9 Crypto Market Catalysts to Watch This Week

Author: THE DEFI INVESTOR Source: substack Translation: Shan Ouba, Golden Finance

Cryptocurrency events worth paying attention to this week

1. Eigenlayer Token Launch - $EIGEN will be launched on May 10. Unfortunately, it will not be transferable in the early stage of the launch. According to the team, EIGEN will be unlocked after the new features are launched. These new features are expected to be launched before September 30, 2024.

Screenshot of Eigen Foundation announcement

2.NVIDIA Earnings Report - Although this event is not this week, I let you know in advance so that you have time to manage your position in advance. NVIDIA will release its Q1 2024 earnings report on May 22. If the earnings exceed expectations, it may have a positive impact on the prices of some AI tokens as it has in the past.

3.Jito may announce a new SOL staking protocol at 6:00 UTC on May 6 - Given the huge success of Eigenlayer, I think building a SOL re-staking protocol may be a very good idea. Jito’s CEO will join X Space along with the co-founders of Solana Labs and Drift to discuss restaking and other topics.

4.Velodrome’s Superchain Scaling - Velodrome’s Superchain Scaling Begins This Week. Velodrome is the most popular native DEX on Optimism. With this expansion, Velodrome will be deployed on some of the most popular L2s built with the Optimism Stack, including Mode, Fraxtal, and Zora.

5.Aptos token unlocking, $103 million worth of APT will be unlocked on May 12. Most of it will go to the team and early investors.

6.Pendle and Ethena deployment on Solana- According to a tweet from an Ethena team member, Ethena and Pendle Finance may be launched on Solana this month.

7.Ethena integrates USDe stablecoin on top CEX - This week, this fast-growing stablecoin protocol will make a major announcement about USDe integration. Given that Binance, OKX or Bybit have invested in Ethena, these 3 exchanges may integrate USDe.

8.Mode Token Release- Mode, one of the fastest growing Ethereum L2s, will launch its token $MODE on May 7. 5.5% of its supply will be allocated to the first community airdrop.

9.Sei V2 Mainnet Release Date Announced- Given that the audit of Sei V2 has just been completed, its release date may be announced soon. Sei V2 is a major network upgrade, and the team will transform Sei into a fully parallelized EVM blockchain capable of supporting 28,000 transactions per second.

This Week’s Airdrop Opportunities

1. Stake SOL on Sanctum (Solana Network)

Sanctum is the liquidity staking ecosystem on Solana.

The protocol has launched a first-of-its-kind loyalty program that rewards users in a gamified way. By holding specific SOL liquidity staking tokens, you can collect pets that may make you eligible for future airdrop rewards.

Last week I used some of my SOL holdings to start participating in airdrop mining. Sanctum is backed by well-known institutions including Solana Ventures and Jump Capital.

Here is the link to Sanctum: [Link to Sanctum website] (need to be added by yourself)

2. Deposit USDe stablecoin in Karak

I think depositing USDe in Karak is one of the best stablecoin airdrop opportunities at the moment.

Karak is Eigenlayer's biggest competitor, and USDe is Ethena's stablecoin.

Both projects have launched points programs, and thanks to their recent collaboration, you can now mine Ethena and Karak points at the same time.

Strategy:

• Use other stablecoins to buy USDe on Ethena

• Deposit USDe into Karak