Weekly Recap Ending January 27

Notable Messari Intel Updates

1. Ripple announced that it bought back the shares from the investors who financed its $200M Series C round in December 2019.
2. The Compound team has released updates to the Gateway project multi-chain strategy.
3. The Espresso hard fork has been pushed back to block number 11838440, which should occur at 12:15 PM PST on Mar. 8, 2022.
4. The Diem Association (as reported by WSJ and others) is winding down operations and selling its technology to Silvergate Capital Corp.

Notable Messari Governor Updates

1. Magic Internet Money DAO submitted a proposal that aims to use 98B SPELL tokens to acquire the Wonderland Money Treasury and merge the two projects. Discussions are currently open.
2. Olympus DAO submitted a proposal that aims to authorize the Olympus DAO Policy team to create and launch Inverse bonds as a market lever that ensures OHM trades above its treasury backing. The off-chain vote passed with a 99.88% approval.
3. Saffron DAO has submitted a proposal that aims to move SFI buy-backs to Bancor in exchange for Liquidity Mining rewards of 2,500 BNT per week (5,000 BNT with multiplier) for 8 weeks. Voting is currently active.
4. The SpookySwap DAO failed to pass a proposal that aims to increase the amount of BOO that is staked in xBOO and then concurrently staked in 0xDAO to farm OXD. The proposal allows voters to select the amount of BOO added from: 0, 100,000, 200,000, or 300,000.

Sector Returns

The markets continue their downward trajectory as this week marks the third week in a row with negative returns across all sectors. Four of the six sectors covered suffered double digit negative returns with Smart Contract Platforms and Web3 within less than one percent apart to be tied for last place. Ultimately Web3 had the highest drawback of -22.09% followed closely by Smart Contract Platforms returning -21.26%. Gaming was the sector with least amount of decline at -6.62%.

Top Assets

All assets ended the week with double digit negative returns. The sector traded with high correlation throughout the week with Bitcoin (BTC) and Dogecoin (DOGE) trading places various times. The two ended the week with almost identical returns, Bitcoin (BTC) having the least losses by a margin of 0.1% returning -11.5%. The asset with the largest decline was Solana (SOL) with a return of -31.7%.

DeFi Assets

Maker (MKR) broke away from the pack on Saturday and traded well above the rest for most of the week but lost momentum towards the end as some of the assets from the sector recovered lost ground. The Dai-issuing platform – MakerDAO – ended the week in second place, returning -14.6%. As the rest of the tokens gained footing, Loopring (LRC) trended upwards faster than the rest but its late week surge was not enough to end the week with a positive return. It finished with a -7.4% decline while the laggard of the sector was Curve (CRV) returning -31.2%.

Smart Contract Platforms

It was a tough week for Smart Contract Platforms as it was the second worst performing sector in the report and recorded double digit negative returns across all assets. Cosmos (ATOM) broke upwards from the group on Monday but quickly lost momentum and rejoined the rest towards the end of the week. Even though Cardano (ADA) was one of the most discussed projects this week due to the launch of the first DEX on the Layer 1, many were frustrated with the congestion that this caused in the network. ADA took third place, losing 18.5% on the week. Cosmos (ATOM) took first place with the least decline of the sector, returning -14.1% while Solana (SOL) took last place for the second time in this recap, ending the week with -31.7%.

Currencies

The Currencies sector traded with similar synchrony to the Top Assets sector with all assets ending the week in double digit negative return territory. Bitcoin (BTC) suffered the least in the sector, returning -11.5% while the worst performer was Zcash, declining 30.1% on the week.

Web3

Even though no sector had an asset end the week with a positive return, Helium (HNT) was the closest one to do so. The decentralized IoT network made a clear U shaped recovery on the week but it was not enough to finish in the green, returning -0.6%. The rest of the assets were left far behind with the next up returning -14.2% (BAT) while Theta (THETA) took the worst hit of the sector, returning -33.3%.

Gaming

While all Gaming assets traded closely for most of the week, two projects: PLA (PLA) and Ultra (UOS) broke out towards the end of the week. Unfortunately this was not enough to give rise to positive returns as PLA (PLA) ended the week with a return of -10.3% while Ultra (UOS) followed closely, returning -10.8%. The worst performer of the pack was Alice (ALICE), ending the week with a substantial 33.3% decline.