📸 AP Tokenizing Iwo Jima Marines Shows Legacy Media is Jumping on NFTs in a Big Way

Hello Defiers! Here’s what we’re covering today,

• Mark Cuban Sends Polygon Soaring Amid Glitch
• AP’s NFT Auction Ushers in New Era for Digital Media
• Arbitrum is the Latest Layer 2 to Join the Ethereum Scaling Race

and more :)

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• 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.

📈 Mark Cuban Sends Polygon Soaring Amid Glitch

CUBAN TOUCH Even as the crypto market continues to recover from last week’s crash, the price of Polygon (MATIC) has soared 25% in the last seven days. The trigger: On May 25, news broke that Cuban had invested in the next-generation Ethereum player. The performance trounced Bitcoin’s 4.8% rise in the same period, and that of Ether itself, which notched a 11.5% hike.

TVL JUMPS Polygon’s TVL, or total value locked, has also soared 62% over the past three days to $11.1B on May 26 from $6.9B on May 23rd, according to data from DeFi Llama. That’s important because TVL measures how much actual capital has been staked in the DeFi’s project’s smart contract.

SDK News of Cuban’s investment in Polygon broke a day before it unveiled its software development kit on May 26. According to a blog post, Polygon SDK provides a framework for turning Ethereum into a more versatile ecosystem that can better accommodate multiple blockchains.

GLITCH No sooner had Polygon announced its new kit than news broke of a technical glitch. On May 26, Anyswap Network, which provides software to help investors move tokens around the DeFi space, reported that Polygon’s bridges had become impassable because of a Matic network fork. Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal clarified that there was no Matic fork, and that the issue was a software hiccup quickly addressed by a “hot fix.”

👉 READ THE FULL STORY HERE, IN THEDEFIANT.IO 👈

📰 AP’s NFT Auction Ushers in New Era for Digital Media

TLDR The Associated Press, the 175-year-old paragon of traditional media, is planning to auction off 10 one-of-a-kind NFTs to celebrate its iconic photojournalism. The AP is the latest of both legacy and new media to experiment with non-fungible tokens.

OLD MEDIA Major news organizations have tested the NFT waters, too. The New York Times’ Kevin Roose tokenized a picture of a column he wrote for the New Times in March, and then wrote an article about it after the NFT of his column sold for $560k. The same month, Quartz, the online news site, sold an NFT of a news article for one Ether token, which was then worth $1,800. The proceeds from both sales were donated to charities.

NEW MEDIA CYBR Magazine, which chronicles the digital world, says it is the first publication to release entire issues as NFTs. Each issue is modeled in 3D and contains multiple augmented reality pages designed to animate when scanned with a smartphone. NFT issues of CYBR are sold on Rarible, a software platform for digital artists, and limited to 10 copies for $150 (0.06ETH) each.

👉 READ THE FULL STORY HERE, IN THEDEFIANT.IO 👈

⚖️ Arbitrum is the Latest Layer 2 to Join the Ethereum Scaling Race

TLDR Arbitrum, the Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum using optimistic rollups, will open its mainnet to developers on Friday and it’s already attracting one of DeFi’s biggest fish — Uniswap. That could mean help is on the way for DeFi investors who are freaking out over soaring gas fees.

SO WHAT The launch is the latest sign that competition in Layer 2, the critical upgrade to the Ethereum ecosystem, is heating up. Arbitum is going mano-a-mano with Optimism, the other leading player in the optimistic rollup space. The prize: Bragging rights as the No. 1 provider of a live and open mainnet that doesn’t compromise blockchain security.

UNISWAP PROPOSAL A proposal on Uniswap’s governance forum to deploy the automated market maker’s (AMM) V3 to the Layer 2 solution quickly gained steam. Compound Finance founder Robert Leshner then created a Snapshot poll to gauge interest among UNI holders, who were able to vote with their tokens. The results were overwhelmingly in favor of V3’s deployment to Arbitrum with 41.41 million UNI cast in favor and zero against.

SUPPORT In response to the Snapshot, Uniswap founder, Hayden Adams, said that the protocol will “support the community by deploying the v3 smart contracts to Arbitrum!”

👉 READ THE FULL STORY HERE, IN THEDEFIANT.IO 👈

🔗 Meme.com, a Platform Pairing Memes With Tokens, Raises $5M: CoinDesk

“Recently launched Meme.com has raised $5 million from blockchain-focused venture capital funds including Outlier Ventures, Digital Finance Group, Morningstar, Blockhype, Spark Digital Capital and other investors. The firm said Thursday that over a dozen investors contributed to the round, with additional funding coming from angel investors Gabby Dizon, CEO of Altitude Games, and Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal.”

🔗 KeeperDAO Act III: Decentralisation

“KeeperDAO Community, we hope you have been enjoying the calm before the storm. It is indeed an important moment for us. We are just days away from the launch of kCompound, one of the most advanced borrowing experiences in DeFi and a showcase for the power of Keepers to deliver novel, in-demand services that resist MEV and protect Users. But more important even than kCompound is what we are about to embark on during Act III. The theme of Act III is Decentralisation.”

🔗 1/ #DeFi enables software economics for financial services: @dberenzon

Dmitriy Berenzon @dberenzon1/ #DeFi enables software economics for financial services. This is something that traditional banks and FinTechs cannot achieve because they continue to be built on antiquated rails.2:53 AM ∙ May 27, 202161Likes17Retweets

🔗 Polygon to Ethereum withdrawal in 1m30 instead of 3hrs: @HopProtocol

HopProtocol @HopProtocolPolygon to Ethereum withdrawal in 1m30 instead of 3hrs😍 ETH DeFi will become multi-chain DeFi soon.

6:30 PM ∙ May 27, 2021731Likes177Retweets

✊ Head to THEDEFIANT.IO for more DeFi news 📰

🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in this newsletter were written by Dan Kahan, Owen Fernau, and edited by Edward Robinson and Camila Russo. Videos were produced by Robin Schmidt and Alp Gasimov. Podcast was led by Camila, edited by Alp.

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The Defiant is a daily newsletter focusing on decentralized finance, a new financial system that’s being built on top of open blockchains. The space is evolving at breakneck speed and revolutionizing tech and money. Sign up to learn more and keep up on the latest, most interesting developments. Subscribers get full access, while free signups get only part of the content. Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button above ($15/mo, $150/yr).