🦄 Recap: DeFi Week of April 11

Apr 17, 2022

Hello Defiers! Happy Weekend!

This week the intersection of web2 and web3 produced some sparks. On one hand, there’s Meta’s plan to take a nearly 50% cut from sales on its virtual reality game — that’s a tech giant’s version of “the metaverse” for you. Then there was a class-action lawsuit against Uniswap from traders who bought tokens including Matrix Samurai, Rocket Bunny, Alphawolf Finance, Bezoge Earth, and BoomBaby tokens, and somehow blamed Uniswap for their losses. In other Uniswap news, the decentralized exchange now has a swapping widget to allow others to integrate with the platform across the web.

It was a gloomy week from the public crypto markets standpoint, with ETH and BTC sliding by more than 5%, and the mood soured further when the Ethereum merge was delayed once more, as Owen Fernau reported, even as a major test called “the shadow fork” was “a huge success.” On an encouraging note, traders are pulling their Ether from centralized exchanges and locking them into DeFi smart contracts, suggesting that traders believe that markets may still climb higher, Sam Haig reported.

Meanwhile, crypto continues to provide a more reliable alternative than traditional financial rails for those in the frontlines of the war in Ukraine. Our newest contributor Robert Stevens wrote about how NFT artist Aldo Comas from The Infinite Machine collection led a convoy to rescue 70 refugees thanks in part to crypto funding.

DappRadar produced an exclusive report for The Defiant on the state of blockchain bridges and the reason behind the recent hacks. Defiant head of video Robin interviewed acclaimed artist Refik Anadol. Earlier in the week, the tables turned and our founder Camila interviewed Robin and Alp, live from the team’s studio near Amsterdam, for the podcast. It was epic.

The open economy is taking over the old one. Subscribe to keep up with this revolution. Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button below ($15/mo, $150/yr).

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🙌 Together with:

SynFutures is a DeFi derivatives exchange that enables permissionless futures trading, allowing anyone to list and trade any asset with a price feed. Learn more!

Nexo is a wallet where you can easily exchange between 300+ unique market pairs, receive up to 0.5% cashback or get instant liquidity against your crypto assets with flexible credit lines. Get started!

Sperax has created $USDs, the stablecoin that generates passive income for holders. Thanks to the Auto-Yield feature, it pays to hold $USDs. Try it yourself here!

APWine is a pioneering yield tokenisation protocol, allowing users to get their future yield in advance. Hedge your risk on APY volatility or speculate on yield with their native AMM.

⍺ DeFi Alpha Newsletter

Check out and subscribe to DeFi Alpha, a weekly newsletter by The Defiant and DeFi Dad, packed with tutorials and tips on how to earn yield in DeFi.

This week:The open economy is taking over the old one. Subscribe to keep up with this revolution. Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button below ($15/mo, $150/yr).

Subscribe now

🙌 Together with:

SynFutures is a DeFi derivatives exchange that enables permissionless futures trading, allowing anyone to list and trade any asset with a price feed. Learn more!

Nexo is a wallet where you can easily exchange between 300+ unique market pairs, receive up to 0.5% cashback or get instant liquidity against your crypto assets with flexible credit lines. Get started!

Sperax has created $USDs, the stablecoin that generates passive income for holders. Thanks to the Auto-Yield feature, it pays to hold $USDs. Try it yourself here!

APWine is a pioneering yield tokenisation protocol, allowing users to get their future yield in advance. Hedge your risk on APY volatility or speculate on yield with their native AMM.

⍺ DeFi Alpha Newsletter

Check out and subscribe to DeFi Alpha, a weekly newsletter by The Defiant and DeFi Dad, packed with tutorials and tips on how to earn yield in DeFi.

This week:

⍺ DeFi Alpha: 264% APY With Beanstalk + HBAR Liquid Staking

Podcast

🎙 Making Magic - A Defiant Love Story with Robin Schmidt & Alp Gasimov

We have a special podcast episode this week — a live conversation between Defiant founder Camila, our head of video Robin, and our editor Alp, recorded directly from The Defiant’s video studio in the Netherlands. Robin and Alp were one of the very first team members working with Camila in making the best DeFi and web3 content out there. In this episode we hear their story, how they came to work together and what moves them. We also go behind the scenes on their intense production process and schedule. Together with Camila, they also try to make sense of the latest drivers behind the crypto market, including the war in Ukraine, last year’s massive bull run and the recent volatility.

