DeFi in Ether: ~$28B in DeFi this week, Alpha Homora v2 launches, BNT liquidity mining rewards are live, LRC tokenomics revamped, Enzyme to integrate Chainlink, 0x’s V4 protocol is here, Kyber V3 announced, Dogecoin is now available on Ethereum for DeFi users, and more!

Paradigm

Published in

Paradigm

15 min readFeb 2, 2021

Biweekly update on Ethereum DeFi ecosystem vol.23, 19th January — 2nd February

TL;DR

More than $27B in DeFi this week, currently at ~$27.75B, with Maker dominance 17.67%.
Alpha Homora v2 launched: You can read this post to get a view on v2 from a lenders perspective, this post for a view from a yield farmers perspective, and this post for a general overview of v2. Check out Alpha Homora v2 explainer thread.
Read in the latest Yearn Finance Newsletter #20: YIP-57: funding Yearn’s future voting is live; relaunch of the v1 WETH yVault; thirteen new yVaults are live; ASSY Index is live; discussion on administration over minting keys; next AMA scheduled (February 3rd at 4pm UTC); partnership roundup; governance roundup; and ecosystem news. Latest YFI Pulse is here.
Making Maker: January 2021: This first Making Maker of the year covers notable protocol and community developments from December 2020 through January 2021.
Aave released its V1-to-V2 migration tool. You can now migrate everything, even if you have borrowing positions opened. Head over to your V1 dashboard to check it out! Read their January Update: Aaveversary, another migration, and MarketMake. Also, The 5th audit of Aave Protocol V2 by Sigma Prime is complete and publicly available here. Aavescan launched. Tune on ‘Zero Knowledge’ Episode 165 with Stani Kulechov.
The latest Compound newsletter covers the following updates: Compound Labs at ETHDenver, WalletConnect support, Vesper Beta launch, Developer Community Call Recap, and more.
xDai Weekly Recap covers POSDAO updates, Wallet Support, Project News & more.
dYdX — 2020 in Review: dYdX had a monster year of growth in 2020 and in this blog post they recap it all from trading growth on the platform to new team members joining. Moreover, last week dYdXhas raised a $10 Million Series B round led by Three Arrows Capital and DeFiance Capital with participation from Wintermute, Hashed, GSR, SCP, Scalar Capital, Spartan Group, and RockTree Capital.
Enzyme for Organisations: Broadening the use cases for Enzyme with Gnosis Safe. Moreover, Enzyme to integrate Chainlink Price Oracles to unleash rapid expansion of assets. Also, a bunch of news from the Enzyme team appeared: Introducing Enzyme: On-chain asset management by Mona El Isa; Redesigning Melon/Enzyme & Fund in the Shell.
Set V2 Asset Management Suite launched: Anyone in the world can now create a tokenized basket, accept capital, implement fees, and access DeFi. The DeFi Pulse Index is now easily accessible through Zerion.
Bringing Bancor to Polkadot: the work is underway on a cross-chain bridge that would allow Bancor to expand its decentralized liquidity protocol to Polkadot. The implementation could eventually give users the ability to create pools, provide liquidity and perform trustless cross-chain swaps on Bancor between Polkadot and ERC20 tokens. Moreover, Bancor just released a new guide on how to participate in its BNT liquidity mining campaign.
Kyber V3 announced: A major revamp is coming to Kyber Network with a host of new features being planned — all of that is detailed in this new blog post.
LRC Tokenomics v2 announced: The LRC token that powers the Loopring ecosystem will be getting a total revamp and will be able to capture protocol fees and be used in governance. Plus, Loopring to distribute all remaining v1 staking rewards on L2.
