Recap: DeFi Week of May 25 🦄

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

Summing up the past week: The Bitcoin on Ethereum trend continued growing with the launch of RenVM. ETHGlobal’s DeFi-focused hackathon wrapped up with more than 100 new projects built in one month. And speaking of Ethereum events, Devcon was postponed to 2021. Centrifuge launched with the goal to bring real world assets to Ethereum, while Polkadot’s initial phase went live. Ethereum’s network activity reached an all time high. Crypto investor Arthur Cheong laid out his investment thesis, which combines studying fundamentals with active involvement in the projects he supports. This week’s interview and podcast was with Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov, who said blockchain developers are underestimating data-related risks.

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).

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Op-Ed

DeFi Will Eat Traditional Finance and Active Investors Can Reap the Rewards: Arthur Cheong

Arthur Cheong, one of the most active investors in DeFi, lays out his investment philosophy for public crypto markets. He combines fundamental research with an active strategy, where he works closely with the team and the community of the crypto-networks he invested in so that he can contribute to the token’s success. His philosophy, he says, has generated market-beating returns for his crypto and DeFi portfolio, which he has grown since August, 2018.

Interview

DeFi Builders Are Neglecting Data-Related Risks And It Could Lead to Massive Failures: Sergey Nazarov

This week’s interview is with Sergey Nazarov, the cofounder of oracle provider Chainlink. The way blockchain applications get their data has proven to be crucial, as failures in those systems have been at the core of many of the latest attacks in decentralized finance. He says developers are currently underestimating the complexities of building data aggregators and oracle systems and says, the only reason these dangerous patterns are not as discussed is because the losses have not been Mt. Gox level. In this conversation Nazarov makes the case on why the Chainlink platform is meant to help avoid those risks. We also talk about the main trends he’s seeing in the space, Chainlink’s plans for the coming months, and his vision for a more decentralized future.

🎙Listen to the podcast episode here:

Thursday

Dives

• On-Chain Idealists Take Legal Dispute to ‘Meatspace’: Aragon was built with the vision of helping spur hundreds of communally owned organizations, governed by token-based votes and computer code. But now that problems with one of its own grant recipients have escalated, it’s turning to plain, old, physical courts.
• How I Celebrated Bitcoin Pizza Day Late (And on DeFi): Ren unveiled the long awaited RenBridge at bridge.renproject.io, where users can swap BTC for renBTC without any middleman or KYC. DeFi_Dad shows how he went from BTC to taking out a leveraged Dai loan using the recently launched platform.

Bytes

• Devcon 6 Was Postponed to 2021 & Will be Held in Bogota: Ethereum’s annual gathering will be postponed for the first time due to the COVID19 pandemic and held next year in Bogota, Colombia.
• First Phase of Polkadot Network Goes Live: After four years of development, the Web3 Foundation on Tuesday launched the first phase of the Polkadot network, a sharded protocol that allows decentralized blockchain networks to operate together.
• Buying Crypto Just Got Easier in the US and Europe
• Tokenized Goods Space Heats Up With New Player

Wednesday

Dives

• Developers Built More than 100 DeFi Apps in Past Month: Developers built more than 100 projects in ETHGlobal’s DeFi-focused hackathon in the past 30-days. From stablecoins, to automated investments, and fractional digital ownership, Ethereum builders pushed the envelope on what’s possible in open finance even further.
• RenVM Launches as Bitcoin on Ethereum Surges: RenVM, which aims to allow interoperability between blockchains, launched on mainnet today. It’s the latest in a long list of projects which users hope will be able to trustlessly bridge Bitcoin and Ethereum.
• Centrifuge Wants to Bridge Real-World Assets to DeFi: Centrifuge launched Tuesday with the aim to feed DeFi with real-world assets such as invoices and mortgages, and to allow holders of these assets to borrow against them on the Ethereum network.

