Flipkart & MPL's Web3 Dreams, BlockFi's deal | 3rd July ‘22 | #1
GM folks!
Welcome to the first edition of Litmosis, where we lose our sleep every weekend to give you digestible insights about Web3 and early-stage projects, with alpha on what’s going on in India🇮🇳.
This week on Litmosis, we have got:
Flipkart Experimenting with Web3. Possibilities? 🛍️
BlockFi-FTX Deal: Billions to Millions⬇️
Decoding Web3 Fundraises ft. MPL, MoHash, FitMint🇮🇳
Chart of the Week📈
Tweet of the Week🐣
Estimated Reading Time: 5 mins 28 seconds
Flipkart dropping something in Web3?!👀
This Friday, Flipkart: Yes, the OG Indian e-commerce giant, announced they are dropping something in Web3 with their new project ‘FireDrops’.
Why is this a big deal, you ask?🤔
Flipkart is an absolute beast with ~$6 Bn in Annual Revenues with a mammoth distribution of 350 Mn+ users in India!
To create an initial hype, they played the guessing game “what the Firedrops can be?”. The replies and quote tweets increase even our curiosity.
So, we decided to analyze the possibilities ourselves.
Here’s a short & sweet summary👇
NFT Collection?
This one seemed obvious given the infinity stone reference in the video and the “Firedrop → NFT drop” analogy makes sense. The next question you may ask: “what’s the point of NFT drop”? Utility?
NFT-gated commerce: For instance, a brand like Nike comes to Flipkart, launches an exclusive ‘Sneaker NFT’ collection, and all NFT holders now become part of a cool sneaker community and get posh physical items like Sneaker to flaunt and access to all further exclusive sales from the brand. Won’t that be cool?
Exclusive NFT-based discounts? i.e Discounts on specific items via NFTs - Not much cool tbh.
Polygon’s co-founder, Sandeep quote tweeted it, including a design studio based on polygon: Might this be a hint — NFTs/Tokens are on Polygon?
Also, their username is “0xFiredrops” 👀
Flipkart already has its own loyalty coins: “Supercoin” — might be taking it to blockchain and becoming Flipkart’s native token?
Low probability, given the uncertain regulations, but just think of it: possibilities can be endless!
Flipkart is having its flagship hackathon right now. And one of its problem statements is the “eCommerce warranty system using NFTs” i.e simply replace physical warranty cards, convert them into NFTs, which represent the warranty, prove & transfer their ownership. The best part is the warranty NFT will be burned once the warranty time is over.
Our take: Brillant and Unique use case of NFT’s uniqueness and readability. Execution & Adoption will be key.
Metaverse shopping experience - “Flipverse”?
An immersive AR/VR shopping world with a curated set of items. Not much Web3, eh!
Started from Billions and now is sold for Millions: BlockFi-FTX deal
Yes, we are talking about a few of the many meltdowns happening in the last few weeks. BlockFi, a crypto banking app was looking to raise at a valuation of $5 Billion in 2021, and now, rumors were to sell BlockFi at $25 Million.
Here’s how it happened:
BlockFi took an $80mm loss on 3AC
The issue was fear of a bank run + BlockFi’s unwillingness to suspend withdrawals which led to a sale (“customers before company” broke the bank)
Finally, FTX US came up and potentially made the acquisition.
The deal was not disclosed publicly. Though there was a CNBC report which came and showed that, there were some rumors of a $25 million deal for this acquisition.
Alongside this, the deal FTX US is also giving a $400 revolving credit line to strengthen its finances in this uncertain market situation.
Though this does not look like a good exit for BlockFi backers, this eased the customers who were still holding funds/positions with the lender.
Decoding India’s Web3 fundraise:
“MPL, the real-money gaming platform is in talks to raise $10-$15 Million from Spartan Capital & Polygon at $200-250 Million for a new Web3 gaming venture, GGX”.
The Litmosis Take: Play-to-Earn or P2E is hot among VCs, and is seen as the next frontier in gaming. So, MPL spun off a Web3 gaming arm, GGX which can launch its own native token, and operate just like any other P2E gaming project, leveraging MPL’s distribution.
Is MPL trying to ride the VC hype of P2E or it really cares about Gamer’s earnings and ecosystem? Time will tell.
“MoHash an Indian startup raised $6M in seed funding which is focused on giving stable yields on DeFi backed by real-world debt assets”.
The Litmosis Take: The unsustainable DeFi yields of 15-20% are now dead, and it’s very difficult to generate > 6% yield these days in DeFi. Tokenized Real-World Assets (RWA) are being seen as the next frontier in DeFi yields and it makes sense:
DeFi gets real & sustainable yields by lending it to real-world MSMEs or Institutions.
Traditional Finance (TradFi) gets DeFi’s global liquidity and capital access.
Quite difficult, but if solved, can be huge with real-world impact. Players like Goldfinch (backed by a16z) are also solving for the same.
“Fitmint, a Bengaluru-based health and fitness startup on Web3 has raised $1.6 million as seed funding”.
The Litmosis Take: Essentially, a clone of STEPN. They are trying to make people adopt a healthy and active lifestyle alongside incentivizing them with the rewards in crypto.
Though, they have 100K+ followers (Fake, maybe?) on Twitter, onboarding most of them to the app to use regularly and retaining them with rewards, especially in India is a hard job to pull off. Let’s see how it turns out.
Chart of the Week📈: Axie Infinity
Around 2021, you ask that internet native kid ‘what happening in the world’, he will say ‘just farming some Axie’s bro!’. Yes, this was the time everyone jumped into the hype of crypto gaming.
Everyone making money, telling the world their rags to riches story. Especially a lot of Filipinos had quit their job to pursue a full-time Axie career. Mostly the countries with a lower cost of living got highly benefitted from it. Until it got hacked(~$625m)!! On top, bear market.🐻Result? Axie Infinity witnessed a sharp drop in its active player count and revenues. The P2E in-game currency—Smooth Love Potion—has fallen ~90X from US$0.34 in July 2021 to US$0.0038 in price this month.
Sky Mavis—the firm behind the game—even after raising $311+ million in funding from prominent investors, its economic fundamentals look wobbly.
Now you can ‘play’ the P2E game and you ‘earn’ the Play. 😂
Tweet of the Week🐣
The bold & bullish predictions by Varun, the founder of Juno, a USDC banking app👇
My 10-year outlook on crypto ✨ - 2 Billion Crypto Users - Majority will self-custody - Hyper tokenization - Trillions in stablecoins - DeFi bigger than TradFi - GameFi big, DeSo DUD - SBF/CZ world's richest - Google, Apple largest Web3 Wallets - Instagram largest NFT platformThe Litmosis Take: It predicts that the Tech Giants will enable mass adoption of Web3, with smartphones being Web3 wallets, social media integrating NFTs, and exchanges generating so much revenue, that SBF (FTX) & CZ (Binance) are the richest. Let’s see, how it ages.
Oh btw, we also help projects with research & strategy and have previously helped 5+ projects, if you know anyone in need, do let us know at @Litmosis.
That’s all lovely folks from your friends: Yash and Sitesh. See ya, next week! 🥂
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DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is only for educational purposes and should not be considered investment advice or any recommendation to buy or sell any assets. Do your own research. None of this is financial advice and you can possibly get rekt.