- The biggest issue facing DAOs is a lack of professional operators involved.
- The recent news of a spot Bitcoin ETF approval turned out to be fake, causing chaos in the market.
- The market inefficiency and price volatility during the incident highlighted the need for more due diligence and maturity in the industry.
- The incident may impact the timeline for the approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF.
- The Stride project has backed down from the Cosmos Hub governance buyout.

- The governance buyout of Stride by Cosmos Hub is being shelved due to community opposition.
- The proposal for a fee switch in Blur governance forums has been put forward by ARCA.
- The proposal suggests a 1% base fee on all trading activity with discounts for token holders.
- The generated fees would be used to buy back and burn Blur tokens.
- The author disagrees with returning revenue to token holders at this stage and suggests reinvesting it into the protocol.
- The proposal is seen as a way to increase value accrual for core contributors, investors, and team allocations.
- The author believes the NFT market is not ready for such a fee switch and questions its effectiveness.
- The author also questions the effectiveness of token buybacks and burns in redistributing wealth to token holders.
- The author acknowledges the potential narrative value of the proposal in attracting new investors.
- Blur currently holds a market share of 50-65% compared to OpenSea, but OpenSea has more active wallets.

- OpenSea has more active wallets compared to Blur, indicating that retail buyers prefer OpenSea for NFT purchases.
- Blur's revenue is driven by token farming, making it difficult to detect wash trading.
- The speaker believes Blur is a better product and expects new features and products from them.
- The speaker questions why anyone would not want to have royalty and market fee income from NFTs.
- The speaker suggests that a Shopify-like platform for NFT marketplaces may emerge in the future.
- The Arbitrum Stip recap discussed the allocation of funds to projects in the ecosystem, with a focus on projects with goodwill in the Arbitrum community.
- The DAO process was challenging, and the speaker suggests electing a board of delegates for decision-making.
- The speaker highlights the need for professional operators in DAOs and questions the purpose of some DAOs.
- Examples of DAOs using service providers and risk advisors are mentioned.
- The FraxGov module is discussed as an example of giving core teams control with a veto power for token holders.

- The governance layer in the crypto space needs more experimentation and development.
- Several protocols, including Lido and Curve, did not receive funding in recent proposals.
- Gains Network did not receive funding despite being a popular platform.
- The high funding request and lack of clear benefits to the ecosystem were reasons for some protocols not receiving funding.
- The allocation of funds to bridges and liquidity providers was a challenging decision for delegates.
- Synapse was close to receiving funding but did not make the final cut.
- The proposal by Wormhole to incentivize USDC liquidity on Arbitrum was well-received but did not receive funding.
- There is competition between different protocols for incentives and user activity.
- Lido faced challenges in other ecosystems and concerns about its market share.
- The valuation of Lido's governance token may still hold value despite limited revenue potential.

- The speaker discusses the potential impact of Lido moving into the Cosmos ecosystem and how it may affect Stride's business model.
- They question Lido's decision to unwind their StakeSoul initiative and suggest alternative options.
- The speaker mentions a recent Lido governance proposal to allocate a small module of Lido staked ETH to DVT solutions.
- They discuss the market share and control that Lido has in the Ethereum ecosystem and the potential vulnerabilities it presents.
- The speaker expresses excitement about the development of dbt and its potential impact.
- They discuss the concept of governance rights and the potential premium they may demand.
- The speaker acknowledges the value of controlling 33% of Ethereum's stake but questions how to quantify it.
- The conversation shifts to discussing Chainlink and the skepticism surrounding its success as a market leader in cross-chain transactions.
- The speaker mentions the convenience and comfort factor in choosing a bridge for transactions rather than solely focusing on price.
- They discuss Chainlink's goal of bringing institutions on-chain and tokenizing real-world assets, drawing a comparison to Ripple's previous ambitions with banks.

- The speaker doubts that banks will rely on Chainlink or other platforms to transfer information between Ethereum and private blockchains.
- They believe that while real-world assets have value on-chain, they should not be the fundamental value proposition for cryptocurrencies.
- The speaker mentions attending a Goldman Sachs event where Sergey, the founder of Chainlink, spoke and impressed the bankers.
- They acknowledge the potential of Chainlink's partnerships but also highlight the need for actual transactions on the platform.
- The speaker discusses the importation of off-chain yields into the DeFi space and the potential for growth and innovation.
- They mention the risk assumptions involved in owning on-chain treasury bonds compared to traditional treasury bonds.
- The speaker addresses the criticism of Uniswap becoming KYC compliant, stating that it is an optional feature created by a community participant and not enforced by the protocol. They express confusion over the concern about KYC requirements in crypto.

