🦄 Recap: DeFi Week of March 6

Hello Defiers! Happy Weekend! Regulation is coming. That’s been a watchword for the better part of a year as the Biden Administration telegraphed its intention to clamp down on the crypto. Don’t operate outside the perimeter – that was Gary Gensler’s warn...

Hello Defiers! Happy Weekend!

Regulation is coming. That’s been a watchword for the better part of a year as the Biden Administration telegraphed its intention to clamp down on the crypto. Don’t operate outside the perimeter – that was Gary Gensler’s warning to the industry. This week, the hammer dropped. And to the surprise of virtually everyone, it wasn’t a blow but, perhaps, an opportunity.

To understand the import of the President Biden’s executive order on crypto read Owen Fernau’s succinct and detailed news analysis. Owen spoke with leading voices on crypto policy, including Kristin Smith, Connor Spelliscy, and the outspoken Ryan Selkis. The upshot: an oversight regime is coming, yet it may not be as draconian as Defiers feared, and most importantly, will reflect the fact that blockchain technologies are a historic breakthrough, and should be supported as such.

The crypto community will have to lobby and argue to make sure web3 fulfills its destiny. To learn more about that may happen, the prolific Robin Schmidt landed an exclusive interview with Andrew Yang to talk about his new venture, Lobby3. Yang says his group “will take the voices of web3 to Washington.” His timing couldn’t be better.

We continued our coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine with a special report from DappRadar analyzing the macroeconomic impact of the conflict, and its impact on blockchain technologies. It’s a comprehensive and probing report that highlights the utility of crypto in extreme geopolitical conditions.

Meanwhile, there was a flurry of news on the DeFi front: Sam Haig reported on the newest dustup around Anchor Protocol and its yield policies, and dug into Avalanche’s plan to invest $290M in ‘subnets’ for DeFi, GameFi and NFTs.
Brady Dale delved into how BitDAO is quietly amassing $2M a day in its treasury. Not to be missed is Owen Fernau’s feature on the restless Andre Cronje and his decision to quit DeFi for good. Owen writes how the Yearn Finance founder’s move isn’t really a surprise after all.

What remains a mystery is the identity of the DAO hacker who upended Ethereum years ago. Or at least it was until author and podcaster Laura Shin investigated the case for her new book The Cryptopians. Check out Camila Russo’s podcast with Laura as the two Ethereum historians unpack one of the great enigmas in crypto.

Enjoy!

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).

Subscribe now

🙌 Together with:

  • Verse Network by STP, is a Layer 2 for DAOs. Redefining value one DAO at a time.
  • Eden Rocket RPC, providing the fastest private transactions on Ethereum (90%+ hashrate). Trade better anywhere on Ethereum with Eden Rocket RPC.
  • Zerionis Mission Control for Web3: an intuitive DeFi portfolio manager, multichain tracking & trading and the best place to show off your NFT collection.
  • Unstoppable Domains, Unstoppable Domain is the #1 provider of NFT domains. One domain, the entire metaverse - your Unstoppable domain is all you need to verify your humanity and access sites and apps on the decentralized web. Get yours today!
the-defiant

⍺ DeFi Alpha Newsletter

Check out and subscribe to DeFi Alpha, a weekly newsletter by The Defiant and DeFi Dad, packed with tutorials and tips on how to earn yield in DeFi.

This week:

⍺ DeFi Alpha: Wield Excalibur For 200% APR on Stablecoins + Curve Boosts With Concentrator

Podcast

🎙 Laura Shin on Solving Ethereum's Greatest Mystery with Her New Book, The Cryptopians

the-defiant

In this week’s episode of The Defiant podcast, we speak to Laura Shin, the former senior editor at Forbes and host of the popular podcast Unchained, about her new book The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze.’ In Cryptopians, Laura may have solved Ethereum’s biggest mystery; the identity of the DAO hacker. In this interview, she goes into the backstory of how she came up with the most credible suspect to date.

