🤝 Weekly Recap: Binance Settles With DoJ

Our resident DeFi degens teach you how to earn juicy stablecoin yields via Radpie, a new subDAO facilitating automated strategies on Radiant Capital — the most popular native money market on Arbitrum and the first omnichain money market built on LayerZero. Plus, we recap all of the hottest yields on offer in web3.

The Defiant chatted with Ethereum’s chief scientist and co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, at the recent Devconnect conference in Türkiye.

Vitalik updated us on the Ethereum roadmap, progress towards the forthcoming Dencun upgrade, and Ethereum’s scaling ecosystem.

Cami Russo spoke to David Gogel, the VP of Strategy and Operations at the dYdX Foundation.

David discussed dYdX’s recent migration from an Ethereum Layer 2 to its newly-launched Cosmos-based appchain, dYdX Chain. He dove into the intricacies of planning the launch, including revamping dYdX’s tokenomics, and gives us a sneak peek into what’s next for the protocol.

Jesper Johansen, the founder and chief executive of Northstake, offers up his predictions for why 2024 will be a big year for crypto. Johansen notes the possible launch of spot crypto ETFs, the implementation of web3 legislation in the European Union, and the Bitcoin halving event as key events that could send the markets surging.

Kate Kurbanova, the co-founder of DeFi risk management firm, Apostro, believes the decentralized finance sector needs to develop native risk assessment metrics to help demystify the users. Kurbanova cites the threat of protocols or developers engaging in pump-and-dump attacks, market manipulation, and poor protocol liquidity as risk factors that should be easier for users to assess.

• Blast Attracts Widespread Criticism Despite Surging TVL Blast, the forthcoming Layer 2, is attracting condemnation from across the web3 community as its total value locked skyrockets. The protocol attracted around $500M since launching a one-way bridge on Nov. 20.

• Bots, Terminals, and LLMs — Crypto UX is Getting a Makeover Top trading bots like Maestro, Banana Gun, and Unibot facilitated more than $4B in trading volume over the past year and a half. And over the past 30 days, Maestro and Banagun have burned more gas than all but two Ethereum-based projects.
• Non-US Bitcoin Miner Gets Caught Censoring Transactions The Bitcoin community is up in arms after news broke that a non-US mining pool was excluding OFAC-sanctioned transactions. This appears to be the first time a non-U.S. actor has complied with U.S. sanctions and has drawn many to speculate about whether the Bitcoin blockchain is, in fact, censorship-resistant.
• BTC Tests Year-To-Date Highs Amid Spot Bitcoin ETF Progress BTC is retesting its year-to-date high as spot Bitcoin hopefuls BlackRock and Grayscale make progress on their applications with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC met with both ETF hopefuls this past week.

• PancakeSwap Adopts Vote Escrow Tokenomics PancakeSwap, the largest decentralized exchange on the BNB Chain, has successfully passed a proposal that introduces veCAKE and gauge voting to the protocol. VeCAKE lockers will be able to vote on governance proposals and will direct CAKE token emissions to their liquidity pools of choice.
• Binance Slapped With Hefty $4.3B Fine – Can It Actually Pay It? Cryptocurrency behemoth Binance and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), pled guilty to charges of money laundering, settling with the U.S. Department of Justice to pay $4.3B. But does it have the cash?
• Avalanche Transactions Skyrocket 2,000% On ASC-20 Hype Ordinals fever is spreading beyond Bitcoin, with Avalanche becoming the latest chain to develop its own token standard enabling arbitrary information to be inscribed onto the blockchain. Avalanche’s on-chain activity spiked 2,000% following the launch of ASC-20 tokens.

