DeFi in Ether: 9B milestone, Uniswap is now #1 for TVL and it releases Token Lists, Aave acquires electronic money license, Yearn introduces delegated funding vaults, 1inch token and liquidity mining program announced, Synthetix’s Pollux release, dYdX LINK-USD perpetual market is live, and much more!

Paradigm
Paradigm
Published in
19 min readSep 2, 2020

Biweekly update on Ethereum DeFi ecosystem vol.12, 19th August — 2nd September

TL;DR

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Total Value Locked in DeFi

Source: defipulse.com

Top DeFi Tokens by Market Capitalization

Total Market Cap: $17,632,467,339

Source: defimarketcap.io

DeFi Aggregators

yEarn.finance:

Delegated Funding DAO Vaults: Delegated funding DAO vaults are a new product being deployed to the Yearn Finance protocol. Funders provide YFI into the fair launch Vault. This works as per a normal delegated vault, you receive your LP share based on your contribution. Yearn also launched their insurance product.

mStable:

MTA Staking Update: In this update, mStable summarises the current thinking about how staking will look, the functions it will serve, and the risk reward ratios it will entail.

Huobi Launches MTA.

Lending

Aave:

These weeks, Aave was #1 on DefiPulse for TVL.

Aave company also got a UK license to provide payment services: Aave’s UK entity responsible for integrations and support, Aave Limited, is now licensed as an authorised electronic money institution. After a lengthy application process, the authorisation was granted in July by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

The team also announced that they’ll support a proposal to add a RealT Market to the Aave Protocol where RealT assets can be used as collateral.

Check out August Update: DeFi in VR, Governance on testnet, and EMI license.

YFI is now listed on Aave.

Moreover, Stani Kulechov, Founder & CEO at Aave talked about the innovation of crypto and DeFi lending and its product development on OKExDeFi Roundtable.

Huobi launches LEND.

Aave is now live on Token Terminal and Instadapp.

Previously, in collaboration with Aave, the Opium Team built and launched a Credit Default Swap for Aave’s recent Credit Delegation feature.

Compound:

Governance Updates

There are currently many active and important discussions in the Compound governance forum. See below for highlights, and please add your perspective:

In addition, there is a proposal from @tarun and Gauntlet Networks that is in the active voting process right now.

Completed Votes

As for votes completed since the last newsletter, Proposals 20 and 21 passed with effectively unanimous support:

Proposal 21: Reduce COMP emissions by 20%

Based on the “Systematically Reduce Emission Quantity” forum discussion led by @tarun, Gauntlet Networks has created Proposal 21 to lower the compSpeed (the emission rate of COMP) to 0.176 COMP per Ethereum block. Their stated intention is to follow up this proposal.

Proposal 20: Upgrade cUSDT Interest Rate Model

  • Status: Executed August 21st, 2020
  • Proposer: blck
  • Voting Results: 898,364 For and 1 Against
  • Summary: With help from fellow community member Ar00, blck proposed and passed a new interest rate model for cUSDT, based on the JumpRateModelV2 upgrade that the Dharma team passed for cDAI. Read the community discussion on the proposal here.

Join the Compound governance discussions at Comp.xyz, and be sure to either vote on proposals with your COMP, or delegate your COMP voting rights to a representative of your choice.

Binance Offers cDAI Interest Rates

Binance has launched DeFi Staking, allowing its users to earn interest on DAI by supplying it to Compound, directly through the Binance interface.

Currently, Binance offers three staking options, with customized terms around minimums/maximums, unlock period, and time commitment:

This type of integration highlights the flexibility of the base functionality of the Compound protocol, which enforces none of Binance’s customized terms (it has no minimums/maximums, no unlock period, and no required time commitment), but still fully empowers Binance to design and launch customized interest rate products that make the most sense for its own users and its own business.

Highly programmable, openly accessible, transparent, and reliable — this is the power of DeFi!

Third-party integrations like Binance’s are crucial for broadening access to yield opportunities and simplifying the onboarding experience for users. If you are a developer interested in adding Compound interest rates to your application, exchange, custody offering, or any other product, please feel free to reach out to our team for technical guidance and support.

