DeFi in Ether: 10B TVL milestone, Aave introduces genesis governance, Uniswap distributes UNI, Synthetix is heading to layer 2 with Optimistic Ethereum, Nexus Mutual’s shield mining is here, Set Protocol releases yield farming Set, and much more!
Biweekly update on Ethereum DeFi ecosystem vol.14, 16th September — 30th September
TL;DR
- UNI, the Uniswap Protocol governance token, is live now on the Ethereum mainnet. UNI officially enshrines Uniswap as publicly-owned and self-sustainable infrastructure while continuing to carefully protect its indestructible and autonomous qualities.
- Synthetix Updates: The Synthetix protocol has been updated with the Formalhaut release, Synthetix is heading to layer 2 with Optimistic Ethereum, and a new Synthetix stats website is now live.
- Check out latest Yearn Finance Newsletter #3 covering SyntheticRebaseDollar announcement (an auto rebasing index that tracks the dollar value of the collateral that creates it), yUSD rebranding, governance updates (YIPs), recent yVault updates, ecosystem news, and more. Andre Cronje of Yearn Finance on YFI and the Fair Launch: ‘I’m Lazy’ on Unchained.
- mStable Staking v1 was released. Staking V1 is all about bootstrapping their governance community with Meta stakers being able to propose and vote on several aspects of the mStable protocol. mStable Dev Update — September: Monthly digest of happenings from within the mStable engine room. The team also published Developer Grants Program — $50k Max Funding: Learn about what we would like to fund, amounts, and more.
- Aave Governance is officially on mainnet, giving the decisional power to the community! Now it’s time to vote on the very first Aave Improvement Proposal (AIP) for the token migration from LEND to AAVE. Aave x HackMoney is back: Aave is proud to sponsor the event again and will be present during the whole event to support builders.
- The original COMP distribution plan included an allocation of 775,000 COMP intended to be used by “the community to advance governance through other means — which will be announced at a future date.” In a Medium post last week, Compound Labs CEO Robert Leshner provided further detail on how these 775,000 COMP have been distributed. Submitted by Dharma on behalf of Arr00, Proposal 23: Upgrade cUSDC Interest Rate Model has successfully passed through the Compound governance system with wide voting margins as well as proposal to Set cWBTC collateral factor to 60.0%. The proposal to add Uniswap as a supported asset, and implements an updated Open Price Feed view contract that supports cUNI is in the voting period.
- The Dharma team released the DeFi Assets Wiki — a community-curated, open-source repository of token meta-data, tags, and icons:
- Gnosis and xDai partnership announced: Gnosis has teamed up with xDai, an Ethereum sidechain designed for fast and inexpensive transactions, providing a developer-friendly environment that retains real world economic incentives. Fresh xDai weekly recap is here.
- MakerDAO won’t compensate Black Thursday vault losses: MakerDAO has concluded a governance poll in which Maker token holders decided not to compensate Vault owners who suffered losses by liquidations during the March 12–13 market crash. The Maker Foundation Interim Risk Team has placed a series of Governance Polls into the voting system which presents polls to implement Oracle Whitelisting, prioritize Real World Asset Collateral, Community Greenlights, and more. It also has placed a series of polls into the voting system which presents polls to implement adjustments to the Base Rate and PAXUSD Debt Ceiling. Maker’s Dai is seeing increased adoption in the NFT ecosystem’s art and culture sectors.
- Augur AMM, L2 & Para Augur: The team announced a new proposal to the community to improve Augur v2.
- 1inch partners with xBTC, Social Capital’s first token. As part of the partnership, xBTC will have an exclusive IMO (Initial Mooniswap Offering). Forby, the 1inch team announced cooperation with cybersecurity firm Hacken, an established provider of cybersecurity solutions.
- Ocean Protocol partners with Balancer Labs to launch Ocean Market, an open-source community marketplace for data and the world’s first Initial Data Offering (IDO) launchpad.
- Nexus Mutual’s Shield mining is here: Stakers (risk assessors) will deposit NXM and stake on contracts that they think are secure and this, in turn, allows other members to purchase smart contract cover on that system. Hugh Karp of Nexus Mutual AMA on Bankless.
