Recap: DeFi Week of Nov. 9 🦄

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

Summing up: It was a bullish week for crypto with DeFi “blue-chips” leading the rally. Not even an Infura outage stopped tokens from gaining; the infrastructure malfunction caused many key DeFi tokens to temporarily break down. LiquidStake is the latest staking-as-a-service project, offering USDC loans against staked ETH. Interest in the Hegic options platform if soaring fueled by Yearn Porotcol partnership. We explored PieDAO’s new DeFi tokens index, and Zerion’s effort to make it easier to track all those DeFi tokens investments.

Second State’s Vivian Hu broke down the highlights of Shanghai Blockchain week, while Harmony Protocol’s Robin Schmidt dove into social tokens in the latest Defiant video. DappRadar produced an excellent overview of the very latest in the NFT space. This week’s podcast episode is with FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried and Solana’s Anatoly Yakovenko. SBF has become known to be a ruthless trader, but he argues he’s simply using DeFi protocols for what they were made. For Anatoly, the reason we’re all here in the first place is to scale cryptography so that billions of people can take control of their assets.

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 get everything. Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button below ($10/mo, $100/yr).

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🙌 Together with Zerion, a simple interface to access and use decentralized finance, Sorare, a fantasy football game with officially licensed cards on Ethereum, and Near, a high-performance proof-of-stake blockchain that interoperates with Ethereum.

Interview

"When Incentives Are Gone, What's Left? DeFi Gets Mixed Marks:" Sam Bankman-Fried

In this week’s interview, I speak with Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder and CEO of crypto liquidity provider Alameda Research and derivatives exchange FTX, and with Anatoly Yakovenko, the creator of the Solana blockchain. Bankman-Fried, recently announced the launch of Serum, a DEX built on the Solana blockchain. SBF has become known to be a ruthless trader, but he argues he’s simply using DeFi protocols for what they were made. For Anatoly, the end goal of Solana is to find the fastest and cheapest way to scale cryptography so that people are able to have ownership and participation in the applications they use, and so that the financial system can become more open efficient.

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

Op-ed

DeFi Takes Shanghai Blockchain Week By Storm

DeFi is meant to be global, interconnected and open, but there’s still a gap between East and West. Each side of the globe isn’t communicating of working together very much, which doesn’t make much (economic or business) sense. For example, did you know last week was Shanghai Blockchain Week? If you didn’t (even if you did), we got you. Vivian Hu of blockchain infrastructure firm Second State was there has a break down of the DeFi projects that stood out the most.

Friday

Report

The Nifty Ways That NFTs Become DeFi: DappRadar’s Defiant exclusive report dives into the fast-moving non-fungible tokens space. The report highlights recent traction, emerging Layer 1s and token standards, and the different ways that NFTs and DeFi are starting to interact, from NFTs to insure financial assets, to interest-bearing tokens.

Thursday

Video

Social Tokens; Plague or Paradigm Shift?: Video producer Robin Schmidt dives into social tokens in the latest Defiant video, produced in partnership with Harmony Protocol. “In this episode we cover a range of social tokens, explore the pitfalls, the idiosyncracies and the value of a community when reduced to only the most committed members.”

Bytes

LiquidStake to Issue USDC Loans for Staked ETH: LiquidStake is the latest venture that wants to make it easier to stake ETH by giving validators liquidity on their deposits.

PieDAO Launches New Small+Large Cap DeFi Index: PieDAO has fused its small-cap DeFi+S and large-cap DeFi+L index tokens to form DeFi++, a basket of the most popular DeFi tokens.

Zerion Adds Profit & Loss Analysis: Zerion now offers DeFi traders a way to easily track their profits and losses on any supported token in its asset management dashboard.

Wednesday

Dives

DeFi Temporarily Broke Down Showing It's Overly Reliant on a Single Provider: Many decentralized finance applications broke down earlier today after a series of unfortunate events resulted in an outage on a key piece of Ethereum infrastructure.

DeFi Blue Wave is Sweeping Over Losses: There’s a blue wave and we’re not talking about US politics; it’s the latest meme making the rounds in DeFi as tokens with blue logos are rallying ahead of the rest this month: That’s AAVE, YFI and SNX up at least 50% just in the past 10 days.

Bytes

Hegic Interest Soars on Yearn Partnership: Hegic is back with a bang. Demand for the protocol, which temporarily suspended activity after a bug earlier this year, is soaring as its partnership with Yearn Finance’s rockstar founder compounds with increasing demand for trading protection.

