I'm looking at two big onchain spenders - Arbitrum DAO and Binance - and how these two organizations are splashing their cash.
Arbitrum DAO voted to give away $42 million from its coffers to increase ecosystem growth on the layer 2 blockchain, which is a key component of Osato Avan-Nomayo's research.
In a bull market, such news would only make headlines. But right now, only few DAOs are in a position to be giving away millions.
Arbitrum's biggest rival, Arbitrum, unveiled a surprise sale of $157 million worth of its OP token without a DAO vote, which appeared to be a desperate bid to raise cash.
The sale - undemocratic as it was - left the Optimism community and token holders understandably miffed.
Arbitrum is looking strong as compared to rivals.
The battle for layer 2 on Ethereum is likely to be a winner-takes-all scenario.
Arbitrum is not just in pole position, it's dominating the competition.
Arbitrum needs to be careful, he said.
How its community decides to allocate the $42 million will be crucial to keeping its momentum going. DAO ecosystem funding has a disasterous history of abuse and misuse - just ask Harmony.
Binance is also big, but in a different way. In just 20 minutes, the top centralised exchange blew over $840,000 on Ethereum gas fees, polling tokens between its wallets.
Why was Binance so obsessed with submitting transactions and pump gas fees to such a high level? We are not even certain Binance is aware of the potential risks involved.
Onlookers, including Gnosis CEO Martin Köppelmann, were quick to say Binance had overpaid for the transactions. If the exchange had spread those transactions out, it could have avoided spiking Ethereum gas and paid a lot less.
Binance's bad behavior is a bad sign for the company, which has a few other problems on its plate.
If it was intentionally done, it shows that the exchange does not care about blowing close to a million dollars for no reason.
If the transactions were unintentional, it indicates Binance's operations are disorganised and chaotic, which would be pretty worrying for an exchange handling more than $56 billion of customer assets.
In other news, I talked to DAO risk management with B.Protocol's Eitan Katchka and Synthetix Spartan Council member Millie.
B.Protocol wants to help fledgling DAOs manage their risk with algorithms, assisting in the creation of a safer DeFi ecosystem. But Millie argued that risk management needs in-depth knowledge of specific protocols and so should only be handled by humans.
risk management is a top priority for DAOs to get right, as Michael Egerov's CRV-backed loans on Aave recently revealed.
There are strong arguments for and against automation of risk management.
Together, Millie, Yaron Velner and me on Wednesday's X Spaces where we'll continue the humans vs code debate.
Arbitrum earlier this year distributed over $100 million worth of ARB tokens to protocols building on the layer 2 as part of its token airdrop. The value of ARB held by protocols has dropped about 40%, according to the chart.
How much of this decline was due to protocol selling of their ARB.
Arbitrum DAOs $42 million worth of ecosystem grants will put additional selling pressure on the ARB token.
A new top-valued Friend.Tech user is here this week after @vombatus_eth spent nearly 1,000 Ether, or $150,000, to buy 326 of his own keys.
No one really knows why vombatus spent so much to pump the price of his key, but the event had a stir on social media.
BoldLeonidas, a crypto cartoonist, thinks Vombatus might just be following some sound advice a little too literally.
Blur could run out of steam after exiting OpenSea as the NFT market in early 2022. Blur's promise of a second token airdrop has been instrumental in boosting trading volume. As @punk9059 pointed out, the conflict of interest between users and the Blur team is palpable.
We have to dive into NFT trading data to see just how well Blur is doing. Our upcoming article on the topic will surprise you - be sure to catch our upcoming piece on the topic.
Tim Craig, the DeFi Correspondent at DL News in Edinburgh, Scotland. Tim has more than $130,000 of Ether, Swell- staked Ether, Redacted Cartel, and GMX. He also holds an insignificant share in NFTs.