👀 EXCLUSIVE: Sifu Speaks!

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

News

• EXCLUSIVE: Sifu Speaks! Ousted Wonderland Co-founder Unveils New Venture and Defends His Record
• Bored Apes Founders Reject Pitch Deck Plans
• Aave Launches Souped Up V3 on Fantom and Avalanche
• ConsenSys’ Lubin Confirms MetaMask Token in the Works

Markets

• Crypto Investors Shrug Off Fed Rate Hike as Bitcoin and Ether Post Modest Gains

Podcast

🎙Listen to the exclusive interview with Fabian Vogelsteller here:

Video

• First Look: Svalbard Notes; Past, Present, & Future

Links

• ‘We’re already buying:’ Terra founder plans to obtain $10B BTC for reserves: CoinTelegraph
• ‘ Several Hundred Thousand’ Crypto Addresses Linked to Sanctioned Russian Actors: Elliptic: Decrypt
• Juno's Proposal 16 Vote Is a Watershed for Blockchain Governance – For Better or Worse: CoinDesk
• That magical time of year is upon us... And no... We don't mean the holidays: Real Vision
• In celebration of Trident and reaching 200k followers we'll be posting an education series around our main products the next few days: SushiSwap

Trending in The Defiant

• The Merge Works! Ethereum’s Passes Major Test in Shift to Proof of Stake
• Proposal Aims to Shake up MakerDAO’s Tokenomics and Light a Fire Under MKR
• Crypto Investors Shrug Off Fed Rate Hike as Bitcoin and Ether Post Modest Gains

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The Defiant Interview

👀 EXCLUSIVE: Sifu Speaks! Ousted Wonderland Co-founder Unveils New Venture and Defends His Record

By yyctrader

DRAMA 0xSifu is back, and he’s got a brand new bag. There’s been no shortage of drama around this enigmatic figure in DeFi. OxSifu, you’ll recall, is the pseudonymous Wonderland co-founder who was ousted from his position as treasury manager at the end of January after he was doxxed as Michael Patryn, a co-founder of defunct Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX. That doomed enterprise folded in 2018 with hundreds of millions in investor losses.

NEW VENTURE As the Wonderland episode fades, OxSifu is now applying his treasury management skills to a new venture, Sifu’s Vision, which is an investment fund built around the SIFU token that he launched a month ago. About 1M tokens are available for sale at $100 apiece, implying a $100M raise if fully subscribed.

WEBSITE The project’s website is short on details, to say the least.

The sifu.vision website.

The Defiant spoke with 0xSifu, and here’s our exclusive interview:

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

😠 Bored Apes Founders Reject Pitch Deck Plans

BAYC founders rebuff leaked pitch deck plans.

By Owen Fernau

REJECTION “F*ck doing expected things. Back to the lab.” So tweeted the co-founder of Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC) who goes by Gordon Goner, just minutes after an article was published by The Block about the NFT collection’s parent company, Yuga Labs.

DECK The article broke down a pitch deck by Yuga Labs which detailed plans to sell virtual land as a part of a metaverse initiative. The deck had Yuga Labs projecting $455M in revenue in 2022 and also outlined the use of a much-hyped token.

OUTDATED BAYC’s other co-founder, commonly known as Garga, posted something similar in the project’s Discord. “That’s an old, outdated pitch deck and hilariously a version that neither Gordon nor I ever saw,” Garga wrote. “There are a lot of things in there that have already changed, and plenty more things that will change because f*ck doing expected things.”

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

DeFi Money Markets

🏎 Aave Launches Souped Up V3 on Fantom and Avalanche

by Samuel Haig

SIX NETWORKS Aave, DeFi’s largest money market by cross-chain TVL, has launched its new v3 protocol across six different networks. The upgrade promises faster load times and lower gas costs.

GROWTH Aave has been a source of dramatic growth for low-cost Layer 1s over the past year, with its deployments on Polygon on Avalanche currently ranking as the largest on both networks with $1.1B and $3.1B respectively. The protocol is also the fourth-largest on Ethereum with $7.9B.

FACELIFT Despite Aave’s leading position, the protocol has not undergone a major facelift since launching v2 in December 2020. The new deployment aims to increase the flexibility and control offered to its users by introducing cross-chain functionality, isolated liquidity pools, and new integrations with blockchain networks and infrastructure providers.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Tokens

🦊 ConsenSys’ Lubin Confirms MetaMask Token in the Works

by Samuel Haig

REALITY Rumors of a token from MetaMask, ConsenSys’ popular Ethereum wallet, have long circulated in the crypto community. Now the token appears to be a reality though a potential airdrop remains unknown.

TOKEN On March 16, Joe Lubin, ConsenSys co-founder, told Decrypt that MetaMask will pursue “progressive decentralization” and intends to issue a token moving forward. Lubin comments came the day after ConsenSys closed a $450M Series D, bringing its overall valuation to a whopping $7B.

