Crypto Markets Look to Recapture Momentum Following Down Week
Ethereum scaling blockchain Arbitrum has distributed over $120 million worth of its arb (ARB) tokens to projects built on the network, with some projects selling their allocation immediately, while others plan to use it to strengthen their development and user engagement. The airdrop, which was based on network activity and number of wallets, was sent to over 131 decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), with NFT marketplace TreasureDAO and gaming-focused TridentDAO receiving the largest allocations. Some projects, like Vesta Finance, plan to use their airdrop to bolster their development, while others, like PlutusDAO, will use their allocation in multiple ways to make their project stronger. The airdrop has spurred both excitement and criticism from the community, with some projects selling their tokens immediately, while others are holding onto their allocation in anticipation of future growth.Nansen, a blockchain data analytics firm, has launched Nansen Query, a platform that allows clients to programmatically access unique, curated datasets pulled from Nansen’s databases. The new product aims to help firms perform blockchain analyses more efficiently by demystifying on-chain transaction history and pricing data. It promises to offer users a complete overview of markets to value “up to 60 times faster than competitors.”nnThe product provides coverage for 95% of all on-chain total value locked, or TVL, asset data and 98% of stablecoin deposit data across 17 blockchains, including Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Optimism, Ronin and Solana. Nansen Query differs from Nansen’s base-level offering by pairing data with the company’s proprietary and trading indicators like the “wash trading filter,” which helps identify suspicious on-chain activity by scanning trades between several linked wallets and transactions bounced between various trading counterparties. Nansen’s labeling system achieves that goal by facilitating firms’ analyses of on-chain data, which, while recorded on a public ledger system, can sometimes be difficult to access. nnA query is a request for data from a database or a request for action on that data that allows users to edit large information sets and identify trends among them. A programming language, like SQL, is used to create a query. Nansen’s data analytics tools, which were released in 2019, have gained traction among firms throughout the cryptocurrency industry, including prominent players like Coinbase (COIN), OpenSea, MakerDAO, Polygon, Avalanche and Andreessen Horowitz.Sandwich bots are front-running punters of newly issued tokens such as pepe (PEPE) and chad (CHAD) – meme coins with no intrinsic value that caught wind of Crypto Twitter degens almost overnight as the tokens zooted over 10,000%. A sandwich attack, traps a user's transaction between two transactions, which is then further manipulated to gain profits. This is done by front-running the victim's trade by buying the same asset, and then selling tokens to the victim in the same trade for a slightly higher price. Sandwich attackers aren’t typically a form of exploit but are looked upon in crypto circles as a type of predatory behavior, which skims value from users, leads to a spike in gas fees and doesn’t benefit either the network or the user. The victim might not notice it, but for sandwich bots the gains can run into millions of dollars as they target thousands of wallets and skim a few dollars each time. A wallet named “Jaredfromsubway.eth,” a likely nod to the popular sandwich chain, has spent over $2 million in the past week on Ethereum network fees trying to sandwich traders punting on predominantly low-cap tokens. That has driven up fees of the entire network, data from Dune Analytics shows. Each transaction on the Ethereum network costs over $10 as of Asian morning hours on Wednesday – ten times more than last week’s $1 level. Gas fees have spiked. (Dune) The actions of Jaredfromsubway.eth mean they spent 7% of all fees on Ethereum in the past 24 hours, the data shows, becoming the top spender on the network. That is ahead of fees spent by Arbitrum, a layer 2 blockchain that batches transactions on the Ethereum network, and Uniswap, the most-used decentralized exchange. It is unclear how much Jaredfromsubway.eth made from their front-running actions, but given they spent a significant amount – and continue to do so – the gains likely exceed costs by a significant amount. As such, research firm Sealaunch has estimated Jaredfromsubway.eth's gains at over $1.4 million since Tuesday, as per a tweet. Meanwhile, the pepe frenzy is on in full force. Pepe tokens nearly doubled in value in the past 24 hours as Crypto Twitter traders moved over their DOGE-themed token obsession to bet on the internet meme instead, as CoinDesk reported. Scores of pepe wannabes have popped up as well, as have chad, wojak, and babypepe – each a nod to internet memes. Most of these are unlikely to last beyond a few weeks. But unlike then, entities like Jaredlikesubway.eth is eating the gains while fresh.