DeFi in Ether: Balancer is live, Dharma adds p2p payments, Uniswap releases V2 details, UMA launches priceless synthetic tokens, MakerDAO transfers MKR token control over to governance

Paradigm

Published in

Paradigm

11 min readApr 1, 2020

Biweekly update on Ethereum DeFi ecosystem, 18th March — 1st April

TL;DR

Balancer is officially live on mainnet.
Nexus Mutual released a new suite of governance proposals.
UMA protocol released details for priceless synthetic tokens with minimized oracle usage.
The 0x team released a comprehensive guide on how to build a DeFi margin trading platform using 0x API. Check out early metrics, Coinbase Wallet compatibility, and more in their latest blog post on ZRX Portal.
The Nuo team is really close to shipping Nuo Exchange for the users and has started internal testing for the product.
The stable coin BUSD from Binance is now listed on Aave. Check out Aave’s latest blog post about data queries and how Aave uses The Graph, with some suggestions on how you could use it in your own projects. Interest rate swaps for Aave have been added to Swap Rate from Opium Network.
Uniswap V2 is the teams’ second iteration of Uniswap and includes many new features and improvements.
P2P payments are live on Dharma. You can now use the Dharma app to send and receive USD from anywhere in the world — all while earning interest.
MakerDAO transfers MKR token control over to governance. USDC is the third collateral type that users can now use to open Vaults on the MakerDAO platform. Read MakerDAO Black Thursday postmortem.
Numerai makes Erasure Bay requests. The team also expanded its popular office hours video calls with a new topic — Erasure Bay.
TokenSets announced cToken trading pairs. TokenSets now supported on imToken. The team announced their support for German across TokenSets.
Synthetix’s Hadar release includes Brent Crude oil, FTSE100 and S&P Global1200.
The Compound team published three guides for beginners to get started building apps that implement the Compound Protocol. They’ve just launched a Governance Explorer to browse the upcoming proposals, addresses, and actions related to Compound Governance. The functioning governance system itself has not launched, but will roll out in line with the plans they outlined in their initial announcement last month. Fidelity-backed crypto security and wallet software provider Fireblocks has integrated with Compound to allow its clients to earn interest directly through Fireblocks’ API or user interface. The Compound Dashboard is now accessible in multiple languages.
The dydx team has optimized the trade page for mobile.
The UBT token is now live on Bancor. Also, Bancor’s FundingTheFuture Virtual Hackathon bounties Gitcoin have been extended for an extra week.
The KyberWidget is now hosted on IPFS, meaning it can be used by anyone, anywhere in the world! Surf the decentralized web by installing the chrome extension.
Augur Weekly is now out. Moreover, the bounty program has been appended to include bounties for finding vulnerabilities in market creation templates.
Version 0.5.0 of the Raiden Light Client is out.
Coinbase Wallet integrates Compound and dYdX.
DMM launched. DMM assets are backed by real-world, income-generating assets and you can easily gain exposure by simply depositing DAI or USDC.
DeBank now live. DeBank is an interface into the world of DeFi that supports apps such as TokenSets, Uniswap, PoolTogether and others.
DeFlast introduced. Swapping the collaterals in Compound to other asset. Powered by Aave’s Flash Loan and Uniswap, all in one transaction and with zero capital requirement.
CoinGecko announced the launch of How to DeFi book and CoinGecko Earn.

Lending

Aave:

Decentralized Data Queries: How Aave uses The Graph: Aave uses The Graph to run GraphQL Queries, which allows you to generate data on many different projects in the Web3 ecosystem! The Graph provides the data for our UI and integrators. Instead of making multiple calls and requests to the blockchain, they can just make one call to the Aave subgraph, making the whole data query process seamless and fast.

In fact, Aave uses The Graph on its own frontend for Aave.com. This article is a general overview on The Graph, with some suggestions on how you could use it in your own projects. A more detailed tutorial will soon be available in Aave developer documentation.

Binance USD is Now Listed on Aave! There’s a hot new stable coin in town and its name is BUSD

The team announced that BUSD from Binance is now available to be deposited and borrowed in Aave Protocol!

Aave has surpassed $38 Million in market size, and now Aave is the first DeFi protocol to add BUSD into the money market!

