More airdrops are announced as we go into the third week of 2024 — find out more in our weekly DeFi roundup of the latest news and alpha!
Overview
Source: https://coinmarketcap.com/chain-ranking/
Welcome to Alpha Central
Ted covers eight big themes for the coming year including:
- Spot altcoin ETFs, specifically starting with ETH
- The end of quantitative tightening from the Fed
- Return of liquidity to crypto
- Bitcoin Halving
- Inflation stabilizes
- Big improvements in AI
- Recession predictors are wrong again
- China continues to print more money
Ethereum: EigenLayer Unpausing Deposits
Other Product Launches and Updates
- Real-world asset (RWA) protocol, Ondo Finance, releases Ondo Points, which reward users who have contributed to the ecosystem, users in their communities and those who have held USDT or USDC between 26 January 2023 to 31 December 2023. Users must claim their points by 31st March.
- Morpho Labs’ newest product, Morpho Blue, goes live on mainnet, with the first isolated vaults, wstETH-WETH and wstETH-USDC being launched. Morpho Blue isolates lending markets in vaults to manage protocol risk.
- Self-custodial decentralized exchange (DEX), C3, launches on mainnet. C3 aims to mimic the centralized exchange (CEX) trading experience in a permissionless manner. Users can now earn points for staking, trading and lending on the platform.
- ETH native restaking platform, EtherFi, announces its plans for the new year, highlighting its token generation event (TGE) in April, which many suspect will come with an airdrop.
- Ethereum liquidity management protocol, Revert Finance, introduces Revert Lend, a new product enabling Uniswap liquidity providers to collateralize their liquidity positions to secure loans while maintaining management over their liquidity.
L2s: StarkNet Takes a Step Closer to the STRK Token
Other Product Launches and Updates
- Perennial Labs reintroduces Power Perpetuals to Perennial V2. Power Perpetuals are a blend between options and perpetuals, a concept first introduced by Paradigm in 2021. The rollout is starting with BTC^2, a contract that tracks the squared price of BTC.
- Telegram trading bot, Unibot, launches on Arbitrum, now expanding its reach to the popular L2. Users can also bridge funds directly with the bot, leveraging Stargate Finance’s technology,
- The latest release of Synthetix, Andromeda, has been deployed on Coinbase’s L2 Base. With the new release, 40% of fees from perpetuals traded on Base will be utilized to buy back and burn SNX tokens, while the remaining will be distributed to liquidity providers and partners.
- Lending market, Clearpool, introduces Credit Vaults, a new product that seeks to give borrowers greater control and flexibility over their loan terms while attracting lenders with higher rates.
- Yield trading platform, Pendle, launches limit orders on Arbitrum, enabling traders to set orders for Principal Tokens or Yield Tokens for GLP, rETH, gDAI, aUSDC, with more chains and tokens to be supported in the near future.
- Exotic derivatives protocol, Y2K Finance, introduces Turbo Option Vaults, which are designed to accept deposits in the same asset that the derivatives are betting on. This allows the trader to earn outsized returns on calls and enables cheaper hedging on puts.
Cosmos: Berachain Testnet Live
Cryptic Cosmos-based chain, Berachain, finally launches its highly anticipated testnet, allowing users to test out a handful of existing applications on the chain.
EigenLayer announces an official collaboration with the Cosmos ecosystem to enable Cosmos chains to tap into Ethereum’s collective security. Teams such as Lay3er and Ethos are working to develop solutions to enable these functions.
Another Week, Another Airdrop
Tweet of the Week
Blackrock CEO, Larry Fink, shills crypto and shuts down Elizabeth Warren in the same session on live television.
Stay updated on your favorite projects and stay tuned for next week’s edition, and keep supporting your favorite projects, degens!