- Kyber went on a DeFi spree in adding support for CREAM, CRV, SUSHI, SWRV, UNI, YFI, and YFV.
- The migration from Yam v2 to v3 is now live and, if you’re a holder of YAM, you can migrate your tokens across with 50% being available immediately and the other 50% vesting over 30 days.
- APY.Finance raises $3.6 million. APY.Finance, which is building a decentralized finance aggregator for yield farming, has raised $3.6 million in new funding.
- Marqet introduced. It combines AAVE credit delegation with Synthetix peer to contract exchange to uniquely provide trustless margin trading of any synthetic asset with no slippage.
- Liquality wallet now on mainnet. You can use the Liquality wallet to swap from BTC to DeFi.
- BarnBridge introduced Liquidity Mining program which will be a 2-phased approach and will begin once security audits are completed.
- syUSD announced, an entirely permissionless and constantly balance increasing stablecoin. It is an ERC20 token that lets you wrap yUSD into a stable currency.
- dYdX Perpetual Contract historical funding rates are now available via the exchange & API.
- There are 3 new liquidity mining campaigns on Loopring Exchange. ADX-USDT, NIOX-ETH, QCAD-USDT. + BZRX-ETH still live. Moreover, the bug bounty program for Loopring v3.6 is open. Covering the protocol smart contracts and ZKP circuits, we invite you to submit vulnerabilities before November 30th for LRC rewards.
- Gemini listed a range of DeFi tokens, including SNX, UNI, YFI, and more.
- UNI is now available to trade on Matcha.
- The 137th edition of the Raiden Weekly is here.
- Check out Ren Ecosystem Update: September 2020.
- ICL arXiv paper studying DeFi interest rates finds uncovered interest parity does not generally hold.
- China state TV runs positive news about Ethereum and DeFi.
- Fork defense strategies in DeFi.
- ETH supply on CEXs vs ETH supply in smart contracts.
- DeFi is eating CeFi, in images.
- ELI5 introduction to YAM.
- Yield TV — Ep 1 hosted by DeFi Dad.
- New DeFi podcasts.
- And much more!
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Total Value Locked in DeFi
DeFi passed 10 billion with Maker and Uniswap nearly tied for #1.
Top DeFi Tokens by Market Capitalization
Total Market Cap: $16,187,384,842
DeFi Aggregators
yEarn.finance:
Check out latest Yearn Finance Newsletter #3: Week Ending September 20th
- SyntheticRebaseDollar Announcement: SyntheticRebaseDollar is an auto rebasing index that tracks the dollar value of the collateral that creates it.
- yUSD Rebranding
- The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of SAFE
- Governance Updates (YIPs)
- Recent yVault Updates
- Ecosystem News
A potential vulnerability with some of yEarn’s Vaults was discovered and patched in a matter of minutes.
yuni.finance updated:
mStable:
- Dev Update — September: Monthly digest of happenings from within the mStable engine room.
- Developer Grants Program — $50k Max Funding: Learn about what we would like to fund, amounts, and more now
- Governance: Staking V1 Launch: mStable Staking v1 was released last week. Staking V1 is all about bootstrapping their governance community with Meta stakers being able to propose and vote on several aspects of the mStable protocol.
- MTA Staking V1: Voting Weights and Rewards
- mStable Community Call #001 Recap
Lending
Aave:
Aave Governance Now on Mainnet: Aave’s community now has a direct say in the governance of the platform with the very first Aave Improvement Proposal (AIP) looking to approve the token migration from LEND to AAVE.
Thread on how to vote:
Aave x HackMoney is back: After a memorable edition last year, the EthGlobal team is back with a second edition of EthOnline and the HackMoney hackathon! Aave is proud to sponsor the event again and will be present during the whole event to support builders. This edition gives hackers 3 full weeks to hack their best project on Aave and take their fair share of the 8000 aUSDC Aave prize pool.
Compound:
COMP Distribution and Governance Updates
COMP Distribution Update
The original COMP distribution plan included an allocation of 775,000 COMP intended to be used by “the community to advance governance through other means — which will be announced at a future date.”
