Amidst bearish news and regulatory clampdowns, the market pushes ahead — in yet another exciting week in DeFi. Check out the most important tweets, news and alpha you wouldn't want to miss.
The SEC clamps down on Binance USD (BUSD) in the latest regulatory move against DeFi (thanks Gary), sparking a flight out of the Binance-backed stablecoin. Zero-knowledge (ZK) players, zkSync and Polygon also take steps forward, heating up the battle for dominance in the ZK space. Finally, Umami comes back from the dead, after being abandoned by their CEO just last week.
DeFi waits for no one. Let’s see what went down this past week in DeFi.
Overview: Market Shrugs Off Bad News
This week, Total Value Locked (TVL) across all chains took a sharp swing upwards, recovering from last week’s jitters. Amidst a slew of negative news including less-than-positive inflation metrics and regulatory risks surrounding BUSD and Kraken, the crypto market shrugs it off, decoupling from the equity markets for the week as major cryptocurrencies push to new highs. Significant movers include Telegram’s L1 chain, TON, and Chinese-based chain, Conflux, as they score a partnership with a major Chinese telecommunications corporation.
Source: Defillama.com
Welcome to Alpha Central
DeFi yield farmer, CJCJCJCJ drops hot alpha on how exactly to look for and find great farming opportunities in DeFi. An essential read for any aspiring degen out there!
The Hong Kong government launches $100m worth of tokenized green bonds on a private blockchain, the latest in Hong Kong’s shift towards more crypto-friendly behavior in recent months.
OnChain Wizard touches on his February catalysts and narratives, covering a range of sectors including liquid staking, perpetuals, AI and many more.
Ansem opens up on his February outlook as well, with the focus on zkEVMs, app-chains, modular architecture and Arbitrum.
Ethereum: It’s Uniswap’s World, We’re Just Living in It
Uniswap greenlights the proposal to deploy on the BNB Chain after a dramatic voting process with large crypto fund, a16z, voting against the deployment.
Yield tokenization protocol, Timeless, drops Bunni Pro, a complementary compounding product for Uniswap V3 positions, which integrates with Timeless, creating a positive flywheel.
Analytics platform for liquidity providers, Revert Finance, brings atomic swaps to Uniswap V3 positions, allowing users to easily swap in and out of Uniswap V3 positions from only 1 of the assets in the position or even a completely different asset!
Paxos Global has been sued by the SEC regarding the issuance of BUSD. Paxos has since announced the decision to stop issuing BUSD. The decision has resulted in a flight to alternative stablecoins such as USDT, USDC, DAI and FRAX.
Ethereum-based research organization, Flashbots, launches MEV-share, which shares profits from Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) with Ethereum users, rather than just with block builders and validators.
Popular multi-chain decentralized exchange (DEX), Sushi, announces Sushi Studios, a framework to empower builders and expand Sushi’s suite of products without hindering development of Sushi’s main products.
Curve Finance puts up a governance proposal on the price oracles for stablecoin pools, hinting the upcoming launch of their native stablecoin, crvUSD.
Balancer unveils Generalized Boosted Pools, which enables higher capital efficiency in Balancer as well as bringing greater flexibility to users in swapping between regular tokens and their yield bearing counterparts.
L2s: ZkSync Open For Business
Major zk-rollup player, zkSync opens their Mainnet to builders, alongside a rebrand to zkSync Era. Perhaps more importantly, their entire codebase has also been open-sourced, allowing anyone to view, fork and build upon their code.
Rollup-as-a-Service platform, Caldera, releases Spark which allows any user to deploy an Optimistic rollup in just 5 minutes.
Arbitrum-based options vault protocol, D-Squared Finance, also launched their public sale this past week, seeing strong demand as investors speculate over the Arbitrum token airdrop.
Ex-Umami Finance CEO, Alex O’Donell pulls the plug on Umami Finance Discord and Twitter. The remaining team members, who are committed to rebuilding without their traitorous CEO, restart their Twitter account as UmamiDAO.
Redacted Cartel looks to expand their Hidden Hand mechanism to Arbitrum’s Camelot DEX in a partnership as Camelot DEX looks to launch gauges soon with the xGRAIL token. Hidden Hand is a marketplace product by Redacted over governance incentives, or bribes.
Polygon: ZkEVM Gets a Date on Valentine’s
Polygon finally announces the date we’ve all been waiting for. Their zk-Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) layer will launch on the 27th March after much speculation and anticipation in the ZK space.
German multinational manufacturing corporation, Siemens, takes a step into the crypto space, issuing €60m 1-year digital bond on Polygon Mainnet.
Credit-marketplace protocol, Clearpool Finance launched their institutional credit platform, Clearpool Prime, this past week as well on the Polygon Mainnet, allowing retail users to lend directly to institutional borrowers in a decentralized fashion.
Avalanche: Gaming x Subnets
Game studio, DOS Labs, launches a gaming focused subnet named DOS Chain, for their battle royale game, MetaDOS, on Avalanche. The chain features a user-friendly custom wallet and zero-gas fees alongside their own block explorer and NFT marketplace to support MetaDOS.
Polkadot: Pendulum Swings Into Action
Micropayments fintech platform, SatoshiPay, launches Pendulum Mainent, a Polkadot parachain. The chain is designed to link the fiat and DeFi ecosystems via the bridging of compliant and robust fiat-pegged digital assets into DeFi.
Cosmos: Rho Today, Lambda Tomorrow
Canto governance votes go live for a 30% reduction in emissions and liquidity mining rewards after Canto sees huge interest from investors in early 2023, seeking to scale back in token inflation to focus on sustainability.
The Cosmos Hub completes the Rho Upgrade, pushing minor bug fixes and the addition of the Global Fee module to the Cosmos Hub. The next upgrade, Lambda, will implement the long awaited, Replicated Security.
Another Week, Another Airdrop
NFT marketplace, Blur, releases their highly-anticipated airdrop, with almost 90% of recipients claiming within the first day.
Leveraged trading protocol, MUX Protocol, announces an airdrop for users who traded more than 10k on the Gains Network platform between 9 December 2022 and 9th February 2023.
Move-to-Earn platform, StepN, also announces an airdrop for Genesis sneaker holders, with the snapshot taken on 12th February.
Popular token-gating service, Collabland, announces a surprise airdrop for more than 2 million eligible recipients. Claims will open 23rd Feb 2023.
Last but not least, Aave’s decentralized social media platform, Lens Protocol, heats up as a deleted tweet on the Lens Protocol Twitter account sparks speculation of an incoming airdrop.
The market craves the new highs and pushes ahead even as bearish news and regulatory fears seep into the market. Brave builders keep going and are rewarded for their resilience. Stay tuned for next week’s edition and keep supporting your favorite projects, degens!
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