The DAO hack was a story to behold, but was by no means the only theme of ‘The Cryptopians.’ Laura’s book delves deep into the Ethereum story itself and those at the core of the project, making new revelations and delivering an extremely detailed account. She talks about the most surprising discoveries she made. We also discuss her Unchained podcast, and what comes next for her now that her first book is out.

The Tube

📺 EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Finally Web3 has REAL lobbying power || head to head w/ Andrew Yang

📺 SuperMassive NFT Show: Think Bigger: Conscientious NFT Projects

📺 First Look: MoverDAO - a metaverse debit card for everyone. But how?

📺 Tuesday Tutorial: XDeFi - the last wallet you’ll ever need?

📺 Quick Take: Andre has left the building

Weekend Read

😲 Andre Cronje’s Sudden Exit Leaves DeFi Agog But It’s Right in Character

In which Owen Fernau reports on one of the more dramatic departures from DeFi by one of its most influential figures.

the-defiant

Andre Cronje’s relationship with DeFi has never been simple. Back in February 2020, the founder of Yearn Finance wrote a blog post called Building in #DeFi Sucks. “Not a sensationalist title, honestly it sucks,” he said. “It’s expensive, the community is hostile, the users are entitled.”

A year later, Cronje was back with another rant, warning entrepreneurs about the years of toil it takes to bring ideas to fruition in DeFi. “This in itself can be demotivating. But now, add hundreds (sometimes thousands) of people shouting on telegram, discord, and twitter, ‘When will it be released?’, ‘Why hasn’t it been released?’, ‘give us an update’, and significantly more hostile messages.”

Now it appears Cronje has finally quit DeFi for good. “Andre and I have decided that we are closing the chapter of contributing to the defi/crypto,” tweeted Cronje’s longtime collaborator Anton Nell on March 6. “There are around ~25 apps and services that we are terminating on 03 April 2022.”

Deep Dive

💰 BitDAO’s War Chest Quietly Grows $2M Per Day After Token Sales to Thiel and Pantera

In which Brady Dale digs into the mysterious rise of BitDAO, the so-called DAO of DAOs.

The BitDAO treasury is the largest for a DAO you’ve never heard of. According to Open-Orgs, BitDAO currently has $1.8B in it, making it the second largest treasury of any publicly viewable treasury on Ethereum, following that of Uniswap and just ahead of those of Ethereum Name Service, Lido, and Gitcoin.

BitDAO holds the number 2 spot largely thanks to its governance token, BIT, which accounts for about $1B of that treasury. Its governance token currently trades for around $1.06. That treasury also grows at a pace of roughly $2M per day without diluting BIT holders.

“I think people in crypto have been excited about coordinating capital better than you can as an individual,” Jonathan Allen, of Mirana Ventures, a sister fund of ByBit, the exchange that managed spinning up the BitDAO concept, told The Defiant.

Research

🇺🇦 Exclusive DappRadar Report: How Russia’s War and the West’s Response is Impacting Crypto

DappRadar analyzes the global economic impact of Russia’s military aggression, and what it means for blockchain technologies.

the-defiant

When Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, its neighbor and trading partner, the world reacted in horror and anger. The West, led by the U.S. and the E.U., immediately imposed severe sanctions on President Vladimir Putin’s regime, including barring its access to foreign reserves. The global economy has been impacted with soaring energy and commodities prices, and capital markets are grappling with the uncertainty and long-term effects of Putin’s aggression and the worst military tragedy on the European continent since World War II.

The cryptocurrency community, too, has been roiled by this tragedy. Due to blockchain technology’s peer-to-peer nature, there are a number of questions about the utility of Bitcoin and other digital assets in the war zone, and in Russia itself, where ordinary citizens have lost purchasing power as the rouble craters and access to financial infrastructure such as the Swift system.

In this report, we unpack the macroeconomic forces at work and analyze how blockchain-based solutions may come to play an important role as the war continues.

the-defiant

In a way not seen before, blockchain and web3 are demonstrating their value in contributing to the humanitarian effort to bring aid to Ukrainian refugees, and to providing support to Ukrainian citizens defending their country against the Russian military.

