🦄 Recap: DeFi Week of April 5
Hello Defiers! Hope you’re having a great weekend. Summing up the past week: The biggest DeFi news of the week was Fei Protocol’s $1.3B token sale, which went awry as its governance token sold off after the first buyers immediately cashed out, while the p...
Hello Defiers! Hope you’re having a great weekend.
Summing up the past week: The biggest DeFi news of the week was Fei Protocol’s $1.3B token sale, which went awry as its governance token sold off after the first buyers immediately cashed out, while the project’s stablecoin was unable to hold its peg, and because of its incentive mechanism, punished anyone who wanted to sell it. The biggest news in crypto was Coinbase releasing first-quarter results ahead of its April 14 IPO, with revenue and users that will make crypto even harder to ignore. We covered how NFTs are becoming a major source of income in developing nations via games like Sorare and Gods Unchained, and how fractionalized NFTs and funds of these unique tokens are making them more accessible.
There were a few project updates: C.R.E.A.M introduced flash loans, dYdX launched on Layer 2, NEAR released its Rainbow Bridge to Ethereum, Kyber launched its Dynamic Market Maker, Audius announced Collectibles, and Gnosis launched its token sale platform, among others. Mara Schmiedt of Bison Trails wrote about the “internet bond,” the new asset class of ETH2-staking-based assets. We interviewed 0xMaki, SushiSwap co-founder, who talked about upcoming plans for the DEX. Our Defiant Weekly video covered Ethereum’s “Dark Forest,” or the world of Miner Exractable Revenue and flashbots.
And there was more! There’s a lot going on, but we’ve got you covered :)
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🙌 Together with:
- Zerion, a simple interface to access and use decentralized finance
- Balancer, one of the leading DeFi automated market makers (AMM) for multiple tokens. Dive into their pools at https://balancer.finance/!
- Kraken, consistently rated the best and most secure cryptocurrency exchange, which can get you from fiat to DeFi
- Aave, an open source and non-custodial liquidity protocol where users can earn interest on deposits and borrow assets.
Video
📺 Defiant Weekly: Enter the Dark Forest: the terrifying world of MEV and Flash bots
📺 Quick Take: What Happened in the FEI Protocol Genesis Event
📺 Tuesday Tutorials: Create DeFi Combinations with Furucombo
First Look: iNFT & Chat with Darth Vader
Interview
"It's Not About Fighting for People Already in DeFi, But About Bringing More People In:" SushiSwap's 0xMaki
In this week's episode we interview 0xMaki, an anonymous DeFi developer contributing to SushiSwap and Yearn Finance protocols. We talk about growing Sushi beyond its drama-filled beginnings as a fork of Uniswap, into a DEX that can hold its own as the second-most active trading platform in Ethereum DeFi. He goes into the main pieces that set SushiSwap apart with its margin trading and a soon-to-be-released smart contract suite to easily launch tokens. He says, it’s short-sighted for DEX competitors to be fighting among each other, as they should be fighting outwards, to bring more people into DeFi, and not inwards trying to win over the people who are already here.
🎙Listen to the interview in this week’s podcast episode here:
Op-ed
Internet Bonds is How Staking Goes Mainstream: by Mara Schmiedt
Words create realities. Today, when attention spans are short, and information load is high, it’s becoming more crucial than ever to simplify complex concepts into relatable and spreadable messages. That’s why even if Ethereum is offering a revolutionary opportunity to own the base layer of finance —the actual protocol of what will become the new internet— it will be hard to get traditional finance participants excited and involved if this new technological development is simply too hard to understand. Digital gold? Easy. Proof-of-stake staking? Not so easy. That’s why Schmiedt is proposing a unified message and terminology for the new asset class represented by proof-of-stake-based tokens.
Inbox Dump #3
Only for paid subscribers: The Inbox Dump is where we include the updates and announcements that flood our DMs each week and didn’t make it to our content platforms. At The Defiant we cover the most important DeFi-related news and developments but I know many of you are hunting for projects before they are fully developed and before they are newsworthy. The goal with this installment of the newsletter is to help you find them. Look at this as the starting point to DYOR. We also include a compilation of DeFi and crypto funding rounds in the past week so you have these in one handy place.
Thursday
Dives
- Bitcoin’s “Kimchi Premium” Blows Up: The so-called “Kimchi Premium,” the difference between Bitcoin’s price on South Korean exchanges versus the international price spiked to 23% before dropping to roughly 14% at the time of writing. This meant that BTC traded for almost $70K on Apr. 5 in South Korea, while the price was around $58K internationally.
