Adams Defies Rough Year to Make Uniswap a True Unicorn

Founder of the Year

Adams Defies a Rough Year to Make Uniswap a True Unicorn

DeFi 2022: The Year That Was

Trends to Watch 2023

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SBF Posts $250M Bail After Claiming To Be Worth $100K

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Founder of the Year

Adams Defies a Rough Year to Make Uniswap a True Unicorn

With Deals in the Payments and NFT Sectors Uniswap Flexed as Other Crypto Projects Ducked

By Aleksandar Gilbert

By his own admission, Hayden Adams didn’t really know what he was doing.

In 2017, Adams, then a 23-year-old native of the suburbs of New York, had been laid off from his job as an engineer at Siemens. He wanted to learn how to code. But he barely understood the intricacies of blockchain technology. So Adams decided the best way to do this would be the hard way — writing an application from scratch.

Read the full story in The Defiant

DeFi 2022: The Year That Was

If the Merge Changed Everything Why Does Ethereum Feel the Same?

Ethereum’s Shift to Proof of Stake Ended Mining and Ushered in Staking, But What Comes Next?

By Samuel Haig

The suspense was unreal.

For months, Ethereum’s devs conducted tests and teased results as the network made its way toward a historic upgrade. Dubbed The Merge, users expected the next iteration of the beloved DeFi bulwark to cure a raft of ills. Gas fees had become such a bummer, and scalability seemed out of reach thanks to Ethereum’s glacial transaction processing times. The upgrade would fix them all.

Read the full story in The Defiant

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Trends to Watch 2023

The Surge Comes Next for Ethereum… Eventually

Ethereum Devs Taking Care of Staking Issues Before Next Upgrade Unfolds

By Samuel Haig

With The Merge completed, what is next for Ethereum?

Well, The Surge, that’s what. But it won’t come as quickly as many hoped, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Read the full story in The Defiant

DeFi 2022: The Year That Was

SBF and Fellow Miscreants Left Customers Reeling and Crypto Damaged

Mismanagement and Alleged Crimes Stained Crypto With a Litany of Scandals in 2022

By Aleksandar Gilbert

Talk about swagger. On March 9, a pseudonymous crypto trader called Algod dismissed the LUNA token a “big ass Ponzi” and threatened to “short it with size.”

LUNA was the native token of the Terra blockchain, and on that day, it had a market capitalization of $36B. Algod’s threat to open a sizeable short position prompted an equally macho response from Terra co-founder Do Kwon, a South Korean software developer.

Read the full story in The Defiant

DeFi 2022: The Year That Was

CeFi Rekt Was the Main Event in Crypto’s Annus Horribilis

FTX, Celsius, 3AC Left a Trail of Wreckage in Centralized Finance

By Aleksandar Gilbert

Crypto has been a bloodbath this year: total market cap down more than 66%, blue-chip assets hitting multi-year lows, companies going bankrupt and freezing customer deposits.

To many, this shows the skeptics are right: crypto is inherently volatile and a “garden of snakes,” as U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA.) put it during a recent congressional hearing. Traditional finance may have its flaws, but at least it’s got rules and watchdogs, the argument goes.

Read the full story in The Defiant

Trends to Watch 2023

Stablecoins Seek to Regain, Well, Stability in 2023

Stablecoins Used to be Immune to Stress — Now they Must Withstand Volatility

By Owen Fernau

Of all the instruments in crypto, stablecoins may have the most utility.

These assets, often pegged to the U.S. dollar, provide the benefits of holding value on-chain without the drawbacks of volatility. Users can tap them for a number of functions throughout DeFi — to borrow, lend, and to provide liquidity and trade out of crashing assets. And, of course, they can be used for that ever-durable use case — paying people.

Read the full story in The Defiant