Dharma:

Dharma released “Intelligent Slippage Fees”, a major step forward for its intelligent fee system. Intelligent Slippage Fees is the next evolution of Dharma’s intelligent parameter setting system. In short, they calculate the intra-block volatility for a given token pair over the last 12 hours, and set the slippage fee at the 95% confidence threshold. Check out the details here.

And Dharma now supports ERC20<>ERC20 Pairs.

Together, these two features make Dharma the easiest place to trade anything on Uniswap.

Furthermore, Surge Fees in Dharma released: Normally Dharma is able to provide free gas by subsidizing the cost with the leftovers from the trade’s slippage buffer. But during periods of extreme demand (e.g. right now), this is not sustainable. In the model of ride-sharing and airlines, Surge Fees in Dharma dynamically adjust to network conditions. Surge Fees kick in when tx costs on Ethereum are simply too high for Dharma to subsidize user trades. They quickly returning to zero once network congestion subsides. When Surge Fees are active, you will see a line-item for this in your swap confirmation. These fees are built into the Guaranteed Rate, so you will still always get the exact number of tokens in the Guaranteed Rate.

Maker:

Making Maker: August 2020: A lot has happened since the last Making Maker! August was all about the Dai debt ceiling, the first Maker Foundation hackathon, governance updates, and more.

Executive Vote: Activate Liquidations 1.2, Multiple Other Changes: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.

  • The cat contract will be replaced as part of the Liquidations 1.2 upgrade.
  • The flipper contracts will be replaced for all collateral types as part of the Liquidations 1.2 upgrade.
  • The new box parameter will be initialized to 30 million Dai.
  • The new dunk parameter will be initialized to 50 thousand Dai for each collateral type.
  • The WBTC-A Risk Premium will be increased from 2% to 4%.
  • The USDC-A debt ceiling parameter will be reduced from 140 million to 40 million.
  • The USDC-A debt ceiling reduction will reduce the Vat global line from 688 million Dai to 588 million Dai.
  • yEarn Finance will be whitelisted on the ETH/USD Oracle.

Executive Vote: Approve August 2020 Governance Cycle Bundle: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.

The First Maker Foundation Internal Hackathon Produces Great New Solutions for Dai: At the first Maker Internal Hackathon developer teams delivered valuable projects focused on Dai and the ever-expanding Maker ecosystem.

The Vital Role of the Dai Debt Ceiling in the Maker Protocol: Answers to questions about the Dai debt ceiling, the roles that asset debt ceilings play in the Maker Protocol, and how each is adjusted.

Ten Brief Explainer Videos About Dai and the Maker Protocol: Ten videos that provide brief overviews of the major elements of MakerDAO — from the Dai stablecoin to the smart contracts that power the Maker Protocol.

xDai:

xDai has been collaborating with Amazon Web Services to show how easy it is to create custom ERC20 tokens using.

Derivatives, Swaps and Prediction Markets

Augur:

REPv2 Token Migration stats:

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

Read more>>>

dYdX:

dYdX LINK-USD Perpetual Market now live: Traders can trade this new market with up to 8x leverage with no expiry. The contracts have been audited by Open Zeppelin, and are fully open-sourced.

Previously, StarkWare and dYdX partner up: Their engineering teams are collaborating on a Layer 2 scaling solution for Perpetual Contracts, based on StarkWare’s StarkEx scalability engine and dYdX’s Perpetual smart contracts. dYdX’s Perpetual Contracts will be powered by StarkEx by the end of this year.

If you missed Bankless AMA with Antonio Juliano check it out here.

Gnosis:

The Gnosis Safe Multisig now stores more than $1B in digital assets.

Gnosis and Energy Web jointly announced a strategic partnership to offer Gnosis Safe services — a multisig enterprise solution for managing digital assets — on both the Volta test network and the Energy Web Chain production network. As part of the partnership, Gnosis will become an Energy Web member and plans to host validator nodes for Volta and the EW Chain.

