DeFi in Ether: Kyber introduces KyberPRO, PoolTogether launches v3, Bancor v2.1 activated, Kwenta is live, Gnosis Safe on xDai, Nexus Mutual updates, and much more!

Paradigm

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Paradigm

16 min readOct 27, 2020

Biweekly update on Ethereum DeFi ecosystem vol.16, 14th October — 27th October

TL;DR

The Kyber team announced KyberPRO, an end-to-end framework for professionals to easily onboard and run a profitable market making operation on-chain with minimal smart contract knowledge. It provides a robust liquidity system, tools, documentation, and technical support to enable professional market makers to easily onboard to DeFi. Forby, Indorse (IND) Fuse Network (FUSE) Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) are now available on Kyber Network.
Kwenta is live. Kwenta is a dApp built on the Synthetix protocol, allowing traders to gain access to a vast range of assets on Ethereum, including forex, commodities, cryptocurrencies, and indices.
Phase 2 of Synthetix OVM Testnet Begins. The purpose of this second phase is to trial the migration from L1 to L2, which will be an important part of the eventual mainnet launch. Read a guide to this week’s product release, Calcite, with all the frontend updates pushed this week including an IPFS domain for Kwenta, Korean support, and more. Why Optimism? Synthetix founder Kain Warwick on Optimistic Ethereum.
Nexus Mutual Updates: Founder of Nexus Mutual, Hugh Karp, provided a list of updates coming to the platform in the coming weeks and months in this Twitter thread. Furthermore, Nexus Mutual members have voted to accept proof of loss changes: claims must now be submitted with proof of individual material loss, acceptable proof = verified addresses, applies to cover #2992 and above.
Yearn Finance Newsletter #8 is here, covering the following news: a new yVault has been created for Gemini USD (GUSD); the team published an article discussing the Yearn ecosystem and ethos, which you can read here; a new yVault strategy was proposed by community member, gspoosi, on the governance forum. The initial proposal can be found here. BitMEX Adds YFI Futures You can read weekly synopsis regarding Yearn’s yVaults, including current strategies and upcoming changes here. Moreover, Andre Cronje published a few updates over the last weeks including a piece where he details his involvement in DeFi, a new tool for launching governance tokens, and an experimental impermanent loss offset product.
Find in the latest Compound newsletter: COMP is added to the protocol as a supported market; Developer Community Calls begin (join on Wednesday!); Coinbase adds new Earn educational content; Proposals 26 and 27 passed through Compound Governance with near-unanimous support.
AAVE is now available to be deposited and used as collateral in the Aave Market. Also, UNI is now listed in the Aave Market. Aave integrated in OUSD to increase and diversify the DeFi yield Origin Protocol. Stani Kulechov featured in a few public talks.
The Dharma team has submitted Proposal 2 “Retroactive Proxy Contract Airdrop — Phase One” to Uniswap Governance. Dharma’s Gas Use Policy is changing: Smart Wallet setup and recovery paid by Dharma; swaps >500 USD paid by Dharma; swaps <500 USD paid by users; all transfers paid by users. Read more in this article.
xDai weekly recap is here. Gnosis Safe multi-sig capabilities bring new security and interaction capabilities to xDai. Now users can create wallets and interact with contracts while requiring multiple signatures. It’s a big step for collaborators and asset management functionality from the expert team at Gnosis. Basic Safe Tutorials are here and on the Gnosis Safe website. Bridge governance is now active on both sides of the xDai Bridge. The team welcomes Perpetual Protocol to xDai. Check out a post outlining why they selected xDai as a scaling solution.
PoolTogether V3 now live. The new version includes larger prizes by doing leveraged yield farming, users can earn rewards for holding tickets or referrals, more prize pools and much more!
