📈 NFT-Backed Lending Surges with Record $1M-Plus Loans and 20% Interest Rates

Hello Defiers! Here’s what we are covering today,

News

Video

First Look: Cross-asset yield folding for 4X gains? How is this possible?

Podcast

🎙Listen to the interview in this week’s podcast with Eric Wall of Arcane Assets:

Links

📣 IF YOU’RE IN NYC LISTEN UP: This is the last day to come claim your POAP in The Defiant’s co-working space Colony, as part of the POAP HUNT 2021. It’s a really cool-looking one, designed exclusively for NFT.NYC. Come get it and say hi! 👋

Head to their Telegram to ask for the address :)

The open economy is taking over the old one. Subscribe to keep up with this revolution. Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button below ($15/mo, $150/yr).air

Subscribe now

🙌 Together with:

Balancer, one of the leading DeFi automated market makers (AMM) for multiple tokens. Dive into their pools at this link.
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.

NFT Collateral

📈 NFT-backed Lending Market Surges with $1M-Plus Loans and 20% Interest Rates

AUTOGLYPH The NFT-backed loan market is off the hook. The latest sign? A $1.42M loan secured by Autoglyph #488, an NFT produced by CryptoPunks’ creators, Larva Labs, was approved on Oct. 28. It’s the largest NFT-backed loan ever, according to Stephen Young, the founder of NFTfi, the peer-to-peer lending protocol that facilitated the transaction.

🎙 Listen to our podcast with Stephen Young here

COLLATERAL The idea of using NFTs as collateral has been around since at least January 2020. That’s when Alex Masmej, a social token pioneer and member of Metacartel, the web3 community, proposed Rocket, a project which would facilitate loans backed by the tokens. That was followed by the fractionalization of NFTs — breaking the collectibles into more affordable pieces.

KEY PLATFORMS A raft of players are jockeying for position in the burgeoning market. Key platforms include Strip Finance, Banksea Finance, Drops DAO, Unbanked, which launched on Nov. 1, all of which provide some form of NFT-backed loan service as users look for liquidity while holding onto their assets.

Autoglyph #488 secured the biggest NFT loan to date.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

AMMs

⚙️ Payments DEX Stellar First L1 to Offer Integrated Automated Market Making

THE NEWS After years of exclusively maintaining an order book-based decentralized exchange, Stellar (XLM) has launched automated market-maker (AMM) functionality native to its protocol.

PROTOCOL 18 Stellar’s Protocol 18 upgrade went live following a successful community on Nov. 3, enabling developers to launch front-ends and other applications utilizing the new AMM functionality. The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has urged devs to ensure all up-to-date software and SDKs are installed as previous versions are not compatible with Protocol 18.

FORMULA AMMs are decentralized exchange protocols that allow the permissionless creation of liquidity pools comprising two assets. An underlying mathematical formula is used to value the two assets against each other, while traders execute orders against the entire pool, and to which any user can provide liquidity.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

NFT Culture

🪱 The Worm Wriggles Through Times Square Dispensing NFT Blessings (and Tokens)

INVERTEBRATE The next blessing of The Worm is coming, with a commemorative token raining down on the first Ethereans lucky enough to have been visited by the digital invertebrate.

ACOLYTES The Worm is a singular NFT and experiment giving and sharing digital art around the world, while also creating a collective narrative. The blessed token has visited 446 Ethereum wallets so far, sitting in its latest one now for almost two days. After 1,000 people have held the Worm, early acolytes will receive a new blessing: a special NFT limited to that early group

TECHNOMANCERS The Church of the Worm was launched by Ambition.wtf, a small NFT company that describes itself as a group of technomancers. The group previously released a procedurally generated cube series called Hexis, the CryptoPunks derivative CryptoJunks, and The Worm.

