To the DeFi Community,
What would this recap be without a reflection on the UNIversal Basic Income.
For those sleeping under a rock, Uniswap released its UNI governance token with a retroactive distribution to past users. Whether you were a trader, a liquidity provider, or a loyal $SOCKS holders, Thursday marked a sweet surprise with a free airdrop good for 15% of the total supply to value-added actors.
We’re thrilled to announce that UNI, the Uniswap Protocol governance token, is live now on Ethereum mainet!
Read more:https://t.co/RD3mwEUyHn
Ethereum Address: 0x1f9840a85d5af5bf1d1762f925bdaddc4201f984
— Uniswap Protocol 🦄 (@UniswapProtocol) September 17, 2020
Now, while the common school of thought for airdrops is “this is going to dump”, we’ve actually seen quite the opposite. Given that the largest UNI recipients are mainly OGs and loyal Ethereum supporters in the form of long-term liquidity providers, the narrative has quickly changed to UNI being a scarce asset.
What’s more interesting here is the ongoing trend of rewarding value-added users for past contributions. Projects like Handshake and Curve are some of the first to come to mind with a version of this trend, and it’s one that I expect to see plenty more of in the coming months. In short, the best people to hold your token are your loyal followers. By making early adopters wealthy for supporting before incentives were in play, projects are creating superfans for the long run.
after $UNI, i hope that distributing tokens to your active community becomes a best practice for DeFi apps.
— ΞWoki is AFK. pls file a github issue! (@owocki) September 18, 2020
The community has a suite of interest takes around this topic, and it will be fascinating to see how it plays out in practice. But, what I’m really interested in is the evolution of Unsiwap governance itself. With UNI at play, centralized exchanges are no longer the most liquid vehicles for many of the top DeFi tokens. Just as we saw with the Curve governance war, I expect to see an influx of projects fighting to acquire UNI as a means of influencing proposals for future liquidity mining incentives.
Retroactive distributions to value-added users is a huge win. 🔑
Reward people for playing before incentives were on the table.
Make your early adopters rich and your community is unstoppable. 🦄 pic.twitter.com/1YIjiYg1mL
— Coopahtroopa 🔥_🔥 (@Cooopahtroopa) September 17, 2020
In case it isn’t obvious yet, governance is valuable, and projects like Unsiwap are here to show exactly why. Despite the 0.05% protocol fee being timelocked for 180 days, many politicians are keeping a close eye on that countdown to take the hottest governance token into overdrive.
Until then, enjoy the free PS5 and remember, don’t send your UNI to the contract address.
– Cooper
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The leading DeFi liquidity protocol surprisingly distributed UNI tokens along with a $2,500+ airdrop to users
The DeFi dashboard released a weighted DeFi token index leveraging Set Protocol for automated rebalances
The synthetic asset protocol is giving rebates to partner applications that drive volume to Synthetix
The unsecured lending protocol announced their October launch date along with Teller Liquidity Mining
Fair Launch Capital announced its first Fair Launch Grant to trustless margin trading protocol for any synthetic asset
- Total Value Locked: $9.1B (up +15% from last week)
- DeFi Market Cap: $14.9 (down -8%)
- DEX 7 Day volume: $5.47B (down -6%)
- DAI supply: 651.9M (up 45%)
- Total DeFi users: 457K (up +3%)
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Aave is a leading lending protocol supporting dozens of the top DeFi tokens. Aave recently showcased an EMI license, giving them the ability to onboard new users directly into DeFi through their parent company – Aave Limited.
We’ve done an extensive amount of coverage on Aavenomics – a new suite of protocol upgrades that incentives protocol safety through AAVE rewards and protocol fees. The best part about Aavenomics is that all of its parameters – including the logistics of Aave yield farming – are governed by tokenholders. There’s a ton of good activity happening on the Aave governance forum and we’d definitely recommend checking it out if you fancy yourself to be an Aavenger.
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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.