The dYdX engineering team is focused on building a Layer 2 solution for Perpetuals. They have also been busy on the marketing side. dYdX has participated in several AMAs & panels. Learn more about the products, decentralized trading, Layer 2, DeFi, & more in this thread.
Q3 Melon update: This quarter the team has had a busy and productive time — they’ve been heads down working on v2 of the Melon Protocol which they’re now going to use as an opportunity for a little re-brand. It is coming in Q4 2020. Also, the team is on the lookout for a new name. They have also been responding to community calls to refine the tokenomics model.
The DeFi Pulse Index migration from LEND to AAVE has been completed in accordance with Index Coop proposal 1.
0x Developer and Governance Update — October 2020: An update on the new technical developments from 0x Labs and the 0x ecosystem. Several new tokens are now available on Matcha.
BOND from Barn Bridge is now available on 1inch. SafePal Wallet has integrated 1inch within the SafePal Wallet app. Watch ETHOnline AMA w/ Sergej Kunz & Jessica Salomon.
Voting on Bancor v2.1 is Live. Last week the Bancor team released the first-ever single-sided AMM pools. See the full step-by-step guide to single-sided liquidity in Bancor v2.1.
Check out the latest Raiden Weekly. Update 140 covers: new development milestones, preparation for the release of version 1.2.0, new projects joined the Raiden grant program.
RenVM has surpassed one billion USD in total volume. Fresh Ren Ecosystem Update covers topics from RenVM network stats, integrations, new Ren Alliance Members, community updates, milestones, new blockchain additions, and more.
Check out freshly-published Guide: mStable SAVE — the Savings Account for the world — a part of a series of “how to guides” that will cover the basic mStable product suite, before getting into more advanced topics. Another article to read — mStable’s Stakeholders Voluntarily Commit to Staking. Here is MTA Emission Spotlight — October 2020. And the next community call is taking place on the 29th of October at 13:30 UTC. Join the team!
Yield Protocol is live. It brings fixed-term, fixed-rate lending and interest rate markets to decentralized finance. Yield Protocol v1 enables fixed-rate borrowing and lending of Dai, using a new core DeFi primitive, fyDai.
New features added to Alpha Homora. New leverage yield farming pool includes WETH/YFI pool. New feature includes Bring-Your-Own-Token (BYOT) feature, a feature that allows yield farmers to supply another token that’s not ETH and can reduce slippage to 0% when opening a position.
You can now use DeFi Saver to instantly switch to a different protocol, change your collateral asset and change your debt asset in just one transaction.
ParaSwap will use StarkWare’s StarkEx technology to scale its decentralized exchange aggregator product.
BarnBridge yield farming now live. You can stake USDC/DAI/sUSD to farm BOND tokens — there’s even a desktop version of the UI available as well.
MetaMask Swaps introduced. MetaMask users can now swap tokens directly from their wallet. Swaps combines multiple decentralized exchange aggregators, professional market makers, and individual DEXs.
PayPal launches new service enabling users to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency: PayPal Holdings, Inc. announced the launch of a new service enabling its customers to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency directly from their PayPal account, and signaled its plans to significantly increase cryptocurrency’s utility by making it available as a funding source for purchases at its 26 million merchants worldwide.
Messari’s Q3 2020 DeFi Review is out.
Derivatives, the Second Half of DeFi.
An Introductory Guide to Ethereum and Dai on Hackernoon.
13 DeFi Notifications Ethereum Needs Today.
Uniswap v2 pairs liquidity and fees dashboard.
7 big takeaways and 20 data points about the current state of ETH and DeFi in 2020.
And much more!

