ETHDenver keeps the party going in DeFi with non-stop launches and announcements — check out the weekly DeFi roundup you wouldn't want to miss.
Tornado Cash is back, now as PrivacyPools on Optimism. Zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) compatible solutions by ConsenSys and Scroll both ready to go live on public testnets. Finally, Polygon releases tools for a Web3 identity utilizing ZK technology.
It has been a week of huge announcements and launches! Let’s see what went down this past week in DeFi.
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Overview: All Eyes on Equities
Total Value Locked (TVL) across all chains dipped slightly this week to $48.65 billion, tracing the equities market which started the week in the red, although it corrected the end of the week. Notable moves in TVL included ZK-Rollup StarkNet, and Bitcoin smart contract layer Stacks, which both saw growth in the low teens.
Source: Defillama.com
Welcome to Alpha Central
KRinweb3 drops his list of whale wallets including prominent influencer and popular trader GCR, UpOnly host Cobie, and BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes.
Reetika covers it all on Narrative Trading: the What, the Why and the How.
Auri0x releases his “Under Radar Early Airdrop Gems” for the aspiring airdrop farmers out there.
TyrougeD discusses cults in crypto and how to profit from them without ending up being the last one holding the bag.
CryptoRank identifies some of the largest token unlocks upcoming in March, including Hedera, Yuga Labs’ ApeCoin and Aptos among others.
Ethereum: Bridges Be Buildin’
Highly anticipated Ethereum token standard, ERC-4337, has been deployed by the Ethereum Foundation, bringing Account Abstraction to the chain. Account Abstraction seeks to improve user experience on-chain by reducing the complexities around self-custody and creating more customizable experiences.
MakerDAO reactivates D3M (DAI Direct Deposit Module), bringing back the wholesale credit line denominated in DAI between money market protocol, Aave, and MakerDAO. This creates a stable borrow rate for DAI borrowers on Aave, which could boost DAI utilization on the platform.
Bridging protocol Axelar launches Axelar VM, a huge release that enables new DApps to easily connect to Axelar and all its connected chains. It also allows DApps to be deployed once and replicated across various other chains, such as Celestia, Base, zkSync and StarkNet, among others.
Jumper Exchange, powered by LiFi Protocol, is now deployed and functional. Jumper aggregates decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and bridges, enabling low fee cross-chain swaps and bridging.
Reserve Protocol launches their decentralized stablecoin, eUSD. The stablecoin is backed by yield-bearing assets from lending protocols such as Compound and Aave, meaning that the collateral generates yield, which is paid out to RSR stakers.
Cat-in-a-Box Finance went live on Ethereum this past week as well. Cat-in-a-Box Finance enables boxETH to be minted, using Lido Staked ETH (stETH) as collateral, enabling greater utility for stETH in the DeFi ecosystem.
Conic Finance is now live, with OmniPools to further support the Curve ecosystem. OmniPools allow users to gain access to multiple Curve pools by only depositing a single asset. Beyond that, Conic users also earn rewards from Convex AND Conic incentives.
Liquid staking derivative (LSD) protocol, StakeWise, launches their Atlantic Testnet to further test their V3 before its launch on Mainnet. The upgrade brings a more modular architecture to the protocol as well as enable greater flexibility for stakers and validators.
Ethereum’s top DEX, Uniswap, announces their very own mobile wallet, allowing access to Ethereum, Polygon and popular L2s, Arbitrum and Optimism. The wallet is currently open for early access to selected users.
Web3 development platform, Alchemy, releases their decentralized application (DApp) creator, Create Web3 DApp, allowing DApps to be rapidly designed and built in just 4 minutes on Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum and Optimism.
L2s: The Layer 2 Race Heats Up
A BitDAO proposal has been put to the vote, to establish an ecosystem fund for BitDAO-incubated Mantle Network. The proposal aims to allocate $10 million from the BitDAO treasury and to further establish a $200 million ecosystem fund for ecosystem development and DApp builder support.
ZkEVM compatible project, Scroll, is now on Goerli after 16 million transactions on their pre-Alpha Testnet. This will be the final testnet before Scroll hits their mainnet launch.
ConsenSys, the company behind top cryptocurrency wallet, MetaMask, announces the date for the release of the ConsenSys zkEVM, which will go live on March 28, 2023.
Founder of SpankChain and Reflex Labs, Ameen Soleimani, announces PrivacyPools V0 on Optimism. PrivacyPools is the sequel to popular decentralized cryptocurrency tumbler, Tornado Cash, after teasing it earlier in the week.
Gamified positional markets Thales Finance brings staking to Arbitrum, bringing cross-chain DAO governance to Thales.
GameFi project, TridentDAO, launches OasisSwap V1, a DEX to support TridentDAO’s ecosystem. Currently, the pool has been seeded with USDC and TridentDAO’s native token.
Spool goes live as well, bringing custom vault strategies to Arbitrum. Spool users can select strategies from a list of selected partner protocols such as Curve, Aave and more.
Yield tokenization protocol, Pendle, collaborates with omnichain protocol, LayerZero, to bring cross-chain vote-escrowed tokenomics to Pendle, after their recent expansion to Arbitrum. This means that users can now boost yields on Arbitrum too, with their vePendle balance on Ethereum.
Polygon: A Web3 Identity by Polygon
The Polygon team announces the launch of 4 infrastructure tools this week, using zk-proofs to create a Web3 identity. Such tools can be integrated into DApps to bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3.
Avalanche: Uniswap’s Race Against Time
University of Michigan Blockchain initiated a Uniswap proposal in collaboration with Ava Labs to deploy Uniswap V3 on Avalanche. The proposal is sparked by the impending Business Source License expiry for Uniswap V3’s code which would allow the Uniswap V3 code to be forked freely.
Solana: DeFi Back in Business
Ellipsis Labs launches Phoenix, Solana’s fully on-chain, non-custodial and composable limit order book DEX. Its code has also been open-sourced, quite unlike many other protocols on Solana.
Solana’s dominant money market protocol, Solend, drops their V2 Litepaper, discussing improved risk management and greater decentralization for the protocol.
Cosmos: Osmosis in Focus
Mars Protocol deploys farm vaults on their Osmosis Outpost, enabling functionality for leveraged staking, leveraged farming and custom strategies. Currently, leveraged farming is available for OSMO-ATOM and OSMO-USDC pools.
Osmosis sees a healthy rise in builder activity week on week, possibly signaling upcoming launches on the chain.
Nitro SVM, built on Solana and Cosmos-based Layer 1, Sei, launched NitroSwap, the first automated market maker (AMM) DEX on the Nitro Testnet. The DEX also aims to help users familiarize themselves with the Nitro Testnet.
Another Week, Another Airdrop
Cosmos-based, Stride, announces the second wave of their airdrop. Unclaimed airdrop tokens from their first wave in November have also been put into this wave.
Centralized exchange, OKX, to airdrop $3 million in USDT to affected users after a pump and dump operation by relating to CELT, the token of GameFi project, Celestial:
Markets took a turn for the worse this week, but ETHDenver keeps the party going with announcements and launches firing non-stop through the week. Stay tuned for next week’s edition and keep supporting your favorite projects, degens!
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