DeFi 2022: Heroes, Rogues, and Breakthroughs
Hello Defiers! Here's a compendium of our Year in Review stories published this week!
Well Defiers, we’ve reached the end of the road in what is surely the most trying year in the history of decentralized finance.
To chronicle this savage journey The Defiant’s crack writers fanned out across the crypto landscape to chronicle the most urgent, and valuable, stories and developments of the last 12 months.
Heroes, Rogues and Breakthroughs
There are heroes — read Aleks Gilbert’s profile of ZachXBT, our Defier of the Year and rogues — check out Aleks’ report on SBF and the other miscreants who poleaxed crypto with their legerdemain. There was the bear market, and there were exploits galore.
There were also breakthroughs — Sam Haig unpacked The Merge and Owen Fernau walked us through the strange world of Chicken Bonds. And we looked at what’s coming down the road in 2023. Sam explored the timing of The Surge, the next upgrade in Ethereum, and Owen explored the widening split between CeFi and DeFi.
Rounding out the week, The Defiant YouTube channel produced a review of 2022, and a preview of 2023.
Enjoy! And Happy New Year!
DeFi 2022 Stars
Defier of the Year
Crypto Sleuth ZachXBT Exposed Chicanery For a Grateful DeFi Community
Deeply Researched Probes of Questionable Projects Proved ‘Invaluable’ in Mad Year
“The obvious,” one commenter wrote, “needs to be stated again and again.”
And what might that be?
“The space is not only safer and smarter because of you, but unequivocally better,” they told the man who moonlights as crypto sleuth ZachXBT on Twitter. The Defiant community agrees.
Read the full story in The Defiant
Founder of the Year
Adams Defies a Rough Year to Make Uniswap a True Unicorn
With Deals in the Payments and NFT Sectors Uniswap Flexed as Other Crypto Projects Ducked
By his own admission, Hayden Adams didn’t really know what he was doing.
In 2017, Adams, then a 23-year-old native of the suburbs of New York, had been laid off from his job as an engineer at Siemens. He wanted to learn how to code. But he barely understood the intricacies of blockchain technology. So Adams decided the best way to do this would be the hard way — writing an application from scratch.
Read the full story in The Defiant
Communities
UkraineDAO Showed Power of Web3 in War Zone
Founder Alona Tapped DeFi to Aid Embattled Ukrainians
By Samuel Haig
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February crypto culture may have been the last thing on the minds of a horrified population. Lines of communication and supply routes were broken. Families rushed to get news of loved ones left behind in Kyiv and eastern Ukraine.
Read the full story in The Defiant
Rogues Gallery
A Series of Unfortunate Incidents
SBF and Fellow Miscreants Left Customers Reeling and Crypto Damaged
Mismanagement and Alleged Crimes Stained Crypto With a Litany of Scandals in 2022
Talk about swagger. On March 9, a pseudonymous crypto trader called Algod dismissed the LUNA token a “big ass Ponzi” and threatened to “short it with size.”
LUNA was the native token of the Terra blockchain, and on that day, it had a market capitalization of $36B. Algod’s threat to open a sizeable short position prompted an equally macho response from Terra co-founder Do Kwon, a South Korean software developer.
Read the full story in The Defiant
Perils of Centralization
CeFi Rekt Was the Main Event in Crypto’s Annus Horribilis
FTX, Celsius, 3AC Left a Trail of Wreckage in Centralized Finance
Crypto has been a bloodbath this year: total market cap down more than 66%, blue-chip assets hitting multi-year lows, companies going bankrupt and freezing customer deposits.
To many, this shows the skeptics are right: crypto is inherently volatile and a “garden of snakes,” as U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA.) put it during a recent congressional hearing. Traditional finance may have its flaws, but at least it’s got rules and watchdogs, the argument goes.
Read the full story in The Defiant
Hacks & Attacks
Exploit Explosion Rocked Crypto in 2022
Bridging Protocols Hardest Hit in Year That Exposed Key Vulnerability
By Owen Fernau
If losing two-thirds of its value wasn’t enough, the cryptocurrency market’s vulnerability to hacks and exploits certainly delivered an annus horribilis for users and investors.