In a Medium post last week, Compound Labs CEO Robert Leshner provided further detail on how these 775,000 COMP have been distributed:
- 500,000 COMP have been designated to Coinbase Earn until November 2021, at which point any remaining COMP will be sent back to the protocol’s reservoir contract.
- 275,000 COMP have been sent directly to the reservoir contract, to be allocated by the community through the governance process.
What this means is that the protocol now has 275,000 COMP in reserves that the community is empowered to re-allocate through governance, in order to incentivize future improvements to the protocol. For example, these reserves could be used to reward successful governance proposals or incentivize new third-party integrations.
The Compound community welcomes your thoughts on how best to leverage these new COMP reserves; please share your ideas in the Compound governance forum.
Completed Votes
Since the last newsletter, Proposal 23 and Proposal 24 have successfully passed through the Compound governance system with wide voting margins.
Proposal 23: Upgrade cUSDC Interest Rate Model
- Status: Executed September 21st, 2020
- Proposer: Dharma
- Voting Results: 427,750 for and 0 Against
- Summary: Submitted by Dharma on behalf of Arr00, Proposal 23 updates cUSDC’s interest rate model to the LegacyJumpRateModelV2 that is currently used for the cDAI and cUSDT markets (base rate of 0%, 4% at 80% utilization, and 25% at 100% utilization). This proposal standardizes the interest rate models for all stablecoins on Compound.
Proposal 24: Set cWBTC collateral factor to 60.0%
This change increases the Collateral Factor of WBTC from 40% to 60%.
Governance Proposals
Ongoing Discussions
See below for highlights from the Compound governance forum, and join in the discussion:
- “Adding New Markets to Compound” — @hayesgm describes the steps taken to deploy the cUNI cToken contract , which can serve as a guide for developers looking to add new markets to Compound.
- “Call to Action” — @rleshner encourages the community to use the protocol’s larger COMP reserves to incentivize protocol upgrades like gas optimization, governance bounties, and new markets.
- “Distribution of COMP token to early users, pre-COMP distribution period” — @Andre1 suggests that the Compound protocol automatically issues COMP to early users, similar to the path taken by Uniswap.
- “Adding COMP as an asset?” — @compoundbart suggests adding COMP as the next supported market on Compound.
Be sure to either vote on proposals with your COMP, or delegate your COMP voting rights to a representative of your choice.
Links & Discussions
- Origin Protocol has launched OUSD, a stablecoin that automatically earns yield through various DeFi protocols, starting with Compound. Users can supply DAI, USDC, and USDT, which gets routed to Compound to earn the highest possible yield, and mints OUSD as a portable, interest-bearing asset.
- Compound Labs is sponsoring ETH Online (Oct 2nd — Oct 30th), be sure to register by next Wednesday, September 30th to secure your spot.
- Uniswap uses a version of the Compound Governance contracts to manage their Governance process — showcasing the power of open source and composability in DeFi.
- Compound Labs CEO, Robert Leshner, joined Binance Summit: The World of DeFi to discuss the current trends and challenges in the decentralized finance space.
- Compound Labs Strategy Lead, Calvin Liu, talked about the early days of finding product-market fit for the Compound protocol on an episode of the Open Web Collective.
- Australia based CryptoTaxCalculator has integrated Compound to allow users to calculate their DeFi related taxes simply by connecting their crypto wallet.
- Rotki, an open-source cryptocurrency portfolio tracker, has integrated Compound so users can track their balances, trades, and earnings across various markets.
Dharma:
The Dharma team released the DeFi Assets Wiki — a community-curated, open-source repository of token meta-data, tags, and icons:
Maker:
Governance Poll: Base Rate and PAXUSD Debt Ceiling Adjustments: The Maker Foundation Interim Risk Team has placed a series of Governance Polls into the voting system which presents polls to implement adjustments to the Base Rate and PAXUSD Debt Ceiling.
Executive Vote: Debt Ceiling Increases, Base Rate Increase, and more: The Governance Facilitators and the Maker Foundation Smart Contracts Team have placed an Executive Vote into the voting system which will enable the community to approve the following alterations to the protocol.
How Dai Is Becoming the Currency of the NFT Digital Art and Culture Market: Dai is a favored currency in the NFT digital art market because it’s a stable store of value that’s easily and quickly transferred anywhere in the world.
