What Are These Runes All About?!

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Here is the breakdown of today's newsletter:

📍 What’s Dropping In Web3
🎯 Biggest NFT Sales This Week
📈 Crypto Update

Reminder: If there is something you think we can do to make this newsletter better (content, format, etc.) please respond to this email with your feedback!

• Magic Eden: Keeps fighting to be the number one NFT marketplace and recently recorded its largest monthly trading volume in March, and even surpassed industry leader Blur. NFT trading volume spiked 194.4% in March to $756.5M, while Blur marginally increased to $530.4M. (CT)

• Tensor Airdrop: Huge payday for Tensor users. Tensor is one of the top Solana NFT platforms and they recently rewarded its early users generously by distributed $250 million in TNSR tokens, which is 12.5% of the total supply. (DF)

• PayPal: Announced a policy update that will remove NFTs from its “Purchase Protection and Seller Protection Programs” starting May 20, 2024. Previously, PayPal had explored direct sales and the holding of NFTs on its platform, even filing an NFT-related patent in 2022. (YF)

• TikTok: ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, has announced a move into Web3 through a strategic partnership with Mysten Labs, the developers behind the Sui layer-1 blockchain (CT)

• Bitcoin Punk #5822: Had the biggest sale of any NFT across all chains with a purchse price of 2.7438 BTC ($168,161.77 USD)

• Bitcoin Wizards: The Ordinal collection and coin ($WZRD) are having quite the week. The coin is now above $7 on CMC, a 260% increase in 7 days. The NFT has exploded as well from 0.1 BTC range to 0.3 BTC range.

What are Runes? 🗿

One of, if not the number one buzz around the web3 and NFT space right now is Bitcoin “runes” which is launching TODAY.

Many are confused and for good reason, it’s a little confusing. We will break it down as easily as possible!

📍 Here’s the rundown:

• Runes will essentially be the “memecoins” on Bitcoin networj

• Runes were created by @rodarmor, the founder of Bitcoin NFTs known as Ordinals

• With this new development “etchers” or devs can launch their own Runes tokens in the same way that devs have on other chains (mainly SOL via pumpdotfun the recent weeks)

• The Runes protocol will launch when the Bitcoin halving occurs which is TODAY

• Marketplaces and DEXes (such as Magic Eden and OKX) have already announced that they will support tokens created from the Runes protocol starting on day one - some BTC NFT projects and coins are giving out Runes to holders

• Unlike BRC-20, Runes do not depend on the Ordinals mechanism of inscribing which infamously was clogging the entire network

In Conclusion: 

Runestones, special messages stored in Bitcoin transaction outputs, correspond to a UTXO and can be locked in Hashed Time-Locked Contracts (HTLCs), facilitating integration with the Bitcoin Lightning Network. This compatibility could lead to faster, cheaper transactions, potentially giving the runes standard an advantage.

Here’s a breakdown of the entire Runes current ecosystem:

• Uniswap: Hiked its swap fees from .15% to .25% (TB)

• A16Z: Allocates $600M of $7B in new funds for Games Fund, with rumors to include blockchain and web3 gaming (BW)

• Hong Kong: Approves first BTC and ETH ETFs (M)

• ZachXBT: uncovers PrismaFi’s $11M hacker (CN)

• Crypto Whale: has lost $4.5M trying to long Ethereum, twice (DH)

• NerdWallet’s 11 best crypto wallets for the average retail user in April 2024 (NW)

Yuga Labs Sells Off Gaming Arm

For the last couple years every piece of Yuga news seemed to be a big hire or acquisition of a different NFT collection.

However, just yesterday it was announced that Yuga Labs (creator of BAYC) has sold the rights of Legends of the Mara and HV-MTL to a veteran web3 gaming studio (backed by Lightspeed, Sequoia, and a16z) known as Faraway.

Faraway hopes to expand these games and their “immediate goal is to drive as much utility as possible to the primary NFTs that make up these collections”

They go on to state that these new activations will have a vast point system network that they go into more detail below:

So there’s no confusion, Faraway will now own the following collections:

• HV-MTL

• Sewer Passes

• Otherside Vessels

• Otherside Maras

• Otherside Kodamaras

• Otherside Ship parts

• Otherside Catalyst

• Otherside Partner Loot

Community Reaction:

It seems across the board on X many BAYC holders are pleasantly surprised with the sale. Many felt that Yuga project-wise lost their focus with acquisition after acquisition. This came to a piping hot reality after the reason Moonbird collection purche.

Here’s a great rundown by @NFTbark:

Top 5 NFT sales in the past 24 hours across all chains:

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That's all for today's issue! Thanks for reading this far and also make sure to give our Twitter a follow daily for breaking web3 news! (@TheDropNFT)

• STEPN x Adidas Sneaker Release

• The Bitcoin Halving Is Almost Here

• Bitcoin Breaks All-Time Highs

• NFTs Are Roaring Back

Written by: Gannon Breslin

Disclaimer: The Drop DOES NOT provide financial advice. All content is for informational purposes only. The Drop is not a registered investment, legal, or tax advisor or a broker/dealer. Trading any crypto-related asset is extremely risky and could result in significant capital losses.