Read the full story in The Defiant
Breakthroughs
Product Design
Chicken Bonds Pecked Their Way Into a Reward-Hungry Market
Novel Liquidity Mechanism Attracted More Than $70M
By Owen Fernau
In a year whipsawed by falling asset prices and yields, it’s easy to forget that there was a whole lot of labor and innovation going on, too.
Read the full story in The Defiant
Historic Leap
If the Merge Changed Everything Why Does Ethereum Feel the Same?
Ethereum’s Shift to Proof of Stake Ended Mining and Ushered in Staking, But What Comes Next?
By Samuel Haig
The suspense was unreal.
For months, Ethereum’s devs conducted tests and teased results as the network made its way toward a historic upgrade.
Read the full story in The Defiant
Market Action
Fed Power
Bear Attack: Investors Lick Their Wounds After Grim 2022
Global Markets Had A Volatile Year As Inflation Took Centre Stage
By yyctrader
Don’t fight the Fed.
That was the incontrovertible truth of a 12-month period that erased 65% of the market value of cryptocurrencies.
Read the full story in The Defiant
NFT Exceptions
NFTs That Bucked The Bear Market
These Five NFT Collections Thrived In A Tough Year For Tokenized Art
By yyctrader
The NFT space was riding high as 2022 rolled in. Floor prices were up, GameFi and metaverse plays were booming, and January 2022 saw record trading volumes of over $5B a week.
Read the full story in The Defiant
Reg Fallout
Crypto Dragnet
Taking Aim at Code Itself Feds Sent Crypto a Clear Message
DAOs, Mixers, and Exchanges Felt the Sting of Officialdom in a Watershed Year
By Samuel Haig
For years, the threat of a legal crackdown hung over crypto like the Sword of Damocles. But as time ticked by with no real action, many dared to believe that the decentralized nature of blockchain technology made the industry impervious to regulatory oversight.
Read the full story in The Defiant
Industry Defense
Crypto’s Lobbyist Kept Cool in a Mad, Mad Year
Kristin Smith and the Blockchain Association Are Facing Busy Agenda on Capitol Hill in 2023
Kristin Smith has one of the most important jobs in crypto but you may not envy her position these days. As the executive director of the Blockchain Association, Smith lobbies for the fledgling industry in Washington, a city replete with skeptics eager to pin down the technology.
Read the full story in The Defiant
Trends to Watch 2023
DeFi vs. CeFi
DeFi To Widen Gap With CeFi After Stormy Year
Collapse Of Centralized Crypto Players Makes The Case For Self-Custody
By Owen Fernau
To the outside observer, if an application uses digital assets, that’s part of “crypto” — there’s no distinction between the now-bankrupt FTX and on-chain exchanges like Uniswap and Curve Finance.
For those more plugged into the space, the difference between an exchange like FTX and decentralized exchanges is crucial.
Read the full story in The Defiant
After The Merge
The Surge Comes Next for Ethereum… Eventually
Ethereum Devs Taking Care of Staking Issues Before Next Upgrade Unfolds
By Samuel Haig
With The Merge completed, what is next for Ethereum?
Well, The Surge, that’s what. But it won’t come as quickly as many hoped, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Read the full story in The Defiant
Shaky Stablecoins
Stablecoins Seek to Regain, Well, Stability in 2023
Stablecoins Used to be Immune to Stress — Now they Must Withstand Volatility
By Owen Fernau
Of all the instruments in crypto, stablecoins may have the most utility.
These assets, often pegged to the U.S. dollar, provide the benefits of holding value on-chain without the drawbacks of volatility. Users can tap them for a number of functions throughout DeFi — to borrow, lend, and to provide liquidity and trade out of crashing assets. And, of course, they can be used for that ever-durable use case — paying people.
Read the full story in The Defiant
DAO Evolution
DAOs Make Peace With ‘Legacy Legal’ Requirements
Registering Like Companies Brings a Slew of Opportunities, and Challenges, for Digital Co-ops
By Samuel Haig
With the anarchic days of DeFi Summer long past, many DAOs have finally succumbed to the inevitable — they’re establishing formal legal structures. Yet the process may pose as many challenges as it does opportunities.
Read the full story in The Defiant
Defiant Video
2023 Outlook
2022 – YEAR IN REVIEW
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