Governance Polls: Oracle Whitelists, Prioritizing Real World Asset Collateral, and more: The Maker Foundation Interim Risk Team has placed a series of Governance Polls into the voting system which presents polls to implement Oracle Whitelisting, prioritize Real World Asset Collateral, Community Greenlights, and more.
How Ethereum Smart Contracts Power Dai, the Maker Protocol, and DeFi: Ethereum smart contracts underpin every element of MakerDAO, including Dai and the Maker Protocol, and are essential to decentralized finance (DeFi)
MakerDAO Won’t Compensate Black Thursday Vault Losses: MakerDAO has concluded a governance poll in which Maker token holders decided not to compensate Vault owners who suffered losses by liquidations during the March 12–13 market crash.
xDai:
Gnosis and xDai Partnership Announced: Gnosis has teamed up with xDai, an Ethereum sidechain designed for fast and inexpensive transactions, providing a developer-friendly environment that retains real world economic incentives.
Derivatives, Swaps and Prediction Markets
Augur:
Augur AMM, L2 & Para Augur: The team announced a new proposal to the community to improve Augur v2.
The Augur Master Plan (Part 2):
- Create beautiful easy to use mobile-first interfaces
- Create open-source tools that make it easier for liquidity to form
- Bring the offline social betting experience online through comments and chat
- Now that the team has built a core platform that people can use, focus on growth and user activation
- Build an open-source betting view for Augur, so it’s accessible to bettors in addition to traders
dYdX:
dYdX Perpetual Contract historical funding rates are now available via the exchange & API:
Gnosis:
Gnosis and xDai Partnership Announced: Gnosis has teamed up with xDai, an Ethereum sidechain designed for fast and inexpensive transactions, providing a developer-friendly environment that retains real world economic incentives.
Fund Management
Melon:
Claiming UNI tokens for a Melon Fund: Melon funds were eligible to claim 400 UNI tokens that were distributed by Uniswap.
Set Protocol:
Introducing Yield Farming Strategies on TokenSets: Set introduced 2 new yield farming strategies to TokenSets this week — the ETH USD Yield Farm and the ETH WBTC Yield Farm — both of which are currently farming the UNI token by providing liquidity to Uniswap.
The DeFi Pulse Index is up +5.5% against ETH over the last 7 days:
Securities, Insurance and NFTs
Nexus Mutual:
Nexus Mutual’s Shield mining is here: Staking with Nexus Mutual is quite unique and is a vital part of the process to enable the members to purchase smart contract cover.
Stakers (risk assessors) will deposit NXM and stake on contracts that they think are secure and this, in turn, allows other members to purchase smart contract cover on that system.
Shield mining rewards:
- native token of partner projects will also be rewarded to stakers
- need to be claimed by stakers through the UI
- claim at any point during the round, as long as you have staked during that round
- claim weekly (no retrospective claims).
Liquidity Relays
0x project:
UNI is now available to trade on Matcha.
1inch.exchange:
- 1inch partners with xBTC: As 1inch continues to constantly work on offering their users diverse options for trading and revenue, they announced a partnership with xBTC, Social Capital’s first token. As part of the partnership, xBTC will have an exclusive IMO (Initial Mooniswap Offering).
- 1inch announces cooperation with cybersecurity firm Hacken, an established provider of cybersecurity solutions.
Balancer:
Ocean Protocol and Balancer Labs Partner for The First AMM-Based Data Market: Ocean Protocol is partnering with Balancer Labs to launch Ocean Market, an open-source community marketplace for data and the world’s first Initial Data Offering (IDO) launchpad. Powered by Balancer’s Automated Market Maker (AMM) technology and Ocean Protocol’s datatokens, Ocean Market offers automated data price discovery , OCEAN staking, and authentic data curation.
Kyber:
On-chain liquidity protocol Kyber Network went on a DeFi spree in adding support for CREAM, CRV, SUSHI, SWRV, UNI, YFI, and YFV.
Loopring:
- Update on Loopring Exchange Liquidity Mining Campaigns
- Loopring 3.6 Bug Bounty: This bug bounty is set up to reward people who identify bugs in Loopring 3.6.0, a pre-release of Loopring protocol 3.6.