BUSD is a stable coin pegged 1:1 to the US dollar, and it has received approval from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) and is backed by reserves controlled by Paxos, experts in stable coins. The stable coin was launched in 2019 by a partnership between Paxos and Binance — purchase and redemption of BUSD must be done through the Paxos platform, but trading BUSD with other cryptocurrencies can be done on Binance Exchange.

Aave is collaborating with Chainlink to bring the BUSD-ETH oracle online, ensuring that price feeds are accurate and current. Aave Protocol offers high APY yields on deposits, with a 9.33% APY for stable coin USDT over the last 30 days, for example. Jump into Aave Protocol to start earning interest on BUSD deposits now!

Interest rate swaps for Aave have been added to Swap Rate from Opium Network:

Compound:

New Developer Guides, Governance Explorer, Fireblocks, TokenSets, and Coinbase Wallet Announcements:

How the Compound Team Optimizes Infura Usage to Power Their DeFi Protocol: The Infure team caught up with Geoffrey Hayes, CTO of Compound, to learn more about the protocol, how the team is batching requests to optimize their Infura usage, and why they chose Infura for their infrastructure needs.

The Compound Dashboard (https://app.compound.finance) is now accessible in multiple languages!

Dharma:

P2P payments are live on Dharma!

Dharma now lets you make unlimited, instant deposits and withdrawals to your USD balance using Ether (ETH).

Once you deposit your Ether, you can seamlessly convert it into interest-bearing DAI in your Dharma account.

Similarly, you can withdraw from your USD balance in Dharma directly into any ETH-supporting cryptocurrency exchange or wallet, anywhere in the world, by converting your DAI to ETH during the withdrawal process.

Maker:

Executive Vote: Adjust Multiple Risk Parameters: The Maker Foundation Interim Governance Facilitator has placed an Executive Vote into the voting system, which will enable the community to approve the following alterations to the protocol.

The Executive Vote (FAQ) will continue until the number of votes surpass the total in favor of the previous Executive Vote. This is a continuous approval vote.

Executive Vote: Unblock the remaining Debt Auctions: Unblock the remaining Debt Auctions — March 23, 2020

The Transfer of MKR Token Control to Governance: The Final Step: Transfer of MKR token control to governance is the latest step toward decentralization as the community embraces its role in governing a self-sustaining DAO.

Governance Polls: Adjustments to USDC Stability Fee, Debt Ceiling, Dai Stability Fee, and more — March 23, 2020: The Maker Foundation Interim Risk Team has placed a series of Governance Polls into the voting system which presents a USDC Stability Fee adjustment, Debt Ceiling adjustment, Dai Stability Fee adjustment, Unblock the remaining Debt Auctions, and a Sai Stability Fee adjustment.

USDC Approved by Maker Governance as the Third Collateral Type of the Maker Protocol: As a result of an Executive Vote held this afternoon, MKR holders have accepted USDC as a new collateral asset in the Maker Protocol.

The remaining MKR Debt Auctions are now live:

The Market Collapse of March 12–13, 2020: How It Impacted MakerDAO. MakerDAO Black Thursday postmortem.

xDai:

Synthetix:

Front-end updates: Markets and Assets pages on Synthetix.Exchange, Mintr translation into Korean, and more! Here’s everything the team is launching on their dApps and websites this week!

Ether Collateral Bug Disclosure: Details about a recent bug disclosure for our ETH collateral contract.

The Hadar release: Here’s a guide to everything included in the upcoming Hadar release.

How fee reclamation / rebates work: A guide to fee reclamation and rebates.

Nuo Network:

The Nuo team is really close to shipping Nuo Exchange for the users and has started internal testing for the product.

Derivatives, Swaps and Prediction Markets

Augur:

How One Trader Turned $400 into $400k with Political Futures: Augur Weekly | A Look at the Week in Political Betting, Augur News, and More.

The bounty program has been appended to include bounties for finding vulnerabilities in market creation templates:

3 critical trading risks mitigated in Augur v2.

dYdX:

The dYdX team has optimized the trade page for mobile!

Gnosis:

Breaking Down Ethereum Wallets Options.

Gnosis Safe update:

The latest Gnosis Safe Multisig release has some big updates: Native hardware wallet integration (Ledger and Trezor) _and_NFT (ERC-721) support. Set yours up in just 60 seconds.

UMA:

UMA Announces “Priceless” Synthetic Tokens: UMA’s new DeFi contract design allows for synthetic tokens that have no on-chain price feed, are multi-sponsored to pool risk and are completely synthetic ERC20 tokens.

