📺 Raoul Pal Bought an Ape for 140 ETH: Was It a Good Idea?
Hello Defiers! Here’s what we’re covering today:
News
Opinion
DeFi Primers
Podcast
🎙Listen to the exclusive interview with Kevin Owocki here:
Video
Elsewhere
Do Kwon Pitches a Decentralized NFT Publishing Service - Ep.333: The Chopping Block
Crypto in Ukraine | Alex Bornyakov, Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine: Bankless
Live at the @avalancheavax Summit @StaniKulechov dropping V3 alpha: Avalanche
Trending on The Defiant
Ukraine
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In some cases, 1 DAI can be matched up to 50x, so even small amounts are meaningful. Peace is a global public good, and it's become increasingly clear that we have to work to collectively maintain it. For more details, check out http://gitcoin.co/grants and go to the "Support for Ukraine" category.
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DeFi Lending
📈 Anchor Leapfrogs Aave as Top DeFi Lending Protocol With $14B TVL
Stablecoin Yield Project Shrugs Off Worries About Sustainability
By Samuel Haig
NEWS Anchor, a stablecoin yield protocol representing more than 53% of Terra’s Total Value Locked (TVL), has overtaken Aave to become the third-largest dApp in DeFi.
CAMPAIGN Anchor’s rise through the DeFi ranks comes as Terra has embarked upon an aggressive campaign to buy $10B worth of Bitcoin to back its native stablecoin UST. Anchor offers a fixed return of roughly 20% on UST deposits.
TVL According to DeFi Llama, Anchor now represents a TVL of roughly $14.5B after growing by 48% over just 30 days. The protocol sits behind Curve’s $20B and Lido’s $17B, with Lido also having grown by almost 59% in the past month.
BLUE CHIPS Anchor has now surpassed almost all of Ethereum’s ‘blue-chip’ DeFi assets, including the lending protocol Aave, Uniswap, and Compound. As for Terra, it now has a TVL of $27B, making it the No. 2 smart contract network, according to DeFi Llama.
👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈
NFT Marketplaces
🎯 Meme Stonk GameStop Taps Loopring for Beta NFT Marketplace
Immutable X to Join Fellow Layer 2 in Running Live Platform
By Samuel Haig
NEWS Gamestop’s highly anticipated NFT marketplace has been launched in beta. But it arrives with a surprise: It will be powered by Loopring instead of Immutable X, its recently announced partner.
LAYER 2s Both networks will eventually support GameStop’s NFT marketplace once it goes fully live by July. The beta deal is clearly a big win for Loopring. As for gamers themselves, who’ve become more vocally anti-NFT in recent months, that’s another story. Both networks are souped up Ethereum Layer 2s.
FAD After the NFT marketplace was confirmed in February, Twitter user ‘Louie Pikmin’ tweeted at GameStop: “Wow, you guys will really do anything to stay in business, including investing heavily into a fad.”
👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈
Opinion
👾 Getting Gamers to Embrace NFTs is Not Impossible
Designers Must Dial Back the Cash Grab and Step Up Innovation
Guest writer Will Deane says gamers’ skepticism of NFTs can be addressed with one simple step — listen to them.
CASH GRAB NFTs are hot. The art, fashion, and food industries have embraced them. So has Hollywood and professional sports leagues and stars. But there’s one group that isn’t interested: gamers. While some game developers are eager to implement NFTs, many are appalled by what they see as a greed-motivated cash grab.
P2E Well-known brands like EA and Ubisoft received enormous backlash from the gaming community (including their employees). Critics argued that introducing NFTs into gameplay through play-to-earn (P2E) gaming would turn the recreational gaming world into a hyper-consumerist place gamers want to escape from.
PROBLEMS Blockchain games need to take a different approach to receive acceptance from the broader gaming community. Rather than presenting NFTs and other digital assets as a speculative earning opportunity, blockchain game developers should address problems their technology can solve.
SHRINKING The concept of digital goods isn’t new to the gaming community. The cash grab started in 2006 when Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion made in-game horse armor available for $2.50. In 2021, gamers spent $23B on microtransactions in PC games. Gamer demand for digital assets isn’t shrinking. Activision, the video game publisher responsible for Call of Duty, made $1.2B alone in Q3 2021 from in-game purchases.
👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈
DeFi How-To Guide
🦊 How to Add BSC to MetaMask
A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Binance Smart Chain With MetaMask
By Arya Ghobadi
TL;DR In this article, we’ll show you how to add BSC network to your MetaMask wallet. If you have yet to read our primer on setting up MetaMask best to do that first. Click here.
DAPPS When you enter MetaMask,the first thing you’ll see is that it’s an Ethereum wallet and it is connected to the Ethereum mainnet. This won’t work with the Binance Smart Chain dApps and you could potentially lose your funds by sending them to addresses that you can’t actually use so we need to connect our MetaMask wallet to the Binance Smart Chain nodes.
AUTOMATIC There are two ways to do it: One is automatic and the second is manual. First, we’ll show you the automatic way. So go to a dApp on Binance Smart Chain like PancakeSwap.
👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈
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The Tube
📺 Real Vision vs. The Defiant: Raoul Pal bought an Ape for 140 Eth. But was it a good idea?
Elsewhere
🔗 Do Kwon Pitches a Decentralized NFT Publishing Service - Ep.333: The Chopping Block
On this week’s episode, Do Kwon, founder of Terraform Labs, also dropped by.
🔗 Two Defendants Charged In Non-Fungible Token (“NFT”) Fraud And Money Laundering Scheme: Justice Department
Defendants Executed a $1 Million NFT Fraud Scheme in January 2022, and Were Preparing to Execute a Second Prior to Their Arrests.
🔗 Crypto in Ukraine | Alex Bornyakov, Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine: Bankless
In this special episode, we bring on Alex Bornyakov, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation to discuss the current state of the war, crypto’s impact, and so much more.
Trending on The Defiant
NFT Market Shifting Into New Growth Phase: Report With every week that goes by it becomes clearer that peak NFT has passed. Or does it?
EXCLUSIVE: Sifu Speaks! 0xSifu is back, and he’s got a brand new bag.
How to Generate an NFT Collection in 10 Minutes With AutoMinter, you can generate large NFT collections by uploading image layers, allowing people to mint your NFTs and sell them on secondary marketplaces like OpenSea.
🧑💻 ✍️ Stories in The Defiant are written by Owen Fernau, Samuel Haig, DeFiDad, and yyctrader, and edited by Edward Robinson, yyctrader, and Camila Russo. Videos are produced by Robin Schmidt, Alp Gasimov and Daniel Flynn. Podcast is led by Camila, edited by Alp.
The Defiant is a daily newsletter focusing on decentralized finance, a new financial system that’s being built on top of open blockchains. The space is evolving at breakneck speed and revolutionizing tech and money. Signest, most interesting developments. Subscribers get full access, while free signups get only part of the content. Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button above ($15/mo, $150/yr)