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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:

	Ticker	Value	24h

Ticker	Value	24h
BTC	$49,579	- 0.94 %
ETH	$2,637	- 0.78 %
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GOLD	$1,993	- 1.25 %
Arch WEB	31.42 0 pts	- 1.21 %
↳ FINANCE	1.22 pts	- 0.91 %
↳ INFRA	1.74 pts	- 1.89 %
↳ CONSUMER	1.49 pts	- 0.16 %

Learn more about Arch Indices here.

🎬 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 Rollo ut

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.

Sei Upgrades Devnet With Ethereum Compatibili ty

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.

DEXES

Arbitrum DEX Dolomite Launches On Polygon zkE VM

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 Stableco in

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.

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