🦄 Recap: DeFi Week of May 17
Hello Defiers! Hope you’re having a great weekend and holding up amid the sell-off. Summing up: It's been a bad week for crypto — ETH is down moe than 40% in the past seven days and so are the top DeFi tokens, while BTC is down more than 20%. Analysts loo...
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Weekly RecapHello Defiers! Hope you’re having a great weekend and holding up amid the sell-off.
Summing up: It's been a bad week for crypto — ETH is down moe than 40% in the past seven days and so are the top DeFi tokens, while BTC is down more than 20%. Analysts looking for explanations for the downturn point to China regulation concerns and Elon Musk turning on BTC. Most likely, crypto had simply gone up too far, too fast. An over-leveraged market led to cascading liquidations, worsening the fall. Our Defiant Weekly video goes into all the drivers of the fall. But if you want to keep things light, head over to our “Wait for It” video, a hilarious production created for CoinDesk’s Consensus, which pokes fun at high Ethereum gas prices and features a deep fake of Vitalik and Terry Crews .
We covered how DeFi protocols held up better than centralized exchanges, never losing uptime amid record volume and liquidations. We wrote about how DeFi on-chain metrics remain strong, with Yearn taking advantage of the dip, buying back is own token, while BSC’s Venus didn’t handle the downturn as well and was left with a pile of bad debt.
Speaking of Yearn, we have a breakdown of the protocol’s complex ecosystem, diving into how each of its merger partners fit and work with each other. We also dug into BSC’s main applications and how its users are proving to be more fickle in the market rout. We also have an explainer on Ethereum’s MEV bots and the projects trying to solve this problem.
In this week’s launches and upgrades, Coinbase announced a new wallet browser plugin that will more directly compete with MetaMask, Sushi released its Miso token launchpad, and Aave hinted at a product for institutions. In our tutorials, we go through how to yield farm using Convex Finance, and how to become a liquidity provider for free by playing APY Vision’s LP Royale game. If you’re looking to keep your eye on the long term vision for web3 amid the market blood-bath, head to our podcast where Kayvon Tehranian talks about how blockchains are adding a value layer to the internet.
And there was more! There’s a lot going on, but we’ve got you covered :)
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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.
Video
📺 Defiant Weekly: Bear Market Blues
📺 V'ktalik Buterin - Wait for It feat. Terry Crews
📺 Quick Take: NBA Top Shots Sued
📺 Tuesday Tutorials: No Risk Liquidity Providing with LP Royale
📺 First Look: Trading Secretly with SecretSwap
Interview
"Blockchains are Adding Property Rights to the Internet:" Kayvon Tehranian
In this week’s episode I interview Kayvon Tehranian, founder & CEO of Foundation, a platform for minting, buying and selling non-fungible tokens. We talked about the future of the internet —Kayvon believes blockchains are adding property rights to the internet. He also thinks that instead of having to wait for old institutions to come online, new ones in the form of decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOS, will be built. He foresees a future when a lot of people will start saying, ‘why aren't you asking me to connect my wallet? Why do I have to log in this other way, that I don't have control over what I'm doing?’ I also believe that future is not so far away.
🎙Listen to the interview in this week’s podcast episode here:
📺Watch the Interview Here:
Thursday
Markets
- DeFi Protocols Show Resilience Amid Market Crash: In a selloff which saw Ethereum’s ETH and the DeFi Pulse Index basket of DeFi tokens dropping over 20% in an hour and more than 40% overall yesterday, DeFi protocols never stopped running and generally behaved as designed.
- DeFi Outperforms Post Crash as On-Chain Indicators Remain Strong: DeFi tokens in the DeFi Pulse Index dropped 50% versus ETH from March to early May. Since then, we have seen a reversal over the past few weeks with DPI rebounding over 30% with on-chain activity turning bullish for DeFi.
- BSC’s Venus Protocol Left With Bad Debt After Liquidations: Binance Smart Chain’s most popular lending protocol, Venus, experienced a massive string of market liquidations totaling over $200M on May 18, and Venus, itself, has been left with $100M in bad debt because of it.
