DeFi in Ether: $25B in DeFi this week, mStable SAVE v2 now live, Sushiswap 2021 roadmap is here, Synthetix L2 migration, Curve x Synthetix cross-asset swaps now live, 1inch launches new liquidity mining program, 0x V4 is here and it’s time to vote, Fei Protocol introduced, YFI minting, and much more!
Biweekly update on Ethereum DeFi ecosystem vol.22, 4th January — 19th January
TL;DR
- More than $25B in DeFi this week, currently at ~$25.029B, with Maker dominance 18.50%.
- mStable launches new, composable version of mUSD Save: The mStable genesis team released mUSD Save V2 — a tokenized savings account, for anyone, anywhere. This release was first proposed by Richard Galvin of DACM here and then ratified by Meta Governors here. Here is How to Save V2. Check out mStable Dev Update — December 2020: The protocol development team shipped MIP-3 and MIP-4, and spent the majority of their time working on SAVE v2, mBTC and the new AMM. The front end team also focused their time on design and development work to compliment the eventual deployment of SAVE v2, mBTC and the new AMM. Gas improvements were also launched for the mStable platform.
- Yearn Finance Newsletter #18 is out covering the following news: deliberation to mint more YFI for contributors; BABY: buyback and build Yearn YIP voting is live; Curve swaps: permissionless stablecoin pools; single-sided liquidity provisioning & impermanent loss hedge being tested; Yearn State of the Vaults; partnership roundup; governance roundup; ecosystem news. Andre Cronje laid out some of the frustrations that DeFi builders can face lately in a new op-ed.
- SNX staking live on Optimistic Ethereum L2: A guide on how to migrate your SNX to OΞ on L2. The Optimistic Ethereum Transition. The Castor release: Details about the technical release. As per SIP-60 and the recent Castor release, the new escrow contract is now live. SNX stakers with escrowed SNX will need to migrate to the new contract before they can claim staking rewards or vest any escrowed SNX. New sEUR incentive on Curve: Details for the new SNX incentive to contribute sEUR to the new Curve liquidity pool. Multi-collateral loans bug disclosure: Details about a recent bug found in the multi-collateral loans release. Synthetix 2021 Detailed: Synthetix is poised to have a big 2021 with a lot of updates coming to the protocol — read the above post to get the full breakdown.
- Cross-asset swaps now live on Curve: Curve now allows you to use Synthetix to do cross-asset swaps with minimal slippage and fees. Read more about it here.
- Sushiswap 2021 Roadmap: In this update, the Sushiswap team details their 2021 roadmap including BentoBox, Governance updates, layer 2 work and more.
- Aavenomics Quarterly Upgrade: AIP-7 has been voted on and executed: stake slashing has been activated; safety Incentives have been increased to 550 AAVE/day. It’s been 1 year since the Aave Protocol launched on mainnet. Congrats to the team! Aave custom streams now available with PARSIQ monitoring. Check out the recap of the latest Aave Weekly.
- Proposal #35 COMP Speed Recalibration passed on January 13th, 2021.
- Referral rewards are live on Dharma: Invite a friend to join Dharma, and you’ll both get $10 in free ETH when they purchase >$100 of crypto. Simply open up your Settings page and send them your referral link. Dharma now supports ACH purchases in Utah.
- Executive Vote: Stability Fee Changes, Oracle Whitelisting, Other Changes: The Governance Facilitator(s) and the Maker Foundation Smart Contracts Team have placed an Executive Vote into the voting system. MKR Holders should vote for this proposal if they support the following alterations to the Maker Protocol.
- xDai weekly recap covers updates on public POSDAO, Twitter, Projects on xDai & more.
- Gnosis Safe receives $2.3B Ethereum in a day, now the 3rd largest ETH holder with 2.2% of supply: 1% of the entire ETH supply is now stored on Gnosis Safe.
- Collectively, 256 REP (~$5,000) was staked on invalid. Of that, 51 REP ($1,000) is burned and the remaining 205 $REP ($4,000) is distributed to the Biden disputers. Learn more about the Augur oracle and disputing.
- dXdY reached a big milestone: $3 BILLION in transaction volume on dYdX since launch. Layer 2 coming soon. Also, dYdX partners with AToken to allow more Chinese users to access dYdX via their wallets.
