🦄 Recap: DeFi Week of April 26

Hello Defiers! Hope you’re having a great weekend. Summing up the past week: Last week Ethereum reached a huge milestone in terms of institutional adoption with the European Investment Bank registering a 100M euro bonds on the network. The move helped pus...

Hello Defiers! Hope you’re having a great weekend.

Summing up the past week: Last week Ethereum reached a huge milestone in terms of institutional adoption with the European Investment Bank registering a 100M euro bonds on the network. The move helped push ETH over $2,700 for the first time. Rising ETH prices are coming with a growing user base with MetaMask monthly active users reaching 5M, while DeFi wallets crossed 2M.

We did a deep dive of the Solana blockchain in our Defiant Weekly video, produced a tutorial on how to swap tokens on Raydium, and published an ecosystem overview, which includes the network’s main DeFi projects. We covered how Polygon is taking the lead in the Layer 2 race, and its token is moving accordingly. Meanwhile Polygon founder raised over $3M for an India Covid Crypto Relief Fund.

Unslashed and Enzyme teamed up to provide insurance infrastructure and Balancer Labs and Gnosis launched a DEX that will combine Balancer V2’s liquidity pool system with Gnosis Protocol's price-finding mechanism. Hashflow launched a new decentralized exchange which uses institutional market makers instead of automated liquidity pools for prices, and we interviewed the founders on the podcast. Ilia Maksimenka of PlasmaPay argues DeFi builders should take a page from the fintech rule book in this week’s op-ed.

And there was more! There’s a lot going on, but we’ve got you covered :)

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).

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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.
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Video

📺 Defiant Weekly: A Deep Dive into Solana

📺 Quick Take: Uranium Finance Exploit – $57M

📺 Tuesday Tutorials: How to swap and provide liquidity on Raydium

📺 First Look: 2-in-1! Polywhale: Yield Farming on Polygon (Matic) + Phantom: DeFi & NFT wallet

Interview

"We Said Let's Start With Uniswap and See What We Can Unbundle:" Pranay Mohan of Hashflow

In this week’s episode, we talk with Varun Kumar and Pranay Mohan from Hashflow, a new decentralized exchange that wants to unbundle Uniswap. What this means is, they want to keep the non-custodial side and the liquidity pools, but instead of finding prices with smart contacts and a formula, they use market makers applying their highly specialized strategies and algorithms behind the scenes. Anyone can become a market maker, and some may open their pools so that others will be able to share their capital in exchange for a portion of trading fees. Their bet is that they will combine machines and humans in just the right way, to provide cheaper rates at lower prices.

🎙Listen to the interview in this week’s podcast episode here:

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Op-ed

What DeFi Can Learn From Fintech Adoption

This week’s guest opinion piece dives into the all-important topic of mainstream adoption for crypto and DeFi. For all its past growth and innovation, less than 1% of the world is using decentralized finance —that’s both a huge opportunity for those building in the space, and a huge challenge. Arguably, developers have been building for insiders. How to build for the larger, 99% of people who don’t have experience with crypto, and who also may need it the most?

Ilia Maksimenka of PlasmaPay argues DeFi builders should take a page from the fintech rule book, and look at what these companies did to reach the masses. Maksimenka questions some of the common practices seen in DeFi today, often hailed as UI/UX triumphs —maybe that minimalistic AMM interface isn’t so intuitive for most users after all. Don’t dangle tech in people’s faces, user recognizable patterns, and make it easier to go from fiat to DeFi. Read his take.

📬 Inbox Dump #6

Only for paid subscribers: The Inbox Dump is where we include the updates and announcements that flood our DMs each week and didn’t make it to our content platforms. At The Defiant we cover the most important DeFi-related news and developments but I know many of you are hunting for projects before they are fully developed and before they are newsworthy. The goal with this installment of the newsletter is to help you find them. Look at this as the starting point to DYOR. We also include a compilation of DeFi and crypto funding rounds in the past week so you have these in one handy place.

