[Daily] Going home to Mars

Good morning! Welcome to The Daily Moon. The Ape lovers are at it again. This time the target was the Twitter account of IPL team Royal Challengers Bangalore. Hackers changed the RCB profile name to Bored Apes Yacht Club. The timeline was soon flooded with NFT tweets. Hope nobody tried buying an NFT from those shady links. 

As of Monday, 8 PM

The markets were cautious. Bitcoin was at $22,800 levels and Ethereum slipped to ~$1,620. Nasdaq rose marginally in early trade. Back home, Sensex and Nifty ended higher on positive global cues. 

Mars Is Back

The OG Terra lending protocol Mars Hub, is back with its mainnet, this time on Cosmos. The Mars Hubs mainnet will launch on January 31 along with its governance token Mars. 

Why the hype?Mars and Anchor were the two largest lending protocols on Terra. But then a crisis struck. After Terra and Luna collapsed in May 2022, Mars was stuck. Its DeFi business needed a new home to survive. And it has now found an alt home on the Cosmos blockchain. Mars Hub will airdrop 64.4 million tokens to eligible users. 

FYI Cosmos is an internet of blockchains, called interchain, that helps developers to build a series of interoperable blockchains on its network.

Who’s eligible for the airdrop?The developers collected data of Mars token holders on May 7 before Terra USD’s collapse. And again after the depeg on May 28. Users will be airdropped tokens proportional to their past holdings. For instance, if you held 10 Mars tokens on the erstwhile Terra, you will be airdropped the same number of tokens. 

What will Mars do?Mars Version 2 or v2 will be a full-fledged DeFi. There is also something called a “rover” through which lending, borrowing, spot trading, and margin trading can be done. Here, multiple transactions can be converted into NFTs that can be later sold. 

But…Mars is also open to relaunching on Terra 2.0. Guess no lessons learnt. 

Will Lido’s Surge Last?

Lido Finance’s market cap has surged almost 48% in the past two weeks. Its token Lido DAO rose ~15% to ~$2.50 in seven days. Ethereum’s Shanghai hard fork is the reason to rejoice.  

What’s the ETH connection?The Shanghai update will allow staked ETH to be un-staked. These released tokens can then be redeployed into DeFi protocols such as Lido. The governance tokens of these DeFi platforms benefit indirectly from increased network activity. 

Then what’s the problem?Lido has only seen lukewarm interest lately. The protocol’s user count is down ~10% over the past 30 days and whale interest is waning. The annual returns on Lido are also on the decline. While we can’t really predict what will happen after Shanghai, the current Lido stats don’t look very promising. 

A SWIFT Idea At Davos

What’s Davos about? Billionaires and world leaders talking about things breathlessly reported by the media. Sometimes some interesting ideas emerge. The contender this year is a SWIFT like solution but on the blockchain. 

How does it work?One of the biggest challenges of SWIFT is its inability to do real time transactions. It takes anywhere from two days to two weeks. It has been a problem for years but it hasn’t been solved. The solution — Universal Digital Payment Network — would do what SWIFT does for banks but for stablecoins and crypto.

Why does it matter?What’s one thing most stablecoins hold in common? The fact that they are backed by fiat currency. So, if you transfer 10 Tethers, the person receiving will get those 10 Tethers and because of the ease of converting back to fiat, the transfer becomes easier. 

Conceptually, it looks interesting. The solution, however, is only restricted to CBDCs and stablecoins. Nothing for BTC. 

Microsoft Logs Out Of Metaverse?

Is Microsoft done with the Metaverse? Was it all pandemic froth and it’ll die away? Seemingly, it could be. The layoff bugle has been sounded and everyone from Microsoft to Google, from Meta to AWS have all cut costs ruthlessly. Buried in one of the notes that Microsoft put out was their intention to shut down a VR facility for good. 

Wait! But what about all the work?The company has also shut down the mixed reality division. Those who like to read tea leaves seem to believe this where the metaverse dreams end. But Microsoft said it would be transfering the work done here to Mesh, a team that works on VR, AR and mixed reality solutions. 

It’s not over then?It probably isn’t. The company seems to be cutting costs and keeping the tech alive to restart when capital is more easily available and people start spending more. Until then, all we get is Microsoft and its boring Office suit. It will turn around. 

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