Bytes

• Why Bitcoin might not survive a Bitcoin Standard: Hasu
• Ethereum Network Activity Reaches All Time High As Price Stalls: Ethereumprice

💜Community Love💜

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

Ryan Selkis @twobitidiotOne of the things I’m most excited about for Mainnet is we have pretty much all the best newsletter writers speaking / moderating throughout. Decentralized media FTW! @nlw @CamiRusso @powers_chris @RyanSAdams @spencernoon @AriDavidPaul @soonaorlater @APompliano @fintechfrank2:03 AM ∙ May 30, 202035Likes4Retweets

Lucas @0x_LucasThe only four newsletters you need to subscribe to: - Bankless by @RyanSAdams - The Defiant by @CamiRusso - Our Network by @spencernoon - This Week in DeFi by @DefiRate This will give you all the #DeFi content you’ll ever need And there’s absolutely zero bias here None1:18 AM ∙ May 30, 2020115Likes16Retweets

criptohispanos @criptohispanos⚡️🎧 Temp. 2 - Episodio Nº 3 🌎⚡️ Te invitamos a escuchar este nuevo episodio de #Criptohispanos 🤓 🤳 📖 Entrevista con @CamiRusso de @DefiantNews Escúchalo en anchor > anchor.fm/criptohispanos… #Bitcoin #Blockchain⛓ #LATAM🌎 #ethereum🔭

anchor.fmCriptohispanos con Camila Russo de The Defiant by Criptohispanos • A podcast on AnchorTemporada 2 - Episodio Nº3: Camila Russo, Fundadora de The Defiant, es una periodista chilena con experiencia en Bloomberg donde cubrió el mercado de Argentina durante los años 2009-2012, y luego cubriendo Latinoamérica desde Nueva York hasta el año 2018. Conoció y escribió su primera columna sobre …12:05 AM ∙ May 30, 202019Likes2Retweets

Joel Dietz @jdietzFor anyone following the @AragonProject @autarklabs events I highly recommend @CamiRusso 's writeup:

thedefiant.substack.comAragon Drama Pushes On-Chain Governance Idealists to the MeatspaceAlso, taking out a Dai loan with renBTC, Devcon 6 postponed, Polkadot launch.3:18 PM ∙ May 28, 20208Likes2Retweets

찌 G 跻 じ ⚡️ 🔑 @DegenSpartanvery good read while i often disagree with @Arthur_0x over growth projections, TAM and the many other things of various projects (the nitty gritty) i would say that our approach to investing in crypto is remarkably similar to a large extent

The Defiant @DefiantNews💎 @Arthur_0x dropping gems of wisdom: "In traditional finance public markets have less informational asymmetries & wider access (...) The exact opposite is true in crypto" Fundamentals & active involvement drives returns, he says. Read his column here: https://t.co/SanuPRpU5R1:44 AM ∙ May 27, 202010Likes2Retweets

DeFinance @DeFInanceGroup@Arthur_0x @DefiantNews Best article on #DeFI. @CamiRusso is a BOSS8:30 PM ∙ May 26, 2020

Arthur @Arthur_0xExcited to share my investment thesis and philosophy on DeFi on @DefiantNews, where I talk about why DeFi will eat traditional finance and how combining fundamentals research and active participation is one of the best ways to generate alpha in crypto.

thedefiant.substack.comDeFi Will Eat Traditional Finance and Active Investors Can Reap the RewardsDedicated crypto investor reveals his market-beating strategy and explains why he’s so bullish on open finance.7:37 PM ∙ May 26, 2020126Likes23Retweets

JonSnow @JonSnowisLink@DefiantNews @chainlink @SergeyNazarov What a great read. Thanks @CamiRusso and @SergeyNazarov for a very informative interview.9:25 PM ∙ May 29, 2020

DeFi Dad - defidad.eth @DeFi_Dad@CamiRusso @renprotocol @WrappedBTC @DefiantNews 👉You should read this guest post and subscribe to @DefiantNews. @CamiRusso has assembled a #DeFi army. 📺Here's the full length video to swap BTC to renBTC to WBTC to a Maker loan: youtu.be/XvWRDlcTipg

youtu.beHow to Use renBTC to Open a Maker LoanThe Ren Protocol team now offers the ability to trustlessly swap BTC to renBTC, an ERC20 token on Ethereum. This means you can put your BTC to work with DeFi...3:24 AM ∙ May 29, 20206Likes2Retweets

𝑬r𝒊𝒄𝒌 𝑷𝒊𝒏𝒐𝒔 @erickpinosWhat are your favorite #DeFi publications? I like @BanklessHQ and @DefiantNews but my centralized little heart yearns for even more DeFi content.1:00 PM ∙ May 28, 2020

Henrik Andersson @phenrikand@richwgalvin Agreed - that was a good article. @DefiantNews is turning out to be a leading source of quality DeFi content.9:03 AM ∙ May 27, 2020

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.

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About the founder: 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.