SATOSHIS The Worm is the non-fungible token equivalent of Bitcoin’s Lightning Torch, where Bitcoin fans passed along and added to a cache of satoshis (the smallest unit of Bitcoin) to prove the robustness of Bitcoin’s lightning network.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

DeFi Regulations

🤔 DeFi Founders Debate Whether to Resist or Embrace Regulation

TLDR Top DeFi founders and VCs engaged in a lively debate on how the sector should be regulated and do business with traditional institutions during a panel called Rise of Resistance at the LA Blockchain Summit on Nov. 3.

SO WHAT Regulation is a critical issue that’s dividing the DeFi community. On one side are those who want to resist the rollout of what they consider overbearing oversight. On the other side are those who believe regulation is inevitable and embracing compliance is the wiser course.

OPEN DISCUSSION Derek Alia, the co-founder of Arbitrum-based derivatives exchange FutureSwap,asserted the DeFi sector should strive to work closely with lawmakers. “Ultimately we want to work with regulators as much as possible. Regulation at some point will approach DeFi,” he said. “I think the best thing would just be cooperation to make sure that we harness as much innovation in this space. I think the best thing the regulators could do is have an open discussion and try to understand what’s going on [in DeFi] so we can address the concerns.”

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

First Look: Cross-asset yield folding for 4X gains? How is this possible?

Links

🔗 SQUID token up 600% despite debacle and Binance investigation: CoinTelegraph

The world’s biggest crypto exchange, Binance, has launched an inquiry into the Squid Game token (SQUID) to trace funds associated with the epic 45,000% pump and dump a few days ago.

🔗 Coinbase is testing a subscription service with zero trading fees and prioritized support: The Block

Crypto exchange Coinbase is testing a new subscription-based service that would give users access to enhanced features, according to materials reviewed by The Block.

🔗 SnowTrace: Bringing Etherscan to the Avalanche Community: Avalanche

Etherscan overhauls and expands core explorer functionality for Avalanche DeFi ecosystem.

🔗 Katana: The Ronin Dex Is Live!: The Lunacian

Katana, the Ronin decentralized exchange, is live! Katana allows anyone to easily swap between the various assets within the Axie Infinity ecosystem.

Solana @solana👀

Neon Labs @neonlabsorgFresh updates! 1/7 The Neon team is now testing the EVM smart contract with the new @solana node software v1.8. This is the last step before our #MainnetAlpha rollout 🔥 https://t.co/iHF6z3pNq7 3:34 PM ∙ Nov 3, 2021729Likes113Retweets

OpenSea @opensea Tomorrow’s the night NYC! We’re bringing this wild week to a close with @creatureNFT at the Hammerstein Ballroom - don’t miss it! Nov 4 🔹 7PM EST Tickets: eventbrite.com/e/creature-wor…

1:42 AM ∙ Nov 4, 2021191Likes43Retweets

This is a public version of the newsletter and both paid and free subscribers are receiving it.

Free subscribers get:

Daily news briefings
Weekly Recap

Paid subscribers get:

Full transcript of the weekly podcast interview
Early access to opinion columns and research pieces
Exclusive access to Inbox Dump where we send all the press releases that didn’t make it to the newsletter (Saturday)
Exclusive access to subscribers-only Discord chat
Exclusive access to bi-weekly community calls

🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in The Defiant are written by Brady Dale, Owen Fernau, Samuel Haig, DeFiDad and yyctrader, and edited by Edward Robinson, Bailey Reutzel, and Camila Russo. Videos are produced by Robin Schmidt, Alp Gasimov and Daniel Flynn. Podcast is led by Camila, edited by Alp.

Subscribe now

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).

📈 NFT-Backed Lending Surges with Record $1M-Plus Loans and 20% Interest Rates

Good reporting. Delivered.

Most read

Railway Urges All Users to Rotate Secrets After Security Incident

CoinDCX Co-Founder Denies New Hack After $16 Million Wallet Alert

Japan's Prime Minister Urges PHP Patching, Suggests Temporary Site Shutdowns

Developer Links $370,000 Theft to Railway Secrets Exposure

Cloudflare CEO Reports Millions of PHP2Shell Exploit Attempts

Aero Launches as Aerodrome and Velodrome Merge Across Seven Chains