Recap: DeFi Week of Nov. 16 🦄

Nov 22

Hello Defiers! Hope you’re having a great weekend.

Summing up: In the past several days DeFi has been hit with one flash-loan driven attack after another. We dove into the main ones that happened just in the past week, draining about $16M from DeFi protocols, and also explained the mechanism and main questions they bring up in a video. The crypto rally continued gaining steam with Bitcoin’s market cap touching an all-time high, while ETH crossed $500 for the first time since 2018; but the bull market has been relatively quiet so far.

Uniswap UNI rewards ended this week; IntoTheBlock looked at on-chain metrics to analyze the impact, while governance may seek to extend rewards. Aave token holders put forward two new governance proposals, and investors in the DPI DeFi tokens index were able to participate. In this week’s podcast episode, we spoke with Illia Polosukhin, cofounder of the Near Protocol and Fernando Martinelli, co-founder and CEO of Balancer Labs, who agreed ETH would likely flip BTC in the coming years.

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 get everything. Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button below ($10/mo, $100/yr).

🙌 Together with Zerion, a simple interface to access and use decentralized finance, and 1inch.exchange v2, which aims to provide the best rates by discovering the most efficient swapping routes across all leading DEXes.

Interview

"I Do Believe Ethereum Will Flip Bitcoin in the Next Four Years:” Balancer's Fernando Martinelli

In this week’s episode, I speak with Illia Polosukhin, cofounder of the Near Protocol and Fernando Martinelli, co-founder and CEO of Balancer Labs. Near is one of the up and coming Layer 1 chains, Balancer is a prominent DeFi protocol and application on Ethereum that will now also be on Near and other blockchains. As for Near being labeled an “Ethereum Killer” Illia says Near is “not trying to kill anybody.”

He thinks finance is just a stepping stone for all the use cases enabled by blockchains and that Near can be the place where those consumer apps are built. Fernando says DeFi will live on many different Layer 1s, but he sees the space expanding into less than 10, not hundreds of chains. He remains very bullish on Ethereum and is betting on a flippening with Bitcoin in the near future, which Illia agreed would be “totally possible.”

🎙Listen to the interview in this week’s podcast episode here:

Video

Flash Loans and Attacks Explained

After five attacks and millions of dollars lost, this week we're diving into the mechanism behind what made this possible: flash loans. Some call them attacks other go as far as to call it art. But other important questions remain. One of them: Why do we keep seeing audited protocols in the victims’ list?

Friday

Dives

  • ETH Crossed $500 in a Most Quiet Rally: We are in the middle of a crypto bull market but you wouldn’t know it from social media trends, news headlines and anchors, and just all-around hype. The gap between BTC and ETH prices and mainstream interest, measured by Google search, is at the widest ever in a run-up.

Markets

Links

Thursday

Dives

Bytes

  • Aave Governance Picks up Steam Ahead of Upgrade: Aave yesterday posted two new governance proposals for its lending protocol,  the fourth largest in DeFi with more than $1.3B in deposits, one of which may lead to an increased pool of assets to be managed by token holders.

  • DeFi Index Investors Can Now Vote in Governance Too: The DeFi Pulse Index (DPI) treasury is being put to work through the release of Index Co-op’s Meta Governance structure.

  • Vietnamese Dong Stablecoin Launches Today: VNDC.io, one of Vietnam's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, is launching a stablecoin that’s pegged to the Vietnamese Dong (VND) today.

Links

Tuesday

Dives

Bytes

  • Bitcoin Market Cap Climbs to Record High: Bitcoin’s market capitalization is at a record, crossing $330B for the first time ever, according to CoinGecko.

💜Community Love💜

Thanking all the amazing Defiers for the support and love this week (and always)!

Alex Masmej @AlexMasmej
I attribute much of my “wide-ranging knowledge” in crypto to: - @DefiantNews - @evan_van_ness WIE - @ethhub_io This is all free. In this industry, the newsletter reporting is so good you can be an expert for free, if you read long enough.

November 15th 2020

5 Retweets
Nico 🛹 @nicoglennon
@AlexMasmej @DefiantNews @evan_van_ness @ethhub_io .@DefiantNews is next level

November 15th 2020

Michael Otis @OHHHtis
Going to start posting my top @YouTube channels or Podcasts that I tend to watch/listen to on a daily/sub-daily basis: @DefiantNews & @DirSchmidt @BiggerPockets @dad_verb @scottmelker @VoskCoin @crypt0snews @Timcast @HotepJesus & @CryptoWendyO

November 22nd 2020

3 Retweets
Zima Red @zima_red
5) Lastly we look at the genius @DirSchmidt who makes the YouTube videos for the @DefiantNews The Defiant guide to Digital Art and NFTsFollowing the great DeFi summer many have been predicting NFTs to be the tricky second album. This is a monumentally large subject with competing viewpoints ...youtube.com

November 22nd 2020

2 Retweets
ROBNΞSS @robnessofficial
HACKERS ARE ARTISTS. BRAND NEW @DefiantNews youtu.be/0Q1_95J10XI #nft #cryptoart #ethereumFlash Loans, and Attacks -- explainedAfter five attacks and millions of dollars lost due to an exploit, this week we’re diving deep into the mechanism behind what made this possible: Flash Loans...youtu.be

November 21st 2020

1 Retweet
DeFi Dad ⟠ defidad.eth 👁⚡️👁 @DeFi_Dad
🤷‍♂️I don’t claim to have all the answers. 👊 But I do stay hungry to learn more and try more apps. 👇If you want to learn #DeFi, here’s some helpful resources: Defidad.com tv.zapper.fi @DefiantNews @BanklessHQ @ethhub_io @PodcastDelphi @Delphi_DigitalZapperZapper is your DeFi hub to track your DeFi portfolio by just connecting your Ethereum wallet. You can instantly see a snapshot of your assets, liabilities, y...tv.zapper.fi

November 21st 2020

CryptoAtlas @cryptoatlas_io
FEATURED PRODUCT this week 🚀 Meet @DefiantNews, one of the leading websites for all things DeFi - founded by @CamiRusso - always educating on the relationship between blockchain and traditional finance. Find out more here: ➡️cryptoatlas.io/products/the-d…

November 16th 2020

1 Retweet
Ian LeViness (Expatcrypto3) ‏ @ExpatCrypto3
1. That there needs to be more out there but it looks like for #DeFi @DefiantNews is doing good work

Marc Zeller @lemiscate

We have a lot of "advanced" resources on #DeFi, but if you had to point stuff to someone starting crypto with DeFi what would be your recommendations?

November 18th 2020

Luc Doucet @lgDoucet
More charts like this pls!! Incredibly helpful and informative for relative newbies (like me). Like an archeological dig into #NFT #DeFi @DappRadar @dragos_dydy @DefiantNews

November 16th 2020

1 Retweet
ROM @blockhiveio
@CamiRusso @DefiantNews @cryptoatlas_io Hey girl! The Defiant is my go-to source for all Defi related news!😘

November 16th 2020

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.

About the founder and editor: Camila Russo is the author of The Infinite Machine, the first book on the history of Ethereum, and was previously a Bloomberg News markets reporter based in New York, Madrid and Buenos Aires. She has extensively covered crypto and finance, and now is diving into DeFi, the intersection of the two.

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