Links

Gemini Exchange Building ‘Wrapped Filecoin’ for the Ethereum Network: CoinDesk

Hackers Draining $10 Million a Month from DeFi: Report: Decrypt

💜Community Love💜

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

Tim Copeland @Timccopeland"Much of DeFi temporarily broke down after Infura suffered an outage." This sentence in @DefiantNews sums it all up.5:28 PM ∙ Nov 11, 202012Likes2Retweets

Jordan Lyall 🍍 @JordanLyallWhen $MEME brought DeFi to NFTs, it kicked off a CryptoKitties-like rally in transaction volume. via @DefiantNews and @DappRadar thedefiant.substack.com/p/the-nifty-wa…

6:57 PM ∙ Nov 13, 202065Likes17Retweets

Will McCormick @TakeoWTFriends! The Defiant is hiring and is providing some of the best produced content on crypto atm @DefiantNews

Camila Russo @CamiRusso💥 The Defiant is hiring!! 🗒 Reporter ✍️ Editor 👩‍💻 Developer 📈 Growth #cryptocurrencies #defi #crypto #newjob #journalism https://t.co/0tOOLoQoJY https://t.co/XyISJqg0kj10:52 PM ∙ Nov 11, 202010Likes3Retweets

Feng Liu @fishkillerThe best opportunity to dive in the DeFi world.

Camila Russo @CamiRusso💥 The Defiant is hiring!! 🗒 Reporter ✍️ Editor 👩‍💻 Developer 📈 Growth #cryptocurrencies #defi #crypto #newjob #journalism https://t.co/0tOOLoQoJY https://t.co/XyISJqg0kj4:50 AM ∙ Nov 12, 202011Likes2Retweets

Zachary Dash 🚀 @ZacharyDash🚨 Crypto jobs for a really cool company in a really cool industry working with a really cool person

Camila Russo @CamiRusso💥 The Defiant is hiring!! 🗒 Reporter ✍️ Editor 👩‍💻 Developer 📈 Growth #cryptocurrencies #defi #crypto #newjob #journalism https://t.co/0tOOLoQoJY https://t.co/XyISJqg0kj1:45 AM ∙ Nov 12, 202012Likes1Retweet

Interaxis @Interaxis8This is amazing! So happy and proud of @CamiRusso...not that she needs me to be proud. So hard to start something you believe in, at a time when many people probably don't share your vision, and to succeed. This is inspirational to those of us that are following you.

Camila Russo @CamiRusso💥 The Defiant is hiring!! 🗒 Reporter ✍️ Editor 👩‍💻 Developer 📈 Growth #cryptocurrencies #defi #crypto #newjob #journalism https://t.co/0tOOLoQoJY https://t.co/XyISJqg0kj2:59 PM ∙ Nov 12, 2020

Seth JEONGㅣsethjeong.eth 🇰🇷 @sethje0ng@CamiRusso @sassal0x I was working on Crypto Media in Korea and found that Crypto Contents creation still in the first-stage. I believe @DefiantNews will be one of the pioneers in crypto content industry.4:51 AM ∙ Nov 12, 2020

Fulvia 🍵 @fulviamoralesV/ @CamiRusso is a great writer/journalist covering the Ethereum ecosystem and DeFi since day 1. What she has built with the @DefiantNews is 🔥 and there’s still a lot more coming. Don’t miss out on their new open roles!! https://t.co/x9U0clOiuz

Camila Russo @CamiRusso💥 The Defiant is hiring!! 🗒 Reporter ✍️ Editor 👩‍💻 Developer 📈 Growth #cryptocurrencies #defi #crypto #newjob #journalism https://t.co/0tOOLoQoJY https://t.co/XyISJqg0kj3:40 PM ∙ Nov 12, 20208Likes3Retweets

YT🗝 $COIN ⚔️ @coin_artistNew video! youtu.be/i0k9oN2buA8 It was amazing to be included @DirSchmidt!! Looking forward to where you run with these ideas! @DefiantNews @CamiRusso @Cooopahtroopa $COIN

8:22 PM ∙ Nov 12, 202030Likes5Retweets

Luca Cosentino @lcosentThanks @CamiRusso for the great summary of the Shangai International Blockchain week.

thedefiant.ioDeFi Storms Shanghai Blockchain Week - The DefiantThe week-long Shanghai International Blockchain Week attracted top projects and investors to Shanghai to seek crypto money and fame in its 6th year. The two main events in the week were the Blockchain Summit organized Wanxiang, one of the earliest backers of Ethereum, and the Web3 Forum organized …1:25 AM ∙ Nov 13, 2020

run the juels @nullpackets@DeFiGod1 @CamiRusso @DefiantNews Got that right... Cami knows.

youtu.beChainlink - The Defiant - Interview with Frameworks Ventures - June 2020Camilia Russo discusses Chainlink and the LINK Marines with Michael Anderson and Vance Spencer from Framework Ventures Full interview here: https://open.spot...10:54 PM ∙ Nov 11, 2020

Sonia Nieves @sn_crescofinBear pause over. 🐻 Expect high growth into end of year. Great newsletter @CamiRusso @DefiantNews

2:55 PM ∙ Nov 9, 202018Likes5Retweets

SuperMassive.eth @DirSchmidt1/1 This is the very first @DefiantNews inspired NFT art piece. RP//FRACT1ONALEYEZ A visualisation of the fractionalization of self. Developed from the intro to this week’s episode. app.cargo.build/collectible/0x… #cryptoart #defiantnews

4:00 PM ∙ Nov 12, 202025Likes7Retweets

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 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.