Now Entering the Osmoverse
Osmocon 2022, new Osmosis features, no more "easy money", and more...
“I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”
— Thomas Jefferson
Greetings pioneers,
I’ll be reconfiguring some things with the newsletter going forward:
I’ll likely be moving off of the Substack platform in the coming weeks
I plan to change the delivery entity from Angel City Stakes to StakeSchool.com
Angel City Stakes will be rebranded to focus on physical Ledger setup and later potentially launch NFTs and/or crypto funds and indices
This newsletter (coming from StakeSchool.com in the future) will have a continued focus on cryptocurrency staking & mining at its core, with secondary emphasis on applying traditional finance wisdom to the world of DeFi and crypto at large.
The Stake of the Week will be replaced with more than one staking and mining option that are currently of interest (E.g. “What we’re looking at”) - this will give it a broader appeal beyond a single blockchain/crypto and be more flexible for a wider audience.
StakeSchool.com will provide classes and coaching and will explore options including and beyond Osmosis. Additionally I’m currently in discussions with a group of talented validator consultants from the Osmosis community to help set up a cluster of StakeSchool.com validator nodes (servers that process transactions on the network). Stake School will also include elements of a community-based “Playground” for crypto staking/mining hypothesizing, testing and experimentation.
TL;DR
Newsletter announcements and adjustments (above); the newsletter will be delivered by StakeSchool.com in the future, but will be unchanged in its focus.
The first annual Osmocon takes place on June 9, 2022 in Austin, Texas (along with one of the biggest defi conferences, Consensus) and I’m trying to score tix.
The Osmosis App gets a new User Interface (UI), and I provided user feedback and commentary to the Osmosis Product + Design teams via a Zoom call.
Terra goes 2.0, and original LUNA becomes Luna Classic (LUNC). LUNA 2.0 airdrop is not yet claimable for Ledger users, and I offer a stark warning on trying to claim the airdrop for non-Ledger Osmonauts (or any airdrop requiring you to enter your seed phrase).
The Federal Reserve’s “Easy Money” policies are being reversed, and as such, you may have to work harder (“put in the time”) to succeed with crypto.
Crypto investment continues despite downturn with a16z crypto launching the largest crypto VC fund to date at almost $5 Billion USD.
I take a look at Akash Network (decentralized cloud computing), Evmos blockchain (symbol EVM) and it’s newly launched pool on Osmosis, and RAC token as an experiment in tokenizing musicians (RAC).
Don’t miss the 2022 State of Crypto report by a16z; a great overview simply explained.
Many thanks to all my readers for your support and encouragement as I strive to provide clarity into cryptocurrency staking and liquidity mining.
Crypto Staking Updates
Enter the Osmoverse: Osmocon 2022
The first-ever Osmosis Conference, Osmocon, was just announced and will take place on June 9 in Austin, TX. This coincides with the Consensus conference for Decentralized Finance and FinTech also occurring in Austin with an expected turnout of 15,000 of the industries most talented teams and leaders in the space.
Your author was told that he’s eligible for a complimentary pass ($1,600 value) and requested to score at least one complementary ticket and should know by June 2 whether the offer will be honored🤞🏼
https://osmocon.com/ for Osmocon details.
New Osmosis App User Interface
The Osmosis front-end (https://app.osmosis.zone/) gets a face-lift
I personally met with Osmosis Design and Product team representatives to provide UX feedback and dev testing on the new site prior to public launch. (Which I must say was a pretty cool process to be heard and listened on the pain points, desired features, and my own experience with Osmosis.)
Users will now notice several new features from the assets page:
Asset page now shows your pools at the top and gives you the option to filter and sort by token, as well as hide $0 balances via check box
The pools everywhere are now shown with token symbols rather than the generic Osmo icon in random colors. A nice touch.
The Pools Page also gets much needed features after so much growth
The pools are now sorted by:
Superfluid Pools
All pools - Incentivized
All pools - Not incentivized
Externally incentivized pools
Users also have the option to sort by APR, total liquidity, volume, fees, or alphabetic order
Incentivized pools have double-circle and check mark logo next to them
From the Swap Page, users can now adjust their slippage tolerance (lower is better, but low liquidity pools or during a volatile market may require a higher tolerance. Slippage is the difference in price from when the order is queued (what is shown on the interface) and when it is executed.
These improvements are much needed after the platform has grown from just a handful of coins to dozens, and 20-30 pools to hundreds by this point.
Check out and play with the new features to get the hang of it and I think you’ll find it much easier to navigate and more informative.
Terra 2.0 and “Luna Classic”
Terra 2.0 launched May 27th after a snapshot of token ownership on the original LUNA Terra blockchain on May 26, with backing by large exchanges.
Terra 2.0 trades under the LUNA symbol
Terra 1.0 is rebranded as Luna Classic under the LUNC symbol
UST was not re-launched as part of Terra 2.0
For more on these developments, please see this link.
All members of Terraform Labs have been subpoenaed amid ongoing investigations.
Osmosis worked with the Terra team to make sure the Osmosis community was represented, and some Osmosis users with LUNA holdings may qualify for an airdrop of LUNA 2.0 (but reports are circulating that many don’t qualify). HOWEVER, the current methods for retrieving the airdrop do not support Ledger and requires a non-Ledger wallet user to enter their seed to retrieve the airdrop. We DO NOT recommend this method if you have any funds of value of the wallet where you had LUNA on May 26/27 for following reasons:
Despite Terra Station app/wallet being a respected staple in the Terra community, there is always the chance your seed could be intercepted.