Dives
- Yearn Finance Ecosystem Breakdown: Yearn Finance surprised the DeFi world late last year when the project announced a flurry of mergers with Cream, Pickle, SushiSwap, Akropolis, and Cover in the span of a week. While the mergers were well-publicized, the nature of the integrations were less so, so we dug into how the teams work together, on both a technical and social level.
Links
- More and More ‘Normies’ of Finance Are Getting ETH-Pilled: Bloomberg
- Jack Dorsey Says Bitcoin Can Make the World Greener. Could He Be Right?: New York Magazine
- “PANCAKEBUNNY: REKT”
Wednesday
Markets
- Crypto Makes First Attempt to Recover After Worst Bloodbath in Over a Year: It’s bad out there — in the past 24 hours Bitcoin plunged more than 30%, while Ether fell more than 40%, crypto exchanges were down, price tracking websites collapsed, China crackdown news flashed, crypto Twitter panic ensued. All in all, a classic crypto sell-off. But there are signs the market is starting to recover.
- Yearn Seizes Dip and Buys Back $1.47M of YFI Token: Yearn Finance is buying its own YFI token dip. The protocol recently announced it would buy 8.15 YFI, when the average price was $50,121. Because of today’s market crash, the organization is down $12K at the time of writing. Yearn doesn’t seem concerned by the drop, doubling down today and announcing another purchase of 21.35 YFI for $1.2M.
Bytes
- Sushi Introduces Miso Token Launchpad: The Sushi community voted and the protocol listened and is now introducing a token launchpad. The launchpad, called MISO, which stands for “Minimal Initial SushiSwap Offering,” is the latest product to arise from the community governance protocol that was built around the Ethereum-based decentralized exchange SushiSwap. It will be launched on May 20.
- Coinbase Wallet Could Give MetaMask a Run for Its Money: Coinbase Wallet has a new Chrome browser extension that will be competing directly with MetaMask, DeFi’s long-standing go-to browser wallet.
Tuesday
Tutorials
- Defiant Degens: How to Yield Farm with Curve LPs in Convex Finance: There are 2 very different opportunities with Convex depending on whether you are a Curve liquidity provider vs those who hold CRV and wish to be a CRV/cvxCRV LP to earn yield farming rewards in the form of CVX.
Markets
- Crypto Market Downturn Mostly Shakes Out Short-Term Bitcoin Traders: It’s been a rough week for the crypto market̶ and it appears to be at the hands of n00bs. Bitcoin (BTC) has been hit especially hard with a 25% loss over the past seven days, and the majority of people selling BTC since the end of April have been traders that have been holding onto the cryptocurrency for less than one month, according to data from IntoTheBlock.com.
Dives
- Polygon’s Rise Comes with Increased Scrutiny of the Scaling Solution’s Security: Polygon, which in the past month soared to become the most popular Ethereum scaling solution, is coming under fire as critics say it is too centralized to be considered secure.
- What Is Binance Smart Chain? Low Transaction Fees But Fickle DeFi Users: BSC has seen impressive growth, but users are proving to be fickle in the recent sell-off. The chain’s decentralized exchange Pancake Swap concentrates much of the chain.
- Aave Hints at New Institutional Product: Aave is hinting at a new product for allowing institutions to practice DeFi. On Monday, Aave founder Stani Kulechov tweeted the words “Aave Pro for institutions” alongside a cryptic screenshot. Kulechov previously teased Aave Pro on May 12, when he tweeted about a private pool for institutions to “practice before aping into DeFi.”
Links
- DeFi dashboard startup Zapper nets $1.5 million in seed round: The Block
- Cathie Wood's ARK holding Grayscale Ethereum Trust, filings show: The Street
- Give a Split: Using Mirror to Fund Public Goods: Mirror
Monday
DeFi 101
Ethereum’s MEV Bots: Explainer and Project Map: Blockchain miners can extract value by excluding, including or re-ordering the transactions on the block they produce. This is known as MEV (miner extractable value) and it’s only bound to increase in the future as DeFi volume and complexity increases.
