Recap: DeFi Week of May 4 🦄
Hello Defiers, hope you’re having a good weekend!
Summing up the past week: Some of DeFi and Ethereum’s biggest names, including Vitalik Buterin and Joe Lubin, spoke at the Ethereal Summit. MakerDAO introduced WBTC as collateral. Near launched the first phase of its mainnet into a crowded “Ethereum Killers” space. Synthetix and Optimism partnered up to create a decentralized exchange to demo Layer 2 scaling. The personal token space is heating up. DeFiZap and DeFiSnap merge to launch a portfolio manager with increased functionality.
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Interview
“There’s a Role for Ethereum as a Permissionless Platform for Central Bank Digital Currencies:” Vitalik Buterin
Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, talked about the possibility of ether becoming the global reserve currency in a world which has lost trust in national currencies and Ethereum becomes the “glue” between nations, in an interview at the Ethereal Summit. He also talked about DeFi apps he uses and those he wishes there were more of. He said talking about tokens primarily as governance vehicles is “wrong-headed,” and that it’s inevitable that Etheruem dapps will lose some composability when communicating between shards in Eth2. He also said we’re only a few months away from the launch of Eth2’s phase 0.
📺 Watch my interview with Vitalik on Ethereal’s YouTube channel.
Thursday
Dives
NEAR Protocol Joins Crowded Ethereum Killers Party: The Ethereum killer space is getting crowded. The latest one to join is NEAR protocol, which launched its mainnet this week.
Bytes
Loopring Paused Exchange After Finding Bug: Loopring temporarily paused trading after finding a critical frontend bug.
SNX Link making it Easier to Use Synthetix Platform: DeFi project SNX Link, which built an interface to use the Synthetix exchange, launched a feature which automatically adjusts users’ collateral ratios.
Wednesday
Dives
Synthetix Demo is Latest Step To a Scalable Ethereum: Derivatives protocol Synthetix and research group Optimism have teamed up to test the cutting edge technology that “optimists” say will help Ethereum scale.
Markets
Synthetix On-Chain Markets Update by IntoTheBlock: The SNX token is used as the collateral powering the Synthetix network in the Ethereum blockchain. Its transactions have grown significantly over the past month.
Sums
Personal Tokens Space Heats Up With $KERMAN: Kerman Kohli is using the Roll platform to sell tokens, with the goal to raise $30,000 with 15% of the total token supply.
PayPal Axes RealT But Crypto Saves the Day: PayPal blocked payments to tokenized real estate platform RealT without warning showing exactly why a censorless financial system matters.
Bytes
Strike Promises to Launch Perpetual Swaps for All Assets
MakerDAO Fundamental Analysis: AlfaBlok
Monday
Dives
MakerDAO Adds WBTC As Collateral for Dai: MakerDAO on Sunday started accepting WBTC as collateral against Dai loans as it seeks to increase liquidity and diversification in the assets backing the stablecoin.
Sums
DeFi10 Update: Portfolio is Up 10% Since January: The DeFi10 portfolio recovered from its March slump and is now up 10%, beating its benchmark, the MakerDAO’s deposit rate. It’s also beating US stocks and junk bonds, which are both down, but is underperforming ETH.
DeFiZap and DeFiSnap Merged to Create Zapper: DeFiZap and DeFiSnap merged to create asset management platform Zapper. The merger of the two aims to provide a portfolio tracker with added functionality.
💜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.