#209 - Pepe is dead, again? 🐸💀

GM and welcome to Decentra Daily.

We're the web3 newsletter that’s back with another week of crypto, NFT, and AI news.

Today,

1. $PEPE is dead?

2. Snowfro says don’t bet on another bull run

3. Blur Blend offers DeGods borrowing and lending

Plus, all the web3 headlines, memes, and Tweets of the day.

D-Daily takeaway 🥡
Cumulative floor prices are at their lowest since our index was created...

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Our floor price index tracks the biggest, most influential pfp projects, art collections, and gaming assets.

Pepe is dead (again)?

In 2017, Pepe’s creator, Matt Furie, killed his frog.

A rise in alt-right Pepe memes connected to Trump and the Proud Boys pushed Furie to sacrifice his amiable amphibian, in a special installment of the Boy’s Club comic series that originally spawned the frog.

But as one of the most recognizable faces on the internet, Pepe can never really die, right? …right?

Over the weekend, $PEPE plummeted from its ATH of $0.0000043

After a Friday surge pushed its market cap over $1 billion, PEPE saw a painful correction of more than 45%.

Which left one late buyer down $500K. 😱

That’s despite attempts from the community and wider web3 to keep sentiment bullish:

• Binance listed the token

• Trading volume and Twitter mentions remain high

• Azuki airdropped $PEPE to holders with froggish pfps

• Matt Furie said he prefers Dogecoin

So is $PEPE dead?

Monday was an important day for internet frog money. After missing several support levels, confidence began to wane.

But, as of this morning, $PEPE is still up a memeable 69% compared to this time last week.

🤷‍♀️ Here’s the thing. Older memecoins like $DOGE and $SHIB have a history of dropping savagely with near-zero volume, then suddenly pumping in response to cultural events.

– which makes selling those volatile tops extremely difficult.

But it also suggests that $PEPE could come roaring back with a timely tweet from the right person, a mainstream media mention, or a Coinbase listing.

Also froggish: parallels between $PEPE and $SHIB

Comparing PEPE’s chart with the memecoin Shiba Inu shows a similar volume and trading patterns when each coin was listed on Binance.

The big difference? A raging bull market was there to support SHIB’s momentum after the listing. So no guarantee things will be the same with PEPE.

Decentra Daily tip: if you are planning to HODL, decide now what you’ll do if $PEPE returns from the dead again – and stick to the plan!

Notable Tweets ✅

On the web3 wire

SushiSwap’s new V3 liquidity pools are now live 🏊‍♀️
The rollout of V3 polls should reduce slippage by letting liquidity providers concentrate funds in a narrower price range. V3 is now live on Polygon, Arbitrum, and other major blockchains.

Check out these 5 web3 patents from big web2 companies 🛠️
If the plans pitched in these patents are built, we’ll see digital collectibles and blockchain tools in everything from candy to Formula 1.

Buy digital assets without handing over full access to your wallet 🔐
Thanks to ERC-4337, you’ll soon be able to restrict dApp access to only those assets you want them to see. This deep dive explains how “wallet abstraction” works and improves web3 UX and eCommerce.

Interview with a cautious founder

Art Blocks founder Erick “Snowfro” Calderon is one of the most pragmatic figures in web3 – as this interview in The Block shows.

In it, Snowfro says he is basing the current Art Block’s growth strategy on the assumption that there may not be another NFT bull market.

This (pessimistic?) take is part of the reason why Art Blocks rarely accepts major investment, keeps a small team of 40 people, and has never released a community token.

Snowfro thinks that a “startup mentality,” where companies take on funds and big valuations in anticipation of growth, is a risky and potentially misguided way to manage a web3 business – especially those that deal in art and community value.

With Art Blocks collections no longer selling out and volume at 2-year lows, you can’t knock Caldron’s cautious approach!

So is this the beginning of the end for Art Block’s supremacy?

Despite low sales, Art Blocks isn’t staying static. It’s currently developing “minting tech” to position itself as an infrastructure partner for less web3-savvy art studios and brands.

Based on this interview, though, Snowfro seems less interested in influencing the NFT market, and more focused on maintaining a quality art curation platform that protects its artists (and their 5% royalties).

In fact, Snowfro was never fooled into grandiose ideas, even during the heights of the ‘21 bull run:

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Meme of the day

C U Tmrw! 👋

What we're reading this week