Stablecoin Loves Solana

MetaMask $25B Volume | Nima Sold $9M SYN

Marco Manoppo & Karon Pangestu
September 06, 2023

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Good Morning,

The theme this week seems to be all things Solana.

The L1 might have finally unshackled itself from SBF’s shadow. In the past few weeks, Solana has partnered with Shopify and Visa to boost stablecoin usage. Now, the largest stablecoin protocol, Maker, is considering building on a fork of Solana.

In Today's Email:

What Matters: Visa and Solana 💵
Case Study: MetaMask $25B volume 📈
Governance & Features: Maker Solana NewChain ⛓️

Interested in learning about the $16T Real-World Assets opportunity? Join this webinar on September 12.

Narratives: Until new capital is coming into the market, farming on new chains and punting low cap tokens are your best bet.

NOTEWORTHY READS

Brian Rudick’s read on the future of Bitcoin mining finance.
Archetype’s read on the evolution of interoperability stack.
Ann’s read on reaction over MakerDAO picking Solana.

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WHAT MATTERS

Visa Adds Solana to Stablecoin Settlement

1/🏦Breaking: Visa Expands Stablecoin Settlement Pilot to Solana
@Visa is scaling their USDC settlement pilot to include the Solana blockchain, enabling enterprise-grade throughput at virtually no cost for Visa issuers and merchant acquirers on Solana.
— Solana (@solana)
12:12 PM • Sep 5, 2023

State of play: Visa is extending its stablecoin settlement capabilities to Solana, alongside its existing support for Ethereum.

Visa has successfully transferred millions of USDC across the Solana and Ethereum blockchains to settle fiat payments via VisaNet.
Visa's Head of Crypto mentioned that the objective of this move is to expedite cross-border settlements and offer clients a stablecoin payment option.
To start, Visa is partnering with merchant acquirers Worldpay and Nuvei to offer merchants the option to receive payments in USDC.

Why it matters: This move reminds us that crypto technology matters and that institutions aren’t slowing down during this bear market.

Bernstein, said that the stablecoin market could hit $2.8T in 5 years as global platforms use tokens for value exchange.

For builders and investors: Crypto superpower is increasing the velocity of capital. Whatever you’re building or investing in, always remember to embrace this aspect of crypto.

CASE STUDY

MetaMask Introduces Crypto-to-Fiat Cash

MetaMask

State of play: MetaMask has unveiled a new feature that enables users to seamlessly convert crypto to fiat, with the option to transfer the funds directly to their bank (or PayPal) accounts.

This feature is now live in the US, UK, and select EU regions, starting with the Ethereum mainnet, and with upcoming expansion plans to include L2 networks.
@3orovik claims that there’s a ~5% fee for a 0.5 ETH withdrawal.

MetaMask has facilitated $25B+ in crypto-to-crypto swaps volume and generated $200M+ in revenue by charging a flat 0.875% swap fee.

Our take: This crypto-to-fiat product will be another massive revenue generator for MetaMask. It will also be the wallet’s way to slowly introduce KYC.

Take a peek at our referral reward at the bottom of this issue. Share this newsletter and receive our list of 100 smart crypto investors' wallet addresses 👇

INSIGHTS

Nima Capital Dumps SYN

Nima Capital sold $9M of $SYN that was received from an agreement to provide $40M in liquidity to Synapse Protocol.

Nima Capital also withdrew the $25M they deposited on Synapse Protocol 8 months earlier from the agreement.
Nima Capital liquidated their $SYN tokens in an illiquid Sushiswap pool, incurring a substantial 50% slippage.
It’s unclear why the move happened, with market participants speculating that Nima might be in financial distress.

U$9M in $SYN dumped by Nima Capital, received from an agreement to provide U$40M in liquidity to @SynapseProtocol 📉
But it gets worse: they withdraw $25M hey deposited on @SynapseProtocol - 8 months earlier than agreed 🏃
Maybe Nima Capital need some liquidity? 👀
— Paradigma Education (@ParadigmaCa)
12:28 PM • Sep 5, 2023

FEATURES & GOVERNANCE UPDATE

Maker Considers Solana for NewChain

Rune Christensen, the co-founder of MakerDAO, which is the largest stablecoin protocol with $5B+ in TVL, has sparked a forum discussion and announced a proposal to use a fork of Solana as the basis for Maker’s NewChain.

Rune argues that NewChain will make the ecosystem more efficient due to Solana’s technical edge.
Vitalik sold $580K worth of MKR tokens after the announcement.
Rune predicts that it will take at least 3 years, if not longer, before the plan is realized.

Why it matters: Mature dApps have all the incentives to vertically integrate and move to their own chain.

I've said this before but the endgame for a dApp large enough is to have more control over the underlying blockchain it lives on
$DYDX is moving to its own appchain
now $MKR is considering a standalone chain
I don't know if this is a good/bad trend, but this will remain the… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
— Marco Manoppo (@ManoppoMarco)
4:41 PM • Sep 1, 2023

Other notable feature updates:

Farcaster goes live on the OP mainnet.
Prisma goes live on Ethereum.
Aerodrome goes live on Base.
Kinetix goes live on Kava.
Zeta Markets V2 goes live.
Lybra V2 goes live.
Bond OLM goes live.
Arbitrum WASM testnet goes live.
Curve goes live on Base.
PancakeSwap goes live on Base.
Stargate goes live on Kava.
Avocado Wallet releases the MultiSig feature.
Aevo enables Arbitrum and OP mainnet transfers.

QUICK BITES & MEME

Stake targeted in $40M exploit.
Visa taps Solana and USDC to boost cross-border payments.
Coinbase begins offering crypto loans to institutions.
Haun Ventures hires PE veteran.
MetaMask adds crypto-to-fiat feature.
Genesis to shutter US crypto trading desk.
Base experiences stall in block production.
Grayscale lawyers ask SEC to discuss greenlighting spot bitcoin ETF.
BitGo partners with South Korea’s Hana Bank.
Circle deploys USDC on Optimism and Base.
Coinbase increases bond buyback program to $180M.

Mother of God. It's over!
— Vandelay ₿TC Industries ⚡ (@VandelayBTC)
2:45 PM • Sep 4, 2023

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Disclaimer: All the information presented in this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advice.