Eco-Friendly Chia Network Gets Elon Musk Boost: The Chia network and its XCH cryptocurrency got a boost from Elon Musk’s recent lambasting of Bitcoin’s energy consumption.
Links
💜Community Love💜
Thanking all the amazing Defiers for the support and love this week (and always)!
The Defiant @DefiantNews🤖Cumulative Miner Extractable Value (MEV) has reached $559M as per https://t.co/p1Prumoufz Here's a look at the current state of #DeFi projects working on #MEV ⚡️Flashbots ♟️ @Keeper_DAO 🤫 @SecretNetwork 🏹 @Archer_DAO Read more👇 https://t.co/MIMGbprmwB https://t.co/69ZHFfbxqi8:05 AM ∙ May 22, 2021
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Fulvia 🍵 @fulviamoralesNo small feat. Source: @DefiantNews
12:40 PM ∙ May 21, 2021139Likes25Retweets
Pedro Costa @saagaz@DeFi_Dad @CamiRusso This is a true gem. That and other contributions to society from @DefiantNews and @CamiRusso towards leveling the financial game really inspired me to start writing something about it in Portuguese, as an attempt to spread the word in Brazil.2:45 AM ∙ May 21, 2021
DeFiFry🔥 @DeFiFryCould we be 6 months away from Proof of Stake (PoS) on $ETH? @CamiRusso interviews @preston_vanloon of @prylabs on @DefiantNews and they talk #Ethereum. Full Interview: youtu.be/FZ0TQAvVpac
2:31 AM ∙ May 21, 202141Likes10Retweets
thedefiant.ioYearn Finance Ecosystem Breakdown –– Pushing the Boundaries of Human Coordination - The Defiant - DeFi NewsWhile Yearn’s mergers were well publicized, the nature of the integrations were less so, so we dug into how the teams work together, on both a technical and social level.1:07 AM ∙ May 21, 202137Likes6Retweets
The Defiant @DefiantNews🎁 A little special something from us to you. 📽️Tune in for the premiere of our "Wait for It" tribute featuring @terrycrews in just under an hour at 3pm UTC🔥 Don't miss @DirSchmidt's #DeFi Unlocked session at @CoinDesk #Consensus2021⚡️ Watch here👇 https://t.co/eJNQNKzGRv3:26 PM ∙ May 20, 20217Likes1Retweet
The Defiant @DefiantNews🌐Global Report on Women, Cryptocurrency & Financial Independence by @MarinaSpindler and @paordgz7🔥 Women worldwide are embracing crypto and the report shows that they: ⚡️Are in it for the tech ⚡️Want to be paid in crypto ⚡️Hold digital assets 👇 https://t.co/bc3ibmz4iN https://t.co/dpIJN1sbJo2:03 PM ∙ May 20, 20218Likes2Retweets
podcasts.apple.comThe Defiant: “Ethereum is About Six Months Away from Proof-of-Stake:” Preston Van Loon on Apple PodcastsIn today’s episode, we interview Preston Van Loon. Preston co-founded Prysmatic Labs, one of the main teams building Ethereum 2.0, and has been leading that team for the past three years. On top of that, he recently founded a DeFi project which bundles the entire crypto market cap in one token to al…12:12 AM ∙ May 19, 202143Likes11Retweets
3NV364N @ENVegaN.@DefiantNews Awesome Job!!! Bravo!! Great content!! https://t.co/vxFwRCTI5R
The Defiant @DefiantNews📉 TVL on @BinanceChain has dropped by 35% to $20B as the crypto market continues to tread water With alternative low-fee options like @0xPolygon and @FantomFDN gaining traction, will users return? Read more👇 https://t.co/K5YD6vtcxS https://t.co/UWHuZ5iWkd11:10 PM ∙ May 18, 20219Likes2Retweets
Ryan Watkins @RyanWatkins_Just wait until DeFi starts receiving meaningful media coverage. Almost a year into this bull market and the media still hasn’t covered what is indisputably the single most exciting sector in crypto.6:00 PM ∙ May 18, 202154Likes7Retweets
spinbackwards @spinbackwards@CamiRusso Stay calm. Buy a subscription to The Defiant.3:39 PM ∙ May 17, 2021
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