🥛 Adios August. Here's what happened in crypto this month👀

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• Adios August. Here's what happened in crypto this month👀
• When "code is law" goes wrong
• Quick bites
• Meme of the Day

Well, ladies & gents, today’s the last day of August. That’s the end of another chapter in the crypto history books. And my oh my, was it a busy one.

We saw…

• Do Kwon finally come out of hiding to do his first interview since Luna crashed
• A DAO sent a guy to the moon on one of Jeff Bezos’ rockets
• Prices were a roller coaster (ETH went from $1k to $2k, Bitcoin went up to $25k and then both crashed back down)

But, who were the big winners in August?

We got 5 for ya:

1/ Web3 x Web2 partnerships 

This month we had more unexpected hookups than a 10th-grade prom.

• Coinbase 🤝 BlackRock - to let institutional investors get direct exposure to crypto
• Mastercard 🤝 Binance - to launch a crypto card and make it easier for people to make everyday purchases using crypto
• FTX 🤝 Reddit - to let users transfer Reddit Community points on-chain

It’ll be interesting to see if this trend continues in September. Maybe a trio next?

2/ CryptoPunks with 2 big moves

• Partnered with Tiffany & Co to drop a collection of 250 custom Punk “NFTiffs” that made $12.5m
• Punk holders got IP rights to their NFTs. Imagine the possibilities ...ok all I could come up with was printing a t-shirt of a CryptoPunk

3/ Web3 Builders continue to raise billions

It’s always a good month to be a builder, and ~90 companies received ~$1.86b in funding in August.

You can keep track of all the latest funding round-ups on the Milk Road database here!

4/ DeGods joins the Mt. Rushmore of NFT collections

The NFT project “DeGods” has been on a tear. 

• It’s now a top 5 NFT project (by market cap) 
• It’s the first Solana NFT to reach that status
• And the founder of DeGods was almost employee #1 for the Milk Road. Proving that if you turn down a job offer from me, you have a 50% chance of becoming fabulously rich

5/ The ex-founder of Machine Zone is back and raised $200M for his web3 gaming company, Limit Break

• Gabe Leydon built Machine Zone into a big name in the mobile gaming space
• They were once valued at $5B…but ended up selling for $600M years later
• The founder is back, with a new mission to build blockchain games
• Dropped an NFT collection “ Digidaigaku” - the hottest collection of the month. The floor price went from $0 → $25k in 3 weeks.

And now, onto the Losers. 

There was a handful to pick from, but here are 2 for ya:

1/ Tornado Cash got banned

• Got sanctioned and put on the SDN list (a list specifically for terrorists, cartels, and people that like the taste of pineapple on pizza)
• Can’t do any business with U.S persons or companies
• Got blocked and censored by companies like GitHub, Aave, etc
• The main developer got arrested and has been in jail for weeks

It’s like an ex-girlfriend blocking your phone number. Except the girlfriend is the most powerful country in the world. And instead of blocking your phone number, they block everything you do.

Hey Tornado, you might need some milk.

2/ Nomad gets hacked

We see a hack happen every week in crypto. But what happened to Nomad was wild:

• Hacked for $190m
• But it was normal, average people that did the hacking
• All people had to do was copy & paste the code, replace the address with their own, and voila! free money

Damn, it be your own people sometimes. 

2 things we’re keeping an eye on for September:

1/ The Merge. After years of waiting, it’s finally happening.

It’s one of the biggest events in crypto history and is set to happen either September 15th or 16th.

2/Starbucks web3 loyalty program. Many are predicting this could be a move that helps onboard the next 1m users into web3.

Details are set to be announced on their investor day, September 13th. We’ll be giving away FREE pumpkin spice lattes to qualified Milk Road readers.

Hate ‘em or love ‘em, NFT sales been booming this year.

Even during a “dip”, sales have already exceeded $42b. That’s more than all of last year combined and 65% more than the global music market.

So it’s no surprise that creators are flocking to the jpeg movement.

But there’s a problem: designing your project & brand is hard.

That’s where Koncepted comes in. It’s like an all-you-can-eat design buffet for Web3 companies.

They offer:

• Art - Illustrations, icons, banners, promotional videos, etc
• Functionality - platform designs, mobile interfaces, etc
• Strategy - user experience, game economy strategy, etc

Koncepted has accelerated turnarounds and only hires the most experienced designers. So you know you’ll be working with the best of the best.

Design so good it’ll rock your world.

Looking to take your project off the ground? Book your free, no-strings-attached call.

Code is law. And people love that about smart contracts - the code is immutable and can’t be changed by anyone.

Not the government, not any company, not even Chuck Norris himself could change it if he tried.

Which sounds great, until it doesn’t. And yesterday we saw 2 examples of where “code is law” can go wrong.

1/ Compound Finance is one of the oldest & biggest lending protocols out there. (~$2.75b in total value locked). But they just ran into a problem…

• They were voting on a proposal that would make a simple update to the price feed
• It was approved and automatically went into effect after voting ended
• But there was a bug in the code that caused an issue with their cETH pools aka users can’t borrow or lend any ETH collateral
• Now the entire cETH market (~$830m in TVL) is frozen for the next 7 days until a new proposal goes into effect to fix it

Compound users just got entered into a Waiting Game. Ya hate to see it.

2/ OptiFi is a DeFi exchange of Solana that just accidentally shut itself down. 

• Developers were making an upgrade to the OptiFi program
• The dev accidentally used the “solana close program” command. (Which does exactly what the name says it does)
• The OptiFi program is permanently shut down and can’t be recovered
• Over $660k was lost due to the mistake

The lesson? Smart contracts can only be as smart as the developers that make ‘em (**mic drop**)

PROOF collection raises $50m led by A16Z. They also hinted at plans for a token and new Moonbirds NFT project coming soon.

Ethermine (the largest ETH miner) dropped a staking service ahead of the Merge. It will not be available to anyone in the U.S. You can thank OFAC for that…

Seven Seven Six has launched a new $177m crypto fund, Kryptós. The fund will be focused on investing in crypto tokens.

Mendoza, Argentina now supports stablecoins as an option for tax payments. I might just pack my bags for Argentina at this point, they can use crypto for anything nowadays.

That's a wrap for today, ladies & gents. See ya tomorrow!

If you want more, be sure to follow our Twitter (@MilkRoadDaily)

P.S - our friends over at Sneaks of Nature are launching a dope NFT project today. We'll be getting in on the action too!

A ROADERS REVIEW

VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY

14. DAYS. LEFT. UNTIL. THE. MERGE

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.