Highly awaited Arbitrum token drops, while a popular DeFi analytics platform gets forked — find out more in our weekly recap of the top DeFi news and alpha.
Highly anticipated Arbitrum airdrop is finally announced, sending market participants euphoric after more than a year of speculation. Lending protocol, Euler Finance is exploited for almost $200 million as well, with the protocol continuing to engage the exploiter for hopes of a favorable outcome. Finally, DeFi analytics platform DefiLlama was forked after the team was allegedly split between launching a token or keeping the status quo.
Let’s see what went down this past week in DeFi.
Join us in showcasing the cryptocurrency revolution, one newsletter at a time. Subscribe now to get daily news and market updates right to your inbox, along with our millions of other subscribers (that’s right, millions love us!) — what are you waiting for?
Overview: The Market is Risk-On Again
Total Value Locked (TVL) across all chains pushed higher to $48.75 billion as the Silicon Valley Bank crisis blew over with the US government stepping in. Market re-enters risk-on mode, with the crypto market soaring higher. Notable moves include Cosmos-based L1, Canto, and Bitcoin smart contract layer, Stacks, which both saw TVL surges of more than 50% over the week.
Source: Artemis.xyz
Welcome to Alpha Central
CryptoShiro is back with another airdrop thread, featuring prominent testnets, zkSync Era, Shardeum, Fuel and more.
Verum Capital looking back at some historical data (from CoinMarketCap!) on how specific buy-and-hold strategies worked in the past bull market.
DeFi Edge shares his list of features that you should be using on the DeFi analytics tool, DeFiLlama, including the borrow aggregator, watchlist feature and yield trend dashboards.
With the Arbitrum airdrop on the way, 0xFlips discusses some of the protocols that could benefit heavily from the airdrop.
Ethereum:
The Goerli Testnet has successfully completed the upgrade to Shapella, bringing Ethereum one step closer to Shapella on mainnet. The long anticipated first withdrawal of staked ETH is expected to occur on 12 April 2023 at 10:27:35 PM UTC.
Popular DeFi analytics tool, DeFiLlama, took the spotlight over the weekend, as a divide formed in the team over the potential launch of a token. DeFiLlama co-founder, 0xngmi, forked the entire website in a bid to avoid the “hostile takeover” and token launch. On the other front, LlamaIntern has described 0xngmi and his supporters as “going rogue”, and disputes his claims.
Lending protocol, Euler Finance was exploited this week, resulting in almost $200 million in losses. Several protocols built on Euler Finance suffered losses as well, including large names such as Balancer, Yearn Finance, Alchemix and Opyn.
DAI stablecoin issuer, MakerDAO, passes a proposal to implement a circuit breaker on Peg-Stability Modules in MakerDAO to preserve DAI’s price in the event of stablecoins losing peg as with USDC in the prior week.
Composable leverage platform, Gearbox Protocol, announces Gearbox V3 which brings in L2 technology, automation of trading strategies on-chain and integrations with DeFi heavyweights such as Aura Finance, Balancer, Frax and Convex among others.
Perpetuals trading platform, dYdX, successfully passes a governance proposal to cut emissions on their platform by 45%, with 92% of voters voting in favor.
Public goods incubator, PeopleDAO, saw an exploit of their community treasury on Safe, resulting in 76 ETH lost to the attackers. The attack was executed via social engineering and both the PEOPLE token contract and Safe’s contracts are not at risk.
Cross-chain bridge protocol, Across Protocol, announces a new roadmap introducing their Universal Bridge Adaptor, composable bridging, and capital recycling to the platform.
Popular Web3 browser, Brave, enables selling of crypto to fiat via their in-built Brave wallet in an integration with on-ramp service, Ramp Network. Brave is the creator of the attention-backed token, BAT.
Hope announces their stablecoin, HOPE, which aims to be backed by crypto-native assets such as BTC and ETH. Hope also seeks to build an ecosystem centered around HOPE, The ecosystem will be powered by their Light Token, LT, and will consist of a decentralized exchange (DEX), money market, bridge, and a tokenization protocol.
