🪂Starknet Confirms STRK Airdrop Is One Week Away

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Starknet has confirmed that its long-awaited airdrop will take place on Feb. 20. The STRK token will be distributed to early adopters of the Starknet and StarkEx ecosystems, Ethereum solo stakers, and open-source developers, among other web3 users.

In other news, Immutable's growth is outpacing rival L2s despite the ongoing rollout of the new Immutable zkEVM, Sei has launched a new devnet boasting EVM compatibility, and the Dolomite decentralized exchange has expanded beyond Arbitrum to Polygon zkEVM.

Plus, Morpho has launched a PYUSD vault in the latest DeFi integration for PayPal's stablecoins.

✍️ In today’s newsletter:

• Starknet airdrop scheduled for Feb. 20
• Immutable and IMX dominate weekly leaderboards
• Sei deploys EVM-compatible devnet
• Dolomite DEX expands onto Polygon zkEVM
• Morpho launches latest PYUSD DeFi integration

🎙️The Defiant Podcast & Interviews:

• Creating asset-backed stablecoins with the Reserve protocol

📈 Markets in the last 24 hrs:

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🎬 WATCH

Check out our discussion with Tina and Teddy to learn more about EigenLayer, the pioneering Ethereum restaking protocol. Also watch our podcast with Worldcoin co-founder, Alex Blania, to get a detailed understanding of the controversial digital identity network.

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A developer-friendly, Rust-based smart contracts platform designed for scale and sensibility. Coming soon to mainnet, Soroban seamlessly integrates with and works alongside the existing Stellar blockchain. Start building on Soroban today.

The Reserve protocol empowers anyone to launch and govern currencies called “RTokens” backed by baskets of onchain collateral. Preserve your spending power with yield-bearing RTokens like ETH+ and hyUSD.

AIRDROPS

Starknet Token To Launch On Feb. 20

TLDR Starknet's long-awaited STRK airdrop is set to take place on Feb. 20, with 1.3M wallets qualifying for the token distribution. Starknet will issue tokens to a wide variety of web3 users, including early adopters of the Starknet and StarkEx ecosystems, open-source developers, and even solo ETH stakers.

SO WHAT Airdrops have emerged as the dominant launch mechanism for new tokens this market cycle, with leading networks and protocols opting to freely deliver tokens to users instead of hosting public tokensales. Starknet is currently the 11th-largest Layer 2 network with a TVL of $187M.

READ MORE: Starknet Token To Launch On Feb. 20

LAYER 2S

Immutable Tops L2 Growth Charts Despite Immutable zkEVM Rollout

TLDR Immutable is topping the web3 leaderboards for the past seven days. The network ranked as the fastest expanding Layer 2 with 27% growth, while its IMX token was the fifth best-performing top 100 cryptocurrency with a 33% gain.

SO WHAT Immutable's impressive growth comes despite the team beginning the rollout of its Polygon-base zero-knowledge rollup. While Immutable zkEVM introduces support for Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) smart contracts, the original Immutable network still hosts more than 200 projects including leading web3 games.

READ MORE: Immutable Tops L2 Growth Charts Despite Immutable zkEVM Rollout

SPONSORED POST

Liquidation in DeFi can be a huge setback to users. They greatly reduce your exposure while making you pay a noticeable penalty, but there are a number of ways to keep your positions in lending protocols safe.

Luckily, there are a number of tools out there today to help you avoid liquidation. From alerts about your positions health rates, to automated protection options, this article will give you four methods that you can use to keep your positions protected and out of the hands of pesky liquidators.

As a bonus, we also touch on what kind of network conditions you can expect during major market crashes, to help you be best prepared for a potentially wild ride.

READ MORE: Four ways to prevent liquidations in DeFi (and one extra tip)

LAYER 1S

Sei Upgrades Devnet With Ethereum Compatibility

TLDR Sei, a high-performance Layer 1 network supporting parallelized execution, has deployed its second devnet featuring EVM-compatibility.

SO WHAT Introducing EVM compatibility would open the door to established DeFi dApps to join the Sei ecosystem. Despite Sei's lack of EVM support on mainnet, the SEI token has enjoyed explosive growth in recent months, currently sitting among the top 50 coins by market cap after gaining more than 300% since early November.

READ MORE: Sei Upgrades Devnet With Ethereum Compatibility

DEXES

Arbitrum DEX Dolomite Launches On Polygon zkEVM

TLDR Dolomite, an Arbitrum-based decentralized exchange and lending protocol, announced plans to expand onto the Polygon zkEVM network. The platform will initially support ETH, USDC, and MATIC, with plans to support more tokens in future, including ARB.

SO WHAT Both Dolomite and Polygon zkEVM are hoping the migration will facilitate an increase in their market share, with the projects commanding TVLs of $20M and $138M respectively. However, Polygon zkEVM is set to soon merge with the Polygon PoS sidechain, promising to push their combined TVl past $1B.

READ MORE: Arbitrum DEX Dolomite Launches On Polygon zkEVM

DEFI

Morpho Launches PYUSD Vault In Latest DeFi Integration For PayPal's Stablecoin

TLDR Morpho has launched a new vault for the PYUSD stablecoin, allowing users to borrow the stablecoin against Lido's wstETH stablecoin and Backed's tokenized U.S. Treasury Bills.

SO WHAT A recent spate of integrations and interest in PYUSD from leading DeFi protocols has helped to propel growth for PayPal's stablecoin, with the token's market cap doubling since the start of November. PYUSD now ranks as the 10th-largest stablecoin with the eighth-strongest daily trade volume.

READ MORE: Morpho Launches PYUSD Vault In Latest DeFi Integration For PayPal's Stablecoin

🔎 OUR REPORTERS ARE WATCHING

• Peter Thiel's Founder's Fund accumulated $200M in BTC and ETH in 2023
• Lens launches algorithm to identify bots on its social network
• Rocket Pool approves $60k grant to explore hybrid restaking on EigenLayer

🌍 ELSEWHERE

• BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF passes 100K BTC under management (Cointelegraph)
• Crypto Fear & Greed Index Hits Highest Level Since Bitcoin's 2021 Record High (CoinDesk)
• ENS considering $300k settlement over eth.link litigation (CryptoSlate)

🔥 TRENDING

• Morpheus AI Launch Attracts $50M Within Hours
• Crypto Markets Rally After Bitcoin ETFs See $400M Of Daily Inflows
• Markets Surge as Bitcoin Flirts With $50,000
• Our Most Read Stories This Week: Morpheus AI, Manta Token, Dymension Airdrop, ERC-404
• Rethinking EigenLayer, ERC-404, New Crypto AI Project, Wormhole Token, Pyth Airdrop
• Franklin Templeton Files For Ethereum ETF
• Ondo To Bring RWA-Backed Stablecoins Onto Sui
• Dymension Launches Mainnet With $300M Airdrop
• Institutional Crypto Holdings Hit Two-Year High: CoinShares
• DN-404 Token Standard Launches To Improve On ERC-404