CMC Market Pulse delivers actionable market insights, giving you all the key narratives and developments you need in under 5 minutes.
Market Overview 📉
The crypto markets continued to chop this week, with majors slowly grinding upwards amidst a handful of sharp pullbacks in the week. Bitcoin (BTC) traded fell to $56K last Friday, but quickly recovered over the week, achieving a weekly high of $61.5K and ending the week up 4.71%. While Ethereum (ETH) followed a similar pattern, its recovery was much weaker, climbing only around 4% from its weekly low of $2,538.66, to end the week up 1.99% from the week prior.
With the muted price action, liquidations continued to dwindle, with daily liquidations even falling under $100M for several days in the week. Funding rates climbed slightly this week, with BTC funding in the low negative range while ETH climbed into the low positive range, perhaps a sign of increasing risk appetite.
📌 US asset manager, Franklin Templeton, files for a Crypto Index ETF, which will initially hold BTC and ETH, weighted by their market capitalization — Link
📌 The SEC rejects the Cboe BZX’s Solana ETF 19b-4 filings, citing concerns over Solana’s classification as a security — Link
📌 Blackrock has now overtaken Grayscale in total on-chain holdings, with almost $22B held across their addresses — Link
Why does it matter?
The market continues to trade sideways amidst the slow release of economic data. This week, jobless claims were revised higher to 232,000 from the initial 227,000, potentially signaling a weaker labor market. Following the release of minutes from the July Fed meeting, "the vast majority" of officials "observed that, if the data continued to come in about as expected, it would likely be appropriate to ease policy at the next meeting."
All eyes remain on the upcoming September rate cuts. Markets expect the cut to be 25 basis points, with the possibility of a 50 basis points rate cut only if there is further pronounced weakening of the economy.
The expectation of the upcoming rate cut could be the catalyst for the crypto markets to continue climbing upwards, although its move is still relatively weak when compared with its traditional finance counterparts. Both the S&P500 and the Nasdaq are nearing all-time highs. Meanwhile, Gold broke new all-time highs, reaching $2,531.60 per ounce.
Altcoins showed great strength against BTC this week, with TOTAL3/BTC rising over 3.3% this week. Among altcoins, Justin Sun associated tokens fared exceptionally well, with tokens such as Tron (TRX), BitTorrent (BTT) and Sun Token (SUN) faring exceptionally well. Other top gainers included DeFi 1.0 tokens such as Aave (AAVE) and Compound (COMP).
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Narrative of the Week 📰
Justin Sun’s Tron takes center stage this week, as the market participants shift their focus from Ethereum and Solana memecoins to Tron’s as their new memecoin launcher, sunpump.meme, rapidly gains traction.
📌 The Tron blockchain achieved a single day revenue of $5.33M, an all-time high for the chain, as the chain’s meme coin launcher, sunpump.meme, generated $1.1M in revenue just 11 days after launching — Link
📌 Crypto market maker firm, DWF Labs, announces a partnership with sunpump.meme — Link
📌 The market capitalization of the USDT stablecoin on the Tron blockchain climbs over $61B, or more than 10x of DAI’s market capitalization on Ethereum — Link
Why does it matter?
Since the beginning of the new bull market cycle, memecoins have played a key role in generating some of the biggest returns for their investors, with many even naming this cycle, the meme coin supercycle. For most of this period, Solana has been the de facto leader, with its low fees forming a conducive environment for new crypto market participants.
With the entrance of Justin Sun’s pump.fun clone, sunpump.meme, and his direct support, capital has rushed to Tron in pursuit of the next meme coin moonshot. Additionally, with Tron as the chain with the second highest total value locked (TVL), this could prime the chain for a resurgence of its own.
Major Project Updates 🗓️
📌 Optimism plans for a hard fork, after potential vulnerabilities were discovered in their fault proof system, which went live two months ago. The fixes are expected to be rolled out over the coming three weeks — Link
📌 Sonic (formerly known as Fantom), announces the Sonic Boom program, a bounty program for developers to earn a share of Sonic Gems, which are points that will eventually convert to the Sonic token airdrop — Link
📌 Quest platform, Galxe, launches the Alpha Mainnet for their chain, Gravity. Gravity Alpha enables fully-onchain questing, chain-abstracted gas payments and staking — Link
📌 StarkNet unveils their first-ever mainnet vote to bring STRK token staking to StarkNet — Link
📌 Popular EVM wallet, Rabby, teases an upcoming chain abstraction feature, which would enable gas fees to be paid in USDC or USDT — Link
Why does it matter?
