In 2006, I, a teenage girl, was really into Christina Aguilera. So much so, I listened to her latest album on repeat, to the detriment of my family's sanity. 

Anyway, it was called Back to Basics. 

A fitting title for the stories this week, which highlight those who are not building casinos on mars, but something more basic. 

Story One

Back in the Day 

Remember, when crypto first started out, one of our noble goals was financial empowerment. Needless to say we strayed far off, but there's one L2 that's making a meaningful difference: Celo. 

Celo volumes on Uniswap have 19x'd since last year, growing from $82 million to $1.62 billion this year so far. It's a jump most L2s that are barely alive since they can't use airdrop promises as a carrot anymore, can only dream of.

Celo also excels in another measure: daily active wallets. Recently, celo-based stablecoin addresses even de-throned Tron. 

How did they do that? Well, it's actually simple. Celo's focus has always been developing markets, they went where crypto actually solves something. 

They partnered with Opera and launched MiniPay, an ultra-light, non-custodial stablecoin wallet. After going live in Nigeria, the app expanded to further countries. Since Opera is already a go-to browser in SE Asia and Africa, adoption grew and has hit 3 million active wallets. 

Integrations with local providers make MiniPay as widely usable as traditional means of payment, at lower fees. 

Takeaway: Maybe, crypto can do good after all. If we focus on some of our original goals, we can get pretty far. Especially, if you build something that addresses a real fundamental need and not the desire to gamble one's life savings on dog coin. 

Story Two

Here to stay 

Vitalik, the founder of Ethereum, got a lot of Crypto Twitter coverage during Token 2049 for his decision to turn his stage appearance into a Karaoke moment, singing a song from the movie: Castle in the Sky.

But that wasn't his only time in the limelight. 

A recently-launched documentary titled "Vitalik: An Ethereum Story"  puts his journey of going from a nerd programmer crying himself to sleep over losing WoW items, to the leader of a global movement front and center. 

Shot by crypto natives, the movie is testament to how crypto can bring creative projects to life that otherwise would have never happened. The producers raised funds via an NFT called Ethereum Infinite Garden. In just 51 hours, they raised over 1000 ETH, paving the way to movie production. 

It's one of the first large crowdfunding projects ending successfully, showcasing a founder, not driven by fame or fortune but by the desire to create a more equitable world. 

You can stream it here after minting an NFT. 

Takeaway: We need more stories like these, showing the human side of crypto and motivation beyond greed.

Story Three

Slow down Baby... 

Before you wrap your BTC to earn juicy yields on it in Ethereum land. 

Despite the name there is no real wrapping involved. Instead, you send your BTC to Bitgo, and they issue a wBTC  on Ethereum. 

This setup worked well enough for years as most of the Bitcoin in custody was stored in their US-entity, read trustworthy. However, recently BitGo announced they'd move reserves to their global entity, which in part is owned by Justin Sun. The same guy whose stablecoins have been notoriously unstable. 

The people didn't like it. Sky (previously Maker) delisted wBTC. There's now even a petition to save-wbtc, with over 20,000 signers arguing to put wBTC into the hands of the community. 

Takeaway: It's ironic to think that we were fine with 90% of wBTC being controlled by one entity when especially Bitcoiners were always so adamant about decentralization. I guess it's easy to forget values when there's yield to be earned.

Fact of the week: You might have been confused why Vitalik would sing in Japanese, a song from a Ghibli movie, but it actually all makes sense. Ethereum's name and shape are derived from the etherium crystals in the movie. Not to spoil too much, but these crystals give the castle the ability to fly. Add to your watchlist, and tell others this is research if they ask why you aren't working. 

P.S all the headings are also song titles from the album this newsletter is named after.

Naomi for CoinJar

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