👀Weekly Recap: Markets Post Eye-Watering Gains

Bulls continued to control the crypto markets this week, with BTC surging 22% to trade 6% shy of its record high, ETH gaining 17.5%, SOL spiking 30%, and DOGE rallying 68% in the past seven days. However, the flurry of activity disrupted the operations of popular centralized platforms, with Coinbase, CoinGecko, and Crypto.com suffering outages as digital assets peaked.

The market momentum was fueled by record action surrounding spot Bitcoin ETFs. Both daily trade volume and inflows to the fund posted new all-time highs this week, with more than $8 billion worth of shares traded and inflows exceeding $637 million on Feb. 28.

The combined market cap and total value locked in DeFi projects also pushed into multi-year highs, with the capitalization of DeFi tokens breaking above $100 billion and TVL surpassing $160 billion for the first time since May 2022. The TVL of Bitcoin-based DeFi projects rallied to a new high of almost $2.5B amid a surge of activity surrounding Merlin Chain, an upstart Layer 2 accounting for 72.5% of Bitcoin’s TVL.

The price action inspired Kyle Davies and Su Zhu, the disgraced founders of the insolvent VC firm, Three Arrows Capital, to resurface on Twitter to espouse their “Supercycle” theory once again.

Restaking remains the hottest narrative in DeFi, with EigenLayer’s TVL growing to $10B while liquid restaking tokens (LRTs) broke above $5B for the first time. MEV Capital, an asset manager serving institutional investors, discussed its LRT farming strategies in an exclusive interview with The Defiant.

EtherFi, the top LRT protocol accounting for 36% of the sector’s TVL, closed a $23M Series A funding round led by Bullish Capital and CoinFund.

Blast the controversial Ethereum L2, completed its long-awaited mainnet launch on Feb. 29. Despite amassing more than $2B in TVL since deploying a one-way deposit contract in November, three-quarters of assets have since exited the network.

Plus, Aave’s decentralized social protocol Lens is now permissionless, Uniswap is rolling out new features including a browser extension and limit orders, Robinhood Wallet users can now execute trades on Arbitrum-based decentralized exchanges, the market cap of DePIN projects is up 150% in six months, and Telegram announced a new revenue-sharing program that will distribute funds via the TON token

And don't miss our podcast with Avery Ching, the co-founder and CTO of Aptos, to learn more about the roadmap of the Layer 1 network developed by former Facebook engineers.

Enjoy!

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ALPHA INTEL

Earn 24% APY with a Tokenized ETH Basis Trade

Our resident DeFi degens examine eUSD, the yield-bearing stablecoin from Ethena Labs purporting to offer yields exceeding 20% to tokenholders through a combination of exposure to ETH staking rewards and funding rates for short positions. We break down the historic performance of this strategy, finding that returns would have fallen short of expectations in recent years

Plus, we recap all of the hottest yields from across DeFi and web3!

PODCAST & INTERVIEWS

Aptos (APT): Ex-Facebook Engineers Aim For 1 Million Transactions

Cami Russo was joined by Avery Ching, the co-founder of Aptos, the Layer 1 network from former Facebook engineers.

The conversation explores the fundamental features that differentiate Aptos from other Layer 1s, emphasizing the network’s dynamic parallelized execution. Avery also addresses the concerns surrounding the significant venture capital investment in Aptos, shares the current and future use cases supported by the chain, and teases the forthcoming Aptos Phone.

VIDEO

How to qualify for Ethereum (ETH) Airdrops by Restaking in 2024

With EigenLayer’s TVL roaring to $9.8B while liquid restaking tokens (LRTs) ballooning to $4.8B, we walk you through all of the hottest LRT protocols tipped to gearing up to airdrop tokens to early adopters.

Saturday

• Institutional Investors Are Farming Liquid Restaking Tokens For Yield MEV Capital, an asset management firm serving institutional clients discussed its wholesale LRT farming strategy with The Defiant.

Friday

• Tron Hits All-time High of $2M In Daily Fees Tron is generating record daily protocol revenue of nearly $2 million, predominantly driven by cheap stablecoin transactions.
• Airdrops Arrive On Bitcoin With Ordinals Project Runestones Runestones will distribute over 112,000 tokens to wallets that hold at least three inscriptions from the more than 2,300 circulating Ordinals collections.
• Metis Integrates Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol Amid Restaking Push Metis, the recently surging Ethereum Layer 2, teamed up with Chainlink to build out cross-chain interoperability amid its move to embrace the booming staking sector.
• Portal Debuts at Lofty $2.5B Valuation Portal’s token debuted at a $400M market cap, positioning it among the top 200 cryptocurrencies. The project described the asset as a “universal gaming coin."

