🦄 Recap: DeFi Week of Jan. 2
Well, that was a sobering week. Wow. Color those charts red. The crypto markets took a beating over the first seven days of 2022, with ETH and BTC plunging to three-month lows. What comes next? Bear market blues? A great source of intel is Sam Haig’s weekl...
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Weekly RecapWell, that was a sobering week. Wow. Color those charts red. The crypto markets took a beating over the first seven days of 2022, with ETH and BTC plunging to three-month lows. What comes next? Bear market blues? A great source of intel is Sam Haig’s weekly Market Action report, published on Mondays. Sam breaks down trends, patterns, and surprises in the DeFi market. This week, he looked at how Curve, Convex, and MakerDAO were bright spots in the carnage.
While we’re on the topic of markets, Owen Fernau wrote how NFT investors sent volumes soaring in the last couple of weeks, a below-the-radar piece of reporting that we love at The Defiant. In our Weekend Read, Brady Dale delivers s fascinating look at how Axie Infinity isn’t resting on the performance it notched in 2021 and is prepping a land gaming mode to solidify its market dominance.
The ever industrious Robin Schmidt and his crew also produced some killer new segments on The Defiant YouTube channel, including a First Look at Terra Money’s hookup with THORChain and Olympus Pro and an explainer on web3.
In other news, The Defiant published a series of stories over the holidays chronicling the madness and biggest stories of the last year, plus the Top Defiers of 2021, biggest DeFi Debacles, and juiciest Airdrops. It was amazing to see how DeFi evolved last year. We can’t wait to see what comes next!
👉 Since you’re a paid subscriber, you will be able to download a PDF compiling all our year-end content in a beautifully formatted report. These 97 pages deliver an in-depth overview of all the stories, people and developments that shaped 2021. If you want to start off the year prepared and knowledgeable about the latest in DeFi and web3, this is the way.
Click on this link and type password defiant2021 to access the report
Screenshot of the first 12 pages of The Defiant 2021 Year in Review
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The Tube
📺 Real Vision vs. The Defiant: “EMINAPE” USHERS IN 2022 AS YEAR OF NFT CULTURE
📺 First Look: Terra Money + THORChain + Olympus Pro = Vader Protocol
📺 Tuesday Tutorial: Maximum Yield for Stablecoins: Degenbox by Abracadabra Money
📺 Quick Take: WTF is Web3?
📺 Quick Take: Coming clean - how the Defiant is REALLY funded
📺 The Defiant Weekly - the biggest, the weirdest, the most creative of 2021
Weekend Read
🏞 Axie Infinity to Release Land Gaming Mode in Bid to Maintain Dominance
In which Brady Dale delves into Axie Infinity’s next act.
Axie Infinity is entering another dimension. It’s not going to just be a sort of Pokémon game any longer. A new wrinkle is coming. “Land is another game mode built in the Axie universe,” Jeffrey Zirlin of Sky Mavis, the company that’s building the Axie Infinity game, told The Defiant in an interview.
On New Year’s Eve, the team published a blog post teasing gaming on Axie land — ownable plots in the Axie creatures’ world, Lunacia. The move introduces a whole new kind of gameplay for the Axie NFTs that have driven so much activity over the last year. The blog post included a short teaser trailer that allows players to have a look at the quality of art powering the game.
Axie Infinity had a giant year in 2021. It was in the vanguard of the play-to-earn revolution spawned by blockchains. Its AXS governance tokens are selling for $88, up 149X from where it was in early 2021.
It also brought in $1.3B in revenue in the last year, according to Token Terminal. But obviously the pressure is on to keep up that dominance. Axie is now a game with basically two modes: quests and battles. Both allow users to earn cryptocurrency, but some have criticized the level of gameplay for such a buzzy enterprise.
Friday
News
- Rug-Pullers and Black-Hats Ran Wild in 2021 With $2.2B Lost to Theft: ReportHackers, exploiters, rug-pullers, and other DeFi miscreants had a prolific 2021. That’s the upshot from a finding by Chainalysis, the blockchain forensic analysis firm.