ARCx becomes first to incorporate imUSD. MTA has been added to DPI. Guides: Gas-free voting on mStable proposals; mUSD Save V2 and imUSD. Good news is, mBTC is coming.
Dharma now supports Wire Transfers in 17 states.
Upgrade: investment earnings, reduced gas fees and streamlined architecture: Nexus Mutual members voted to accept proposal #121 which is one of the largest upgrades the team has made since launch. Here’s everything you need to know. If you miss Hugh Karp’s AMA with Hillrise Capital — read the highlights here.
0x makes a comeback: it just crossed over $1M in protocol fees generated, with $450k+ just in the last 30 days. 0x’s v4 protocol is now live. It is the most gas-efficient DEX protocol. 0x users should expect more competitive liquidity from professional market makers (up to 70% gas savings for RFQ liquidity, 10% for limit orders). In addition to that, it is cheaper to trade on both Uniswap and Sushiswap using 0x v4 than it is natively on those platforms. Check out 0x Community and Governance call — January 2021.
1inch has just surpassed $15B in total volume. 1inch’s joint liquidity mining program with Opium, which started on January 30th, focusing on the newly launched ETH-OPIUM pool. The team also launches a ‘quadro farming’ program: users will have four ways to benefit from an stETH-LDO liquidity pool. Furthermore, 1inch supports EtherPunk 2021 hackathon by ETHIndia. Meet 1inch team: Anton Bukov, co-founder and CTO. xINCH is here, an auto-claim and compound wrapper for 1Inch staking.
Balancer V1 in Review: In this post, rabmarut recaps all the growth Balancer has had since it launched its v1 in 2020. Balancer will also be reimbursing users gas costs until v2 is live. The latest Balancer Report is out.
Ren + Alameda: The Ren development team is joining Alameda and the wider ecosystem. OpenDAO & RenVM Bring Dogecoin to Ethereum: Dogecoin is now available as renDOGE on the Ethereum network, opening up a whole new world of possibilities for the crypto community. Ren Ecosystem Update: This update covers new partnerships, Dogecoin on Ethereum, volume growth, community updates and more. Check out the January Development Update.
Spendless announced: Spendless allows you to earn interest on your DAI and then donate that interest automatically to various charities.
Arbitrum Rollout introduced: Arbitrum Rollout is a full L2 demo on Arbitrum with apps like Bancor, Bounce, McDex and more.
Parsec launched: Parsec is a Bloomberg-like terminal for DeFi. It is the beating heart of the market, equipped with real-time data streams and rich high fidelity visualizations that paint a picture of an often opaque market.
Biconomy Forward announced: Projects that integrate Biconomy Forward can allow their users to pay gas fees using ERC20 tokens and stablecoins instead of just ETH.
You can now use Uniswap LP and Sushiswap LP tokens as collateral in C.R.E.A.M.
Binance just launched a CRV staking program.
Grayscale is launching new trusts around DeFi tokens like AAVE and UNI.
Opium Finance releases collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) through Compound Finance. The project also just unveiled the OPIUM governance token.
Ethereum dev studio ConsenSys released its Q4 2020 DeFi report.
YAM Finance: The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of the OG Foodcoin on Epicenter.
Thoughts on Liquidity Mining
DeFi Will Eat Corporate Debt
DeFi Pooling
Elon Musk is liking DeFi tweets.
And more!

