A significant topic recently was the airdrop token announcement from the layer-2 projects ZKsync and LayerZero, which received much criticism from the crypto community.
Let’s join Unich Analysis in reviewing the highlights of the crypto market in June 2024!
Macroeconomic and Legal News
- Fed Maintains High Interest Rate: The Fed kept the interest rate at a high 5% for the 7th consecutive time.
The high interest rate could lead to economic stagnation in the U.S., greatly affecting sectors like real estate, import-export, and the crypto market.
- U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI): The CPI in May 2024 was 3.3%, lower than the forecasted 3.4%.
This positive signal could make Fed reconsider its stance on lowering interest rates.
- Political Influence: Donald Trump promises to support Bitcoin mining if elected, while President Joe Biden considers accepting campaign donations in crypto.
Crypto is increasingly influential in politics and plays a significant role in the upcoming election. Public support for crypto is also growing.
Comments: Macroeconomic events are gradually setting up for an upcoming bullish wave. Factors pointing to a bullish market in November include:
- The SEC might reduce interest rates as the CPI rises, and the high interest rate has been maintained for too long.
- The U.S. presidential election in November, with crypto playing a crucial role in the campaign between Trump and Biden.
- CZ (Binance CEO) will be released from prison in November, potentially boosting the crypto community’s positivity.
Major Institutions
- Paradigm: Raises $850 million for its 3rd crypto fund.
The fund will support potential projects in infrastructure.
- Tether: Plans to invest over $1 billion in the next 12 months.
Investment targets include emerging market infrastructure, financial infrastructure, AI, and biotechnology.
- Coinbase: Launches pre-launch market for international users.
The first project on Coinbase’s pre-launch is EigenLayer (EIGEN), with trading starting at 12 PM on June 18, 2024 (UTC zone).
- MicroStrategy: Sells $700 million in bonds to buy more Bitcoin.
Assuming Bitcoin stays around $66,000, the company can buy about 7,400 coins with the new bond sale.
Competition with BlackRock to become the entity with the most Bitcoin on the planet.
Comments: Major institutions are primarily building momentum by launching funds and investment plans to prepare for the upcoming uptrend.
DeFi
- Ethena: Supports restaking ENA and sUSDe via LayerZero and Symbiotic.
ENA staking pool on Symbiotic to launch on June 26.
The collaboration between Ethena and Symbiotic showcases their ambition to challenge EigenLayer, especially as EigenLayer secures many crucial protocols.
Symbiotic, despite being new, has already begun to demonstrate its applicability. New projects like Ethena could serve as a springboard for Symbiotic to grow stronger.
Comments: The market adjusted last week, so the DeFi market was not very prominent, with fewer project announcements following the early-week slump.
Airdrop
Users who lock Simple Earn with BNB will receive airdrop tokens from upcoming projects on Binance, reducing supply and increasing BNB price.
Attracts users to Binance, strengthening its position amidst competition from OKX, Bybit, and Coinbase.
- HashKey Group: Announces massive airdrop for the community, listing HSK token in Q3 this year.
HSK is the governance token for HashKey Group’s ecosystem, used for gas fees and on-chain governance of the Layer2 HashKey Chain.
- Blast: Preparing for airdrop on June 24.
- zkSync: Announces airdrop of 17.5% of total ZK supply to 695,232 wallets.
- The most controversial airdrop this year.
ZKsync airdrop: Is this the endgame for… the whole airdrop industry?
The timeline & real facts of the $ZK airdrop drama ↓ pic.twitter.com/QQflfbEHu1
— Stacy Muur (@stacy_muur) June 14, 2024
The “unique” airdrop criteria allowed insiders to receive more tokens than regular users:
A ZKsync developer received 660,000 tokens through 47 wallets.
Do you think $ZK airdrop was unfair?
I discovered that one ZkSync developer has 47 wallets and received 660,369 tokens, all wallets connected through Disperse contract.
0.05 ETH was dispersed on 550 wallets.Why do I believe these wallets belong to one zkSync developer?
1.The… pic.twitter.com/6GkbWHFFDc
— Nonzee (@0xNonceSense) June 12, 2024
Many wallets received more than 100K ZK even though the project announced a maximum of 100K ZK per user.
Projects on ZKsync, such as zkApes, Dmail, and Element, were overlooked during the airdrop.
Meanwhile, Holdstation wallet received over 2 million ZK, and users holding HOLD tokens also received airdrops. ZKsync appears to favor Holdstation, despite it being just another dApp.
