How can crypto winter be good for shippers? [62]

Even with the market downturn, crypto features are coming faster than ever

Good afternoon, friends!

Crypto winters are good for feature shippers.

So, what happened, guys? I’ve been locked up for only a few weeks now and people are already calling this a “crypto winter.” To be honest I’m not all that concerned. I’ve been in this space since 2011, and it’s been my experience that crypto winters are always a good thing for shipping products.

Ethereum grew out of the post-Mt. Gox crypto winter after the major crash took out 70% of all Bitcoin trading at the time. This is what we’re seeing in the markets right now as well. It’s the same thing all over again with the markets in a downturn.

DeFi and NFT spring came after the post-pandemic winter, and there have been other great innovations that came out of many lulls in Bitcoin price that we’ve seen over the years. It’s basically a truism that real work in crypto happens during bear markets.

Now is a great time to accumulate not just blue chip cryptos, but tokens in your favorite projects that are continually shipping.

On the Ethereum side of things, we’ve got projects such as NFTX that have been shipping things regularly. The project launched the v2 upgrade of the protocol in June, which upgraded the foundations for NFT liquidity. In July NFTX shipped staking yield capabilities to the v2 mainnet, and most recently in September, the protocol launched a decentralized NFT marketplace powered by the NFTX protocol.

There are also older projects such as the Ethereum Name Service, which has regularly been shipping new features and updating its service over the past year. It’s expanded its features with support for NFT profile pictures and partnerships with numerous outfits including Cloudflare.

Projects that I’m personally involved with such as FreeRossDAO are adding even more projects to their DAO, including the Solidarity Network, and have plans to spin other projects into standalone organizations.

It has also been a very good time for DeFi protocols getting strong backing from venture capital to ship new features, an excellent example in the news this week is UniSsap Labs, the decentralized exchange, just raised $165 million in funding to expand its ecosystem of features, including developer tools and NFTs.

Crypto winters are good for shipping features and products. That includes this one.

As usual, you’ll find a bulleted list of the news from this week below, with a long-form analysis after the fold. Stay tuned for more next week! We’ve got more coming down the pipe as usual.

---

Thank you for your support!

If you enjoy this newsletter, you'll want to check these links out.

💛 - Send this email to a friend! Even if you’re on the paid version. It’ll get someone else interested, and possibly subscribed!

🕊️ - I'm the Ops Pod lead for FreeRossDAO, a movement for prison reform and clemency for the unjust imprisonment of Ross Ulbricht. Learn more here, or subscribe to my FreeRossDAO Newsletter.

₿ - I'm the VP at Geosyn Mining, a datacenter for co-locating your bitcoin mining equipment. If you want to learn more about how you can mine bitcoin directly, drop me a line here.

🦢 - Have you started investing in Bitcoin yet? You’ve read about Dollar Cost Averaging, but don’t know where to start? I endorse Swan Bitcoin as a great tool for setting up a disciplined investment regimen, and many of you do, too! If you sign up with this link, I get $10 to help support my efforts with this newsletter.

📧 - Did you get this emailed to you? Click here to try a premium subscription out free for 14-days (generally, two issues).

---

Blockchain Bulletin

• Google partners with Coinbase for crypto payments for cloud services. Google has made a deal with Coinbase so that its customers can pay for its cloud services with cryptocurrency, reported CoinTelegraph, according to the same report, Google is also exploring the possibility of implementing custodial services.

• Web3 startup Nxyz raises $40M to provide fast blockchain indexing. Blockchain infrastructure startup Nxyz raised $40 million from Paradigm to provide developers with lightning-fast data ingestion and indexing from multiple blockchains, reported CoinDesk.

Blockchain Behind the Scenes

• Decentralized exchange Uniswap Labs raises $165M in new funding to develop new projects. Decentralized exchange Uniswap Labs has raised $165 million in funds to expand its ecosystem and build more products atop its protocol as well as launch a fund that will provide grants for developers building decentralized projects.

• Binance launches $500M lending fund to support beleaguered bitcoin miners. Binance has announced a $500 million lending pool for bitcoin miners suffering during the market downturn and amid rising energy costs.