<h2 id="header-0">Market Overview 📉</h2><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeIhpHqPWz4ZM9Gbxotl7DrXpOJgvEGU1Op0rS1Cbi-IpFDuNxOrzoK413crwNzkf8LhZ8qQoxdZ8MTtBbqH_YGPRoerlXQBJqWY5uGIMBsY7Yxwk0XtYfpaXvZy7mw4HPztwljSL0uufI2rR90xPvmBx6r?key=d0E6qU19njRI68DKr0D1_Q"/>A monumental week as the first spot Ethereum ETFs went live on Tuesday. The crypto markets started the week strong, a continuation of positive price action from the week prior. However, the market took a sharp nosedive following a downturn on equities, which saw the Nasdaq 100 drop 3.6%, the sharpest daily drop since October 2022. The ‘Magnificent Seven’ which comprises tech giants Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Tesla, Alphabet, Meta and Amazon, fell 5.8%.This quickly spilled over to the crypto markets, sending <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/">Bitcoin (BTC)</a> down 5%, while <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/">Ethereum (ETH)</a>, despite its spot ETF launch, saw a huge dip of almost 10% across just two days.Despite liquidations across the board, <a href="https://www.coinglass.com/FundingRate">funding rates</a> have largely stayed flat at a relatively low level, although many suspect that especially for ETH, <a href="https://x.com/lazyvillager1/status/1813445475002933665">funding rates have been unnaturally suppressed</a> due to Ethena’s mechanism which involves shorting ETH perpetuals to maintain delta neutrality.📌 The spot ETH ETFs got off to a good start, with a net inflow of $106M and over $1B in trading volume. However, the ETFs saw net outflows of $152M on the second day, driven by Grayscale — <a href="https://x.com/FarsideUK/status/1816680935602995376">Link</a>📌  As Mt. Gox completes the majority of the distribution of user funds, these exchanges saw an uptick in outflow of BTC, possibly indicating that many have chosen to hold their BTC instead of selling directly — <a href="https://x.com/cryptoquant_com/status/1816049879518482895">Link</a>📌 Incumbent United States President Joe Biden, steps down as the Democrat nominee for the upcoming elections, endorsing Kamala Harris to take his place — <a href="https://x.com/JoeBiden/status/1815087772216303933">Link</a>Why does it matter?The Mt. Gox supply overhang has been largely regarded as a headwind for the market, with more than $9B to be distributed. However, as the uncertainty of the distribution cleared up after the majority of BTC was distributed, the markets reacted positively, with the distribution seemingly having minimal impact on the markets.The failed assassination attempt of Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, was initially seen as a white swan for the market, pushing up his odds of winning the elections later this year. However, with Joe Biden stepping away from the elections, uncertainty surrounding his endorsed candidate, Kamala Harris, has left the markets less certain about the outcome of the elections.With Trump’s seemingly pro-crypto views and a possible change in the SEC leadership under his administration, the markets surged higher, with BTC leading the charge. Altcoins took a dive alongside BTC and ETH this week, with TOTAL3/BTC only falling ~1% in the week. However, this strength was largely propped up by Solana’s strength, which held strongly against BTC. Nevertheless, several sectors of altcoins <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/gainers-losers/">outperformed</a> this week, notably Solana-based governance tokens such as <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/jito/">Jito (JTO)</a>, <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/helium/">Helium (HNT)</a> and <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/raydium/">Raydium (RAY)</a>.<h2 id="header-1">Narrative of the Week 📰</h2>Despite the launch of the spot ETH ETFs this week, it seems Solana has once again stolen the limelight, showing immense strength against Ethereum in the charts. Beyond prices, Solana 30 days trailing DEX volumes have also surged, <a href="https://x.com/_ryanrconnor/status/1815753548841300025">surpassing Ethereum</a> for the first time ever.