Sydney Lai

You probably missed it.  It was a deal that didn’t involve a big NFT marketplace or a new decentralized crypto exchange. Yet the vote by members of Opolis, a digital employment cooperative, to launch a DAO is significant. Why? Because it’s the latest instance of venture capitalists’ love affair with decentralized autonomous organizations. It also…

The Chia network and its XCH cryptocurrency got a boost from Elon Musk’s recent lambasting of Bitcoin’s energy consumption.  Last week, Chia was trending on Twitter and in the five days since May 12  ̶ when Musk tweeted that he would no longer be accepting Bitcoin as a payment mechanism for Teslas because of Bitcoin’s…

DeFi is catching the attention of the mainstream consumer, as NFTs draw artists in and Elon Musk to Mark Cuban sing its praises. Introducing DeFi to consumers has been both a design and messaging challenge due to the technical comprehension required. Yet the rate of production and adoption may be converging. In the last week…

“Bitcoin billionaire” Tyler Winklevoss of Gemini submitted a governance proposal on a community forum for GUSD to be used as stablecoin collateral for loans on AAVE. Currently, GUSD can only be borrowed.  GUSD is a stablecoin that maintains value by holding one USD in reserve for each stablecoin issued. By using GUSD as collateral, borrowers…

Uniswap has become the first decentralized trading platform to process over $100B in volume, a sign DeFi is starting to compete in the big leagues of crypto.  The milestone for the DEX, which launched just over two years ago, shows that automated market makers, which are based on token liquidity pools instead of centralized order…

You know we’re heading into frothy markets when an otherwise unremarkable tweet sends a token flying.  Alpha Homora’s token ALPHA jumped by almost 50% to the highest since its launch in October after the DeFi project tweeted on Monday that 0.39% of ETH supply is locked in its smart contracts. That’s $600M, or 11th in…

Kyber Network just overhauled its protocol and token holders are loving it. Kyber’s KNC jumped 25% on Thursday after the announcement to the highest since 2018, compared with ETH’s 10% increase.  Over the weekend KNC retraced some of the gains and has been hovering between $1.3 and $1.45. The upgraded Kyber 3.0 will be transitioned…

After a series of flash loan attacks where DeFi protocols lost $100M in damages, Yearn acquired Cover Protocol to provide decentralized insurance. The project pays out claims from exploits or certain attacks on smart contracts, using a the  Snapshot voting tool to decide coverage. The claim will move to its Claim Validity Committee (CVC) to…

SushiSwap is the latest DeFi project to combine forces with Yearn Finance as Andre Cronje’s protocol continues with its merger spree to expand services to the addressable market.  As the announcement became public, there were no remarkable price jumps $SUSHI on the day of the announcement, however, it kept its price around $1-$2, a 98%…

Yearn Finance announced a merger with Akropolis, trailing a series of Yearn partnerships and recent ecosystem hacks.  Earlier this month, Akropolis lost $2M in an exploitation attack. This technical partnership highlights the permissionless nature of DeFi, where Akropolis could make the unilateral decision to integrate itself in the Yearn ecosystem. Akropolis enables under-collateralized lending protocol…

Yearn Finance and Pickle Finance today announced a merger where the teams are consolidating resources and technical stack. Just a few days earlier, Pickle was attacked and ~$20M Dai was drained (more on the attack below). The timing of the merger at the heel of a protocol attack highlights the seized opportunity these DeFi teams…

Hackers were able to drain $16.4 million in ETH and Dai from DeFi projects Akropolis, Value DeFi Protocol, and Origin Protocol using flash loans, just in the past week. Value DeFi Attack An attacker on Value DeFi swapped flash-loaned ETH for DAI and USDT, deposited part of the flash-loaned DAI into Value DeFi’s multi-stablecoin vault. They…