- ERC-4626 Proposes To Make Yield-Bearing Tokens Their Own DeFi LegoA new proposed token standard for Ethereum sent optimistic ripples through the DeFi community this week. Joey Santoro, co-founder of the Fei protocol, introduced a new token standard, called Ethereum Request for Comment (ERC) 4626 on Twitter on Jan. 4 to general support.
- Index and Bankless Have a New Token for the Lazy but Risk Hungry DeFi InvestorNot sure which of the up-and-coming decentralized finance tokens are the right bet? Why not just buy all of them?
- Devs Flock to Ethereum But Fulltimers Still Sorely Needed as DeFi ExpandsIt may not be a surprise, but now we have the proof: Devs love Ethereum more than ever. The lion’s share of developers — 700 — are joining the Ethereum ecosystem every month, according to a report published by Electric Capital, a crypto research firm.
- Vitalik Cheers NFTs, Layer 2s, and Previews Ethereum 2.0 in PodcastVitalik Buterin is just like everyone else — he digs NFTs, too. That was just one of the observations made by the co-creator of Ethereum in an appearance on Bankless’ podcast on Jan. 4. In a freewheeling discussion, Buterin also weighed in on Ethereum 2.0 and Layer 2 scaling solutions.
Links
- $139M Terra proposal to ‘bring awesome UST use-cases’ to DeFi projects: CoinTelegraph
- Bitcoin Slips to 3-Month Low, Analysts Divided on Impact of Fed’s Tightening: CoinDesk
- GameStop Entering NFT and Cryptocurrency Markets as Part of Turnaround Plan: The Wall Street Journal
- Goldfinch raises $25M led by Andreessen Horowitz to double-down on 154X growth in 2021: Medium
- A new parachain slot auction started yesterday, and Composable Finance is currently in the lead: Polkadot
- The EF research team will host a Reddit AMA on Jan 7 at 1pm UTC: Ethereum Foundation
Thursday
News
- Sunflower Game Throws Wrench in Polygon’s GearsFees on Ethereum scaling solution Polygon are surging to record highs. The cause? A game. Polygon gas prices spiked to an all-time high of a 410 Gwei average. That’s nearly twice as much as the previous high of 226 posted on Dec. 4, according to Polygon’s block explorer.
- TradFi Billionaires Bet Livepeer’s DeFi Streaming Model Can Disrupt YouTubeIn the latest sign Wall Street billionaires are moving deeper into DeFi, Livepeer, an Ethereum-based video streaming network, has raised $20M in a funding round including Tiger Global, the technology investment firm led by one-time hedge fund manager Chase Coleman, and Alan Howard, the co-founder of Brevan Howard Asset Management.
- BitGo Makes Deal with Index Coop in Bet Institutions Want ‘Thematic’ DeFi TokensBitGo, a crypto platform that caters to institutional investors, has launched support for Index Coop’s “thematic” tokens. The move signals growing demand from institutions for products that allow them to speculate on nascent segments breaking through in the DeFi and Web3 sectors, including Metaverse and data economy projects.
Links
- Congress is preparing an oversight hearing on Bitcoin mining's environmental impact: sources: The Block
- Multidimensional EIP 1559: Ethresearch
- Will This DAO Succeed in Revamping Blockbuster for Web 3.0?: CoinDesk
- Bitcoin Falls to 1-Month Low as Fed Minutes Reveal Talks to Shrink Balance Sheet: CoinDesk
- Wow! @UmamiFinance now partners with @OlympusDAO on @arbitrum!: Arbitrum
- Visa onboards first @Solana project to its #Fintech Fast Track program: CryptoSlate
Wednesday
Markets
- Osmosis Lights Up the Market with 80% Run in Last 14 DaysOsmosis, a decentralized exchange, has made its way to the front page of CoinGecko as its token has repeatedly rallied in the new year.
News
- Aave’s New Platform Attracts 30 Institutional Players in Big Push for GrowthThirty institutions have joined Aave Arc, the DeFi lending giant’s platform catering to TradFi and crypto firms, the platform said today. The firms, which signed up on a whitelisted basis, include Galaxy Digital, a financial services firm, CoinShares, a digital asset investment outfit, and Wintermute, a market maker.
