Recap: DeFi Week of Sept. 7 ?

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

Summing up: SushiSwap continues to make headlines this week, first with a successful migration of liquidity, where it was able to take about half of Uniswap’s assets, and next when founder Chef Nomi returned the full $14M he has taken from the project. yEarn launched yet another DeFi lego with StableCredit, Perpetual Protocol and Hegic tested new token distribution mechanisms, and UMA teamed up with Ren to create a Bitcoin-backed stablecoin.

Ian Lee of IDEO CoLab wrote a great guest column showing hoe DeFi is disrupting the entire finance stack. This week’s podcast episode is with Grammy-award winning DJ RAC, who talks about how crypto and blockchain technology can reduce intermediaries in the music industry, and help artists capture more of the value their work produces.

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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? Together with Perpetual Protocol, which provides decentralized perpetual contracts for any asset, and Zapper, the ultimate hub for managing DeFi assets & liabilities.

Interview

“It Turns Out Music Does Have Value. We’ve Been Pricing It Incorrectly For 20 Years:” RAC

In this week’s interview, we chatted with Grammy Award-winning DJ Andre Anjos, aka RAC. Many have seen cryptocurrencies as a way to decentralize the financial system, thanks to the innovation of digital scarcity. RAC says that digital scarcity can also help disrupt the music industry. His experiments have so far showed how distributed networks can be the underlying infrastructure that helps artists can sell their creations directly to fans; how tokens on open markets can help more accurately price goods and help them benefit from secondary trading of their products; and now how digital assets can help strengthen communities.

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

Op-ed

We’re the Architects of a More Open, Free and Fair Financial System: IDEO CoLab’s Ian Lee

IDEO CoLab’s Ian Lee takes us through the evolution of finance, from the pre-internet days to DeFi. He breaks down the full stack for money, showing how, despite sleek-looking applications, fintechs have only innovated on the surface, while the core had remained the same for hundreds of years —until the advent of cryptocurrencies. Public blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum have enabled a better infrastructure layer, while the application layer had remained centralized. With DeFi, decentralization is moving up the stack for the first time, revolutionizing finance from the ground up.

? Watch New Video on The Defiant’s YouTube Channel and Subscribe

Check out the just-released video on The Defiant’s YouTube channel! The amazing story of SushiSwap. The video was produced in partnership with Robin Schmidt of Harmony Protocol.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/VGTVN7QIfzo?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0

Friday

Dives

• “I F*cked Up. And I am Sorry:” Chef Nomi Returns $14M of ETH to SushiSwap: The founder behind the Uniswap fork SushiSwap, an anonymous developer going by the name of Chef Nomi who had run off with about $14M worth of ETH and prompted accusations the project was an exit scam, today returned his stash.

Bytes

• yEarn Unveils StableCredit Loans: yEarn Finance said it’s preparing to release a new decentralized lending protocol and automated market maker.
• Aavegotchi Showcases GHST Governance Token: Aavegotchi, an NFT x DeFi crossover, released details for a new governance token, giving players the ability to dictate key parameters of the forthcoming digital pet universe.

Wednesday

Dives

• SushiSwap Drains Uniswap Liquidity. Still, Everyone Won: SushiSwap, a fork of Uniswap, successfully migrated Uniswap liquidity into its own protocol. It was the first time the scheme that has come to be known as Vampire Mining had ever been attempted.

Bytes

• UMA & REN Team up for Bitcoin-Based Yield Dollar: UMA and Ren Protocol are teaming up to offer a Bitcoin-backed stablecoin. The price of UMA’s uUSD stablecoin will tend towards $1 as it approaches its maturity date, and will be redeemable for $1 of the collateral asset at expiry.
• DeFi Protocols Are Testing New Token Sale Mechanisms: DeFi protocols Perpetual and Hegic are listing their tokens with new distribution mechanisms aimed at reducing front running and price speculation.

Tuesday

• SushiSwap Migration is Hours Away With $1.3B at Stake: In less than 48 hours, a two-week upstart will attempt to drain liquidity from DeFi’s largest exchange, in a never-before-attempted vampire-like attack, which right now has $1.3B in tokens at stake. This is the definitive SushiSwap saga story.

