This Week in DeFi – July 23

To the DeFi comunity,

This week, Grayscale introduced a new DeFi fund tracking asset allocations set by the Coindesk DeFi index. As with other Grayscale products, eligible (accredited) investors and institutions can buy into the fund to track the performance of a basket of blue-chip DeFi protocol tokens, with Grayscale working towards listing the fund on secondary exchange markets.

Today we’re unveiling Grayscale DeFi Fund, our second diversified investment product, which tracks the @CoinDesk #DeFi Index. Accredited Investors are now able to gain exposure to a selection of industry-leading DeFi protocols through the Fund. Learn more: https://t.co/i0hm9vrklB pic.twitter.com/QASEp9SpfK

— Grayscale (@Grayscale) July 19, 2021

Coinfund closed on $83 million in its third fundraiser since 2015, led by Venrock partners. Coinfund has already led or participated in 8 deals since March 2021, and was an early investor in high profile DeFi players like Balancer Labs, Maker, 0x, and The Graph, as well as other dapp projects like Livepeer and Decentraland.

Exclusive: Blockchain investment firm @coinfund_io has raised $83 million for its third #crypto venture fund 💰

I spoke to CEO and founder @jbrukh to find out more about the new fund, his investing strategy and outlook for the crypto VC ecosystem 👇https://t.co/N9bO07GbX6

— Kari Vanessa McMahon (@karivmcmahon) July 20, 2021

Decentralized exchange IDEX is making its way into the Polygon ecosystem, offering unique features like limit orders and front running protection with the familiar Polygon benefits of massive reductions in transaction costs. The official launch is expected within the next few weeks, adding ever more liquidity and DEX options to the Polygon L2 solution.

🟣 @IDEXio $IDEX is coming to @0xPolygon $MATIC!

The decentralized exchange will be launching its IDEX Hybrid Liquidity #DEX on #Polygon with features: high-performance order book and trading engine with liquidity pools of an AMM.

🟣 https://t.co/k9yXWljodL@Polygonians_ pic.twitter.com/CMIuVDEphR

— Polygonians $MATIC (@Polygonians_) July 22, 2021

And Thesis raised $21 million in a Series A funding round with investments from ParaFi, Nascent, Fenbushi Capital, and more. Thesis portfolio projects include Keep, Saddle, and tBTC, and the venture studio is currently working on an open source Web3 wallet as an alternative to Metamask.

1/ Allow us to introduce ourselves.

We’re Thesis, the early team behind @fold_app, @keep_project, @tbtc_project, and @saddlefinance.

And we have big plans.https://t.co/x2ckiW2Yev

— Thesis (@thesis_co) July 22, 2021

While DeFi opportunities on the Bitcoin blockchain are limited, most eyes are still glued to the original cryptocurrency when it comes to understanding which way the market is heading. So traders’ ears started to perk up after Bitcoin quickly recovered from a brief drop below $30k, potentially signalling a reversal of the now months-long downtrend in the broader crypto market that has seen metrics like TVL and DeFi user growth slow.

One thing that’s not slowing down? VC and other high-level investor interest in making bets on builders all throughout the blockchain ecosystem. For those who have been around for more than a market cycle, or with a particular eye towards economic fundamentals of the networks powering DeFi, the long-term expectations of how crypto will impact the world have only grown.

Nobody said it would be easy, and incumbents like banks and other financial institutions are likely to continue to turn up the pressure or regulators to mold these emerging technologies in the framework of what financial services offer today. Investors know that the potential of decentralized financial protocols are so much greater than that, and by now hopefully you do too. 

Maybe the market is turning around now, maybe it will take another year. But when the rocket takes off again, you don’t want to miss it.

Thanks to our partner:

Total Value Locked: $58.97B (up 7.82% since last week)

DeFi Market Cap: $74.83B (up 2.13%)

DEX Weekly Volume: $12.29B (up 8.09%)

DAI Supply: 5.24B (up 0.75%)

Total DeFi Users: 3,063,100 (up 2.08%)

[Anthony Sassano – The Daily Gwei] – Foresight – The Daily Gwei #293

[ thegostep – Ampleforth Blog] – 5 Lessons Learned in Liquidity Mining

[Owen Fernau – The Defiant] – Neon Labs’ Solana Move Tempts Developers with Scaling Power

[Ben Giove – Bankless] – Is PERP Undervalued?

[Fabian Klauder – DeFi Times] – Institutional DeFi: Mass Adoption Behind the Curtain

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.