Thursday

Dives

Bytes

Links

Wednesday

Markets

  • EIB’s Blockchain Bond Pushes ETH to New Highs: 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.
  • Polygon Takes Lead in Layer 2 Race as MATIC Token Soars: 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.

Dives

Bytes

Links

Tuesday

Tutorials

DeFi 101

  • Solana DeFi Ecosystem Overview: Solana has emerged as one of the handful of smart contracts platforms competing to become a base layer for DeFi applications, with some of its projects gaining traction as its SOL token climbs to the top 15 by market capitalization. This overview looks at the main DeFi dapps on Solana and compared them with Ethereum and BSC applications.

Markets

Bytes

💜Community Love💜

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

the-defiant

psy^ @psyOPs_@DirSchmidt @RajGokal @DefiantNews Really enjoyed this vid. Thanks for doing the deep dive i should've done myself months ago 😅3:51 PM ∙ May 1, 2021

Peter Renton @LendAcademyI have been educating myself on #DeFi since the start of the year, and have become an avid reader of @DefiantNews. This week's piece hits the nail on the head. For mass adoption user friendliness needs to be the focus and DeFi has a long way to go here:

the-defiant

thedefiant.ioWhat DeFi Can Learn From Fintech Adoption - The Defiant - DeFi NewsRoughly only 1% of the world’s population are crypto users —and far fewer for DeFi— suggests that the true milestone for crypto and DeFi, which is mass adoption, is going to be a struggle to achieve without solving their current challenges.5:20 PM ∙ May 1, 202112Likes4Retweets

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DefiDrifter @DefiDrifter@DefiantNews love the ending bit about maximalism...well put man, well put !!!

the-defiant

youtu.beA Deep Dive into SolanaOur sponsorshttps://balancer.finance/https://aave.com/https://app.zerion.io/Linkshttps://outlierventures.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/OV-Blockchain-Dev-Q1-2...12:50 PM ∙ May 1, 2021

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Garious 🦀 @garious14@DefiantNews @solana @DirSchmidt I really enjoyed this, especially the maxi commentary in the last 3 minutes, but also all the decentralization insights and fun word play along the way. Thanks for sharing!12:29 PM ∙ May 1, 2021

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Top Signals LLC @bitcointarget“when the Snowden leaks happened, the ennui of what I was experiencing as a potato chip engineer bubbled up to the surface” Oh my days only in crypto 😂😂 @DefiantNews @CamiRusso @pranaymohan @GandalfTheBr0wn this was awesome 🙌 open.spotify.com/episode/2LDZym…

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open.spotify.com“We Said Let’s Start With Uniswap and See What We Can Unbundle:” Pranay Mohan of HashflowListen to this episode from The Defiant on Spotify. In this week’s episode, we talk with Varun Kumar and Pranay Mohan from Hashflow, a new decentralized exchange that wants to unbundle Uniswap. What this means is, they want to keep the non-custodial side and the liquidity pools, but instead of find…9:55 PM ∙ Apr 30, 20216Likes3Retweets

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THE DEMATERIALISED @dematerialisedHave you had a chance to check out “The Greatest #NFT Film Ever Made” yet? It’s highly recommended viewing from @DirSchmidt and @DefiantNews . Plus @dematerialised @lukso_io and @the_fab_ric_ant get a name check 1hr in 🦾 . More soon!!! youtube.com/watch?v=cY9lM7…

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7:28 AM ∙ Apr 29, 202167Likes17Retweets

DeFi Resources 👨🏼‍🌾 apyvision.crypto 🚀 @DeFiResourcesPolygon takes lead in Layer 2 race as MATIC token and assets soar. Have you bought any $MATIC? bit.ly/3eFRDWB #DeFi #DeFiNews #Layer2 #L2 #Matic #Polygon via @DefiantNews

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bit.lyPolygon Takes Lead in Layer 2 Race as MATIC Token and Assets Soar - The Defiant - DeFi NewsPolygon’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.11:18 PM ∙ Apr 28, 20215Likes1Retweet