• CrvUSD Proposal Aims to Increase Rates and Restore $1 Peg The Curve community is currently voting on a proposal to raise interest rates for its decentralized stablecoin, crvUSD, in a bid to restore the token’s peg. The move is intended to drive the price of crvUSD back up to $1 in response to the token trending toward $0.99 throughout November.
• Circle Launches Bridged USDC Contract For EVM Chains Circle has deployed a bridged token contract for USDC, the second-largest centralized stablecoin, in a bid to service emerging and future networks. The bridged USDC standard allows EVM-compatible chains to quickly and permissionlessly migrate the stablecoin onto their network.
• Swiss City of Lugano Embraces Crypto With Polygon Integration MyLugano, the payments app of the Swiss city of Lugano, has integrated support for Polygon as part of the municipality’s broader mission to embrace crypto. Local residents will be able to pay taxes, fines, and social service fees using BTC, USDT, and LVGA in the future.
• KyberSwap Dex Hacked for $48M KyberSwap, a decentralized exchange and aggregator deployed across 15 blockchains, has been exploited. The protocol lost $48M from its Arbitrum, Optimism, and Ethereum deployments.
• Solana is Having its Best Month Ever Decentralized exchanges on Solana reached $5.1 billion in monthly volume for November, according to DefiLlama, marching past its previous peak of $2.8 billion during November 2022. Weekly volumes also climbed to a new high of $2.1 billion, outperforming the same week last year by more than 33%.
• Aragon Tokenholders Vote To Sue Aragon Association The Aragon DAO has voted in favor of initiating legal action against the founding team behind the Aragon project as tensions flare over the planned dissolution of the Aragon Association. ANT tokenholders passed two proposals, one outlining plans for the legal action and a second allocating 300,000 USDC to fund the lawsuit.
• Upstart Layer 2 Blast Draws In $100M With Airdrop Scheme Blast, an upcoming Layer 2 network, has pulled in over $100M of ETH and DAI deposits since unveiling an airdrop program on Nov. 20. Set to launch as an optimistic rollup in February 2024, Blast touts native yield for bridged assets by depositing ETH to Lido and stablecoin to MakerDAO.

• Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao to Step Down and Agree to $4.3B Settlement Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, has agreed to step down from his position and plead guilty to violating U.S. anti-money laundering laws, the Wall Street Journal reported. This decision is part of a major settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice involving a fine of $4.3 billion.
• Tron’s JustLend Surpasses Aave As Largest Web3 Lending Market JustLend, the Tron-based web3 lending market, has overtaken Aave by total value locked to emerge as the sector’s leading protocol. Data from DeFi Llama shows JustLend ranking as the third-largest DeFi protocol overall with a TVL of $6B after growing by 12% in 30 days.
• Pyth Network Token Goes Live With $75M Airdrop For DeFi Users Oracle provider Pyth Network has launched its highly anticipated PYTH token with a retroactive airdrop for community members and DeFi traders. Pyth Network is the second-largest oracle provider by the number of protocols secured with 120, while Chainlink — the sector’s leader — boasts 361.
• SEC Sues Kraken Alleging Unlicensed Securities Trades and ‘Commingling’ of Customer Funds Kraken, the popular U.S.-based centralized exchange, is the latest web3 entity to face legal action from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC accused Kraken of illegally offering unlicensed securities to retail investors and commingling customer assets. Kraken vowed to fight the lawsuit.

• Tamagotchi-Like Fren Pet is Crushing it on Coinbase's Base Network A Tamagotchi-like game is crushing it on Base. The top trending token pair on Coinbase's Layer 2 network Base on Monday was Fren Pet against wrapped ETH. The Fren Pet token gained more than 38 times over the past weekend.
• Ethereum Validators Are Now Queuing To Exit The Network Ethereum validators are now lining up to exit the beacon chain, defying expectations that Ethereum’s consensus layer would steadily absorb Ether’s supply. Nearly 650 entities are waiting to offboard the network, while there is zero wait time for validators seeking to onboard.
• Web3 Community Slams dYdX For ‘Centralized’ Response to Alleged Market Manipulation Attack The dYdX team is copping flak from decentralization devotees over its handling of a recent “market manipulation attack.” DYdX promised to pay bounties to sleuths that help identify the attacker and promised to forward its findings to the FBI.