Thursday

• Markets See Violent Volatility Amid Record Bitcoin ETF Activity BTC posted a violent pull-back after posting new year-to-date highs above $63,600. The move coincided with spot Bitcoin ETFS posting record inflows and trade volume.
• Robinhood Partners With Arbitrum to Ease Layer 2 Access Robinhood Wallet can now swap tokens using Arbitrum-based decentralized exchanges following a partnership between the popular trading app and the leading Ethereum Layer 2.
• Blast Mainnet Goes Live Ahead Of Schedule Blast’s highly-anticipated but controversial Layer 2 network is live, but its TVL has slumped 76% in the 24 hours since.
• Ondo To Use Blockchains as Middleware to Trade Traditional Securities Ondo Finance is moving to support the trading of U.S. Securities assets on-chain in the protocol’s latest real-world asset expansion.

Wednesday

• Bitcoin Goes Parabolic As Massive Inflows In ETFs Push It Beyond $60,000 BTC is traded above $60,000 for the first time since November 2021 as ETF activity continues to surge. Top memecoins are also rallying, with PEP up 44% and WIF up 30%
• Crypto Rally Breaks Websites And Apps Including Coinbase The surging market momentum has wreaked havoc on leading web3 platforms, with Coinbase, CoinGecko, and Robinhood all suffering outages.
• Telegram’s TON Flies on Planned Ad-Sharing Program Telegram announced plans to distribute 50% of its ad revenue to channel owners in the form of the TON cryptocurrency.
• EtherFi Closes $23M Series A Round As Eigenlayer TVL Surpasses $9B EtherFi, the leading liquid restaking protocol, has closed a $23M Series A funding round led by Bullish Capital and CoinFund. The project accounts for 36% of the $4.65B locked in liquid staking protocols.
• Centrifuge Proposal Set To Introduce Protocol Fees Collected By Treasury Centrifuge, the leading real-world asset credit protocol, appears poised to introduce a protocol fee charged on all loans matured from its pools. The project expects to generate $4M in treasury revenue this year.
• Merlin Chain’s Surging Growth Pushes Bitcoin’s DeFi TVL Past $2B Users have piled $1.6B into the Merlin Chain Bitcoin Layer 2 since the network launched three weeks ago, driving up Bitcoin’s DeFi TVL.
• DePIN Sector Sees Resurgence In 2024 The market cap of Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) tokens has surged 150% in six months from around $10B to roughly $25B.
• Prominent Lawyer Gabriel Shapiro Introduces Effort to Synthesize Crypto and Law Delphi Digital’s general counsel has launched MetaLeX, a new project seeking to improve legal representation for DAOs.

Tuesday

• Lens Protocol Goes Permissionless After two years of running in beta, the NFT-powered social media platform Lens Protocol has officially gone permissionless, opening the protocol to unfettered access for users and developers.
• Fidelity Canada Recommend 1-3% of Crypto Allocation in Portfolios The Canadian subsidiary of the financial services company Fidelity’s new all-in-one ETF page now recommends portfolio allocations of between 1% and 3% to crypto assets.
• Dune Analytics Partners With Cloud Computing Giant Snowflake Dune Analytics’ data is now available for purchase on the marketplace of Snowflake, the $73B cloud computing behemoth.
• Arkis Raises $2.2 Million To Accelerate Institutional Adoption Of DeFi Blockaid The Arkis brokerage closed a $2.2M pre-seed round to accelerate DeFi adoption in large institutions. Arkis will offer DeFi hedge funds undercollateralized loans, asset valuations, and on-chain margin accounts.
• Uniswap Adds New Features Including Limit Orders The leading DEX will begin rolling out Uniswap new features including a browser extension, limit orders, and a real-time data platform.
• Blast Schedules Mainnet Launch As TVL Pushed Above $2B Blast, the controversial Ethereum Layer 2 from the developers behind the leading NFT marketplace, Blur, has scheduled its mainnet launch for Feb. 29.
• Gauntlet Partners With Morpho As TVL Rises The web3 risk management firm has teamed up with the Morpho lending protocol one week after terminating a four-year relationship with Aave, the top DeFi money market.

Monday

• Bitcoin Surges Above $54,000 The crypto markets are kicking off the week firmly in the green as Bitcoin trades above $54,000 for the first time since early December 2021.
• LDO Spikes 10% On Fake Revenue Sharing Proposal The since-deleted proposal in Lido’s governance forum floated the idea of revenue being distributed to LDO stakers, apparently igniting a 10% rally for LDO.
• Parcl Announces Airdrop For DeFi Real Estate Traders Parcl, the DeFi real estate index exchange, will airdrop tokens to early adopters in April.
• Ethereum Ecosystem Continues To Rally Into New Year-To-Date Highs Multiple assets within the Ethereum ecosystem posted new year-to-date highs, pushing the combined capitalization of DeFi tokens near $100B for the first time since May 2022.