What's Driving Token Prices? March 8, 2023

LDO (-19%) - Decentralized liquid staking provider Lido passed a vote today to upgrade its platform to enable withdrawals, with Ethereum’s Shanghai hard fork fast approaching. The Shanghai upgrade will allow withdrawals of staked ETH from Ethereum. Users began staking Ethereum to the PoS version of the chain in December 2020, so this upgrade will enable anyone staking through platforms like Lido to liquidate their position. In addition, on-chain detectives have noted that one of the larger holders of the LDO token has sold all the tokens in their wallet, indicating that some potential sell pressure has concluded. Many believe this wallet holder is Rune Christensen, the founder of MakerDao.
FTT (-17%) - FTX launched a lawsuit against Grayscale for charging “exorbitant management fees” and accused them of “improperly preventing redemptions” on its BTC and ETH trusts. The complaint, technically launched by Alameda, claims to own $290M of GBTC and ETHE shares and would be worth over $540M if fees were reduced and redemptions allowed. The lawsuit is unlikely to continue as Grayscale fights the SEC in court over transitioning its GBTC Trust to an ETF. Many market participants do not believe this lawsuit will result in returning money to creditors, but it appears FTX/Alameda is pursuing every avenue.
AVAX (-11%) - Layer-1 protocol Avalanche announced yesterday that it partnered with TSM—the largest esports team—to launch TSM’s competitive gaming platform, Blitz, on Avalanche’s blockchain. The Blitz app will allow users to improve their gaming skills and learn specific insights in preparation for participating in Blitz Arena competitions that include prizes. Most interesting about this announcement is that Blitz will use the AVAX token as its gas token on this subnet, which is a divergence from other projects that have chosen to launch a subnet but use their native token for gas.
UNI (-6.6%) - Decentralized exchange Uniswap announced the launch of a mobile app for iOS that allows users to self-custody their assets and trade tokens and NFTs through its exchange. Apple still needs to greenlight the app, so it has only been released to 1,000 users. The app’s introduction could lead to more swaps on Uniswap and greater revenues, but it is unlikely to be impactful in the near term. Regardless, mobile trading is a huge step for DEXs, which have been stuck within the desktop trading interface.

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