- DeFi Projects Embrace Vote Locking Governance Tokens to Boost ValuationsVote locking governance tokens is the new hotness for decentralized finance protocols. DeFi had a good 2021 but the tokens underlying the big protocols did not. DeFi tokens have been hammered, and many of their investors are wondering if they shouldn’t have just bought and held ETH instead.
- Giancarlo Assails ‘Defensive and Reactionary’ Crypto Policy and Calls for Single U.S. WatchdogChristopher Giancarlo, the former chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), said turf battles between federal agencies were bad for crypto and joined Coinbase’s call for the creation of a single regulator overseeing digital assets.
Links
- OpenSea raises $300 million at $13 billion valuation, with backing from Coatue and Paradigm: The Block
- CoinFund, Franklin Templeton Back Metaversal in $50M Funding Round: CoinDesk
- How to use zkSync: Bankless
- What Crypto Can Learn From Elizabeth Holmes’ Fraud Conviction: CoinDesk
- And here's the first use of the new Meebits API!: Larva Labs
- Here’s where Labs is headed in 2022: Uniswap
Tuesday
News
- NFT Investors Shake Lull and Send Market Volume to Four-Month HighNFTs are back. Daily volume across the top Ethereum NFT marketplaces OpenSea, Rarible, Foundation, SuperRare, surpassed $231M on Jan 2, its highest level since Aug. 30, according to a Dune Analytics query.
- U.S. Orders DeFi Platform Polymarket to Pay $1.4M and Shut Unlicensed MarketsThe U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has settled charges against Polymarket, an Ethereum-based prediction markets platform, ordering the firm to pay a $1.4M penalty and remove its unauthorized markets by Jan. 14.
- Aave Unveils Mobile Wallet and Eyes V3 Deployment on StarkNetAave, a leading decentralized lending protocol, is developing a mobile wallet, the company said on Jan. 1. Founder Stani Kulechov said Aave holds an electronic money license in the U.K. to support the wallet.
- Yearn Passes New Tokeneconomics, Rewarding YFI Stakers With Up to $35M Per YearYearn has decided to make governance pay. Yield aggregator Yearn Finance has closed the vote on its new tokenomics. Once implemented, holders of its YFI governance token will need to stake their tokens to participate in governance, but in doing so they will be able to earn more YFI.
Links
- Grayscale reshuffles its DeFi index, adds Flexa's AMP: The Block
- What Jack Dorsey Doesn't Get about Web3 | LITE: Bankless
- More billionaires turning to crypto on fiat inflation fears: CoinTelegraph
- Crypto tycoons help drive global art market to record levels in 2021: The Guardian
- Half a Billion in Bitcoin, Lost in the Dump: The New Yorker
- Hey #LUNAtics, @binance has added 2 new $LUNA trading pairs: Terra Daily
- Another V2 pool with T network token: Curve Finance
Monday
On the Radar 2022
- Blockchain Interoperability Moves Closer to Fruition But Challenges Remain
- DAOs Poised to Scale if They Can Clear Major Hurdles
- Regulators Target Crypto on Multiple Fronts in Pivotal Year
- Layer 2s Flex and Efficiency Thrives
- Looking Forward to a Greener Ethereum in 2022
Markets
Defiers of the Year:
- pplpleasr, NFT Maestro
- Samczsun, DeFi Hero
- Nayib Bukele, Crypto Prez
- Cathie Wood, TradFi Queen
- Brian Armstrong, CeFi King
- Mark Zuckerberg, Worst of Web2
- Alexis Ohanian, Best of Web2
- Jack Dorsey, Recalcitrant Maxi
- Cooper Turley, Full-Time DAO-ist
- Chris Dixon, Ultimate DeFi VC
- Do Kwon, Innovator & Ecosystem Builder
- Daniele Sestagalli, Serial Founder
- Banteg, Hacker Extraordinaire
- Elon Musk, the Shitposter Par Excellence
💜Community Love💜
Thanking all the amazing Defiers for the support and love this week (and always)!
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🧑💻 ✍️ Stories in The Defiant are written by Brady Dale, Owen Fernau, Sanuel Haig, Bailey Reutzel, and yyctrader, and edited by Edward Robinson, yyctrader, Bailey Reutzel, and Camila Russo. Videos were produced by Robin Schmidt and Alp Gasimov. Podcast was led by Camila, edited by Alp.
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