Up Only Season Is Back, and dydx Chain is Live

The 2021 crypto cycle will always be a special one, no matter what happens in the future.

Attention on the crypto space had peaked in the mainstream after a decade of simmering under the surface. Institutional adoption was coming, retail-friendly assets like NFTs were picking up, and new leaders had taken the mantle within the industry, players who would professionalize the industry by showing their faces and using their reputations to raise capital to do good within the space rather than grift or scam like so many others.

We have to learn to appreciate those moments when we get them. Because if there is anything this space teaches you, it is that good times do not last.

Incredible run ups in price like what we saw in early to mid-2021 (and then again later that year) are generally followed by months if not years or choppy or downwards price movements. Such is the nature of speculation in technology, which tends to lead to bubble like behavior by the crowds.

All of this is to say that the price movement of the last week or two has been an incredible breath of fresh air for a market that absolutely needs it.

Zooming out like this it seems more clear that this kind of long build up was necessary as the spring for the next big run up in price. In fact, the beginning of the last bull run actually kicked off in Q4 2019, when prices shot up near 14k USD on the BTC pair, before the March 2020 crash wiped out all gains across the board and the run started again in Q4 2020.

4 years later, it seems like the same story is playing out. This time we have the BTC ETF narrative taking strong hold - Blackrock iShares ETF listing showed up on the DTCC website over the weekend - and tons of sidelined cash in a weak macro environment to move us back upward.

When moves like this happen in crypto, they happen quick. Whether this is the real start to the crazy parabolic moves we tend to see in full fledged bull markets or a simple taste of what’s to come, we have now safely entered a new environment in the crypto markets. Up only.

dydx Blockchain is Live

The dydx has officially released the code for v4 of their flagship product dydx, the largest on chain perpetual DEX.

This is a huge step as it moves the entire protocol from Starkware (the L2 where it currently runs) to its own blockchain (an app-chain) based on the Cosmos stack. Check out our Cosmos Deep Dive to learn more.

This transition is geared towards allowing the protocol to be completely decentralized (both in software and in governance), along with improving the TPS of the network and having full control over the entire implementation of the protocol.

It is however interesting to see the perp DEX space get more crowded recently, especially with the rise of ApolloX on BNB chain taking market and mind share away from existing participants. dydx is making a play to differentiate itself in an increasingly crowded market as the first app-chain of this kind.

Nonetheless this is a huge upgrade from dydx, one of the earliest players and a leader in innovating on the technology side, and we will continue to track their progress as time goes.

Recap: Solana is back, ETF Fakeout, Scroll is Live, Aptos is Down, Uniswap Fee Switch (sort of)

We are back with our latest recap to talk everything happening in crypto this week (and the past few months).

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