Fund Management

Melon:

Set Protocol:

How SW Capital Uses Quantitative Analysis and AI to Trade BTC and ETH — Set Social Trader Spotlight. The Set Social Trader Spotlight Series. In these posts, the team will give you insight into exciting new traders that will be trading on the Set Social Trading platform. If you want to learn more about Set Social Trading, you can click here.

In this post, they’ve got an interview with SW Capital, a new trader on the TokenSets platform who’ll be offering the BTC Long-Only Alpha Portfolio and ETH Long-Only Alpha Portfolio Sets. SW Capital’s Set will be live on TokenSets in a few weeks — join the Set Protocol Discord to discuss more!

TokenSets Now Supported on imToken.

The team announced their support for German across TokenSets.

DeFi is More Than Lending.

ICONOMI:

Securities, Insurance and NFTs

Nexus Mutual:

Nexus Mutual released a new suite of governance proposals:

Liquidity Relays

0x:

ZRX Portal: New Features and Beta Updates: Early metrics, Coinbase Wallet compatibility, and more. Since the launch of ZRX Portal, the team has been busy fixing bugs, monitoring the health of the staking system, and adding new features.

ZEIP 76 introduces a new standard for managing the ZEIP implementation process.

The team released a comprehensive guide on how to build a DeFi margin trading platform using 0x API:

1inch.exchange:

The 1inch.exchange team updated 1split.eth to be able to split among ALL Uniswap and Compound pools like ETH-CDAI by swapping token pairs for example ETH-DAI:

Interview with its CEO Sergej Kunz on Ethereum Denver:

Balancer:

Balancer is Live: Balancer Ethereum mainnet launch went well, and the project is now live for ETH users. Ethereum mainnet Balancer launch has seen a muted response from the ETH community. The interest is likely to pick up once the COVID-19 market turmoil subsides. Balancer published its white paper in September 2019, and the launch was imminent ever since the ETH community took an interest in the project.

The Balancer project is based on the Automated Market Makers model of Uniswap. Numerous liquidity pools are part of the Balancer implementation model and are very much similar to Uniswap.

Balancer Labs Raises $3M: The seed round was led by Accomplice and Placeholder with participation of CoinFund and Inflection.

Bancor:

Bancor’s FundingTheFuture Virtual Hackathon bounties Gitcoin have been extended for an extra week!

The Unibright pool on Bancor passed $15K/day in volume in its 1st week live & is generating 140% APR vs. holding UBT on its own.

You can now launch or join an EOS liquidity pool on Bancor in a couple of clicks with xNation.io:

Kyber:

The KyberWidget is now hosted on IPFS, meaning it can be used by anyone, anywhere in the world! Surf the decentralized web by installing the chrome extension:

Loopring:

Loopring Monthly Update — March 2020: During March — the first month following the launch of Loopring Exchange — the team has made many optimizations on the frontend and backend of the DEX. At the same time, they have also made incredible progress in protocol upgrades, prover, and the Loopring smart wallet. Read on for more details.

Uniswap:

Uniswap V2: Uniswap V2 is the teams’ second iteration of Uniswap and includes many new features and improvements. This article will serve as a high-level overview of these changes including:

For full details check out the:

Uniswap V2 code is open source and has been deployed to the Ropsten, Kovan, Rinkeby, and Goerli testnets. The team is optimistic it can be deployed to mainnet in Q2 of this year. However, keep in mind this is a target and not an announced release date.

Payments Networks

Raiden Network:

Version 0.5.0 of the Raiden Light Client is out:

Raiden Weekly:

Other updates

DMM Launched: DMM assets are backed by real-world, income-generating assets and you can easily gain exposure by simply depositing DAI or USDC.

Dex.ag Updates: Limit orders added for various trading pairs and dex.ag have integrated Curve Finance with their X Blaster for better prices on stablecoin swaps.

DeBank Now Live: DeBank is an interface into the world of DeFi (similar to Zerion) that supports apps such as TokenSets, Uniswap, PoolTogether and others.

Microsponsors Now Live: You can now mint and auction your time as NFTs using the Microsponsors marketplace (powered by 0x).

Coinbase Wallet Integrates DeFi Apps: You can now lend out your crypto and earn interest on Compound and dYdX by using the Coinbase Wallet mobile app.

DeFlast introduced: