The Morning Block

An MDAO Weekly Newsletter

Author

Alex Farfel
June 10, 2022

Welcome to the Morning Block

Good morning apes,

Markets continue to trend sideways as war wages, inflation rages, and the merge is pushed back once more (it's coming I swear). I hope this newsletter can be a good source of general news and crypto news to supplement each week and help give everyone a better understanding of what is happening in Web3. Wish everyone the best of luck on their finals and that you were able to enjoy this past weekend's weather.

Market Breakdown (4/25/22):

News: Twitter Flushes the Pill

Elon Musk successfully pooled the money together to make a bid for Twitter that has caused the board to have a change of heart. It's easy for people to take a bold stance until the money is on the table. Musk's ability to make the $43 billion bid has opened Twitter's board to negotiate for the acquisition soon after giving plans for a poison pill to prevent this exact scenario.

The proposed purchase would place Twitter at a value of $54.20 per share, 4.8% higher than the current price. The deal is expected to go through, entering Twitter into a new chapter as a platform of free speech under the leadership of the wealthiest man in the world. $DOGE reacted accordingly.

Web 3 News: Moonbirds

A common piece of advice I was given as I began to dip my toes into the chaotic metaverse that is NFTs was to stay away from drops with high mint prices. This was a classic red flag of a project simply wishing to raise capital off its mint so the founders could run off with their newfound riches. A tale as old as time. Now, here we are in 2022 with the NFT market seemingly fizzling out, and out comes the Moonbirds launch with a mint price of 2.5 ETH (~$7600). This project was backed by Kevin Rose, a simple, sort-of popular entrepreneur and podcast host, and his PROOF Collective. While this gives the collection more credit than one without anonymous individuals behind it, I steered clear and rode the sidelines as their price skyrocketed to a FLOOR PRICE of 30 ETH ($89,000). This successful launch could propel the NFT market back into business, but only time will tell as NFTs continue to falter compared to other assets during this crab market.

Stat: In 7 hours, Moonbirds had more volume than BAYC, MAYC, Azuki, Beanz, Punks, Doodles, and CloneX have done. Over the last 7 days. Combined.

Crypto Spotlight

Today, we will take a deeper dive into Aragon Network (ANT). Aragon Network's main service is Aragon Client, which serves as a platform for users to create and manage their DAOs, or decentralized autonomous organizations. Compared to its rivals in DAOHouse and DAOStack, Aragon, founded in 2017, is by far the largest platform with over 2000 DAOs and nearly $1 Billion relying on its services. Aragon is the foundation of some of the top protocols providing support with Governance and Tokenomics for DAOs like AAVE and CurveDAO.

While proper DAO Governance continues to be an area of debate in Web3, DAOs have established themselves as effective means by which individuals can pool funding and coordinate groups of people. A lack of developers has left many groups turning to services like Aragon Network to provide support and expertise in establishing a foundation for their DAO. At a market cap of $125 million, Aragon Network has a lot of room to grow. Aragon has a diversified treasury that includes BTC, ETH, and Zcash, so it should accrue value as those tokens increase in price. Current trends point to DAOs becoming the future of work and coordination by incentivizing participation and good actors. As DAOs expand to all aspects of society, expect Aragon Network to continue to lead the charge. ANT stands out as a pick and shovels play on the future of Web3.

TL;DR: Aragon Network and its native token, ANT, have positioned themselves as a winner-takes-most favorite for providing the foundations of DAO ecosystems as Web3 continues to broaden into more aspects of society and the future of work.

Headlines

Thanks for reading. Please provide any feedback you all have,

Alex Farfel