Biweekly update on Ethereum DeFi ecosystem vol.24, 2nd February — 16th February
>$40B in DeFi, CME ETH futures are here, RenBridge 2 is live, Omen launching on xDai, 1inchExchange just did another airdrop, UMA KPI options announced, MCDEX v3 soon, St. Louis Fed DeFi report...
TL;DR
-More than $40B in DeFi this week, (two weeks ago was $28B), with Maker dominance 16.38%.
-Yearn Finance Newsletter #22 covers the following news: yveCRV-ETH Pickle Farm is live earning rewards; announcement of Yearn Affiliate Program; Compensation Working Group established; Badger DAO & Yearn Partnership; yDAI Vault restored; State of the Vaults; partnership roundup; governance roundup; ecosystem news. Latest YFI Pulse is here.
-Compound regular newsletter is out with bunch of updates: ETHDenver, Developer Community Call Recap, WBTC CF to 75%, and more. Since the last newsletter, Proposals 36 and 37 passed through governance, Proposal 38 failed.
-Governance Poll: Greenlight Polls, Collateral Onboarding, and Parameter Adjustments have placed a Governance Poll into the voting system on behalf of the MakerDAO Risk Domain Team. The community can vote in this poll to express support or opposition to these polls on the voting portal. The Governance Facilitators and the MakerDAO Smart Contracts Domain Team have placed an Executive Vote: Onboarding Uniswap V2 LPTs, Rates Updates, Other Changes into the voting system. MKR Holders should vote for this proposal if they support the following alterations to the Maker Protocol. The MCD Voting Tracker introduced, it enables anyone to easily access and explore detailed current and historical data regarding MakerDAO’s Governance Polls and Executive Votes.
-MarketMake: Aave Winners are here.
-xDai Weekly Recap — 12/02/2021 focuses on new projects and project updates on xDai, the latest on POSDAO staking, news & more.
-How (and why!) to Use Omen on xDai: DXdao and Gnosis have launched Omen Prediction Market on xDai. Also, Gnosis Safe ENS Grant is here: Gnosis Safe and ENS are teaming up to offer another Safe Apps grant of up to $6000, consisting of $3000 in DAI plus a matching $3000 in ETH.
-Degenerative Finance presents “uSTONKS”: uSTONKS, designed by UMA Protocol in their uLABS program, will be a synthetic that tracks an index of the ten most bullish Wall Street Bets stocks. With uSTONKS, DeFi users can earn liquidity mining rewards, hold a long position, or hold a short position. UMA KPI Options and Airdrop announced: UMA will be airdropping a new incentivization mechanism called a “KPI option” to a curated list of addresses in DeFi. The value of these options depends on the TVL of the UMA protocol, thereby giving every recipient an incentive to grow the protocol.
-RenBridge 2 Release: with RenBridge 2, the DeFi ecosystem now has access to the below assets: renBTC, renBCH, renZEC, renDOGE.Linkswap Integrates RenVM: A New Cross-Chain DEX Emerges Ren + Alameda: the Ren development team will be joining Alameda Research.
-Enzyme Finance, previously Melon Protocol, is distributing 1,000 MLN tokens to Paraswap users in a new trade mining campaign.
-Index Coop Adds Fiat On-Ramp: You can now use Transak to buy the DeFi Pulse Index using British pounds and Indian rupees. Index Coop published its “Introduction #1 Compound Finance” report. The bull case for INDEX.
-The Yam Community has voted to approve yamHOUSE’s initial funding of $1M. The funding has been executed.
-0x Ecosystem Update, January 2021 is out. 0x Labs Raises $15 Million Series A: 0x Labs, the startup behind the decentralized exchange protocol and a provider of DEX infrastructure, has raised $15 million in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Pantera Capital with participation from Jump Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Blockchain.com Ventures, Nima Capital, IOSG, the DeFi Alliance. 0x is preparing to decentralize its governance. Good news is, Matcha just passed $3 billion in total volume.
-Balancer raises $5 million: Three Arrows Capital and DeFiance Capital have made a combined investment of $5M in the Balancer protocol, joining recent investors Pantera Capital and Alameda Research via a direct purchase of BAL tokens from the Balancer Labs treasury. Fire Eyes DAO x Balancer: Fire Eyes DAO announced their collaboration with Balancer Labs this week and will be helping them with governance. The latest Balancer Report is here.
-Bancor Monthly Progress Update (February 2021) was published.