- The discussion revolves around the desire for permissionless systems in DeFi.
- There is a debate about the adoption rate of a particular hook in Uniswap v4 pools and whether it will become the norm.
- The possibility of KYC compliant pools attracting more liquidity due to regulatory concerns is discussed.
- The likelihood of professional LPs and US-based entities favoring KYC compliant pools is considered.
- The conversation extends beyond Uniswap to the potential KYC requirements for bridging to Layer 2 solutions.
- The importance of following where the money goes in a laissez-faire market is emphasized.

- Lack of professional operators is the biggest issue facing DAOs.
- Fake news about a Bitcoin ETF approval caused market chaos and highlighted the need for more due diligence.
- The Stride project's governance buyout by Cosmos Hub has been shelved due to community opposition.
- ARCA has proposed a fee switch in Blur governance forums, suggesting a 1% base fee on trading activity.
- The author questions the effectiveness of returning revenue to token holders and believes the NFT market is not ready for such a fee switch.
- OpenSea has more active wallets compared to Blur, indicating retail buyers prefer OpenSea for NFT purchases.
- The speaker believes Blur is a better product and expects new features and products from them.
- The importance of professional operators in DAOs is highlighted, along with the need for more experimentation in the governance layer of the crypto space.
- Several protocols, including Lido and Curve, did not receive funding in recent proposals.
- The speaker discusses the potential impact of Lido moving into the Cosmos ecosystem and questions their decision to unwind their StakeSoul initiative.
- The skepticism surrounding Chainlink's success as a market leader in cross-chain transactions is mentioned.
- The speaker discusses the potential growth and innovation in importing off-chain yields into the DeFi space.
- The criticism of Uniswap becoming KYC compliant is addressed, stating it is an optional feature and not enforced by the protocol.
- The debate about the adoption rate of a particular hook in Uniswap v4 pools and the potential for KYC compliant pools to attract more liquidity is discussed.
- The importance of following the money in a laissez-faire market is emphasized.

In this week's analyst table, Dan and Sam are joined by Blockworks research analysts Matt and Brick to discuss the fake Bitcoin ETF news that briefly pumped BTC price 7% before plunging back down. They also analyze Lido's proposal to sunset Staked Sol, the Arbitrum incentive program results, and debate whether real world assets coming on-chain will be a long-term value proposition. The group also weighs in on the controversy around Uniswap V4's optional KYC compliance hooks, arguing that crypto will likely see more regulatory compliant options emerge. Hope you enjoy!

As always remember this podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice.
- -

Follow Sam: https://twitter.com/swmartin19
Follow Dan: https://twitter.com/smyyguy
Follow Brick: https://twitter.com/0x___Brick
Follow Matt: https://twitter.com/MattFiebach
Follow Blockworks Research: https://twitter.com/blockworksres

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3foDS38
Subscribe on Apple: https://apple.co/3SNhUEt
Subscribe on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3NlP1hA

Get top market insights and the latest in crypto news. Subscribe to Blockworks Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/
- -
Hexens is the premier cybersecurity provider in web3 with an essential focus on blockchain technologies. Always exceeding clients’ expectations, Hexens is a trusted security partner of the most prominent web3 projects like Polygon & zkEVM, 1inch, Lido, Nubank, TON, Risc0, EigenLayer, Mantle, Celo and more.
https://hexens.io/
- -
MetaMask Portfolio is your one-stop shop for all things web3. Instead of connecting to multiple exchanges, dapps, and tools, you just need to connect to one simple dapp to track and manage all your assets across different networks and accounts. MetaMask Portfolio provides a secure and convenient way to perform common tasks such as Buy, Sell, Swap, Bridge, and Stake.
Try MetaMask Portfolio at https://blckwrks.co/MetaMask0xResearch
- -
Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(01:39) ETF Approval Fake News
(09:48) Stride Community Rejects Enshrinement 
(11:06) “Hexens Ad”
(12:10) Blur Fee Switch Proposal 
(21:12) “MetaMask Ad”
(21:56) Arbitrum STIPs Review
(30:25) Surprise Grant Snubs and Winners
(37:01) Lido DAO Sunsets stSOL
(46:27) Link CCIP Overblown?
(53:31) The Efficacy of RWAs
(57:57) Uniswap V4 KYC Hook Hate
- -
Resources

Intern Tweet
https://x.com/intern/status/1713932991905284137

Stride Buyout Episode
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUrqpCf62bc

Wash Filter by Hildobby
https://x.com/hildobby_/status/1603763322012041217

- -
Check out Blockworks Research today! Research, data, governance, tokenomics, and models – now, all in one place

Blockworks Research: https://www.blockworksresearch.com/
Free Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter
- -
Disclaimer: Nothing said on 0xResearch is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Dan, Sam, and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.

