Last Week’s Top 5 in DeFi/NFT News — March 14, 2022

Weekly DeFi/NFT news is a collection of major weekly events/announcements brought from the most trustworthy data sources, such as The Defiant, Spencer Noon, Week in Ethereum News etc. with comments and extra insight from the Bulldax DeFi labs.

Evmos Chain Paused After Going Live With Highly Anticipated ‘RektDrop’ — The Defiant

• Evmos is essentially a Layer 1, meaning it’s a smart contract platform, but will be interoperable with the rest of the Cosmos ecosystem through the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC).
• Evmos also looks to have some unique mechanics which differ from those of other Layer 1s. Instead of just being a token used to pay for transactions and stake in various protocols, EVMOS will be used to drive outcomes for the chain, namely useful apps.
• “Typically block proposers accumulate the most shares of the network while users and developers — the most active participants — are left with less,” says Tharis’ post outlining EVMOS’ token model. “Block proposers” encompasses both miners in Proof-of-Work systems and validators in Proof-of-Stake ones.

• Usage incentives include a mechanism called “deferred gas rebates,” which will allow governance to reward users of Evmos smart contracts with the inflationary EVMOS tokens. Typically, block rewards only go to block producers.
• Usage incentives also include a liquidity mining program, which rewards users for deposits in certain protocols, which will be run by governance.
• Another novel feature of EVMOS is a “dApp Store,” which will partially redirect fees that would be burned under Ethereum’s EIP-1559 update.

Airdrop ‘rektrop’ to Cosmos and Ethereum users

• In solidarity with those who have suffered major losses in the dark forest of web3, also known as those who have been “rekt,” Evmos is calling its airdrop the “Rektdrop.”
• The Rektdrop rewards unique groups of users, ranging from people who voted on specific proposals with ATOM tokens, various users of the Osmosis chain, users of major Ethereum DeFi apps, and also people who used interchain bridges, according to Tharis’ post.

Airdrop and chain stopped

• The Rektdrop went live on Mar. 3. However, many eligible users were unable to claim their tokens due to technical problems. The Evmos team released a thread addressing the issues.
• On Mar. 6, the team tweeted that the Evmos network was undergoing an upgrade. A little over an hour later, a subsequent tweet announced that the ‘network upgrade has unfortunately failed.’ The blockchain is currently paused with no transactions being processed.

Source: https://thedefiant.io/evmos-paused-rektdrop/

Aftermath of Andre Cronje departure from crypto — The Defiant

• The crypto markets have been punished recently, but tokens associated with Andre Cronje have taken an extra beating in the wake of news he is quitting DeFi.
• Nell announced that he and Cronje will “close” their respective “chapter[s] of contributing to the DeFi/crypto space,” noting they will hand over all existing responsibilities with roughly 25 projects by April 3. He added that their decision “has been coming for a while now.”

Fantom

• The Fantom (FTM) team responded to the news by emphasizing that the network “isn’t and never was a one man team.” It added that there are currently more than 40 people working on Fantom.
• Despite the team’s best efforts at placating fears in the market FTM is down 22% since Fell’s tweet went live. Its TVL has almost halved in the past five days, currently sitting at $6.38B from $12.1B since March 3.

Multichain aka Anyswap

• Multichain, a popular cross-chain bridge that recently rebranded from Anyswap, has suffered a less violent draw-down than other tokens associated with Cronje. The MULTI token has shed 24% since March 6. However, TVL appears largely unscathed, dropping 6.6% to $6.61B from $7.43B over the same period.

Solidly

• Cronje’s freshly launched DEX Solidly shed 76% of its value down to $0.80 within a day of the news breaking. SOLID has since rebounded to $2.17, a 76.4%% draw-down in two weeks. Its TVL has also plummeted, sitting at $812M from $1.25B on March 6.

