Author: MIIX Capital

Introduction:

With the increase in net inflows for BTC spot ETFs in recent weeks, the activity of BTC and ETH futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange has surged, indicating growing institutional interest in this field. However, as the upgrade timeline for Cancun is confirmed, market attention is gradually shifting towards the ETH ecosystem. Last week, the trading price of ETH broke above $3,000 for the first time since 2022, and the ETH/BTC exchange rate rebounded above 0.06, suggesting that there may still be room for ETH to rise.

1. Investment and Financing Observation

Last week (2.19-2.25), there were 27 investment and financing events in the global blockchain space, with a total funding scale of approximately $210 million :
The DeFi sector reported 7 investment and financing events, including a $100 million investment from a16z into the Ethereum restaking protocol EigenLayer;
The gaming sector reported 4 investment and financing events, including a $5 million seed round financing for the decentralized gaming ecosystem platform and studio Crystal Fun, with participation from Kucoin Ventures;
The infrastructure and tools sector reported 10 investment and financing events, including a $14.4 million strategic round financing for the Rollup-as-a-Service protocol AltLayer, co-led by Polychain Capital and Hack VC;
Other Web3/crypto-related sectors reported 6 investment and financing events, with the crypto gambling platform Monkey Tilt completing a $21 million financing round, with participation from Polychain Capital;
No investment and financing events were reported in the NFT and metaverse sectors;
Last week, the number of investment and financing events in the cryptocurrency market increased significantly, with 4 financing rounds in the tens of millions of dollars; in the sub-sectors, the investment amount was concentrated in the DeFi direction; among VCs, the most active institutions this week were Polychain and Genblock Capital.

DefiLlama data: The total locked value (TVL) of EigenLayer currently reaches $8.376 billion.
About AltLayer
AltLayer is a platform aimed at launching native and restaked Rollups, supporting Optimistic and ZK Rollup stacks. The project is also the 45th project on Binance Launchpool, and new funds will be used to expand the AltLayer team and further develop its Rollup infrastructure.
About Monkey Tilt
Monkey Tilt is an online gambling platform focused on the integration of cryptocurrency and online gambling, where players can win by correctly predicting whether their chosen player will exceed or fall below their statistical predictions.

2. Industry Data

BTC Hits New High Again, Market Accumulates Over 110,000 BTC in Nearly a Month

On February 21, the price of BTC broke above $53,000. According to Glassnode data: in the past 30 days, the BTC community has actively accumulated, with a monthly total balance change of 111,000 BTC, reaching a high since October 2023. This is the highest accumulation amount since Bitcoin surged from $25,000 to $40,000.

Among them, "whale" entities holding 1,000 to 10,000 BTC have accumulated about 236,000 BTC in 30 days, leading the entire accumulation process, while the net outflow of Bitcoin from exchanges is about 50,000 BTC.
Additionally, Bloomberg data shows: since the beginning of 2024, various gold ETFs have seen outflows of about $3 billion, while Bitcoin ETFs have seen inflows of $4.1 billion. The year-to-date increase in spot Bitcoin has reached 16%, with some funds flowing from gold into the Bitcoin market. This indicates that institutions and whales are optimistic about the current market phase, reflecting an enhancement of market signals.

EigenLayer TVL Breaks $8 Billion

Last week, EigenLayer's TVL also surpassed $8 billion, ranking among the top five DeFi projects, approaching Maker Dao ($8.735 billion) and AAVE ($8.8 billion). On February 22, A16Z also announced a $100 million investment in EigenLayer's Series B financing, and it is rumored that EigenLayer's TGE event will occur in Q2.

In the Whales Market, EigenLayer's current point price is around $0.15, with a total point value of $285 million, leading to an estimated valuation of EigenLayer at around $3 billion. In comparison, projects close to FDV include Maker Dao at $2 billion and AAVE at $1.6 billion.
The increased activity in the ETH ecosystem, along with ETH's price breaking above $3,100, further enhances the overall market activity. Although the trend of LST sector absorbing xETH is gradually slowing down, EigenLayer's TVL continues to maintain an upward slope, indicating that EigenLayer's deposit ceiling has not yet appeared.

Pendle TVL Hits All-Time High

Pendle's total TVL exceeds $1.7 billion, reaching an all-time high.

Currently, Pendle's disclosed primary investors include Binance Labs, Bixin Ventures, Mechanism Capital, etc., with major VC holders of its tokens including Spartnan Group (4.3 million), Arthur Hayes (co-founder of BitMEX, 1.3 million), and Hashkey (666,600).
With EigenLayer bringing explosive growth to the LRT sector and the future maturity of the Ethereum ecosystem entering traditional finance, it is expected that institutional demand for Pendle-type products will significantly increase, with a high likelihood of participation in accumulation, driving its value and TVL to continue rising.

About Pendle
Pendle is the first product to facilitate on-chain interest rate swaps. In traditional finance, the interest rate swap sector is the largest category by trading volume in derivatives. Its innovative approach splits LST tokens into yield tokens and base tokens, allowing users to operate on the value of this portion.

