Goldfinch, a newly launched DeFi lending protocol focusing on loans without collateral, today announced a $1M funding round and progress on its pilot lending program in emerging markets.  Goldfinch, which launched in December, said it’s working with PayJoy in Mexico, Aspire in Southeast Asia, and QuickCheck in Nigeria, which have collectively drawn down $1M from…

The first ever DeFi mortgage may have just gone through.  An engineering lead at a top DeFi protocol, who asked to remain anonymous to keep his personal finances private, on Jan. 22 paid off his mortgage loan with Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and now is paying down his refinanced home loan through DeFi protocol Notional…

This week has seen a flurry of announcements around Layer 2 scaling solutions with Aave’s Matic bridge, Synthetix introducing Layer2 staking on Optimism and Loopring’s mobile app hitting the Google Play store bringing all the advantages of Layer 2 to mobile users. I’ve found myself using the Metamask and MyEtherWallet apps a lot recently so…

By Dan Kahan and Owen Fernau GameStop stock (GME) is going to the moon. So are AMC Theaters (AMC), Nokia (NOK), BlackBerry (BB), and maybe even Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY)—just ask the shitposters on Reddit’s r/wallstreetbets (WSB). The WSB saga has been a fascinating black box for anyone interested in finance (or wealth redistribution,…

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…

Fixed rate lending has been slow to take off in DeFi. That’s what one of the latest MakerDAO proposals is seeking to change.  Maker Improvement Proposal 43 would enable MakerDAO to buy fixed-rate loans. The goal is that having DeFi’s largest protocol buying tokenized loans issued by other protocols, at more favorable terms, will boost…

Transactions on the Ethereum network continue to outpace Bitcoin’s as momentum for decentralised finance protocols snowballs. ETH is testing all-time highs, but has yet to double in price from its record, like BTC did. Highest Since 2017 Ethereum transactions are soaring near the high reached at the top of the 2017/2018 crypto rally, at around…

Lower transaction fees on Ethereum won’t come into play until the full transition to the PoS mechanism is complete, which is still years away. In the meantime many Layer 2’s are providing scaling solutions. In this video we’re taking a look at Loopring which allows you to execute gas-less transactions using zkRollups.

dYdX closed its Series B round with an investment of $10M led by Three Arrows Capital and DeFiance Capital. Other investors include Wintermute, Hashed, GSR, SCP, Scalar Capital, Spartan Group, and RockTree Capital. The dYdX exchange, which focuses on derivatives trading, notes that since launching its  decentralized perpetual contracts for three markets in 2020, it’s…

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…