Over 100 million ZK were airdropped to wallets with no transactions, likely for dumping tokens. Link: https://dune.com/realpeha/zksync-airdrop-for-users-with-0-transactions-in-zksync-era
Holdstation’s zk Wave 2 airdrop also received significant criticism, similar to ZKsync.
- LayerZero: Checking for sybil attacks, with only 8.5% of total supply available at TGE and listed on major exchanges.
The pre-market price is around $4 with an FDV (Fully Diluted Valuation) comparable to Wormhole.
With low supply and high FDV, it is predicted that the LayerZero team will exit liquidity since most tokens are held by developers, leaving very few tokens in the market due to unclear and ambiguous airdrop criteria, similar to ZKsync, making it easy to airdrop to insiders.
Low float, high FDV is common in recent projects, leading to charts crashing and then consolidating. Retail users suffer as potential projects hesitate to buy tokens with new lows appearing daily.
Fun fact: LayerZero saved $10 million in airdrops by filtering Sybil attacks. This filtering mainly benefits the project more than users, seemingly redistributing fees from the poor to the rich.”
Comments: The airdrop has reached the end game with LayerZero. ZKsync ends the volume and transaction farming meta for airdrops, surrounded by controversies over airdrop criteria, showing the project is farming users more.
The upcoming meta will feature airdrops based on Points with Linea and Scroll, and airdrops for testnet experiences will return with Berachain, Morph, Plume, and Initia, culminating with Monad, the most anticipated Layer-1 in the near future.
Fundraising
- Binance Labs: Invests in Rango, a cross-chain DEX Aggregator platform.
Rango has announced a successful strategic funding round led by Binance Labs, with participation from Nomad Capital and Foresight Ventures.
Rango is a cross-chain DEX aggregator platform that consolidates liquidity from multiple protocols across different blockchains, providing users with the most optimal prices.
- Solana Layer-2 Sonic: Raises $12 million, valuing the company at $100 million.
Sonic, a Layer-2 network on Solana (SOL) focusing on GameFi, has raised $12 million in a Series A funding round led by Bitkraft Ventures.
Other investors include Galaxy Interactive, Big Brain Holdings, Sanctor Capital, Mirana Ventures, Sky9 Capital, and OKX Ventures.
The latest funding will be used to expand Sonic’s current team of 20, with a focus on business development, gaming, and marketing departments. Additionally, the funds will support accelerator programs to help game developers build their platforms.
- Renzo: Raises $17 million for liquid restaking.
- Layer3: Secures $15 million in Series A funding.
Layer3 has raised $15 million in a Series A funding round led by ParaFi and Greenfield Capital, bringing the total funds raised to $21 million.
Layer3 plans to expand its current team from 13 to 20 members by the end of the year, focusing on reaching the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.
- Zircuit: Receives undisclosed investment from Binance Labs.
Binance Labs has announced an investment in Zircuit with an undisclosed amount.
Zircuit is a Layer 2 project based on the ZK-Rollups model, fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
- Pixelverse: Raises $5.5 million from various investors.
Investors participating in Pixelverse’s latest funding round include Delphi Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, LiquidX, and Foresight Ventures, alongside individual investors such as The Sandbox founder Sébastien Borget, Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz, Dingaling, DCF GOD, Grail, and James Kwon.
Recently, Pixelverse has emerged as a studio with over 15 million registered users and 5 million daily active players. The ‘tap to earn’ game on Pixelverse generates significant FOMO within the community.
- Bondex: Raises over $10 million, positioning itself as a Web3 competitor to LinkedIn.
Bondex has successfully raised funds through two fundraising rounds:
+ The first time, the project raised over 4 million USD in August 2021, led by Animoca Brands, Morningstar, Dext Force Ventures, iAngels, and several other funds.
+ The second time, the project raised over 6.5 million USD through an ICO on CoinList in March 2024.
Co-founder and Animoca Brands’ Yat Siu believes, “Bondex is changing the game for recruitment activities in the future through Web3.”
Other Information
- Ronin: Launches zkEVM for game projects to develop their layer-2 solutions.
- zkSync: Allocates 0.5% of total ZK supply to bring Lens Protocol to its ecosystem.
- Solana MEV Bot: Earns $30 million in two months.
- Cardano: Set to transfer a $682 million treasury to the community after the “Chang” hard fork.
- Zapper: Launches Zapper Protocol with utility token ZAP.
These updates from Unich Analysis provide an overview of the significant events and trends in the cryptocurrency market for June 2024, helping you keep track of market activities, seize investment opportunities, and make timely investment decisions.