The New NFT Finance Stack
1️⃣ GONDI's big revamp
GONDI started out squarely in the NFT lending sector, a space that it's come to dominate over the past couple of years.
Now, though, the team has set their sights on becoming an all-out NFT finance stack. This week, they released their revamped platform, which offers a streamlined UX for buying, selling, borrowing, and lending around NFTs.
It'll be interesting to see how the trading side of things fares here over time, but whatever happens, expect GONDI to keep iterating and rolling out new features to maintain its momentum.
2️⃣ Canary PENGU ETF
The Wall Street ambitions of the Pudgy Penguins took a notable procedural step forward this week.
That's because TradFi exchange giant Cboe just filed a 19b-4 form for Canary Capital's proposed PENGU ETF, which would invest in Pudgy Penguin NFTs and the $PENGU token.
With this move, the ETF has officially entered the SEC's formal review process, making it the second culturecoin ETF the Commission is considering behind a Dogecoin ETF. For now, all eyes are on the SEC's final decision here.
3️⃣ Yuga's Otherside updates
Yuga Labs have continued their heads-down work on the Otherside metaverse, and this week they published a series of updates on the project.
For instance, next month the team plans to roll out a slew of fresh experiences for players, including Bathroom Blitz (a new 8v8 game mode) and Meet Me at the Clubhouse (which can support 500 users per "bubble").
There's even more in the works here, so keep your eyes peeled. While it's taken some time to get to this point, there's no denying that the Otherside vision is starting to come together.
4️⃣ Magicnet is live
I love fully onchain games, with all their new challenges and new possibilities.
And while the majority of my exploring here has been in the Ethereum ecosystem, one project has particularly caught my eye on Solana, and it's actually an infra project: MagicBlock.
You can think of it like an onchain game engine. To make it, its builders pioneered ephemeral rollups, which are like customizable external runtimes that offer super fast blocks without fragmenting assets or state.
It's cool tech, which is why it's worth noting that this week the team unveiled Magicnet, which offers simple MagicBlock integrations into any existing Solana app. Let's see what kind of traction it can get in the months ahead.
5️⃣ Matt Furie's mints exploited
Matt Furie is the artist behind the original pepe art, and upon embracing NFTs he teamed up with the Chain/Saw team to develop the technical aspects of his drops, namely the underlying code.
Unfortunately, there was a fox in the hen house. North Korean hackers surreptitiously worked on that code per ZachXBT's analysis.
We saw the fallout from this compromise this week when the smart contract of Furie's latest Replicandly mint was commandeered and used to dump many thousands of dollars' worth of NFTs on the market. Shortly thereafter, Furie's older Peplicator collection was also attacked in this way.
It's a devastating turn of events for Furie and his collectors, and just the latest high-profile reminder that North Korea is always probing for weak spots they can take advantage of onchain. Stay frosty.
