Aave Prepares To Launch GHO Stablecoin

Optimism Deploys Bedrock Upgrade

This week was a grab bag of headlines in DeFi. 

Amid all the action, Cami Russo spoke with 

, about the core proposition in cryptocurrencies: upgrading the internet. In 

, Juan described how his team are developing blockchains into new rails for the internet. Heady stuff!

Big names made big moves in DeFi. Aleks Gilbert interviewed 

 newly minted NFT marketplace, about the DEX’s ambition to be the marketplace 

 onto the BNB chain, expanding its reach in NFT sales. And Sam Haig reported on 

 of Ropsten, the first testnet to support The Merge. The move advances 

Our video team covered a couple of different facets of the intensifying regulatory story in crypto on 

… ugh. More fallout came this week. Owen reported on a 

 and other tokens all posting a little rally this week it looks like the FTX disaster is not proving to be as existential for crypto as many feared. Or at least, 

, which appears poised to ease up on rate increases as inflation cools.

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DeFi Alpha is a weekly newsletter by yyctrader and DeFi Dad, packed with tutorials and tips on how to earn yield and interact with new protocols for airdrops. DeFi Alpha is exclusive to paid subscribers.

This Week: Track Your Airdrops, Mints and Governance Votes with Daylight

Juan Benet is Working to Upgrade the Heart of The Internet with Blockchains

Juan Benet is the founder of Protocol Labs and the inventor of the Inter Planetary File System, a peer-to-peer network for storing and sharing data. He’s also the creator of Filecoin, a storage network incentivised by crypto. Both of Juan’s ventures are hugely ambitious as they are in direct competition with the basic rails of the internet, with protocols such as HTTP and data giants like AWS.

EU Bureaucrats face off with Crypto Twitter

Uniswap Aims To Become Marketplace For ‘All Digital Assets’: NFT Chief

New Aggregator Won’t Compete With Sudoswap On AMM Pools, Plans To Integrate Blur

 reports on Uniswap’s outsized ambitions in the NFT arena…

 its new, NFT marketplace aggregator on Wednesday, it also shuttered Genie, the NFT marketplace aggregator it had acquired in June. “The genie went back in the lamp,” Scott Gray, Genie founder-turned-Uniswap NFT chief, quipped.

Layer 1s Fall Back to Earth After Surge in Popularity

Fantom, Avalanche and Other EVM Networks Have Become DeFi Infrastructure Amid Falling Revenue

 delves into the state of play with Ethereum scaling…

When it comes to Layer 1s there’s good news, and bad news. On the one hand these low-cost systems offering Ethereum Virtual Machine compatibility have surged in popularity and become an indelible fixture in the architecture of decentralized finance. Yet on the other hand, the activity on many of these chains is now just a fraction of the highs posted during the bull market that ended in May.

Compound Caps Borrowing Levels for 10 Assets to Reduce Risk

COMP Tokenholders Vote to Limit Debt After Aave Freezes Lending Pools

 reports on the push to rein in risk in DeFi protocols in the wake of the FTX debacle…

Another DeFi lending protocol is reducing risk a day after Aave passed a proposal to freeze 17 of its lending pools. Holders of Compound Finance’s COMP token 

 to cap the borrowing level of 10 assets supported by the protocol.

Loyalty NFTs Have the Power to Drive the Next Bull Run

Now That NFTs Have Proven Their Utility in a Very Tough Year Comes the Next Phase

 makes the case for NFTs’ true usefulness…

It may not feel like it, but crypto has reached yet another inflection point. The next growth spurt in crypto will come from tokens supporting loyalty programs that motivate community engagement, not from yield-generating protocols. NFTs will serve as the foundation for these loyalty programs, which corporations like

Hacker Makes Off With Millions After Minting Six Quadrillion of Ankr’s BNB Staking Tokens

 Ankr, a web3 infrastructure project on BNB Chain, has suffered a major exploit with an attacker minting and dumping millions worth of its wrapped BNB token, aBNBc. On Dec. 2, Nansen, an on-chain analytics provider, 

 that six quadrillion aBNBc had been abruptly minted.

