🦄 Recap: DeFi Week of April 25

Hello Defiers! Happy weekend! In Bored Apes we trust… That was the watchword of the week as we saw the most illustrious club in NFTs excel at a time when the rest of crypto — strike that, all the capital markets — pummelled by economic blows. Not Bored A...

Hello Defiers! Happy weekend!

In Bored Apes we trust…

That was the watchword of the week as we saw the most illustrious club in NFTs excel at a time when the rest of crypto — strike that, all the capital markets — pummelled by economic blows. Not Bored Ape Yacht Club. Its recently released ApeCoin soared more than 60% in the last week or so, as yyctrader reported in a market roundup for a very tough April.

Owen Fernau dove deep into Yuga Labs, BAYC’s creator, to find out what makes the NFT studio tick and how it went from zero to a $4B valuation in less than a year. It’s a great weekend read addressing fundamental questions about the utility and unhinged valuations of NFTs, and how Yuga has made savvy moves to extend its brand into the pop culture firmament. Our video crew also dove into the BAYC phenomenon in the latest Defiant Weekly BAYC, APE, the OtherSide and Kodas - everything you need to know.

Speaking of utility and proper value, Robin Schmidt and his team of cineastes also produced a sharp primer on essential NFT tools in the latest episode of The Open Metaverse Show. Robin also covered how crypto has become the “connective tissue” for Ukrainians as they struggle to secure essential supplies amidst Russia’s bombardment of civilians. It’s an important and eye-opening segment.

The other major story this week was, of course, Elon Musk’s $44B deal for Twitter. In this week’s Real Vision vs. The Defiant segment, Camila Russo, Robin, and Ash Bennington unpacked the ins and outs of the blockbuster move. And Bitcoin was also trending as a flurry of moves demonstrated deepening adoption. Jason Levin reported on Fidelity’s decision to begin offering BTC in its 401(k) retirement accounts, and Buenos Aires’ move to let taxpayers settle bills in the cryptocurrency, among other news.

Don’t be sure to miss Cami’s podcast with Professor Fabian Schar, one of the most provocative and influential academics focused on crypto. He argues that regulators should disregard consumer protection and err on the side of flexibility.

Great stuff… Enjoy!

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⍺ DeFi Alpha Newsletter

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This week:

Ultimate Guide To Optimism + Boosted Beefy 4pool Vault

Podcast

🎙 Prominent Academic Fabian Schär Says Crypto Regulation Should Happen Only at On/Off-Ramps and Ditch Consumer Protection

Fabian Schär is one of the most prominent academics focusing on blockchains and specifically DeFi. He is Professor for Distributed Ledger Technology and Fintech at the University of Basel, has a PhD in crypto, co-authored the bestselling book “Bitcoin, Blockchain and Cryptoassets” and has published many academic papers, including one outlining the DeFi tech stack on the St Louis Federal Reserve Review.

Fabian has a great deal of experience speaking with regulators and studying different laws and frameworks being applied to crypto. He argues regulators should not be using old laws to regulate new tech. He also says regulation should happen at the off and on-ramp level, and at individual businesses, but not in the non-custodial world of on-chain transactions.

Fabian has the somewhat controversial opinion that regulators should ditch consumer protection as a goal all together, and trust that each individual should be free to decide what to do with their money, and take responsibility for their decisions.

The Tube

📺 Real Vision vs. The Defiant: ELON MUSK WON TWITTER. HOW DID THE CRYPTO COMMUNITY REACT?

📺 The Open Metaverse Show: The devils in the detail. The essential tools for the Metaverse 2.0

📺 Tuesday Tutorials: How to track what crypto whales are buying

📺 Quick Take: 3NFTs launch big, but did they all make it?

📺 The Defiant Weekly: Meet the war hero saving lives with crypto

DeFi Saga

🚀 Anything But Boring: How Yuga Labs Became a $4B NFT Juggernaut in a Year

Bored Ape Creators Target Metaverse with New Land Venture

In which Owen Fernau delves into the mysteries of the world’s most exclusive primate club and the unhinged valuations of NFTs.

NFTs are irrational. They don’t make any sense. A JPEG you can instantly copy with a right-click of your mouse? And the cheapest Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT costs 146 ETH, or $416,000? That’s a down payment on a house… a really nice house.

Many Bored Apes go for much more. How is this even possible? And yet non-fungible tokens and their magical ability to make the ubiquitous unique have defied all the naysayers, and a punishing bear market. Cryptocurrencies as a whole have lost a fifth of their value this year but the floor price for Bored Apes has has soared 131%. Absurd? Yes, indeed. But NFTs are pumping.

