📈 DeFi Regains its Footing in March

Hello Defiers, here’s what we’re covering today:

• The DeFi market is coming back in March
• We share a quick guide to NFT accelerators
• Aavegotchi NFT drop sells out in less than a minute

and more :)

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DeFi Rebounds After Bleak February

TLDR DeFi is regaining its footing in March after a market-wide plunge at the end of February.

BY THE NUMBERS The DeFi Index Pulse is up 15% this week after dropping by more than 20% in the last week of last month. Total value locked (TVL) too, is on the rise in March after a weeklong 20% tumble to $36B, from an all-time high of $45B on Feb. 21. TVL now stands at $40B.

ETH While ETH has been slower to recover, up 11% this week, inflows to exchanges have decreased to 493k from a 30-day peak of 1.4M on Feb. 23, and from 1M a month ago, according to market analysis platform, Chainalysis. Inflows of Ether into exchanges generally signal selling pressure as investors move their assets from personal wallets in order to sell them. The lower inflows suggest decreased ETH selling pressure as investors are happy to keep their Ether within the crypto ecosystem.

DEFI DEBT Outstanding debt of major lending protocols, MakerDAO, Compound, and Aave, has also reached an all-time of $8B in loans, after dropping from the previous all-time high just short of that mark on Feb. 21 before the week-long pullback.

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

A Quick Guide To Accelerators Funding NFT Startups

TLDR The NFT space is blowing up, and there’s undoubtedly a new cohort of entrepreneurs who have been inspired by this new paradigm of digital ownership. Here’s a guide of some of the accelerator programs that can help launch their ventures.

We list major accelerators that are funding NFT-focused startups. We include both newly established Web3 accelerators as well as historical players in the space, along with their program’s application deadline, how much they invest, and against what equity stake (where the information is available).

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

Aavegotchi NFT Drop Sells Out in Under One Minute

TLDR Aavegotchi, a DeFi game revolving around digital “fren” avatars similar to Tamagotchi, sold out of their first drop of 10,000 NFTs in under one minute. Including additional sales of “wearable” and “consumable” NFTs that players can use on their Aavegotchi, collectors bought $5.5M worth of tokens.

PORTALS The Aavegtochi NFTs came in the form of “Portals,” which could be opened to “summon” a group of 10 ghost-like Aavagotchi characters, each randomly generated with a series of different traits of varying rarities. Players then select one of the summoned characters to keep, and the other nine disappear.

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

Amazon Makes Hosting An Ethereum Node Easier

TLDR Amazon Managed Blockchain, a AWS offering, now fully supports Ethereum. This means that companies will be able to spin up a node “in minutes” as the release says. Customers will be able to offload infrastructure issues of “data reliability due to out-of-sync nodes, data storage scaling challenges, and time-sensitive Ethereum software upgrades,” to AWS. This means Amazon will be competing more directly with Infura, the Consensys-funded Ethereum infrastructure provider.

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

Rug Pull? DeFi project Meerkat drained by $31 million on Binance Smart Chain: The Block

“Meerkat Finance, a decentralized finance project, has just said it has been drained by $31 million worth-of crypto assets due to a hack. But on-chain data shows it may not as simple as that,” The Block reported. “On-chaindata shows that the supposed hacker(s) drained the funds by altering Meerkat's smart contract that contains the project's vault business logic via using the original Meerkat deployer's account.”

A Group of Crypto Proponents Burned an Original Banksy 'Morons' Print and Turned It Into an NFT: Bitcoin.com

“One of the members of the Burnt Banksy crew appeared on a livestream in order to show the burning process and explain the reasoning behind it. The individual mentioned the team was a bunch of art enthusiasts backed by the crosschain decentralized finance project Superfarm. The “Morons” NFT will be sold on the Opensea NFT marketplace according to the burning ceremony announcement,” Bitcoin.com reported.

Exodus Wallet Files With SEC to Sell $75M in Shares—With a Twist: Decrypt

“The Nebraska-based crypto firm has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for permission to sell $75 million in shares of the company at $27.42 a pop through a Regulation A+ offering, which opens up shares to regular retail investors (as opposed to just accredited investors). The share price is based on a $710 million valuation for the company,” Decrypt reported. “Exodus wants subscribers to its offering to pay in Bitcoin, Ethereum, or the USDCstablecoin.”

✊ Head to THEDEFIANT.IO for more DeFi news 📰

🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in this newsletter were written by Owen Fernau, Dan Kahan and Clyde Smith, and edited by Camila Russo. Videos were produced by Robin Schmidt and Alp Gasimov.

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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 ($10/mo, $100/yr).