Morning Minute | Hot New SocialFi App Sees $60M in Deposits

TylerD's Market Summary

Today's Morning Minute is brought to you by Arcade, the leading protocol for NFT lending.

Arcade allows users to hold on to their NFTs and still get liquidity when needed via their flexible time-based lending terms.

They changed the game with their Smart Vaults, allowing users to store their NFTs in vaults during the loan process - enabling them to claim airdrops sent to the NFT after paying off the loan.

It's a major unlock.

The protocol has seen an explosion in user growth (+130%) and monthly loans (+300%) over the past 8-9 months as more and more users find the platform.

And of course - users are being rewarded.

Lending and borrowing on the Arcade protocol earns points which convert to $ARCD tokens.

So check Arcade out today, give or take some liquidity and start earning!

🫂 SocialFi Spring Is Here

Spring is setting up quite nicely for SocialFI enthusiasts.

Headlines and big events on the horizon:

• Stars Arena v2 goes fully live (launched yesterday)
• Fantasy Top Mainnet launches (today) and first $4M tourney starts Monday (4.29)
• FriendTech V2 kicks off Monday (4.29)
• District1 on Blast receives 2nd biggest Blast Gold allocation

The most notable highlights from that list from yesterday though are definitely the traction Fantasy Top has seen and the Stars Arena v2 launch.

Fantasy Top Sees $60M+ In Deposits Ahead of Launch

Money is flooding into Fantasy Top, the "first social trading card game" to come to SocialFi.

As of this morning, the app has seen $63M_ in deposits across nearly 20,000 depositors.

To make the top 10 list, one would have to deposit 238 ETH ($735,000).

And the mainnet isn't even live yet!

It launches at 11 am ET.

Why Is It Seeing This Traction?

For one, Blast gold rewards. 

Pacman and the Blast team made it pretty clear in their last Blast Gold allocation update on Friday that SocialFI apps would be rewarded.

Fantasy Top and District One received 733k Blast Gold each, tied for 2nd behind Thruster.

So farmers are flocking.

And Fantasy Top is kicking Fomo into overdrive with its latest announcement:

• Pack opening and trading beings today at 11 am ET
• Competition starts Monday with 222k Blast Gold in prizes (roughly $4M)

The premise of the game is pretty simple - collect digital trading cards of Crypto Twitter (CT) and NFT Twitter's biggest personalities and score points based on their engagement.

Cards like Ansem will be heavily coveted and will likely skyrocket in price.

Which presents a few ways to play the app:

• Farm somewhat passively by buying up packs and setting lineups
• Actively trade and flip cards

With this amount of prizes on the line and all of CT's attention - expect fireworks next week.

Stars Arena V2 Goes Live

The Arena is back with a new UI and big roadmap.

V2 officially launched yesterday with a slick new UI which mirrors Twitter (X) but with a bit more of a financial ("fi") twist.

The user's wallet, trending tickets and top most traded participants are highlighted in the primary differentiator from the X UI.

Along with the new UI, Jason Desimone and team rolled out a new roadmap.

Their primary goals are to onboard a bigger & more diverse users base, find new partnerships, develop better creator tools and monetization paths and continue building the Arena Brand.

Notable ighlights from the roadmap itself:

• Release of $ARENA & First governance vote on Arena subnet — Details coming soon
• Public API Access — Access for any developers within the community to build tools on top of The Arena
• Lowering fees to 7.5% 
• Expanding login options (Instagram, TikTok, Reddit)
• Expanding tipping options
• Fiat on-ramp — In-app features for fiat to $AVAX conversion.
• The Social Exchange — A new way to buy and sell digital assets on a social feed + new forms of creator monetization
• Direct NFT minting — Create and mint NFTs instantly within the app
• New wallet solution — Improved wallet management solutions, including self custodial wallets.
• Arena Groups — New features and tools to support existing communities (memecoins, NFTs) and launch new ones. Leveraging clever cryptoeconomic incentives to revolutionize existing web2 incumbents, such as Reddit

It's a pretty lofty vision.

While many will focus on the token launch, the expansion of login options, new social exchange and group creation seem to be the most intriguing aspects.

If the team can pull those off, the Arena should have a bright future.

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• ETH led NFT trading volume with $7.9M on the day (+12%); BTC was next with $7.3M (+23%) and then Solana with $4.5M (-16)
• ETH NFT leaders saw big green with BAYC +11% to 14 ETH, Pudgy +3% to 11.8, Captainz +3.5% to 3.4 and MAYC +7% at 2.4
• Azra Games & InfiniGods were notable winners, jumping 33% each
• Runestone led the BTC NFT board again with 29 BTC volume, jumping 10% to 0.025 BTC post-airdrop (more below); Prometheans ralliee 30% to to 0.058 as the team promised more details today on the runes
• BTC PFP leaders rebounded big after yesteday's dip; NodeMonkes +20% at 0.39, OMB +7.5% at 0.44 BTC, Quantum Cats +7.5% at 0.41, Bitcoin Puppets -2% at 0.32
• Ink announced a $10M raise from community member Caesar Eon, with $2M going to the team for operations and $8M pegged for IP development (Ink +20% to 0.018 BTC on the news)
• Solana NFTs were mixed on the day; Mad Lads +1% at 90 SOL, Tensorians +3% at 14.5, sharx -4%
• NFT Stat's project "GM Photography" minted out its 205 NFTs at 0.5 ETH in just 20 minutes on Blastr 
• Yuga Labs will create a new golden key that will stay in the BAYC ecosystem (after the divest with Faraway), airdropping it to the owner of the key
• BAYC holders can now "bring their apes to life" with 3D downloads available via their profiles
• The Opepen website got a facelift, enabling a new way for users to view sets and submissions 

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here's a rundown of major token or airdrop news from the day:

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

• Crypto majors are very red this morning; BTC -4.3% at $63,500; ETH -5.5% at $3,090; SOL -8.5% at $144
• Memecoin majors were even more red; DOGE -8%, WIF -15%, PEPE -8%, BONK -10%; MANEKI outperforms (+38%)
• WIF Perp futures went live on Coinbase International and Advanced
• The SEC is expected to deny the ETH ETFs next month 
• The CEO and Founders of Samourai Wallet were arrested and charged with money laundering and unlicensed money transmitting in a shocking move on Wednesday 
• Sergito revealed new details on his company Popset, a mobile-focused product which is a "personal tokenization engine" with early access launching this week

🚀 Memecoin Movers 

• $CATGPT (+2000%, $16M market cap, Solana)
• $BUNNY (+134%, $17M market cap, Base)
• $ELON (+83%, $25M market cap, ETH)
• $BOOMER (+36%, $10M market cap, Base)
• $MANEKI (+35%, $190M market cap, Solana)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)

• Azra Games (33%, 1.3 ETH Floor)
• Smowl (30%, 0.22 ETH)
• Infinigods (23%, 0.18 ETH)
• Early Retired Cats Club (38%, 0.15 ETH)
• BAYC (11%, 14.1 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is another slower day of mints but a big day of events.

The highlight is definitely Fantasy Top's mainnet launch going live at 11 am ET, where packs will be openable and trading begins.

Magic Eden is also expanding to Base today as it looks to corner more of the NFT market.

See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• $SOMO presale (1`:00 a.m. ET)
• WizOrds (11:00 a.m. ET)
• Fantasy Top mainnet (11:00 a.m. ET)
• Magic Eden - Base launch (1:00 p.m. ET)

Enjoy this write-up and/or want to sponsor the Morning Minute? Follow along with me on Twitter @tyler_did_it or reach out via email to tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.