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Total Value Locked in DeFi

Top DeFi Tokens by Market Capitalization

Total Market Cap: $15,417,049,887

DeFi Aggregators

yEarn.finance:

Yearn Finance Newsletter #8

New yVault Created for GUSD — A new yVault has been created for Gemini USD (GUSD).
2nd AMA Announcement
Yearn Manifesto — the team published an article discussing the Yearn ecosystem and ethos, which you can read here.
Levered DAI Strategy Under Testing — A new yVault strategy was proposed by community member, gspoosi, on the governance forum. The initial proposal can be found here.
BitMEX Adds YFI Futures
Yearn State of the Vaults — You can read weekly synopsis regarding Yearn’s yVaults, including current strategies and upcoming changes here.
Governance Updates (YIPs)
Ecosystem News

Moreover, Andre Cronje published a few updates over the last weeks including a piece where he details his involvement in DeFi, a new tool for launching governance tokens, and an experimental impermanent loss offset product.

mStable:

mStable’s next community call is taking place on the 29th of October at 13:30 UTC:

Lending

Aave:

AAVE is now available to be deposited and used as collateral in the Aave Market:

Compound:

cCOMP Launches, Compound Developer Community Calls, New Coinbase Earn Tasks, and Governance Updates

cCOMP Market Launches

Following a successful voting period and execution of proposal 27, COMP is now a supported market on Compound. cCOMP uses the same implementation contract as cUNI and is deployed with a 60% collateral factor, a 20% reserve factor, the JumpRateV2 interest rate model, and a 50k COMP borrowing cap.

Announcing Compound Developer Community Calls

Starting this week, the Compound developer community will begin holding bi-weekly calls as a discussion forum for folks building applications on the protocol, or making changes to the protocol.

Held every other Wednesday at 9:30am PT / 4:30pm GMT, starting 10/28 (Google Calendar invite)

In the Compound Discord, with video/voice participation in the #compound-live channel, and text participation in the #development channel.

New Advanced Coinbase Earn Tasks

Coinbase launched new Advanced Earn Tasks for Compound, rewarding users with $10 of COMP for supplying USDC to Compound.

Governance Updates

Completed Votes

Since the last newsletter, Proposals 26 and 27 passed through Compound Governance with near-unanimous support.

Proposal 26: Uniswap Improvement Strategy

Status: Executed October 13th, 2020
Proposer: blck
Voting Results: 466,606 For and 1 Against
Summary: In response to the high demand for supplying/borrowing UNI on Compound, blck proposed a set of upgrades for the cUNI market. This proposal changed the interest rate model from JumpRateV2 to a more aggressive model, increased the borrow cap to 5M UNI, and set the Borrow Cap Guardian to the Community Multi-Sig.

Proposal 27: Add COMP Support

Status: Executed October 17th, 2020
Proposer: blck
Voting Results: 622,697 for and 1 Against
Summary: Proposal 27 added COMP, the governance token for Compound, as the latest supported asset on the protocol.

CAPs

Getty Hill created a new autonomous proposal to increase the collateral factors of ETH and USDC from 75% to 85%. He explained in an accompanying Twitter thread that high liquidity for these assets reduces the risk of liquidation default and justifies more efficient borrowing. Consider delegating your support to this CAP, or follow this guide to create your own if you have at least 100 COMP.

Ongoing Discussions

See below for highlights from the Compound governance forum, and join in the discussion:

Borrow Cap Guardian Policy — @rleshner details the initial policy framework for the Borrow Cap Guardian, which is now managed by the Community Multi-Sig.
Lower Gas by Removing COMP Auto Distribute! — @lay2000lbs suggests removing the automatic COMP distribution in order to reduce gas fees.
A Leaner, Meaner Comptroller — @jared proposes a set of ideas to simplify the Comptroller contract, in order to make it easier for future developers to upgrade the protocol.
Helping to bring more real-world users to Compound — Three new product ideas for the Compound community — @Bud shares ideas on how to implement under-collateralized borrowing on Compound.
Setup community cUNI Voting — @jhvst discusses how cUNI holders would be able to participate in a hypothetical dividend paid from Uniswap governance.
Vesting for the Compound protocol — @tarun details a newly added pull request that contains vesting for COMP rewards, COMP grant functionality, reduced Comptroller size, and an independent vesting module that other projects can leverage.