New incentivization program for stablecoin liquidity providers on Gnosis Protocol/

Mesa DEX starting today:

UMA:

UMA’s Liquidation Opportunity Program: A total of $16,000 will be given away in the coming weeks for those who run liquidator bots on the UMA protocol.

UMA’s Liquidity Mining Pilot — Retro and Rollover: Initial pilot attracted $20mm in locked value and will rollover to a new pool.

Derivatives UMA gets Listed on OKEx.

Fund Management

Melon:

Huobi Global starts trading MLN.

Set Protocol:

Set Community Update #13 — July 2020

-The team updated the TokenSets News Feed Newspaper

- Added Spanish translation to TokenSets Flag of Spain

- Onboarded new Social Traders

Yield Farming Deep Dive

Securities, Insurance and NFTs

Nexus Mutual:

Hugh Karp hops on the Blockcrunch podcast to discuss Nexus Mutual, and:

- Why the time for DeFi insurance is now

- NXM token model

- Insurance mining

- Plans to decentralize + phase out KYC

Binance Lists Nexus Mutual Wrapped NXM.

The Zerion team has added support for tracking your NexuMutual tokens & staked NXM on Zerion.

Liquidity Relays

0x project:

0x’s New Request for Quote System Announced: 0x’s new Request for Quote (RFQ) system allows professional market makers to bring CEX liquidity directly to DEX users to support great pricing for medium and large trades.

  • The growth of DeFi has been possible because of the major improvements in DEX liquidity in 2020
  • DEXs today support small trades well, but struggle to provide competitive pricing for medium & large trades
  • 0x’s new Request for Quote (RFQ) system allows professional market makers to bring CEX liquidity directly to DEX users to support great pricing for medium and large trades
  • Get started today: RFQ documentation

0x Labs Team Hackathon III: A recap of 0x Labs’ internal hackathon — July 2020.

The team has added several new liquidity sources to 0x API: Bancor, mStable, and Mooniswap:

Ethereum’s gas costs have risen dramatically over the past few months as demand in DeFi has skyrocketed. Read through 0x new blog series on Scaling DeFi for an examination of layer 1 limitations, layer 2 options, and of 0x’s strategy.

Matcha:

mUSD, BNT, BUSD, FOAM, PAX, DONUT, LPT, BAND, and OMG are all now available to trade.

BZRX is now available to trade on Matcha.

1inch.exchange:

1Inch token and liquidity mining program announced: In this post, the team details the mechanics and distribution of the 1inch token, how their liquidity mining program works, and how you can get involved.

The team integrated DODO and hakkafinance Black Hole Swap into 1inch.

USDN is now available on Mooniswap.

Forbes is writing about 1inch.

Sergej Kunz, 1inch ’s CEO and co-founder, spoke exclusively to 8btc’s “How We DeFi -ing” program about Mooniswap.

1inch CTO Anton Bukov and developer Mikhail Melnik to talk markets, Mooniswap, the CHI token and more on Santiment Network’s podcast.

Balancer:

Less than a month later and Balancer already have added over $1 Billion to its cumulative trades:

Balancer Adds Multi-Path and Smart Routing: Multi-path order routing means a trade can now jump between multiple pools on Balancer.

Kyber:

KyberSwap is now using Kyber Network Reserve Routing, greatly reducing gas costs for token swaps.

Matic Network is now available on Kyber Network

Loopring:

Loopring Monthly Update — 2020/08: This month the team released Loopring Wallet’s smart contract v1.1 and started the app’s UX/UI redesign. They hope to invite users to an early beta in September. Loopring protocol 3.6 is close to code-complete (a quite special new feature was added) and the external security audits will start in two weeks.

Uniswap:

The project is now was #1 on DefiPulse for TVL.

Uniswap flipped Coinbase for transaction volume

And flipped Bitcoin for transaction fees

Uniswap introduces Token Lists, a new standard for creating lists of ERC20 tokens. This is a community initiative to improve discoverability and trust in ERC20 token lists in a manner that is inclusive, transparent, and decentralized.

