Translated by elcreto

Xangle’s Take on the Market This Week

• This week’s crypto market sustained a notable uptrend, backed by a slowing inflation and a recovery in risk-on sentiment.
• A particularly strong performance was observed in the games/metaverse (+27%) and NFT (+24%) sectors as a staggering 114% rise in the price of Gala drove up other gaming and NFT assets, i.e., The Sandbox (+33%) and Decentraland (+41%).
• Solana was up 29%. Last week’s strong performance continued into this week as the effect of the launch of meme token BONK and anticipation for the bottoming out continued. Avalanche saw a 34% bump after its announcement of partnership with AWS.

Top Stories & Takeaways

Ethereum’s Shanghai Upgrade Slated for end-March

• On Jan 5th, ACD Execution (ACDE) discussed timeline and development details of the Shanghai Upgrade.
• As was scheduled for the post-Merge phase, Ethereum developers aim to launch a testnet in Feb and a mainnet update in Mar for the Shanghai Upgrade.
• While withdrawal of ETH staked on the Beacon Chain will still be made available, EOF (EVM Object Format) update will be removed from the plan.

Our Take: The news about Ethereum’s update of the withdrawal feature surely gave a boost to the liquid staking narrative, shooting up the price of LDO and RPL by more than 100% from the low. Persistent demand for ETH staking generally considered relatively safe, and addition of withdrawal expected to reduce the burden associated with incentives for liquidity pool staking stand to help boost the protocol token staking market. Once the withdrawal of staked assets becomes available though, competition will heat up particularly among projects seeking to snatch the market share of Lido.

Link: Ethereum Shanghai Public Testnet Launching in Feb

Committee’s Decision to Ban the Game

• On Jan 13th, the Seoul Administrative Court dismissed the lawsuit filed by SkyPeople to revoke the decision of South Korea’s Game Rating and Administration Committee.
• Earlier in May, the Committee refused to issue a rating for SkyPeople’s Five Stars for Klaytn, citing concerns over speculation.
• SkyPeople said that, aside from the fact that it would honor the court ruling, it would continue with preparation for global service.

Our Take: The court’s decision gives a stronger basis for the Game Rating and Administration Committee to restrict P2E games, further obscuring the availability of P2E games in South Korea. Yet, the impact may not be significant since the focus of the blockchain business of South Korea’s leading game companies has long been on the global market.

Link: Court Upholds Prohibition of P2E Game Distribution

Mainnet

Avalanche Now Partners with AWS

Ava Labs has entered a service partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Link: Ava Labs and AWS Bring Scalable Blockchain Solutions to Enterprises and Governments

Samsung Asset Management’s Bitcoin Futures ETF Listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange

Samsung Asset Management became the first South Korean company to launch and list an ETF using CME Bitcoin futures as the underlying asset on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Link: Samsung Unveils Bitcoin Futures ETF Amid Escalating Crypto Interest

StarkWare Unveils the Papyrus Full Node

StarkWare has released a Rust-based, open-source StarkNet full node client, “Papyrus.”

Link: github.com/starkware-libs/papyrus

Games/Metaverse

$GALA Spiked 114% (7D) on Positive News

The GALA token gained as much as 114% in a week, propelled by the news of acquisition of a mobile game studio and launch of a mobile blockchain game.

Link: Gala Games Acquires Ember Entertainment

Marblex Unveils MBX 3.0

Marblex has unveiled MBX 3.0, which primarily envisions multichain expansion.

Regulatory Landscape

Paycoin Will Reapply for Crypto Service Provider License

PayProtocol, a South Korean issuer of Paycoin, said on the 9th that it would again seek approval for the crypto service provider license on Feb 5th.

Link: Paycoin Seeks Reapproval After S.korea Suspends the Payments Token: Report

U.S. SEC Lays Charges on Genesis and Gemini of Securities Law Violation

On the 12th, the SEC charges Genesis and Gemini with violating the securities laws.

Link: SEC Charges Genesis, Gemini With Selling Unregistered Securities

Macro/Industry/Corporate

FTX Is Said to Have Recovered $5B Worth of Liquid Assets

FTX announced that it had recovered more than $5B in cash and other liquid assets, adding that it would continue to seek ways to sell its assets worth more than $4.6B in book value.

Link: FTX Says It Has Located More Than $5 Billion in Cash, Liquid Assets

Layoffs Ensue in 2023 Across Crypto Industry

Global crypto companies are projected to continue downsizing their workforce, as the waves of layoffs that started last year persist into this year.

Link: Coinbase Form 8-K | Coinbase Announces Workforce Reduction | Ethereum Software Firm ConsenSys to Cut Upwards of 100 Staf (Coindesk) | Crypto Brokerage Blockchain.com Lays Off 28% of Workforce Blockchain.com (Coindesk)

South Korea’s DAXA Holds Industry Self-Regulation Symposium

DAXA (Digital Asset eXchange Alliance of South Korea) held a symposium and discussed self-regulatory measures.

EclipseFND X RiscZero Release zk SolanaVM PoC

The Eclipse team, which has been working with RiscZero for Solana VM (Sealevel VM) Rollup, released zk SolanaVM PoC.

Link: Eclipse Team Releases zk Solana Sealevel VM PoC

Previous Weekly Reports

• [On-chain Weekly] Ethereum Node Distribution by ISP, Market Share of Lending Platforms
• [On-chain Weekly] MC and FDV, Uniswap NFTs, APE Staking
• [Weekly Xangle] Latest Crypto News from Starbucks Odyssey, Wemade's Injunction Request, Chainlink’s Staking Service and More
• [NFT Weekly] Pudgy Penguins, Starbucks Odyssey, Lawsuit Against Yuga Labs & On-chain Analysis