Recap: DeFi Week of July 27 🦄

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

Summing up this past week: Governance updates were what’s up, with Synthetix dissolving its foundation and turning control over to three DAOs, and Aave implementing “Aavenomics.” yEarn’s YFI token continued making headlines, this time as many forks of it popped up. As ETH continued to rally, easily crossing $300, more than 70% of ETH holders have now made money with their investment. Augur released its long-awaited V2, Dharma integrated with Uniswap, Coinbase users will now earn 2% on their Dai. Also, FTX launched a DEX on Solana, Polkadot raised $43M in private token sale and Mainframe acquired Sablier. This week’s podcast episode was with Polychain Capital founder Olaf Carlson-Wee, who spoke about an internet-sovereign future. And there’s more :)

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Here’s the 2nd video of a DeFi series with Robin Schmidt of Harmony Protocol:

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Interview

"We're at the Early Stages of a Truly Novel Structure That Can Organize Humans and Money:" Olaf Carlson-Wee

Olaf Carlson-Wee joined Coinbase as the exchange’s third employee, right out of college, enamored with the idea of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. After helping scale the operation to millions of users, he left in 2016 to start Polychain Capital, a venture fund designed to invest in digital assets. He managed to grow Polychain into the largest crypto fund, at one point crossing the $1 billion mark.

He was already telling Wired magazine about programmatic finance back in 2016, so it’s no surprise Olaf is very excited about the growth and promise of DeFi. He thinks smart contracts are enabling different ways of organizing people and capital, turning traditional corporations into internet-sovereign corporations. He believes that given a compelling underlying product, liquidity mining will be an incredibly effective mechanism for accelerating network effects, which will be applicable to many different types of business models even beyond financial services.

🎙Listen to the interview in this week’s podcast episode here:

Thursday

Dives

Aavenomics Now Rule DeFi’s Third Largest Lender: DeFi lending platform Aave is upgrading its protocol’s internal economics and incentives with a focus on safety.

Bytes

Ethereum Turns Five: Ethereum, the distributed network that serves as the base layer for most of DeFi, launched five years ago and it’s already supporting all the applications imagined in its whitepaper.

Dharma Enables Token Trading With Uniswap Integration: Users of crypto wallet Dharma can now trade more than 2,000 tokens thanks to an integration with Uniswap.

Holders of Decentraland’s MANA Can Now Mint Dai: MakerDAO’s MKR holders voted in a July 28 Executive Vote to accept MANA as a new collateral type that can be used to generate Dai.

The market cap of Ampleforth's AMPL token has tanked by over 60%: The Block

The inside story of YFII: China's celebrated DeFi knockoff: Decrypt

Wednesday

Dives

There Are Now More ETH Addresses Making Money Than Total Addresses Holding BTC: More than 73% Ether addresses are making money in their position. This means that the number of Ether addresses profiting (31.86 million) has surpassed the total number of Bitcoin addresses with a balance (30.83 million).

Blacklisted YFI Copycat Spurs DeFi Soul Searching: Censorship is the talk of DeFi this morning as automated asset management protocol Balancer blacklisted YFII, the fork of yEarn’s governance token YFI.

Bytes

Coinbase Users Will Now Earn 2% on Dai Deposits: Coinbase is introducing Dai Rewards, with 2% APY for customers in the US, UK, Netherlands, Spain, France, and Australia.

Bitcoin Wallet Ledger’s Database Hacked for 1 Million Emails: Decrypt

Tuesday

Dives

The DeFi Holy Grail: Synthetix Dissolves Foundation: Synthetix, the third-largest DeFi platform by assets locked, is now under the control of community-owned organizations, or DAOs.

Augur Debuts Long-Awaited V2 Release: Augur, the first permissionless prediction market in the world, has had trouble scaling to the mainstream since its July 2018 launch, while competitors mushroomed. Co-founder Joey Krug is planning to change that with the upgrade unveiled today.