DAO Under the plan,MetaMask will launch a DAO, although Lubin said that it “won’t govern MetaMask, but will enable the creation of novel pieces of MetaMask to be funded.” The comments suggest that MetaMask users who expect to receive an airdrop may be disappointed, although an airdrop was not explicitly ruled out.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Market Action

🤷🏻‍♀️ Crypto Investors Shrug Off Fed Rate Hike as Bitcoin and Ether Post Modest Gains

By yyctrader

RATE HIKE This is what we call baking in the bad news. Crypto markets jumped modestly after the U.S. Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate on Wednesday by 0.25%, a hike that was widely expected by investors and was apparently factored into token prices leading up to the decision.

UPTICKS Bitcoin ticked up 2.6% to $40,600, and Ether rose almost 3% in mid-afternoon trading New York time, according to data from CoinGecko. By Thursday morning U.K. time, BTC had eked out a 1.3% increase over 24 hours and ETH 3.4% rise. Prior to the decision, futures markets indicated a 98.3% probability of such a hike.

Source: CME FedWatch

NERVOUS INVESTORS Investors have been nervously watching the Fed as consumer prices surged 7% in 2021 to a 39-year high. The central bank signalled it would hike interest rates to rein in inflation, a move equity investors tend to dislike because it makes bonds more attractive. Crypto has been closely correlated with stocks for the last few months. Commodity prices are also skyrocketing, especially as Russia’s war on Ukraine shakes up the oil and natural gas markets as well as the production of metals and staples such as wheat.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

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The Tube

📺 First Look: Svalbard Notes; Past, Present, & Future

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Links

🔗 ‘We’re already buying:’ Terra founder plans to obtain $10B BTC for reserves: CoinTelegraph

The founder of Terraform Labs (TFL) and Ethereum competitor Terra Do Kwon has outlined plans to accumulate a whopping $10 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) to add to the project’s stablecoin reserves.

🔗 Razzlekhan: The Untold Story Of How A YouTube Rapper Became A Suspect In A $4 Billion Bitcoin Fraud: Forbes

On her wedding day in November, Heather Morgan was center stage, leaning back on one arm, holding a microphone and gyrating on the ground.

🔗 ‘ Several Hundred Thousand’ Crypto Addresses Linked to Sanctioned Russian Actors: Elliptic: Decrypt

Blockchain analytics platform Elliptic has identified “several hundred thousand” crypto addresses that are linked to sanctioned Russia-based individuals or entities.

🔗 Juno's Proposal 16 Vote Is a Watershed for Blockchain Governance – For Better or Worse: CoinDesk

For perhaps the first time, a blockchain community has formally voted to confiscate a user’s funds.

Real Vision @RealVisionThat magical time of year is upon us... And no... We don't mean the holidays. We're talking about The #CryptoGathering 🚀 ⚡️ Join thousands of investors, thinkers & doers at the most electrifying 3 day event in #crypto ⚡️ 🎆 March 23-25 🎆 Here's @RaoulGMI with the details👇 9:19 PM ∙ Mar 16, 2022167Likes34Retweets

SushiSwap @SushiSwap🎉 In celebration of Trident and reaching 200k followers we'll be posting an education series around our main products the next few days 🍱 🔱 🥣 We've collaborated with our amazing community artist @MochiNFT to visualize the rarest memes, Sushi characters and products.

5:48 PM ∙ Mar 16, 2022110Likes20Retweets

Trending in The Defiant

• The Merge Works! Ethereum’s Passes Major Test in Shift to Proof of StakeThe Ethereum community has a lot to look forward to. On March 15, The Ethereum Foundation announced that The Merge was successfully completed on Kiln — the final merge testnet before the upgrade will be deployed on Ethereum’s public testnets.
• Proposal Aims to Shake up MakerDAO’s Tokenomics and Light a Fire Under MKRUtility doesn’t always lead to value. That’s the hard lesson holders of MKR, the token of MakerDAO, have been learning in the past year. MKR has dropped 11% in the last 12 months even as DAI, the protocol’s stablecoin, has increased by a multiple of 3.5 times.
• Crypto Investors Shrug Off Fed Rate Hike as Bitcoin and Ether Post Modest Gains This is what we call baking in the bad news. Cyrpto markets jumped modestly after the U.S. Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate on Wednesday by 0.25%, a hike that was widely expected by investors and was apparently factored into token prices leading up to the decision.

🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in The Defiant are written by Owen Fernau, Samuel Haig, DeFiDad, and yyctrader, and edited by Edward Robinson, yyctrader, and Camila Russo. Videos are produced by Robin Schmidt, Alp Gasimov and Daniel Flynn. Podcast is led by Camila, edited by Alp.

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