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This Week in Web3 | 10.24.22

Binance always encourages collaboration between industry players. Regarding any speculation as to whether this is a move against a competitor, it is not. Our industry is in it’s nascency and every time a project publicly fails it hurts every user and every platform.

— CZ on liquidating all of Binance's FTT holdings

GM! It's been another fascinating week in web3. Welcome to your Monday digest from Layer3, and here's what we'll cover:

  • Binance plans to liquidate its entire position of FTT, the native token of rival exchange FTX

  • @MeirBank: Eigenlayer is the most important protocol since the launch of Ethereum

  • We just launched NFT galleries on user profiles

  • Featured community: Clipper DEX, the exchange for self-made traders

Your Web3 Briefing 📝

An analysis of what you missed in web3 over the past week

Retail stands no chance against the market makers

On Sunday, Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao announced that Binance would be liquidating their entire position in FTT, the native token of rival exchange FTX. Binance received over $2.1bn in both BUSD and FTT as part of an exit from an equity position in FTX it has had since 2019.

The announcement followed a transfer of approximately 23m FTT tokens worth $530m to Binance. According to CZ, the decision was made in light of two major allegations: 1) that Alameda Research, FTX's hedge fund arm, was insolvent, and 2) the ongoing criticisms against SBF for "lobby[ing] against other industry players behind their backs."

Unsurprisingly, growing fears around FTX being insolvent and CZ's announcement compounded into some major market moves since Sunday. In just the past day, FTX has been compared to Terra/LUNA, Alameda has offered to buy CZ's FTT position at $22, and of course, the titans have continued to dump on retail.

Otteroooo recaps the situation elegantly in his thread here:

Did CZ declare war on FTX? Or is it just a smart risk-management move? You decide.

As one Tweeter said (in a tweet I've forgotten to save), equity sell-off was just as common in TradFi as it is amongst our not-so-friendly crypto whales today — but now there's just the added spectacle of seeing it all play out on Twitter and the public blockchain record. Bread and circuses, but make it crypto. I'm sure they'll be fine in the end.

Sarah's Recommended Reads: What is Eigenlayer?

Welcome to Sarah's Recommended Reads! Here, I'll be summarizing well-written articles or threads by web3 thinkers and builders that you should know about.

Up today is @MeirBank on Eigenlayer. Eigenlayer launched earlier this year as an Ethereum "hyperscaling" solution that leverages the power of Restaking. Meir breaks it down in his thread:

So, what exactly is Eigenlayer and how does it work? Eigenlayer's re-staking protocol modifies Ethereum at the base client layer in order to allow validators to "rehypothecate" their ETH stake to validate other protocols at the same time.

In other words: If you're a staker, then you can re-stake, re-use, and recycle your staked ETH (don't quote me on the re-use and recycle part, but you get my point).

Further down, Meir covers some of the general use cases for Eigenlayer, including bridges, rollups, oracles, and decentralized RPC nodes. The thread also dives into some of Eigenlayer's innovations, like EigenDA (Data Availability) and EigenSettlement.

What else you should know

What we've been BUIDLing 🏗️

Have you noticed our latest feature?

If you're a fan of Layer3 NFTs and you've been wanting to show them off for a while...look no further than your NFT profile gallery!

View all the NFTs you minted on Layer3 in one place, and make sure to tell others about your favorite.

🛣️ Stay up to speed on what we're building: Take a look at our roadmap to see what we've been cooking at Layer3, and a preview of what’s to come.

🚢 And if you want to help decide what we ship next: You can submit a feature request here and vote on your favorites! Some top community requests have already made it onto our roadmap.

Community Feature: Slingshot

Our featured community of the week is Clipper!

Clipper is the decentralized exchange (DEX) built to give the self-made crypto trader the best possible prices on small trades (< $50k).

We’ve created a series of Quests in collaboration with Clipper so that you can experience the magic of Clipper's low-fee swaps. Clipper limits who can become a liquidity provider and caps TVL so that its pools are extremely capital efficient.

Complete our Quest and sail into the stormy DeFi seas with Clipper below:

P.S. Just before you go....

Here's a little recap of our October, from our Co-Founder and COO, Brandon:

And a bonus photo from our company offsite in Barcelona (with some delicious, home-cooked ravioli):

Thanks for reading!

Join our Discord and follow us on Twitter to stay up-to-date on the latest Bounties, communities, and more!

That's all for this week! Until next time, frens.

Cheers,

Sarah at Layer3

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