This year’s ETHDenver was noted by many as the most vibrant hackathon to stop through Colorado since its inception.
With nearly 1,000 guests working around the clock on Valentine’s Day weekend, it’s no surprise that innovation within the Ethereum ecosystem is quickly reaching an inflexion point in which web3 applications will begin to garner attention from mainstream audiences (without them even knowing it).
In this article, we’ll be looking at the Top 3 DeFi hacks of the weekend with a brief overview of what the teams looked to achieve.
For a full overview of all the Open Track submissions, feel free to visit this link.
UpsideDai
As one of the more experienced hackathon teams, UpsideDai pooled experience from DeFi projects like Uma and Cherry Swap to create a margins market on Dai volatility.
Seeing as Dai has been known to break it’s peg (albeit by fractions of a cent) more than any other stablecoin on the market, Upside Dai provides up to 20x leverage while remaining capital efficient with 100% collateralization.
This further allows market makers to arbitrage the price of Dai – all with the intent of trying to stabilize the peg in the long term.
The project is currently live on mainnet and can be accessed either using MetaMask or Fortmatic. The project integrated an instance of Uniswap to allow users to easily select their position – UpDai (long) or DownDai (short) – in tandem with a built-in pooling feature to collect liquidity fees.
ShopiFi
ShopiFi allows e-commerce solutions to funnel USD purchases into DeFi protocols like Compound, PoolTogether or Chai.money via a credit card or Apple/Google Pay.
Perhaps the most novel part of the project is that users do not need any prior experience with cryptocurrency, while merchants can leverage passive income opportunities on each and every purchase made through the platform.
As a demo, ShopiFi launched an e-commerce site selling breakfast cereal, called “General Shills” with unique plays on popular DeFi products including Chai-reeos, Coco Pools and Compound Crunch.
The project was led by members of Consensys CodeFi, the creators of the DeFi Score.
OhmyDeFi
As a product to combat crypto volatility, OhMyDeFi created a suite of options that are represented as ERC20 tokens. These markets allow traders to hedge against future volatility on any asset of their choice. Similar to a derivatives market like Synthetix, option creation is permissionless, meaning anyone can create a put or call option on whatever Ethereum-based token they’d like.
The sale of an option is different from a lending protocol in the sense that a premium can be realized upfront, rather than gradually over the course of the year.
Beyond option building, OhMyDeFi also created a “straddle” which is a combination of both a put and a call option to allow traders to benefit from volatility in the market.
The product is currently live on mainnet with a full presentation which can be found here.
Honorable Mentions
Beyond the projects described above, other awesome DeFi-like submissions include:
- Bitcoin Earn – Earn interest by lending Bitcoin
- MakerDAO BTC Vault – Mint new DAI by using BTC as collateral thanks to RenVM
- Bound – Musician curation markets using bonding curves.
In the coming weeks, our team will be at ETHLondon, ETHCC & ETHParis. If you or your team are interested in demoing your product, feel free to reach out to us on Twitter (@Defirate) or via email to [email protected]
Please note that all of these projects are still highly experimental and should be used with caution!
Until then, be sure to keep up with all the ETHDenver winners using this link.
Cooper is the Editor of DeFi Rate and an active contributor to leading DeFi media outlets like The Defiant, DeFi Pulse, and Bankless. He works with early-stage teams through Fire Eyes DAO to incubate governance models and grassroots community development. He is an ambassador to Set Protocol and an author of a weekly publication called Token Tuesdays. To stay up with Cooper, follow him on Twitter.