Welcome to the 29th issue of The Defiprime Post, a quick weekly primer covering the biggest developments around Ethereum and DeFi. This week’s issue covers events between Feb. 7th and Feb. 14th, 2021.
Want to mine some yield farming knowledge? We’re leaking alpha. Check out defiprime’s new Alpha DeFi community forum, where we regularly launch great new yield farming guides!
🔥 The DeFi Bulletin
- Looking for a refresher on how Ethereum governance works? Tim Beiko has you covered in this excellent episode of Cryptotesters.
- Mastercard is opening up cryptocurrency payments to its merchants later this year, so BTC and ETH are presumably first on the slate as the largest cryptos.
- Ethereum L2 provider Matic Network has rebranded to Polygon and is pivoting to become Ethereum’s “internet of blockchains.”
- Ethereum smart wallet Argent just optimized its gas controls and estimates.
- In a new post, Vitalik Buterin breaks down the ongoing Ethereum state size discussions.
- Coinbase Ventures, IOSG, and Paradigm have joined Synthetix’s Spartan Council by strategically purchasing SNX directly from the DAO’s treasury.
- What’s your DeFi Degen Score? Find out now, courtesy of atomic.blue.
- UMA Protocol announced KMI Options, a new DeFi primitive that incentivizes holders to support the total value locked in DeFi protocols.
- Index Coop published its “Introduction #1 Compound Finance” report.
- The Yearn team opened a Maker Vault with some of Yearn’s newly minted YFI in order to repay victims of the recent yDAI Vault attack.
- Yam Finance and UMA Protocol have launched uSTONKs, a basket of popular tokenized stocks.
- mStable launched its tokenized bitcoin product, mBTC.
- Per a new partnership, Yearn will now develop Badger DAO’s BTC Vault products.
- PoolTogether launched its No-Loss Prize Pool Builder.
- Leveraged yield farming project Alpha Homora was hit with a flash loan attack this week to the tune of $38 million. The mechanics of the attack means that Alpha Homora is now indebted to C.R.E.A.M. Finance.
- Missed the MarketMake Hackathon? Some of the standout efforts included volatility index project dVIX, flash loan toolbox FlashSuite, and LP analytics platform Revert.
- The Singapore-based Spartan Group has launched a new $50 million DeFi-focused venture fund.
- Siam Bank’s VC unit is set to invest $50 million across a range of blockchain and DeFi projects.
- Two DeFi projects, Harvest Finance and Value Protocol, are looking to make the leap to Binance Smart Chain (BSC).
- Meet HAPI, a new on-chain cybersecurity protocol for DeFi projects.
- DAO framework project Colony is launching its v2 system.
- The Gauntlet Network released an analysis on the economic incentives of DeFi liquidators.
- This week defiprime interview Biconomy and SynLev.
💱 DEX Report
- Sushiswap’s top chef 0xMaki was the latest guest on the FTX Podcast.
- Is the stablecoin exchange Curve migrating to Polkadot? Not quite.
- L2 DEX Loopring is seeing a boom in its daily transaction counts as users migrate over amid rising Ethereum gas prices.
- 0x is preparing to decentralize its governance.
- MetaMask is now raking in over $100,000 in swap fees per day!
- Fire Eyes DAO has teamed up with Balancer to help boost community engagement around the AMM. And speaking of Balancer, Three Arrows Capital and DeFiance Capital just joined the project’s Series A funding round.
- Check out the Kyber Ecosystem Report January 2021.
- The DODO exchange just unveiled its DODOnomics v2 plans.
- Enzyme Finance, previously Melon Protocol, is distributing 1,000 MLN tokens to Paraswap users in a new trade mining campaign.
💵 State of the Stablecoins
- New stablecoin project Fei Protocol is gearing up to launch its TRIBE token.
- Reflexer Labs, builder of the Rai token that will track the ETH price in stable fashion, just raised $4 million in funding.
💎 NFT News
- Hearing more about NFTs than ever before, but you’re not sure where to start? defiprime has you covered with its new NFT Ecosystem Explained primer.
- NFT marketplace Rarible has released a draft proposal regarding the structure of the upcoming Rarible DAO.
- Jack Dorsey groks NFTs! Welcome to Ethereum, Mr. Dorsey …
Thanks for reading, and be sure to catch the 30th issue of The Defiprime Post out this time next week! 👋♦️👋
