This Week in Signal Teams — Cardano, 0x, Orca

Every week we comb through hundreds of FTX Signals to bring you the most significant team updates with brief analyses to help you understand the latest developments in blockchain.

Macro Crypto News This Week

• Goldman Sachs has Offered its First Bitcoin-Backed Loan
• Panama Passes Law Giving Bitcoin Legal Status, No Capital Gains Tax
• Investment Giant Fidelity Adds Bitcoin to its 401k Offerings
• The Central African Republic Makes Bitcoin Legal Tender
• Russia’s Central Bank to Allow Stock Exchanges to Trade Crypto
• Bitcoin Hash-Rate Hits New All-Time High
• Ft. Worth, Texas to Become First US City to Mine Bitcoin
• Cuba to Allow Licensed Bitcoin and Crypto Exchanges

Top FTX Signals This Week

• Cardano Increases Mainnet Block Size by 10%
• 0x Labs Raises $70M Series B Led by Greylock
• Orca Launches Whirlpools for Concentrated Liquidity

Cardano Increases Mainnet Block Size by 10%

“Cardano blockchain gets update treatment with 10% boost in block size.”

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— Anastassia Nilova, Communications & Social Media Manager

Summary

• A proposal was passed to increase the block size from 80KB to 88KB and the change took place on April 25th.
• Input Output said the 10% increase in block size network would help increase data throughput and scalability.
• The performance of decentralized applications, or services that rely on smart contracts, on Cardano is additionally expected to improve.
• The step comes ahead of Cardano’s eventual Basho upgrade, which would introduce sidechains on the network.

Significance

This change helps to improve the performance of the Cardano blockchain and one of several small steps planned to continually optimize.

Price at the time of FTX Signal: $0.87. View ADA on FTX.

0x Labs Raises $70M Series B Led by Greylock

“We’re excited to share that 0x Labs, the architect of Web3 exchange infrastructure 0x, has raised $70M in a Series B round led by Greylock with participation from Pantera, Sound Ventures, A.Capital, Jump Capital, OpenSea, Coinbase, Brevan Howard, Reid Hoffman, and Jared Leto.”

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— Brent Oshiro, Head of CX and Comms

Summary

• The funding will fuel the expansion of the 0x Labs team and its product and service offerings, including Matcha, the search engine for tokens; 0x API, supplying multi-chain aggregated liquidity as a service; and 0x Protocol, the open-source, global backbone for decentralized exchange.
• To onboard the next 100x wave of users, businesses, and institutions, 0x Labs is expanding its team and products.
• Most importantly, the funding will allow 0x Labs to continue marching towards building a tokenized world where all value can flow freely.

Significance

This is a significant capital injection backed by key funds and individuals that believe in the future potential of the protocol.

Price at the time of FTX Signal: $0.80. View ZRX on FTX.

Orca Launches Whirlpools for Concentrated Liquidity

“After many months of development under the sea…

The Whirlpools public launch has arrived!

Orca’s concentrated liquidity pools are now open to the entire Solana ecosystem.”

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— Boaz Shoshan, Communications

Summary

• Whirlpools are Orca’s brand-new concentrated liquidity pools. These pools allows LPs to concentrate their liquidity around specific price ranges, unlocking significant gains in capital efficiency for liquidity providers and better prices for swaps on Orca.
• During the Closed Beta, Whirlpools beta testers used their Orcanaut NFT to access and provide liquidity. The tractions observed during the beta were encouraging, with both $10M in total value locked and $10M in volume traded per day.
• Whirlpools will continue to take zero fees for the Orca Treasury. This will further increase yields for LPs and lower prices for traders, supporting the long-term growth of the protocol.

Significance

This is a key milestone in Orca’s journey to becoming an Apex AMM.

Price at the time of FTX Signal: $1.96. View ORCA on FTX.

Quotes of the Week:

“Mathematics is the language of the Universe. Bitcoin is universal money.”

— President of Central African Republic

“We need to double down on digital wallets, that’s where the future of the industry is going.”

— PayPal CEO

“Bitcoin mining is going to accelerate the shift to renewable energy.”

— Cathie Wood

Chart of the Week:

The following chart shows Bitcoin Whales (entities with over 1,000 BTC, filtering our for exchanges, GBTC, Purpose ETF, etc.) adding to their holdings for the first time since January.

Thanks for joining us and we look forward to bringing you our top FTX Signals again next week.

Jason Hamlin

Ecosystem Insights @ FTX

FTX Signal is a first-of-its-kind communications platform built exclusively for token teams to connect and engage with their communities. Over 1,000 token team CEOs and team leaders actively use the platform to provide relevant project updates directly to FTX’s 6 million+ users. Learn more.

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