I think the biggest issue DAOs face today is that there aren't enough professional operators in DAOs.

It's mostly people who are big personalities on Twitter, maybe an airdrop threader who helps a lot of people get tokens, gets delegated a bunch of tokens or something like that.

And while it's totally fine, maybe more technical entities and entities who are who are really involved, like maybe, I don't know, smart contract auditors, things of that nature would be the best delegates.

And before we dive into today's episode, I wanted to shout out Metamask Portfolio.

Are you always constantly stressed like us, managing your portfolio across different chains, wallets, LP positions, purpose positions?

I'm excited to tell you about Metamask Portfolio, which lets you manage all of your crypto assets across different networks, wallets, all in 1 place.

Do more with Web3, your way with Metamask portfolio.

You'll hear a little bit more about it later in the show.

Welcome back to another episode of ZeroX Research.

We have a great interview lined up with the Blockworks research team.

Today we're going to be joined by Matt and Brick making his debut.

Before we get into that, wanna give a quick shout out to our sponsor, Hexens.

They're 1 of the most hardcore security teams in web 3 pioneering in ZK and novel cryptography.

Hexens is trusted by tier 1 protocols like Polygon, including the work on their new ZK EVM, Mantle, Risk 0, Lido, OneInch, NewBank, and more.

You'll hear about them a little bit more later in the show from Dan, but I also wanna remind everyone to use code 0xResearch10 at checkout at blockworksresearch.com if you're interested in leading industry research data and governance updates.

Dan, how about I just kick it over to you to get things started off?

Yeah, we'll kick things off with the top movers and biggest losers section.

And that's definitely the Bitcoin running on the news of the spot ETF this morning.

So today's Monday, as Sam mentioned, and we woke up this morning to some what seemed like to be great news.

There was a Cointelegraph tweet that went out just kind of saying the SEC has approved the iShares, which is BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF.

So obviously, this is huge news that the market's been anticipating for months and months and quite honestly, years.

You know, it's just last week where Grayscale had another positive step in their ETF battle with the SEC just regarding their GBTC fund.

And so it's like, all right, we kind of seem like we're treading in the right direction.

So boom, this headline hits on Monday morning.

And I was with it at first and we actually hopped on our team call.

And it was like there was no source anywhere.

But then everyone just kept sourcing the original tweet, which had no source.

And so, you know, first step whenever I see ETF news is definitely just go to the 2 Bloomberg legends James Seyfert and Blanking on the other guys.

They have incredible ETF content non-stop So I pulled their Twitters And it was 1 of the 2 of them that actually tweeted back at the Cointelegraph tweet like source.

And of course, I was like, all right, there might be some credence to this not being not being real.

And sure enough, 5 minutes later, I'm now putting Bitcoin in the biggest loser section as it retraced the entire move.

And Cointelegraph then edited their tweet to say, you know, this is like they added the word reportedly in there.

Well, they were the first 1 to report it.

And sure enough, about an hour or so later, the tweets deleted, an apology message comes out.

And there's just completely seems to be false news, fake news, whatever you want to call it.

So Bitcoin is actually claiming the throne for biggest mover and biggest loser all within the 10 minute span of this Monday morning.

So definitely always a fun industry to work in when you have to wake up to complete chaos.

But it's also a little bit disheartening.

I mean, sometimes it really does feel like we live in a clown world.

And this was, you know, no, you know, this today felt no different.

I was writing our newsletter this morning, I actually had a quote in there, like, feel like I kind of summed up a little bit of how I felt.

A crypto native, a crypto native media outlet posted a false report that led to a 7% Bitcoin candle in a matter of minutes.

And that is only further proving Gensler might be right in his claim that the spot Bitcoin market can be easily manipulated.

But it was actually a portfolio manager from ARCA, Jeff Dorman, who was tweeting about this as well.

And he was like, you know what, every market can be easily manipulated on a major false headline.

So we got to grow up and mature as an industry and like, let's get some true due diligence and not just be putting things out there to be first to the click rush.

I thought 1 of the most interesting takes in response to this and yeah, what a crazy morning like Absolutely absurd.

