🦄 Recap: DeFi Week of March 15

Hello Defiers! Hope you’re having a great weekend. Summing up: The week started out (again) with hacks. Social token platform Roll had its private keys compromised and an attacker was able to make off with tokens from over 400 creators. PancakeSwap and Cr...

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

Summing up: The week started out (again) with hacks. Social token platform Roll had its private keys compromised and an attacker was able to make off with tokens from over 400 creators. PancakeSwap and Cream Finance suffered a Domain Name Service attack which modified their websites to request users’ seed phrase. The latest NFT craze taking crypto by storm was MoonCats, digital animals pre-dating CryptoKitties. Elon Musk put up for sale a tweet about NFTs, as an NFT, and it was fetching more than $1M.

Aave launched a lending market for AMM liquidity provider tokens and Tyler Winklevoss proposed adding GUSD as collateral on Aave. Anchor Protocol is a new protocol which will be targeting a 20% fixed annual yield on stablecoins. Gnosis merged with Snapshot to facilitate on-chain governance, 1inch aims to reduce gas fees on its V3 update, and MetaMask introduced swaps to its mobile app.

dYdX founder Antonio Juliano came on the podcast to talk about the exchange’s move to Layer 2, and Gitcoin founder Kevin Owocki wrote an opinion piece on the stare of decentralized identity.

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

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🙌 Together with:

  • Zerion, a simple interface to access and use decentralized finance
  • 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
  • Casper, an enterprise-focused blockchain which aims to introduce unprecedented security, speed and scale for businesses
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Video

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📺 Quick Take: $69 Million for 5000 Days: Beeple by Numbers

Interview

"People Are Seeing The Writing on The Wall; DEXs Will Rule Crypto:" dYdX's Antonio Juliano

In this week’s episode we speak with Antonio Juliano, founder and CEO of dYdX, one of the biggest decentralized exchanges on Ethereum, focusing on derivatives. dYdX recently made news by being one of the first major DeFi projects to move to Layer 2.

One of the main goals for his team this year will be to further decentralize dYdX, Juliano said, from the order book to the control of their smart contracts. So yes, for those reading between the lines, that means decentralized governance, and Juliano isn’t ruling out a dYdX token. Juliano believes derivatives are going to be the biggest products in crypto and so his long-term goal is for dYdX to become one of the biggest crypto exchanges, period. He knows DEXes are just 5% of total crypto volume, but that’s up from 0% two years ago. He says, a lot of people are seeing the writing on the wall.

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

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📺 Or watch:

Op-ed

Decentralized Reputation Will Unlock the Internet Of Value

DeFi is criticized, and rightly so, for being a playground for speculators without much connection to the real economy. This is a direct consequence of the lack of a reputation mechanism. It’s such a hard piece to crack because the very core of decentralized finance is that it’s open to everyone and that usually means there’s no KYC, usernames and passwords. Your identity is your wallet.

In this week’s opinion column we’re talking about the holy grail of DeFi and web3. The one piece that’s necessary to open up so many essential use cases, yet hasn’t been cracked just yet: Decentralized identity. Gitcoin founder Kevin Owocki writes about this key primitive, the value it could potentially unlock, and the teams building to get us there.

Thursday

Dives

  • Streaming Content Refuses to Take Off (Even With Crypto): If we pay per song or video we stream or download, why not do the same with written content? Some are hailing crypto as a potential solution, but no platform has been able to become the Spotify or Netflix equivalent for print.
  • ETH in Whales’ Wallets Is Barely Budging: ETH in whales’ wallets isn’t budging while smaller holders take their tokens to DeFi. The number of wallets with 100 to 10K Ether have dropped by 7.2% since the cryptocurrency hit an all-time high four weeks ago.

Bytes

Links

Wednesday

Dives

Bytes

Links

Tuesday

Dives

Bytes

Links

💜Community Love💜

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

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DefiDrifter @DefiDrifterGod Damn! bullish as hell @novogratz @DefiantNews

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youtube.com“I Don’t Think We’re in a Bubble. We Had a Bubble in ’17; Now We’re in a Movement:” Mike NovogratzIn this week’s episode we speak with Mike Novogratz, the CEO of Galaxy Digital. He started his career at Goldman Sachs and then led a macro hedge fund at For...3:48 PM ∙ Mar 20, 20217Likes2Retweets

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Kevin Simback @KSimback@DirSchmidt I can’t get enough of @DirSchmidt and @DefiantNews videos. If the effort that goes into the research is a fraction of the quality of production these guys put out, it would still be among the top 1% of #DeFi content.3:57 PM ∙ Mar 20, 2021

MementoM @JGong_4Best podcasts uncommoncore.co @BanklessHQ @UpOnlyTV @theBlockcrunch @DefiantNews

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uncommoncore.coUncommon CoreAn independent perspective on money and crypto.7:54 PM ∙ Mar 19, 2021

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88mph 🛹 @88mphappTo wrap up this week, The Defiant is taking a deep dive into fixed-interest rate and structured products, with of course (spoiler alert🚨), a nice overview of 88mph protocol youtu.be/iWq4JEsDvcg

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The Defiant @DefiantNewsStep into crypto & it can feel like you’re throwing your life to the gods of thunder. But what if there was another way? 🤔 What if you could have your cake AND eat it... We bring you... Risky Business. Watch & learn 👇7:53 PM ∙ Mar 19, 202126Likes6Retweets

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cristina mailat @cm_mailatWant to understand $wCRES? Here is our founder's @robertesharratt thesis article in @DefiantNews

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bit.lyDeFi Needs a Safety Net to Make Banking Dinosaurs ExtinctFor many people, banks and not smart contracts still feel like the safest place to put their money.9:35 AM ∙ Mar 19, 202116Likes4Retweets

Chris Cable @mrchriscableVery pleased to contribute to the @DefiantNews in regards to $ETH movement across wallet sizes My title as 'NFT purveyor' for the @FLAMINGODAO has a nice ring to it... 😉 thedefiant.io/eth-in-whales-…

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thedefiant.ioETH in Whales’ Wallets Is Barely Budging - The Defiant - DeFi NewsETH in whales’ wallets isn’t budging while smaller holders take their tokens to DeFi.11:02 PM ∙ Mar 18, 202114Likes1Retweet

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Jay Putera @JayPuteraThis is a great guide to #DeFi and #NFT by @CamiRusso @DefiantNews Will send all my noob friends here instead of explaining it to them

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thedefiant.substack.com✊The Defiant’s Definitive Guide to DeFiAt The Defiant, we are convinced finance will become increasingly decentralized and open. It just makes sense; our current financial system is running on infrastructure that was built in the 1970s; messaging networks like SWIFT and ACH that simply aren’t made to transact value.3:46 AM ∙ Mar 2, 202114Likes2Retweets

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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 ($10/mo, $100/yr).

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