Blur Enforces Royalties for Opensea Boycotters, ZkSync Launches zkSync Era Testing
Market Update
- Digital asset markets have continued to decouple from legacy markets since Tuesday. $BTC (+2.6%) briefly spiked above $25k this morning before retracing right below, while $ETH (+2.5%) broke $1.7k and is holding above the level at the time of writing. On the other hand, $SPX (-0.4%) and $QQQ (-0.4%) opened lower before trading upwards. Markets were spooked by signs of persistent inflation following a higher annual PPI print of 6.0%, perhaps an indication that the Fed will need to keep rates higher for longer to tame inflation. $ACS and $FLOKI has been the top gainers over the past day and past week. The former is a content monetization platform on Solana, while the latter benefitted from Elon's jovial tweet on the new CEO of Twitter named 'Floki.' Blur's airdrop (expanded on below) also caused a spike in gas fees, contributing to Ethereum's deflation in the past month.
- Following a successful airdrop on Tuesday, NFT marketplace Blur has announced it will enforce full creator royalties for any collection that blocks trading on incumbent Opensea. Blur, which launched last October, did not fully honor creator royalty settings before, only enforcing a 0.5% minimum with the option for traders to pay more. This escalation comes after Opensea rolled out a blocklist tool that allowed creators to prohibit their NFTs from being traded on any marketplace that didn't honor creator royalties. Apart from encouraging creators to earn royalties on all marketplaces they whitelist, the recommendation bears massive financial implications since creators who implement it will be eligible for Blur's Season 2 rewards. Due to the airdrop incentives, Blur also surpassed Opensea in volume for the past 30 days, welcomed by most natives as a shift from the incumbent's outrageous 2.5% platform fees.
- ZkSync, a Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum, announced today that it is launching its next development phase "fair onboarding alpha." This phase allows registered projects to deploy onto its zkSync Era (formerly zkSync 2.0) network for testing purposes but will remain closed to end-users for now. zkEVMs are significant since zero-knowledge proofs offer faster finality and privacy features. Unlike earlier ZK rollups, zkEVMs also able to support any existing Ethereum app. So far, prominent Layer 2s such as Optimism and Arbitrum are optimistic rollups and run on fraud proofs. The race to develop the first zkEVM is heating up, with participation from Polygon, Starknet and Scroll. ZkSync's announcement today was followed by Polygon's announcement yesterday that it will launch its zkEVM beta on March 27.
Daily Technical Strategy
Mark L. Newton, CMT
Head of Technical Strategy
Bitcoin's sudden surge likely will require consolidation before carrying much higher, and prices have just arrived at the first meaningful area of resistance near last August's highs just over 25k. Daily $BTCUSD charts show this recent surge which has helped price gain a bit over 61% off the lows from last November. Volume expanded sharply on the first leg of the push higher in January, and recent consolidation proved brief into mid-February before lifting back to new monthly highs this week. In the short run, this area near 25k does line up with a prominent 50-week moving average which proved to be important back in March 2022 along with July 2021, which might yet again serve as an area where prices might stall. Momentum has begun to negatively diverge with price on daily charts, and the area near early August 2022 could serve as resistance. However, any pullback likely proves short-lived and shouldn't move much below 23.3k before further rallies carry BTC back up to $27.5k which is thought to be more meaningful. Overall, technically this looks like a constructive move, but just a bit stretched as it's nearing former peaks which could result in a temporary stalling out.
Daily Important Metrics
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All metrics as of February 22, 2023 12:40 PM
All Funding rates are on bps
Crypto Prices
| Symbol | Market Cap | Last Price | Daily Change | Year to Date | Relative to BTC YTD |
 BTC | $464B | $24,044 | ↓ -2.62% | ↑ 45% | |
 ETH | $200B | $1,636 | ↓ -2.49% | ↑ 37% | ↓ -8.58% |
 ADA | $13B | $0.3854 | ↓ -2.44% | ↑ 56% | ↑ 11% |
 MATIC | $12B | $1.37 | ↓ -2.41% | ↑ 79% | ↑ 34% |
 DOGE | $11B | $0.0853 | ↓ -1.20% | ↑ 22% | ↓ -24% |
 SOL | $8.9B | $23.64 | ↓ -6.35% | ↑ 139% | ↑ 94% |
 DOT | $8.2B | $7.06 | ↓ -3.51% | ↑ 62% | ↑ 17% |
 LINK | $3.8B | $7.48 | ↓ -3.58% | ↑ 35% | ↓ -10% |
 NEAR | $2.1B | $2.45 | ↓ -4.30% | ↑ 93% | ↑ 47% |
Exchange Traded Products (ETPs)
| Symbol | Premium to Nav | Last Price | Daily Change | Year to Date | Relative to BTC YTD |
| GBTC | ↓ -47% | $11.58 | ↓ -2.53% | ↑ 40% | ↓ -5.45% |
| BITW | ↓ -58% | $8.97 | ↓ -2.45% | ↑ 67% | ↑ 22% |
| ETHE | ↓ -53% | $7.42 | ↓ -2.83% | ↑ 56% | ↑ 11% |
| BTCC | ↑ 0.98% | $4.38 | ↓ -3.31% | ↑ 45% | ↓ -0.58% |
News
QUICK BITS
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DOSE OF DEFI
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FUNDRAISING AND M&A
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NFTS
Decrypt.co Blur Advises NFT Creators to Block OpenSea in Royalties Battle Riding high on the success of its BLUR token airdrop, the marketplace announced a provocative policy change. |
HIRING
The Block Signature Bank to appoint Eric Howell as CEO and president Crypto friendly Signature Bank is reshuffling its leadership team — with Eric Howell, the current COO, taking the reins as CEO. The ... |
PRODUCT UPDATES AND PARTNERSHIPS
The Block Flashbots introduces MEV-Share protocol to share profits with Ethereum users Flashbots has introduced a new protocol called MEV-Share, which is designed to distribute a portion of the Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) to Ethereum users, ra... |
CoinDesk Matter Labs Says zkSync 2.0 Entering New ‘Era’ With Re-Brand and Developer Rollout Matter Labs has renamed zkSync 2.0, its zero-knowledge rollup platform, to “zkSync Era” and is making its code open-source. |
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