Check out the latest DeFi news and alpha — from central banks using Curve for CBDC test, Matter Labs releasing ZK Stack and dYdX announcing the testnet of their Cosmos-based chain.
Central banks from Singapore, Switzerland and France engage in the development of an automated market maker (AMM) modeled after Curve Finance in a pilot program for a cross-border central bank digital currency (CBDC). Compound Finance founder, Robert Leshner, steps down from the protocol to launch his own mutual fund to connect blockchains and traditional markets. Finally, Matter Labs releases the ZK-stack, a modular framework for deploying new zero-knowledge rollups (zk-rollups).
What a week of developments! Let’s see what went down this past week in DeFi.
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Overview: Onwards, Fellow Bulls!
Total value locked (TVL) across all chains steadily rose upwards another 1% as crypto markets stabilized higher after recovering from a decline beginning in early June. Notable increases in TVL include StarkNet and zkSync Era, which continue their healthy TVL growth week-on-week with both seeing increases of close to 10%.
Source: DeFiLlama
Welcome to Alpha Central
Daniel Shapiro shares his long-term vision and thesis for the oracle infrastructure project, Chainlink.
Jiraiya dives deep into Cosmos-based Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible chain, Tenet, and what makes it different (hint: it has to do with liquid staking derivatives (LSDs)!).
An interesting analysis by venture capital firm, 6th Man Ventures, on the price impact of token unlocks, as studied over 20 different protocols.
Ethereum: TradFi Building in DeFi Leveraging Curve
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has been running tests for Project Mariana, a cross-border CBDC program, in which Curve Finance’s AMM architecture was leveraged for the design of the program’s AMM exchange which has since been deployed on the Sepolia testnet.
Undercollateralized lending protocol, Maple Finance, launches Maple Direct, a lending desk targeting institutional demand in Web3 lending. The new arm strives for compliance, transparency and quality, while minimizing counterparty risk for lenders.
Compound Finance CEO and founder, Robert Leshner, steps down as CEO and launches a mutual fund, Superstate, which aims to connect the traditional markets and the blockchain world.
Stable-peg AMM, Curve Finance, adds WBTC and ETH as collateral options for loans against their native stablecoin, crvUSD. In the same week, crvUSD supply crossed the 50 million mark.
MakerDAO-backed automated strategy platform, Oasis, rebrands to Summer.fi, to encapsulate their grander vision and the experience they wish to deliver to their users.
Oracle-free options trading platform, Panoptic, releases their whitepaper this week. Panoptic seeks to enable the permissionless trading of options on any ERC-20 token. Panoptic also implements perpetual options, to consolidate liquidity, rather than fragment it across expiries as with traditional options.
Options protocol, Cega, launches two new vaults: the Puppy Vault and the L2 Vault, giving users exposure to memecoins, DOGE and SHIB, and L2 tokens, ARB and OP, respectively, via options to earn yield on depositors’ USDC.
Bridging protocol, Celer Network, unveils Peti, an omnichain liquidity protocol, connecting DeFi power users and market makers. The protocol uses “just-in-time” liquidity via market makers to provide liquidity to users’ cross-chain needs, without requiring liquidity to be locked in pools all the time.
Sommelier Finance introduces Fraximal Vaults, which are vaults structured to maximize returns based on strategies centered around FraxLend, Frax Finance’s in-house money market platform.
LSD-backed stablecoin protocol, Gravita, unveils its plans for redemptions of their native stablecoin, GRAI, which will be opened on 18th July. The initial redemption will be at $0.98 with the balance going to the protocol. This figure will be increased to $0.99 after one month.
Fixed-rate money market platform, Yield Protocol, has successfully recovered the funds from the Euler Finance hack earlier in the year. Affected liquidity providers are required to upgrade their tokens to regain access to funds.
L2s: ZK Stack Unveiled
Matter Labs, the team behind zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) chain, zkSync Era, unveil their open source modular framework for launching and deploying zkEVM chains, as L2s or as L3s. The move steps up the competition in the modular chain space with Optimism and Arbitrum already in the arena with the OP Stack and Arbitrum Orbit respectively.
Arbitrum decentralized exchange (DEX) and launchpad, Camelot, makes a bold proposal to the Arbitrum Foundation for the disbursement of 12m ARB tokens over six months, in order to grow the Camelot and Arbitrum ecosystem through the support of new and upcoming projects.
Bond marketplace, Bond Protocol, introduces Options Liquidity Mining (OLM), a novel method for acquiring liquidity through provision of rewards via options instead of tokens. OLM reduces the drain on the protocol from mercenary capital in traditional liquidity mining incentives, as they take in assets when these options are exercised.
GND Protocol introduces liquid staking for the GND token as zGND. Currently, GND tokens can only be locked as xGND to earn yield, but zGND enables users to stake their zGND to earn yield or to provide liquidity for zGND-GND, granting users more flexibility over their tokens.
Arbitrum governance aggregator protocol, PlutusDAO, teases the launch of Plutus V2, bringing to the protocol a tokenomics revamp for the PLS token.
Arbitrum option vault platform, Dopex, partners with Telegram trading bot project, Unibot, to announce upcoming integration of Dopex with Unibot, which will enable option trading via Telegram.
Optimism-based options platform, Haptic, introduces their protocol, a platform designed to allow the use of liquidity pool positions as collateral for options in order for liquidity providers to express their market bias while providing liquidity.
SYS Labs launches Rollux, an EVM-compatible Optimistic rollup built on Bitcoin and the Syscoin L1. The rollup is powered by Syscoin’s token, SYS.
Solana: Neon EVM Closed Beta Live
EVM-compatible Solana layer, Neon EVM, launches their closed beta, allowing whitelisted developers to test out their decentralized applications (DApps) on the chain. Neon EVM’s closed beta will support fee-free transactions for ease of testing.
Cosmos: DYdX V4 Testnet Incoming
Perpetuals trading platform, dYdX, announces the launch date for their Cosmos-based V4 public testnet on July 5. The testnet will open with BTC and ETH markets to start.
Composable Finance releases Centauri, a bridge linking up the Polkadot and Cosmos ecosystems. Osmosis is the first chosen link for Centauri and liquidity pools are now live for OSMO-KSM and OSMO-DOT pairs on Composable’s L1, Picasso.
Another Week, Another Airdrop
Dynamic distribution AMM, Maverick Protocol announces their airdrop to reward early adopters who participated in the Maverick Ecosystem Pre-Season. 30 million tokens, or 1.5% of the MAV token supply, are being airdropped across Ethereum and zkSync Era.
As Diva Protocol goes live, so does the DIVA token, with an airdrop to early users of their incentivized testnet and participants in their quiz sessions. A total of 1.4 million tokens have been set aside for the community in the token allocation.
Arbitrum-based GMX fork, Vela Exchange, relaunches, now open to the public. Together with this announcement, Vela Exchange has also released the eligibility check for their beta airdrop. Claims are now open to eligible users.
The market shows no sign of slowing down, consolidating higher amidst the anticipation for the Bitcoin ETF. As the market charges on, so do the builders and their projects. Stay updated and stay tuned for next week’s edition, and keep supporting your favorite projects, degens!
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