MetaMask launches V6 of their mobile application, bringing better connectivity, load times and browser navigation to users in a slew of UX improvements. The move comes after Uniswap launched their own mobile wallet as well, just two weeks prior.
Staking platform, RockX, launches Bedrock, a non-custodial solution for liquid staking using their own liquid staking derivative (LSD), uniETH.
L2s: Aztec Connect Closes Their Chapter
Aztec Network sunsets Aztec Connect, a toolkit for Ethereum developers to deploy applications easily to Aztec’s rollup. They continue to develop Noir, a language for ZK circuits as well as a privacy-focused zk-rollup.
Multichain lending protocol, UniLend Finance announces their upcoming deployment to the Polygon zk-Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) testnet on 20 March. This move likely also signals their intention to deploy on the Polygon zkEVM mainnet as well when it goes live the following week.
Options trading protocol, Siren, announces their migration to Arbitrum and the upcoming launch of their new product, Siren Flow, on the chain.
Omnichain money market protocol, Radiant Capital, launches Radiant V2, bringing seamless omnichain borrowing, gated emissions and full LayerZero implementation to Radiant to fulfill their omnichain vision.
Binance Smart Chain: Uniswap Has Landed
Uniswap launched on the Binance Smart Chain after passing in a governance proposal last month. The move finally brings the top DEX on Ethereum to BSC after the eventful voting process.
Filecoin: Virtual Machine Deployment
Decentralized data storage network, Filecoin, deploys Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) after much anticipation. FVM brings smart contracts to FIlecoin, bringing new functionality to the chain. Moreover, FVM is EVM compatible, making it easy for Ethereum developers to easily build on FVM.
Cosmos: Upgrades All Around
Cosmos completes their Lambda upgrade as well, bringing replicated security to the Cosmos. This allows new chains to rely on the Cosmos Hub for security, enabling new chains to bootstrap security easily while in their infancy.
Osmosis deploys the V15 Sodium Upgrade on-chain, integrating Miner Extractable Value (MEV) infrastructure protocol, Skip, into Osmosis, allowing MEV profits to be captured and returned to stakers. Moreover, V15 also implements a minimum gas fee on Osmosis, among other additions.
Cosmos-based L1, Sei, launches Atlantic-2, their final testnet before the official push to mainnet. Sei is a blockchain built specifically to cater to trading, to power the future of the financial markets.
Cosmos-based EVM chain, Kava, announces Kava Upgrade 13, which seeks to implement better chain performance, seamless Cosmos-Ethereum bridging, and more flexibility and autonomy to their strategic vaults on Kava.
Data lake blockchain, Kyve, launched on mainnet this week too, looking to create trustless data storage and access for developers and engineers.
Another Week, Another Airdrop
Arguably the most anticipated airdrop of this year, Arbitrum finally announces their token airdrop, ARB, which will open up for claims on 23 March. The airdrop distributes more than one billion ARB tokens with the median airdrop size being 1,250 ARB tokens.
Sturdy Finance announced their airdrop this week as well, granting allocations to users of partner protocols Aura Finance, Convex, and Yearn Finance as well as the top 500 DegenScore Beacon holders and Sturdy community members.
Whether the markets go up or down, builders never stop pushing higher. Every week is still packed with new feature releases and announcements. Stay tuned for next week’s edition and keep supporting your favorite projects, degens!
This article contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only (“Third-Party Sites”). The Third-Party Sites are not under the control of CoinMarketCap, and CoinMarketCap is not responsible for the content of any Third-Party Site, including without limitation any link contained in a Third-Party Site, or any changes or updates to a Third-Party Site. CoinMarketCap is providing these links to you only as a convenience, and the inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by CoinMarketCap of the site or any association with its operators.
This article is intended to be used and must be used for informational purposes only. It is important to do your own research and analysis before making any material decisions related to any of the products or services described. This article is not intended as, and shall not be construed as, financial advice.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s [company’s] own and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinMarketCap.