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Total Value Locked in DeFi

More than $28B in DeFi this week, currently at ~$27.75B, with Maker dominance 17.67%.

Top DeFi Tokens by Market Capitalization

Total Market Cap: $36,708,494,603

DeFi Aggregators

mStable:

yEarn.finance:

Yearn Finance Newsletter #20:

YIP-57: Funding Yearn’s Future Voting is Live: A key Yearn Improvement Proposal (YIP) regarding minting an additional 6,666 YFI is now live on Snapshot. This proposal would use 1/3rd of the minted YFI and vest to current contributors. The remaining portion would be sent to Yearn’s Treasury and reserved for future contributors, liquidity mining programs, staking rewards, mergers & acquisitions, and cross-protocol incentives within the Yearn ecosystem. Voting ends February 2nd at 6pm UTC. You can read the full description of this YIP and vote now using this link.
Relaunch of the v1 WETH yVault. This vault has been improved in order to accommodate the high demand that the initial v1 WETH yVault experienced. ETH deposited into this vault is sent to MakerDAO, mints DAI, and earns CRV by depositing into the 3pool on Curve.fi. You can deposit to this newly launched yVault here.
Thirteen New yVaults are Live. Included are the previously experimental Curve stETH yVault, a new v2 WBTC yVault, and 11 other new Curve pool yVaults. As a reminder, the stETH yVault farms CRV and LDO from the stETH/ETH pool on Curve.fi. The new WBTC yVault has been deployed and will soon launch its first strategy, farming on Idle.Finance. Finally, the 11 new Curve pool vaults all accept Curve LP token deposits and use those to harvest and sell CRV for more of the underlying tokens. You can see all of these vaults in our UI here.
ASSY Index is Live. PowerPool recently voted on a new PowerIndex, ASSY, which consists of staked AAVE, SNX, SUSHI, & YFI. This new index has been launched and you can now deposit funds and gain exposure to these four assets via their index. You can deposit into the ASSY index here.
Discussion on Administration over Minting Keys. A new discussion is on our governance forum that explores different options on what to do with the YFI minting keys. A few options include, (1) burning the minting keys, (2) lock the minting function for a predetermined period of time, or (3) establish a clearly defined and more stringent consensus requirement to mint additional YFI. No vote is live regarding this potential YIP as it is merely in the discussion phase. You can read the governance post and join the discussion here.
Next AMA Scheduled (February 3rd at 4pm UTC)
You can read the weekly partnership roundup discussing updates involving partners in the Yearn ecosystem here.
You can read the most recent bi-weekly governance roundup discussing potential YIPs or ones actively being voted upon here.
Ecosystem News

Latest YFI Pulse is here:

Lending

Aave:

Aave released its V1-to-V2 migration tool. You can now migrate everything, even if you have borrowing positions opened. Head over to your V1 dashboard to check it out!
January Update: Aaveversary, another migration, and MarketMake
The 5th audit of Aave Protocol V2 by Sigma Prime is complete and publicly available here.
Aavescan launched
‘Zero Knowledge’ Episode 165: Aave with Stani Kulechov.

Compound:

Compound Labs at ETHDenver, WalletConnect Support, Vesper Beta Launch, Developer Community Call Recap:

Compound Labs is to again be sponsoring the upcoming ETHDenver Conference, which will be held on Thursday, February 4th through Friday, February 12, 2021.
With help from DeFi community members @transmissions11 and @mikedemarais, Compound Labs (finally) added support for Wallet Connect on the app.compound.finance interface.
Vesper, a protocol for a yield strategy and aggregation, integrated Compound into its vDAI and vWBTC liquidity pools. The team recently deployed the vDAI test pool to public beta, and migrated the vWBTC pool from public beta to production. Both of these pools supply the underlying asset directly to Compound to earn interest, and in future, pools can be modified with more advanced yield strategies based on user risk preferences. In order to ensure the security of user funds, Vesper pools start in private testing, then move to public beta at https://app.vesperdev.net/ and then to production at https://app.vesper.finance/.
The Compound community held a Developer Community Call last Wednesday to discuss ongoing protocol and application development. You can listen to an audio recording of the call here or on your favorite podcast platform.
There have been no new governance votes since the last newsletter.
SkewAnalytics released a DeFi lending dashboard with data on interest rate protocols like Compound.
Opium Finance launched collateralized debt obligation products (CDOs) that offer risk tranching for cDAI.
O3 Wallet integrated Compound’s interest rate markets, which users can access through the discovery browser.
ARCx launched a yield farming program that uses cUSDC as a supported asset.