IntoTheBlock Report

🧐 How Swapping and Staking on Curve Drives High User Engagement

On-Chain Markets Update by Pedro Negron IntoTheBlock

Curve Finance was launched in 2020 with the initial purpose of creating an automated market maker (AMM) exchange for assets pegged to one another. By using efficient algorithms they soon experienced incredible growth, offering some of the lowest fees, slippage, and impermanent loss in the DeFi space.

Since their focus was on stable assets, fees for liquidity providers (LPs) tended to be smaller. This created the need for the protocol to offer incentives to its liquidity providers. These incentives were given in the form of CRV which also works as a governance token for the Curve DAO. This article analyzes Curve’s high user engagement on the swapping and staking side of the protocol.

Volume traded is an important indicator to understand DEXes. They show the platform’s usage. IntoTheBlock gathers all daily volume traded on Curve’s pools on Ethereum and aggregates it into a single indicator.

the-defiant

Source: IntoTheBlock DeFi Insights

Primer

📝 Decoding The NFT Black Box

Guest writer Tiffany Priosoetanto-Masrin shares her tips and experience on understanding the increasingly complex NFT space.

the-defiant

Entering the NFT space is a little like venturing out into a hurricane. DeFi, crypto, Web3, and a slew of acronyms come at you from all sides.

What’s worse is that scammers are taking advantage of this learning curve. Cases of fake websites and malicious links that steal your secret seed phrases and drain your wallet are serious obstacles to adoption. That being said, there is little doubt that NFTs are an emerging medium with the potential to become a global phenomenon, if they aren’t there already.

Most NFT projects are a form of crowdfunding or investment into a new type of asset in conjunction with real estate, trading cards, luxury handbags, and wine. As an investor at a venture capital firm, I’ll be drawing parallels from the traditional finance world to the metaverse in order to show you a comfortable pathway into NFT investments.

Friday

News

Links

Thursday

News

Links

Wednesday

News

Markets

  • Privacy Coins Shake Off Their Slumber and Spike 25% in 24 HoursPrivacy coins were dead in the water, an afterthought for most of last year as the crypto market hit all-time highs and they languished. Now, the top two privacy coins, Monero’s XMR, and Zcash’s ZEC, are both up more than 25% on Tuesday before settling at 21% and 16% respectively in early morning trading U.K. time. What’s going on?

Links

Tuesday

Markets

News

Links

💜Community Love💜

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

the-defiant

The DΞFi Ξducator 📖 @DeFi_educatorThis is probably the most comprehensive guide to DeFi to date from @DefiantNews

the-defiant

newsletter.thedefiant.io✊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.11:47 PM ∙ Mar 10, 202231Likes7Retweets

the-defiant

Kevin Beardsley @kevinhbeardsleyWhen you're building a product, thoughtful reviews from major outlets like this are incredibly valuable and motivating. A huge thank you to @IamSuperMassive and the team at @DefiantNews from all of us at @xdefi_wallet!

the-defiant

youtu.beXDeFi - the last wallet you’ll ever need?XDEFI Wallet is a cross-chain wallet extension. You can store, send and receive all your digital assets from a single place.Our sponsorshttps://rpc.edennetwo...12:18 PM ∙ Mar 9, 20227Likes3Retweets

the-defiant

Bad Karol @Bad_Karol_ArtWhile part of me disagrees with the amount of power accumulated in one person, I can’t help but love to hear @gavofyork talk about @Polkadot with so much enthusiasm and idealism 😻🔥 Great Interview by @CamiRusso @DefiantNews 👇 m.youtube.com/watch?v=-avBxG…

the-defiant

m.youtube.comPolkadot’s Gavin Wood on Building a Layer 0 to Underpin the Entire Blockchain-Based EconomyThis week on The Defiant Podcast we speak to Gavin Wood. Gavin’s crypto journey started with Ethereum – he was one of the eight original founders and the pro...8:32 PM ∙ Mar 2, 202210Likes2Retweets

