This Week in DeFi – June 11

This week, Curve Finance rolled out a major update to V2, enabling trades between uncorrelated assets similar to other DEX like Uniswap or Sushiswap. Curve V2 provides automatic rebalancing of provided liquidity in contrast to Uniswap V3, which allows external inputs to manually rebalance liquidity. The goal behind each design is maximum capital efficiency and minimal end user input, with two different philosophies on how to achieve the optimal combination.

Curve v2 is still hot off the press but this already seems to me to be the fundamental tradeoff between it and Uni v3.

Do you want the protocol doing the rebalancing for you, or do you want to do it yourself (or outsource to a third party app with different strategies)? https://t.co/rqz8BxDD7w

— Ben Simon (@benjaminsimon97) June 9, 2021

More protocols are making their way onto Polygon as Matcha, Furucombo, and 0x set up shop on the leading Eth scaling competitor. In particular, the 0x and Polygon communities have joined forces to donate more than $10 million to bring 1 million users into the Polygon ecosystem, while 0x APIs will make it easy to aggregate liquidity from different DEX protocols that have been ported to Polygon.

1/ ⚛️Announcing the goal to bring 1M users to Polygon with @0xProject, the framework powering decentralized exchange on Ethereum!

To accelerate this goal both the 0x and Polygon communities are together contributing a total of $10.5 mn. pic.twitter.com/2BMlj6UzYy

— Polygon (previously Matic) (@0xPolygon) June 10, 2021

Enterprise-grade blockchain Solana raised $314 million in a funding round led by a16z and Polychain Capital, the third largest funding total in crypto industry history. Solana will use the funding to develop an incubation studio for nascent projects in the Solana ecosystem and provide funding for promising projects via a venture investment arm of the Solana Foundation

🆕Solana Labs raises $314 Million led by
☀️@a16z &
☀️ @polychaincap

Other participants include
☀️@multicoincap
☀️@paraficapital
☀️@jumptrading
☀️@cmsholdings
☀️@coinfund_io
☀️@CoinSharesCo
☀️@sinoglobalcap
☀️@AlamedaResearch$SOL #SOLSZN @solana
📰https://t.co/V4ZPNcSYUG https://t.co/GxHNd4OldM pic.twitter.com/FfFxilzdYF

— S◎L mates ☀️ (@Solana_Mates) June 9, 2021

And behind the scenes, regulators and policymakers continue to ponder the future of DeFi as it relates to the existing financial infrastructure and the patchwork of national financial laws around the world. To help them along, the World Economic Forum has released a DeFi Policy-Maker Toolkit of nearly 40 pages of deep dives into the nature and risks DeFi pose to users and integrated financial systems. As DeFi continues to grow, anticipate more and more regulatory scrutiny into individual protocols and the ecosystem as a whole.

I’ve had several people ask for primers on DeFi. Here you go, @wef on #DeFi https://t.co/lmNJDzD3Jc

— Kyle Davies (@kyled116) June 9, 2021

As with any industry, DeFi is bound to go through cycles of interest, investment, and regulatory examination in the jurisdictions in which it operates (so everywhere on Earth). For those of us that want to see DeFi thrive and believe it is the best path forward to a more open, fair, and prosperous global financial system, there will be much work in the coming years to dispel misconceptions around how DeFi works and who should ultimately reap the benefits.

Given the complexity and pace of innovation, it can feel like DeFi has been around for many years. But it’s worth remembering the industry is just two or three years old at most. What will DeFi look like when it’s getting on towards 13 years old, as Bitcoin is today? Safer, likely more regulated, and with any luck a smoother upward trajectory compared to the booms and busts of today. Are you excited? It’ll be here before you know it.

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