Recap: DeFi Week of Nov. 16 🦄

Hello Defiers! Hope you’re having a great weekend.

Summing up: In the past several days DeFi has been hit with one flash-loan driven attack after another. We dove into the main ones that happened just in the past week, draining about $16M from DeFi protocols, and also explained the mechanism and main questions they bring up in a video. The crypto rally continued gaining steam with Bitcoin’s market cap touching an all-time high, while ETH crossed $500 for the first time since 2018; but the bull market has been relatively quiet so far.

Uniswap UNI rewards ended this week; IntoTheBlock looked at on-chain metrics to analyze the impact, while governance may seek to extend rewards. Aave token holders put forward two new governance proposals, and investors in the DPI DeFi tokens index were able to participate. In this week’s podcast episode, we spoke with Illia Polosukhin, cofounder of the Near Protocol and Fernando Martinelli, co-founder and CEO of Balancer Labs, who agreed ETH would likely flip BTC in the coming years.

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Interview

"I Do Believe Ethereum Will Flip Bitcoin in the Next Four Years:” Balancer's Fernando Martinelli

In this week’s episode, I speak with Illia Polosukhin, cofounder of the Near Protocol and Fernando Martinelli, co-founder and CEO of Balancer Labs. Near is one of the up and coming Layer 1 chains, Balancer is a prominent DeFi protocol and application on Ethereum that will now also be on Near and other blockchains. As for Near being labeled an “Ethereum Killer” Illia says Near is “not trying to kill anybody.”

He thinks finance is just a stepping stone for all the use cases enabled by blockchains and that Near can be the place where those consumer apps are built. Fernando says DeFi will live on many different Layer 1s, but he sees the space expanding into less than 10, not hundreds of chains. He remains very bullish on Ethereum and is betting on a flippening with Bitcoin in the near future, which Illia agreed would be “totally possible.”

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

Video

Flash Loans and Attacks Explained

After five attacks and millions of dollars lost, this week we're diving into the mechanism behind what made this possible: flash loans. Some call them attacks other go as far as to call it art. But other important questions remain. One of them: Why do we keep seeing audited protocols in the victims’ list?

Friday

Dives

ETH Crossed $500 in a Most Quiet Rally: We are in the middle of a crypto bull market but you wouldn’t know it from social media trends, news headlines and anchors, and just all-around hype. The gap between BTC and ETH prices and mainstream interest, measured by Google search, is at the widest ever in a run-up.

Markets

Uniswap LPs Prove to be Fickle as UNI Holders Stick Around: IntoTheBlock reports on the on-chain impact of the end of Uniswap’s UNI mining

Thursday

Dives

Ethereum OG Whales Are Biggest Stakers in Eth2 Deposit Contract: There is now 20% of the required staked ETH needed for the network to launch its proof-of-stake-chain, the first step in its transition to Ethereum 2.0, and a big chunk of it is coming from long-time ETH whales.

Bytes

Aave Governance Picks up Steam Ahead of Upgrade: Aave yesterday posted two new governance proposals for its lending protocol, the fourth largest in DeFi with more than $1.3B in deposits, one of which may lead to an increased pool of assets to be managed by token holders.
DeFi Index Investors Can Now Vote in Governance Too: The DeFi Pulse Index (DPI) treasury is being put to work through the release of Index Co-op’s Meta Governance structure.
Vietnamese Dong Stablecoin Launches Today: VNDC.io, one of Vietnam's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, is launching a stablecoin that’s pegged to the Vietnamese Dong (VND) today.

Tuesday

Dives

Uniswap Liquidity Plunges After UNI Rewards End: Uniswap’s total liquidity has almost halved after the decentralized exchange ended its token rewards program on Monday afternoon.
Attackers Drain $16M+ From DeFi Protocols in One Week: Hackers were able to drain $16.4 million in ETH and Dai from DeFi projects Akropolis, Value DeFi Protocol, and Origin Protocol using flash loans, just in the past week.

Bytes

Bitcoin Market Cap Climbs to Record High: Bitcoin’s market capitalization is at a record, crossing $330B for the first time ever, according to CoinGecko.

💜Community Love💜

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

Alex Masmej @AlexMasmejI attribute much of my “wide-ranging knowledge” in crypto to: - @DefiantNews - @evan_van_ness WIE - @ethhub_io This is all free. In this industry, the newsletter reporting is so good you can be an expert for free, if you read long enough.10:56 PM ∙ Nov 15, 202032Likes5Retweets

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youtu.beFlash Loans, and Attacks -- explainedAfter five attacks and millions of dollars lost due to an exploit, this week we’re diving deep into the mechanism behind what made this possible: Flash Loans...2:21 PM ∙ Nov 21, 20207Likes1Retweet

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tv.zapper.fiZapperZapper is your DeFi hub to track your DeFi portfolio by just connecting your Ethereum wallet. You can instantly see a snapshot of your assets, liabilities, y...12:54 PM ∙ Nov 21, 2020

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About the founder and editor: Camila Russo is the author of The Infinite Machine, the first book on the history of Ethereum, and was previously a Bloomberg News markets reporter based in New York, Madrid and Buenos Aires. She has extensively covered crypto and finance, and now is diving into DeFi, the intersection of the two.