To Our DeFi Community,
The pace of innovation in DeFi never ceases to amaze.
Whether it’s new products, new upgrades, new tokens, or new investment rounds closing, we’re genuinely having trouble keeping it up with it all. To give you an idea, here’s what we saw this week alone as DeFi closed out Q2:
- Kyber’s Katalyst upgrade launch date set for July 7th
- 0x launches it consumer-friendly DEX, Matcha
- Synthetix releasing Binary Options
- Nexus Mutual releasing pooled staking
- The Graph closing a $5M investment
- bZx releasing governance token details
- Curve releasing governance token & DAO details
- Tornado Cash launching a DAO
- Maker adding KNC and ZRX collateral
- Compound changes it COMP token distribution model
- MetaCartel Ventures investing in Zapper
And that’s just what we covered. There’s plenty of other things – like Augur’s V2 launch, DXdao’s Omen, and MCDEX’s ETH perps – that barely missed a feature and smaller projects that we have yet to discover.
Everyone working in DeFi is wildly bullish these days and the sentiment is beginning to show. DeFi tokens are starting to skyrocket in value, day after day. Kyber Network’s KNC surged up 65%, Bancor‘s BNT spiked up 45%, Synthetix‘s SNX is up +28%. The strong performance isn’t this past quarter or in 2020 – that’s just in the past 7 days. People are flooding into the market to scoop up these tokens. Why? Because there’s an increasing amount of tangible value backing them. The industry has spent two years iterating and working on improving token economics. Now, token models are dialing-in on proper value accrual mechanisms. This was exemplified perfectly with KNC’s upcoming Katalyst upgrade enabling KNC stakers to earn ETH for governance participation. You participate in shaping the future of the protocol and you get paid for it in a liquid asset. Not another obscure token. You get ETH.
Equally as important, fundamental metrics are starting to gain meaningful traction. Look at the DEX sector for example. Ethereum DEXs have experienced nearly $1.5B in volume over the month of June alone, resulting in a 70% increase from the previous month. Moreover, DEX volume in 2020 has reached $5.1B – twice as much as all of 2019 combined. And we’re only halfway through the year.
You literally cannot be bearish on this space. If you are, you’re living in banana lands because this stuff is insanely exciting. It’s open financial services for anyone, anywhere. No paperwork. No banks. All you need is an internet connection and some ETH for gas fees (which are brutal these days by the way).
Don’t worry about what the Bitcoin Maxis say – we’re staying in our lane focused on building open financial infrastructure for the world.
#DeFi origin story. pic.twitter.com/kP1bYoahOs
— Samson Mow (@Excellion) July 2, 2020
Till next week!
-Lucas
Interest Rates
DAI
USDC
The DeFi liquidity protocol announced a July 7th launch date for its highly anticipated Katalyst upgrade
0x launched their consumer-facing exchange routing liquidity from Uniswap, Balancer, Bancor and 0x.
The DeFi data query startup closed a $5M token sale from MultiCoin, Coinbase Ventures, DTC Capital, and others
The derivatives protocol launched binary options, allowing anyone to bet on the future price of any asset on the platform
The discretionary mutual released pooled staking, a key piece for the DeFi insurance protocol to scale its capacity
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Analyst at Bankless – one of the leading resources for open finance. Lucas is an active contributor to the DeFi ecosystem with appearances in other notable DeFi outlets including The Defiant and Our Network. He has years of experience working with dozens blockchain and token startups where he focused on token economics, marketing, and growth.