NFT Lending Resurgence: DeFi Week of May 21

This week, Tegan Kline was joined by Jacob and Marcin, the co-founders of RedStone, a rising crypto oracle team.

Jacob and Marcin dive into the nitty-gritty details of oracles, how RedStone is going up against the oracle monolith Chainlink, and what makes them unique. Plus, they also share an exclusive update, so make sure to watch until the end!

The DeFi world has seen its fair share of innovative and not so innovative but hype-based projects enter and exit the top 10 list. PulseChain is one of them, with TVL reaching over half a billion dollars in just a couple of days. Today, we’re diving in and addressing the question: is this really the biggest airdrop ever? Or just a scam?

Claim the (potential) zkSync airdrop - 5 step zkSync Era tutorial

ZkSync is a ZK-EVM Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum that has attracted more than $120M in TVL since launching two months ago. Today, we’re going to use some applications that are live on Era. And if you watch till the end, we’ll walk you through the exact steps to qualify for their ‘potential’ airdrop!

• MakerDAO Mulls Proposal To Boost DAI Savings Rate Block Analytica, a risk management firm, has proposed to increase the Dai Savings Rate (DSR) to 3.3% from 1%. The DSR enables users to earn a yield on DAI, crypto’s fourth-largest stablecoin, by depositing their tokens into the Maker protocol.
• Fed Data Shows Most Crypto Holders Stuck Around in 2022 Bear Market A new report shows 10% of U.S. adults held or used crypto assets in 2022, down just 2 percentage points from the previous year.
• Trezor Sales Spike 900% Even as Exploit of “T” Model is Revealed Sales of hardware wallet Trezor jumped after rival Ledger proposed a feature that has unnerved crypto holders.
• DAI Mostly Centralized Even After Halving USDC Exposure DAI is now 24% collateralized by USDC, down from 40% one month ago and above 50% for much of the year.
• Blend Drives Surge In NFT Lending Activity Combined NFT loan volumes totaled $375M from May 1 until May 22, of which Blend accounted for 82% or $308M, according to a report from DappRadar.

• Bitcoin and Ether Options Worth $3.6B Set To Expire On Friday Options traders are keeping a close eye on their clocks as more than $3.6B worth of open positions on Deribit, the leading crypto options exchange, are set to expire at 8am UTC on Friday.
• Memecoin Trading Bot Maestro is Raking in Millions One of the ‘shovels’ emerging from the memecoin trading fad is a Telegram bot that’s reaping in millions. The bot, called Maestro, has captured roughly $4.5M in trading fees so far this month.
• Bitcoin-Based Space Pepes Top NFT Charts The Bitcoin blockchain continues to defy expectations as it’s now the home of the top NFT collection by weekly volume. With nearly $7.4M worth of trades, collectors have pushed an NFT project called Space Pepes to the top of the charts, ahead of blue-chip collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club.

• Solana Launches ChatGPT Plugin Solana, a Layer 1 blockchain known for its fast and cheap transactions, is embracing the nascent world of artificial intelligence in a bid to reverse its long-term downtrend. On Tuesday, Solana launched a ChatGPT plugin that lets users purchase NFTs, transfer tokens, and analyze on-chain data.
• BitDAO Approves Rebrand and Token Swap A governance vote that passed on May 19 committed to rebranding BitDAO as a Layer 2 called Mantle and also approved plans to enable one-way conversions of the project’s BIT tokens to MNT, the new network’s native token.
• Multichain Token Plummets on Team Arrest Rumors The token of Multichain, the fifth largest blockchain bridge, is plunging on rumors that the team was arrested. The MULTI token is down over 25% in the past twenty-four hours.

• Hackers Steal $1M From Tornado Cash, Then Propose to Fix Governance Takeover The hacker who exploited Tornado Cash is proposing to patch the attack that allowed them to drain an equivalent of about $1M in tokens. Ironically, the hacker used Tornado Cash to obscure the destination of 360 ETH they obtained by selling stolen TORN tokens.
• Vitalik Warns Against Applications Using Ethereum’s Social Consensus to Resolve Conflict Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s creator, is sounding the alarm about the potential of other blockchain projects using the chain’s validators to resolve their own conflicts. The concern comes as re-staking emerges as a hot new trend.
• Crypto Rallies As US Debt Ceiling Talks Continue Crypto markets have started the week in the green, with Ether up nearly 3% at $1,860. Notably, crypto is showing signs of resilience despite major stock markets like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq losing over 1% today.