Dharma:

Update To Dharma Gas Policy — Dharma’s Gas Use Policy is changing.

a. Smart Wallet setup and recovery paid by Dharma

b. Swaps >500 USD paid by Dharma

c. Swaps <500 USD paid by users

d. All transfers paid by users

e. All changes took effect on Friday 23rd October

The Dharma team has submitted Proposal 2, “Retroactive Proxy Contract Airdrop — Phase One”, to Uniswap Governance.

Maker:

Introducing the Redesigned, Easier-to-Use Maker Voting Portal: The Maker Foundation’s Product Team has redesigned the Maker Voting Portal to make governance proposal polling and voting simpler and easier to follow. The new portal includes features such as batch voting, filters on the polling page, a much quicker & responsive website and much more.
Governance Polls: Add GUSD and PAXG as Collateral Types: The Maker Foundation Interim Risk Team has placed a series of Governance Polls into the voting system which presents polls to implement greenlight polls for GUSD and PAXG.
Governance Polls: Greenlight Polls for Collateral Types,Whitelist Oracles and more: The Maker Foundation Interim Risk Team has placed a series of Governance Polls into the voting system which presents polls to implement greenlight polls for collateral types, whitelisting oracles, and more.
The Top Five Ways the Dai Stablecoin Is Used Around the World: As a decentralized, borderless, and composable digital currency, the Dai stablecoin is used all over the world in many exciting ways. Here are the top five.
Executive Vote: Increase the Surplus Buffer, Oracle Whitelisting:The Governance Facilitator 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. Therefore, if this Executive proposal passes the following will occur:

-The System Surplus Buffer limit will be increased from 2,000,000 DAI to 4,000,000 DAI.

-B.Protocol will be whitelisted on the ETHUSD Medianizer Oracle.

-B.Protocol will be whitelisted on the ETHUSD OSM Oracle.

New Maker Voting Portal Now Live: The new portal is completely redesigned with a focus on ease-of-use and includes features such as batch voting, filters on the polling page, a much quicker & responsive website and much more!

xDai:

Weekly recap is here:

Gnosis Safe multi-sig capabilities bring new security and interaction capabilities to xDai. Now users can create wallets and interact with contracts while requiring multiple signatures. It’s a big step for collaborators and asset management functionality from the expert team at Gnosis. Basic Safe Tutorials are here and on the Gnosis Safe website.

Bridge governance is now active on both sides of the xDai Bridge.

Excited to welcome Perpetual Protocol to xDai. They released a post outlining why they selected xDai as a scaling solution:

It’s Ethereum-compatible and users can use Metamask to interact with it.

It’s production-ready and there already are some Dapps running on it.

It’s user-friendly as in having a short dispute period and fast block times.

Derivatives, Swaps and Prediction Markets

Augur:

Augur AMM, L2 & Para Augur

dYdX:

dYdX engineering team is focused on building a Layer 2 solution for Perpetuals. They have also been busy on the marketing side. dYdX has participated in several AMAs & panels. Learn more about the products, decentralized trading, Layer 2, DeFi, & more. Watch / read / listen / learn in this thread.

Gnosis:

Gnosis Safe Now on the xDai Chain: By accessing Safe on the xDAI network, you can now enjoy instant transactions with low network fees.

Fund Management

Melon:

Q3 Melon update: This quarter the team has had a busy and productive time — they’ve been heads down working on v2 of the Melon Protocol which they’re now going to use as an opportunity for a little re-brand. It is coming in Q4 2020. Also, the team is on the lookout for a new name. They have also been responding to community calls to refine the tokenomics model.

Set Protocol:

The DeFi Pulse Index migration from LEND to AAVE has been completed in accordance with Index Coop proposal 1.

Securities, Insurance and NFTs

Nexus Mutual:

Nexus Mutual Updates: Founder of Nexus Mutual, Hugh Karp, provided a list of updates coming to the platform in the coming weeks and months in this Twitter thread.