📌 Solana sees traditional finance giants, Hamilton Lane and Brevan Howard, launching private credit funds on Solana via LibreCap, increasing the accessibility of such investments — <a href="https://x.com/solana/status/1815719702989344780">Link</a>📌 Solana liquid staking giant, Jito, introduces liquid staking, setting the stage for Jito to become the EigenLayer of Solana — <a href="https://x.com/jito_sol/status/1816488798374830164">Link</a>📌 Privy launches support for Solana, enabling the seamless onboarding of new users to the chain through abstracted wallet user experience — <a href="https://x.com/privy_io/status/1816132358049030499">Link</a>Why does it matter?Despite the push for Ethereum as the next best investment behind Bitcoin, Solana has repeatedly shown itself to be the star of this cycle.Ethereum has long been deemed as the “institutional chain”, with several traditional finance teams including Mastercard and JP Morgan having launched pilot programs in the past on Ethereum. However, with traditional finance firms like Hamilton Lane and Brevan Howard with almost $1T in AUM between the two launching their own private credit funds on Solana, eyes have turned to Solana to compete for that same title.Moreover, with Solana rivaling and even surpassing Ethereum in DEX volumes, only one question remains on the mind of all crypto investors: what exactly is Ethereum better than Solana to warrant its 5x valuation premium?<h2 id="header-2">Major Project Updates 🗓️</h2>📌 Telegram introduces a mini-app store to support the wave of Telegram-based games built on the TON blockchain — <a href="https://x.com/TheBlock__/status/1814329472599949805">Link</a>📌 Proton, the firm behind Proton Mail, launches Proton Wallet, an open-source, end-to-end encrypted Bitcoin wallet, with features including Bitcoin via Email — <a href="https://x.com/ProtonWallet/status/1816090220359475651">Link</a>📌 Blockspace marketplace Alkimiya, goes live, enabling users to buy and sell “transaction fees” on Bitcoin for speculation or hedging purposes — <a href="https://x.com/alkimiya_io/status/1816089796177190975">Link</a>📌 Solana-based AI data layer, Grass, releases desktop nodes, an invite-only beta test to enable Grass to run with less than 5% of the resources of a Chromium browser while handling 10x more bandwidth than the current extension — <a href="https://x.com/getgrass_io/status/1815466889436602412">Link</a>📌 Restaking L2, Karak Network, introduces MakerDAO’s governance token, MKR, as a supported asset for restaking on the L2 — <a href="https://x.com/Karak_Network/status/1815802593064714367">Link</a>Why does it matter?Telegram’s TON blockchain has taken center stage this cycle, competing alongside majors such as the Binance Smart Chain and Solana for mindshare. In just this year alone, several games have sprung up on the chain, most notably Notcoin, a tapping game which has onboarded more than 40M users.With the cycle expected to focus on consumer applications, the move by the Telegram team to launch support for TON-based mini-apps through their mini-app-store is a step in the right direction to support the ecosystem’s development and growth to compete against the other incumbents in the space.<h2 id="header-3">DeFi Brief 🏦</h2><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdwCxX5LLaYvNIEs-Ia4qnWYGQPKbUAV4MSyd2djdJUQ1S4ZW5gGnUn1jB5Nw6kJpT1hjSd1mCg9OVd_wsdzerDJp9g5w8jKkzMQQBl95JXYI403v6QLqA1sjGFfHril_hvGWTrtL0KdU4zxChxKyMIui01?key=d0E6qU19njRI68DKr0D1_Q"/>Source: <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/chain-ranking/">https://coinmarketcap.com/chain-ranking/</a>📌 Perpetuals DEX, dYdX, has begun exploring a potential sale of the dYdX V3 technology built on Starkware. The sale will not relate to the Ethereum smart contract or V4 on the dYdX chain — <a href="https://x.com/dYdX/status/1815852819288604744">Link</a>📌 Yield vault platform, Yearn Finance, unveils Gimme, a UX-optimized platform to aggregate yields and provide users the best yields on their assets, without the hassle — <a href="https://x.com/yearnfi/status/1815734673516986823">Link</a>📌 Perpetuals DEX aggregator, Rage Trade, pushes their token generation event (TGE) forward by a week, with the token sale to be on 31st July and the token launch on Hyperliquid between August 7 to 9 — <a href="https://x.com/rage_trade/status/1815341196337946645">Link</a>📌 Telegram trading bot, Unibot, unveils Unibot.fun, a no-code token launching service across multiple blockchains, with minimal fees and advanced tokenomics models supported — <a href="https://x.com/TeamUnibot/status/1816133891494928418">Link</a>📌 A money market platform on Scroll was exploited for $7.6M. Fortunately, the funds were seized by an MEV bot in the exploit and was successfully recovered in full by the team — <a href="https://x.com/RhoMarketsHQ/status/1814332036095861135">Link</a>📌 OHM-fork, Redacted Cartel, retires the Redacted brand, rebranding to Dinero, alongside a token migration to the new ticker as well to go all in on their pxETH and upcoming pxUSD product — <a href="https://x.com/dinero_xyz/status/1813962205022597420">Link</a>Why does it matter?With a potential sale of the dYdX V3 technology, new discussions have been rekindled surrounding the rights of token holders. Token holders have never enjoyed the same rights as equity holders, which constantly attracts questions surrounding the actual value accrued by these governance tokens from the successes of their respective protocols.If the sale comes to pass, it is expected that dYdX holders will likely not benefit from the sale, especially with the stringent regulations surrounding securities in the United States, where the dYdX team is based. Expectedly, the dYdX token immediately fell more than 5% after the release of this news.