Ordinals Ecosystem Deeply Engages with Merlin Chain

Merlin Chain announced that its total locked value (TVL) has surpassed $2 billion. This figure includes $1.85 billion in native assets from the BTC ecosystem and over $200 million in Ethereum, stablecoins, and other altcoin assets. The Ordinals ecosystem has a high level of participation in Merlin Chain, with SATS, ORDI, and Bitmap accounting for 12.5%, 5.1%, and 26% of their total supply, respectively.
Additionally, Merlin Chain's BRC-20 token VOYA has become the altcoin with the highest number of trading addresses on the network, reflecting the activity in the BTC ecosystem and signaling a warming market alongside BTC and ETH.

About Merlin Chain
Merlin Chain is a Bitcoin Layer 2 supported by Bitmap, based on the native assets, protocols, and products of Bitcoin Layer 1, making Bitcoin interesting again.
Merlin Chain aims to empower Layer 1 assets, protocols, and user ecosystems through Layer 2, such as building a user-friendly metaverse based on Bitmap and constructing DeFi protocols based on BRC-420 to maximize the release of its token duality, thereby amplifying the overall asset potential of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

3. Some VC Holdings Data Anomalies

Note: The above data is sourced from https://platform.arkhamintelligence.com/, with the statistical time: February 26, 2024, 12:00 (UTC+8).

4. This Week's Focus

February 26

• Ronin plans to upgrade to Neo (v.27.1) and perform a hard fork at block height 32367400 at 3 PM;
• OKX Jumpstart mining will begin today;

February 27

• The Central Bank of Nigeria has approved the cNGN stablecoin, set to launch today;
• The play-to-earn platform Arcade2Earn is conducting a public token sale;
• The Cosmos Hub fork network AtomOne is launching its mainnet;
• A RWA-themed event co-hosted by PANONY, PANews, and Bullish will be held in Hong Kong today;
• SevenX Research Day: Restaked Modularity - Day 2;
• Yield Guild Games (YGG) will unlock 16.69 million tokens at 10 AM, worth about $8.6 million;
• Nym (NYM) will unlock 25 million tokens at 8 AM, worth about $5.2 million;
• Venture Capital World Summit;

February 28

• The L2 network Mint Blockchain plans to officially release its testnet and announce 30 initial supporting ecosystem partners;
• SingularityNET (AGIX) will unlock 8.97 million tokens at 8 AM, worth about $6.8 million;

February 29

• Initial jobless claims in the U.S. for the week;
• U.S. January core PCE price index;
• Lido will no longer support the Goerli testnet starting today;
• Euler (EUL) will unlock about 92,000 tokens at 6:37 PM, worth about $520,000;
• Optimism (OP) will unlock 24.16 million tokens at noon, worth about $84 million;
• Echelon Prime (PRIME) will unlock 1.66 million tokens at 8 AM, worth about $20 million;
• Sui (SUI) will unlock 4 million tokens at 8 AM, worth about $6.4 million;

March 1

• U.S. February Consumer Confidence Index;
• The Arbitrum community will start voting on the ArbOS 20 Atlas AIP proposal, which proposes support for Ethereum Dencun, with voting ending today;
• The Snapshot vote for the proposal "Activating Uniswap Protocol Governance" will be released;
• Decentralized Dialogues: A New Era of DAO Governance | ETH Denver;
• OKX Web3 Night;
• Acala (ACA) will unlock 27.43 million tokens at 3 PM, worth about $3 million;
• dydx (DYDX) will unlock 3.33 million tokens at 8 AM, worth about $100 million;
• ZetaChain (ZETA) will unlock 529,000 tokens at 8 AM, worth about $11.6 million;
• Manta Network (MANTA) will unlock 1.87 million tokens at 7:59 AM, worth about $5.5 million;

5. Conclusion

In the past week, the crypto market has shown positive growth signs, with Bitcoin and Ethereum prices breaking through key resistance levels. The market remains buoyant, and trend signals seem to be strengthening.
Global blockchain investment and financing activities show strong momentum, with a total scale reaching $210 million and a clear upward trend. EigenLayer and AltLayer's financing events have become focal points. Additionally, with EigenLayer's total locked value (TVL) surpassing $8 billion, the DeFi sector demonstrates strong potential, with multiple projects hitting new TVL highs. The innovative nature of products like Pendle may attract more institutional investors' attention. The BRC-20 token VOYA from the BTC ecosystem's Merlin Chain has become the altcoin with the highest number of trading addresses, all of which seem to indicate that the signals for market warming are becoming stronger.
In the coming week, it is recommended to focus on the ETH Denver conference, Uniswap proposals, the unlocking of various popular tokens, and the latest developments in macroeconomic events to make more scientific and reasonable predictions and investment operations.
Note: All views above are for reference only and do not constitute investment advice. If there are any objections, please feel free to contact us for corrections.

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