Recap: DeFi Week of April 20 š¦
Hello Defiers, hope youāre having a good weekend!
Summing last week up: dYdX launched the first decentralized perpetual futures contracts, and Futureswap launched shortly after with similar assets, attracting so much attention it had to warn users its software hadnāt been audited. Speaking of untested software, Hegic is another exciting project that launched this week, releasing a decentralized options market, but its developers found a bug in the code with the potential of locking up usersā funds. Coinbase released price oracles for DeFi apps, Zerion built an SDK to connect DeFi protocols, and PoolTogether now allows users to link their lottery tickets and increase their chance of winning.
Analyst Andrew Kang wrote about the different Bitcoin-to-Ethereum efforts, Covalentās Ganesh Swami crunched numbers to find how Ethereum tokensā market caps have grown over time, and @DeFi_Dadās tutorial this week explains how to get paid (or pay for) Zoom calls with ETH and 2Key Network. Aave engineer Emilio Frangella breaks down DeFiās biggest hack yet, and MEW founder Kosala Hemachandra in this weekās exclusive interview and podcast says volume is surging amid the coronavirus pandemic.
š¦Reminder to followĀ @DefiantNewsĀ on Twitter if you havenāt!
That was just one week. Subscribe to get the latest DeFi news and analysis straight to your inbox and you donāt miss a thing. Free-signups get partial content, paid subscribers (only $10/month, $100/year) get everything.Ā Click here to pay with DAI ($70/year).
šĀ Together withĀ Ampleforth, a digital asset protocol for a base money which doesnāt require collateral and is uncorrelated with the rest of crypto.
Interview
"Volumes Have Almost Tripled; Crypto Was Made for This," MEW's Kosala Hemachandra Says
This weekās interview is with MyEtherWallet founder and CEO Kosala Hemachandra. As the head of one of the most popular Ethereum interfaces, Kosala has a unique perspective on how the global pandemic has impacted activity. He also talks about how crypto was built for crises, about the importance of building a decentralized product āif itās custodial, itās not worth itā and what he believes the future of digital wallets will look like. Lastly, he told me about MEWās next big project: a DEX.
šListen to the interview first hand on this weekās podcast.Ā
Op-Eds
The Cross-Chain Pegging Dilemma
Builders are creating Bitcoin-backed Ethereum tokens and concocting ābridgesā connecting the two chains in so many different projects that itās hard to keep track. Andrew Kang, a venture investor and analyst deep in the crypto space, has compiled these efforts in a Bitcoin-to-DeFi primer. Youāll get the pros and cons of Bitcoin tokens and bridges including by Ren, Synthetix, Keep, pTokens, and TokenIon. And see where the fall in the decentralization and scalability scale.
Ethereum is a True Platform for Fintech Innovation
Ethereumās market capitalization has been sliding sidewaysĀ for the last couple of years at around 20 billion dollars. Thatās a grim picture, but in reality,Ā innovation on Ethereum is at all time high. Bill Gates once said,Ā āA platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it exceeds the value of the company that creates it.āĀ Ethereum is starting to prove itself as a platform for fintech innovation as the market cap of tokens built on top of it grows, Covalent cofounder Ganesh Swami writes.
Friday
Dives
Coinbase Launches Price Oracle for DeFi: Coinbase launched a price oracle for decentralized finance applications. The price feed for BTC-USD and ETH-USD markets is sourced from Coinbase Pro API, signed by Coinbaseās private key, and updates each minute.
Sums
Hegic Launches Decentralized Options Market: The DeFi hedging market is maturing. Hegic, a non-custodial protocol, which is open to anyone launched a market for ETH put and calls.
Futureswap Warns Users: Traders are jumping on Futureswap, an untested platform offering 20x leverage on perpetual futures contracts.
Tutorials
How To: Use Money Legos to Get Paid for Zoom Sessions: In light of the seismic shifts in society brought on by COVID19, an Israeli-based team developing solutions on Ethereum calledĀ 2key NetworkĀ recognized a way that their technology could be used to empower small businesses and entrepreneurs with aĀ launch-ready paywall for Zoom, requiring no code calledĀ Zoom SmartSessions, DeFi Dad writes.
Thursday
Dives
KNC Fundamentals Strengthening: Kyber Networkās KNC token is growing by number of active addresses and number of new addresses, but thereās risk of collusion as itās highly concentrated, according to on-chain data analyzed by IntoTheBlock.
Sums
dYdX Launches First Decentralized Perpetual Contract: Perpetual contracts, the most widely traded product in crypto, will now be tradable in a decentralized, non-custodial platform.Ā dYdX this week launched perpetual bitcoin contractsĀ and plans to later roll out ether and Dai contracts.
You Can Now Send Money to Any Twitter Handle: Crypto lenderĀ DharmaĀ launchedĀ a feature that enables users to send the dollar-pegged stablecoin Dai to anyone in the world using their Twitter handle.
Zerion Launches a Tool to Connect DeFi Apps: The team at portfolio trackerĀ Zerion wants to make it easier to connect money legos and built an open sourceĀ SDK, or software development kit, that will make it easier for developers to integrate DeFi protocols.
PoolTogether Allows Users to Group Their Lottery Tickets: PoolTogether, the āno-lossā lottery,Ā now allows users to link their tickets, increasing their chances at winning.
Tuesday
Dives
Hackers Steal $25 Million in Hours and Then Return the Funds: A Breakdown: A hacker was able to drain $25 million from lending protocol Lendf.Me āalmost all of the funds it heldā in just under four hours,Ā by exploiting vulnerabilities in the imBTC token and in the protocol itself.Ā Emilio Frangella, engineer at lending protocol Aave, breaks down the attack and how to avoid it.
šCommunity Loveš
Thanking all the amazing Defiers for the support and love this week (and always)!
The DefiantĀ 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 at $10/month or $100/year, while free signups get only part of the content.
Click here to pay with DAI.Thereās a limited amount ofĀ OG Memberships at 70 DaiĀ per annual subscription ($100/yr normal price).
About the author: Iām 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. Iāve extensively covered crypto and finance, and now Iām diving into DeFi, the intersection of the two.