Recap: DeFi Week of July 13 🦄
Hello Defiers, hope you’re having a great weekend :)
Summing up last week: bZx listed its token BZRX on Uniswap and front-running bots who snapped up the tokens in the first block sparked debate over DEX listings. mStable delayed its own sale after bZx’s experience. It was a great week for Aave; it announced it sold $3M worth of LEND tokens to crypto funds Three Arrows Capital and Framework Ventures, which prompted other crypto funds to disclose their own investments, all while total value locked skyrocketed ahead of its upgrade. COMP slipped from its high, but traders aren’t flocking to short. Rari Capital was one of the biggest new projects launched this week, providing a new yield aggregator with a twist to the ones already in the market. Lasse Clausen of 1kz talked token-based business models, while Republic’s Kendrick Nguyen op-ed argues that tokenization may help bridge the wealth gap, but regulators shouldn’t be ignored.
🌈 Also, The Infinite Machine, my book on the history of Ethereum, launched Tuesday! After two years of work, following the Ethereum community wherever it went —Toronto, Boston, Prague, Berlin, Zug, Osaka, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires, New York—, recording over 100 interviews, diving into countless documents and videos, and holding the manuscript close to my heart, it’s now in the hands of the world. It’s been intensely emotional to see what’s been a significant piece of my life, being enjoyed and loved by so many. It’s a fantastic story about a fantastical community, and I feel so grateful I was able to tell it. Thank you Ethereans for welcoming me and helping me tell your story <3
That was just one week. Subscribe to get the latest DeFi news and analysis straight to your inbox and you don’t miss a thing. Free-signups get partial content, paid subscribers (only $10/month, $100/year) get everything. Click here to pay with DAI ($70/year).
Interview
"Things Tend to Get Better. For Anyone Involved in Crypto, It's Obvious That This is 1,000x Better," 1kx's Lasse Clausen
A typical VC question in the traditional tech space is it a 10x? Is it 10 times faster, better, cheaper? This concept has been dressed up very nicely as like, often with grand statements about making the world a better place, but really, Lasse says, VCs are subsidizing a market takeover. The real question they're asking is, can this become a national monopoly, where users are so locked in, that they have no choice but to use the product. Lasse Clausen, founding partner of 1kx, thinks crypto will crack this system open and that the paradigm shift is so big that there will be some networks that are really 1,000x improvement over the status quo.
Op-ed
When Kendrick Nguyen, Republic co-founder, moved from Vietnam to California’s Bay Area, he saw that wealth inequality was being perpetuated by legislation which only allowed millionaires —aka, accredited investors— to invest in high-growth tech companies. That prevented the less well-off from owning pieces of the companies that would go on to change the world and benefit from the huge amounts of value they created. Nguyen, who spent his early career as a securities lawyer, then as a Stanford Law Fellow, and later as General Counsel at AngelList, believes tokenization can help bridge that gap. Tokens can reduce inequality by allowing everyone to invest in startups at the cutting edge of their industries. But, he also believes there’s no reason to do this at the margin of the law. Nguyen argues if crypto plays by the rules, everyone will benefit.
Thursday
Dives
Aave’s $3M Token Sale Reveals It’s a VC Favorite: In the already cutting-edge DeFi space, Aave is pushing the boundaries even further, and that’s making it a VC darling.
On-Chain Markets Update by IntoTheBlock: This Week: Key Insights Assessing Aave’s LEND. The number of daily LEND transactions has increased by almost 10x, LEND’s large transaction volume hit an all-time high of $26 million on June 18, but long-time holders are selling, while traders rise.
Bytes
Rari Capital: A New Yield Bouncer With A Twist: Rari Capital is a newly launched yield bouncer for maximizing stablecoin interest, specifically DAI, USDC, and USDT. It currently moves funds between Compound and dYdX lending pools to maximize lending interest returns.
mStable Delays Sale to Thwart Front-Running Bots: Less than 24 hours before its token offering, mStable hit the brakes in light of BZRX’s Uniswap listing on Monday morning.
Tuesday
Dives
Instant $500k Profits on BZRX Raises Questions on DEX Offerings: Lending platform bZx listed its BZRX tokens via Uniswap, and less than 60 seconds after the Uniswap liquidity pool was seeded, BZRX price jumped 12x. the main “winners” were those running scripts to purchase BZRX in the same block it became available.
No One Is Shorting COMP in DeFi: While COMP’s surge may prompt speculation that it’s rallied too far, the reality is that there are no signs of anyone shorting the token that spurred the yield farming craze in decentralized platforms.
Bytes
💜Community Love💜
Thanking all the amazing Defiers for the support and love this week (and always)!
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. 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.
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About the founder: I’m 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. I’ve extensively covered crypto and finance, and now I’m diving into DeFi, the intersection of the two.
Great week. I'm absolutely fascinated with The Infinite Machine, your wonderful book! I'm really hooked up and can't stop reading it. Waiting for your next release... What's it gonna be about?