• Starkware confirms Starknet token launch.

• GameStop NFT hits $1 million in 24-hour volume.

• Pods Finance releases Pods Yields vault.

• Animoca Brands raises $75 million.

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Starkware has confirmed the launch of its native Starknet token. The news comes after 3AC founder Zhu Su revealed details about Starkware token warrants in a letter to liquidators. The Starknet token will have a total supply of 10 billion with an ERC-20 version coming to Ethereum. The token distribution includes 17% for StarkWare investors, 32.9% for Starknet software developer partners, and 50.1% for a newly created Foundation. The foundation’s allocation is further broken down into 9% for StarkEx L2 users, 9% for community rebates, 12% for Starknet grants, 10% for ecosystem activities, 2% for donations, and 8.1% unallocated. The token is part of Starkware’s road to decentralization and will be used for governance, transaction fee payments on the network, and staking. Starkware plans to launch the token in September of this year. Next year, the company will release token allocations to the community based on verifiable work.

GameStop’s launched a public beta release of its NFT marketplace this week, generating more than $1 million in 24-hour volume. The non-custodial marketplace is built on Loopring’s Ethereum-based L2 network, enabling low-fee transactions. The marketplace has already surpassed Coinbase NFT’s all-time volume of 1,704 ETH. Users can connect to the marketplace with a browser-based wallet, including GameStop’s own wallet browser extension. GameStop earns a 2.25% fee for each sale as part of the marketplace fee. In February, GameStop partnered with L2 network Immutable X which included a fund of up to $100 million in IMX by Immutable.

Pods Finance, a decentralized options protocol, has launched its first Pods Yields vaut. Coined stETHvv, the vault focuses on ETH accumulation using a weekly stETH strangle to capitalize on volatility. A strangle is an options strategy in which both a call and a put option are held with different strike prices. Pods is opening the vault gradually with an initial cap of 500 stETH. The code is not yet fully audited. Pods finance supports vaults on Arbitrum, Ethereum and Polygon. Pods Finance is a Brazil-based DeFi protocol seed funded by Boost VC and The LAO.

Game publisher Animoca Brands has raised $75 million in fresh capital at a $5.9 billion valuation. The funding was the second part of a previous round in January, which raised close to $360 million at a $5.5 billion valuation. The company’s valuation has more than doubled from a $2.2 billion valuation in October 2021. Animoca Brands said it will use the fund for acquisitions, investments, and product development. The company also plans to secure licenses for IP rights in popular projects. Animoca Brands’s investments include more than 150 NFT-related projects including The Sandbox, OpenSea, and NBA Top Shot.

Aztec Network, a privacy-focused ZK-rollup, updated its website after the launch of Aztec Connect. The Aztec team is the inventor of Plonk, an industry-standard universal zk-SNARK. More than 6k users have made deposits into its zk.money privacy dapp. In total, users have deposited more than 1500 ETH into the rollup.

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• Hackers steal 7,500 ETH in a Uniswap V3 phishing attack.

• Celsius pays back $113 million in DeFi loans.

• Lenstube launches on Polygon mainnet.

• Optimism distributes Phase 0 governance tokens.

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Argent has integrated with Layerswap to enable CEX deposits onto the Argent X wallet. Argent X is a browser wallet for the StarkNet L2 network. Users can now use Layerswap to bridge funds from centralized exchanges such as Coinbase, FTX, FTX US, Binance, Huobi, OKEx, Kucoin, Bitfinex, and Kraken. Layerswap is a solution that allows users to deposit funds from a CEX into L2 networks

Optimism began distributing 36.6 million $OP tokens to Phase 0 projects that successfully requested tokens from the governance fund. In total, the governance fund consists of 5.4% of the total $OP supply. Slingshot, Clipper Exchange, Perpetual Protocol, and Gelato are among the projects that have already received the funds. The governance fund is broken down into two phases, with Phase 0 distributing 0.8% of the total $OP supply and Phase 1 distributing 4.6% of the total $OP supply. 12.3 million $OP remains in the OP wallet for Phase 0 distributions. The grants were designed to reward existing projects that have driven the growth of the Optimism ecosystem.