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mariano.eth 🦇🔊 @nanexcoolI just subscribed to @DefiantNews Paid with Dai via @UnlockProtocol !!! Took about 2 minutes 🚀10:40 PM ∙ Apr 28, 202166Likes14Retweets

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Richest Man In London @RichestManInLDNTop 4 youtube channels for learning about #DeFi not in order: @coinbureau @finematics @DefiantNews @Interaxis810:36 PM ∙ Apr 27, 202113Likes4Retweets

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🌏🌶️Ben👹🐙 @BenduPeloux@DefiantNews keeps shippin' some quality content⭐️. Besides #tokens and #governance, I think the key feature compared to #tradfi or #equity is the speed of execution & its feedback loop. A fantastic playground for solving issues such as the #commons.

the-defiant

bit.lyGovernance Tokens: Investing in the Building Blocks of a New Economy -One of the most important building blocks in DeFi is the governance token. When blockchains have on-3:12 PM ∙ Apr 27, 20215Likes1Retweet

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DCinvΞstor ☀ @iamDCinvestorsome "influencers" & YouTubers are getting paid to shill without disclosing it beware separate signal from noise imo, the best resources for getting started in #Ethereum and #DeFi are: @BanklessHQ @DefiantNews @ethhub_io @thedailygwei @WeekInEthNews @OurNetwork__2:54 PM ∙ Apr 27, 2021351Likes54Retweets

the-defiant

$MIGUEL Piedrafita 🌟 @m1guelpf@DefiantNews is a great example of this. Their daily newsletter includes: - Relevant news on crypto and Ethereum - Profiles on new trends and projects in the space - Interviews with influential people Plus awesome tutorials on YouTube, and much more!1:55 AM ∙ Apr 26, 202110Likes1Retweet

the-defiant

🌏🌶️Ben👹🐙 @BenduPelouxan exhaustive view on #DAOs by @DefiantNews with a great take on their disruption : "they are dramatically accelerating the provision and scale of services." in a borderless & censorshipless way. #management #NGO #CorpGov #governance #community #startup

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2key.meWhat is a DAO? Mapping Out the Ecosystem - The Defiant - DeFi NewsThis article offers a 10,000ft view on the ‘Decentralized {Autonomous} Organization’, or DAO tooling4:32 PM ∙ Apr 26, 202110Likes2Retweets

the-defiant

Alex Gold @alex_gold77This is a phenomenal article that succinctly outlines the #crypto ecosystem - in case you were wondering... thedefiant.io/what-is-a-dao-… @DefiantNews #DAO

the-defiant

thedefiant.ioWhat is a DAO? Mapping Out the Ecosystem - The Defiant - DeFi NewsThis article offers a 10,000ft view on the ‘Decentralized {Autonomous} Organization’, or DAO tooling and project landscape. It’s intended to be complementary to introductory posts like Linda Xie’s ‘A beginner’s guide to DAOs’. The goal is to help contributors and participants better acclimate themse…4:39 PM ∙ Apr 26, 202121Likes6Retweets

Decrypted @DecryptedMediaCredit for the video is owed to @DefiantNews Watch the rest of the overview on how @Flashstake plans to create their version of Venmo with "transfers-less transactions" 👇 youtu.be/csEvTaqmsYw

the-defiant

youtu.beRedeem Money From The Future with FlashstakeLinkshttps://flashstake.iohttps://xord.com/publications/flash-ecosystem-an-in-depth-explanationhttps://medium.com/bombx/the-tokenization-of-time-rise-risks-a...4:54 AM ∙ Apr 26, 202124Likes1Retweet

the-defiant

Modern Age Wealth @ModernAgeWealth@ROGUEWEALTH If you're starting from minimal knowledge about DeFi, the following two resources helped me the most. The Defiant DeFi 101: thedefiant.io/defi-101/ Finematics (a bit more technical):

the-defiant

finematics.comGuide To Decentralized Finance – Finematics5:42 PM ∙ Apr 25, 202185Likes13Retweets

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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 below ($15/mo, $150/yr).

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