To claim your airdrop, you’d need to recover your wallet in the Terra Station app, by entering seed phrase. Again, no support for Ledger yet.
Private keys/seed phrases are literally your funds. The code embedded in the mnemonic seed phrase is the literal code representing your funds across accounts derived from the seed via derivation paths.
Private keys need to be protected and should only be used as a last resort. If they fall into the wrong hands, there’s not much you’ll be able to do to recover your funds.
The dangers that are associated with entering seed phrases include:
Malware - Your computer could be infected with keyloggers that log your seed phrase while you enter it, stealing it and your funds.
Unknown Exploits - It’s still early and not fully tested. If there were an exploit in this or another app, entering your seed phrase in multiple places (even if you trust them) increases the attack vectors on your wallet. You should never take on unnecessary risk.
Future Complications - Rushing to grab airdrops can complicate matters for these early users down the road. This has happened before, where the drop was not fully tested and early users who tried to claim their airdrop a.) discovered a bug in the process, b.) were not able to claim the airdrop, and c.) were not able to claim the airdrop after the team fixed the bug.
As a general rule, I strongly encourage users to wait for a potential Ledger integration where they do not have to enter private keys.
Changing Market Dynamics
The current market dynamics seems to be shifting under our feet. Prior to the Fed raising rates this year (as I covered here), most cryptocurrencies were in an uncontested bull market and early investors were rewarded with big gains.
In a down market (temporary or otherwise), projects and coins will come under increased scrutiny and will be in more heated “competition” for an increasingly limited supply of funds.
Cryptos may no longer benefit simply by association, for example when Bitcoin and Ethereum are up, then other alternative cryptos would also be up simply by association and participating in the bull market because of the Fed’s “Easy Money” policies. It’s called “Easy Money” for a reason. And “Easy Money” policies are being scaled back, or reversed.
My point here is not that there are no opportunities to make money in crypto, but that there are in fact ample opportunities if you are able to commit the effort and time to work towards them and improve your skills and knowledge. It’s more difficult to be the beneficiary of a rising market that lifts all boats (E.g. simply being lucky as the whole market rises); now you must find and understand the currents (cryptos) that work in your favor and how to manage them.
“I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”
— Thomas Jefferson
Notable Cryptocurrency Market Developments
Per Forbes, JP Morgan now says it’s time to replace real estate with cryptocurrencies as their preferred alternative asset class (along with hedge funds) due to “potential lagged repricing.” Here’s the link to the article.
Andreessen Horowitz VC giant’s crypto fund - a16z - launched the largest crypto fund ever raising a cool $4.5 billion, and is confident that growth will continue despite the recent downturn.
Crypto regulation continues to stay on the radar after UST’s crash. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen (and former Fed chairwoman) suggested congress should be legislating on crypto by the end of 2022, but many don’t see anything concrete happening until sometime in 2023. She previously said it would take five years for the Federal Reserve to come out with their own Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
What I’m Currently Looking At
Akash Network (coin symbol = AKT) as a decentralized distributed peer-to-peer cloud computing provider. I keep hearing how many love deploying on Akash and how affordable it is compared to the oligopoly that is Microsoft, AWS, Google, Hetzner GmbH, and others. Current simple staking of AKT earns ~32% annually, alternatively, pool #3 (OSMO/AKT) offers up to ~60% APR (24% for a 14-day bond + 14% for Superfluid enabled + 18% external APR for the next 51 days and a 4% swap fee APR).
Sci-Fi and anime fans who happen to also like crypto (or is the other way around?), can hunt for 9 “easter egg” QR codes from the Netflix series Love, Death, and Robots Season 3 to mint a limited edition NFT. Supposedly not all of them have yet been found. I love the short-form of the series and many unique episodes each with their own characters and story arc.
New Pool #722 - EVMOS/OSMO. Evmos cryptocurrency powers the Evmos blockchain: an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible chain that offers interoperability across Cosmos and Ethereum blockchains. EVM is the most widely adopted standard for smart contracts, thanks to its simple hardware requirements and design that separates the VM from the application layer. Pool #722 currently yields 270% in swap yields, making it a candidate for a one-day bond for extra-nimble miners, until incentives kick in Friday and liquidity shoots up rapidly.
RAC token not as a potential investment but as an experiment in tokenizing a (grammy-award winning) musical artist - RAC (the individual that took the name from the original Remix Artists Collective). RAC tokens can be spent on RAC’s website, which is a rather interesting and cool site. I only discovered RAC because of Pool #669, RAC/OSMO, but I personally don’t find it suitable for investment given the low MCap to FDV, extremely small market cap of ~$1.5 million US, and even more extreme microscopic total value locked on the protocol (~$15K currently).
a16z’s “State of Crypto” report, which can be read here. Weighing in at 56 slides, it isn’t a short read, but slides are well-done and explained in simple terms. Topics include L1s, DAO’s, Web3, NFTs, the potential of a collectively owned future, the cyclical nature of markets, Defi, and much more. I strongly encourage readers to have a look for themselves.
Thank You
I just wanted to say thank you to all readers whether you’ve been a “Day 1” or just found this newsletter. I strive to be a guiding voice on crypto staking, liquidity mining, and the application of traditional finance methods to this new and exciting market. Thank you for the support and encouragement each and every one of you has provided. There’s so much I want to learn and do in this space. I consider myself fortunate to be involved and look forward to growing with you and for you, so that we may rise above and discover that the world we seek is possible. If we persevere and work hard towards it, we may even get lucky along the way too.
Cheers,
Michael Broudy, ACS & StakeSchool.com Founder