Solana Memecoin Hype Surges as Backpack Beta Succeeds, Starbucks Ends NFT Venture

The Zero Byte Crypto Newsletter: Weekly Roundup

Greetings and welcome to the latest edition of The Zero Byte Crypto newsletter, previously known as Chain Reaction.

Highlights of the Week

In this week’s crypto news, Starbucks pulled the plug on its Odyssey NFT initiative, which was introduced last year. Meanwhile, Solana continued to experience a surge in memecoin activity, and India faced increased challenges in the crypto space as government agencies intensified their crackdown.

Top Stories

1. OKX, a crypto exchange, halts operations in India
2. Solana sparks a fresh wave of memecoin frenzy
3. Crypto exchange Backpack’s journey to success following the demise of its primary investor, FTX
4. Starbucks abandons its Odyssey NFT initiative
5. Blockchain technology: A potential solution for detecting deepfakes and verifying content

Market Analysis

This week, crypto market prices experienced a decline but remained relatively robust compared to previous months. Bitcoin dropped by 6.5% to $67,300, still 32% higher than the previous month. Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, fell by 8.6% to $3,550, according to CoinMarketCap data. The total crypto market cap decreased by 6.3% to $2.55 trillion during the same period.

Featured Podcast Episode

In this month’s series, Chain Reaction delves into the intersection of blockchain and AI. The latest episode features an interview with Tegan Kline, CEO and co-founder of Edge & Node, a company focused on developing and supporting decentralized applications (dApps) and protocols. Tegan discusses The Graph network, data indexing, and its broader implications for the internet, as well as the company’s “New Era roadmap” released in November 2023.

We also discuss:

• The Graph’s implementation of AI solutions
• The long-term potential of dApps for AI
• Why AI is indifferent to crypto
• Transitioning into a web3 career

Subscribe to Chain Reaction on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform to stay updated with the latest episodes, and please leave a review if you enjoy the content!

Notable Investments

1. Ex-Grindr exec and married couple secure $6.2 million for Rails, a decentralized FTX alternative
2. Avalanche Foundation unveils $1 million liquidity mining incentive program, Memecoin Rush
3. Morph secures $20 million in seed and angel investment for its EVM layer-2
4. Mantra raises $11 million to expand real-world asset tokenization in the MENA region
5. Ago raises $2.5 million to enhance DeFi accessibility through an all-in-one platform

This list was compiled using information from Messari and The Zero Byte’s own reporting.

Beyond Web3

Interested in exploring topics beyond web3? Here are some articles from The Zero Byte that piqued our interest this week.