As Bitcoin price flirts at all-time high levels, the total value locked in DeFi has reached pre-Luna levels. Read on to find out the latest DeFi news, alpha and airdrops!
Jupiter Exchange introduces staking and governance for their token, JUP, while Jito Labs drops the mempool offering from their product lineup, citing negative externalities to Solana users. In the Cosmos, Nim Network announces the first RollApp to deploy on the Dymension RollApp network.
Overview
Total Value Locked (TVL) across all chains show no signs of slowing their climb, after closing the fourth positive consecutive week as Bitcoin breaks its all-time high. Notable outperformers to the trend include Blur’s L2 chain, Blast, and alt-L1 chain, Near, which saw TVL increases of 258% and 114% respectively.
Source: https://coinmarketcap.com/chain-ranking/
Welcome to Alpha Central
MetaQuant covers the parallels and comparisons between the Gold ETF and the Bitcoin ETF, how well the Bitcoin ETFs have done and where we can expect the BTC price to move from here based on gold’s historical performance.
Ethereum: Gearbox Supercharges Ethena Shards
Leverage protocol, Gearbox, announces their latest product, leveraged USDe and sUSDe, allowing depositors to take on leverage to earn up to 90x Ethena Labs’ Shards. Deposits will open on 11th March.
Other Product Launches and Updates
- Redacted Cartel partners up with interoperability layer, LayerZero, enabling the cross-chain transfer of their ETH liquid staking token, pxETH, between Arbitrum, Optimism and the BNB Smart Chain.
L2s: A Liquid Staking Token for StarkNet
StarkNet-based DeFi suite, Nostra, unveils stSTRK, a liquid staking token for the STRK token. Users can now stake their STRK to receive stSTRK, which allows them to earn points on Nostra as well as claim future staking rewards when StarkNet launches their native staking mechanism.
Astar Network officially launches the Astar zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) chain. The chain is an Ethereum L2 built on Polygon’s chain development kit and is also the first chain to integrate Polygon’s AggLayer, a layer to seamlessly connect chains together for unified liquidity.
Other Product Launches and Updates
- ETH-based stablecoin protocol, Ethena Labs integrates with modular L2, Manta Network, to bring USDe to the chain. In the same week, Ethena Labs also integrated with Cosmos-based chain, Injective.
- The Fraxtal Bridge for Frax Finance’s L2, Fraxtal, is now live. Users can now bridge ETH, FRAX, frxETH and other assets from Ethereum to the Fraxtal mainnet.
- Perpetuals trading platform, Kwenta, launches Perps V3, which brings to the platform USDC support, cross-margin, better pricing via Pyth’s oracles and support for Coinbase’s L2, Base.
- Cross-chain decentralized exchange (DEX), WooFi, has been exploited on Arbitrum, via the WooFi Swap feature, resulting in $8.75 million in losses. The team has halted the product temporarily and all other products are marked as safe to use.
- Perpetuals DEX, IntentX, releases their latest feature, stop loss and take profit orders, granting trades better control over their orders.
- Cross-chain money market platform, Pike Finance, announces the Pike PIU Program (PPP), allowing users to earn the PIU token by lending, borrowing or holding these positions on Pike. Holding the PIU token grants benefits such as whitelist slots for the upcoming PIKE token sale among others.
- Real-world asset (RWA) tokenization platform, Tangible DAO, announces the development of their very own L2, Real, a chain dedicated to RWA tokenization built on Arbitrum Orbit.
Solana: Jupiter Exchange Introduces Staking and Governance
Solana DEX aggregator, Jupiter, launches their voting platform, enabling JUP token holders to stake their JUP tokens for voting power. Unstaking tokens will require 30 days, with decreasing voting power assigned to tokens that are unstaking. All votes will receive incentives which are derived from launchpad fees.
Solana liquid staking protocol, Jito, suspends their mempool product offered through the Jito Block engine, in a bid to reduce the negative impact on the average Solana user due to sandwich attacks executed through this service.
Solana money market platform, Kamino Finance, announces the date for their upcoming snapshot on 31st March, with the genesis token launch coming in April. The token is expected to be utilized for governance, to determine incentive programs, revenue allocation and decisions surrounding risk management and operations.
Cosmos: Injective EVM-Rollup Launches
Injective launches inEVM, a rollup built on Injective but fully compatible with the EVM. This enables Ethereum-based developers to build applications on inEVM while leveraging the high speeds of Injective. InEVM was designed in collaboration with rollup provider Caldera, supported by Hyperlane and LayerZero.
NIM Network, the first RollApp to launch on Dymension, introduces itself. NIM Network is a RollApp focused on the intersection of crypto and gaming, powered by Dymension and leveraging Celestia for data availability.
Another Week, Another Airdrop
Interoperability infrastructure layer, Wormhole, releases the eligibility checker for the W token airdrop. Users who have utilized cross-chain bridges supported by Wormhole will be eligible for the airdrop.
Option and perpetuals DEX, Aevo, will be launching their token on March 13th, with an airdrop to users who qualified as part of their Farming Program which has been ongoing for the past month.
Automated chain deployment protocol, Saga, opens up claims for the SAGA token airdrop. Eligible users include Avalanche, Celestia, Cosmos and Polygon stakers, as well as community participants and winners of their past game tournaments.
GambleFi protocol, Shuffle, releases the airdrop allocation for eligible users of the SHFL airdrop. Users who have wagered on the platform since its launch will qualify for the airdrop. The token will be open for claiming after the token sale.
Tweet of the Week
As every coin rebrands into an AI coin, Qiao Wang of AllianceDAO reminds us that while we can capitalize on and trade these worthless AI coins, we must remain aware of what game we are playing: the AI trade or the memecoin trade.
Stay updated on your favorite projects and stay tuned for next week’s edition, and keep supporting your favorite projects, degens!
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