A Year in Review — 2023
It’s been quite the year for the Magpie team! Crypto has been on the slow grind upwards all year, much better than 2022, but today, we are not here to focus on what crypto overall has been up to the last rotation, we’re going to go over everything Magpie has been up to, covering all of our integrations, events, and updates! At the end of each section is a collection of our blog posts that we published during that quarter, so go ahead and check out the ones that interest you!
We’d like to give a huge shout out to the birds who have been with us since the beginning as well as all of our new members. The Magpie Mafia is over 11,000 strong and we thank all of you, we wouldn’t be where we are without you.
Strap in to your nests, this post is quite lengthy, as the birds have been busy. When sharing what we’ve been up to this year, we’ll provide you with a brief description and a link so that you can read more about it if you’d like! We’re also kicking off a new campaign, so if you’re interested, be sure to read to the end!
Q1 was full of a lot of behind the scenes work to get the app ready for its alpha phase. We kicked off the year with our code audit, visiting ETH Dubai, networking, and integrating multiple blockchains and billions in liquidity.
✅ Code Audit
Magpie completed its first code audit, done by the amazing team over at d3ploy in which we scored 97 out of 100 and were found to have zero critical, major, or medium issues!
✅ Simplifying DeFi jargon
One of our firsts community campaigns was launched just four days into the new year. In this campaign, we posted a DeFi word of the day followed by a trivia question and then rewarded three winners a Magpie alpha test spot as well as $50 worth of the $FLY token when it launches.
✅ ETH Dubai
We both sponsored and attended ETH Dubai, an amazing event in which we were able to connect with our community as well as other projects within DeFi.
✅ Integrations
It was a big month for liquidity integrations, with a couple added blockchains as well corresponding liquidity sources for each. Magpie added over $5b in liquidity in Q1 through the top liquidity sources on Ethereum, Polygon PoS, and Arbitrum chain.
Blogs Q1
📖 How Liquidity Aggregation Solves The Liquidity Issue For Institutional Investors.
While one or two DeFi exchanges are not enough to handle the needs or volume of institutional investors, the aggregation of hundreds of exchanges and liquidity sources, across all of the top blockchains, helps to bring in both large traders and institutional investors into the DeFi space.
📖 What Are Wrapped Tokens?
How do they work? What are they used for? In short, they are synthetic versions of a token that is native to a different blockchain, and many are used for DeFi yield farming and allowing users on different chains to purchase tokens they wouldn’t otherwise have access to.
📖 The Benefits of Cross-Chain Liquidity
To break it down to its most important aspect, cross-chain liquidity enables interoperability between chains, and is one of the important aspects of growing DeFi.
📖 DeFi: Why it’s necessary & building for the future
Why is DeFi necessary? It only takes looking at the collapses in both the centralized and DeFi spaces caused by the centralization of collateral and funds.
📖 Aggregating DEX Liquidity
Aggregation makes both your life, and trading easier. Magpie aggregates liquidity from hundreds of different DEXs liquidity pools so that you can get the best deal out there on a token without needing to search every source out there for the best price.
📖 Optimism
We announced our integration of the Optimism chain and its many liquidity sources into the Magpie dApp!
📖 Arbitrum
With our public launch of the alpha, Magpie integrated the Arbitrum chain, a layer 2 Ethereum chain with incredibly fast transactions with cheap transactions!
📖 Hashflow
One of the cooler projects in DeFi, making DeFi swaps a bit nice by protecting users from MEV attacks. Magpie integrated Hashflows liquidity so that Magpie users could get some great deals as well!
📖 Wallet Service
We announced a feature that was released with our public launch later in 2023, the wallet feature on the Magpie dApp! Easily see your balances across all of our eight supported chains without needing to switch chains or look in your wallet. Want to swap on another chain? Just click ‘buy’ or ‘sell’ on the token from the wallet menu and it’ll populate directly in the app.
We started to ramp things up in Quarter 2 this past year. We participated in Battle of the Dapps, Avalanche Summit II, and launched both our closed alpha and public Beta!
✅ 100K Magpies: Our Journey to 100K!
Magpie hit 100,000 followers on Twitter and we gave a rundown of where we started and the journey to 100k.
