š¦ Recap: DeFi Week of March 6
Hello Defiers! Happy Weekend!
Regulation is coming. Thatās been a watchword for the better part of a year as the Biden Administration telegraphed its intention to clamp down on the crypto. Donāt operate outside the perimeter ā that was Gary Genslerās warning to the industry. This week, the hammer dropped. And to the surprise of virtually everyone, it wasnāt a blow but, perhaps, an opportunity.
To understand the import of the President Bidenās executive order on crypto read Owen Fernauās succinct and detailed news analysis. Owen spoke with leading voices on crypto policy, including Kristin Smith, Connor Spelliscy, and the outspoken Ryan Selkis. The upshot: an oversight regime is coming, yet it may not be as draconian as Defiers feared, and most importantly, will reflect the fact that blockchain technologies are a historic breakthrough, and should be supported as such.
The crypto community will have to lobby and argue to make sure web3 fulfills its destiny. To learn more about that may happen, the prolific Robin Schmidt landed an exclusive interview with Andrew Yang to talk about his new venture, Lobby3. Yang says his group āwill take the voices of web3 to Washington.ā His timing couldnāt be better.
We continued our coverage of Russiaās war on Ukraine with a special report from DappRadar analyzing the macroeconomic impact of the conflict, and its impact on blockchain technologies. Itās a comprehensive and probing report that highlights the utility of crypto in extreme geopolitical conditions.
Meanwhile, there was a flurry of news on the DeFi front: Sam Haig reported on the newest dustup around Anchor Protocol and its yield policies, and dug into Avalancheās plan to invest $290M in āsubnetsā for DeFi, GameFi and NFTs.
Brady Dale delved into how BitDAO is quietly amassing $2M a day in its treasury. Not to be missed is Owen Fernauās feature on the restless Andre Cronje and his decision to quit DeFi for good. Owen writes how the Yearn Finance founderās move isnāt really a surprise after all.
What remains a mystery is the identity of the DAO hacker who upended Ethereum years ago. Or at least it was until author and podcaster Laura Shin investigated the case for her new book The Cryptopians. Check out Camila Russoās podcast with Laura as the two Ethereum historians unpack one of the great enigmas in crypto.
Enjoy!
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).
š Together with:Ā
Verse Network by STP, is a Layer 2 for DAOs. Redefining value one DAO at a time.
Eden Rocket RPC, providing the fastest private transactions on Ethereum (90%+ hashrate). Trade better anywhere on Ethereum with Eden Rocket RPC.
Zerion is Mission Control for Web3: an intuitive DeFi portfolio manager, multichain tracking & trading and the best place to show off your NFT collection.Ā Ā
Unstoppable Domains, Unstoppable Domain is the #1 provider of NFT domains. One domain, the entire metaverse - your Unstoppable domain is all you need to verify your humanity and access sites and apps on the decentralized web. Get yours today!
āŗ DeFi Alpha Newsletter
This week:
āŗ DeFi Alpha: Wield Excalibur For 200% APR on Stablecoins + Curve Boosts With Concentrator
Podcast
š Laura Shin on Solving Ethereum's Greatest Mystery with Her New Book, The Cryptopians
In this weekās episode of The Defiant podcast, we speak to Laura Shin, the former senior editor at Forbes and host of the popular podcast Unchained, about her new book āThe Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze.ā In Cryptopians, Laura may have solved Ethereumās biggest mystery; the identity of the DAO hacker. In this interview, she goes into the backstory of how she came up with the most credible suspect to date.
The DAO hack was a story to behold, but was by no means the only theme of āThe Cryptopians.ā Lauraās book delves deep into the Ethereum story itself and those at the core of the project, making new revelations and delivering an extremely detailed account. She talks about the most surprising discoveries she made. We also discuss her Unchained podcast, and what comes next for her now that her first book is out.
The Tube
šŗ EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Finally Web3 has REAL lobbying power || head to head w/ Andrew Yang
šŗ SuperMassive NFT Show: Think Bigger: Conscientious NFT Projects
šŗ First Look: MoverDAO - a metaverse debit card for everyone. But how?
šŗ Tuesday Tutorial: XDeFi - the last wallet youāll ever need?
šŗ Quick Take: Andre has left the building
Weekend Read
š² Andre Cronjeās Sudden Exit Leaves DeFi Agog But Itās Right in Character
In which Owen Fernau reports on one of the more dramatic departures from DeFi by one of its most influential figures.