Dharma:

Dharma now supports Wire Transfers in 17 states

Maker:

Making Maker: January 2021: This first Making Maker of the year covers notable protocol and community developments from December 2020 through January 2021.
Governance Polls: Collateral Onboarding, Oracles, and more: The MakerDAO Governance Facilitator has placed Governance Polls into the voting system on behalf of the MakerDAO mandated actors. These are polls to implement greenlight polls for collateral types, oracles, and more.
Governance Poll: Add NS-DROP (New Silver DROP) as a Collateral Type
Executive Vote: Add ETH-A to the Debt Ceiling Instant Access Module
Executive Vote: Approve January 2021 Governance Cycle Bundle
Executive Vote: Collateral Onboarding, Debt Ceiling Adjustments, Other Changes
Nine Most Common Missteps of Crypto and DeFi Users
Decentralized, Stable Crypto Tokens Broaden Their Appeal to the Digital Artwork Market: Explore more provocative artists and initiatives from the fast-growing list of stablecoin adopters in the digital artwork world

xDai:

xDai Weekly Recap — 29/01/2021: xDai weekly recap covers POSDAO updates, Wallet Support, Project News & more.

Derivatives, Swaps and Prediction Markets

dYdX:

dYdX — 2020 in Review: dYdX had a monster year of growth in 2020 and in this blog post they recap it all from trading growth on the platform to new team members joining.
dYdX Raises $10 Million: dYdX has raised a $10M Series B round led by Three Arrows Capital and DeFiance Capital with participation from Wintermute, Hashed, GSR, SCP, Scalar Capital, Spartan Group, and RockTree Capital.
dYdX’s insane growth

Gnosis:

$10,000,000,000 are now stored using Gnosis Safe:

GnosisDAO DEX community call (February 2nd, 3:00 PM GMT):

UMA:

uLABS volatility token introduced: uLABS introduced a simple token named uVOL that can track the volatility of any asset.
uLABS Notes: Borrow USDC with your ETH for free: UMA’s Yield Dollar trades with a negative yield.

Fund Management

Enzyme Finance (formerly Melon):

Introducing Enzyme: On-chain asset management by Mona El Isa
Enzyme for Organisations: Broadening the use cases for Enzyme with Gnosis Safe
Enzyme Integrates Chainlink Price Oracles to Unleash Rapid Expansion of Assets
Redesigning Melon/Enzyme
Fund in the Shell: a transplant approach to upgradable Enzyme portfolios

Set Protocol:

Set V2 Asset Management Suite launched: Anyone in the world can now create a tokenized basket, accept capital, implement fees, and access DeFi.
The DeFi Pulse Index is now easily accessible through Zerion
DeFi Pulse Index fundamentals are on fire

Securities, Insurance and NFTs

Nexus Mutual:

Upgrade: investment earnings, reduced gas fees and streamlined architecture: Nexus Mutual members voted to accept proposal #121 which is one of the largest upgrades the team has made since launch. Here’s everything you need to know.
If you miss Hugh Karp’s AMA with Hillrise Capital — read the highlights here.

Liquidity Relays

0x project:

0x’s v4 protocol is now live.

What are the primary benefits of 0x v4?

It is the most gas-efficient DEX protocol. 0x users should expect more competitive liquidity from professional market makers (up to 70% gas savings for RFQ liquidity, 10% for limit orders). In addition to that, it is cheaper to trade on both Uniswap and Sushiswap using 0x v4 than it is natively on those platforms.

It is DeFi native. Apart from its industry-leading smart order routing algorithm, 0x v4 enables DeFi legos (e.g. borrowing, debt repayment, provide liquidity, etc.) to be injected natively into the context of a trade. The only transformer deployed right now is a simple ETH wrapper/unwrapper, but there is no shortage of DeFi legos that can be implemented with the same pattern. For example, it could be possible to provide liquidity into a pool with any arbitrary token, swap liquidity pool tokens, or swap your collateral on Compound or Aave on the fly.

It offers plug&play liquidity. V4 allows custom on-chain liquidity pools to be plugged in via a standard interface before being automatically aggregated with all other liquidity sources. Whether you’re a market maker with a proprietary on-chain strategy or a developer building the next-gen public AMM, V4 can support your use case out of the box.

It is automatically upgradable. Thanks to this new architecture and to the 0x governance process, the protocol will be able to iterate more quickly based on what the market needs, without having to wait for the ‘next 0x version’. ZRX holders should expect more ZEIPs and governance votes on specific features in the months to come.

