⍺ DeFi Alpha: Create Your Own NFT Contract With Manifold + 32% APR on Stablecoins

DeFi Alpha is a weekly newsletter published for our premium subscribers every Friday, contributed by Defiant Advisor and DeFi investor at 4RC, DeFi Dad, and our Degen in Chief yyctrader. It aims to educate traders, investors, and newcomers about investment...

Motivation

Two years ago, DeFi investors could easily name every yield farming opportunity without much effort. It was a simpler time, when only a handful of teams had launched with any liquidity to trade, lend, borrow, provide liquidity, or even demonstrate new primitives such as no-loss savings by PoolTogether.

But times have changed! DeFi liquidity has grown to hundreds of billions of dollars across Ethereum with new burgeoning DeFi economies taking shape on EVM-compatible chains such as Polygon and Avalanche and non-EVM chains such as Cosmos and Solana. Any given day, a new DeFi or NFT project is launching. So after writing and creating countless DeFi guides and tutorials since 2019, we at The Defiant agreed it’s time we publish a more detailed weekly guide on all you need to know to keep up with new and old yield earning opportunities.

This is DeFi Alpha by The Defiant.

Any information covered in DeFi Alpha should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions. Any mention of a token or protocol should not be considered a recommendation or endorsement.

🙌 Together with:

prePO is a decentralized trading platform allowing you to gain synthetic exposure to any pre-IPO company or pre-token project. Check us out at prepo.io
ZetaChain is the first public L1 blockchain that natively connects with any chain and layer including Bitcoin and Dogecoin without wrapping or bridging assets. Dive into the docs to start building the future of multichain.

📈 Yield Alpha

Each week we will provide options to earn yield on ETH, WBTC, stablecoins, and other major tokens.

Stablecoins - Earn 32.5% APR by providing liquidity to the USDC-DOLA pool on Velodrome, the newly-launched AMM on Optimism.
- This yield is issued in VELO tokens.
- To participate, one must add liquidity on Velodrome.
- DOLA is an overcollateralized stablecoin issued by Inverse Finance. Make sure you review the documentation before depositing assets.

ETH - Earn 6.3% APY with Sense Finance’s fixed rates for wstETH Principal Tokens
- This yield is accrued from the underlying Lido staking rewards for stETH and thanks to Sense allowing users to purchase Principal Tokens to collect a fixed APY, or bet that implied APYs will fall before the maturity date
- To participate, one must buy the PTs here maturing May 31, 2027.
BTC - Lend WBTC at 4.83% APY to borrowers on Aurigami Finance on Aurora (NEAR)
- This yield is issued in 0.72% APY in WBTC + 4.06% APY in PLY tokens.
- To participate, one must deposit into the WBTC pool here on Aurigami.
- Caution: The PLY token rewards vest over 48 weeks, and it’s likely the price of PLY will change over that time, meaning the estimated net yield as of this writing, could go up or down.
AVAX - Lend AVAX on Aave using Yield Yak for leveraged lending at 7.9% APY
- This yield is issued in AVAX, paid by borrowers on Aave.
- To participate, one must deposit into this YieldYak farm.
SOL - Lend SOL to leveraged farmers on Francium at 6.53% APY
- This yield is backed by interest paid by borrowers on Francium.
- To participate, one must deposit into the SOL option in the Francium lending tab.
MATIC - stake MATIC with MaticX and LP MaticX-MATIC on Balancer for a net 45% APY
- The yield is backed by validator rewards using the MaticX liquid staking derivative + trading fees on Balancer + BAL rewards + SD rewards.
- To participate on Polygon, I use the Stader MaticX dApp to mint MaticX.
- Then, I deposit into the 50/50 MaticX-MATIC pool on Balancer and stake the LP.
ATOM - mint pATOM and stake the pATOMs on Ethereum to earn more pATOMs on pSTAKE at a rate of 13.5% APR
- The yield earned is issued and claimable in pATOM.
- To participate, one must first mint a 1:1 representation of ATOM as pATOM on Ethereum by using the pSTAKE dApp under Stake
- Then, deposit/stake pATOMs to get stkATOMs and earn 13.5% APR
FTM - stake with sFTMx by Stader, earning 14.5% APY
- The yield is issued in FTM rewards, as sFTMX is earning FTM via validator rewards to support Fantom’s PoS network.
- To participate, one must deposit FTM to receive sFTMX here on Stader.
HBAR - stake with the first HBAR liquid staking derivative by Stader, earning 42.8% APY
- The yield is issued in HBAR rewards, as HBARX is earning validator rewards.
- To participate, deposit HBAR to receive HBARX here on Stader.
- Caution: This is in beta and withdrawals will not be possible until July 2022 or later.

🪂 Airdrop Alpha

In each DeFi Alpha guide, we update a list of the most obvious DeFi protocols that have yet to announce and/or launch a token.

Hop Airdrop

$HOP went live on June 9. Claim here.

If you followed the guide posted in previous issues of DeFi Alpha, you should be eligible.

Optimism Airdrop

Congratulations if you followed our guide betting on a hunch that Optimism would release a token!

$OP is Live! Claim guide here.

Arbitrum Odyssey

Layer-2 rollup Arbitrum will be launching a series of tasks in early June for airdrop seekers. We’ll keep you posted in DeFi Alpha.

