Garga in as Yuga CEO, Risk on Blast Rugs, Uniswap Token fees | TS-006
Plus: what is BAYC LLC, and Blast L2 goes live!
Hey everyone - it’s never a dull week in crypto and web3. From insider trading allegations, to a new acquisition, to projects shutting down - lets go through the top six stories in crypto from the past week.
TOP SIX STORIES IN CRYPTO
Yuga’s Co-Founder Garga replaces Daniel Alegre as CEO
BAYC LLC: Bored Ape Yacht Club to be it’s own subsidiary
Risk on Blast rugs for $1.2 Million (420 ETH)
10KTF: PFPs will likely reveal this Thursday (I’ll be in LA Streaming live!)
Uniswap token surges 2x after fee switch turns on
Blast L2 goes live this week! Catch up with Jenn
1. Yuga’s Co-Founder Garga replaces Daniel Alegre as CEO
In a bombshell and totally unexpected announcement (really), Garga (Yuga Co-Founder) announced on X that he’ll be stepping back in as CEO, replacing the outgoing Daniel Alegra (of Google and Activision fame).
This is not even a week after Yuga Labs announced the controversial acquisition of Proof (after which some of the BAYC community questioned Daniel’s business acumen in the web3 space). While the announcement was unexpected, it was surprising given how many fumbles Yuga had had lately - from minor things like minting high volume NFTs on ETH in 2024, to launching repeated boring games like HV-MTL and Legends of the Mara. After the announcement, hundreds of Bored and Mutants were swept off the floor - the community liked the decision. Read Garga’s full announcement here.
2. BAYC LLC: Bored Ape Yacht Club to be it’s own subsidiary
In Garga’s CEO announcement, he mentioned a few things including: BAYC LLC. That the Bored Ape Yacht Club is now it’s own subsidiary entity sitting under Yuga Labs, vs a direct part of the parent company. This is something some have been asking for - some sort of separation between The Club and the rest of Yuga’s activity.
For example, when Yuga’s Gaming division wasn’t going well this summer (HV-MTL, LOTM), the community asked for all gaming content to be moved off the BAYC Twitter to create more separation. This led to the Yuga Labs Gaming X account.
Now, it feels like BAYC is fully untethered. Illa (Community lead at BAYC) mentioned on an X Space that it wasn’t fair for “the BAYC vibes to get dragged down when gaming or another division of Yuga messes up.” So, along with the financial separation, Yuga is also clearly creating a psychological separation.
So what does BAYC LLC mean tangibly for Bored Ape Yacht Club? I think we can expect more of what made BAYC, BAYC in 2021. More fun and weird experiments that gets everyone talking. There will be less pressure on BAYC LLC becoming a cash cow from VCs (which is what I think was happening internally, that will shift to gaming which is a much bigger market). BAYC can now focus on being the best club in the world and personally, I’m bullish.
3. Risk on Blast rugs for $1.2 Million (420 ETH)
Risk on Blast was a protocol that was going to launch when Blast L2 goes live later this week. It was a gambling finance (Gamblefi) play. They were tweet out by the official Blast L2 X account, they entered the Blast Builders competition (although they did not win). They were doing a pre-sale for their token $RISK, ahead of the launch.
….And they rugged. Twitter account? Gone. Discord? Deleted. Walked away with 420 ETH from the community. I wrote a whole thread on it, which you can see here (or click on the photo below). It’s hard to say what will come from this, but authorities are on it. MoonCat (a prominent angel investor in the space) has given ZachXBT (a prominent on-chain detective) a bounty to see if the perpetrators can be caught. Yours truly was caught up in the as well (rip 0.1 ETH). But other protocols on Blast have offered part of their presales allocations to those who lost money, so all is not lost. Blast launches later this week (see story #6 for a great primer).
4. 10KTF: PFPs will likely reveal this Thursday (I’ll be in LA Streaming live!)
If you’ve been along my journey in NFTs, you know how important 10KTF (now a part of Yuga) has been for me. It’s where I made my first on-chain friends, it was the first IRL event I went to (wrote about it here), I was also put into the story as a “Captain” (wrote about that too).
Well, after a long bear market, 10KTF is finally about to reveal their PFPs. They’re based off the environments in Otherside, they’re going to be Otherside native, and theres a 99% chance you’re getting the 3D models for them too (eventually).
And if you haven’t heard, I’m headed to LA to stream the event live! It’ll be in the Fine Arts Cinema in Beverly Hills, and you can still get tickets to attend. If you can’t attend, watch it live on Thursday at 5:30 ET on our YouTube Channel.
5. Uniswap token surges 2x after fee switch turns on
The price of the UNI token jumped from $7.24 to $10.22 in less than an hour after the Uniswap Foundation proposed an upgrade to the Uniswap Protocol Governance. The upgrade would allow UNI token holders to get rewarded via it’s fee mechanisms.
Some people are certain the proposal will pass, but there is still some regulatory issues it will need to overcome, particularly in the States where a fee earning token would end up as a security. Some think the proposal is front-running a major decision in the US, that would allow for more of an open environment for token innovation, but that remains to be seen.
Are you buying UNI here?
6. Blast L2 goes live this week! Catch up with Jenn
Blast L2 - a very hyped layer 2 from the Blur marketplace team - goes live this week. The date has not bee announced, but given its the last week of February, Blast is imminent.
To catch you up, here’s a video by Jenn that goes through a bunch of interesting protocols and how you can farm them (for potentially a token airdrop?)
It’s also not too late to bridge to Blast to earn points for their airdrop in May. Adding more invite codes here to join my team.
That’s all for this week - See you next time and hit the subscribe button, por fa
- atareh out