Dencun On The Horizon: DeFi Week of April 30
Weekly Recap
Happy weekend Defiers! Here’s what we covered this week.
New technology captured headlines throughout the week, with Ethereum Foundation’s Tim Beiko revealing core devs are already entering the “final stages of planning” the network’s next major upgrades, called Dencun.
Dencun will include proto-danksharding, which is tipped to dramatically reduce Layer 2 transactions fees by reducing the costs associated with storing transactions on-chain.
The week hosted the mainnet launch of the Sui blockchain, a heavily hyped Layer 1 network from former Meta employees. Curve deployed its native crvUSD stablecoin deployment on Ethereum, prompting degens to ape $2M into the project before a user interface was even live.
Degens also wreaked havoc on Aave and Compound, sending lending rates for TUSD into triple-digits after racing to capitalize on the stablecoin briefly tagging heights of $1.20 on Binance.
New platforms continue to proliferate for NFT traders, with Blur, OpenSea’s upstart competitor, launching an NFT lending protocol that allows users to ape into non-fungibles on lay-by. Sotheby’s, the 279-year-old auction house, also launched Sotheby’s Metaverse, a new peer-to-peer NFT marketplace. The news indicates influential players in the art world are betting the prolonged NFT downtrend will eventually subside and pave the way for a resurgence in non-fungibles.
Bitcoin is enjoying a surge in activity after continuing to embrace Ethereum-inspired tech, with the network’s new BRC-20 token standard driving Bitcoin’s daily transaction count into new all-time highs. The move follows the launch of Ordinals, a protocol allowing users to mint NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain, which has garnered significant adoption since launching in January.
And in this week’s podcast, Nader Dabit of Aave and Lens — Aave’s decentralized social media protocol. Nader gave us a sneak peek at what Lens is currently working on, including gasless transactions.
Enjoy!
Podcast
From AWS to Aave & Lens Protocol: Nader Dabit Explains Web 3 Social Media and Gasless Transactions
This week, Tegan Kline was joined by Nader Dabit, the director of developer relations at Aave and Lens.
Nader starts by diving into his journey from AWS to Web3, before moving to what the team at Lens is currently working on behind the scenes. Nader has become a household name across the developer community, publishing live coding demos and tutorials, and providing interviews on modern web development, Web 3, and AI. Don’t miss this episode!
Best of the Week
Owen Fernau covered Bitcoin reaching its highest level of decorrelation from equities since mid-2021. The move shows that investors may no longer see crypto as “just another tech stock” and are hedging their bets amid elevated interest rates and the recent failure of banking institutions.
YYC reported on the markets trending sideways in response to the Federal Reserve hiking interest rates by 0.25%, with the move marking the 10th consecutive bump in interest rates. Fed funds futures project a 90% probability of rates remaining unchanged in June, predicting rate cuts by the end of the year.
And Samuel Haig dove into Momoka, the forthcoming Layer 3 scaling solution for Lens. The network is currently being beta-tested by Lens and top ecosystem partners and aims to enable gasless transactions by serving as a data availability layer.
Defiant Video
The REAL reason why Balaji burned $1 Million
Remember Balaji Srinivasan's million-dollar bet on Bitcoin? Well, today, we're revisiting that story with a twist. Balaji just burned $1 million to warn us about an impending financial crisis, sending shockwaves through the crypto community. Let's find out what this means for the economy, the world of decentralized finance, and the future of Web3.
Web3 Social Media Landscape (Top 12 Projects)
With Memecoins on the rise, we have to consider the impact of social networks and hype on web3 adoption. Delphi Digital says decentralized social protocols are in the "innovation phase" of their hype cycle and that emerging protocols could one day dethrone traditional social media giants. So without further ado, here are the 9 protocols which can potentially reshape the Web3 social landscape.
Weekly Recap: Binance Lists $PEPE, Coinbase International, takeaways from the Fed meeting
A livestream of the biggest news ofthe week, every Friday at 12pm EST.
Opinion
Is a Government Backstop the Only Solution?
Antoine Scalia is the founder and CEO of Cryptio, which develops enterprise-grade accounting, audit and tax software for digital assets writes in an op-ed for The Defiant:
Over the past two months, a number of banks and financial institutions have collapsed worldwide. Central banks are left with two options: Let the banks fail and cause catastrophic damage to the economy, or backstop deposits, save the banks and risk hyperinflation.
Even if central banks are able to walk the tightrope between the two options, commercial banks must find a new way to offer their depositors confidence in the balance sheet and solvency. DeFi may be part of this solution.
Friday
- Sushi Launches Concentrated Liquidity On 13 Blockchains: Sushi is the latest decentralized exchange to capitalize on the expiration of Uniswap V3’s Business Source License, with Sushi rolling out concentrated liquidity features across 13 chains on Thursday.
- Sui Blockchain Launches Its Mainnet: Sui, a Layer-1 blockchain developed by former Meta employees, has launched its mainnet.
Thursday
- Ethereum Developers In ‘Final Stages Of Planning’ Next Major Upgrade According to a May 3 blog post from Ethereum Foundation community manager Tim Beiko, Ethereum’s core developers are already in “the final stages of planning” for Dencun.
- Bitcoin Transactions Hit Record High as New Token Type Takes Off Bitcoin’s new BRC-20 tokens, fungible assets named after ERC-20 tokens, are quickly gaining momentum.
- New Bitcoin Token Overtakes WBTC on Avalanche: Signs are emerging that the biggest Bitcoin-like token can be unseated. BTC.b is outpacing the long-standing incumbent, Wrapped Bitcoin, on the Avalanche network.
- TUSD Lending Rates Spike After Stablecoin Briefly Rallies To $1.20: Opportunistic DeFi traders pushed lending rates for TrueUSD, the centralized stablecoin favored by Binance following a regulatory crackdown on its own BUSD token, well into triple digits after TUSD suddenly rocketed to $1.20 on Monday.
Wednesday
- Fed Hints At Pause After Another 25bps Hike Markets remained little changed after the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates for the 10th straight time, nudging the benchmark US rate up by another 0.25%.
- Curve Deploys crvUSD Stablecoin On Ethereum crvUSD, the highly anticipated stablecoin from Curve Finance, is now live on Ethereum.
- Sotheby's Launches NFT Marketplace Storied auction house Sotheby’s has launched a peer-to-peer NFT marketplace on Ethereum and Polygon.
- Bitcoin Decouples From Stocks As Fed Decision Looms After remaining elevated for most of 2022, Bitcoin’s correlation to equities has plummeted to 12%, a level not seen since mid-2021.
Tuesday
- Coinbase Looks Beyond The U.S. With International Exchange Coinbase is the latest major exchange to launch an offering specifically for non-US customers.Coinbase International, which launched today, will initially serve institutional clients, according to a post from the company.
- Blur Launches NFT Lending Protocol Blur, the leading NFT marketplace by trading volume, is diving into NFT lending with its new Blend protocol that went live today.
Monday
- Lens Social Media Protocol Unveils Layer 3 Scaling Solution Lens, the decentralized social media protocol from the team behind Aave, has begun beta-testing Momoka, a bespoke Layer 3 scaling solution.