Sam Bankman-Fried Reveals FTX Was Selling Assets That Did Not Exist

 In a live Twitter Space Thursday, Sam Bankman-Fried said FTX was selling Bitcoin to clients that did not exist. During the conversation, Ran Neuner, the host of the Crypto Banter podcast, 

 Bankman-Fried to explain why FTX’s spot exchange customers’ assets were missing when the exchange filed for bankruptcy.

 After updating its App Store Review Guidelines 

 to mention NFTs for the first time, the world’s most valuable company is flexing its muscles. Apple has blocked Coinbase Wallet’s latest release of its iOS app, 

 claiming that the transaction fees required to transfer NFTs need to go through the iPhone maker’s 

Auros Misses $3.1M Loan Payment on Maple Finance

 Auros, a crypto trading firm which claims on its 

 to account for a “significant proportion of global cryptocurrency volume,” has missed a loan payment of 2,400 wrapped Ether (wETH), worth $3.1M as of Nov. 30.

First Merge Testnet to Shut Down as Ethereum Moves Ahead on PoS

 Ropsten, the first public testnet to support Ethereum’s transition to a Proof of Stake system, will be shut down this month, the Ethereum Foundation announced Tuesday.

SBF Says He ‘Did Not Commit Fraud’ in Latest Public Comments

 The swift collapse of FTX was a “massive failure of oversight, of risk management,” disgraced founder Sam Bankman-Fried said in a live interview Wednesday evening.

 Thanks to their distributed structure, blockchains tend to be slow. If a single transaction has to be verified across thousands of Ethereum’s nodes, this also makes the network expensive to use.

 When it comes to Layer 1s there’s good news, and bad news. On the one hand these low-cost systems offering Ethereum Virtual Machine compatibility have surged in popularity and become an indelible fixture in the architecture of decentralized finance.

 As the nascent NFT field struggles with low trading volumes, the leading marketplace is expanding onto new blockchains.

Cronje Explains Why Fantom is Poised to Run 30 Years — DeFi

 Decentralized finance saved the foundation behind Fantom, the Layer 1 blockchain, from a slow march to financial ruin, according to crypto entrepreneur Andre Cronje, one of the project’s most notable contributors.

 Liquity is a decentralized application for borrowing crypto money without paying an interest rate on the ETH collateral. You may wonder, doesn’t this defeat the purpose of lending?

 Another DeFi lending protocol is reducing risk a day after Aave passed a proposal to freeze 17 of its lending pools. Holders of Compound Finance’s COMP token 

Aave Decommissions Low Liquidity Asset Pools To Protect Against Attacks

 Aave, the leading DeFi money market protocol with over $5B in total value locked, has frozen multiple low-liquidity asset pools in a bid to protect against attacks like the one targeting Aave’s CRV pool that caused the protocol to incur $1.6M worth of bad debt last week.

 The collapse of FTX has felled another crypto business, with centralized lender BlockFi filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday. The move comes two weeks after BlockFi suspended withdrawals due to “the lack of clarity on the status of FTX.com, FTX US, and Alameda.”

Abracadabra Calls On Sushi For Emergency Assistance As Faulty Oracle Places $10M At Risk

 The community of Abracadabra, a crypto lending protocol and issuer of the MIM stablecoin, has called on SushiSwap to make changes to two of its Bento vaults holding $10M worth of Abacadbra users’ assets that could be at risk.

Thanking all the amazing Defiers for the support and love this week (and always)!

Full interview.

Watch the absolute squirming at 1:37 and 3:55 when pressed on stealing customer deposits.

Shook.



— Cold Blooded Shiller (@ColdBloodShill) 

Can’t believe it’s a been a year already… and still 

 is the best web3 project I’ve been involved in, it has everything that was promised about crypto… I’ll never be able to thank you enough for making me a part of it 

This week was a grab bag of headlines in DeFi. Uniswap launched an NFT marketplace, a hacker minted six quadrillion (!) of Ankr’s BNB staking coins, and SBF won’t shut up about what went wrong at FTX.

Amid all the action, Cami Russo spoke with Juan Benet,...

Recap: DeFi Week of Nov. 27