- Fund in the Shell: a transplant approach to upgradable Enzyme portfolios: Enzyme funds are now fully upgradeable through a process that allows managers to opt-in to the latest release, while providing investors a window during which to opt-out. The technical approach involves transplanting the “soul” of the fund (ownership, asset holdings, and shares) into a new shell (release configuration). Avantgarde has deployed Enzyme contracts to main-net & control has been handed over to the Technical Council who are verifying the main-net state of the contracts.
- The DeFi Pulse Index (DPI) crossed $50m in market cap. Check out Set V2 protocol updates : SushiSwap and Uniswap trade adapters added as well as Chainlink, BAND, HEGIC, and COVER oracles. Set managers can now trade using Sushi / Uniswap liquidity & use these new Chainlink oracles for NAV issuance. Good news is, The DeFi Pulse Index (DPI) crossed $50m in market cap. Here is Call For the Best Product Thinkers in DeFi.
- Nexus Mutual members asked for the unstake lockup period to be reduced, therefore the team reduced it from 90 to 30 days.
- Announcing the 0x V4 vote: since January 16th, ZRX token holders are able to go to https://0x.org/zrx/vote/zeip-82 and cast their vote. The vote will end on Saturday, January 23rd. 0x Protocol V4 Bug Bounty: The program pays out up to $100k for critical exploits and is open to anyone. Moreover, Matcha launches Matcha Moolah.
- 1inch hits $10B total volume. Also, the team launches new liquidity mining program: check out the five pools which will participate in the new liquidity mining program, which started on January, 9th (ETH-1INCH; ETH-DAI; ETH-USDC; ETH-USDT; ETH-WBTC). Earn rewards by holding 1INCH tokens: through January 31, all 1INCH holders can take a share from a 5,000,000 SFP reward pool by participating in the Holding Challenge from SafePal. 1inch to sponsor MarketMake hackathon by ETHGlobal and support BUIDLers. Maker DAO PSM is added to 1inch.
- The latest Balancer Report is here.
- Bancor v2.1 Protocol Health Report: January 2020: Three months after Bancor launched single-sided liquidity & impermanent loss protection, the team has released a report analyzing the growth and overall health of the protocol. New proposals currently in the late-stages of development by the BancorDAO are worthy of attention. This includes the proposed “Bancor Vortex”, which seeks to create new revenue streams for LPs staking BNT.
- Kyber Ecosystem Report December 2020: Read the latest developments, stats, and figures from Kyber World.
- Read Loopring Monthly Update — 2020/12. Terence Lam to expand roles with Loopring as Vice President. There are still over $1.7 million worth of assets in Loopring 3.1 which will shut down in a few days. Also, Loopring zkRollup now holds >$100m of value. ETH-USDC pool is up on the L2 AMM.
- DeFi continues to gain attention as the major protocols pick up steam. The Stanford Blockchain Club has joined Uniswap as a delegate to provide guidance and governance in the future. UNI Grants applications now open: The first wave of UNI grants has the goal of funding projects working on usability, community and tooling.
- Check out the latest Raiden Weekly. Update 152 covers: progress towards the mainnet release for the Raiden Light Client, bugs fixing, advancement of the Bespin milestone.
- Alpha Homora V2 detailed: Alpha Homora v2 includes a new logo, new user interface, more functionalities, and more partners including Balancer, Curve, Cream and Sushiswap.
- ShapeShift goes DeFi: The Colorado-based non-custodial exchange is now routing orders through decentralized finance applications in a bid to get rid of KYC regulations that gutted the cryptocurrency trading platform back in 2018.
- Yam 2020 Recap & 2021 Roadmap: In this post, the Yam team gives a recap of all that happened in 2020 and provides a roadmap update covering all the features coming to the protocol in 2021.
- Announcing Futureswap V2 Beta: V2 of Futureswap provides features that serious traders expect, including live pricing, more performant trading, and higher capital efficiency. Core features such as AMM style liquidity providing, incentivized usage, and community governance remain mostly unchanged.
- Airswap 2021 revamp: Airswap — the decentralized p2p trading protocol — is planning on a major revamp in early 2021, based on this announcement there seems to be major changes coming to the protocol from a smart contract, tokenomics, and even branding level.