And this all went down in 30 minutes while we were on our morning call.

But Bitcoin's still up 4% on the day, like even now at 2 p.m.

6 hours, some 6 hours after all this is going down.

And 1 of the cool better takes us all is Crypto Donnell on Twitter.

He's like that 7% move and, you know, a 5, 7, 8, 10 minute time frame shows that people are sidelined that shouldn't be sidelined.

He says that this is almost an inevitability that a Bitcoin spot ETF does get approved and that sideline money might now realize, OK, maybe we should put on some exposure.

Just like devil's advocate to that, I actually do tend to agree and think that that's an interesting take that now we'll have some more of that exposure priced in.

So meaning like that, we won't retrace the whole way down.

But 1 interesting, you know, just by devil's advocate to that is maybe people just are pricing in a non-inevitability, a low chance that the Bitcoin spot ETF does get approved soon, in which case it wasn't mispositioned money.

It was just people don't think it's actually going to happen.

I tend to agree with CryptoDonald and thought that was smart.

Another interesting factor is that so much, so much short OI got wiped on that move to the upside that there would probably be some incentive for market makers to now squeeze it out to the downside.

So in other words, it's easier for market makers to push the price down than it would have been before, given that a lot of shorts got wiped out.

Just think that's an interesting fact that I saw also, I guess, propagated through Twitter.

Yeah, I just don't really know how this happened.

That's a pretty big blunder, to be honest.

I saw someone on Twitter saying that someone hopped in a telegram group, dropped like that headline 30 minutes before it actually reached X or Twitter or whatever you want to call it.

I also saw the coin telegraph intern and this might've been a shit post too, but he's like, thanks for the exit liquidity, which I thought was absolutely hilarious.

Twitter was just super, super entertaining.

This morning, it felt like the good old days, like 2 years ago when everyone was just screaming into the echo chamber on the way up.

Yeah, the at intern handle had a great tweet and I was like, you know, we're sorry to say that we've had to formally let the Cointelegraph intern go from the intern group.

I put the link to that 1 in the show notes, but the shit posting was pretty impressive this morning as well.

I mean, my first thought that this was that, like how inefficient the market seems to be.

Like if you're trading news, it would have been so easy to just like, go long when the news comes out.

And then it didn't take that long again for the market to like switch and start realizing that, okay, this news piece doesn't hold and then just write it back down.

My first thought was that, okay, there's still a lot of like opportunity here and the market seems super inefficient in that way.

I was like, okay, like Matt, I think it was you that dropped it in Slack and then I'm looking at the Bitcoin price and I'm like, all right, it's not moving.

And then like you had so many opportunities to short it after you kind of knew it was fake.

Super interesting that once it like, you know, price goes up 78%, it did take about 30 seconds or a minute, which is longer than I would expect.

You'd think that the scalping bots would have made that happen way quicker.

But 3, 4 minutes in, I'm looking through all the SEC's recent reports, word that they put out.

I'm looking through every response to the tweet, seeing is there actually a source attached?

Like, is everyone just sourcing the first tweet?

And at that point, you know, it's like, oh, shit, like, this news is not definitely fake, but there's no source anywhere out there on the Internet.

This 8% price move is probably not justified.

And then you had like, like, like, like Rick said, a solid period of time to be able to short it on the way down to it does feel so inefficient.

And maybe this pushes us back to the original timeline for the spot Bitcoin ETF, which I believe was would be the BlackRock filing.

That is the last time it could be delayed or accepted or denied would be in February.

And so I just pulled up the estimated Bitcoin halvening timeline that's in April.

And it's kind of like all things are back in order for the Bitcoin spot ETF carrying us into the Bitcoin halvening.

And really, that's that seems to be an exciting catalyst.

Like, you know, sometimes it's just easier to think about those 2 things and left left curve and be like, all right, everything that happens in between now and then like actually doesn't matter.

Yeah, I also saw Eric Balachunas, I'm probably botching his name, Dan, you just mentioned him, but he said, I thought it was super weird when I saw the BlackRock 1 got approved because with the E-Futures ETF, they approved all of them at the same time to make sure there was no first mover advantage because that wouldn't be very fair and it'd be like the SEC picking favorites.

So I do think in the future, if you're wondering if a Bitcoin ETF approval is fake or not, it's probably, it'd probably be fake if it was 1 specific 1 and not all of them all together.

So that's another thing to take away from the situation.

Dan, you wanna head over there for some governance updates though?

They're actually gonna back down from the governance buyout or excuse me, the Cosmos Hub buyout of Stride.

