Ahri's unqualified thoughts #3
Random articles, quotes, videos, musings. Easy to consume content: 1 quote, 1 tweet/storm, and 1 article/video.
In today’s edition, I’m going to share a tweetstorm about on-chain sleuthing and “The state of Crypto 2023 report” from a16z.
1 quote
"Success ain't about winning, just like losing ain't a sign you're not successful. Real failure is getting knocked down and not rising again" Nipsey Hussle
1 tweet/storm
0xShual is a major player when it comes to on-chain sleuthing and farming in general. In this thread, he shares some important Arkham Intel dashboards tracking some good wallets.
1 article/video
a16z crypto (the crypto investing arm of og VC giant Andreessen-Horowitz) is becoming a major player in the crypto industry. While they have a vested interest to push certain narratives, they also bring valuable content like the following report (you can download the full version from there)
TLDR (from the article):
Blockchains have more active users, and more ways to engage. Active addresses hit an all-time high last month – 15 million – doubling over the last two years, as a growing variety of apps and services, like on-chain games, offer people new ways to engage.
DeFi and NFT activity appears to be rising again as promising new uses and applications emerge. After a frenetic speculative period and subsequent cooldown, more people seem to be buying NFTs in recent months. Meanwhile, on decentralized exchanges, more than $100 billion was traded last month, marking the third consecutive month of positive growth in trading volume.
The number of active developers in the crypto industry has held steady. Builders drawn in by the 2020 bull run are sticking around. Almost 30K developers contributed to or built on, crypto projects last month – steadily increasing over 60% in the last three years.
Blockchains are scaling through promising new paths. A proliferation of protocols and projects are working to scale blockchains, facilitating more transactions using a number of different approaches and technologies. Last year, “Layer 2” (L2) scaling solutions accounted for 1.5% of the total fees paid on Ethereum. Today: 7%.
New technologies, once practically impossible, are becoming very real. We’re seeing decades-in-the-making work on “zero knowledge” systems advance at a staggering pace, which will unlock further blockchain scalability and a new category of privacy-protecting applications (not to mention applications in AI). The data shows a positive trend in ZK-related research, developer activity, and usage.
The U.S. is losing its lead in web3. Between 2018 and 2022, the proportion of crypto developers based in the U.S. vs. the rest of the world fell 26%. Thoughtful regulation can encourage crypto builders to innovate and grow these technologies safely in the U.S.
Zooming out shows progress across key indicators. Market cap, developer activity, and funding activity have all increased steadily over the last decade. Stepping back from short-term volatility reveals a more predictable pattern: a price-innovation cycle where price swings propel new ideas forward.
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