Recap: DeFi Week of Oct. 19 🦄
Hello Defiers! Hope you’re having a great weekend. Summing up: This week was devoted to more deep dives than the usual day-to-day news coverage (though of course, we did that too). We focused on the need for privacy-preserving blockchains on the podcast w...
Hello Defiers! Hope you’re having a great weekend.
Summing up: This week was devoted to more deep dives than the usual day-to-day news coverage (though of course, we did that too). We focused on the need for privacy-preserving blockchains on the podcast with Secret Foundation’s Tor Bair, who warned about how Web3 can devolve to enable surveillance capitalism, and in an essay by Rachel O’Leary about the different teams building a more anonymous crypto world.
We covered the recent rise of non-fungible tokens and digital art with a piece in the newsletter and a video that compiled all the most notable recent developments and includes a fun —and also kind of twisted— experiment. This experiment/game is going on right now (you can still participate if you’re able to recognize art when it’s right in front of you)— more on this next week.
The breaking news of the week was that PayPal plans to add BTC, ETH and other cryptos for payments. Uniswap’s first governance vote was rejected because it didn’t meet the minimum participation threshold, while yield chasers had their share of launches with Barn Bridge and Yield Protocol.
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).
🙌 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
"Privacy Might Be the Only Thing Left That Makes Web 3.0 a Viable Alternative:" Tor Bair of Secret Foundation
In this week’s podcast episode I interview Tor Bair, the founder of Secret Foundation, an organization which promotes privacy-preserving technologies, with a focus on Secret Network. Tor says that for Web3 to develop into the open and permissionless system its builders want, privacy should be at the core. His biggest fear is that in a Web3 future, intead of having single corporations control our data, governments will have the same access too. Without private blockchains, Web3 could devolve to enable surveillance capitalism, where auditability is weaponized. Tor talks about the technologies that are being built today to stop that from happening.
🎙Listen to this week’s podcast episode with Secret’s Tor Bair here:
Op-ed
The State and Future of Anonymous DeFi
If you heard this week’s podcast, you will know the urgency some in the crypto world are feeling for privacy-focused transactions and applications: The blockchain future we’re building may have some sinister consequences if Web3 enables not only corporations to mine our data, but governments too.
Today’s piece by Rachel O’Leary goes through the state of privacy solutions, from anonymous ERC-20 token swaps, to standalone general-purpose, privacy-preserving chains, to private interoperability solutions, and what an anonymous DeFi future would look like.
Wednesday
Dives
- PayPal Move Shows Crypto is Bound to Become Mainstream: PayPal is putting crypto at the fingertips of its 346M customers, helping digital assets break away from speculation as their main use case, and drive a real economy where you can earn, save, invest and now spend.
Bytes
- Uniswap’s First Governance Vote Thwarted by Voter Apathy: Uniswap’s first governance proposal to reduce quorum thresholds failed due to the exact thing it proposed to fix.
- Barn Bridge Keeps Yield Chasers’ Hopes Alive: Barn Bridge has soaked up more than $200M in assets for a tokenized risk management protocol giving yield farmers a second taste of glory.
- Yield Protocol’s Fixed Lending Goes Live: Yield Protocol unveiled v1 of its fixed rate, fixed lending market with support for Dai.
Tuesday
The Defiant's Guide to Digital Art & NFTs: As the yield farming craze cools off, non-fungible tokens are undoubtedly taking the blockchain world by storm, making us question our ideas about art and —as is often the case in crypto— greed.
Here is The Defiant Guide to Digital Art and NFTs, produced by Robin Schmidt in partnership with Harmony Protocol
The riddle for you while viewing is: can you recognize and seize art when it’s staring right at you across the screen?
💜Community Love💜
Thanking all the amazing Defiers for the support and love this week (and always)!