That was, We had basically half an episode on this, so we'll put the link to that 1 in the show notes so it won't harp too much on here.

But it sounds like a lot of the community was really just against this, whether there were some people on the Stride side that were like, this is crazy, why would we

There were some people on the stride side that were like, this is crazy, why would we

There were some people on my Cosmos Hub side saying the exact same thing.

And of course there was people on both sides saying, what a great idea.

There was no clear way to be like, okay, well, if we're gonna do it, here's a map of what that looks like.

Nobody really seemed to even put that forward.

So it really never even left the ideation stage.

But now it sounds like it's being fully shelved and saved for later.

And if you had any indication, if you wanted some indication of what the community thought about it this late.

On the 14 day and the 30 day time frame, Shride is still down 30-35%.

So a lot of people were not happy about this to say the least.

And I'm not too surprised it's getting shelved.

But again, yeah, if you want more details on what it was and you know how our team thought about it, definitely check out that episode that we will put in the link in the show notes.

I wanna give a quick shout out to Hexens.

As we explore today's blockchain landscape, let's take a moment to recognize them as a premier cybersecurity provider in web 3.

Hexens is trusted by tier 1 projects like Polygon, including a security review on their new Polygon ZK EVM, Mantle, Risk 0, Lido, OneInch, NewBank, and more.

Get a deep dive into your technology stack with the most comprehensive analysis and cybersecurity consulting.

Hexens not only uses widely known methodologies and flows, but discovers and introduces new ones on a day-to-day basis.

With over $55 billion secured, they cover everything from smart contracts to blockchain to Web2 pen tests.

Yeah, there's been nearly $7 billion of total value hacked in crypto's nascent history, so it's safe to say your team has a lot on the line.

Don't skimp out, take your security seriously, and reach out to Hexens.

Don't forget to mention ZeroX Research for a free web 2 pen test with your partnership, and reach out to Hexens at hexens.io, find them in the links in the show notes or reach out to them at permissionless.

But without further ado, let's get back to today's episode.

The other big news was the Blur fee switch proposal.

And so this came out about midweek last week.

ARCA actually put a proposal forward in the Blur governance forums, really just bringing about the point of a fee switch and their belief about why you could turn it on and how they think the best way about going and doing so would be.

So when Blur originally launched, it had like an 180 day timeframe before anyone could have a fee switch discussion.

And that has since passed by about a quarter or so.

And so Arca's proposal stated a 1% base fee on all trading activity, but it also had this interesting tier system that would apply discounts to token holders that held X amount of tokens basically.

And all fees generated by this proposal would be used to buy back and then burn Blur.

And I got a lot of thoughts on this because it kind of asks you 2 questions.

1, should revenue be returned to token holders at this point in the Blur protocols life?

And 2, if yes, what should that look like?

Right now, revenue should not be used to be returned to token holders because the token pit plays no role within Blur's function.

And so because of that, it's just like this governance token and that's fine.

And when you return protocol revenue to the token, it's basically like a dividend.

And dividend should be excess cash that the protocol does not need to continue growing its market share or building the best product.

And for a product that's like 200-ish days old, that is absolutely not the case.

It is not 1, it's not the best NFT marketplace out there.

It still has a lot of work it needs to be doing.

So I would like to see that revenue being recycled into the protocol to promote growth or build a new service product or hire some more engineers to go build x, y and z.

There are so many other things that could be done with this money being generated that buying back and burning is not the answer here.

And returning revenue to token holders is like just throwing it out the window in a lot of ways.

And ARCA cited the reason of why they wanted to see that, because Blur is now kind of teasing this end to Season 2 trading rewards as November 20th.

And supposedly when November 20th hits, all these trading rewards that people have been earning over the last couple months will now become liquid.

And of course, there's really no use to holding the Blur token today, right?

It's just like a governance token that has governance rights over a protocol that has a very minimal governance.

And so they're trying to be like, all right, well, if it's a useless token, then let's give it revenue.

But like it doesn't to me seem like the best answer here.

But curious if you guys have any thoughts on this proposal.

I'm all for throwing on a fee switch at some point.

I think it's just being forced because honestly, probably because the core contributors, investors and team allocations just hit their cliff and now they're vesting.

So I'm sure they're kind of desperate to get some value accrual.

And, you know, if you look at the X2, Y2 or Lux token charts, the token incentives can only take you so far, especially as your token bleeds out towards 0 and the value of those incentives gets less and less valuable over time.

