Morning Minute | Prepare for Launch? Blast May Be Next Up for Hot Ball of Money

Before our regularly scheduled programming, a small housekeeping note for this week.

Tyler is out on vacation (one well earned) so I'll be filling in for both the Morning Minute and Lucky Lead! 

You may notice slightly different tone and topic, but I promise to keep you abreast of all the most important things happening in web3. 

Today, that's trying to get ahead of the hot ball of money before it gets there, investigating opportunities arising on Blast and Base. 

Today's Morning Minute is brought to you by nftperp, your gateway to the future of NFT derivatives trading!

Are you ready to dive into the world of NFT trading but hesitant due to high entry barriers? Look no further than nftperp.

nftperp allows traders to go long or short NFTs with the click of a few buttons. 

And now it is officially live on Blast L2, providing a lower fee environment for traders along with:

• New "Degen Draw" raffle game

• Punks, Penguins and Milady's live for trading

• 100% of their Blast airdrop being shared with the community

• Additional $VNFTP rewards for traders

So start trading today (and use our code "LUCKYTRADER" to get access).

🚀 Blast Off

I'm not sure if the Morning Minute has ever opened with a Beanie tweet, but today it will. 

Feels like we’re between metas rn. No clear narrative atm. Good time to touch grass and chill tf out. This is the type of market that can ruin your bankroll without really any defined upside. Save your capital for +ev plays. They will return. And sleep will be commoditized again.

— Beanie (@beaniemaxi) March 24, 2024

The first part of this post resonates most with me. I think Beanie is spot on in suggesting that it feels like we are "between metas." 

Despite a strong Sunday bounce, Solana memecoins lost a little bit of steam on the back of presale meta. Ordinals collections have held their ground, but aren't dominating the timeline like their initial surge. Crypto majors bounced on Sunday too, but all-time highs are a pump or two away. 

But you know what does seem to be picking up steam on my timeline? Blast. 

The Latest GOLD Rush

On Friday, Pacman and team began the first distribution of 10 million Blast GOLD to mainnet dapps and Big Bang winners. This GOLD, like Blast Points, can be passed on from the dapps to the users of their protocols at their discretion. And like Blast Points, GOLD holdings will affect a users eventual airdrop allotment as it earns 50% of the upcoming airdrop. 

While the difference between Blast Points and GOLD may be confusing, Blast has provided an estimation of their relative pair. Based on data from my Blast dashboard, right now, 1 GOLD will earn about as much as 35,000 Blast Points. 

On the surface, that might not mean much to you. But thanks to trading on Whales Market, we can start to put a number on just how impactful Blast GOLD may be. 

For context, recent fills of Blast Points (of trades of at least $1,000+) on Whales Market have Blast Points in the range of $0.00077-$0.001.

Therefore, using the low end of this range, 1 Blast GOLD at current prices is ~$27. That makes GOLD very desirable. 

And teams and protocols have lots of GOLD to distribute to hungry users as the latest distribution of 10 million GOLD is just the first of a bi-weekly, manual distribution from Blast.

Here's the full list of protocols shared by Blast, and their corresponding GOLD amounts. Thanks to the transparency of the team, posts about the "best ways to farm GOLD" started to populate my timeline. 

When people start to see major ROIs, and consider that, hey....Blast might airdrop $1.5 billion to users...it's likely less surprising that attention is picking up on the timeline. 

1B. 

I'd be remiss to not mention Base one more time as a strong candidate for the next hot ball of money. 

In fact, you could likely make the case that the hot ball of money is already making its way there. 

According to data from DefiLlama, Base was second in weekly volume gained (+64%) among chains that had more $10 million in DEX volume. On top of that, Base climbed into the No. 7 spot in weekly DEX volume at $1.78 billion. 

What else is happening, or yet to come? 

• XCOPY and Jack Butcher choose Base for latest open edition launches. 
• Base memecoin activity is heating up (see also, DEX volume). $DOGINME eclipses $90 million mc, $BRETT approaches $400 million again, $ROOST $200 million, $TOSHI $222 million, and the list goes on. 
• Farcaster-based $DEGEN ripped to new all-time highs this weekend, up 50% on Sunday alone, surpassing a $600 million FDV at one point. 
• Friend Tech points continue to surge on Whales Market as v2 prepares for launch in ~1 month. 
• Oh, and maybe most importantly Coinbase and its influential, key players are relentlessly fighting for its continued adoption. 

🚚 What Else Is Happening in NFTs?

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

• Bitcoin led NFT trading volume with $10.6 million in volume on the day (+12%); ETH was next with $9 million (+8%) and then Solana with $6.5 million (-2%)
• The ETH NFT leaders were mixed yesterday; Pudgy -6% to 12.41 ETH and BAYC +1% to 13.64 ETH
• Azuki bounced 9% to lead notable top movers, rebounding to 4.70 ETH, up 23% on the week. 
• Runestones was the top Bitcoin mover, tallying 28.93 BTC. The floor is down a bit to 0.04 BTC, but another airdrop is in the works for Runestone holders. 
• Froganas was the top mover on Solana, down nearly 8% to 2.74 SOL. Howdy Hats followed just behind as its token airdrop snapshot was taken at 7:00 a.m. ET. Hats had fallen around 14% to 9.13 SOL around that time. 
• Darkfarms started an Ordinals inscription auction, with bids in $BOME being taken via X replies. At current $BOME prices the bid is more than $250,000. 
• Jack Butcher followed XCOPY's lead, dropping an open edition, "1988" on Base. The edition minted more than 148,000 times by more than 37,000 unique minters. 
• Three Bitcoin Rocks traded for multiple Bitcoin on Sunday, two to the same buyer. The early inscription, low-supply collection briefly bounced to a 6.9 BTC floor, but listings have pulled it back to 4.2 BTC (silly jokesters).
• $600,000 USDC loan originated against Zombie Punk on Gondi. 

💰 Token, Airdrop & Points Tracker

Highlighting the major token or airdrop news from the day.

• Pike Finance announced its tokenomics and community presale details. Tier 1 access will go live later today at 1:00 p.m. ET. 
• With more reminders that Friend Tech is turning over its points to the community, point allocaitons on Whales Market are trading in larger size.
• Arcade's $ARCD transferability proposal voting is now live. Votes "For" overwhelmingly receive support, sitting at 99.95% of the vote. 
• Howdy Hat owners captured in this morning's snapshot will receive their portion of the $HOWDY airdrop today. Hats were trading at 9.17 SOL as of 7:00 a.m. ET. 
• Blast GOLD distribution started on Friday and dApps have started distributing to users. 

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

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

• Crypto majors are  this morning; BTC +2.7% $66,993; ETH +2% at $3,452; SOL +8.5% at $189
• Green in majors helped bump leading memes as well. $WIF up ~24% in the last 24 hours to $2.78, Pepe up 2.29%, and Mog up 13.57%. 
• DreamOS announced a raise of $2.1 million and updated holders on what it means for BreadHead NFTs. 
• The EU scratched a payment limit for self-custody wallets according to a CoinTelegraph report. 

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is another slower day of drops without major highlights.

With memecoin energy slowing down, it could be a good weekend for any NFTs that catch momentum - so be on the lookout.

It's also a nice setup for a quality stealth drop.

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

• Pike Finance Community Presale (11:00 a.m. ET)
• $HOWDY Coin launch (noon E.T.) 
• Sovrn - Cents (noon E.T.)
• Miragenesi x Fingerprints DAO: The Queue (1:00 p.m. ET)

Enjoy this write-up and/or want to sponsor the Morning Minute? Follow along with me on Twitter @lhitch09 or reach out via email logan@luckytrader.com.