Never a dull week in DeFi — check out our first weekly roundup of the most important DeFi tweets, news and alpha you can't miss out.
Mango Markets exploiter Avraham Eisenberg gets charged by the CFTC, Treasury Bills brought on-chain, and a ton of projects launching across the DeFi space. All that and more in just the past week.
2022 has been a painful bear market for us, but looking at all the building going on — it sure doesn’t feel like we left the bull market at all.
Let’s see what went down in DeFi in the past week.
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Overview: Recovery in Prices and TVL
The DeFi space saw a recovery of sorts in the last week, with total value locked (TVL) on all chains soaring almost 10% in the last 7 days. The bulk of this move is mainly attributed to rising asset prices across the board. Notably large rises include Canto, Ziliqa and Filecoin, all seeing rises in over 40% rise in TVL in the past week.
Source: DeFiLlama
Ethereum: Shanghai-Bound
Starting on good ol’ Ethereum, the past week was all about LSDs — no, not the drug — but Liquid Staking Derivatives. With the Merge successfully executed and behind us in September 2022, many ETH stakers are looking to the Shanghai upgrade in March 2023 where ETH is expected to become withdrawable from the Beacon chain.
Currently, staked ETH cannot be withdrawn. However, with the Shanghai upgrade, ETH staked will be allowed for withdrawals and will become far more attractive as an asset. This in turn, is expected to benefit Liquid Staking Protocols, which drove a run in the LSD subsector, including tokens of protocols like Lido Finance, Rocket Pool, Frax Finance, and Stakewise, among others.
Yield aggregator, Yearn Finance, also launched their new Permissionless Vault Factories this week, allowing anyone to deploy a vault on Yearn. Not just that, these vaults maintain low fees, with no management fees and a 10% performance fee.
Ever wanted U.S. Treasuries on-chain? Well, now you can. Ondo Finance launched this week as well, bringing U.S. Treasuries and institutional-grade bonds on-chain. The caveat here though is the requirement for KYC and AML screening before participating, which could be seen as a downer for those wishing to preserve their anonymity and privacy in DeFi.
L2s: All Systems Go
L2s are piping hot this week with new projects firing off on Arbitrum and Optimism almost everyday. Options vault protocol, Dopex, joined the LSD race in a partnership with Lido Finance to provide LDO token rewards on their new stETH Single Staking Options Vaults (SSOVs):
PoolShark announced an overview of their protocol which gives their users a better liquidity provision experience through facilitating buy-and-hold strategies using their pools. Poolshark is expected to launch on Arbitrum Mainnet in March 2023 and on Fuel Testnet in April 2023.
In merger news, multi-chain options protocol, Premia Finance, has merged with Knox Finance, an options protocol built for Arbitrum.
Optimism-based options protocol, Lyra Finance, announces their Newport upgrade, allowing cash collateral on Lyra’s Market Maker Vaults, improving capital efficiency and user experience all round for the protocol.
Gumball also launched on Arbitrum this past week bringing deep liquidity to NFT trading on Arbitrum, via the tokenization of NFTs.
@TheDeFinvestor drops much-needed Arbitrum alpha with his thread on some of the most innovative DeFi projects on Arbitrum — including volatility investment products, delta-neutral strategies and more.
Solana: Rise From the Ashes
Solana was hit particularly badly with the collapse of FTX in late November 2022. However, the builder community remains strong in the face of this challenge. Lumina Labs launched last Wednesday, making Solana transactions easier to understand and providing valuable insights for developers.
Messari also explores, from a data perspective, the strength shown by the Solana ecosystem as a whole, from wallet activity to gas fees and network performance in consideration of the recent activity sparked by the BONK token and its copycat tokens.
In other news, Saber Labs Founders Dylan and Ian Macalinao, revealed to be behind the guise of at least 11 pseudonyms developers on Solana, have been placed under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Avalanche: Partnerships and Expansions
On Avalanche, their top decentralized exchange (DEX), Trader Joe expands to BNB Chain, taking along their NFT collection, Joepegs, along for the ride. This comes shortly after Trader Joe launched on Arbitrum earlier this month.
In a huge BD win, Avalanche enters a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), allowing AWS to support their ecosystem and bring Avalanche to enterprises and governments.
Cosmos: Stablecoin Rush
In the Cosmos, L1-chain Canto regains steam this week as markets take a more risk-on stance. Large stablecoin inflows were observed entering the Canto ecosystem with stablecoin levels rising more than 35% to almost $100m.
Your Weekly Dose of Alpha
The Alongside Market Index releases their token this week, allowing passive investors to invest in a basket of crypto tokens, by simply holding one.
Blocmates blesses us all with fresh alpha this new year with the “blocmates 2023 Thesis,” showcasing a handful of projects and catalysts to watch for as we enter the new year.
Karl has blessed us with his "free monthly alpha" for the month of January, covering stablecoin launches, the LSD narrative, dYdX’s upcoming token unlock, among many others.
Chinchilla covers a handful of newly launched stablecoins and how they may affect existing incumbents in the stablecoin space.
Another Week, Another Airdrop
There’s nothing quite like waking up to the news of an airdrop that you qualified for.
Arbitrum-based ETH perpetual protocol, Rage Trade, confirms its token on Twitter, sparking discussions on an upcoming token airdrop.
ThenaFi, a DEX on the Binance Smart Chain, launches and announces their airdrop all in one tweet.
Multi-chain prime brokerage protocol, Primex releases their tokenomics and distribution model, which includes a 30% allocation to “Early Community,” effectively confirming an airdrop for their token.
Olimpio drops another alpha-laden thread on potential airdrop farming opportunities on upcoming wallet Argent, StarkNet, and StarkNet-based automated market maker (AMM) protocol, JediSwap.
Extra! Extra! Read All About It!
There is never a dull day in DeFi. Chain-specific news aside, here are some of the more eye-catching headlines and threads.
Roe Finance was exploited for $80k via a flashloan attack. But that’s not even the interesting part. The interesting part is that the initial attacker was front-ran by a front-running bot, which managed to copy the entire set-up and exploit, taking the spoils for themselves.
Alameda liquidators continue to fumble in attempting to consolidate the fragmented funds left behind in the wake of the Alameda-FTX collapse. From causing Aave loans to be liquidated and missing out on millions in funds on various wallets and chains, FTX victims just can’t catch a break.
Mango Markets exploiter, Avraham Eisenberg, has been charged by CFTC for market manipulation for his role in the exploit. This comes after his arrest last month in Puerto Rico.
In preparation for the EIP-4844 upgrade, anyone can (and should!) contribute to Ethereum’s security by participating in the KZG ceremony by signing a secret message with your wallet or GitHub account.
Bear markets are builders markets. One thing’s for sure, DeFi builders have been hard at work for the past year — striving to bring greater innovations and collaborations in the DeFi space in 2023. Keep an eye out for next week’s piece degens!
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