💎 Meet Eddie: He's Living the American Dream Thanks to NFT Wearables

Hello Defiers, here’s what we’re covering today,

and more :)

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🙌 Together with:

Balancer, one of the leading DeFi automated market makers (AMM) for multiple tokens. Dive into their pools at https://balancer.finance/!
Kraken, consistently rated the best and most secure cryptocurrency exchange, which can get you from fiat to DeFi
Aave, an open-source and non-custodial liquidity protocol where users can earn interest on deposits and borrow assets.
The DeFi Pulse Index, a capitalization-weighted index that tracks the performance of selected DeFi assets across the market.

EIB’s Blockchain Bond Pushes ETH to New Highs

TLDR European Investment Bank (EIB), the publicly owned lending arm of the European Union, sold a 100M euro 2-year digital bonds registered on the Ethereum blockchain. ETH jumped after the news was reported and continued to climb to a new record of over $2,700 today.

SO WHAT The news signals that institutions consider the Ethereum blockchain to be a viable settlement layer for financial instruments and activity.

REGISTERED ON ETHEREUM The 2-year digital bonds will be registered in the Ethereum blockchain after pricing on Tuesday, and will have a zero percent coupon, as reported by Bloomberg, citing an unnamed source. The sale will be joint-managed by Goldman Sachs International, Société Générale, and Santander.

👉 READ THE FULL STORY HERE, IN THEDEFIANT.IO 👈

0xHack: Borderless, Open & Decentralized Online Coding Marathon

The 0xHack is a two-week-long hackathon organized by ETHWorks, Golem, Matic, that’s open to hackers from all over the world. We'll provide workshops, demos, and more in order to facilitate onboarding into blockchain and fine-tuned documentation and world-class tech support for crypto veterans and blockchain beginners alike.

The hackathon starts on May 14th and will end on June 2nd.

There’s up to $35k in prizes:

Golem Network: Open Internet: $10,000
Polygon: Layer 2: $10,000
EthWorks: Infrastructure: $10,000
Ramp Network: FinTech: $5,000

With support from: Ethereum Foundation, DevCon, Starkware, ENS

Goals:

Build the tech stack of tomorrow mentored by some of the biggest thinking brains in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Help blockchain beginner developers build their first crypto project.
Work on a myriad of use-cases and different technologies
Learn from the greatest minds behind the Ethereum ecosystem.

We'll provide workshops, demos, and more in order to facilitate onboarding into blockchain and fine-tuned documentation and world-class tech support for crypto veterans and blockchain beginners alike.

Polygon Takes Lead in Layer 2 Race as MATIC Token Soars

TLDR Polygon’s token is rising the most among all cryptocurrencies in the past 24 hours, while assets in its networks spike. The activity is a sign an increasing number of users are betting the project will become a leading Ethereum scaling solution.

BY THE NUMBERS Polygon’s MATIC token is up more than 30% just in the past day, the most out of all cryptocurrencies listed in CoinGecko. The token is up 150% in the past seven days. Value locked in the project’s proof-of-stake bridge to Ethereum has spiked to $2B, doubling from $1B just three days ago, while assets in its Plasma solution crossed $300M yesterday, up from just over $100M last week, according to The Block’s data.

SO WHAT Scaling solutions are racing to provide the necessary infrastructure needed to continue growing decentralized finance after Ethereum gas fees skyrocketed in the past few months. Explosive growth on Polygon bodes well for the project, as network effects and the importance of composability for DeFi, make being the first mover even more important than usual.

👉 READ THE FULL STORY HERE, IN THEDEFIANT.IO 👈

Novice Jeweler is Living the American Dream Thanks to NFT Wearables

Recently multiple images of a pendant featuring NFT art were shared on Instagram and Twitter creating sizable buzz for Eduardo Jaramillo aka the NFT Jeweler. The jewelry piece, an iced out iWatch display on a gold chain, showed a series of images. In one sense it was a simple concept yet it also unofficially launched NFT jewelry as a form of wearable tech.

The solid gold and diamond-studded chain are a stark contrast to the artists’ background.

“My dad’s from the smallest pueblo in Mexico and then my mom is from Tijuana and then one generation later her son’s here creating this,” he said in an interview.

Edwin A. Chavez and Eddie Jaramillo

It’s been a long, hard road for Eddie, as he’s known. Growing up in South Central LA, he was always the class clown, scraping by with Cs on a good day. Until he improved his grades in order to play soccer in 12th grade.

