What's Driving Token Prices? February 7, 2024

OX (+6.2%) - Last week, OPNX, the exchange started by the founders of Three Arrows Capital, Kyle Davies and Su Zhu, abruptly announced it would be shutting down. Users were advised to close all positions by today (February 7) and withdraw all assets by February 14. As a quick history lesson, in mid-2022, hedge fund Three Arrows Capital blew up causing a massive strain on the crypto markets. The founders have been accused of mishandling client assets while running Three Arrows Capital and Su Zhu was even arrested in Singapore last September for failing to cooperate with the bankruptcy proceedings. OPNX, which was designed as a bankruptcy exchange, was launched less than a year ago and already received multiple cease-and-desist orders from Dubai’s crypto regulator.
ENS (+16%) - Ethereum Name Service, which allows users to buy and use a “.eth” address in place of a public wallet, announced a partnership with GoDaddy this past Monday. The partnership allows users to link their Ethereum address to web domains for free, as long as the user owns the domain. For example, registering a web domain with an ENS address would allow a user to send ETH to “Amazon.com” and it would go to the associated Ethereum address. While this is a small integration that doesn’t drive any immediate value, it does show that Web2 companies are taking digital assets seriously in rolling out this partnership.
DYM (+50%) - Rollup-as-a-service provider, Dymension, airdropped its token yesterday morning along with launching the mainnet of its product. However, the launch was anything but smooth with the mainnet unable to reach consensus due to a bad validator. In addition, it appears that Dymension’s connection to other blockchains through IBC, the Cosmos messaging system, was not functioning properly and therefore many users were unable to bridge their assets off the chain either to a DEX or centralized exchange. Finally, one of the validators currently has 35% of the tokens delegated to it which raised criticism that the network is not properly decentralized with one group holding an outsized amount of power.
STRD (+63%) - The Cosmos liquid staking protocol, Stride, announced last week that it raised a $4M strategic round. The investors included 1confirmation, Modular Capital, Chorus One, Road Capital as well as a handful of angel investors. The raise announcement comes after the recent launch of stTIA, a liquid staking token for Celestia, which has already gained $29M in TVL. Stride currently supports liquid staking for ATOM, OSMO, DYDX and STARS with many more in the pipeline.

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