Ethereum L2s have constantly come under fire, with many of their critics claiming that most of them are no better than centralized systems, often due to the lack of fraud proofs and centralization of their sequencers. As such, the rollout of the fault proof system on Optimism two months ago was a huge milestone for the chain.
However, with the recent rollback on Optimism due to security concerns surrounding the fault proof system, critics are once again questioning the decentralization of the L2.
DeFi Brief 🏦
📌 Solana perpetuals DEX, Drift, launches BET, a predictions market enabling users to use any of Drift’s supported collateral assets to bet with, while earning yield on their assets — Link
📌 Bitcoin staking protocol, Babylon, releases Mainnet Phase 1, enabling BTC holders to stake their BTC and delegate their Proof-of-Stake voting power to their respective finality providers — Link
📌 Paraswap deploys Paraswap Delta, an intent-based trading protocol where traders can make swap without gas fees and with enhanced MEV protection — Link
📌 Real-World Asset (RWA) lending platform, Clearpool, announces their upcoming L2, Ozean. Ozean will be powered by Caldera, leveraging the OP Stack — Link
📌 Optimism adopts ERC-7683, a cross-chain intents standard, enabling high speed transfers of assets across the OP Superchain — Link
Why does it matter?
Predictions markets have taken the crypto world by storm, especially with skyrocketing activity on the leading predictions market, Polymarket, due to the polarizing upcoming US elections. Despite its reputation for degeneracy, there has been no dominant predictions market on Solana yet.
With the introduction of BET by Drift, Solana users now have access to predictions market, plus the additional benefits from Drift, including yield-bearing assets and multiple supported collateral options to bet with.
Meme Coins 🚀
📌 The official McDonald’s Instagram account was compromised, leading to the pump and dump of the GRIMACE memecoin on Solana, netting the exploiter $700K — Link
📌 Self-proclaimed pump.fun rugger, 0xPhantom, goes on an interview detailing how he launches and rugs memecoins on pump.fun, raking in over $200K in the process — Link
📌 The success of Tron’s pump.fun clone, sunpump.meme, has spawned another clone, this time on the BNB Smart Chain, named four.meme — Link
📌 Paradigm jumps into the memecoin launcher arena as well with their own variant, Dub — Link
Fundraises 💰
📌 Omnichain perpetuals DEX, Orderly Network, raises $5M in a strategic funding round, with support from OKX Ventures, Manifold Trading, Nomad Capital and more — Link
📌 IP-focused L1 blockchain, Story Protocol, raises $80M in a Series B funding round led by a16z crypto, with participation from Polychain Capital and angel investors including NFT collector, Cozomo de’ Medici — Link
📌 Web3 zero-knowledge credential layer, zkME, raises $4M in a seed round led by Multicoin Capital, with other investors including OKX Ventures and Robot Ventures — Link
📌 Ethereum MEV solution, Sorella Labs, raises $7.5M in a seed funding round led by Paradigm, with other participants including Uniswap Ventures, Bankless Ventures and Robot Ventures, among others — Link
📌 Base limit orderbook perpetuals DEX, BSX, raises $6.2M in total funding, led by Blockchain Capital, with co-investors including Base, Bankless Ventures, CMS Holdings and more — Link
Airdrops Abound 🎁
📌 Solana lending platform, Kamino Finance, opens up claims for Season 2 of the KMNO token airdrop to eligible users. 350M KMNO tokens have been allocated to this airdrop for users in the past four months — Link
📌 Telegram-based memecoin, DOGS, is now open for claims to eligible users. Users may also opt to deposit their DOGS tokens to selected centralized exchanges, which will be received when the token is live — Link
📌 Ethereum liquid restaking platform, Swell Network, announces that their airdrop has been taken, with the SWELL airdrop taking place in October — Link
📌 Multi-chain NFT marketplace, Magic Eden announces their upcoming ME token airdrop, which will be claimable in the Magic Eden wallet — Link
Tweet of the Week 📝
Source: VitalikButerin
With even Vitalik bullposting ETH, surely we go up now, right? Right?
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