GM!
Last week brought some major milestones for the AO ecosystem - StarGrid Battle Tactics broke into the top 5 PlayToEarn games globally, Permaswap had a massive spike in 24-hour trading volume, and Astro Labs revealed details about $USDA and their upcoming private beta.
Let's get into it.
StarGrid Battle Tactics hits top 5 on PlayToEarn 🎮
Last week, StarGrid Battle Tactics climbed to the #5 spot in PlayToEarn's blockchain game rankings, marking the first time the game has ranked above Axie Infinity. This is huge for the AO and Arweave ecosystem, as StarGrid is built fully onchain, on AO.
Having a game rank this highly is a testament not only to the game itself (s/o David Kong!) but also showcases that AO can be, and is, capable of running complex games seamlessly.
Considering AO is just starting out with mainnet, this is an amazing thing to see. As AO is built on top of Arweave, it allows for gaming experiences to be fully onchain including assets and the user interface/frontend. Developers might consider it for launching their own fully onchain game, too.
StarGrid's success is particularly notable. We're excited to see where it goes from here. If you're interested in seeing what it's all about - consider checking it out at stargrid.ar.io.
Permaswap 24-hour volume breaks $550K 📈
Permaswap, a native DEX for the AO ecosystem, experienced a massive 24-hour volume spike on June 11 - June 12, last week. Permaswap hit over $550K in 24-hour trading volume, peaking above $600K.
Sam Williams, founder of Arweave and AO, added to this by sharing some other stats in the ecosystem, mostly focused on wrapped tokens such as $wAR and $wUSDC, as well as Botega.
Increased usage of Permaswap is a great sign for AO overall, and signals that more users are jumping in and getting active in the DeFi ecosystem. The infrastructure for DeFi is coming together and maturing rapidly, and helps push the ecosystem even further forward.
Congrats to the Permaswap team!
Astro announces USDA closed beta 🏛️
On the other side of AO DeFi, the Astro team released a lot more details on $USDA and their mission to build stablecoin infrastructure on AO.
$USDA is soon to be entering its closed beta phase - users will be able to lock stablecoins from other ecosystems such as Ethereum and Solana to receive $USDA on AO.
Astro also announced that they are building an on-ramp directly from fiat to $USDA. This is in partnership with BoomFi, and is the first instance of an on-ramp to directly purchase stablecoins on AO.
Astro is also planning to support swaps with $USDA directly within their own platform.
These updates will likely help bring new users (and liquidity) to AO by reducing a lot of the friction currently in place. Stablecoins allow users to park their liquidity without being subject to as much volatility, while MetaMask support, fiat on-ramps, and integrated swaps help bring new users into the ecosystem, and unify all things stablecoin-related.
We're looking forward to learning more details about these upcoming updates, and what the actual infrastructure will look like for supporting a growing DeFi ecosystem on AO. NFA.
ICYMI 👀
- Beacon Wallet announces Liquid Ops integration
- Tate shares PI token revenues
- First BazAR LeARn episode goes live
- Sam Williams on DePINed podcast
This Week's Featured Community Piece 📝
A new update for HyperBEAM, AO's node software, dropped on Arweave's birthday (June 7). The Permaweb Journal covers everything you need to know about the update, and why it matters. Check it out here.
Thanks for reading!
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The Longview Team
This is not investment advice. No profit guarantees. If in the U.S., ensure compliance with U.S. laws and seek professional advice.