- Introducing Fei Protocol: Fei Protocol aims to build a new decentralized, fair, liquid, and scalable stablecoin that exhibits a high fidelity peg.
- Charm live on mainnet: Charm is a new decentralized options protocol. It uses an innovative mechanism that can create options markets which are liquid and cheap for users to trade on.
- Notional launches out of beta: Notional allows you to borrow assets at a fixed rate and you can currently borrow USDC and DAI at less than 5%.
- Yield Protocol releases RateLock: RateLock is a new tool that allows Dai borrowers on Maker to lock-in a low interest rate with as little as one click.
- Introducing Coinbase Asset Hub: The Coinbase Asset Hub is an interface for digital asset issuers to manage the full lifecycle of their assets.
- Crypto exchange giant Binance is teaming up with the Orbs project to launch a new DeFi startup accelerator.
- The Holy Grail of Stablecoins
- Unicorns or Sushi?
- Building in DeFi Sucks (part 2)
- AMM LPs and Layer 2 in times of Market Volatility
- US regulator: Federally chartered banks can facilitate stablecoin payments, issue their own
- Are we in the DeFi-driven, Fourth Crypto Cycle? a16z’s Chris Dixon says aye.
- How liquidations work in DeFi
- And more!
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Total Value Locked in DeFi
More than $25B in DeFi this week, currently at ~$25.029B, with Maker dominance 18.50%.
Top DeFi Tokens by Market Capitalization
Total Market Cap: $31,123,163,795
DeFi Aggregators
mStable:
- mStable Launches New, Composable Version of mUSD Save: The mStable genesis team released mUSD Save V2 — a tokenized savings account, for anyone, anywhere. This release was first proposed by Richard Galvin of DACM here and then ratified by Meta Governors here.
- How to Save V2
- mStable Dev Update — December 2020: The protocol development team shipped MIP-3 and MIP-4, and spent the majority of their time working on SAVE v2, mBTC and the new AMM. The front end team also focused their time on design and development work to compliment the eventual deployment of SAVE v2, mBTC and the new AMM.
- Gas improvements were also launched for the mStable platform.
yEarn.finance:
- Deliberation to Mint More YFI for Contributors. You can read the initial governance post here and the other post from the community benefactor here.
- BABY: Buyback and Build Yearn YIP Voting is Live. A new YIP was proposed recently that will cease staking rewards in the governance contract and instead use protocol earnings to buy YFI in the market. The purchased YFI would be given to Yearn contributors and to fund other initiatives that would help the ecosystem grow. This YIP was proposed before the proposal above was introduced that discussed potentially minting additional YFI. This YIP is now live on Snapshot and voting concludes on January 19th. You can read the full description of the YIP and vote on it here.
- Curve Swaps: Permissionless Stablecoin Pools. Users can now create permissionless stablecoin pools using any stablecoin and ones in the 3pool (DAI, USDC, & SUDT), on Curve.fi. Algorithmic stablecoins have taken decentralized finance (DeFi) by storm in recent months. These coins are elastic supply but ultimately attempt to restore peg to $1. Many of these coins have experienced difficulties maintaining their peg, but by adding them to a liquidity pool with other stablecoins (DAI, USDC, & USDT), they may achieve peg easier.
- Single-Sided Liquidity Provisioning & Impermanent Loss Hedge Being Tested. The team is in the process of testing a solution that will mitigate the negative effects of Impermanent Loss. This product is intended to be used in SushiSwap, Yearn’s AMM arm. A UI has been launched, but is only intended for advanced users to monitor their positions. Do not purchase the coin associated with this product. Additional information will be provided in the future. Advanced users can access the user interface here.
- Yearn State of the Vaults. You can read our weekly synopsis regarding Yearn’s yVaults, including current strategies and upcoming changes here.
- You can read our weekly partnership roundup discussing updates involving partners in the Yearn ecosystem here.
- You can read our bi-weekly governance roundup discussing potential YIPs or ones actively being voted upon here.
- Andre Cronje laid out some of the frustrations that DeFi builders can face lately in a new op-ed.
