What's Driving Token Prices? February 28, 2024

BLUR (+13%) - Blast, the Layer 2 project spun out of NFT marketplace Blur, is set to launch tomorrow, unlocking $2B of TVL on the chain. Since launching late last year, Blast quickly attracted millions in ETH deposits in anticipation of the new Layer-2 that promises “real yield” (i.e. yield not paid out in the native token) and a plethora of new applications. While many deposited ETH in anticipation of a Blast token airdrop, there is now the promise of many airdrops in the future from yet-to-be-launched projects in the new ecosystem.
BAT (+15%) - Brave, the creator of the Brave Web 3 browser and the Basic Attention Token (BAT), announced it will move to Solana to make payouts of BAT tokens to users. The Brave browser has built-in blockers for ads and allows users to be paid in BAT tokens for watching targeted advertisements. The migration of BAT payments to Solana solves a huge issue since BAT was previously based on Ethereum. Therefore, payouts were very expensive and inefficient as ETH gas fees were too high for micropayments. Brave requires users to sign up with a custodial partner to claim rewards (and also requires KYC). Now, users can just connect a SOL wallet address to receive their BAT rewards.
AAVE (+19%) - Last week, Gauntlet announced that it would no longer perform risk advisory services to the Aave DAO, a decentralized money market protocol. Gauntlet stated that it received inconsistent guidelines, making it impossible to work with the DAO. Most recently, Gauntlet struggled to push through proposals that would protect Aave from bad debt due to illiquid loans made via the CRV token. In addition, mixed signals from Aave users, including last month when the Aave community pushed back against a distribution proposal for ARB token rewards but overwhelmingly supported an identical proposal for the distribution of OP token rewards. While not stated explicitly, some users have also alluded to the behavior of Marc Zeller, the leader of one of the largest token delegations, as the reason behind Gauntlet’s resignation. Just yesterday, Gauntlet announced it was signing on as a “risk curator” with Morpho, a direct competitor of Aave’s.
UNI (+50%) - The big news in the DEX sector this week came on Friday when the Uniswap Foundation proposed to turn on the fee switch for the Uniswap decentralized exchange. Many groups have tried in the past to activate the fee switch. However, this proposal is unique as it was sponsored by the Uniswap Foundation and not by an outside group of token holders. As a result, it is believed that this proposal may pass. The token initially shot up 50% on the news and sparked a broad-based rally in other Defi tokens. Yesterday, Uniswap Labs also released a browser extension for its wallet product, which previously lived on mobile only, allowing users to use it in the same way they do their Metamask wallet.

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