So I think the logic here is like, well, we'll still hand out these blur trading rewards, but if you want to keep farming in the future, then you have to actually hold the airdrop we give you in order to have like free trading on the platform and continue to farm into the future.

So I guess it can remove some sell pressure and then I guess continually buying the token with trading fees could help that FDV and make the incentive and back of napkin math that people would then be kind of writing out in order to see, All right, should I even be wash trading here?

Is it worth my time and the fees I'm paying versus what the value of the Blur token is?

So I see the logic, I just think the NFT market is still 6 to 12 months away from catching on to a new narrative.

I could also see why they wanna do the fee burning thing because that seems to be a good playbook to get your multiples higher or the market.

Like, I don't know, it seems that a lot of market participants enjoy a fee burning mechanism, even though it doesn't accrue real value that much.

Maybe also trying to ride on that Volbit wave that has been going on lately where like, okay, they do make a lot of revenue or like do burn a lot of tokens, but kind of getting into a similar comp bucket with those protocols.

Yeah, that's a good point, Brik, because when I think about buyback and burn, it's pretty similar to...

We see this a lot in the traditional equity markets, right?

Companies will repurchase shares of their stock and then that kind of gets equally allocated across all the shareholders.

And that happens for 1 reason, and that's because traditional finance equity markets are fairly efficient for the most part, and especially when it comes to share repurchases, because you have this enterprise value that gets divided amongst the total number of shares.

And the only thing that's changing in that calculation is the number of shares outstanding.

So when that gets reduced, the value per share increases.

And that tends to work quite well as this like more tax efficient distribution of excess revenue to shareholders because dividends count as income and share repurchases do not, it's just capital gains.

But in crypto markets, you don't have agreed upon financial metrics and that everyone has this model that's relatively agreed upon.

Sure, maybe you don't totally agree on the long term growth drivers, but roughly you're going to get to the same number.

So when you do these share repurchases, like just because the denominator is decreasing, doesn't necessarily make the token value increase.

I don't think share token buyback and burns are like the best way to redistribute wealth to token holders if you're going to do it.

But I mean, at the end of the day, like there is a narrative around it, right?

You mentioned Rollbit, and I think that's a great example.

Like they're really crushing it with their model.

going to say, I also totally agree with Brick's take there, but the way you took it was like, okay, here's how this could bring a fundamental valuation to the Blur token.

And the way I took it was like, it could fit into a narrative that's currently hot and popular among CT and investors in crypto.

Who cares if, I don't think Blur is going to drive meaningful revenue to token holders, even if they turn on the fee switch, if they return to token holders.

But if they do both those things, I don't think they're returning meaningful value to token holders based on their valuation today.

That said, it might fit into a narrative where there's a lot of new liquid funds who are probably looking for these protocols who have real yields.

I know that that's something that kind of is dying out compared to the narrative that existed a year ago.

But at the same time, I do think that that is something that a lot of the newer investors in crypto people in the class of 2020 kind of look for.

So I think that it definitely does have some value just as far as getting back into the attention of the general public and things of that nature.

I got a question that I should probably know the answer to.

So Sam, I'm going to lean on you here for this 1.

But What percentage of market share does Blur have relative to OpenSea these days?

I was actually looking at this like the other day, but it's if you have like a Hill Dobby's wash filter on, which is actually a great little calculation that he personally made and he's got it on doing.

I highly recommend everyone checks it out.

Maybe we can drop that in the show notes, but it's around like 50 to 65 percent depending on the given week.

So they're definitely seeing more volume than OpenSea still.

But what's interesting is OpenSea still sees 2 to 3 times more like uniquely active wallets like really interacting with the protocol.

So I think that just implies, 1, like if someone's going to buy an NFT, like a retail person who's not super crypto native, they're going to OpenSea, they're not going to to Blur yet.

I think OpenSea kind of has that Uniswap brand.

And then on top of that, I just think a lot of the volume, like it's not technically wash trading and filtered out based on Hildabi's methodology, but it's impossible to detect because it's the Blur token farming.

That is definitely what's driving the revenue over there.

I personally think Blur is a better product and they've done some innovative stuff obviously with Blend and I think they're continually going to push out new products and features.

So I really don't think it's a terrible play if you're bullish on like general purpose marketplaces, but I'm personally just super bearish that I don't understand why anyone who, you know, drops in NFT wouldn't want to have that royalty, like baked in income slash like market fee income accrued to themselves.

See all 0xResearch transcripts on Applepodcasts

Unpacking Arbitrum STIPs Winners and Uniswap KYC Uproar | Analyst Round Table