Weekly DeFi/NFT News — December 20, 2021

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.

Hop Exchange is a cross-L2 bridging protocol crossing $120M TVL — Spencer Noon

• The project uses “bonders” (essentially LPs) to front liquidity on a cross-chain AMM for trading fees; L2 canonical tokens are exchanged for Hop Bridge Tokens, which can be swapped for the underlying asset on L1 or a different L2 token.

• It supports Ethereum mainnet, Polygon, xDai, Optimism, and Arbitrum. Total Hop users recently grew to 35k+.
• The exchange saw ~$23m in volume over the past week and over $300m total since its launch in late June.

• Hop only allows swaps between ETH, stablecoins, and MATIC; approximately 50% of the volume is ETH, 45% is stablecoins, and 5% is MATIC.

• Hop TVL is now tracking around $120m across multiple chains. Polygon and Optimism TVL are around $11.5m; Optimism’s TVL exploded over the past few months, along with Polygon whose TVL passed its previous ATH in October.

Source: https://ournetwork.substack.com/

Connext — cross-chain liquidity bridge supporting 9 chains saw $350M in volume since launch.- Spenser Noon

https://connext.network/

• It is a non-custodial and very capital-efficient way to bridge assets from one chain to another.
• Since the launch of their liquidity bridge in early October, Connext has facilitated over $350 million in volume, spread across 305k transactions. In the last 30 days alone Connext facilitated $153 million in volume across 135k transactions, averaging a daily volume of $4.9 million.

• Over the last 30 days the majority of outflows facilitated via Connext came from Binance Smart Chain.

Source: https://ournetwork.substack.com/

FTFKT NFT studios acquired by Nike Inc.

• RTFKT, which makes virtual shoes was acquired by Nike to create sneakers for the metaverse.
• “We will continue to evolve our brand, innovations, products and community with NIKE resources and talents. NIKE is the only brand in the world we always looked up to and got inspired by when starting RTFKT.” — said RTFKT after the acquisition.

• Nike claims they are ““a leading brand that leverages cutting edge innovation to deliver next generation collectibles that merge culture and gaming.”
• RTFKT claims that in February, a collaboration with teenage artist FEWOCiOUS to sell real sneakers paired with virtual ones managed to sell some 600 pairs/NFTs in just six minutes, netting over $3.1 million at the time.
• RTFKT was founded in January 2020.The price of the acquisition is not disclosed.

Source: https://news.nike.com/news/nike-acquires-rtfkt

Rari and FEI protocols are merging — vote is happening right now

• Rari Capital, the lending & borrowing protocol and FEI protocol, a DeFi native stablecoin communities are voting on the merger.

• “The vision for TRIBE has always been to build out the DeFi that we all want and need. Financial primitives that can scale and network in a permissionless way, free from the inherent bureaucracy and fat that comes from laws not written in code. Fei and Rari have each captured a critical piece of this vision, the fully decentralized algorithmic bank and the permissionless money market. Together, we can achieve even more.” — Joey, the founder of FEI protocol said in a forum post.
• “Together, a Rari and Fei merger would create a fundamentally new type of DeFi platform, and there are no two DeFi projects better suited for a merge. Uniting forces will compound our existing strengths.”

How does the merger strengthen both protocols

• According the forum post, “The main bottlenecks to Fuse’s growth are bootstrapping pools with initial liquidity, and ensuring manipulation resistant oracles for long-tail assets. The Fei DAO can easily provide this initial FEI liquidity to solve the chicken-and-egg problem, and has already done so in 15 Fuse pools, including 8 of the top 10.
• “Tighter integration between the protocols would enable fundamentally new types of DeFi services. On Rari, the oracle problem is a major bottleneck, and the Fei DAO can help scale this through Liquidity as a Service with Ondo.”

Conversion of RGT to TRIBE

• Take the USD-denominated value of the RGT and return the equivalent amount of TRIBE. We can use a neutral third party and historical price data to ensure that this is done in the most fair manner and such that it is not prone to manipulation. Some options include Gauntlet, Llama DAO, and Reverie.
• The existing RGT treasury can be covered by existing TRIBE treasury. Remainder will be newly minted TRIBE.

Source: https://forums.rari.capital/d/177-feirari-token-merge

Bitwise is working on Blue-chip NFT collections index — The Defiant

• On Dec. 17, Bitwise Asset Management, a leading crypto index fund manager with more than $1.7B in managed assets, launched the Bitwise Blue-Chip NFT Index Fund.
• Matt Hougan, the firm’s Chief Investment Officer (CIO), says it is the first fund of its kind. But it will only be available to accredited investors, with a minimum investment size set at $25,000.

• The index fund is designed to make it easier for investors to own the top 10 most valuable nonfungible token collections, weighting and selecting collections based on their market capitalization and floor prices.
• CryptoPunks comprise 37.5% of the index and Bored Ape Yacht Club accounts for 29.7%. The remaining third includes Veefriends, Autoslyphs, Fidenza, Cyberkorgz Genesis, Cool Cats, Meebis, and Chromie Squiggle with between 5.4% and 2.5% each.
• The product will exclude NFT collections that feature less than 100 tokens due to their illiquidity, in addition to NFTs representing music rights, virtual land, and game items. “The focus is on arts & collectibles,” Hougan added.

Source: https://thedefiant.io/index-fund-nfts-bored-apes-cryptopunks/