This Week in DeFi – February 4

To the DeFi community,

This week, the team behind DeFi Pulse and Index Coop launched Kuiper, a DeFi protocol for index tracking. Kuiper allows participants to variously propose, issue assets into, rebalance and hold tokens that serve as index baskets. The protocol also prioritizes DeFi principles of being permissionless and credibly neutral, with the protocol only allowing changes to three index parameters that will apply equally to all, to ensure no special treatment.

Kuiper is a new permissionless index protocol that I had the pleasure to help out with.

It features a novel “bonded dutch auction” mechanism:

– market makers compete for the right to rebalance
– complexity is pushed out of the protocol

no token

DYOR

good luck have fun https://t.co/tzJmCYYUew

— Will Price (@will__price) February 1, 2022

Aave governance transmitted its first proposal from Ethereum-based governance to the Aave instance on the Polygon network, adding new assets to the platform including CRV, BAL, LINK, and SUSHI. The transmission is a meaningful milestone on the road to an interoperable cross-chain future, and another piece in the puzzle of how to manage applications across multiple blockchains under decentralized governance.

1/ The first cross-chain governance proposal has successfully updated the Aave Polygon Market! This proposal from @aavegotchi is a major step forward in multi-chain governance systems👻✨🚀

New assets listed include GHST, BAL, CRV, DPI, LINK, & SUSHI

A thread on this proposal:

— Aave (@AaveAave) January 31, 2022

DEX aggregator 1inch exchange launched 1inch Earn, a set of liquidity pools for stablecoins following in the design of Uniswap’s V3 pools that compress most liquidity of a given pair into a smaller range in the price range. Earn will also automatically buy and sell stablecoins outside a small range around $1 (0.998 and 1.002) to farm additional APY for liquidity providers.

1/ 📢 Calling upon all brave #liquidity providers 📢

💸 We’re excited to release #1inch Earn, a new investment product offering attractive APYs.

🦄⛏ So grab your pickaxes and prepare to go down to a dungeon of extra earnings!#DeFi #crypto pic.twitter.com/hmLQxdzTqY

— 1inch Network (@1inch) February 3, 2022

And on-chain data analysis platform Dune Analytics raised $69 million in a series B funding round led by Coatue at a valuation of $1 billion. Funds will go towards growing the Dune team and developing the Dune API, and the overarching goal to help spread education and empower crypto users around the world with real time data.

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We’ve raised $69,420,000 in Series B Funding, led by Coatue 🦄

We’ll use the funds to double down on our mission of making crypto data accessible!

& to educate, reward and empower a new generation of on-chain analysts aka Dune Wizards 🧙‍♂️

👇https://t.co/jJtikXCTSg

— Dune Analytics (@DuneAnalytics) February 2, 2022

As crypto markets struggle to break the ongoing downward trend, it’s worth noting just how much of a disconnect there seems to be between development realities on the ground and price action on the screen. From data analytics to undercollateralized DeFi loans, from the fits and starts of early cross-chain interoperability to highly autonomous options trading protocols, the development (and funding) within the broad crypto ecosystem has never been greater or more tangible.

On the regulatory side as well, never before have so many policymakers taken crypto-related issues so seriously; the policy responses span the gamut from calls for wholesale bans on crypto to embracing CBDC pilot programs and more thoughtful tax treatments. These responses are not always positive, but they indicate that the days of cryptocurrency as a niche experiment are long gone.

Bearish trends are no fun, but the world of crypto has so much more to offer now than in years past, where watching charts was genuinely one of just a handful of ways to participate. Today there are hundreds or thousands of startups, protocols, and discord groups desperately seeking more support from anyone who can get up to speed on their vision and make a meaningful contribution. Sitting on the sidelines waiting for number go up is hardly a viable option anymore – find a community you care about, increase your education, and make a contribution to the future we’ll all share.

Thanks to our partner:

Total Value Locked: $81.34B (up 6.69% since last week)

DeFi Market Cap: $110.24B (up 7.74%)

DEX Weekly Volume: $16.53B (down -16.6%)

DAI Supply: 9.2B (up 1.09%)

Total DeFi Users: 4,333,000

[Stefan Stankovic – Crypto Briefing] – Who Is Daniele Sestagalli?

[Anthony Sassano – The Daily Gwei] – Decentralization Matters – The Daily Gwei #426

[John Wang – Bankless] – Layer 2 Tokens Are Coming

[Brooks Butler – Crypto Briefing] – Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, MIT Publish CBDC Research

[Owen Fernau – The Defiant] – Jump Crypto Replaces Over $320M of Wormhole Wrapped ETH in DeFi Bailout

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.