**Welcome back to episode 279 of The Block Runner Podcast. As always, we have your host William talking with your cohost I-man as we discuss cryptocurrency developments while we make this new technology relatable to you. You can watch the full episode on YouTube AND stay up to date by subscribing to our newsletter at TheBlockRunner.com.
Here are some of the topics they discuss today:**
First up, revisit Bitcoin DeFi through the lens of this cycle’s emerging “industry cook”: digital-asset treasury companies.
Next, Do we really need native Bitcoin primitives, or will off-chain/custodial routes—UTXO time-locks and loan products be enough to make BTC productive?
and Finally, we pressure-test trench metas like Pokémon “phygital” and map where the music could stop.
Alright, let’s listen in!
How the rug pull culture is slowly eroding the morale of everyone in the crypto space. The more projects with anonymous founders the more likely a rug pull becomes more likely. The trend of an anonymous founders is a sign of the infancy of the space. We're noticing some valuable mechanics being implemented by these anonymous founders that we believe legitimate projects will implement as a justifiable mechanism. We've seen a lot of missed opportunities by NFT minting platforms using ERC20 tokens that can be improved on. Ethermon drops their biggest announcement yet, they have just acquired the Battle District which is 668 parcels! We also show off our Corona Zombie wearable in Decentraland!
Episode 86 kicks off with a discussion on tokenomics design the MetaZone platform. We discuss how we encourage participation on the platform by rewarding the creators and collectors with platform tokens. Gas fees have calmed down recently, but increasing gas prices are just around the corner. Honeyswap is a fork of Uniswap but built on top of the xDAI network. This means that swaps cost almost no gas but the downside is coins need to use a bridge for them to work on the 2nd layer. We drop in some technical analysis into the podcast to show that sometimes it does work but its an unreliable tool. Finally, the community that created the $HNY token called 1Hive.org uses a way to verify their members and one of them created Honeyswap.
With the latest UNI airdrop, we dive into thinking through all the possible airdrops that could occur from other platforms. Uniswap has grown to a volume that has surpassed larger centralized exchanges such as Coinbase. With a decentralized exchange releasing a token to reward the behavior they want to encourage, Uniswap is poised to grow even larger. In this podcast, we break down the connection between SORA and Polkaswap. As we look for the next sector of the industry to do a parabolic run up, we speculate that the next ecosystem with high potential would be Polkadot. We also dive into the Plasm platform and we breakdown their lockdrop protocol.
The MetaZone team consisting of Corv, William and Iman come together to discuss progress on MetaZone and the entire NFT space. We make grand predictions that almost every NFT minting platform will have their own platform token to incentivize activity on their own platform. We believe in helping landowners monetize their land in a way that is sustainable while growing the value of the land in Decentraland. Ethermon has built the next meta that will allow landowners to make 20% from every sale of eggs on their land. Each egg hatches an Ethermon NFT that is able to grow and gain levels in Decentraland. We also contemplate a proper tokenomics strategy for MetaZone that will properly reward users for their activity on MetaZone. Finally we breakdown why sidechains will become a standard in the crypto industry.
On the heels of a topic Iman and William have been talking about for at least a few months, our predictions begin to show accuracy. Rarible is the first large NFT minting platform to reward the behavior they want to encourage. They released the $RARI token and airdropped it to creators and collectors with 75,000 tokens sent out weekly by participating on the platform. We explore how this will ignite a DeFi style explosion of NFT platforms. We predict the proliferation of this tactic as this is something that would be helpful in MetaZone. Not only do we think a token platform makes sense for MetaZone, but we believe generating tokens and other cryptographic assets for the underlying game itself will help increase user adoption and overall sustainability within the ecosystem.