Solidex, Keep3r, Bribe, Iron Bank…

• Solidex (SEX), a yield optimizer built on top of Solidly, has also crashed 44.5% since March 6, and its TVL is down by two-thirds since March 2.
• Keep3r (KP3R), a decentralized devops network launched by Cronje in late October 2020, has tanked by 42.3% since the news broke.
• The news was the catalyst for another leg down in Bribe’s prolonged down-trend, with BRIBE drooping 23.4% from March 6. Bribe has now crashed 91.5% in roughly six weeks.
• Iron Bank (IB) is also down 24% since news of Cronje’s departure went viral, with the IB token shedding 61.6% since posting an all-time high six days ago.

Source: https://thedefiant.io/yearn-cronje-fantom-exit-defi/

Cryptocurrency market forecast to boom under Yoon administration — The Korea Times

• Korea’s cryptocurrency market will boom under President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol as the incoming administration is widely expected to adopt a deregulatory stance by easing taxation on crypto trading and allowing an initial coin offering (ICO), officials said on March 11th.

• First and foremost, he pledged to reduce taxation on crypto gains.
• Last year, the Ministry of Economy and Finance planned to impose tougher crypto income taxes on those whose gains exceed 2.5 million won ($2,225) beginning from 2022. The plan, however, hit a snag amid fierce political opposition. One key reason behind the backlash was that the standard was too tight compared to taxes on profits from stock investments. Stock investors are required to pay income taxes only when their gains top 50 million won. This led the government to delay the plan to 2023.
• Other noteworthy pledges by Yoon include the establishment of a basic law on digital assets. This consists of tightening the monitoring of illegal crypto trading and widening insurance policies to tackle lingering concerns over hacking and system errors.
• Yoon plans to allow the ICO concept in phases after enabling an initial exchange offering (IEO). As crypto exchanges supervise the sale of coins through the IEO, the process guarantees more security, according to the President-elect.
• “As crypto exchanges serve as trading agents, the IEO comes with fewer risks than the ICO,” Yoon said while announcing his crypto market pledges in January.

Source: https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/biz/2022/03/175_325347.html

Polygon network back up with a ‘temporary fix’ after eight-hour stoppage — The Block

• Ethereum scaling project Polygon’s blockchain network was down for roughly eight hours last weekend due to a technical upgrade that went wrong.
• The network has now been restored with a “temporary hotfix,” according to a tweet from the company.

• Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic told The Block that the project’s proof-of-stake blockchain network has two layers: Heimdall (the consensus layer, based on Cosmos SDK/Tendermint) and Bor (the block production layer, based on Geth). A “small upgrade” on the Bor layer led the Heimdall layer to get stuck and the network stopped producing blocks, said Bjelic.
• Bjelic did not detail the temporary fix but said it was introduced “as soon as possible” to get the blockchain up and running again. “No user funds were at risk at any moment,” he said. A permanent fix, which requires wider action from validators and is basically a network upgrade, is expected today or tomorrow.

Source: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/137509/polygon-up-temporary-fix-down-several-hours-ethereum-scaling

Juicebox — decentralized fundraising protocol

• Juicebox is a decentralized fundraising protocol allowing individuals to create a DAO in order to pool funds in a structured way towards a shared goal. Contributors receive a proportional amount of the project’s native token, which Juicebox generates against individual contributions. Since inception 7 months ago, over 500 projects were created using this protocol, raising north of $160m through the platform. Some of the top projects that used Juicebox are ConstitutionDAO and AssangeDAO.

• The Juicebox ecosystem is self-sustainable and is governed by the JuiceboxDAO. The DAO collects fees by charging projects 2.5% of the total funds raised. This mechanism helped the DAO generate close to $3.5m in revenue since inception.

• The JBX token plays a unique role within the Juicebox ecosystem. The token enables its ~3,600 holders not only to vote on governance proposals, but also provides holders an easily redeemable proportional claim to the JuiceboxDAO treasury which currently holds over $17m.

Source: https://ournetwork.substack.com/p/ournetwork-issue-112