Unbundling Uniswap: The Future of On-Chain Market Making

Discover new trending Uniswap pools:

Payments Networks

Raiden Network:

Fresh Raiden Weekly is out.

Synthetix:

With Synthetix’s Pollux release, all Synths are now powered by

Chainlink’s network of decentralised oracles. This marks a major step forward for the decentralisation of Synthetix, as oracles are a pivotal LINK in the system.

Introducing the New Synthetix Visual Brand: The new Synthetix visual brand is now live. The vision for this initiative was to create a distinct and characterful brand identity for the protocol, while expressing the energy of the Synthetix ecosystem.

Privacy protocols for DeFi

Ren protocol:

August Development Update:

  • sMPC Audit by Trail of bits
  • Open-sourced sMPC Primitives
  • Transaction Engine Improvements

RenVM | The Road to Decentralisation:

  • Since the beginning, the plan has been to release RenVM incrementally, and slowly progress from centralised to decentralised. This follows the article published by a16z in January and allows RenVM to remain as secure as possible, even though it is a new and nascent technology.
  • In this blog post you can find an overview of the different phases that RenVM will progress through, with a more detailed follow-up for the beginning phase.
  • Ren wiki also documents these different phases. Here, you will find some more information about what will happen during each phase, what this means for centralisation vs. decentralisation, and what it means for security.

Zcoin is looking to integrate with Ethereum’s DeFi sector via the RenVM.

More updates

USDC Upgraded to V2: The “USDC 2.0” update will allow services that offer USDC support to pay transaction fees (gas) for their users.

Yam V2 Governance Portal Now Live: If you hold YAM, you can now vote on and submit proposals using the new governance portal.

Zapper Raises $1.5m Seed Round: This week, the Zapper team announced that they have raised a $1.5M seed round to expand DeFi accessibility led by Framework Ventures and Libertus Capital with participation from MetaCartel Ventures, Coinfund, The LAO, CoinGecko, and Zee Prime Capital. Previously, Zapper integrated Yearn Vaults, so you can now enter any Yearn vault using any asset on Ethereum with Zapper’s new integration.

Introducing SushiSwap: SushiSwap protocol is an “evolution” of Uniswap that claims to better aligns incentives for network participants by introducing revenue-sharing & network effects to the popular AMM model via the SUSHI token.

MCDEX Adds New Perpetual Markets: These markets include SNX-PERP, LEND-PERP and COMP-PERP that you can now trade on MCDEX’s decentralized exchange.

DefiDollar is Live: DefiDollar is a stable asset backed by an index of stablecoins. DUSD is a hedge against volatility and provides portfolio risk diversification.

Introducing YieldSpace: YieldSpace is a new automated liquidity provider for yDai (a token that is redeemable for Dai at maturity).

Decentralized options platform Opyn launched put options on Curve’s CRV token.

Furthermore, Binance Smart Chain has launched:

Podcasts

Making Money in DeFi with Su Zhu on POV Crypto.

Investing in DeFi Paradigms | Charlie Noyes on Bankless.

🎙️ METACAST: Top Crypto Podcasts of August 2020: a quick overview of what we’ve been listening to last month!

MISC

YAM: More Than a Game (Potentially)

Why YAM is a Nakamoto Scheme

On DeFi Frontends

DeFi and Discourse

Token Terminal’s DeFi dashboard: Greenfield One, a crypto-focused VC firm, has released a research report highlighting the importance of governance systems in DeFi protocols.

The Opium Team’s Andrey Belyakov released a write-up on DeFi derivatives, noting that collateralized derivatives can help prevent the kind of financial crises that unfolded in 2008.

The Fastest Unicorn of All-Time

DeFi Doesn’t Need to Go Mainstream

Using Zapper To Save Time & Gas Entering yVaults

Advanced Analytics Tool For Ethereum & DeFi | Dune Analytics Tutorial

Some tweets from Vitalik & further discussions:

This is not financial advice.

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