Bytes

Mainframe Pivots to Lending With Sablier Acquisition: Mainframe today announced it acquired payments platform Sablier, rebranding its decentralized communications platform in favor of a new fixed-rate tokenized debt market

FTX Announces Solana-Based DeFi DEX Serum: FTX , the 5th largest derivatives exchange according to CoinMarketCap, is playing their hand at DeFi through the advent of a cross-chain DEX called Serum.

Blockchain Project Polkadot Raises $43 Million in a Private Token Sale: The Block

Ethereum Futures Open Interest Reaches All-Time High of $1 Billion: Decrypt

💜Community Love💜

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

Linda Xie @ljxieMy must-read crypto newsletters right now: - @DefiantNews - @OurNetwork__ - @coinmetrics - @ethhub_io All of them help keep me updated on news each week but also include fantastic commentary.4:09 PM ∙ Aug 1, 2020136Likes34Retweets

Spencer Noon @spencernoonHere are the top twitter accounts for #DeFi insights, as voted for by the @OurNetwork__ community: 🥇 @DeFi_Dad 🥈 @tomhschmidt 🥉 @DegenSpartan @sassal0x @SpartanBlack_1 @Arthur_0x @el33th4xor @teo_leibowitz @CamiRusso @SBF_Alameda @kevinsekniqi Follow @spencernoon too ofc 😉4:08 PM ∙ Jul 31, 2020191Likes28Retweets

Doug Molina @doug_molinam@smpalladino @DeFi_Dad YT videos are great he is the GOAT youtube.com/channel/UCatIt… @BanklessHQ has great writes up and keeps up to date as well as @CamiRusso the Defiant. Those are good starters, if he is a developer i guess he can dive deep into the this 😅 github.com/iearn-finance

github.comyearn.financeDeFi made simple. yearn.finance has 14 repositories available. Follow their code on GitHub.1:21 AM ∙ Jul 31, 2020

SuperMassive.eth @DirSchmidt@DefiantNews is on youtube and making waves with the funnest vids you’ll likely see. DeFi is impossibly hard to understand but if you follow the blog and watch some vids you’ll soon be up to speed. @CamiRusso delivers daily goodness here: thedefiant.substack.com #thedefiant #defi

thedefiant.substack.comThe DefiantThe essential content platform about decentralized finance.2:56 PM ∙ Jul 29, 20202Likes2Retweets

Vlad Dramaliev @vdramaliev"We're at the Early Stages of a Truly Novel Structure That can Organize Humans and Money” @DefiantNews @CamiRusso #DeFi2:07 AM ∙ Aug 2, 2020

Block&Pop @block_and_popChoo-choo! 🚜🌽 Amazing work by @DefiantNews m.youtube.com/watch?v=WDR4Bq…

m.youtube.comThe ultimate guide to Yield Farming in DeFiYield Farming is the hottest thing in blockchain right now drawing in millions of dollars in collateral as traders and investors look to capitalise on high i...3:17 PM ∙ Aug 1, 2020

Matt Casto @mcasto_@ljxie I really like @kermankohli DeFi Weekly. That one and @DefiantNews are must reads for DeFi imo.5:05 PM ∙ Aug 1, 2020

DeFi @4KTV@AboutDefi In no particular order..... @spencernoon @BanklessHQ @DeFi_Dad @defiprime @DeFiRate @DefiantNews @ethhub_io @Rewkang @Cooopahtroopa 🔥_🔥 @She__Fi @defivc @defipulse3:43 PM ∙ Jul 31, 202018Likes3Retweets

Dareh Winston @DarehWinston@AmeerRosic I'm going to give this one a shot. Any other podcasts you recommend? I’m a big fan of @mrjasonchoi podcast, along with @sassal0x and @econoar “Into the Ether”, @DefiantNews by @CamiRusso and “the scoop” by @fintechfrank . Am I missing any other legends?2:22 PM ∙ Jul 27, 2020

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About the founder: I’m Camila Russo, author of The Infinite Machine, the first book on the history of Ethereum. 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.