📉 Fed + Tether + SEC Jitters: DeFi Week of June 11

In this week’s edition, our resident DeFi experts dive into Alphascan, a powerful analytics platform that uses on-chain data and Twitter analytics to find the next big token before the herd!

This week, Tegan Kline was joined by Alex Gluchowski, the co-founder and CEO of Matter Labs, the team behind zkSync’s Layer 2 scaling solutions. Alex is a renowned physicist and entrepreneur. We dive into the story behind zkSync, new DeFi use cases on zkSync, the team’s plans for a token, and why Matter Labs believes ZK-rollups are the holy grail of Ethereum staking.

We explore the future of Uniswap, the world's leading decentralized exchange protocol, and why the recently announced V4 is significant, particularly in a bear market. Since its V3 release, Uniswap has facilitated over $1.5 trillion in trading volume. And now, with the forthcoming V4, they're looking to revolutionize on-chain liquidity and token trading once again, so let’s dive in.

Uniswap V4 Deep Dive with Head of Protocols Sara Reynolds

In this Weekly Recap with The Defiant writers we speak with Sara Reynolds from Uniswap's protocol team about the leading DEX's v4.

• Gauntlet Flags Risk Posed By $176M CRV Position On Aave A wallet known to belong to Michael Egorov, co-founder of the decentralized exchange Curve Finance, has outstanding debt of $60M in stablecoins secured by CRV on Aave worth $176M. While the position currently remains safe from liquidation, Gauntlet, a risk management firm, recommended that Aave’s governance freeze the CRV market on Aave V2.
• Newly Released Documents Detail Tether’s Exposure to Chinese Securities Financial documents released by New York’s Attorney General show that Tether was backing its USDT stablecoin in part with Chinese commercial paper as of 2021. The documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request made by CoinDesk and Bloomberg, also provide details on Tether’s $5.1B loan program and banking partners.
• Uniswap Taps Wormhole and Axelar For Cross-Chain Bridging After Lengthy Analysis The Uniswap Foundation’s Bridge Assessment Committee delivered its report evaluating Wormhole, Celer, DeBridge, LayerZero, Axelar, and Multichain based on their ability to facilitate cross-chain governance on Thursday.
• Ethereum ‘Restaking’ Protocol EigenLayer Launches On Mainnet EigenLayer, a highly anticipated “restaking" protocol for Ethereum, successfully completed the initial guarded stage of its mainnet launch on Wednesday. Users can now deposit liquid staking tokens into the protocol, or set up and configure an EigenPod to natively restake ETH.

• USDT Stablecoin Briefly Dips Below $1 as Financial Document Disclosure Looms Crypto’s largest stablecoin, USDT, fell below its $1 peg on Tuesday before Tether, its issuer, tried to front-run a potentially damning news article. USDT dropped to as low as $0.994 on June 14, its lowest since April 26, before bouncing back to $0.999.
• Lens Protocol Releases Open Governance Framework Lens Protocol, the decentralized social media protocol from the team behind Aave, opened up to governance proposals from the public on Thursday. The Lens Improvement Proposal process borrows heavily from Ethereum’s EIPs, allowing developers, creators, and protocol users to publish proposed changes and upgrades to Lens.

• Ethereum Survives AWS Outage Unscathed But Analysts Warn Of Future Incidents Ethereum’s reliance on centralized infrastructure is under scrutiny after some U.S. users of Amazon Web Services suffered a roughly three-hour outage on Tuesday.
• Crypto Markets Drop After Fed Leaves Rates Unchanged After over a year of hiking rates at every meeting, the Federal Reserve left rates unchanged at a target rate of 5% to 5.25% earlier today.
• Court Asks SEC and Binance.US To Reach Compromise A U.S. federal judge refused to grant the Securities and Exchange Commission’s request for a temporary restraining order freezing the assets of Binance.US.
• Crypto Advocates Call for Regulatory Clarity in Congressional Hearing Crypto leaders called for industry-specific rulemaking in a congressional hearing a week after securities regulators cracked down on the largest digital assets exchanges.
• Controversial Open Exchange Token Rallies On Conversion Plan The FLEX token, which Three Arrows Capital founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies adopted for use in their new venture, Open Exchange, has emerged as an unlikely winner amid the recent crypto pullback.
• Web3 Gaming Studios Grapple With Tokenomics and DAOs at 3XP Conference Blockchain gaming companies converged on the Pasadena Convention Center for the 3XP Web3 Gaming Expo, where hopeful independents and major players all sought to crack the secret to the perfect crypto-infused game.

• Uniswap Publishes Draft Code For Upcoming V4 Iteration Uniswap Labs published the draft code for Uniswap’s new v4 iteration. The protocol introduces several new features, including on-chain limit orders, automated compounding of liquidity provider (LP) rewards, and dynamic fees.
• NFT Marketplaces Compete For Users As Bear Market Drags On Despite cratering prices and dwindling volumes, NFT marketplaces are shipping upgrades. Over the past week, Sudoswap launched its v2 iteration, Blur cracked down on wash traders and other airdrop spoofers, Kraken launched its NFT trading platform, and LooksRare unveiled a liquidity mining program.
• Polygon Unveils 2.0 Roadmap Polygon, a top Ethereum scaling team, has announced plans to redesign its ecosystem into a symbiotic network of many chains. Polygon 2.0 will establish a future path for its PoS Chain, introduce new utility for the MATIC token, and pave the way for greater community governance over the Polygon protocol and treasury.

• Layer 1 Tokens Crumble After SEC Calls Them Securities In its recent complaint against Coinbase, the SEC claimed that 13 digital assets comprise securities. The mentioned tokens declined by an average of almost 27% since the SEC's lawsuit, while the top 50 tokens by market cap dropped by an average of 15% over the same period.
• U.S. Lawmakers Propose Bill To Fire Gensler and Restructure the SEC Two Republican congressmen want to fire Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Gary Gensler and overhaul the SEC. The “SEC Stabilization Act” calls to fire Gensler and restructure the SEC by eliminating the role of the chairperson.