-Kyber Ecosystem Report January 2021: An update on all the things Kyber achieved during the month of January including the announcement of v3 of the protocol, growth stats and more.
-Loopring L2 AMM Liquidity Mining: Round 3: Details on liquidity incentives for LPs, swappers, and market makers for round 3. Withdraw from Loopring 3.1 — the First-Ever Experiment of Shutting Down a zkRollup. Mask Network Partners With Loopring: Mask Network will build a strategic partnership with Loopring Protocol. They’ll have deep cooperation in L2 scaling, zkRollup and other decentralized technologies. On the application layer, Mask Network and Loopring will work together on developing more second layer “Red Packet’’ functions.
-Uniswap just became the first decentralized trading platform to process over $100b in volume — an exciting milestone for DeFi. The Uniswap team and UNI Grants featured at ETHDenver.
-Raiden Pulse #15: News from November 2020 — January 2021 is out. Check out the latest Raiden Weekly. Update 157 covers: the priorities of the dev team, progress of the Light Client and Raiden Client teams, discussion regarding the Matrix transport layer integration.
-Synthetix Bellatrix release now live: A bunch of improvements with this release including new crypto synths, shorting rewards and more. Furthermore, Synthetix raises $12 million in a $12 million dollar fundraise led by venture capital firms Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures, and IOSG. The funds purchased SNX tokens directly from the DAO treasury. In line with SCCP-77, the s/iDEFI index will be reweighted with a new composition of assets. It will be launched this week. How to short using Synthetix.
-zkSwap launched: ZKSwap, a decentralized exchange (DEX) built on ZK-Rollup technology, has launched its mainnet as a layer-2 protocol on the Ethereum network.
-Domination Finance announced: A team that has been working in pseudo stealth alongside UMA for the last 3 months launched their inaugural products last week: BTCDOM and ALTDOM. Tradable now, these derivatives give traders access to these indexes. The team, Domination Finance, will be launching a suite of related products over 2021.
-Goldfinch announced, a DeFi lending protocol that aims to address emerging markets. It raised $1 million from a group of industry stakeholders that includes Kindred Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, IDEO CoLab Ventures and Dragonfly Capital co-founder Alex Pack.
-MCDEX V3 will come with a brand new AMM, a revolutionary market structure, and an exceptional trading experience.
-Alpha Finance January 2021 Summary: Alpha Homora v2 was announced and launch, AlphaX started its second round of private testing, design and implementation started on ALPHA’s tokenomics and much more in this January recap. Alpha Finance also announced a liquidity mining program for v1 and v2. Why Alpha Finance is yield farming on steroids.
-Reflexer Labs raises $4.14 million: Pantera and Lemniscap have led a $4.14 million round for Reflexer Labs, the creator of a new stablecoin.
-Ethereum smart wallet Argent just optimized its gas controls and estimates.
-PoolTogether launched its No-Loss Prize Pool Builder.
-MetaMask is now raking in over $100,000 in swap fees per day.
-Decentralized Finance: On Blockchain- and Smart Contract-Based Financial Markets by Fabian Schär (St. Louis Fed).
-The Gauntlet Network released an analysis on the economic incentives of DeFi liquidators.
-Lyn Alden and Raoul Pal: Is Ethereum a Good Investment? on Unchained.
-2020 Reflections on Crypto and Beyond | Vitalik Buterin on Bankless.
-Crypto-Dollars, Regulation, and DeFi | Jeremy Allaire on Bankless.
-DeFi and the SEC on Coin Center.
-Sushiswap’s top chef 0xMaki was the latest guest on the FTX Podcast.
-The Daily Gwei Data Pump #2 — Ethereum and DeFi On-chain Analysis.
-Mastercard is opening up cryptocurrency payments to its merchants later this year, so BTC and ETH are presumably first on the slate as the largest cryptos.
-CME ETH futures product goes live.
-Crypto exchanges drew in more than 300 million website visitors in January: The number of visitors to crypto exchange websites surged in January, according to data collected by The Block.
-Spartan Group has launched a new $50 million DeFi-focused venture fund.
-Siam Bank’s VC unit is set to invest $50 million across a range of blockchain and DeFi projects.
-What’s your DeFi Degen Score? Find out now, courtesy of atomic.blue.
-And more!
Read the full report here.
For more updates, join Paradigm on Medium, Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn, and Reddit.
Read ‘Defi in Ether’ on LinkedIn, follow me on Twitter for more insights 🦄🌈