This Week In DeFi – January 29

To the DeFi community,

The need for DeFi has never been more apparent as retail traders take on billionaires and confirm the banks might not be on their side.

Blue chip DeFi protocols have seen impressive price action since the beginning of the year, with Aave up 240%, Uniswap up 200%, and Synthetix up nearly 120% over the last month. After foundational cryptos like Bitcoin and Ethereum saw similar gains in December, you could say January has been a sort of season for alternatives as new or reinvigorated investors go looking for value in the deeper waters of the digital asset pool.

So $AAVE, $SNX, $UNI, and $LINK are ALL hitting new highs / in price discovery right now…

…but it’s probably nothing…

👀👀👀

— DCinvestor | Aftab (@iamDCinvestor) January 16, 2021

 

Traditional markets have been turned on their head as retail investors pile into – you know it – Gamestop. Originally meant to squeeze short sellers, the viral investment quickly evolved into a popular rallying point in a battle against hedge funds and billionaires that use their size and clout to crush good businesses. And with the higher-ups demanding a halt on buying of specific securities to bail out their buddies, it’s clearer than ever that institutions don’t play by the same rules, and the money is only intended to flow in one direction.

I got it wrong. It’s not about occupying Wall Street. It’s about leaving it.

— WSB Chairman (@WSBChairman) January 28, 2021

 

BTC and ETH are on the rise again, and it’s seems there’s been a tectonic shift in the mindset of thought leaders across the internet, and among millions of retail traders around the world.

buckle up. pic.twitter.com/eh8pqHmfq0

— Jane Zhu (@janezhu) January 29, 2021

 

It’s only a matter of time before those inflows turn towards the DeFi market, where real value is being created every single day, for participants and builders alike. The foundation for a new financial paradigm has never been stronger. Are you ready?

The total market cap of DeFi is still less than Gamestop $GME.

One is a struggling Dallas-based video game retailer, the other is core infrastructure of a new global, decentralized financial system.

— Santiago R Santos (@santiagoroel) January 27, 2021

 

In other news, Balancer is experimenting with a new program, reimbursing traders for up to 95% of their gas fees when trading between designated asset pairs. Limited in scope for now, if the program is successful or expanded it could usher in a new strategy in the battle for users and their trading fees.

dYdX raised $10 million in a Series B funding round led by Three Arrows Capital and DeFinance Capital. The fresh cash will go towards adding new assets and investing in strategic markets, adding more juice to the growing DeFi ecosystem.

Decentralized derivatives market Opium announced a retroactive airdrop to anyone who used the protocol in 2020, with a unique release mechanism designed to increase rewards for true adherents. The longer a user waits to withdraw their tokens, the more they receive from the total allotment made by the developers, with the last to claim their reward getting a 30,000x greater stack. If the design helps remove selling pressure from Opium during its early months, it could prove an effective way to root out speculators from the supporting crowd, an eternal goal in the strongly community-driven crypto marketplace.

The winds of financial change are blowing, and if you’ve been in the DeFi game since 2018 or are just joining us, there’s probably never been a week where the obvious weaknesses of the traditional financial infrastructure was more on display. Build it and they will come, so they say.

Highest Yields: dYdX at 12.82% APY, Nexo Lend at 10% APY

Cheapest Loans: CoinList at 3.00% APY, Aave at 7.48% APY

MakerDAO Updates

DAI Savings Rate: 0.00%

Base Fee: 0.00%

ETH Stability Fee: 2.50%

USDC Stability Fee: 0.00%

WBTC Stability Fee: 4.50%

Highest Yields: Fulcrum at 12.6% APY, dYdX at 11.68% APY

Cheapest Loans: CoinList at 1% APY, Aave at 7.77% APY

Balancer community governance allocates 30,000 BAL tokens to encourage use of the Balancer exchange.

Opium protocol experiments with a new retroactive airdrop design built for strong hands.

Decentralized margin trading with dYdX gets a $10 million boost as venture capital continues dumping into DeFi.

Reddit teams up with the Ethereum Foundation on the road to building Web 3.0.

USDC adds support for ACH bank transfers in both directions for US customers.

Total Value Locked: $27.15B (up 13.6% since last week)

DeFi Market Cap: $47.56B (up 17.9%)

DEX Weekly Volume: $12.77B (up 6.8%)

DAI Supply: 1.64B (up 13.9%)

Total DeFi Users: 1,307,000 (up 1.2%)

[Dan Kahan & Owen Fernau – The Defiant] – WSB Wants to Tear Down the Old Financial System; DeFi Wants to Build a New One

[Cooper Turley – Mirror] NFT Issuance Landscape

[Lucas Campbell – Bankless] – DEX Title Fight: Uniswap vs. Sushiswap

[Kerman Kohli – DeFi Weekly] – The New Age of Stablecoins

[Anthony Sassano – The Daily Gwei] – Freedom – The Daily Gwei #171

[Chris Powers – Dose of DeFi] – Forks and Moats in DeFi

[The Defiant] – This is How Wall Street Becomes Obsolete