Andre Cronjeās relationship with DeFi has never been simple.Ā Ā Back in February 2020, the founder ofĀ Yearn Finance wrote a blog post called Building in #DeFi Sucks. āNot a sensationalist title, honestly it sucks,ā he said. āItās expensive, the community is hostile, the users are entitled.ā
A year later, Cronje was back with another rant, warning entrepreneurs about the years of toil it takes to bring ideas to fruition in DeFi. āThis in itself can be demotivating. But now, add hundreds (sometimes thousands) of people shouting on telegram, discord, and twitter, āWhen will it be released?ā, āWhy hasnāt it been released?ā, āgive us an updateā, and significantly more hostile messages.ā
Now it appears Cronje has finally quit DeFi for good. āAndre and I have decided that we are closing the chapter of contributing to the defi/crypto,ā tweeted Cronjeās longtime collaborator Anton Nell on March 6. āThere are around ~25 apps and services that we are terminating on 03 April 2022.ā
Deep Dive
š° BitDAOās War Chest Quietly Grows $2M Per Day After Token Sales to Thiel and Pantera
In which Brady Dale digs into the mysterious rise of BitDAO, the so-called DAO of DAOs.
The BitDAO treasury is the largest for a DAO youāve never heard of. According to Open-Orgs, BitDAO currently has $1.8B in it, making it the second largest treasury of any publicly viewable treasury on Ethereum, following that of Uniswap and just ahead of those of Ethereum Name Service, Lido, and Gitcoin.
BitDAO holds the number 2 spot largely thanks to its governance token, BIT, which accounts for about $1B of that treasury. Its governance token currently trades for around $1.06. That treasury also grows at a pace of roughly $2M per day without diluting BIT holders.
āI think people in crypto have been excited about coordinating capital better than you can as an individual,ā Jonathan Allen, of Mirana Ventures, a sister fund of ByBit, the exchange that managed spinning up the BitDAO concept, told The Defiant.
Research
šŗš¦ Exclusive DappRadar Report: How Russiaās War and the Westās Response is Impacting Crypto
DappRadar analyzes the global economic impact of Russiaās military aggression, and what it means for blockchain technologies.
When Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, its neighbor and trading partner, the world reacted in horror and anger. The West, led by the U.S. and the E.U., immediately imposed severe sanctions on President Vladimir Putinās regime, including barring its access to foreign reserves. The global economy has been impacted with soaring energy and commodities prices, and capital markets are grappling with the uncertainty and long-term effects of Putinās aggression and the worst military tragedy on the European continent since World War II.
The cryptocurrency community, too, has been roiled by this tragedy. Due to blockchain technologyās peer-to-peer nature, there are a number of questions about the utility of Bitcoin and other digital assets in the war zone, and in Russia itself, where ordinary citizens have lost purchasing power as the rouble craters and access to financial infrastructure such as the Swift system.Ā
In this report, we unpack the macroeconomic forces at work and analyze how blockchain-based solutions may come to play an important role as the war continues.Ā
In a way not seen before, blockchain and web3 are demonstrating their value in contributing to the humanitarian effort to bring aid to Ukrainian refugees, and to providing support to Ukrainian citizens defending their country against the Russian military.Ā
IntoTheBlock Report
š§ How Swapping and Staking on Curve Drives High User Engagement
On-Chain Markets Update byĀ Pedro Negron IntoTheBlock
Curve Finance was launched in 2020 with the initial purpose of creating an automated market maker (AMM) exchange for assets pegged to one another. By using efficient algorithms they soon experienced incredible growth, offering some of the lowest fees, slippage, and impermanent loss in the DeFi space.
Since their focus was on stable assets, fees for liquidity providers (LPs) tended to be smaller. This created the need for the protocol to offer incentives to its liquidity providers. These incentives were given in the form of CRV which also works as a governance token for the Curve DAO. This article analyzes Curveās high user engagement on the swapping and staking side of the protocol.
Volume traded is an important indicator to understand DEXes. They show the platformās usage. IntoTheBlock gathers all daily volume traded on Curveās pools on Ethereum and aggregates it into a single indicator.
Primer
š Decoding The NFT Black Box
Guest writer Tiffany Priosoetanto-Masrin shares her tips and experience on understanding the increasingly complex NFT space.
Entering the NFT space is a little like venturing out into a hurricane.Ā DeFi, crypto, Web3, and a slew of acronyms come at you from all sides.
Whatās worse is that scammers are taking advantage of this learning curve. Cases of fake websites and malicious links that steal your secret seed phrases and drain your wallet are serious obstacles to adoption.Ā That being said, there is little doubt that NFTs are an emerging medium with the potential to become a global phenomenon, if they arenāt there already.Ā
Most NFT projects are a form of crowdfunding or investment into a new type of asset in conjunction with real estate, trading cards, luxury handbags, and wine. As an investor at a venture capital firm, Iāll be drawing parallels from the traditional finance world to the metaverse in order to show you a comfortable pathway into NFT investments.