BAYC 2087 sold for 769 ETH or $2.3M.

Perhaps no venture has maximized this strange craze like Yuga Labs, the mysterious outfit behind Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and its many spinoffs. In March, the Miami-based enterprise raised $450M in a round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, bestowing the NFT studio with an astonishing $4B valuation. Not bad for a year-old company, eh?

Yuga was also key in releasing ApeCoin last month. The token’s $5.5B market cap already eclipses that of every DeFi project. Oh, and in March the company also acquired the intellectual property rights for CryptoPunks, arguably the second buzziest NFT collection. Meanwhile, BAYC has captured the web3 zeitgeist, with celebs ranging from Snoop Dogg to Madonna to Paris Hilton to Super Bowl champion Tom Brady joining the club.

Now on Apr. 30, Yuga is gearing up another NFT mint for a project called Otherside, which is largely anticipated to be a metaversal world of some kind. That Yuga posted a teaser with computer animation strong enough to make Pixar blush has helped turn up the hype meter for Otherside to a fever pitch.

Market Roundup

📈 $APE Surges in a Bummer of a Month for Crypto

By yyctrader

April hasn’t been kind to crypto. But there is one unlikely bright spot: ApeCoin (APE), the native token for the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) has surged 37% as investors prepare for Yuga Labs’ upcoming virtual land sale on April 30.

For just about everything else, the end of April can’t come fast enough: only nine of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization have posted gains this month, according to data from CoinGecko. The total crypto market cap dropped more than 18% this month and now stands at $1.8T.

Source: CoinGecko

Bitcoin is down 16% in the last 30 days and Ether has fared slightly better, down 13%. The damage wasn’t limited to crypto, however. Global equities have softened as inflation concerns take center stage. The S&P 500 is down 7% this month and the tech-heavy Nasdaq has plunged over 12%. In fact, crypto has outperformed major tech stocks this year.

Opinion

📬 Trust This: Web3 Will Deliver on the True Promise of Crowdfunding

Web2's Missed Opportunities are About to Be Remedied

Guest writer Spencer Graham makes the case for a new era in crowdfunding.

Web3 promises to advance crowdfunding far beyond what Web2 is capable of. To fulfill this promise, we must fully embrace the trust-minimization ethos of Web3 as well as its technology.

With Web2 platforms like Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and WeFunder, individuals, non-profits, and startups can call upon donations and even venture funding from their communities. It’s a powerful innovation. But as we all know, there are problems with these Web2 platforms.

The first problem is access, which limits the amount of funding available to projects and worsens inequality. Many would-be funders are blocked from accessing these platforms, including marginalized groups like sex workers, residents of countries with sanctioned and/or authoritarian governments, and large portions of the world that lack financial payment infrastructure.

The second problem with Web2-based crowdfunding is power and accountability. The Web2 crowdfunding platforms are large, centrally controlled companies. Their size grants them market power to extract outsized fees, and their centralized nature creates vectors for governments or executives to block access to many would-be funders.

Friday

News

DeFi Lender Goldfinch Hits $100M in Loans as Crypto-to-Real World Model Picks Up SteamCrypto is a circular system where whales borrow money against their assets to pump up ponzi schemes and dump those tokens on retail traders betting those coins are the future of finance.
DAO Buys a Team in Ice Cube’s Basketball LeagueOn Apr. 28, the DeGods NFT community acquired a basketball team in Ice Cube’s BIG3 league.

DeFi Primers

How to Become a Liquidity Provider on UniswapUniswap is a decentralized financial exchange, or DEX, which allows anyone to take part in the financial transactions of Ethereum-based tokens without a central body or intermediary.

Elsewhere

Thursday

News

Bitcoin Gets Mainstream Push From Argentina to FidelityIf progressive decentralization comes in waves, this week there was a tsunami. And it struck in widely different areas.
Ox Labs’ Bandeali Says ‘Everything of Value Will be Tokenized’Ox Labs, the maker of Matcha, the popular DEX aggregator, and a key partner for Coinbase on its fledgling NFT offering, has a mountain of fresh capital to work with. On April 26, 0x Labs raised $70M in a round led by Greylock Partners.