0x Community and Governance call — January 2021
0x makes a comeback: 0x just crossed over $1M in protocol fees generated, with $450k+ just in the last 30 days.

1inch:

1inch has just surpassed $15B in total volume
1inch’s joint liquidity mining program with Opium: An additional liquidity mining program, which will start on January 30, midnight (00:01 UTC), focusing on the newly launched ETH-OPIUM pool.
The team launches a ‘quadro farming’ program: Users will have four ways to benefit from an stETH-LDO liquidity pool.
1inch supports EtherPunk 2021 hackathon by ETHIndia
Meet 1inch team: Anton Bukov, co-founder and CTO
xINCH: an auto-claim and compound wrapper for 1Inch staking

Balancer:

Balancer V1 in Review: In this post, rabmarut recaps all the growth Balancer has had since it launched its v1 in 2020.
Balancer will also be reimbursing users gas costs until v2 is live.

The Balancer Report

Total Value Locked recovered nicely this week and nearly eclipsed the recent high of $952 million. LP's collected $1.03…

balancer.substack.com

Bancor:

Bringing Bancor to Polkadot: the work is underway on a cross-chain bridge that would allow Bancor to expand its decentralized liquidity protocol to Polkadot. The implementation could eventually give users the ability to create pools, provide liquidity and perform trustless cross-chain swaps on Bancor between Polkadot and ERC20 tokens.
Bancor just released a new guide on how to participate in its BNT liquidity mining campaign. Bancor’s single-sided liquidity pools allow users to easily stake BNT rewards without needing to stake tokens on the other side of a pool. This creates a positive feedback loop that incentivizes users to turn rewards into productive capital while increasing protocol liquidity.

Kyber:

Kyber V3 announced: A major revamp is coming to Kyber Network with a host of new features being planned — all of that is detailed in this new blog post.

Loopring:

LRC Tokenomics v2 announced: The LRC token that powers the Loopring ecosystem will be getting a total revamp and will be able to capture protocol fees and be used in governance.
Loopring to distribute all remaining v1 staking rewards on L2

Uniswap:

Payments Networks

Raiden:

Check out the latest Raiden Weekly. Update 154 covers:

Overview of useful Raiden resources for people new to Raiden
Continued progress towards the Bespin release for the Python Client
Work on getting the Light Client ready for mainnet release

Synthetix:

Privacy protocols for DeFi

Ren protocol:

Ren Ecosystem Update: This update covers new partnerships, Dogecoin on Ethereum, volume growth, community updates and more.
January Development Update
OpenDAO & RenVM Bring Dogecoin to Ethereum: Dogecoin is now available as renDOGE on the Ethereum network, opening up a whole new world of possibilities for the crypto community.

More updates

Alpha Homora v2 Launched: Alpha Homora v2 has now officially launched. You can read this post to get a view on v2 from a lenders perspective, this post for a view from a yield farmers perspective, and this post for a general overview of v2. Check out Alpha Homora v2 explainer thread.
Spendless announced: Spendless allows you to earn interest on your DAI and then donate that interest automatically to various charities.
Arbitrum Rollout introduced: Arbitrum Rollout is a full L2 demo on Arbitrum with apps like Bancor, Bounce, McDex and more.
Parsec launched: Parsec is a Bloomberg-like terminal for DeFi. It is the beating heart of the market, equipped with real-time data streams and rich high fidelity visualizations that paint a picture of an often opaque market.
Biconomy Forward announced: Projects that integrate Biconomy Forward can allow their users to pay gas fees using ERC20 tokens and stablecoins instead of just ETH.
You can now use Uniswap LP and Sushiswap LP tokens as collateral in C.R.E.A.M.
Binance just launched a CRV staking program.
Grayscale is launching new trusts around DeFi tokens like AAVE and UNI.
Opium Finance releases collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) through Compound Finance. The project also just unveiled the OPIUM governance token.