SOL to the rescue. Disbelief stage?

Markets in Review:

Crypto markets had their second consecutive green week. While just about every major category in crypto is up, the big story is SOL. SOL is sitting at $39.6, after briefly breaking the $40+ mark, for a gain of 22.8%.

No chart is more telling of current sentiment than the SOL/ETH chart. Since bottoming in late Dec 2022, SOL is up ~3x compared to ETH. This has led to many questioning (again) what purpose ETH serves.

Eventually, the pendulum will swing back to ETH, but after everything SOL has been through, it’s nice to see them get a win. Ironic justice that on the week SBF is convicted of fraud, SOL reaches its high for the year.

Not only is price up, but activity on SOL as well. TVL is currently at $414.8M, and many are looking at airdrop opportunities. Patrick has a great starter guide below:

Week in Review:

• SBF has been convicted of fraud by a New York jury. The verdict came after a month-long trial, with SBF facing decades in prison as he was found guilty on all charges, including wire fraud and money laundering. He awaits sentencing in March.

• A security breach in Unibot, a Telegram bot for trading on Uniswap, led to the theft of approximately $560,000 in memecoins. UNIBOT token's is down over 30% as a result. Unibot has pledged to reimburse the affected users. Self custody will always be a pillar of cryptocurrency and this hack is a reminder of that.

• Coinbase recorded a $2 million deficit, and despite the loss being the smallest since Q4 2021 and beating Wall Street expectations, the stock dropped -5% in after hours trading. The deficit was attributed to a significant drop in trading volumes and active users.

While last week was about memes - (RealSmurfCat, BITCOIN, DEV SMASHED), this week’s activity was spread across multiple sectors (New launches, AI, DeFi). Notable new launches include:

• TITANX (Ponzinomic game) - $108K inflows

• MEME (GameFi) - $127K inflows and listing on Binance.

November is a big month for AI conferences. Whatever happens in the real world is magnified in crypto, and we have seen inflows in AI coins, as well as profit-taking. Notable coins:

• MicroAI - $26K inflows

• EMP - $9K inflows

• ImgnAI - $63K inflows

OLAS, an AI coin that pumped massively, is seeing profit taking. -80K outflows in the past week, and price is down -25%

Finally, we have DeFi. While DeFi (particularly LSDFi) had a nice run earlier this year, it has largely been forgotten until now. Notable coins include:

• LBR ($25K inflows)

• GRAIL ($84K inflows)

• LYRA ($12K inflows)

KUJI

KUJI is an L1 built on Cosmos. Their mission is to bring sustainable DeFi solutions and tools to the masses. Price increased 110% in October, and TVL has grown to $40M+. We have seen how profitable it is to be active on a new chain (Early Arbitrum settlers printed millions). KUJI could be a similar opportunity.

Use these apps today to get started. In parentheses is the ETH app it most closely resembles.

Blue: Your command center in Kuji. This is your entry point into the ecosystem.

• Mint

• Swap

• Stake

• Bridge

• Vote on Governance

• View Dashboards (Balances, Token information, Token Emissions, etc)

Bow (Uniswap):

Seamelssly make swaps. Bow is leaning into token incentives for LPs. Notable Farms: KUJI/ATOM - 33.1% APR KUJI/USK - 8.65% APR KUJI/USDC - 17.58%

USK (Dai):

USK is a decentralized, over-collateralized (166%) stablecoin. Backed by ATOM, wBTC, wETH, and more. USK is fully integrated into every app in the Kuji ecosystem.

Fin (DYDX):

Order-book-based DEX w/ deep liquidity. Similar to DYDX it caters to traders. Certain coins like ATOM & ETH have margin up to 2.5x.

Orca (Maker Dao liquidation engine):

Bid on liquidated collateral for as much as a -30% discount. For example buy Arbitrum at a 30% discount. Useful for market makers and degens alike.

Ghost (Compound):

Centralized money market fund. Borrow assets (overcollateralized) or lend your own to earn interest. GHOST utilizes an algorithm to adjust interest rates. Uses ORCA for liquidations.

Finder (Etherscan):

Block explorer of Kuji. Use this to get wallet information, balances, transaction status, etc.

Conclusion:

Kuji has a unique value proposition. The translation literally means “Anyone can become a whale.” This contrasts other L1s, where a few people control the entire chain. This community led project espouses the crypto ethos perfectly. Find more information on the network at the apps listed above here.

https://kujira.network/

🤑 Notable Raises

• Modulus Labs - $6.3M seed. Sector: AI. Lead investor was Variant & 1kX. Notable investors include Bankless & Stanford.

• Ekubo Protocol - $12M for 20% share. Sector: DeFi. Uniswap invests $12M for 20% of governance token

• Intract - $3M seed. Sector: Social. Notable investors include Bitkraft, Polygon, & Moonpay.

• Access Protocol - $1.2M Seed. Sector: Media. Notable investors include CMS & DV Chain.

• Moonveil Entertainment - $5.4M Seed - Sector: Gaming. Lead investors were Gumi Cryptos & Arcane. Notable investors include Long Hash Ventures & IOSG Ventures.

• Celestia: Celestia’s Mainnet is LIVE.

• Firedancer: Highly Anticipated SOL upgrade is live on testnet. I wrote about it earlier this year.

• dydx: dydx Chain is live.

• Arbitrum: Arbitrum Orbit is mainnet-ready. Permissionlessly build a customized chain.

• LastPass Hack: $4.4M was drained from 25+ victims as a result of the LastPass Hack

• Metamask: New features aims to beef up security and prevent scams.

🫡 Tweet of the Week

See you next week,

Mid-Curve Team

The Mid-Curve newsletter is intended purely for educational and informational purposes and should not be construed as financial advice. We encourage all our readers to conduct their own research or seek advice from a certified financial advisor before making any investment decisions. Please note that members of the Mid-Curve team may hold positions in some of the investments discussed in our newsletter.