Friday
News
Call to Reduce Yield Payouts to Save Anchor Protocol Roils Terra Community The Terra community is again divided on the future of the networkās leading protocol, Anchor. And the question of how it can maintain high yield payouts is at the heart of the matter.
Messari Data Shows Flipping Airdrops is Twice as Profitable as Holding It appears that profit-seeking web3 users would have been better off selling their airdrops rather than holding them.
Polygon Suffers Latest Multi-Hour Outage After Node Halts Polygon, a leading sidechain-based scaling solution for Ethereum, is suffering a multi-hour outage resulting from an issue with one of its nodes.
Links
Crypto firms under attack for sticking with Russia: Politico
Venture Forward gift launches initiative on blockchain and decentralization of power: Princeton
EBay Shows Investors Digital Wallet as It Explores Crypto and Other Payment Options: Decrypt
Thursday
News
Crypto Community Relieved by Biden Orderās Balance Yet Wary as Oversight Regime Takes ShapeĀ Whew! The cryptocurrency community is breathing a sigh of relief after President Biden issued his hotly anticipated executive order for digital assets on Wednesday.Ā
South Koreaās Next President Vows to Reverse Crypto Crackdown and Deregulate Sector The cryptocurrency community just got a friend in very high places in South Korea. Yoon Suk-yeol, the former prosecutor general of South Korea who recently pledged to deregulate crypto assets, secured a narrow victory on ThursdayĀ in the countryās presidential election.
Avalanche to Invest $290M in āSubnetsā for DeFi, GameFi and NFTs Following last yearās rise of low-cost scalable Layer 1s, an increasing number of projects are now seeking to foster multi-chain ecosystems under the umbrella of a single network.
Links
Ethereum Layer 2 developer StarkWare is raising funds at a $6 billion valuation: report: The Block
Reality Intrudes on a Utopian Crypto Vision: The New York Times
Wednesday
News
EXCLUSIVE: Andrew Yang Urges Web3 Community to Rally and Shape Inevitable Regulation If there was ever a time when the crypto community believed it would operate unfettered by state rules itās over. Regulation is coming, and time is running out for DeFi to influence and shape this looming regime.Ā
EXCLUSIVE: Aavegotchi Poised to Morph into Play-to-Earn Game on March 31 Aavegotchi, the playable characters loaded with Aaveās interest-bearing tokens, are getting their own little gaming universe. The Gotchiverse will launch March 31, The Defiant has learned.
Markets
Privacy Coins Shake Off Their Slumber and Spike 25% in 24 Hours Privacy coins were dead in the water, an afterthought for most of last year as the crypto market hit all-time highs and they languished. Now, the top two privacy coins, Moneroās XMR, and Zcashās ZEC, are both up more than 25% on Tuesday before settling at 21% and 16% respectively in early morning trading U.K. time. Whatās going on?
Links
Tuesday
Markets
Cronjeās Exit Hits Yearn and Fantom as Defenders Scramble to Shore up Confidence The crypto markets have been punished recently, but tokens associated with Andre Cronje have taken an extra beating in the wake of news he is quitting DeFi.
News
Evmos Chain Paused After Going Live With Highly Anticipated āRektDropā Last year, it seemed like every blockchain compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the rules which dictate how transactions get processed, had its time in the sun.Ā Layer 1s like Avalanche, Fantom, and Binance Smart Chain launched nine-figure growth funds to bootstrap their DeFi ecosystems.
Axie Infinity Hikes Marketplace Fees to Reward Game Players with āCreator Codesā In a move to crank up tokenomics, Axie Infinity launched a new program today to share the wealth with game players. The leading play-to-earn game, plans to increase its marketplace fees to 5.25% and distribute the extra revenue to Axieās community of content creators, the project said last week.Ā
Links
EXCLUSIVE NFT startup Immutable valued at $2.5 billion in Temasek-led financing: Reuters
Ukraine Is Buying Bulletproof Vests and Night-Vision Goggles Using Crypto: CoinDesk
Calling Artists to Feature Their NFTs at Avalanche Summit: Avalanche
šCommunity Loveš
Thanking all the amazing Defiers for the support and love this week (and always)!
š§āš» āļø Stories in The Defiant are written by Owen Fernau, Sanuel Haig and yyctrader, and edited by Edward Robinson, yyctrader and Camila Russo.Ā Videos were produced by Robin Schmidt and Alp Gasimov. Podcast was led by Camila, edited by Alp.
The Defiant is a daily newsletter focusing on decentralized finance, a new financial system thatās being built on top of open blockchains. The space is evolving at breakneck speed and revolutionizing tech and money. Sign up to learn more and keep up on the latest, most interesting developments. Subscribers get full access, while free signups get only part of the content.Click here to pay with DAIĀ (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button above ($15/mo, $150/yr.