Uniswap LPs fell victim to a phishing scam resulting in a hacker stealing more than 7,500 ETH in V3 positions. An attacker airdropped malicious tokens to Uniswap LPs and manipulated data so that block explorers index the "From" field as the legitimate "Uniswap V3: Positions NFT" contract. The name of the token directed users to a malicious website that claimed the users could swap the tokens for UNI. The website directed users to sign a “set Approval For All” transaction, giving the attacker the ability to redeem the user’s Uniswap v3 LP tokens. The attacker then laundered the funds through Tornado Cash in batches of 100 ETH. Binance CEO CZ had mistakenly announced the attack as an exploit on UniswapV3. Uniswap creator Hayden Adams later addressed the issue as a phishing scam unrelated to the protocol itself.

Celsius Network has paid back $113.1 million towards its DeFi loans on Aave and Compound. The company’s debt in DeFi protocols is down to $123 million, compared to $236 million last week. The loan repayments have allowed the company to withdraw 400k stETH from its collateral, which is currently worth about $428 million. Last week Celsius paid off a $41.2 million DAI loan on MakerDAO to unlock $440 million worth of WBTC. It remains unclear if Celsius plans to trade stETH for ETH, which would result in further losses to do a slight de-peg. User accounts on Celsius have been frozen since June 12th.

Lenstube, an open-source video-sharing platform built on top of Lens Protocol, is now live on Polygon mainnet. Tape uses Arweave’s Bundlr Network to store videos permanently on IPFS. Anyone with a lens handle is now able to use Tape to watch or upload videos. Similar to Lenster, users can collect video content as an NFT. The platform allows creators to monetize by setting membership fees for their channel and being able to receive tips. Creators can also customize who can collect videos and associated fees. The social media platform features a YouTube-like user interface with the ability to subscribe to channels and like and comment on videos.

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• Offchain Labs releases Arbitrum Nova.

• Angle Protocol deploys its borrow module on Polygon.

• Li.Fi raises a $5.5 million funding round.

• Alphaday reveals the launch of its crypto dashboard.

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Offchain Labs announced the release of Arbitrum Nova, a new chain built on the company’s AnyTrust technology. AnyTrust is tech-optimized for ultra-low-cost transactions by use of a data availability committee. The chain is live on mainnet for developers to deploy dapps ahead of a public launch for end users in the coming weeks. Arbitrum Nova is expected to be used by gaming and social applications, whereas Arbitrum One will remain a chain for DeFi and NFTs. Arbitrum One is days away from migrating the Arbitrum Rinkeby testnet to Nitro. The anticipated migration to Nitro on mainnet will follow soon after. Dune Analytics also added support for querying on-chain data from Arbitrum One. Arbitrum is running a contest through July 18th for the top 10 dashboards created for the network. Winners will be selected from the contest page posted on layer3.xyz, for a chance to win a share of $3,000.

Cross-chain DEX aggregator LI.FI raised $5.5 million in a funding round led by 1kx. The round included participation from Coinbase, Dragonfly Capital, RockTree Capital, and 6th Man Ventures among others. LI.FI’s cross-chain DEX aggregates bridging routes based on desired filters, such as cost and speed. LIFI plans to use the new funds to expand its team and integrate more bridges and DEXs.

Angle has deployed a new borrowing module on Polygon, allowing users to borrow its Euro-pegged stablecoin agEUR. The integration provides users with low-cost transactions and has allowed Angle to reduce its minimum permitted borrow amount to just 20 agEUR on Polygon, compared to 10,000 agEUR on Ethereum mainnet. Users can use wETH, USDC, or MATIC as collateral to mint agEUR directly on Polygon. Angle is a capital-efficient, decentralized, and over-collateralized stablecoin protocol that aims to become an uncensorable money layer for DeFi blockchains.

Alphaday, a crypto dashboard tool, is planning an early access launch on July 26th. The tool is being developed by Kyber Network’s former Head of Growth Deniz Omer. Users will be able to build dashboards with customizable widgets, including news feeds, event calendars, NFT reports, and portfolio trackers. The platform plans to pull information from more than 200 data sources to report on over 500 projects. Alphaday will also support more than 30 widgets with custom codable widgets coming at a later date. Early Alphaday adopters who received a POAP will be eligible to access the early beta release.

Hop Protocol has integrated Sign-In with Ethereum into its governance forum. Sign-In with Ethereum is an authentication method that enables users to control their digital identity with their Ethereum account and ENS profile. An ongoing specification for Sign-In with Ethereum is being developed as part of EIP-4361. The integration allows users to sign into a dapp by signing a message with their Ethereum wallet.

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