Recap: DeFi Week of June 8🦄

Hello Defiers, hope you’re having a great weekend!

Summing up this past week: Total unique Ethereum addresses surpassed 100 million, signaling accelerating growth of the network. An Ethereum paid $5.2 million in transaction fees for two transactions, spurring theories from money laundering, to black mail, to a code bug, to explain it. Balancer Labs metrics soaring after BAL token launch. ConsenSys launched a KYC service, The Graph integrated with Chainlink to improve smart contract data. Aragon co-founder Luis Cuende, who talks about the growth of DAOs and the long road ahead to mass adoption. And more :)

One more thing before you scroll: Please vote!

Camila Russo @CamiRusso📢People of DeFi, question: *What DeFi metric needs to be more easily accessible?* 📈 (ie. no code/queries needed, visualized with historical chart & leaderboard, customized by date, total # and specific protocol) Pls RT for visibility!4:15 PM ∙ Jun 14, 20209Likes9Retweets

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Interview

"The World is Crying for the Tech We're Building But We're Nowhere Near Ready:" Aragon's Luis Cuende

Luis Cuende is the co-founder of Aragon, a platform for users to create their own decentralized autonomous organizations. DAOS are organizations that have as much of its operations put into code as possible, and have smart contracts execute those operations. Cuende started this project in 2016, at a time when most had given up on these organizations after the crash of what’s likely the most well-known DAO so far, called The DAO. The space has recovered and in the past year, thousands of DAOs holding millions of dollars have flourished. The dream of more fair and open organizations, which anyone can access and create, is back at a time when the world seems to really need them. People are losing trust in institutions and crypto can provide an alternative. But Cuende says he’s saddened to discover the space is nowhere near ready.

Thursday

Dives

Balancer Growth Shows Tokens Are Steroids for DeFi: Balancer Labs’s so-called liquidity mining program is proving tokenized incentives can be huge drivers for growth. Metrics across the board for the new liquidity and asset management protocol spiked since the launch of the token-based incentives program.
Ethereum User Paid $5M+ in Txs Fees in One Day: Someone spent a record 2.6M in gas fees to send money over the Ethereum network. And they did it twice in one day. The user ended up spending ~$5.2M to send $84.5k.

Bytes

DeFi Protection on Nexus Mutual Surges to Record High: Nexus Mutual reached an all-time high in total cover amount. Total value more than doubled in the past 90 days to over $4M.
Sequoia-Backed Band Protocol Creeps Onto Chainlink’s Turf With Oracle Product: CoinDesk

Wednesday

Dives

DeFi Exchange Meets CeFi Liquidity —at a Cost: DeversiFi innovated by integrating a zk-Stark Layer 2 solution, scaling transactions per second dramatically. But the zk route means there is no composability to the main Ethereum chain.
The LAO Wants to Open For-Profit DAOs to Everyone: The LAO, a venture fund powered by MolochDAO and OpenLaw, is exploring ways to open up for-profit decentralized organization, such as theirs, to unaccredited investors.

Bytes

ConsenSys Launches DeFi-Focused Compliance Service: ConsenSys is rolling out a product focused on the know-your-customer regulatory compliance requirements that have proved to be a headache for many cryptocurrency firms.
Maker Community Votes on Potential New Collateral Types: The MakerDAO community this week voted for at least five tokens they’d like to add as collateral types in the system.
The Graph Announces Integration With Chainlink: The Graph is integrating with Chainlink to allow indexed data from The Graph’s APIs, called subgraphs, to be relayed to smart contracts via Chainlink oracles.
Rari Capital is the Latest DeFi Yield Robot: Rari Capital is the latest “yield robot,” a popular DeFi application which rebalances users stablecoin deposits into the highest-yielding opportunities.
Baseline Integrates Microsoft & Google Spreadsheets: CoinTelegraph

Tuesday

Dives

Ethereum Addresses Crossed 100 Million: Total Ethereum addresses just crossed 100 million. Metrics point to accelerating growth and adoption that’s beating even early internet use.
Whale Causes Dai in Aave to Temporarily 2x Overnight: There’s a whale lurking in DeFi waters and its latest move caused Dai locked in decentralized lending protocol Aave to more than double overnight — and then lose it all.

Bytes

DeFi Traders Can Now Access Tokens Before They List: Opium.exchange launched options markets for users to assign a value to Balancer’s BAL and Compound’s COMP before they start trading in secondary markets.
Loopring Launches Fast and Instant Payments: Loopring Protocol added zkRollups-based payments functionality to the Loopring.io frontend, so users can send payments instantly and for free.

💜Community Love💜

Especially thanking all the amazing Defiers on The Defiant’s 1st birthday week! Your comments to my post were incredibly encouraging and moving.