✅ Avalanche Summit II
The team traveled to Barcelona, Spain to participate in Avalanche Summit, connecting with teams and projects within DeFi to discuss how to push the tech forward.
✅ Magpie Maven Quizathon — Community Campaign
We held a quizathon with the Twitter community and with a cool prize for the winner.
✅ Beta Launch for Alpha Testers
This past June we launched our closed beta test for those who participated in our alpha and helped provide us feedback.
✅ Polygon zkEVM integration
Integrating even more chains, we integrated the Polygon zkEVM chain, a zero-knowledge blockchain from Polygon that focuses on scalability, enhanced interoperability, and speed. Magpie was the very first aggregator on the platform!
✅ Magpie Protocol’s Alpha Testers Badge
All of our alpha testers got a unique badge for participating in the alpha in order to track their points.
✅ Public Launch
After a successful closed beta for alpha testers, we launched our public beta, with cross-chain swaps across six of the largest DeFi blockchains, and on-chain swaps and the very first liquidity aggregator for Polygon zkEVM.
Blogs Q2
Cross-Chain Tech & How It’s Transforming Defi
We take a look at different cross-chain tech, such as wallets, infrastructure layers, and bridges and how they apply to DeFi.
📖 Want to join DeFi? Use Magpie.
If you or someone you know is interested in participating in DeFi, we go over why the Magpie app is the best way to do it in this article. We cover security, use-cases, our DeFi education and onboarding, and the Magpie community and integrations. We make joining DeFi easy.
📖 The Power of Uniqueness
A rundown of our completely unique aggregator, why it’s important to have aggregation, and how our aggregator works in order to find the best route through DeFi to get you the best deal.
📖 Benefits of using a Decentralized cross-chain swap protocol
What are some of the benefits to a decentralized protocol? We go over what it means to be decentralized cross-chain swap protocol: Magpie is non-custodial, permissionless, transparent, and keeps you anonymous by not requiring KYC.
📖 The Magpie Experience: Making Cross-chain Easy
A short & sweet blog going over just how easy it is to swap cross-chain with Magpie, shortening the normal cross-chain swap from 9 or more steps down to 3.
📖 Real-World Assets On-Chain: A Birds Eye View
This post covers tokenized real world assets, such as stablecoins, real estate, loans, and carbon credits and how each of them are used within DeFi.
Q3 kicked off with the introduction of The Magpie Mafia as well as the first of the few roles for it: The Ally, Chief, and Counselor, all of which are important within the Magpie Mafia family. Continuing with the Magpie Mafia, we introduced some Magpie Mafia telegram emoticons and stickers developed by our graphics department, so you can post a bird for any occasion. Next up, we had a big integration with the Verse ecosystem, sponsored and attended Token 2049, teamed up with RhinoFi for an amazing community campaign, as well as hosted our first ever bug bounty on Immunefi!
✅ Verse Ecosystem
As a way to help even more take part in DeFi, Magpie integrated Verse Ecosystem, the official token and DEX of bitcoin.com, giving access to DeFi to the over 41 million bitcoin dot com wallet users.
✅ AMA
We held a discord AMA to discuss Magpie’s future updates and plans with the community. It was the first of many to come!
✅ Magpie Mafia launch
Introducing the Magpie Mafia, the communities all access pass to all Magpie events and campaigns. The Mafia Bird NFT tracks each user’s XP in the Magpie ecosystem and will incur benefits within the Magpie ecosystem after the official launch.
✅ Bug Bounty
Magpie launched our first bug bounty on immunefi, offering cash rewards to any bird out there who could help us find a bug.
✅ Token2049
Magpie sponsored and participated in Singapore Token2049, having a chance to network with some amazing people and meet many community members as well!
✅ Magpie x Rhino Fi Campaign
We hosted a Galxe quest campaign with our friends over at Rhino.fi as a way to encourage our communities to fly through DeFi. Additionally, we held a Twitter space with their team to cover how important we believe the user experience to be.