the-defiant

uniuyo.sol @barsieyWith the #EPNS protocol, you can now get news updates as published by @DefiantNews . Read more on the partnership below. #DeFi #blockchain #cryptocurrencies #Ethereum #news

the-defiant

EPNS | $PUSH @epnsprojectWe are super excited to announce our collaboration with the DeFi news & media platform: @DefiantNews🤩✨ Together, we aim to build a communication channel for Definat users to keep them updated on latest news🙌 Join & stay notified in this DeFi revolution with #PUSHtheDefiant✊ https://t.co/UxJSTwojvP3:30 PM ∙ Mar 7, 202210Likes5Retweets

the-defiant

RichBuffalo 🇺🇦💙💛 @RichBuffalo_ETHInteresting read, maybe $DPI is due for a tear given months of a #defi bear market. As always appreciate @DefiantNews!

the-defiant

thedefiant.ioDeFi Blue Chips Slide 80% Since 2021 as New Generation Rises - The DefiantA new generation of DeFi projects — Terra, Fantom — have had a blistering run in the last 30 days. The old guard, let’s call them DeFi 1.0 blue chips, not so much.12:36 AM ∙ Mar 5, 202214Likes3Retweets

the-defiant

DeFi Dad ⟠ defidad.eth ≡🦇🔈 @DeFi_DadWorking with @yyctrader1 to get @DefiantNews DeFi Alpha guide out shortly, featuring guides/tips on... ⚡️ @THORSwap LPs for two-digit yield on $ETH $BTC 🌔 @astroport_fi AMM on @terra_money 🦢 @aurigami_PLY money market on @auroraisnear @NEARProtocol

the-defiant

4:10 PM ∙ Mar 4, 202222Likes3Retweets

the-defiant

EPNS | $PUSH @epnsprojectWe are super excited to announce our collaboration with the DeFi news & media platform: @DefiantNews🤩✨ Together, we aim to build a communication channel for Definat users to keep them updated on latest news🙌 Join & stay notified in this DeFi revolution with #PUSHtheDefiant✊

the-defiant

5:44 PM ∙ Mar 1, 202281Likes27Retweets

the-defiant

The Infinite Machine Movie & Collection @ETHMovieThe infinite machine is going galactic now! Owned by @FGordillo #WAGMAM

the-defiant

12:37 PM ∙ Mar 9, 202241Likes5Retweets

the-defiant

CriptoEsCultura.ethᵍᵐ - Sabrina (she/ella) @criptoesculturaEn este #DiaInternacionalDeLaMujer quiero presentaros las magníficas obras #NFT de las 14 artistas hispanas que participan en nuestra exhibición #HispanicWomenInNFTs que saldrá a la venta en @DoinGudHQ el 6 de Abril como parte de la campaña #DoinGud17SDG 🧵1/

the-defiant

6:09 PM ∙ Mar 8, 202262Likes29Retweets

the-defiant

Colony @DefiantXColonygm new york if you're interested in working out of our new & very cozy facility in dumbo. please join the @DefiantNews discord and introduce yourself in the colony channel!

the-defiant

discord.ggJoin the The Defiant Discord Server!The DeFi news platform. | 3,241 members2:37 PM ∙ Mar 9, 20224Likes3Retweets

the-defiant

Cristobal Pereira @cristpereirag📢 #Recap de la semana gracias a @DefiantNews en Español 📰 Exponencial crecimiento en TVL de #Terra y #Fantom, el extraño fenómeno de #Pixelmon, más de #NFT, y por supuesto sobre #UkraineDAO Lee el recap defiantes.substack.com/p/-recap-defi-… ✅ Recuerda suscribirte!

the-defiant

9:30 PM ∙ Mar 6, 202227Likes8Retweets

🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in The Defiant are written by Owen Fernau, Sanuel 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.

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.

banner