Markets

Market Roundup: $APE Surges in a Bummer of a Month for Crypto

Elsewhere

Wednesday

News

Carson’s Sudden Exit from Moonbirds Team Leaves NFT Investors MiffedRyan Carson, the chief operating officer of the Proof Collective team that launched the Moonbirds NFT collection on April 16, is leaving to start an NFT fund. The new venture,1.21 Gigawatts Fund, touts itself as “the fund you wish you could go back in time and invest in.”
New Project Puts NFT Investing on AutopilotThe financialization of NFTs continues. The latest development is the deployment of an automated market maker (AMM) called sudoAMM, which is specifically designed for NFT trading. It’s slated for Ethereum’s mainnet and is designed to be a piece of infrastructure for other NFT projects.
Optimism Launches OP Token With Airdrop For Early UsersLayer 2 season is upon us. Optimism, a Layer 2 (L2) network designed to scale Ethereum by executing transactions off the main chain, is launching the “Optimism Collective,” a bicameral governance system which will be tasked with increasing demand for the network.

Elsewhere

Tuesday

News

NFTs Worth Millions Stolen After Bored Apes Instagram Hack Ape owners continue to fall prey to scams. In the latest exploit, some users have lost their Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and other NFTs after the project’s Instagram was hacked, directing users to a malicious website that promised an airdrop of virtual land.
OpenSea’s Deal for Gem a ‘Hell of an Upgrade’ for Leading NFT MarketplaceOpenSea, the most popular site for buying NFTs, has made an acquisition of its own. On Apr. 25, OpenSea acquired Gem, an NFT marketplace aggregator.
Synthetix Incentivizes sUSD Liquidity On Optimism With LyraLegendary investor Charlie Munger famously said, “Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome.” On Apr. 22, Synthetix, a derivatives protocol, unveiled its new initiative with Lyra: an options protocol that launched last year.
Stripe to Start Using Crypto’s Financial Rails for Payments TodayStripe, the payments processing giant, introduced a new function which will allow businesses to pay users in crypto using the Polygon network.

DeFi Primers

How to Buy Crypto on Uniswap

Elsewhere

💜Community Love💜

Thanking all the amazing Defiers for the support and love this week (and always)!

Joël Kai Lenz @_jklnzReally enjoyed listening to @CamiRusso and @chainomics in The Defiant podcast. These kind of discussions are what we should have!

8:25 AM ∙ Apr 28, 20226Likes2Retweets

SohoJoe.eth (aka Joe Booth in meat world) @SohoJoeEth🙏 to @IamSuperMassive & @DefiantNews for telling stories to keep Ukrainian top of mind and highlighting the need for action https://t.co/2KmEI7te5m

SuperMassive x Defiant @IamSuperMassiveMeet the war hero saving lives with crypto https://t.co/MOgfe30sR7 She saves lives everyday, and she does it with crypto. What did you do today?5:59 PM ∙ Apr 24, 20227Likes1Retweet

Encode Club @encodeclub🎯 We had a phenomenal AMA session with @CamiRusso (Founder of @DefiantNews) on 30th March. Camila shared her insights on founding The Defiant, web3 journalism, decentralized finance, writing a book and much more! 🪄 Article and transcript in the🧵 below.1:20 PM ∙ Apr 26, 202220Likes6Retweets

Fantohm @FantohmDAO Be sure to check out @DefiantNews latest video sponsored by @USDB_ 👇 youtube.com/watch?v=dl1ONc…

youtube.com3NFTs launch big, but did they all make it?While the broader market continues to fake and break crushing the will of retail minnows everywhere the NFT space continues to provide us with juicy morsels ...3:00 PM ∙ Apr 26, 202218Likes5Retweets

Leah Callon-Butler 🇦🇺🇵🇭 @leah_cb"I don’t want us to manufacture toxicity that pushes people away, I don’t want us to create jargon and memes that lock people out, I don’t want this technology to be relegated to a new breed of financial elites..." @BLR13 @DefiantNews

thedefiant.ioBlack Pilled at Bitcoin 2022: Do We Know What All This Is For? - The DefiantAm I a Grifter? And Other Ruminations on the Emptiness of the Crypto Industry.4:09 AM ∙ Apr 26, 20229Likes1Retweet

Kunal Chopra (choprakunal.eth) @chopra_kunal_Really liked the philosophy of @buchmanster behind COSMOS ecosystem - building, operating, and interoperating more local financial infrastructure. Do check out - @DefiantNews Podcast with Ethan! open.spotify.com/episode/0lW4BN…4:56 AM ∙ Apr 25, 20227Likes4Retweets