Lending
Aave:
- Aavenomics Quarterly Upgrade: AIP-7 has been voted on and executed: stake slashing has been activated; safety Incentives have been increased to 550 AAVE/day.
- 1 year ago the Aave Protocol launched on mainnet:
- Aave custom streams now available with PARSIQ monitoring
- Check out the recap of the latest Aave Weekly
Dharma:
- Referral rewards are live on Dharma: Invite a friend to join Dharma, and you’ll both get $10 in free ETH when they purchase >$100 of crypto. Simply open up your Settings page and send them your referral link.
- Dharma now supports ACH purchases in Utah.
Maker:
- Executive Vote: Stability Fee Changes, Oracle Whitelisting, Other Changes: The Governance Facilitator(s) and the Maker Foundation Smart Contracts Team have placed an Executive Vote into the voting system. MKR Holders should vote for this proposal if they support the following alterations to the Maker Protocol.
xDai:
Derivatives, Swaps and Prediction Markets
Augur:
- Collectively, 256 REP (~$5,000) was staked on invalid. Of that, 51 REP ($1,000) is burned and the remaining 205 $REP ($4,000) is distributed to the Biden disputers. Learn more about the Augur oracle and disputing.
dYdX:
- dXdY reached a big milestone: $3 BILLION in transaction volume on dYdX since launch. Layer 2 coming soon.
- dYdX partners with AToken to allow more Chinese users to access dYdX via their wallets.
Gnosis:
- Gnosis Safe receives $2.3B Ethereum in a day, now the 3rd largest ETH holder with 2.2% of supply: 1% of the entire ETH supply is now stored on Gnosis Safe.
Fund Management
Enzyme Finance (formerly Melon):
- Fund in the Shell: a transplant approach to upgradable Enzyme portfolios: Enzyme funds are now fully upgradeable through a process that allows managers to opt-in to the latest release, while providing investors a window during which to opt-out. The technical approach involves transplanting the “soul” of the fund (ownership, asset holdings, and shares) into a new shell (release configuration).
- Avantgarde has deployed Enzyme contracts to main-net & control has been handed over to the Technical Council who are verifying the main-net state of the contracts.
Next up:
- Testing Enzyme interface on main-net
- Public launch
Set Protocol:
- Added SushiSwap trade adapter
- Added Uniswap trade adapter
- Added Chainlink, $BAND, $HEGIC, $COVER oracles
Set managers can now trade using Sushi / Uniswap liquidity & use these new Chainlink oracles for NAV issuance.
-You can earn a lot of INDEX for successfully launching a product with the Coop
-Index Coop has broadened beyond indexes to a diverse array of structured products
-Software engineering skills are not required
-Join the Index Coop forum or Discord to start the conversation
Securities, Insurance and NFTs
Nexus Mutual:
-The unlock period on all new stakes will be 30 days.
-The unlock period on current stakes are reduced by 60 days.
-The unlock period on pending unsakes have been reduced by 60 days.
Liquidity Relays
0x project:
- Announcing the 0x V4 vote: Since January 16th, ZRX token holders are able to go to https://0x.org/zrx/vote/zeip-82 and cast their vote. The vote will end on Saturday, January 23rd.
- 0x Protocol V4 Bug Bounty: The program pays out up to $100k for critical exploits and is open to anyone.
Matcha:
1inch.exchange:
- 1inch hits $10B total volume.
- 1inch launches new liquidity mining program: The five following pools will participate in the new liquidity mining program, which started on January, 9th:
Under the new program, another 1% of the 1INCH token total supply will be distributed among providers of liquidity to the above pools in equal shares. The program will run for one month.
- Earn rewards by holding 1INCH tokens: Through January 31, all 1INCH holders can take a share from a 5,000,000 SFP reward pool by participating in the Holding Challenge from SafePal.
- 1inch to sponsor MarketMake hackathon by ETHGlobal and support BUIDLers.
- Maker DAO PSM is added to 1inch.
Bancor:
- Bancor v2.1 Protocol Health Report: January 2020: Three months after Bancor launched single-sided liquidity & impermanent loss protection, the team has released a report analyzing the growth and overall health of the protocol.
- New proposals currently in the late-stages of development by the BancorDAO are worthy of attention. This includes the proposed “Bancor Vortex”, which seeks to create new revenue streams for LPs staking BNT.
