Recap: DeFi Week of March 2 🦄
Hello Defiers! Hope you’re having a great weekend.
Summing up last week: A new financial exploit on DeFi started the week off, with traders attempting to manipulate markets to their favor on the iEarn platform. Over 20% yield for ETH deposits on bZx, compared with less than 1% on other platforms, is drawing users back after the biggest exploits in DeFi. Meanwhile, ETH whales are starting to accumulate. EY partnered with Microsoft and ConsenSys to create the Baseline Protocol, which aims to enable companies to use blockchain technology privately. pTokens and Ren helping make cross-chain transaction a reality and bring bitcoin to DeFi. dYdX to introduce trading fees, Instadapp launches DeFi-specific accounts and PieDAO wants to help issue and trade decentralized ETFs. And there’s even more!
Thursday
Dives
EY-Led Baseline to Provide DeFi Plug-In for Companies: EY announced it’s leading an open source initiative called Baseline Protocol for businesses to connect their processes via distributed networks, without having to reveal their public information.
Sums
pTokens to Bring Bitcoin Holders and Liquidity to DeFi: Blockchain oracle provider Provable Things launched pTokens to enable transactions across different blockchains. pTokens allow any cryptocurrency holder to use Ethereum-based decentralized applications, even if they’re not holding Ethereum-based tokens.
Ether Whales Starting to Accumulate: The top 100 ether holders are once again beginning to accumulate higher percentages of the total token supply, according to Santiment.
Two Large Crypto Hubs Get Regulatory Breakthroughs: South Korean lawmakers passed legislation providing a legal framework for cryptocurrency trading and holding. India struck down a two-year-old ban on cryptocurrency trading.
Wednesday
Dives
+20% Yields for Ether Deposits Drawing Users Back to bZx: Users are coming back to bZx, the DeFi platform that was at the center of two exploits about three weeks ago, even as trading hasn’t resumed.
Sums
dYdX Introduces Trading Fees: DeFi trading platform dYdX is introducing trading fees starting March 10. Taker fees will range between 0.05% and 0.5% of trade volume, depending on trading pair and order size.
Instadapp Wants to Provide a Single Point of Entry for DeFi: Instadapp, which built a bridge connecting major DeFi lending protocols, is launching DeFi Smart Accounts to provide users and developers with a single point of access to all of decentralized finance.
PieDAO Wants to Become DeFi’s ETF Issuer: PieDAO wants to enable anyone to trade and create investment portfolios, which can include digital and traditional assets via synthetic assets. These portfolios, called PIEs, will be tokenized and available for trading 24/7 by anyone, globally, and with no minimums.
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Tuesday
Dives
Emergencies Complicate DeFi User/Builder Relationship: There was another financial attack to a DeFi platform over the weekend, this time to the iEarn platform. The scheme resulted in a frenzied community who demanded answers from founder, and in the resignation of the founder who felt he was the victim of a witch-hunt.
Sums
Ren Wants to Connect Non-Ethereum Assets to DeFi: Ren announced an alliance of projects helping secure, develop, and use the project’s RenVM system, which has the goal of enabling transfers across different blockchains.
Developers Build First Insured Interest-Bearing Dai Token: As of today, there are plenty of tokens that automatically earn interest. Separately, there are ways to protect against the loss of those tokens. SaveDai wants to wrap those things together.
A Loan Against Virtual Real Estate Was Just Issued: Someone was able to take tokens representing unique plots of land in a virtual world, and use them to take out a loan denominated in MakerDAO’s Dai stablecoin, in what’s probably the first ever transaction of its kind.
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💜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 author: 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.