Fernando Molina @fergmolinaAmazing panel discussion at @DefiantXColony today 🧐 @laurashin @tarunchitra @CamiRusso

12:26 AM ∙ Apr 29, 202218Likes4Retweets

Spencer Graham @spengrahNew from me in @DefiantNews In which I call for *trustless* web3 crowdfunding Trusted fundraising with sexy tokens sprinkled on top is...fine, but we can do SO much better, and its important that we do

thedefiant.ioTrust This: Web3 Will Deliver on the True Promise of Crowdfunding - The DefiantWeb3 promises to advance crowdfunding far beyond what Web2 is capable of. To fulfill this promise, we must fully embrace the trust-minimization ethos of Web3 as well as its technology.4:30 PM ∙ Apr 28, 202234Likes13Retweets

IOSG VC | We're hiring @IOSGVC Neither replicating the #Ethereum DeFi map nor sacrificing decentralization, censorship resistance, security, and trustlessness, what can we expect for new DeFi system?🧐👇 thedefiant.io/iosg-report-a-… @DefiantNews @IOSGVC @momir_amidzic

thedefiant.ioIOSG Report: A New Financial System Will Be Built on Rollups - The DefiantThe slowing pace in DeFi innovation gives us the opportunity to step back and recap the advance of DeFi over the past five years as well as build a thesis about the future of DeFi in an environment driven by a multichain narrative e.g. solunavax.10:19 AM ∙ Apr 26, 202211Likes5Retweets

ً @alpGasimov Meet the war hero saving lives with crypto youtu.be/tQEmk-ORLmo @DefiantNews

11:13 AM ∙ Apr 25, 20224Likes3Retweets

Rose 🌹 @RoseOnAurora Glad to have been featured on this week's edition of DeFi Alpha 🙏 Check out their guide on the RUSD farm (suitable for beginners!): thedefiant.io/-defi-alpha-… Big things happening 🌹

The Defiant @DefiantNews👨‍🌾In this week's #DeFi Alpha with @DeFi_Dad and @yyctrader1: 🌹40% APR on RUSD with @RoseOnAurora on @auroraisnear 🦧32% APR on YUSD with @YetiFinance on @avalancheavax 🌟20% APY lending #Bitcoin on @starlay_fi @AstarNetwork Happy Farming! https://t.co/OwqiWWJT9D https://t.co/0bhDO9j4pT12:52 AM ∙ Apr 23, 202216Likes5Retweets

EveryAny One @everyanyone_Our interview with @DefiantNews about ethics in the metaverse is live😇👇 youtube.com/watch?v=YcC5U6…

youtube.comIs there any place for ethics in the Metaverse?Arlo Eisenberg - https://twitter.com/RxCPTS - https://drugreceipts.com/Alex Smeele - https://twitter.com/alexsmeelenz - Non - Fungable LabsTom Graham - https...7:01 PM ∙ Apr 22, 202249Likes2Retweets

angelajung.eth @_AngelaJungThanks for having us over at your place @DefiantNews! 🛋 @tarunchitra @laurashin @CamiRusso

2:08 AM ∙ Apr 29, 202223Likes1Retweet

MIT Bitcoin Club @MITBitcoinClub It is with great excitement that we announce @CamiRusso, Founder of @DefiantNews, will be joining us at #MITBitcoinExpo 2022: #BreakingThrough on May 7-8 to talk about crypto adoption. We can't wait! mitbitcoinexpo.org

1:54 AM ∙ Apr 25, 202216Likes4Retweets

ILIA.Ξ ØxPlasma 🦇🔊 @ILIA_0xNot bad. The film will be the first introduction many in the mainstream get to crypto that’s not saturated in the hype. It will bring a new type of investor into the space

Camila Russo @CamiRusso@mattmedved pretty simple really: collect NFTs that allow you to be a part of a Ridley Scott movie based on The Infinite Machine book, that will take crypto to the mainstream at a theatre near you 🎬2:04 PM ∙ Apr 27, 202210Likes2Retweets

Lucas Ribeiro @lucasribei_roHere are some pieces I made for the @ETHMovie collection. Since day one I new this project would be HUGE, and after the announcement of Ridley Scott as a producer, I'm even more excited and anxious about it! 🤯🚀

3:57 PM ∙ Apr 26, 202216Likes9Retweets

🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in The Defiant are written by Owen Fernau, Samuel Haig and yyctrader, and edited by Edward Robinson, yyctrader and 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.