Numerous launches from projects as EthCC kicks off this week — from Layer-2s like Linea, Base and Mantle to on-chain analytics platform, Arkham Intel. Check out more in our weekly DeFi recap!
On-chain analytics tool, Arkham Intelligence, announces their intelligence marketplace, allowing the buying and selling of information on-chain. In the same week, two new zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) chains, Linea by ConsenSys and Base by Coinbase, arrived on mainnet, with both rolling out over the next couple of weeks.
Huge week for DeFi! Let’s see what went down this past week.
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Overview: Ripple Lawsuit Lifts Markets
Total value locked (TVL) across all chains rose slightly as markets surged on the positive outcome of the Ripple lawsuit ruling against the SEC. Notable increases in TVL were observed on Solana, with a rise of 12% in TVL after a resurgence of interest in the chain, and StarkNet, which saw a rise of almost 20% after a successful mainnet upgrade.
Source: DeFiLlama
Welcome to Alpha Central
Keyu of Fenbushi Capital dives deep into the current state of the DeFi options scene and where they think it's headed in the future.
Messari CEO, Ryan Selkis, drops a long thread on his thoughts for the second half of 2023, covering 95 theses to think about as investors and builders.
Squads Protocol drops a thread covering the Solana DeFi space after an uptick in interest in the ecosystem, covering protocols like Marinade, Jito, Raydium and more.
Ethereum: Arkham Intel Marketplace & GHO Goes Live
On-chain analytics tool, Arkham Intelligence, introduces their intelligence marketplace, allowing users to buy and sell information on any wallet address. Some privacy advocates have called this out as dangerous, terming the whole process as “Dox-to-Earn”. The marketplace goes live on July 18.
Money market protocol, Aave, deploys their native stablecoin, GHO, on the Ethereum mainnet after a successful governance vote, with almost all voters voting in favor of the proposal. GHO can be minted against deposited collateral on Aave and the collateral will continue to earn yield even with GHO borrowed, lowering cost of borrowing for the user.
ETH restaking layer, EigenLayer, raises the caps on their platform to 30K staked ETH tokens in total as announced the week prior. The caps were hit again, resulting in the team further increasing the cap to 45K, which has since been hit once again.
Bridging protocol, Multichain, delivers an update on their protocol after last week’s fiasco in which funds were moved unexpectedly. The update alleges the movement of funds by Multichain CEO, Zhaojun’s sister. Due to all key operations being controlled by Zhaojun, who is allegedly under police custody, the Multichain protocol will cease operations going forward.
Yield vault protocol, Yearn Finance, announces the first five whitelisted protocols for their ETH liquid staking derivative (LSD) basket product, yETH. The protocols are Lido, Frax, StaFi, Tranchess and Swell.
ETH liquid staking solution, Stader, goes live on mainnet, allowing users to now stake ETH for ETHx. More than $1 million in incentives have been set aside for users, with a 1.5x staking boost for the first 30 days and $800K upcoming for liquidity providers.
Blockchain research and development firm, GFX Labs, introduces Oku, a frontend trading platform utilizing Uniswap V3 pools for liquidity. The platform brings the traditional trading platform interface to DeFi, including features such as limit orders, order books and trading histories.
Maximal extractable value (MEV) protected decentralized exchange (DEX), CoW Swap, releases CoW Hooks, a feature enabling multiple DeFi actions to be combined and executed as a single transaction. Think bridging, swapping, and repaying a loan, but all in one transaction.
Options vault protocol Ribbon Finance launches a proposal to merge with their own options and perpetuals trading platform, Aevo, into one protocol under the unified brand, Aevo. The merge will also wind down the existing RBN token for a new token, AEVO.
SpiralDAO releases their liquid wrapper for locked tokens of dynamic distribution automated market maker (AMM), Maverick Protocol. This allows MAV stakers more flexibility over their locked tokens and rewards them with additional SPR incentives from SpiralDAO.