Blogs Q3
📖 Magpie’s Nest — Your Gateway to DeFi, or, Safe Haven from Traditional Finance
We explore how DeFi creates opportunities and addresses financial challenges throughout the world, covering how DeFi can help people become financially secure, help to avoid inflation, and is accessible all over the world, and in many areas, more accessible than traditional financial services.
📖 DeFi Tips — Safety
Need some tips for staying safe in DeFi? We go over some of the most important things to look for in a project, or lookout for in order to keep your funds safe.
📖 Building a Strong Community
As we’ve said before, and we’ll say again, the community in DeFi is just as important as the projects themselves. A community pushes for a better project, and good developers implement feedback in order to make the project better for both the community and DeFi as a whole.
📖 Security, Scalability, and User Experience
As a way to introduce all of the new Magpie Mafia members to Magpie Protocol, we put together a blog post to cover how Magpie provides a secure DeFi experience that can help scale the space, and offers a next-level user experience.
📖 Step-by-Step — Your Guide to Fly with Magpie
An easy to follow step-by-step guide to show just how easy it is to cross-chain swap with Magpie.
📖 Cross-chain Swaps with Magpie
Our first @layer3xyz campaign, encouraging our community and introducing ourselves to the layer3 folks to our easy cross-chain swaps. Users got themselves some XP and rewards just for swappin’.
📖 DeFi User Experience: Past, Present, and the Role of Magpie
A blog post exploring the history of the DeFi user experience. From the early days of EtherDelta all the way up to Magpie. We cover what it was like to use the old systems, the advances in tech that have taken place, how far DeFi has come, and where it needs to be for the next bull run.
Q4 was home to one of Magpie’s largest events to date: our new and incredibly sleek and user-friendly interface and introduction of Base chain to the Magpie ecosystem. Magpie also hosted a big AMA session with our leader Dr. Raheman on discord to fill in the community on all of the Magpie updates as well as what is to come.
✅ Base Chain
Our update wouldn’t be complete without mentioning our integration of one of the hottest chains of the year: Base, a layer2 solution by Coinbase.
✅ Discord AMA
The bird leader, Dr. Eagle, or Dr. Ali Raheman, answered community questions and discussed Magpie’s recent updates, the DeFi user experience, where Magpie comes in, and future goals and plans for Magpie. Check out the in-depth recap below:
https://medium.com/@Magpieprotocol/magpie-discord-ama-recap-3f609eb38190
✅ Magpie On Base.
Back with the team at layer3, and to celebrate our recent launch on Base, we hosted a community campaign to encourage users to use Magpie to swap and get the best deal on Base, join our discord, and follow us on Twitter. With over 4100 participants, we’re incredibly grateful!
Blogs Q4
📖 DeFI UX: Past, Current, & Future of Bridging
Why are bridges needed? What were they like in the beginning, how have they improved, and what solutions can we look forward to? Interested, check it out here.
📖 Flyin’ high with Magpie
Hosted in partnership with Tide, we gave away 2000 USDC to the top ten swappers on Magpie’s dApp, and through the campaign, users were able to generate over $31 million in volume! An amazing feat and a huge shoutout to our amazing community for participating.
📖 Next Level UX — Step-by-Step
As we updated Magpie’s UI, we were in need of a new step-by-step guide for any bird out there who needed a guiding wing to help out. Go cross-chain in just three steps with Magpie, check it out here.
Right now, we’ve got our next volume campaign ongoing:
✅ Magpie Mafia’s Swapmaster, where users can compete with each other for their share of a 3000 USDC prize pool, as well as huge Magpie Mafia XP boosts.
The past year has been an incredible year at Magpie, from closed Alpha, to a new look, four additional blockchains, billions in added liquidity, hundreds of DEXs aggregated, and cross-chain swaps between the largest blockchains out there. As well, we’ve hosted many community campaigns that have all been hugely successful thanks to the fantastic Magpie community.
We’d like to thank our amazing partners, supporters, and community for your continued support of our project and we look forward to this next year, but there’s just one more thing…
🎉 We have been invited to be a part of Ignite 2024 with Galxe! A big kick off to next year with a ton of campaigns and rewards, so get those wings ready and fly on over to the campaign to join us!
https://galxe.com/magpieprotocol/campaign/GC7pWttosB
