Tides Are Shifting in the NFT Space; StarkWare's Valuation Quadruples

Chart of the Day





On Wednesday, U.S. stocks rallied after U.S. Federal Reserve officials signaled that counter-inflation measures will not take another aggressive turn. The broader crypto market, however, flipped red upon the release of the latest FOMC minutes. As of the time of writing, BTC is hovering near the $30k psychological support level after suffering a marginal loss over the last 24 hours. Some analysts believe that the largest cryptocurrency by market cap will likely remain in the $28.5k to $30.5k range until more clarity can be derived from extant macroeconomic conditions.

In a similar vein, ETH is struggling below the $2,000 handle after shedding 3.2% of its market value from 24 hours ago. Most major altcoins are also mostly in the red, with the exception of TRX (up by 1.8%) and a handful of metaverse tokens that saw double-digit percentage gains even through the general market gloom. 

As BTC remains trapped in a narrow range, many on-chain metrics have taken a bearish turn as well. BTC's mining difficulty fell by 4% overnight to compensate for plummeting block production rates and falling hash rates. As a result, it appears that many retail miners have exited to prevent further losses. Meanwhile, the tides seem to be shifting within the NFT space. While Solana NFTs have now generated more sales volume than their Ethereum counterparts over a 24-hour span, the floor prices of many popular NFT collections are nonetheless still trending downwards.





Talk of the Town





Despite the current market downturn, capital is still pouring into the crypto space as demand for scalable blockchain infrastructure grows. The most recent example would be StarkWare, an Ethereum scaling solution that leverages ZK-rollup technology. After raising $100 million in a Series D funding round, the project has just seen its valuation quadrupled to $8 billion within six months. The capital inflow and considerable amount of interest in the project are no doubt a huge testament to StarkWare's ability to be one of "the most comprehensive, powerful, battle-hardened, and future-proof solutions" in the space.