“I don’t wanna be stuck here forever in the hood,” Eddie says he realized back then. “My friends aren’t really doing anything. Everybody’s stuck here. I don’t want to get stuck…[So] I went to community college for three years in Long Beach City College and then I transferred to UC Riverside.”

Now Eddie is back home with a college degree, learning to be a jeweler and navigating an American success story powered by NFTs. His story is one of many tales of success shared by crypto artists around the world…

👉 READ THE FULL STORY HERE, IN THEDEFIANT.IO 👈

Yearn Finance Q1 Report Reveals Rising Profits Thanks to Vaults and Yield Farming

TLDR Yearn Finance said in its second-ever quarterly report, and first using the EBITDA accounting metric, that earnings in Q1 2021 were up 32% of all 2020 earnings, a period which spanned the five months since the protocol’s inception last year.

SO WHAT The report offers a glimpse into the business model of a DeFi project that’s not structured the traditional corporate way, but rather is an open protocol being built by a decentralized organization of contributors.

$4.8M IN Q1 The protocol reported $4.8M for Q1 based on the EBITDA metric which is often used as a proxy for cash flow, compared with $3.7M in the last five months of 2020. $3.1M, or 66% of the EBITDA came in March, when several v2 yVaults were deployed.

REVENUE SOURCES Yearn earns revenue via its vaults by charging depositors a 20% performance fee of which 19.5% is allocated to the project’s Treasury and the other 0.5% going to the vault’s strategy creator. Yearn also charges a 2% management fee that accrues to the Treasury on a per block basis.

Yearn’s new initiative to use Treasury funds to yield farm also contributed to its revenue. Traditionally though, revenue which is invested would count as non-operating income, not revenue.

👉 READ THE FULL STORY HERE, IN THEDEFIANT.IO 👈

1Inch Launches DeFi Wallet for IOS

TLDR 1Inch released 1Inch Wallet, a non-custodial DeFi wallet for IOS yesterday. At launch, 1Inch Wallet’s features primarily revolve around swaps, with plans to introduce staking, governance, and liquidity pools in the future. 1Inch Wallet offers IOS users the same settings and aggregation functionality as the 1Inch dapp for both Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, and the ability to perform stealth transactions on Ethereum to avoid front-running losses.

👉 READ THE FULL STORY HERE, IN THEDEFIANT.IO 👈

Binance Set to Launch NFT Marketplace in June

Binance is planning to launch an NFT marketplace and trading platform in June, the exchange said in a post. Binance NFT aims to offer high liquidity and low fees for NFT transactions. The two main venues available at launch will be a “Premium Events” category for exclusive artist collaborations and exhibitions, and a “Trading Market” where any user can mint their own NFTs at minimal cost.

👉 READ THE FULL STORY HERE, IN THEDEFIANT.IO 👈

Builder Grants for DeFi & Web3: dlab

“Builder Grants are for hackers and founders working on new ideas and projects in DeFi and Web3. Our goal for this collaboration is to allow creative newcomers to the blockchain space to fully realize their concepts and bring them to market as quickly as possible. We’re specifically targeting projects that are pre-launch or even concept stage. We’ll be providing $30k in USDC as a grant to selected projects, along with 3 months of support and mentoring through scheduled weekly Zoom sessions.”

Alchemy raises $80M at a $505M valuation to be the ‘AWS for blockchain:’ TechCrunch

Blockchain developer platform Alchemy announced today it has raised $80 million in a Series B round of funding led by Coatue and Addition, Lee Fixel’s new fund. The company previously raised a total of $15.5 million, so the latest financing brings its total raised to $95.5 million since it launched in 2017.

I will be converting my entire 2021 NFL salary to Bitcoin: Sean Culkin

Sean Culkin @culkin22I fully believe Bitcoin is the future of finance and I wanted to prove that I have real skin in the game — not just trying to make a quick buck. I will be converting my entire 2021 NFL salary to #Bitcoin.12:51 PM ∙ Apr 26, 202133,015Likes4,751Retweets

✊ Head to THEDEFIANT.IO for more DeFi news 📰

🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in this newsletter were written by Dan Kahan, Owen Fernau, Andras Beak, and DeFiDad, and edited by Camila Russo. Videos were produced by Robin Schmidt and Alp Gasimov. Podcast was led by Camila, edited by Alp.

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The Defiant is a daily newsletter focusing on decentralized finance, a new financial system that’s being built on top of open blockchains. The space is evolving at breakneck speed and revolutionizing tech and money. Sign up to learn more and keep up on the latest, most interesting developments. Subscribers get full access, while free signups get only part of the content. Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button above ($15/mo, $150/yr).