Kyber:
- Kyber Ecosystem Report December 2020: Read the latest developments, stats, and figures from Kyber World.
Uniswap:
- DeFi continues to gain attention as the major protocols pick up steam. The Stanford Blockchain Club has joined Uniswap as a delegate to provide guidance and governance in the future.
- UNI Grants applications now open: The first wave of UNI grants has the goal of funding projects working on usability, community and tooling.
Payments Networks
Raiden Network:
Check out the latest Raiden Weekly. Update 152 covers:
- Progress towards the mainnet release for the Raiden Light Client
- Bugs fixing
- Advancement of the Bespin milestone
Synthetix:
- SNX staking live on Optimistic Ethereum L2: A guide on how to migrate your SNX to OΞ on L2.
- The Optimistic Ethereum Transition
- The Castor release: Details about the technical release. As per SIP-60 and the recent Castor release, the new escrow contract is now live. SNX stakers with escrowed SNX will need to migrate to the new contract before they can claim staking rewards or vest any escrowed SNX.
- New sEUR incentive on Curve: Details for the new SNX incentive to contribute sEUR to the new Curve liquidity pool.
- Multi-collateral loans bug disclosure: Details about a recent bug found in the multi-collateral loans release.
- Synthetix 2021 Detailed: Synthetix is poised to have a big 2021 with a lot of updates coming to the protocol — read the above post to get the full breakdown.
Privacy protocols for DeFi
Ren protocol:
More updates
- Cross-asset swaps now live on Curve: Curve now allows you to use Synthetix to do cross-asset swaps with minimal slippage and fees. Read more about it here.
- Sushiswap 2021 Roadmap: In this update, the Sushiswap team details their 2021 roadmap including BentoBox, Governance updates, layer 2 work and more.
- Alpha Homora V2 detailed: Alpha Homora v2 includes a new logo, new user interface, more functionalities, and more partners including Balancer, Curve, Cream and Sushiswap.
- ShapeShift goes DeFi: The Colorado-based non-custodial exchange is now routing orders through decentralized finance (DeFi) applications in a bid to get rid of know-your-customer (KYC) regulations that gutted the cryptocurrency trading platform back in 2018.
- Yam 2020 Recap & 2021 Roadmap: In this post, the Yam team gives a recap of all that happened in 2020 and provides a roadmap update covering all the features coming to the protocol in 2021.
- Announcing Futureswap V2 Beta: V2 of Futureswap provides features that serious traders expect, including live pricing, more performant trading, and higher capital efficiency. Core features such as AMM style liquidity providing, incentivized usage, and community governance remain mostly unchanged.
- Airswap 2021 revamp: Airswap — the decentralized p2p trading protocol — is planning on a major revamp in early 2021, based on this announcement there seems to be major changes coming to the protocol from a smart contract, tokenomics, and even branding level.
- Introducing Fei Protocol: Fei Protocol aims to build a new decentralized, fair, liquid, and scalable stablecoin that exhibits a high fidelity peg.
- Charm live on mainnet: Charm is a new decentralized options protocol. It uses an innovative mechanism that can create options markets which are liquid and cheap for users to trade on.
- Notional launches out of beta: Notional allows you to borrow assets at a fixed rate and you can currently borrow USDC and DAI at less than 5%.
- Yield Protocol releases RateLock: RateLock is a new tool that allows Dai borrowers on Maker to lock-in a low interest rate with as little as one click.
- Introducing Coinbase Asset Hub: The Coinbase Asset Hub is an interface for digital asset issuers to manage the full lifecycle of their assets.
- Crypto exchange giant Binance is teaming up with the Orbs project to launch a new DeFi startup accelerator.
MISC
- The Holy Grail of Stablecoins
- Unicorns or Sushi?
- Building in DeFi Sucks (part 2)
- AMM LPs and Layer 2 in times of Market Volatility
- US regulator: Federally chartered banks can facilitate stablecoin payments, issue their own
- Are we in the DeFi-driven, Fourth Crypto Cycle? a16z’s Chris Dixon says aye.
- An explanation of how Curve and Synthetix’s new swap feature works
- The bullish case for YAM
- Layer 2 DEX trading volumes
This is not financial advice.
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