L2s: Linea, Base and Mantle Arrive on Mainnet
ConsenSys-backed zkEVM chain, Linea, is finally going live on mainnet after three months of public testnet. The chain is currently onboarding ecosystem partners before a public roll out of the mainnet alpha during EthCC Paris.
Coinbase’s L2 solution, Base, goes live on mainnet as well, opening their doors to builders to deploy their smart contracts. The public launch for users will occur in early August, when the frontends will go live.
BitDAO's Mantle Network also announced its mainnet alpha at EthCC, after 6 months of development. Mantle is now open to Web3 users, and will focus on building its ecosystem, leveraging its grants program and $200M ecosystem fund, and partnership with Bybit. The network, which partnered with restaking protocol EigenLayer, will also create its own liquid staking protocol using its treasury consisting of 264,947 ETH.
StarkNet successfully deploys the v0.12 upgrade to mainnet, after a successful deployment to the Goerli testnet in the prior week. This upgrade increases throughput on-chain by 10x, as part of StarkNet's Quantum Leap upgrade to enhance the chain’s performance.
Synthetix founder, Kain Warwick, unveils Infinex, a new frontend for Synthetix for perpetuals trading. Infinex is designed to take on centralized exchanges (CEXs) through optimizing for the user experience. Infinex will be governed by SNX and will not have its own token.
Structured product vault protocol, Cega, launches on Arbitrum, allowing users to tap into their vaults on the L2. This move comes just two weeks after the launch of their L2 Vaults, which generates yields based on ARB and OP price action.
Leveraged yield farming protocol, Rodeo Finance, has been exploited for a net amount of $880K. The initial exploit amount was $1.7 million but $810K has since been recovered. The attack occurred due to a flawed oracle implementation.
Manta Network unveils Manta Pacific, a modular execution layer designed for applications leveraging zero-knowledge technology. The layer is built on Optimism’s OP Stack and integrates Celestia for data availability.
Polygon: Polygon 2.0 Token, POL
Polygon Labs releases the plan for a new Polygon token, POL, an upgraded version of the existing MATIC token. POL is designed to be able to secure multiple chains at once via staking, to support the larger Polygon ecosystem of supernets, their zkEVM chain and the Polygon sidechain.
Binance Smart Chain: Equilibria Pools on BSC
Pendle yield booster protocol, Equilibria, deploys on the Binance Smart Chain, just a week after Pendle completed their migration to the chain. The ETH Pool is now live on Equilibria on the Binance Smart Chain for deposits.
Money market protocol, Venus, releases Venus V4, unlocking isolated pools for the platform. Isolated pools improve risk management for the protocol, reducing risk of bad debt for Venus. The upgrade also introduces multiple oracles to Venus to reduce single points of failure.
Cosmos: Dymension Devnet, Incentives Incoming
Cosmos-based RollApp network, Dymension is now live on devnet. Dymension allows for the easy deployment of RollApps, which are Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) enabled appchains that are also EVM compatible. The devnet will be incentivised soon, with 90% of allocated rewards for RollApp deployers.
EVM compatible Cosmos chain, Evmos, completes their v13 upgrade, Apeiron. The upgrade enables smart contracts to transfer tokens across chains, across both EVM chains and appchains, allowing for true cross-chain functionality for protocols on Evmos.
Another Week, Another Airdrop
On-chain analytics tool, Arkham Intelligence, has announced their airdrop alongside the announcement of their intelligence marketplace. Users will receive an airdrop based on the points they have accumulated based on the number of users they have referred to the platform. The airdrop will go live on July 18.
ZkEVM chain, zkSync Era, airdrops a surprise NFT collection, Libertas Omnibus, to a randomly selected 10,000 users out of the 179K identified users on the chain.
Markets turn increasingly bullish with a favorable outcome for the Ripple lawsuit. Projects ride the sentiment, churning out updates and new products for their protocols. Stay updated and stay tuned for next week’s edition, and keep supporting your favorite projects, degens!
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