The Tube

📺 Head to Head Refik Anadol || a Defiant SPECIAL

📺 Near Protocol - Full guide on getting started with and Ref Finance overview

📺 Near Protocol surprises belligerent Do Kwon with new stablecoin $USN

📺 What is dead may never die - Return of the legends

📺 $Silo - The hottest DeFi opportunity in the world right now

📺 META ZUCKS UP NFTS WITH HEFTY VIRTUAL VIG

Research

How Blockchain Bridges Became Hackers’ Prime Targets: DappRadar Exclusive Report

Bridges are one of the most valuable tools in the industry, but their interoperable nature presents an important challenge for the projects building them. One of the most severe attacks occurred two weeks ago when the Ronin bridge was hacked for $540 million. Before that, the Solana Wormhole and BNB Chain’s Qubit Finance bridge were exploited for more than $400 million in 2022. The largest hack in the history of crypto occurred in August 2021 when the PolyNetwork bridge was exploited for $610 million, though the stolen funds were later returned.

From a security standpoint, bridges can be classified into two main groups: trusted and trustless. At first glance, it might look like trustless bridges offer a more secure option for transferring assets between blockchains. However, both trusted and trustless bridges face different challenges.

Friday

News

NFT Artist Leads Convoy To Rescue 70 Refugees From War-Torn Ukraine: Last Monday, the Spanish artist Aldo Comas, better known as “CryptofuxkBoy” on OpenSea, sat down for some eggs with his wife, read the paper and started his car. He returned five days later with almost 70 refugees from the war in Ukraine.
Uniswap Faces Class-Action From Trader Who Lost Money On Altcoins: Two US law firms have invited anyone who lost money on Uniswap since last April to join a class action suit against the exchange’s developers and investors for failing to crack down on “rampant fraud”.
Meta’s Plan to Keep 47.5% of Metaverse Sales has Crypto Raising Eyebrows: The company formerly known as Facebook continues to make moves towards its version of the metaverse. And the crypto community remains skeptical.
Uniswap Launches Swap Widget For Third-Party Apps: On April 14, Uniswap launched Swap Widget, allowing developers to integrate access to the exchange “with just one line of code.”

Elsewhere

Thursday

News

Wikipedia Community Pushes Back Against Crypto Donations: The Wikipedia community doesn’t want your crypto donations. In a poll between Jan. 10 and Apr. 12, 232 users, or 71% of voters, asked the Wikimedia Foundation to stop accepting cryptocurrency donations.
Traders Move ETH out of Centralized Exchanges and into DeFi: Traders are pulling their Ether from centralized exchanges and locking them into DeFi smart contracts, suggesting that traders believe that markets may still climb higher.

Elsewhere

Wednesday

News

Major US Clearing House Experiments with CBDC for Real-time Settlements: It takes a lot of complicated financial engineering to make it look like your stock market trades settle instantly. But in reality, it takes a vast shadow network of clearinghouses several days to shift your money around the market.
DeFi Protocols Heed MakerDAO’s Call to Back DAI with Real-World Assets: If the crypto market gets wiped out – really, truly zonked – not even MakerDAO’s over-collateralized crypto loans might be able to save its U.S. dollar stablecoin, DAI. But how about if DAI wasn’t just backed by crypto, but by real-world assets, like factories, stocks and corporate debt, too?
Ethereum’s Merge Delayed Despite Successful ‘Shadow Fork’ Test: A major test called “the shadow fork” was “a huge success,” Ethereum developer Marius van der Wijden tweeted on Apr. 11.

Elsewhere

Tuesday

News

Refunds for NFTs? New Standard Sets Give-Back Period for Minters: Maybe every wild west must become civilized in the end. If so, then the taming of NFTs may be about to begin. The catalyst for a more stable NFT space is a new token standard called ERC721R. It builds off the ERC721 standard, which NFTs typically use. Its twist: refunds.
Uniswap Joins the Hunt for Web3 Startups with New Venture Arm: Uniswap Labs, the team behind the leading decentralized exchange, has launched a venture wing to make early-stage investments in web3, it announced on April 11. Uniswap said Uniswap Labs Ventures (ULV) will invest in web3 protocols with aligned values.
Terra Hard Hit as DeFi Drops 20% in a Week: The DeFi sector has lost a fifth of its value in the last week and a third going back to the heady days of November, according to data from CoinGecko.