Arbitrum @arbitrum📳 𝐼𝑁𝐶𝑂𝑀𝐼𝑁𝐺 𝑇𝑅𝐴𝑁𝑆𝑀𝐼𝑆𝑆𝐼𝑂𝑁 CALLING ALL ARBINAUTS!🚨 The Arbitrum Odyssey will officially be going live mid-June. The space engineers and teams involved are hard at work making sure all systems are in check before launch.1:31 PM ∙ May 19, 20221,768Likes467Retweets

Arch Finance - a protocol for comprehensive indices that provide access to differentiated sources of market risk.
DeFi Saver - a one-stop dashboard for creating, managing and tracking DeFi positions across Aave, Compound, Maker, Liquity, and Reflexer
Francium - leveraged yield farming similar to Alpha Homora but on Solana, one can choose to simply lend single assets or hold leveraged LPs to potentially earn an airdrop here
Jupiter - The leading DEX aggregator by trading volume on Solana
LI.FI - A cross-chain bridge and DEX aggregator protocol
Magic Eden - The leading NFT marketplace by trading volume on Solana
Nested - a crypto social trading platform built on Ethereum and other chains
Opyn - one of the OG decentralized options protocols on Ethereum, with major investors that signal a token has to be in their future. Buy/sell puts or call options to earn a possible future airdrop.
Polymarket - one of the strongest players in the DeFi prediction market vertical, bet on an outcome related to crypto, politics, sports and more or add liquidity
Polynomial - A newer DeFi derivatives vault creator, built on Optimism
Set Protocol - one of the earliest DeFi protocols yet to launch a token for DeFi asset management, popular for TokenSets and known for powering IndexCoop indexes
Socket (formerly Movr) - their bridge aggregator Bungee moves assets between chains, finding the cheapest, fastest route
StarkNet - Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum using zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs. Testnet guide here.
Volmex - Volmex is a tokenized volatility protocol, similar to the VIX but ETHV
Wormhole - a cross-chain messaging protocol known for bridging between Solana, Terra, Polygon, BSC, Avalanche, Fantom, and Oasis
Yield Protocol - a newer protocol for fixed-term, fixed-rate lending in DeFi, backed by Paradigm, one might earn a future airdrop by lending DAI or USDC
Zapper - participate in Zapper trading, lending, providing liquidity, or yield farming; given the Zapper Quests and NFT Rewards program, it can be surmised that if Zapper ever releases a token, this is one way they might do a retro airdrop
Zerion - same can be said speculated about Zerion; if they ever release a token, they’re likely to reward those who interacted with their smart contracts swapping, lending, providing liquidity, or borrowing
zkSync is a Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum that uses zero-knowledge proofs to enable scalable low-cost payments. Bridge some assets and do some swaps for a potential airdrop. Guide here.

👨‍🎓 Defiant Tutorial

Deploy Your Own NFT Contract With No Coding Using Manifold

Have you ever wanted to create your own NFTs but were turned off by the complexity of the process?

Most marketplaces like OpenSea and Rarible let you mint NFTs on their platforms but you’re limited to using their smart contracts, which doesn’t leave you truly in control of your collection.

We were looking for a simple solution to create The Defiant NFTs, which have been airdropped to some of our most active community members!

Make sure to keep up with the announcements in our Discord for more chances to snag one!

Manifold Studio is a free app that lets you create your own ERC-721 or ERC-1155 contract on Ethereum. It uses a standard template that is customized based on a few inputs from the user.

In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through creating an NFT collection that you can deploy on Ethereum and freely trade on all marketplaces.

Step 1: Head over to manifold.xyz, connect your wallet and sign the login message to authenticate yourself. You’ll then need to complete your profile by picking a username.

Step 2: Click on the button marked ‘New Contract’ and fill in the Contract Name, Type and Symbol you would like to use. You can also include some ASCII art of your choice.

Step 3: Deploy the contract on the Rinkeby testnet by clicking the button. Proceed when asked to switch networks.

You’ll need some Rinkeby ETH for gas fees. Get some from this faucet.

Sign the deployment transaction in Metamask and the test contract will be deployed and verified.

Step 4: Mint a test NFT on Rinkeby.

Once the NFT is minted, you’ll be able to view it on OpenSea using the provided links.

Step 5: Confirm that your test NFT works correctly and deploy your contract to Ethereum mainnet.

It will cost you around $40 in gas fees at 60 gwei.

Step 6: Once your contract is deployed and verified, you can go ahead and mint your NFTs. You can mint single NFTs like in the example above, or batches of NFTs in a series as shown below.

Step 7: After minting your first NFTs on mainnet, your collection should become visible on OpenSea. At this stage, you can set the royalties on the contract as a percentage of secondary market sales.

That’s it! You’ve just become an NFT creator!

If you face any issues, reach out to the support team in Manifold’s Discord.

📰 Elsewhere on The Defiant

This week, Robin showed you how not to fall for the latest NFT scam making the rounds on OpenSea.

The information contained in this newsletter is not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, financial advice. The authors are not financial advisors and the information contained here is not a substitute for financial advice from a professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. We have done our best to ensure that the information provided is accurate but neither The Defiant nor any of its contributors shall be held liable or responsible for any errors or omissions or for any damage readers may suffer as a result of failing to seek financial advice from a professional.