- Loopring 3.6 is Code Complete and Security Audit Has Begun
- Coinbase Lists LRC
- Autonio Integrates Loopring Exchange Into NIOX Market Making Software
There are 3 new liquidity mining campaigns on Loopring Exchange. ADX-USDT, NIOX-ETH, QCAD-USDT. + BZRX-ETH still live. Moreover, the bug bounty program for Loopring v3.6 is open. Covering the protocol smart contracts and ZKP circuits, we invite you to submit vulnerabilities before November 30th for LRC rewards.
Uniswap:
UNI, the Uniswap Protocol governance token, is live now on the Ethereum mainnet. UNI officially enshrines Uniswap as publicly-owned and self-sustainable infrastructure while continuing to carefully protect its indestructible and autonomous qualities.
Payments Networks
Raiden Network:
The 137th edition of the Raiden Weekly. This week featuring:
- ETHOnline hackathon sponsorship
- Continued work on WebRTC support
- Cross Token Network Payment progress
Synthetix:
- Stake SNX on the Optimistic Ethereum L2 testnet: Synthetix is now live on the Optimistic Ethereum L2 testnet
- The new Synthetix Stats website is now live: A guide to the new Synthetix Stats site
- Everything you need to know before using Ether as collateral to borrow sUSD: A quick primer on how borrowing sUSD against ETH works
- The Fomalhaut release: All the details about tomorrow’s technical release
- The shifting sands of DeFi: Founder Kain’s views on Synthetix and DeFi right now
- synthetixDAO incubator: binary options trading platform: Request for proposal: binary options trading platform
- Meet the new Synthetix grantsDAO interface
Privacy protocols for DeFi
Ren protocol:
Ren Ecosystem Update: September 2020.
More updates
New York-based crypto exchange Gemini listed a range of DeFi tokens, including SNX, UNI, YFI, and more.
Yam V3 Goes Live: The migration from Yam v2 to v3 is now live and, if you’re a holder of YAM, you can migrate your tokens across with 50% being available immediately and the other 50% vesting over 30 days.
Now that the Yam Finance “Replanting” was successful and YAM rebases are flowing once again, the project’s builders are eyeing new improvements around treasury management, usability, and more.
APY.Finance Raises $3.6 Million: APY.Finance, which is building a decentralized finance (DeFi) aggregator for yield farming, has raised $3.6 million in new funding.
The round saw participation from Alameda Research, Arrington XRP Capital, Coingecko, and Parafi Capital partner Santiago Roel Santos, among others.
Marqet Introduced: Marqet combines AAVE credit delegation with Synthetix peer to contract exchange to uniquely provide trustless margin trading of any synthetic asset with no slippage.
Liquality Wallet Now on Mainnet: You can use the Liquality wallet to swap from BTC to DeFi.
BarnBridge Introduces Liquidity Mining: The liquidity mining program will be a 2-phased approach and will begin once security audits are completed.
syUSD Announced: syUSD is entirely permissionless and constantly balance increasing stablecoin. It is an ERC20 token that lets you wrap yUSD into a stable currency.
Podcasts
Andre Cronje of Yearn Finance on YFI and the Fair Launch: ‘I’m Lazy’ on Unchained.
Hugh Karp of Nexus Mutual AMA on Bankless.
🎙️ METACAST: Top Crypto Podcasts of September 2020: a quick overview of what we’ve been listening to last month!
MISC
ICL arXiv paper studying DeFi interest rates finds uncovered interest parity does not generally hold.
China state TV runs positive news about Ethereum and DeFi.
Fork defense strategies in DeFi.
ETH supply on CEXs vs ETH supply in smart contracts:
DeFi is eating CeFi, in images
Uniswap has the deepest ETH spot books in the world:
DeFi needs a global, distributed team to even work:
Yield TV — Ep 1 hosted by DeFi Dad:
Phil Liu, the chief legal officer of investment manager Arca, published a piece arguing that Uniswap’s UNI “may very well be outside the enforcement framework of U.S. securities laws.”
General front-running arbitrage bots have surfaced in DeFi. These bots can “identify profitable DeFi transactions and kill them by getting there first and claiming this profit.”
This is not financial advice.
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