Long Live Optimism

OP token drops, OpenSea drama, Kanye West NFTs, Bankless DAO Tax Guide

Jun 4

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Dear Bankless nation,

Here’s a recap of the biggest news in crypto for the first week of June:

OP is born

After its official announcement several weeks ago, the Optimism Token went live this week. Claim it here if you’re eligible.

Optimism (✨🔴_🔴✨) @optimismPBC

Yesterday was an absolute whirlwind. It wasn't without hiccups, but to much excitement, OP was born. 🔴‿🔴 We’ll have an extensive retro on Drop Day next week. Meanwhile, we want to share some stats coming out of the launch. With >50% of Drop 1 now claimed, let’s dive in!

The largest airdrop of the year didn’t go off without some hiccups. Due to high traffic, Optimism’s mainnet stalled. Its remote procedure calls (RPC) — a communication protocol that allows other protocols to interact with the Optimism chain — went down for several hours, preventing other users from executing transactions on Optimism.

After these issues were resolved, Optimism saw a huge uptick in daily transactions, even coming in 5th on total ETH burned on the Ethereum mainnet.

DavidHoffman.eth 🔴_🔴 🦇🔊🏴 @TrustlessState

Point to the airdrop $OP @optimismPBC

At the time of writing, 65% of OP airdrops have been successfully claimed.

We’ve written a lot about why L2s are going to be a game-changer for DeFi. By processing transactions off the base chain, rollups like Optimism scale Ethereum without sacrificing on security.

David Mihal.eth (ℹ️, ℹ️) @dmihal

Optimism was responsible for 1.6% of all fee revenue paid on Ethereum yesterday (l2fees.info/l1-fees). That's hundreds of thousands of dollars of ETH burned in just a couple hours (airdrop didn't start until late in the day). Who says L2s are parasitic to L1?

sassal.eth 🦇🔊🐼 @sassal0x

Pretty cool to see Optimism coming in 5th place for the amount of ETH burned on layer 1 today! https://t.co/PhNHNvbGfK

If you’re new to rollups: check out why Layer 2s are the future or our previous videos with the Optimism team.

Velodrome launch and airdrop

Velodrome — an AMM decentralized exchange modeled after Solidly — is launching on Optimism.

Velodrome officially launched May 31st with more than ten partners, including Maker DAO and Frax Finance, and launched its own $VELO airdrop.

Velodrome (🚴,🚴) @VelodromeFi

Velodrome is an AMM designed as the central trading and liquidity marketplace on @optimismPBC. It is the next evolution of the @solidlyexchange model introduced by Andew Cronje. Launching on May 31st with 10+ partners, it will kick start #OPSummer. Need a 101?👇🧵

#OPSummer is coming!

OpenSea drama

Former Head of Product at OpenSea Nathaniel Chastain is being indicted on wire fraud and money laundering charges.

What happened: Last September, OpenSea users sleuthing on Chastain’s wallets noted purchases of NFTs before they were featured on Opensea’s homepage.

0xZuwu.eth 🧪 @0xZuwu

Hey @opensea why does it appear @natechastain has a few secret wallets that appears to buy your front page drops before they are listed, then sells them shortly after the front-page-hype spike for profits, and then tumbles them back to his main wallet with his punk on it?

Chastain allegedly pushed for the NFTs to be listed on the frontpage and cashed out in profits of up to $67,000 after widespread publicity.

In response, OpenSea admitted insider trading was going on, and quickly fired Chastain.

This will go down as a landmark case. Although NFTs are not yet officially regulated as securities, this sets a strong precedent for treating digital assets as such.

For that, the DOJ is reportedly considering a sentence of 20 years for Chastain. 🤯

Steven @Dogetoshi

Crypto VCs right now.

Web3 News Roundup

Kanye West NFTs

Kanye West filed 17 trademark applications on his Yeezus brand for “blockchain-based non-fungible assets” and bought the yeezus.eth ENS domain despite previous claims that he wouldn’t be jumping onboard the NFT craze.

You’re late! Welcome aboard the NFT hype train, Ye.

PoolTogether

We covered in last week’s recap that PoolTogether launched a public crowdfunding campaign in its legal battles. As of this week, PoolTogether has raised 566 ETH out of its 769 ETH funding goal in Pooly NFTs to fight its court case.

cdixon.eth @cdixon

We just bought a 75 ETH Pooly Judge to support. mint.pooltogether.com

Leighton @lay2000lbs

As some of you know, I’m currently being sued (personally) in a putative class action lawsuit. I can’t speak about it publicly because the litigation is ongoing but I want to share some context and ask for your help.

Crypto is marked with lots of inner-fighting, but it’s nice to see crypto coming together where it matters.

Join the fight by minting your own Pooly here.

Solana Shutdown

Solana went down… again.

frogmonkee.eth @frogmonkee

"Validators check Discord" is the most janky ass web3 shit I've read all day. What happens when Discord goes down too? Looool

Laine | stakewiz.com @laine_sa_

The Solana network appears to have stopped rooting new blocks, meaning consensus has stalled. Investigation of the cluster status is going on while restart instructions are being prepared. Validators: check discord

Sam Stratten 🇦🇺 @SamStratten

@Solana_INC

We’ll leave it at that.

Bankless DAO Global Tax Guide

Bankless DAO’s Legal Guild released a mintable Global Tax Guide covering nine countries (and more to come!).

While countries are still figuring out their how to take their cut of crypto, this will provide some respite for crypto tax complexities.

Metaversal Revenue Service - MRS @TaxDroid

Minting for The Global Tax Guide by @banklessDAO is now LIVE! The Global Tax Guide provides the most-up-to date and relevant crypto tax information available for: USA🇺🇸 UK🇬🇧 PORTUGAL🇵🇹 SPAIN🇪🇸 AUSTRALIA🇦🇺 POLAND🇵🇱 RUSSIA🇷🇺 BRAZIL🇧🇷 GERMANY🇩🇪 Details below 🧵

You can jump in on the mint here!

Another wild week in the books, here’s what we have lined up for the next one:

William’s dropping the Ultimate Guide to Synthetix
Vance Spencer answers the question: Is DeFi dead?
Ben breaks down the Layer 2 Endgame 🔥

See you next week.

- Bankless

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