CFTC Sees ‘Significant Risks’ From Digital Assets 

Rocket Pool Launches rETH On zkSync Era

 Up to 36% APY on Stablecoins, 5-33% APY on ETH and BTC

DeFi Alpha is a weekly newsletter published for our premium subscribers every Friday, contributed by Defiant Advisor and DeFi investor at 

It aims to educate traders, investors, and newcomers about investment opportunities in decentralized finance, as well as provide primers and guides about its emerging platforms. It is meant to be highly actionable and shareable.

Any information covered in DeFi Alpha should not form the basis for making investment decisions nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions. Any mention of a token or protocol should not be considered a recommendation or endorsement.

Before we get started, here are the top headline-grabbing events from this week that every savvy DeFi investor ought to keep on their radar.

OP Hits Fresh Highs After Foundation Unveils ‘Bedrock’ Upgrade

NFTfi Processes Record Number Of Loans In January

Ethereum Developers To Launch Testnet Supporting Staked ETH Withdrawals

(meaning Shanghai Upgrade + ETH withdrawals due in March!)

Gains Network Rides Arbitrum Launch To All-Time Highs

 is held every Monday at 2pm ET in Discord.

check out the recording of this week’s call

Each week we will provide options to earn yield on ETH, WBTC, stablecoins, and other major tokens.

: 33% APY with pETH/ETH Curve LP staked in Convex via Concentrator 

This yield is accrued in aCRV + trading fees compounded in the LP.

Then, one must stake the Curve LP under the 

: 5.47% projected vAPR with the Curve multiBTC​+sbtc2Crv LP staked in Convex

This yield is accrued in CRV, CVX, and trading fees.

To participate, one must first deposit into this 

: 14.4% APY with 50/50 MaticX-WMATIC LP on MeshSwap 

The yield is backed by validator rewards using the MaticX LSD (5.76% APY) + MeshSwap trading fees + MESH rewards + SD rewards.

To participate on Polygon, one may use the 

: 21% APR staking ATOM with Keplr Wallet on Cosmos Hub 

rank by APR, choose a validator, and click 

Then, I specify how many ATOMs and follow the prompts to 

: 13% APY with 50/50 BNB/BNBx ApeSwap LP in a Beefy Finance vault 

This yield is issued in SD, BNB staking yield (thanks to BNBx), and trading fees.

Alternatively, one can zap BNB, BNBx or stake the BNB/BNBx ApeSwap LP 

: 7.05% APY staking AVAX with ankrAVAX by Ankr

To participate, one must deposit AVAX for ankrAVAX 

This is backed by Solana staking yield, LDO rewards, and ORCA rewards.

To participate, one must deposit stSOL/SOL into a concentrated LP 

: 4.7% APY staking sFTMx liquid staking derivative by Stader

The yield is issued in FTM rewards, as sFTMX is earning FTM via validator rewards to support Fantom’s PoS network.

To participate, one must deposit FTM for sFTMX 

: 36% APR with the jEUR/sEUR LP staked in Velodrome on Optimism

To participate, one must deposit and stake in 

Please be aware we do not always report the highest yield rates because some high yields may be less sustainable due to high inflation token rewards or fewer LPs participating.

Provide USDC or ETH Liquidity On Connext To Earn Yield and a Potential NEXT Airdrop

 is a modular interoperability protocol that lets you build secure crosschain apps (called xApps) by passing funds and data between chains.

By 2023, bridging is a commonly understood use case in DeFi but going back to the last bear market between 2018-2020, the founder Arjun Bhuptani looked like a rebel without a cause. He was ahead of the market, working on the bleeding edge of enabling a cross-chain future when most crypto users were stuck on centralized exchanges.

Because blockchains do not scale to the level of volume needed for mainstream adoption, Ethereum and other programmable blockchains solve this problem by moving users, funds, and data to multiple parallel domains such as sidechains (ie Polygon) and rollups (ie Optimism, Arbitrum, zkSync). The drawback to this design choice is a fragmented user experience.

Connext is working to enable Web3 application users to be able to move between chains without having to fully understand how it works and how to navigate between chains/L2s. Connext refers to this multichain experience as xApps.

xApps promise to retain the security and trust-minimization properties of the underlying chains, which as most of us know, has not been the experience up until now with rampant bridge-related DeFi exploits.

Below are a few examples of the kinds of DeFi applications you can expect in the form of xApps powered by Connext:

Lending on one L1/L2 and borrowing on another

Depositing into an LP on one L1/L2 and earning yield on another

Enjoying Uniswap V3 TWAPs on every L1/L2 without having to stand up oracles on each

Chain-agnostic NFT marketplaces where you can buy NFTs unknowingly from any chain

Voting on Snapshot across any chain for a DAO on another

On January 31, 2023, the team announced a final milestone before the full Connext Amarok launch, kicking off the bootstrapping of liquidity. This new network introduces two types of liquidity, active and passive, as well as nextTokens, an internal unit of account that represents a router’s ownership of locked funds on Ethereum L1, similar to other liquidity networks like Hop and Across.

Passive LPing ensures there is available liquidity for a given adopted asset on each chain by incentivizing liquidity provision and rebalancing by the market. In other words, passive LP affects the price of transactions.

Active LPing within Connext allows routers to effectively loan funds to a waiting user and be repaid by the protocol. In other words, active LP affects the latency of transactions.

Together, the combination of these approaches ensures that users & applications can transfer adopted assets and data from an origin chain and receive adopted assets and data on the destination chain nearly instantly and with minimal added security/trust assumptions.

Today, I’ll show how I can provide passive liquidity to Connext Amarok and not only earn fees but also a likely future 

Anyone can lend USDC or WETH to help bootstrap liquidity, but I’ll focus on the Arbitrum USDC pool, to also possibly earn 

 will be available to be claimed by the top 30% wallets on every chain that provide liquidity over the course of 3 months.

Before we get started, please be aware of these risks.

Front-end spoof attack on the Connext app

Featured Yields: Up to 36% APY on Stablecoins, 5-33% APY on ETH and BTC

DeFi Alpha is a weekly newsletter published for our premium subscribers every Friday, contributed by Defiant Advisor and DeFi investor at 4RC, DeFi Dad, and our Degen in Chief yyctrad...

DeFi Alpha: Provide Liquidity On Connext To Earn Yield And A Potential NEXT Airdrop