The Mempool
December 3rd, 2021
“If there’s one thing I like about our community it’s that it constantly makes real the maxim that if you will it, it is no dream. Something as insane-sounding as crowdfunding $45 million to buy a copy of the Constitution can go from concept to done in under a week.” - Jerry Brito, executive director of the DC-based crypto think tank Coin Center
Good afternoon and happy Friday! This past month saw continued market volatility after red-hot US inflation data was released on November 10th, prompting Bitcoin (BTC) to set a new all-time high at $69,000. In the previous month, U.S. inflation hit a 31-year high as consumer prices jumped +6.2%.
To recap this past month's news: The activation of the Taproot upgrade to the Bitcoin network was successful, CoinDesk seeks nominations for the 2021 edition of “Most Influential” in the blockchain industry, and we take a deep dive into ConstitutionDAOs attempt to buy a rare copy of the US Constitution in our December Breakdown.
Also, did you know you can now trade Avalanche (AVAX), Axie Infinity (AXS), Cartesi (CTSI), Polkadot (DOT), and yearn.finance (YFI) on Binance.US?
Let's dive in…
*Note that the contents of this newsletter are subject to a legal disclaimer located below*
Top Gainers and Losers in November:
Top Headlines
- Every year, CoinDesk recognizes the “Most Influential” people working to expand cryptocurrency and blockchain’s reach. Help assist CoinDesk editors in determining a final list of 50 nominees by voting! (Read more)
- Taproot, Bitcoin's long-anticipated code upgrade with a focus on enhancing the network's privacy and security, has been activated. The upgrade went live when the Bitcoin blockchain reached block 709,632 at 5:15 UTC time on Sunday, The Block reports. (Read more)
- El Salvador’s president has said the Central American country plans to build a volcano-powered “bitcoin city.” The city would have no property, income or capital gains taxes and would be financed partly by an issue of $1bn in sovereign bonds backed by the cryptocurrency, according to the Financial Times. (Read more)
December Breakdown: We the DAO - The Constitutional DAO Story
Photo by YouTube
The blockchain industry has seen its fair share of experimental projects appear throughout these past 12 months, but perhaps one of the most innovative use cases that has gained significant traction is the evolution of decentralized autonomous organizations or DAOs. DAOs serve as organizations represented by rules encoded as a computer program that is transparent, controlled by the organization members, and operated and maintained on a blockchain.
Beginning with the emergence of “The DAO'' as the first formally decentralized autonomous organization in May of 2016, the role of DAOs have expanded from a way of allocating capital (think of a decentralized venture fund) to a way of governing decision making through communities. These communities can consists of anything from members of a community that invest in NFTs and physical collectibles like PleasrDAO to MKR token holders that govern the Maker Protocol and the smart contracts that power the algorithmic stablecoin DAI. DAOs are a relatively new innovation that has the potential to disrupt the traditional organizational structure and decision making model.
So what happened with the ConstitutionDAO?
On September 17th, 2021, Sothebys announced that it would auction off an extremely rare official first-edition printed copy of the U.S. Constitution on November 18th, 2021.
Following the announcement, two 25-year-olds, Austin Cain and Graham Novak, launched an effort to organize ConstitutionDAO via Discord to crowdsource the funds needed to bid on the first-edition copy. Within a week of launching, ConstitutionDAO raised over $40 million worth of ETH on the DAO fundraising platform Juicebox. Supporters received PEOPLE tokens in return for their ETH donation to the fund.
After it was all said and done, the DAO announced it had lost the auction to Kenneth Griffin, the founder of the hedge fund giant Citadel. Griffin paid $43.2 million for the rare copy.
What will happen to the funds?
ConstitutionDAO declared their intentions to refund the 17,437 donors through the Juicebox platform after it had officially lost the auction. When donors supplied their ETH to the DAO, they received PEOPLE tokens in return at a ratio of 1 ETH to 1 Million PEOPLE. A twitter thread from the DAOs official twitter page on November 26th indicated that donors can choose to redeem their respective share of PEOPLE tokens for a refund back in ETH through Juicebox. The price of PEOPLE is currently up +1,900% since the token launch on November 18th at the time of writing.
While many argue that high Ethereum gas fees used to submit bids may have prevented the DAOs ability to fully deploy it’s treasury, there was a silver-lining: The ConstitutionDAO community broke the world record for the most capital crowdfunded in under 72 hours.
Cryptotrivia
1. Find the outlier: Which of the following DeFi protocols are NOT live on the Avalanche blockchain?'
a. Aave
b. SushiSwap
c. Compound
d. Curve
2. Bitcoin is programmed to self-adjust the difficulty to solve for new blocks in order to keep a target block time of 10 minutes. How often does this adjustment period occur?
a. Every 2,016 blocks
b. Every 100,000 transactions
c. Every 4 months
d. Every 21,000 blocks
Answers at the bottom
Venture & Fundraising
- Blockade Games Raises $5M Round at $23M Valuation From Animoca Brands, Others
- Former Tron Exec Launches Play-to-Earn ‘Mafia’ Game With Twitch Co-Founder’s Backing; raises $8M
- Private equity giant KKR plans to lead a new investment in crypto startup Anchorage
- Valkyrie launching $100 million hedge fund run by Tom Brady's former business manager
- Crypto startup MoonPay sees valuation blast to $3.4 billion
- NFT music marketplace Royal raises $55M in Series A round
- Anoma Foundation Raises $26M to Simplify Exchanging Cryptocurrencies
- ConsenSys Plots Massive Expansion Following $200M Fundraising
- Kosen Labs, founded by ex-DeepMind researchers, aims to bring the benefits of advanced AI to the world of web3
- Defy raises $ 5.5m to build India’s first social crypto exchange
- ‘Wonder’: ‘The Project Metaverse’ Platform Raises $2.5m to help DAOs take over the world
The Shards
- Ethereum Name Service Token reaches a $3.1 billion market cap after the token airdrop (CoinTelegraph)
- Bitcoin tops $69,000 after high inflation numbers released (The Block)
- Stablecoins should be regulated like banks, say Biden administration (MarketWatch)
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