Nexus Mutual members have voted to accept proof of loss changes.

Claims must now be submitted with proof of individual material loss.
Acceptable proof = verified addresses.
Applies to cover #2992 and above.

Liquidity Relays

0x project:

0x Developer and Governance Update — October 2020: An update on the new technical developments from 0x Labs and the 0x ecosystem.

Matcha:

Several new tokens are now available on Matcha:

1inch.exchange:

Bancor:

Last week the Bancor team released the first-ever single-sided AMM pools.

Kyber:

KyberPRO: The Only Professional Framework for On-chain Market Making: The Kyber team announced KyberPRO, an end-to-end framework for professionals to easily onboard and run a profitable market making operation on-chain with minimal smart contract knowledge. It provides a robust liquidity system, tools, documentation, and technical support to enable professional market makers to easily onboard to DeFi.

Loopring:

Loopring’s New Relayer Added AMM Support: at the beginning of October, the team successfully submitted zkRollup AMM join, swap, and exit transactions on Ethereum’s Goerli network.

Uniswap:

Payments Networks

Raiden Network:

Check out the latest Raiden Weekly! Update 140 covers:

New development milestones
Preparation for the release of version 1.2.0
New projects joined the Raiden grant program

Synthetix:

Kwenta is now live. Kwenta is a dApp built on the Synthetix protocol, allowing traders to gain access to a vast range of assets on Ethereum, including forex, commodities, cryptocurrencies, and indices.
Calcite product release: A guide to this week’s product release, Calcite, with all the frontend updates pushed this week including an IPFS domain for Kwenta, Korean support, & more!

Why Optimism? Synthetix founder Kain Warwick on Optimistic Ethereum.
Phase 2 of Synthetix OVM Testnet Begins: The purpose of this second phase is to trial the migration from L1 to L2, which will be an important part of the eventual mainnet launch.

Privacy protocols for DeFi

Ren protocol:

Ren Ecosystem Update: This update covers topics from RenVM network stats, integrations, new Ren Alliance Members, community updates, milestones, new blockchain additions, and more.

RenVM has surpassed one billion USD in total volume:

More updates

PayPal Launches New Service Enabling Users to Buy, Hold and Sell Cryptocurrency: PayPal Holdings, Inc. announced the launch of a new service enabling its customers to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency directly from their PayPal account, and signaled its plans to significantly increase cryptocurrency’s utility by making it available as a funding source for purchases at its 26 million merchants worldwide.

Yield Protocol is Live: Yield Protocol brings fixed-term, fixed-rate lending and interest rate markets to decentralized finance. Yield Protocol v1 enables fixed-rate borrowing and lending of Dai, using a new core DeFi primitive, fyDai.

New Features Added to Alpha Homora: New leverage yield farming pool includes WETH/YFI pool. New feature includes Bring-Your-Own-Token (BYOT) feature, a feature that allows yield farmers to supply another token that’s not ETH and can reduce slippage to 0% when opening a position.

PoolTogether V3 Now Live: The new version includes larger prizes by doing leveraged yield farming, users can earn rewards for holding tickets or referrals, more prize pools and much more!

DeFi Saver Loan Shifter Now Live: You can now use DeFi Saver to instantly switch to a different protocol, change your collateral asset and change your debt asset in just one transaction.

ParaSwap Joins StarkEx: ParaSwap will use StarkWare’s StarkEx technology to scale its decentralized exchange aggregator product.

BarnBridge Yield Farming Now Live: You can stake USDC/DAI/sUSD to farm BOND tokens — there’s even a desktop version of the UI available as well.

Introducing the DeFi Pulse Economic Safety Grade: Created in partnership with Gauntlet Network, economic safety grades allow users to more easily quantify and compare the risks they face using on-chain protocols.

Introducing MetaMask Swaps: MetaMask users can now swap tokens directly from their wallet. Swaps combines multiple decentralized exchange aggregators, professional market makers, and individual DEXs.