Initial jobless claims data came in at 211k, slightly higher than last month’s reading of 195k. This led to a monstrous rally, as people thought, “Powell’s tightening is working. More people are unemployed now, so somebody will definitely buy Ethereum!”, Ethereum then put the pump on, rocketing from $1,531 to $1,542 in two hours.

I am totally kidding. Markets look pretty bleak right now, but let’s dive into some top movers.

Filecoin is showing strength, up 8% from yesterday’s low. This is likely due to the upcoming launch of the Filecoin EVM (FEVM), which will enable smart contracts on the network as soon as March 14. Instadapp also rocketed 40% this morning, which is interesting considering that Avocado, its new blockchain aggregator and smart contract wallet, was announced a solid 24 hours ago.

Avocado is a non-custodial account abstraction wallet that enables users to send any token from any supported blockchain to a single address on the Avocado network. Avocado lets users pay gas fees with USDC. Further, INST holders stand to benefit from a 20% fee charged on gas fees, which can be relayed as revenue. Avocado is actually a pretty big deal because it is the first consumer-facing implementation of account abstraction.

This just goes to show that crypto markets continue to be inefficient, and that public news can often take a while to impact prices. If you’re market buying something like INST off an announcement and feeling uncomfortable about it, hang tight because that’s probably a decent way to make some money.

- 0xPibblez

Since the February announcement of a $750M ecosystem fund, Kava TVL has shown impressive growth, jumping from $260M to $350M in as little as two weeks. The protocol will give incentive rewards to projects on the Kava EVM based on their usage. This has led to the classic rotation playbook of coins pumping, including KAVOGE, a Kava equivalent of DOGE, which has risen 150x in three days. Another ecosystem pump beneficiary was Equilibre, a Kava native DEX. Equlibre’s VARA token jumped 4x in two days.

Frax’s FPIS governance forum is live, and the first proposal was penned by Convex Finance and StakeDAO. The two protocols are requesting to be whitelisted to stake veFPIS. This opens the possibility for cvxFPIS and sdFPIS, which would likely encourage even more users to lock veFPIS. Convex ran a similar playbook with FXS about a year ago with the launch of cvxFXS, which offered incentives to lock FXS with Convex.

While the potential yield is always attractive, Convex locked tokens usually have a difficult time in maintaining price parity with their unlocked counterparts, such as the cvxFXS/FXS trading pair. Currently 43% of circulating FPIS is locked for an average time of 2.25 years. veFPIS is paying out anywhere from 27%-108% APY depending on a staker’s lock time.

Ethereum Roadmap Part 3: The Verge and The Purge

The Verge's primary goal is to make light clients as easy as possible to run and increase their role in the security of Ethereum, while the Purge's primary goal is to simplify the protocol by stripping down the storage requirements of nodes.

Base Layer-2: Optimism Superchains

While the Superchain vision is just an idea today, Coinbase’s commitment to the OP stack and partnership with the Optimism core development team makes it much more likely that it comes to fruition.

SEC v. Ripple: Could The XRP Case Go To Trial?

Insiders expect a result in the long-running SEC case against XRP any month now, but a trial is still possible.

Coinbase Exec Says Its "Catch 22" for Crypto Firms Seeking SEC Registration

ETH tokens are essential for executing smart contracts on the Ethereum network, unlike Apple's stock which is not necessary for operating an iPhone, Paul Grewal argues.

The insights, views and outlooks presented in the report are not to be taken as financial advice. Blockworks Research analysts are not registered broker/dealers or financial advisors. Blockworks Research analysts may hold assets mentioned in this report, further outlined in the Firm’s Financial Disclosures.

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🟣 More Unemployment = More ETH Buying... Right?