Yash Ahluwalia @dnayash@CamiRusso Consistently the best, unbiased and latest coverage on #DeFi7:02 PM ∙ Oct 23, 20206Likes2Retweets
Jason Choi @mrjasonchoi@tongnk @theBlockcrunch @kaiynne @SBF_Alameda @solana @ProjectSerum @BlockWorksGroup @TheLTBNetwork Thanks Nick! Make sure you’re subscribed and you won’t miss another :) sub links on pinned tweet here -> @theBlockcrunch For DeFi news, there are others doing great work already - @CamiRusso’s is the best imho7:02 PM ∙ Oct 24, 2020
Linda Xie @ljxie@lpolovets Highly recommend @CamiRusso's The Defiant newsletter and @laurashin's Unchained podcast for learning more about the crypto landscape and interested apps1:10 AM ∙ Oct 24, 202028Likes1Retweet
youtube.comFair Launch is a New Way for Founders to Express Themselves: Gavin McDermottGavin McDermott is an investor at IDEO CoLab Ventures, the venture arm of design firm IDEO, and he’s one of the creators of Fair Launch Capital. Fair Launch Cap...9:33 AM ∙ Oct 23, 20203Likes1Retweet
open.spotify.com“Privacy Might be the Only Thing Left That Makes Web 3.0 a Viable Alternative:” Tor Bair of Secret Foundation - The DefiantIn this week’s podcast episode I interview Tor Bair, the founder of Secret Foundation, an organization which promotes privacy-preserving technologies, with a focus on Secret Network. Secret Network is a proof-of-stake, Cosmos-based blockchain, which has the capacity to process private transactions a…6:55 PM ∙ Oct 22, 20209Likes2Retweets
Justin Dorfman @jdorfmanYes, @DirSchmidt, the effort you put into your @DefiantNews videos is art, very entertaining art. Please don't stop. 🙏 youtu.be/XqveU599ojg?t=…
youtu.beThe Defiant guide to Digital Art and NFTsFollowing the great DeFi summer many have been predicting NFTs to be the tricky second album. This is a monumentally large subject with competing viewpoints ...10:22 PM ∙ Oct 21, 20204Likes1Retweet
Camila Russo @CamiRussoHere's a riddle: 🎨 Do you recognize art when it's right in front of you? Anyone got it? ;) https://t.co/WzGqRaGU0c6:54 PM ∙ Oct 20, 202010Likes3Retweets
Simon Taylor @sytaylor@packyM The defiant podcast by @CamiRusso is 👌👌👌 if you want to go down the defi rabbit hole6:43 AM ∙ Oct 20, 2020
Spencer Noon @spencernoon@APompliano @Delphi_Digital Here are some of my favorite #DeFi resources: @OurNetwork__ @Delphi_Digital @BanklessHQ @DefiantNews @TheBlock__ @MessariCrypto @intotheblock @sassal0x’s The Daily Gwei @DeFiRate @DeFi_Dad’s content @veradittakit’s newsletter11:12 PM ∙ Oct 18, 202039Likes5Retweets
yPLT @PlutusSwap@APompliano @DefiantNews is a good place to start reading all content related to #DeFi!2:19 PM ∙ Oct 19, 2020
Eric Dadoun @EDadoun@lpolovets Following @mrjasonchoi and his @theBlockcrunch pod are great resources. @DefiantNews is a solid source of info. @spencernoon has an excellent newsletter. MUCH deeper dive but @hasufl and @zhusu run an excellent pod (Uncommon Core).12:45 AM ∙ Oct 24, 20207Likes2Retweets
youtube.comThe Defiant guide to Digital Art and NFTsFollowing the great DeFi summer many have been predicting NFTs to be the tricky second album. This is a monumentally large subject with competing viewpoints and...4:31 PM ∙ Oct 23, 2020
Brendan Kittredge @Brendan_Kitt#Privacy is needed for #DeFi to see even more use. @DefiantNews has a great overview of why here: thedefiant.substack.com/p/the-state-an… $SCRT $AZTEC $NEAR $REN $NYM $BTC $ETH
thedefiant.substack.comThe State and Future of Anonymous DeFiDevelopers are building the infrastructure for a future of dark pools and mixers.2:50 PM ∙ Oct 23, 202013Likes5Retweets
Trevor Jones 🎨 @trevorjonesartA brilliant documentary about the crazy world of #raredigitalart & a TJones cameo! 🙏 @DefiantNews One correction, it was @GoingParabolic who bid on Picassos Bull NFT and who now owns the physical painting. Bad @APompliano, bad! 👀 Full doc 👉 youtu.be/XqveU599ojg
10:31 AM ∙ Oct 22, 202085Likes14Retweets
youtube.comThe Defiant guide to Digital Art and NFTsFollowing the great DeFi summer many have been predicting NFTs to be the tricky second album. This is a monumentally large subject with competing viewpoints ...3:09 PM ∙ Oct 21, 202029Likes6Retweets
The Defiant @DefiantNews🎲NFTs are usually things (art, fashion, game assets); it's a lot more interesting when they're experiences @ianjohnlee says. 🌟Ownership that shapes reputation 🌟Badges enabling memberships 🌟Links in global communities 🌟Composable products Read 👇 https://t.co/IuzBTHP7tp7:20 AM ∙ Oct 21, 20208Likes1Retweet
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.
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.
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