?Community Love?

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

@DefiantNews produces top tier quality content. Hands down my favorite youtube channel. Keep up the great work! https://t.co/oohNW132vx

— Jared Chin (@jaredcj1) September 12, 2020

@DefiantNews produces top tier quality content. Hands down my favorite youtube channel. Keep up the great work! https://t.co/oohNW132vx

— Jared Chin (@jaredcj1) September 12, 2020

Amazing video recounting the @SushiSwap $SUSHI saga by @DefiantNews. $SUSHI – the ballad of Chef Nomi – DeFi’s greatest ever story https://t.co/5KKnSglcpR

Proud to be a governor of their #DeFi101 media grant by @harmonyprotocol $ONE@CamiRusso @alex_yatesalex
???

— Alpha Virtual (@avblockchain) September 11, 2020

@CamiRusso's Defiant newsletter has done a great job covering everything as it unfolded

Worth of sub https://t.co/WPpleDEW4x

— Connor Dempsey (@Cdempsey44) September 11, 2020

Yep saw both. Difficult to include everything in one tweet 🙂 I basically tell everyone to subscribe to @CamiRusso’s The Defiant to keep up.

— Linda Xie (@ljxie) September 11, 2020

Hands down @VitalikButerin and @aantonop

Education: @karl_dot_tech @AnnaRRose @0xstark @ljxie @technocrypto

Memes: @DoveyWan @Melt_Dem @nanexcool

Honesty: @zooko @La__Cuen @ameensol

Staples: @laurashin @cburniske @CamiRusso

— Jing is hiring for Optimism ? (@jinglanW) September 10, 2020

New blog post: "The Future of Finance is Decentralized"

"Why DeFi will eat banks, fintechs, and CeFi from the ground up"

(in @DefiantNews @CamiRusso )https://t.co/3oXrXoTitP

— Ian Lee (@ianjohnlee) September 10, 2020

Collaborative events hearing about the strides made in the industry is good for the soul.

Well done to @BlockShopDC & @mozillabuilders. Would love to see more events like this.

+ @CamiRusso is a huge asset to the space. The Defiant is A+ coverage of the space. https://t.co/YpFCSsKvev

— Brian Nistler (@Briannistler) September 10, 2020

Bought my first digital art on @SuperRare_co from @sven_eberwein!

The @SushiSwap and @UniswapProtocol liquidity war was interesting to watch and glad to now own this memorabilia. Hope it will age well.

Thanks to @CamiRusso for first showing me this art.https://t.co/UrbPbBNmK0 https://t.co/7s3Kzx3mDE

— Richard Chen (@richardchen39) September 10, 2020

All the @DefiantNews guys for DeFi. Recently discovered @DCLBlogger for NFTs pretty cool

— Al Bert (@albiverse) September 10, 2020

What an amazing story, and what a great journalist that we have in #DeFi ecosystem. Great job @CamiRusso.

if you want to talk with arguments, this is a history that you must read. https://t.co/RRDOv5DETF

— Cristobal Pereira (@cristpereirag) September 9, 2020

Excellent summary from @CamiRusso about SushiSwap's turbulent journey so far. https://t.co/qRfj8kxQIu

— ⟠ toast.eth ? (@intocryptoast) September 9, 2020

Fantastic article summarising the whole #Uniswap Vs #SushiSwap story.

A must read for #DeFi enthusiasts that got lost asking the way.

Great job, @CamiRusso! https://t.co/lEfzMQjfxv

— Gonzalo Faura (@GonFaura) September 8, 2020

The best write-up on Sushi.

Awesome job @CamiRusso ! https://t.co/dC70fCD2uU

— Alex Svanevik ? (@ASvanevik) September 8, 2020

Excellent write up of the Sushiswap story, we're fortunate to have a real journalists like @CamiRusso working in the space with us. https://t.co/VeFxQq7Jgz

— Lasse Clausen (@lalleclausen) September 8, 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.

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.