zkSync Era Gains Steam, Using ChatGPT for Crypto Research, and More

7 Highlights from the World of Digital Assets

In this issue:

1. zkSync Era Gains Steam

2. How to Use ChatGPT for Crypto Research

3. L2 Gas Consumption Hits Record high

4. Trader Joe Trading Volume Explodes

5. Rundown of Arbitrum Drama

6. What the Rise of Music Streaming Can Teach Us About Crypto

7. Amazon’s Big NFT Push

zkSync Era Gains Steam

zkSync Era, zkSync’s new zkEVM chain, has quickly attracted attention. Airdrop hunters, Ethereum early adopters, and DeFi enthusiasts have been bridging to the chain.

zkSync Era TVL has already climbed above $47 Million:

How to use ChatGPT for Crypto Research

AI and ChatGPT have taken over the Internet recently. In this unique and helpful thread, 0xsurferboy shows step-by-step how to use ChatGPT to upgrade your crypto research:

Surf @0xsurferboy

In-depth Cryptocurrency Research used to take 10+ hours. It now takes less than 10 minutes with ChatGPT. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how you can use ChatGPT to conduct in-depth research: 🧵 👇

L2 Gas Consumption Hits Record High

The most interesting crypto chart I saw this week. Arbitrum, zkSync Era, Polygon’s zkEVM, and ImmutableX pushed Ethereum Layer 2 activity higher. The result of this was that Layer 2 contracts consumed 18% of Ethereum gas at one point last week.

Sam @swmartin19

The launch of zkSync's Era, Arbitrum's token, and Polygon's zkEVM have sent daily L2 gas usage to nearly 18% of the total gas consumed on Ethereum.

Food for thought: what happens once Layer 2 activity rises another 10X and they’re consuming a majority of Ethereum gas? Will Ethereum main net be too expensive for individuals?

Trader Joe Trading Volume Explodes

Trader Joe’s liquidity book has been offering low slippage trades, especially on ARB. This pushed its daily volume over $150M at one point last week, up from under $10M in January. On that day, Trader Joe was the second largest DEX by volume across all chains.

Trader Joe volume from DefiLlama.

Rundown of Arbitrum Drama

After being mostly offline for a few days, I came back yesterday to the drama surrounding Arbitrum’s failed governance proposal to transfer ARB tokens to the Arbitrum Foundation. TLDR: Arbitrum Foundation proposed to transfer 750M tokens from the Arbitrum DAO to the; after this proposal was voted down, the Foundation said that it was actually only a ratification of a decision that had already been made.

This thread summarizes the situation nicely:

olimpio @OlimpioCrypto

The Arbitrum Team released a statement on AIP-1. Takeaways: • It was a ratification of something already decided. Not a proposal. • Other chains have Foundations. And they control a similar amount of tokens as the $1B ARB requested • They acknowledge miscommunication 🦅🔵🧵

And Arbitrum’s response and efforts to rectify the situation yesterday:

Arbitrum (💙,🧡) @arbitrum

Thanks to all the DAO participants and delegates for their feedback on AIP-1. It likely will not pass and we are committed to addressing the feedback received from the community. More details in the thread 🧵👇

What the Rise of Music Streaming Can Teach Us About Crypto

Regulators and banks have made crypto a target recently. If they succeed in passing regulation, they might feel like they’ve won. But once a technology’s time has come, its market dominance is all but inevitable. Consider the example of the DMCA and streaming services:

Daniel Tenner (swombat.eth) 🔮 @swombat

In 1998, when the music industry passed the DMCA, they thought they killed their competitors (Napster, etc) and protected their revenues. Turns out that was the beginning of the end. Bring on the "anti-crypto army". You can't stop startups, innovation, change.

Amazon’s Big NFT Push

As new details emerge about Amazon’s push towards NFTs, it appears they may going in heavier than many people anticipated. CryptoCondom lays out what we know in this thread:

CryptoCondom @crypto_condom

Everyone is talking about Mt Gox & Shanghai...but no one is talking about one of the OTHER biggest stories of April 2023: @amazon's NFT marketplace GALLERY Let's dive in bc it's something worth watching 👀 🧵👇

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That’s all for this week. For more frequent content, follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

Until next time,

Patrick Scott

Dynamo DeFi