Recap: DeFi Week of April 13🦄

Hello Defiers, hope you’re having a great weekend!

Summing up last week: The big news this week is that Compound Finance, DeFi’s second-biggest lending platform after MakerDAO, took its first steps towards fully decentralizing governance by handing down decision making to shareholders and team member who own COMP tokens. Other big news happened over the weekend: An attacker was able to exploit DeFi project LendfMe, which has been accused of copying Compound Finance’s code, and drain $25 million, almost all of its funds.

Gnosis and 0x joined the decentralized exchange party. Atomic Loans unveiled a $2.45 million funding round —you can follow the steps to opening a leveraged long BTC position trustlessly, and getting more than 8% on your Dai. Loopring founder Daniel Wang talks about how the speed of centralized exchanges is now possible for non-custodial platforms. Etherean who goes by the name of DeFi_Dad wrote a guide on how to make DeFi go viral.

🐦Reminder to follow @DefiantNews on Twitter if you haven’t!

That was just one week. Subscribe to get the latest DeFi news and analysis straight to your inbox and you don’t miss a thing. Free-signups get partial content, paid subscribers (only $10/month, $100/year) get everything. Click here to pay with DAI ($70/year).

Subscribe now

🙌 Together with Ampleforth, a digital asset protocol for a base money which doesn’t require collateral and is uncorrelated with the rest of crypto.

Interview

Decentralized Money Shouldn't be Traded on Centralized Exchanges: Loopring Founder Daniel Wang

This week’s interview is with Daniel Wang, CEO and founder of the Loopring protocol. The exchange built on the protocol launched a little over a month ago, with the goal of providing a non-custodial platform, meaning it allows users to keep control of their funds, with similar performance in throughput and cost as centralized exchanges. There’s mind boggling technology with funny names behind this protocol —zero-knowledge proofs, Snarks, Starks,— which Wang demystifies and explains. We talked about how scalability is a relative and not an absolute measure. To him that means Ethereum 2.0, an upgrade meant to increase the tractions per second on the network, won’t magically solve all scalability issues and Layer 2 solutions, which take part of applications’ data and computation off chain, will still be needed.

Podcast

The Defiant Podcast Episode 2: Daniel Wang

Ever since Ethereum launched in 2015, there has been one over-arching concern hanging over developers’ heads: scalability. Loopring CEO and Founder Daniel Wang is using scaling solutions to build a protocol for non-custodial exchanges than can compete in throughput and cost with centralized exchanges. Is scaling on Ethereum solved? Listen up to what he has to say about that in The Defiant podcast’s second episode.

Op-ed

Fail-Proof Guide to Make DeFi Go Viral by @DeFi_Dad

If you frequent DeFi twitter at all, then you already know about the popular account of @DeFi_Dad. He’s a heavy user of decentralized finance and is on a mission to get everyone around him to try these apps, frequently posting step-by-step tutorials and videos of his experience. In this op-ed, he argues everyone should do the same. As early users of this new financial system, it’s on us to explain to our friends and family why it’s so much better than the old one, and to guide them through what seems baffling to an outsider, but is really so simple for those who just try it out.

Friday

Dives

• Compound Cedes Governance to Shareholders and Team: Compound Finance on Thursday announced holders of its new COMP token are taking over the platform’s governance system, deciding on everything from what assets the platform will supported to system’s parameters.
• New Dexes in Town Are Bet on DeFi Going Mainstream: Gnosis and 0x announced the launch of decentralized exchanges, Gnosis Protocol and Matcha. They’re coming to a relatively crowded space with over a dozed DEXs competing for a reduced pool of volume, likely betting the pie will get bigger.

Tutorials

This week’s tutorials focus on recently launched Atomic Loans, a platform to take out BTC-backed loans on Ethereum, which launched this week.

1. Liquality’s Simon Lapscher, will guide you through how to take out leveraged long Bitcoin positions in a trustless way — read, without having to give your information or funds to a centralized exchange.
2. The second tutorial by the Etherean who goes by the online name of DeFi Dad, will teach you how to lend USDC and Dai, which are currently yielding 5% APR and 8.2% DAI respectively.

Wednesday

Dives

• Rather than Banning Stablecoins, Bankers Should Worry About Strengthening Their Own Currencies: The Financial Stability Board published a document outlining 10 recommendations on how bankers should regulate stablecoins, which go as far as outright banning them. Bankers should worry about making their local currencies and the global financial system more attractive to use than trying to ban digital assets.