<h2 id="header-4">Meme Coins 🚀</h2>📌 Cat-themed memecoin, POPCAT, hits a market cap of $1B briefly, making it the first cat-themed memecoin to do so. However, there were some dispute over a Polymarket bet — <a href="https://x.com/DegenerateNews/status/1814756039138447722">Link</a>📌 Cat-themed coin MEW pumps, with a seemingly coordinated shill across several large CT influencers, amidst rumors of paid shills of up to 250K in USDC — <a href="https://x.com/thecexoffender/status/1815875988125040785">Link</a>📌 Jupiter teams up with influencer, Irene Zhao, to launch a new memecoin, ASIANMOM. The move has been criticized by ZachXBT, citing the various projects Zhao was involved in that rug pulled — <a href="https://x.com/zachxbt/status/1815425685714047039">Link</a>📌 Solana lending platform, Save (formerly Solend), launches dumpy.fun, a memecoin shorting platform designed to let traders profit from corrections and increase the efficiency of memecoin markets — <a href="https://x.com/solendprotocol/status/1816106090385510775">Link</a><h2 id="header-5">Chart of the Week 📊</h2><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcY2lSE7jmcOdo43WThbuNo-AWO3bdN_Lhf7rTliPMKy38ZgSyCpuqv21w45N5a-GIrf96NlvcYJgwxO-o00V58W3UjN--vd3Rg4131YvXf4yOYn2p-iBysThEt8hBvrtqsSEMk0ob7XQJb15dUEk-lg2tu?key=d0E6qU19njRI68DKr0D1_Q"/><h2 id="header-6">Fundraises 💰</h2>📌 Blockchain cloud solution, Nirvana Labs, raises $4M in a seed round led by Castle Island Ventures and RW3 Ventures, with support from Third Earth Capital, Play Ventures and more — <a href="https://x.com/nirvanalabsai/status/1814412899172921827">Link</a>📌 Real-world asset tokenization platform, Etherfuse, raises $3M in a seed round led by White Star Capital and North Island Ventures, with participation from FunFair Ventures and several angels, among others — <a href="https://x.com/etherfuse/status/1814735942114292008">Link</a>📌 Web3 gaming infrastructure project, NPC Labs, raises $18M in a seed round led by Pantera Capital, with other investors including Hashed, Mirana Ventures and more. — <a href="https://x.com/TheBlock__/status/1815371249406582849">Link</a>📌 Bitcoin L2, Bitlayer, raises $11M in a Series A funding round led by Franklin Templeton and ABCDE, bringing their total investment to $16M — <a href="https://x.com/BitlayerLabs/status/1815732938153082922">Link</a>📌 Pudgy Penguins parent company, Igloo Inc, raises $11M in a funding round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, with support from 1kx, Fenbushi Capital, Selini and more — <a href="https://x.com/IglooInc/status/1815797946819993811">Link</a>📌 Ethereum roll-up deployer, Caldera, raises $15M in a Series A funding round led by Founders Fund, with participation from Dragonfly, Sequoia Capital, Lattice Fund, ArkStream and more — <a href="https://x.com/Calderaxyz/status/1816106531005555178">Link</a><h2 id="header-7">Airdrops Abound 🎁</h2>📌 Web3 quest platform, Layer3, releases the airdrop checker for the upcoming L3 token airdrop. The airdrop is based on wallet activity, CUBE credentials, levels and quests completed, among other factors — <a href="https://x.com/Layer3FDN/status/1816206797876912238">Link</a>📌 Data availability layer, Avail, launches their mainnet and the AVAIL token, airdropping 600 million tokens to eligible users across several ETH L2s — <a href="https://x.com/AvailProject/status/1815660846367826188">Link</a>📌 Cross-chain bridge, DeBridge, announces the snapshot for Season 1 of their points program, teasing an upcoming airdrop checker as well — <a href="https://x.com/deBridgeFinance/status/1816081007709397369">Link</a>📌 AVAX tokens have been airdropped to wallets on Avalanche which participated in the Memecoin Rush earlier in the year — <a href="https://x.com/TraderJoe_xyz/status/1814393676271079757">Link</a>📌  Mantle unveils the tokenomics for their new governance token for their liquid staking program, COOK. 15% of COOK will be allocated to four ecosystem initiatives including Season 1: Methamorphosis — <a href="https://x.com/0xMantle/status/1815371536653775346">Link</a><h2 id="header-8">Tweet of the Week 📝</h2><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfSjU-qdaLT56RmkM52IcnlbqppUi_RaFjsvT8RrA1s8II-KvRLZvsbUvXxjb8Z6dnyOdLKMmQQltNk1_SVBiuNawApjLrYSIwk_KX1wbcSpr_s_2TdiHdEPEXHFrx7PL1VYnWYSPth10BPrBlp9EBdFHpZ?key=d0E6qU19njRI68DKr0D1_Q"/>Source: TraderMercurySophisticated crypto market participants.

CMC Market Pulse: July 26

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