- Compound Assets Locked Jump After Single Whale Deposits 629k ETH: Compound has been ahead of other DeFi protocols, with over $ 10 billion supplied since March. when users take out a loan. The recent rise in Compound’s deposits comes after a whale deposited over 629,000 Ether in a single transaction.
Bytes
- C.R.E.A.M. Finance Unveils Cross-Protocol Flash Loans: DeFi lending protocol C.R.E.A.M. Finance is launching a protocol-to-protocol flash loan product through its Iron Bank, with the aim to increase capital efficiency and expand the scope of decentralized finance.
- Bridge Connecting NEAR Blockchain to Ethereum is Live: The Rainbow Bridge, which connects the NEAR blockchain to Ethereum, is live. The Rainbow Bridge is a decentralized, permissionless bridge protocol built by NEAR Protocol that allows anyone to use an existing bridge or deploy a new bridge.
- dYdX Launches Layer 2 Perpetuals Powered by StarkWare: dYdX launched its cross-margined perpetuals product on a Layer 2 scaling solution powered by blockchain software developer StarkWare.
Links
- Announcing Audius Collectibles: Audius
- NFT Tech Stack: IOSG Ventures
- Introducing the Metaverse Index (MVI): Index Coop
Wednesday
Dives
- NFT Investing on a Budget With Fractions and Index Funds: Investing in individual non-fungible tokens or NFTs is a problematic task. The NFTs that seem likely to do well as investments are selling for astonishing sums pricing out both newcomers and established collectors. For those seeking exposure to high-flying NFTs, fractionalization may well be the answer.
- Coinbase’s Open Books Makes Crypto Hard to Ignore: Coinbase, the largest US-based cryptocurrency trading venue, has opened up the books highlighting just how powerful this crypto behemoth has become.
Bytes
- Kyber Launches Dynamic Market Maker: Kyber Network, a decentralized exchange, launched a dynamic market maker (DMM), which the project says will optimize fees for liquidity providers (LPs).
- Yat Wants To Make an Emoji-Based Identity System: Yat, a project building internet identities, ran its first auction last week, selling 18 “yats,” or strings of emojis which can be used in URLs or as payment addresses. Its highest selling item, the key emoji sold for $425K according to the auction’s website.
Links
- Why sharding is great: demystifying the technical properties: Vitalik Buterin
- SushiSwap x UMA: Announcing Call Options for xSUSHI: UMA
Tuesday
Dives
- NFTs Are Becoming a Major Source of Income in Developing Nations: Before April 2020, Paul had never purchased cryptocurrency, let alone even heard of an NFT. Less than a year later, his NFT trading profits have netted him around 17 times the yearly minimum wage in his native Colombia (around $3,100 annually) and allowed him to buy his first house.
- Fei Roils Investors As Token Tumbles After $1.3B Sale: Fei Protocol was one of the most anticipated project launches this year but the high of its $1.3B token sale was immediately tainted by angry traders, as the project’s governance token slumped and the stablecoin has failed to hold its $1 peg. But that’s not all, today, the team found a vulnerability in its code.
Bytes
- ForceDAO Was Hacked for 183 ETH: ForceDAO was targeted in a hack that resulted in the liquidation of 183 ETH worth of FORCE token.
- Grayscale Aims to Turn GBTC Into an ETF: Grayscale Investments intends to convert Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into an exchange-traded fund (ETF), the asset manager said in a blog post on Monday.
- Gnosis Auction Aims to Solve ICO Volatility: DeFi market mechanism developer Gnosis is launching Gnosis Auction, a tool intended to solve initial price volatility for new ERC-20 tokens.
Links
- We’re excited to support @LiquityProtocol: @Zerion
- Sacramento Kings Will Offer Bitcoin As Salary To Players: Forbes
💜Community Love💜
Thanking all the amazing Defiers for the support and love this week (and always)!
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youtu.beEnter the Dark Forest: the terrifying world of MEV and Flash bots“It’s no secret that the Ethereum blockchain is a highly adversarial environment. If a smart contract can be exploited for profit, it eventually will be. Som...3:39 PM ∙ Apr 11, 2021
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Gonz 🌹 @ohmygonz@rylandking I also get a ton of great info from @DefiantNews. I'm a subscriber and it's been really helpful 👀👇 thedefiant.substack.com
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Umbria.network @NetworkUmbriaInbox Dump - great idea @DefiantNews "I know many of you are hunting for projects before they're fully developed and before they are newsworthy. My goal with this instalment of the newsletter is to help you find them," @CamiRusso Includes Umbria Farm 😃 thedefiant.substack.com/p/-inbox-dump-1
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