This Week in DeFi – October 15

To the DeFi community,

This week, Sushiswap and Celo announced a partnership to bring $12.6 million in liquidity mining rewards to Celo’s mobile-first user base, with rewards going live at 4pm ET on October 14. The partnership also launches with support from Optics, an L2 token bridge that will now allow users to bridge from Polygon to Celo without needing to route through Ethereum (while offering withdrawal capabilities to Ethereum as well).

1/ Sushi is stoked to partner with @CeloOrg to bring the promise of DeFi to more than 6 billion smartphone users around the world, with $12.6M of joint liquidity mining rewards in both $CELO and $SUSHI

Read more here:https://t.co/3q3fEj45rd

— SushiChef (@SushiSwap) October 13, 2021

Dubai-based Morningstar Ventures announced a $15 million investment in Elrond, to provide support to founders and builders working within the Elrond ecosystem. Funds will also be used to set up an Elrond Incubator based in Dubai, with an eye towards growing Elrond use in the UAE and the rest of the Middle East.

Calling all builders!

A $15M USD battlechest with strategic support from the new @ElrondNetwork Dubai incubator by @Morningstar_vc is calling out to exceptional builders.

It’s time to build. https://t.co/hOLSCjYQUj

— Lucian Mincu (@LucianMincu) October 13, 2021

pNetwork presented plans for V2, enabling enhanced cross-chain and cross-L2 transfers of both assets and data messages, employing a unified infrastructure layer to route between chains as opposed to the current one-lane pToken bridges between individual chains. Postman will do the same but with smart contract data, allowing assets like NFTs and oracle data to more easily be transferred throughout the crypto ecosystem. 

If you’re just coming on board our #DeFi steamboat, you should know that there is much to be excited about. 🚢🚀

🦜 Here is an overview of what’s coming with #pNetwork v2: 👇https://t.co/jdO7Ow8WFZ #pTokens #crosschain #interoperability

— pNetwork 🦜 (@pNetworkDeFi) October 12, 2021

And LP-collateral loan primitive Alchemix released a roadmap for the future, including the announcement that V2 code is nearly complete and will go for audits on November 1. Plans also include increased decentralization and launching a DAO, a grant program, multichain support, and a slew of other improvements to bring the protocol into the DeFi 2.0 epoch.

The future isn’t written in stone, but rather arises from the cumulative blood, sweat, and tears of dreamers on a mission.

We proudly present our roadmap to transmute Alchemix and DeFi along with it.

Get a sneak preview of the future in our article.https://t.co/p4Pzkjb41M

— Alchemix (@AlchemixFi) October 8, 2021

With institutional interest firmly entrenched, DeFi has become an industry in its own right in a remarkably short time. Now some of you may have heard the rumblings about ‘DeFi 2.0’, distinct and different from the Compounds and Curves of the world, but still a piece of the broader project to democratize financial access and improve financial wellbeing around the world.

Opinions on DeFi 2.0 are still being formulated and consolidated, but here are a few initial thoughts. DeFi 2.0 protocols are largely reliant on the building blocks laid down during the initial DeFi wave – decentralized exchanges, overcollateralized lending protocols, and the wrapped tokens and bridges that allow value to more or less freely float through the ecosystem.

DeFi 2.0 increasingly seems to be capturing those protocols that use these foundational components in ways not seen before in the traditional financial system, or anywhere else. Increasingly robust algorithmic and incentives-based stablecoins are beginning to find real uptake and traction while avoiding implosion, while time-based lending protocol lockups and staking schemes try to find the balance between ‘too difficult to understand’ and ‘too good to pass up’.

Finally DeFi 2.0 represents a truly multichain experience, where demand (even in this nascent industry) can only realistically be met by offering services on multiple blockchains or L2 solutions. As with many things in crypto, there’s more to believe in and a more sturdy foundation, but the number of potential winning projects to keep track of has grown exponentially – in this world the factors to consider change, but picking good investments rarely gets easier.

Nobody can keep track of it all, and I’ve missed more winners than I care to admit. But keep your head in the game and do your research, and it will be hard not to come out at least a bit better off.

Thanks to our partner:

Total Value Locked: $96.3B (up 3.63% since last week)

DeFi Market Cap: $135.76B (up 3.18%)

DEX Weekly Volume: $15.62B (down -3.99%)

DAI Supply: 7.02B (up 7.83%)

Total DeFi Users: 3,543,720 (up 1.58%)

[Chainalysis Insights] – DeFi Drives Growth in World’s Second-biggest Cryptocurrency Market But Ransomware Is Cause For Concern

[Owen Fernau – The Defiant] – DeFi 2.0 Wave of New Projects Test Liquidity Mining Alternatives

[Frogmonkee – Bankless] – The next big unlock for DAOs

[Anthony Sassano – The Daily Gwei] – Innovate or Die – The Daily Gwei #355

Alex is a Content Writer at Circle, with previous experience at tech startups, Fortune 500 corporations, and as a freelance writer and analyst. Interests include cutting-edge technologies in blockchain, energy, supply chains, transportation, urban living, and more and he has been in the crypto community since 2014.