Camila Russo @CamiRusso🎂Today is The Defiant's 1st bday! I wrote this first post with the belief that the world's new financial system needs dedicated, quality journalism. Your support and the space's incredible growth kept me writing almost every day. (I'm not crying, you're crying) 1/x

9:09 PM ∙ Jun 11, 2020313Likes27Retweets

Crypto & Coffee @crypto_espresso@DavidJNage Big fan of @CamiRusso work 5:27 PM ∙ Jun 13, 2020

Aziz @MohammedAziz90 @DavidJNage Our Network by @spencernoon ournetwork.substack.com @BanklessHQ bankless.substack.com Defiant by @CamiRusso thedefiant.substack.com Formal Verification by @_LewisHarland_

formalverification.substack.comFormal VerificationA new kind of crypto research.3:19 PM ∙ Jun 13, 2020

RCN @RCNFinance #Ethereum keeps growing with more than 100M total addresses and counting! 🦄 Don't miss @CamiRusso's piece at @DefiantNews to see where the ecosystem is heading and why it might end up being bigger than the internet! 👀 thedefiant.substack.com/p/ethereum-add…

thedefiant.substack.comEthereum Addresses Cross 100M. That’s ~10x More Than Internet Users in 1995Also, DeFi whale makes waves, Opium’s options market, Loopring payments.5:24 PM ∙ Jun 12, 202026Likes7Retweets

Ash Egan @AshAEganCrypto Friday 5: things I'm using, loving, reading... + Introducing @TorusLabs' DirectAuth 💥 + @BisonTrails / @NEARProtocol partnership + @reganbozman's Dove Mountain crypto database + @CamiRusso interviews @AlexisGauba + @Fidelity says institutions (36%) hold crypto Links ⬇️4:23 PM ∙ Jun 12, 202029Likes5Retweets

Sebastian Aldasoro @SaldasoroWhat Camila has achieved in one year is impressive. The Defiant has become one of the go-to sources for all things DeFi. She consistently creates excellent content, adds new formats, and speaks to some of the brightest minds in the space, while always scaling her game. Kudos 🙌🚀

Cooper Turley @CooopahtroopaIf you've yet to check out @DefiantNews you're surely missing out! Super concise overviews on the most important trends in #DeFi and beyond 🚀 Congrats to @CamiRusso on all the success and here's to the biggest year yet!

DeFi Dad - defidad.eth @DeFi_Dad 🎉Congrats to @CamiRusso and @DefiantNews on your 1-year anniversary! 🤔When someone asks "How can I get started learning about #DeFi and keep up with the fire hose of new opportunities?" Duh. Subscribe to thedefiant.substack.com

⎔O⎔ @thatcoinguysays This listen is incredible! 🙌🏽 In depth insight into problems & solutions when providing high quality data. #Defi #ChainlinkVRF #Enterprise #interoperability #defenseindepth #gaming #insurance @CamiRusso & @SergeyNazarov 👍🏽 open.spotify.com/episode/2vjjYp…

open.spotify.comBlockchain Devs Are Neglecting Data-Related Risks, Chainlink’s Sergey Nazarov Says - The DefiantThis week’s interview is with Sergey Nazarov, the cofounder of oracle provider Chainlink. The way blockchain applications get their data has proven to be crucial, as failures in those systems have been at the core of many of the latest attacks in decentralized finance. He says developers are current…11:44 PM ∙ Jun 8, 20209Likes2Retweets

Crypto Leslie @CryptoLeslieA colleague just asked for some of my favorite newsletters: @FortuneMagazine The Ledger @MatiGreenspan’s Quantum Economics @APompliano's The Pomp Letter @CamiRusso's The Defiant @nlw's Long Reads Sunday 4:59 PM ∙ Jun 11, 202015Likes2Retweets

Quantstamp @QuantstampIt's hard to keep up with the firehose of DeFi projects ... Unless you subscribe to the Defiant. 📰 @CamiRusso does an excellent job rounding up the news you should know, and everything cool that's happening in this ever-evolving space.

The Defiant @DefiantNewsIn today's Defiant: 💸@MakerDAO borrowers pull USDC collateral 🏎️@deversifi launches scalable Dex 🗳️@compoundfinance's governance move 👛Buying ETH with @Dharma_HQ 📈"Coinbase Effect" on $OMG, $MKR https://t.co/p1B1dhEGx5 7:46 AM ∙ Jun 8, 202035Likes6Retweets

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About the founder: I’m Camila Russo, a financial journalist writing a book on Ethereum with Harper Collins. (Pre-order The Infinite Machine here). I was previously at Bloomberg News in New York, Madrid and Buenos Aires covering markets. I’ve extensively covered crypto and finance, and now I’m diving into DeFi, the intersection of the two.