To claim Magic Eden’s airdrop, you’ll have to also get its wallet

Today, enjoy the Lightspeed newsletter on Blockworks.co. Tomorrow, get the news delivered directly to your inbox. Subscribe to the Lightspeed newsletter.

Howdy!

The “Grimace” token allegedly put out by McDonald’s turned out to be a scam, unfortunately.

If you’re having a tough week, just remember that somewhere out there is a wallet holding tens of thousands of DJT, RTR, and now GRIMACE tokens. Anyways:

Magic Eden announces token, expansion beyond NFTs

Magic Eden’s newly-created foundation confirmed a forthcoming airdrop for its ME token this morning — but the whole thing felt like a marketing ploy for the new branded wallet. 

There’s not yet public information on when the airdrop will happen, how it’s being distributed, or if and when Magic Eden will take a “snapshot” of users’ Diamonds holdings to divvy up the token. Magic Eden Foundation director Matt Szenics declined to comment on distribution and tokenomics when I reached out, saying more info would come at a “later time.”

What we do know is that the token can only be claimed in the Magic Eden wallet — and users are being not-so-subtly encouraged to download it. 

In a press release, the Magic Eden Foundation said the token would “incentivize people to use the open source protocols adopted by ME Foundation” — seemingly a reference to the smart contracts undergirding Magic Eden, which the foundation now owns.

We’ve more or less known a Magic Eden token was coming since January, when the platform introduced a points program to track users’ loyalty. Turning points into token allocations has become the most popular way to carry out airdrops — and has spawned a cottage industry for “points farmers.”

NFT Price Floor founder Nicolas Lallement told me he thinks Magic Eden using its token generation event (TGE) as a way to boost wallet downloads is a “smart play.” He added that Magic Eden’s wallet and token releases are part of a broader “vertical integration” trend among large platforms — Uniswap, with its native token, wallet, and mobile app, is another example.

(I’m sad to say, I got personally suckered into Magic Eden’s wallet advertisement — I just added the wallet to my browser extensions this morning.)

In any event, there’s a more interesting development lurking beneath the TGE announcement: In multiple press interviews, Magic Eden said it has broader ambitions than just NFTs, and the new wallet will allow for token swaps. 

Magic Eden CEO Jack Lu told me Magic Eden is still primarily an NFT platform, but the app needs to “skate where the puck is going” to onboard new crypto users. 

To read between the lines a bit: NFTs just aren’t what they once were, and any retail-focused crypto app needs to reckon with the dominance of memecoins during this current market cycle. 

Or you could look at it this way: Magic Eden is the largest NFT platform by trading volume, according to NFT Pulse, and it’s going to start allowing users to trade tokens. It’s hard to imagine Pump.fun has plans to add NFT trading. 

— Jack Kubinec

Zero In

Crypto trivia of the day: Can you identify this price chart?

This particular August bloodbath belongs to ORE, the proof-of-work currency that resumed mining on Solana earlier this month. From the start, some users complained that there wasn’t enough reason to hold onto mined ORE, and sure enough, miners appear to be dumping it. 

This makes it less worthwhile to mine ORE since you have to spend a bit of SOL to land transactions, a fact that miners seem to be coming to grips with: Active miners have dropped by thousands over the past two weeks, according to a Flipside dashboard.

Still, the currency’s developer Hardhat Chad has spun off a company meant to develop use cases for ORE, including a game that we spoke about on the Lightspeed podcast recently. We’ll have to see whether use cases can reverse ORE’s fortunes. 

— Jack Kubinec

The Pulse

It’s the Elon Musk/Pump.fun crossover event you (probably) didn’t know you were looking for.

Fun fact, apparently: Turns out that Noland Arbaugh of Neuralink fame might be a Pump.fun fan — or, at least, he visited the site and kept his browser tab open. 

As reported by Wired earlier this year, Arbaugh is the first user of Neuralink, the Elon Musk-backed brain implant startup. Arbaugh suffered a serious spinal injury in 2016, leaving him paralyzed.

But the implant has allowed him to perform multiple functions via Neuralink’s computer interface. As he told the publication: “I’m constantly multitasking when I’m in sessions or when I’m playing around. I’ll throw on an audiobook or throw something on my TV and then play a game at the same time. It takes very little brain power. What I’m thinking the whole time is just where I want the cursor to go.”

I guess we can add Pump.fun to that list.

Lightspeed’s intrepid reporter Jack is out there asking the real questions, but for now we’re left with the tantalizing possibility that memecoin trading is the true use case for the human/machine interface. 

As expected, Crypto Twitter dove on Arbaugh’s post. His replies are full of calls to buy their preferred sh*tcoin and suggestions that he launch his own token. Naturally, they wanted to know what he’s buying (if at all).

User wahndo perhaps summed up the mood best: “he’s just like me for real.” 

— Michael McSweeney

One Good DM

A message from Brandon Tucker, core contributor at GolfN:

Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the On the Margin newsletter.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.