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  • 🟣 Fed watchers look for market cues

🟣 Fed watchers look for market cues

Assembling infra nuts and bolts

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Welcome back to 0xResearch. Here's what we’ve got for you today:

  • What’s on Powell’s mind?

  • Lava Network mainnet

  • Jito tips ATH 

  • CT: Terra broke

It’s FOMC day! A Wednesday typically characterized by a fair bit of volatility. Yesterday, crypto markets followed Big Tech lower, but the rebound thus far has been tepid relative to equities.

Bitcoin has been in a relatively uncorrelated phase over the past few weeks. The Nasdaq slid by about -10%, while BTC rallied over 20%.

The US dollar has been weakening lately, and took another blow with yesterday’s FX “yentervention” by the Bank of Japan, which hiked interest rates 15 basis points to 0.25%.

A weakening dollar is generally a tailwind for risk assets like bitcoin, though at the moment the DXY is merely revisiting the recent low-end of a range set over the past three months.

Let’s see what J-Pow says.

Lava erupts

Lava Network’s public mainnet went live Tuesday, including integrations with Filecoin, Starknet and the Cosmos Hub.

Lava specializes in RPC infrastructure with a native Cosmos-based app-chain.

This launch includes a $2 million incentive pool for participants and the release of the LAVA token, with an airdrop of 55 million tokens.

Lava's token distribution strategy aims to enhance decentralization and participation by featuring a high initial float and capped supply. 

A Uniswap pool on Arbitrum with an ERC-20 wrapped version of the LAVA token is currently the primary public market. An Osmosis pool for the native token has less than $5k of liquidity.

But if you’re in the US, you better not even read their blog!

In a curiously cautious approach, the publicly available blog says, “By accessing and reading this article, you represent and warrant that you do not reside in, are not located in, are not incorporated in and do not have a registered office or principal place of business in the United States.”

Last I checked, even in Gary Gensler’s US, you’re still free to read whatever the heck you want on the internet.

— Macauley Peterson (X: @yeluacaM | Farcaster: @Macauley)

Get your game face on - we're about to make history with the first-ever Permissionless Pickleball Tournament!

We're talking epic matches from a who’s who roster of crypto. Think Bankless vs. Blockworks…

Team submissions are now open if you think you’ve got what it takes. Register for Permissionless III and submit your team to play today.

Jito tips reach new heights:

Jito is making bank on MEV validator tips, racking up a Sunday all-time high of approximately $3.2 million. Tips are paid by users to Solana block validators to incentivize quicker transaction inclusion into a block — a crucial feature for Solana due to rampant transaction spam on the network.

Jito makes 5% of all validators tips, but that revenue does not go to the DAO or JTO holders. Unlike Ethereum, Solana lacks a block space market. The open-source Jito-Solana software client previously facilitated the creation of that market to provide a revenue stream for searchers and validators, though its mempool service was shut down in March.

— Donovan Choy (X: @donovanchoy | Farcaster: @donovan)

Solend unveiled multiple new products in the pipeline, including an LST, a stablecoin and a new market for shorting memecoins. Rolling out this new product suite comes with a rebrand to “Save.” While the lending protocol has stumbled in the past with the occurrence of bad debt, and deposits have struggled to keep up with competitors Kamino and MarginFi, these new product verticals may serve as avenues for growth and revenue generation.

Synthetix is actively shipping their cross-chain strategy. Trading on Base went live in April and has reached $20 million in TVL, matching the trading volume of Synthetix on OP Mainnet. The Arbitrum deployment opened its doors to LPs in June, and already attracted $28 million.

Competing teams each verified zk proofs on Bitcoin mainnet during Bitcoin 2024.

Analysts are calling the crypto exchange’s stock “underappreciated,” with a focus on latest trading volumes and current regulations.

The insights, views and outlooks presented in the report are not to be taken as financial advice. Blockworks Research analysts are not registered broker/dealers or financial advisors. Blockworks Research analysts may hold assets mentioned in this report, further outlined in the Firm’s Financial Disclosures.