Bytes

• DeFi Saver Updates MakerDAO Collateral Automation: DeFi Saver, which provides an automated mechanism to manage collateral on MakerDAO, updated its system to prevent the events of Black Thursday ever happening again.
• Zerion Team Launches DeFi Market Cap: The team behind DeFi portfolio tracker and manger Zerion launched DeFi Market Cap, a website ranking the market capitalizations and other metrics specific to tokens of decentralized finance platforms.

💜Community Love💜

Thanking all the amazing Defiers for the support and love this week (and always)!

Alex Masmej ☄️ @AlexMasmejTo everyone new to crypto asking me how they can learn more about Decentralized Finance, three easy steps: 1️⃣ Read this by @ljxie nakamoto.com/beginners-guid… 2️⃣ To level up, read either (or both) @DefiantNews & @BanklessHQ 3️⃣ If you want to dive more into Ethereum, try @ethhub_io

nakamoto.comA beginner’s guide to DeFiAn introduction to decentralized finance. Covers stablecoins, composability, decentralized lending, dexes, and identity.12:42 PM ∙ Apr 15, 202026Likes13Retweets

Covalent 📊 @Covalent_HQ6/ Understand the flippening around these wallets and how they are the foundation of Ethereum’s future. Read the complete post here: thedefiant.substack.com/p/wall-street-… @DefiantNews 🗞 #Ethereum #DeFi

thedefiant.substack.comWall Street is Paying a +500% Premium to Own EtherAlso, smart contract wallets are still tiny compared with total Ethereum accounts, dPiggy launched no-loss investment, Ethereum-based Sila raised $7.7m to replace ACH.5:54 PM ∙ Apr 14, 20207Likes1Retweet

Matthew Finestone | 3body.eth @finestonemattIt's not often (~ever) that @loopringorg founder @daniel_loopring does a podcast, but when he does, it's worth a listen! Especially on @CamiRusso's 2nd ever episode of @DefiantNews 🎤 Listen: anchor.fm/camila-russo/e… or: open.spotify.com/show/1dYQYB5Wx…

4:42 PM ∙ Apr 16, 202015Likes7Retweets

ETHSantiago @ethereumstgoBloque 0️⃣1️⃣ de #ETHSantiago con @CamiRusso de @DefiantNews hablando sobre #DeFi en tiempos de crisis.

10:40 PM ∙ Apr 16, 202012Likes4Retweets

Simon Lapscher @simonlapscherUsing native BTC as leverage, as is the case with Atomic Loans + Liquality, provides the security benefits of the Bitcoin chain, without the liquidity constraints that Bitcoin pegged/wrapped tokens have. Thanks @DefiantNews @CamiRusso ! You're doing amazing hands-on work!7:30 PM ∙ Apr 17, 2020

DeFi Dad - defidad.eth @DeFi_Dad@edo_cantona @Slengas @RyanSAdams @Dharma_HQ @Atomic_Loans @HegicOptions @opyn_ @PieDAO_DeFi @tokensets @idlefinance @iearnfinance @CurveFinance @gnosisPM @RealTPlatform @loopringorg @ddexio2018 I’m leaving out lots still but these are hard to skip! You can also find more by: 🔎Skim my Twitter for tutorials 🗞Read @DefiantNews 💱Read @BanklessHQ 📺Follow/watch @ChrisBlec 📰Follow @defiprime 📺Watch @Interaxis8 videos1:54 PM ∙ Apr 17, 202010Likes2Retweets

DeFi.cx @CxDefi#DeFi Can Be Much Easier If You Follow the right people/projects! Enjoy ☑️ @argentHQ @AlphaWallet @eidoo_io @atomex_official @monolith_web3 @MyCrypto @dexwallet @CamiRusso @DeFi_Dad @ChrisBlec @StaniKulechov @AaveAave @dForcenet @WrappedBTC @Synthetix @MakerDAO @compoundfinance

9:46 PM ∙ Apr 16, 202037Likes12Retweets

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 at $10/month or $100/year, while free signups get only part of the content.

Subscribe now

Click here to pay with DAI.There’s a limited amount of OG Memberships at 70 Dai per annual subscription ($100/yr normal price).

About the author: I’m Camila Russo, a financial journalist writing a book on Ethereum with Harper Collins. (Pre-order The Infinite Machine here). I was previously at Bloomberg News in New York, Madrid and Buenos Aires covering markets. I’ve extensively covered crypto and finance, and now I’m diving into DeFi, the intersection of the two.