Welcome to the 63rd issue of The Defiprime Post, a quick weekly primer covering the biggest developments around Ethereum and DeFi. This week’s issue covers events between October 3rd and October 10th, 2021.
Want more in-depth knowledge? We have communications over at our Telegram channel @defiprime. Check out defiprime’s latest news, interviews, guides, and more with daily updates.
🔥 The DeFi Bulletin
- $66M has been recently added to the vulnerable Compound contract, making more funds available for exploitation.
- Officials from the Fed are reportedly preparing for a review of a central bank digital currency, but they are divided on the matter.
- The US FDIC is reportedly studying deposit insurance for stablecoins, with such pass-through coverage being able to insure the holders of tokens against losses of up to $250K, in the scenario where the bank holding the collateral were to fail.
- The SEC Chair, Gensler, recently discussed the SEC’s plans to regulate crypto, during a House Committee on Financial Services hearing. When asked about a ban on crypto, he stated that a ban on crypto was not planned by the SEC, and would up to Congress, affirmed by him saying, “No, that would be up to Congress”.
- The Bank of America has recently launched its digital asset research, along with the publication of its first report, titled, “Digital Assets Primer: Only the first inning”.
- Recently, dozens of protocols are competing for Tokemak’s first five offerings of optimized liquidity, coming from the protocol’s first “sustainable” liquidity reactors.
- Dapper Labs, who helped take NFTs mainstream, now reportedly wants to do the same for DAOs on Flow. Dapper Labs has recently also acquired Brud, which also includes Trevor McFedries.
- Mirror launched a decentralized publishing protocol last December, which is now open to all rather than having closed publishing.
- The DeFi project, Strips Finance, has recently raised $8.5M to launch an interest rates trading platform on Arbitrum.
- Art Blocks has recently raised $6M in an equity round, with the lead investors being True Ventures and Galaxy Interactive.
- Merit Circle has closed a $4.5M seed funding round on the 7th of October. Merit’s main goal is revolutionizing the P2E gaming industry.
- PowerLoom has recently announced its $3.1M funding round, with lead investor Blockchain Capital having the most participation.
- Tinyman, an Algorand-based AMM, has raised $2.5M ahead of its launch, with lead investors Arrington Capital and Borderless Capital seeking to kickstart the Algorand blockchain.
💱 DEX Report
- ThorSwap, a ThorChain-based DEX, has recently raised $3.75M in a private token sale.
💵 State of the Stablecoins
- The SEC has recently subpoenaed the USDC backer, Circle, which says it is “fully cooperating” with the investigation, but refuses to elaborate on the scope of its cooperation.
💎 NFT News
- The Evolved Apes NFT creator has allegedly absconded, with more than $2.7M under his belt.
- Binance NFT has recently launched NFT Deposits for the BSC and ETH networks, along with minimal trading fees and being able to receive mystery box rewards.
- OpenSea seems to be set to eclipse even traditional art sellers, with over $10B in sales for 2021, after record sales in August and a trading scandal in September.
- Speaking of OpenSea, a new marketplace, Infinity, aims to challenge OpenSea, saying that it wants to be an anti-establishment rival to OpenSea, and calls itself the “FTX of NFTs”.
- The Hollywood talent agency, CAA, has recently signed with the NFT collector 0xb1 to help CAA monetize their pieces.
- Dolce & Gabbana set a $6M record for Fashion NFTs this October, after auctioning a nine-piece collection.
- a16z (Andreessen Horowitz) this week valued the developer of the NFT game, Axie Infinity, at $3B.
- Futureswap V4 is to reportedly allow you to trade leveraged perpetuals on CryptoPunks and any other NFTs.
- reNFT has recently closed a $1.5M Strategic Funding round, with the lead investor being Animoca Brands.
Thanks for reading, and be sure to catch the 64th issue of The Defiprime Post out this time next week! 👋♦️👋
