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⌐◪-◪ → Doodles just announced an animated NFT film called Dullsville and the Doodleverse” that will feature Pharrell and Lil Wayne (aka Lil Tuneci).

My first reaction to this headline was “Oh fuck, the top is in” — reminding me of all the times A-list celebrities entered blue chip NFT collections, but I think this is different.

For one → Pharrell was named the Chief Brand Officer of Doodles back in June 2022, making this a continuation of an existing partnership

Secondly → it’s not like Pharrell or Lil Wayne were gifted $100k+ JPEGs like Justin Bieber’s Ape, they are making actual creative/artistic contributions to the work.

The best part of this story though is how Doodles decided to bet on themselves by walking away from massive animation studio deals to self-finance, acquire their own animation studio, and do it themselves.

I don’t own any Doodles, but I’ve gotta give their team credit for landing some of the world’s biggest artists here and undertaking a big endeavor — something most NFT projects can only dream of.

Will be interesting to see how this turns out. The movie will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

⌐◪-◪ → Ethena’s new “synthetic dollar” USDe just crossed a $2B supply within 2 months of launch, making it the 5th largest stablecoin by market cap. It’s pretty impressive how quickly they hit $2B too:

• it took 4 months to go from $0 → $1B

• but just 3 weeks to go from $1B → $2B

While USDe is still over 50x smaller than $USDT and 16x smaller than $USDC, their growth is surely impressive — increasing their market cap by 2.5x in the last 30D.

To make things more interesting, Ethena just onboarded Bitcoin as a backing asset for USDe, aiming to improve both scalability and safety.

This goes to show that crypto is still anybody’s game and that even a new contender can rise to the top and compete with the most established projects/protocols.

We saw it with Magic Eden, we saw it with Eigen Layer, and now we’re seeing it with Ethena. This space is still so early.

⌐◪-◪ → Sony Bank (a banking division of Sony) just announced they’ll be piloting a fiat-linked stablecoin on Polygon.

The company cited blockchain’s reduced payment/remittance fees as a competitive edge that could help promote the company’s IP in gaming and sports.

The development itself will be entrusted to Belgium-based blockchain firm SettleMint.

This isn’t Sony’s first move in web3 either…

The company recently filed a patent to implement NFTs in their games and is already working with Startale Labs to build their own blockchain network.

Lastly, I’ve gotta say that I’m super impressed by Polygon’s BD team, they are constantly dropping new killer partnerships. I want to know what their secret is.

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