Aave Companies Acquires Sonar Moji

Quick Take

• Aave acquires Sonar Moji.
• Nostra launches Money Market Alpha.
• Vitalik describes the Ethereum application ecosystem.
• Rainbow wallet integrates cross-chain swaps.

This is our Trezor affiliate link.

Aave Companies Acquires Sonar Moji

Aave Companies acquired Sonar, a mobile-first metaverse platform that allows users to create virtual worlds using emojis and spatial audio. Users create their digital identity using Moji NFTs, which also serve as playable 3D avatars. Sonar will integrate with Lens Protocol as part of the acquisition. Moji NFT holders can also claim a Lens profile.

Lens Protocol is a Polygon-based decentralized social graph used to power Web3 social platforms. Aave founder Stani Kulechov first teased the acquisition of a social team back in October. It marks Lens Protocol’s first acquisition, although the terms of the deal were not disclosed. Lens Protocol has more than 20,000 monthly active users.

Nostra Money Market Live On StarkNet

Nostra Finance launched Money Market Alpha, a lending and borrowing platform, to StarkNet Alpha Mainnet. Nostra decided to skip a testnet version and instead deploy directly to mainnet for its alpha release. Smart contracts for the release are currently being audited by Trail of Bits. User deposits have been limited to mitigate risks.

Nostra’s Money Market allows users to deposit collateral to mint $UNO, the protocol’s native stablecoin on StarkNet. Users are able to prevent collateral from being borrowed to minimize liquidity risk. Nostra uses Empiric Network as its oracle provider. Nostra plans to launch a bounty program once its code is open-sourced.

Vitalik On Ethereum Application Ecosystem

Vitalik Buterin published a new post describing the current Ethereum application ecosystem including the state of money, privacy, stablecoins, identity, and hybrid applications. Vitalik notes that transactions are now included on-chain more quickly since the merge. Rollups and account abstraction also make crypto more practical.

Vitalik believes cryptocurrency can realistically power a digital cash system while preserving the benefits of cash-like privacy. He highlights stablecoins as a pragmatic use of cryptocurrency today. When it comes to identity, Vitalik points to making heavy use of ZK-SNARKs to privatize large amounts of on-chain information.

Rainbow Integrates Cross-Chain Swaps

Rainbow integrated cross-chain swaps onto its mobile wallet. Users can now bridge and swap assets between Ethereum, Optimism, Polygon, and Arbitrum. The integration uses Hop Protocol and Across Protocol as initial bridges. The bridge is powered by Socket Plugin, a widget that allows developers to build their own bridge.

The plugin provides dapps the option to select which chains and bridges to support. Socket is a bridge aggregator and liquidity layer that optimizes bridging routes by cost or speed. MetaMask, Zapper, and Zerion are among the applications to have integrated Socket’s bridge plugin into their dapp.

Blur Reveals Airdrop 2

Blur, a zero-fee NFT marketplace targeting advanced traders, revealed the launch of its second airdrop. Eligible users who made listings on the marketplace have 14 days to claim Care Packages, which will be redeemable for $BLUR tokens in January 2023. Blur has processed $225 million in trading volume since launching in October.