DeFi & L1L2 Weekly (29/11/2023)

Blast skyrockets with nearly US$600M in TVL days after launch. dYdX completes mainnet migration, rolls out a $20M launch incentive program. Cosmos founder calls for chain split to create AtomOne.

Weekly DeFi Index

This week’s market cap index was positive at +3.71%, while the volume and volatility indices were negative at -19.01% and -58.88%, respectively.

Chart of the Week

On 21 November, the team behind NFT marketplace Blur announced the development of Blast, an Ethereum scaling solution that leverages optimistic rollup technology and aims to reduce transaction costs. It features native ETH and stablecoin yields and promises token incentives to early adopters. The project has significant backing from several venture capital firms, including Paradigm and Standard Crypto. 

Blast is rapidly gaining traction; however, the project has incited strong discussions among the crypto community for various reasons. For one, the product is not yet live. It also cannot be classified as a Layer 2 — as it lacks a testnet, transactions, a bridge, rollback capabilities, and transaction data transmission to Ethereum — but rather only as an intermediary contract that deposits and locks assets. 

Despite these concerns, among others, Blast has reached over US$500 million in TVL in less than a week, which includes assets like ETH staked in Lido and DAI in Maker DSR. Blast has surpassed zkSync Era, becoming the fourth largest L2 by value locked.

• Uniswap’s governance has approved a proposal to delegate 10 million UNI tokens from the DAO’s treasury to seven active delegates (including 404 DAO, Wintermute Governance, PGOV, and StableLab) to combat low participation rates. The tokens will not be tradeable and will only be used for voting purposes, potentially increasing the delegates’ voting power in governance proposals.

TVL of Top Chains

Top DEX by Chain

News Highlights

• Decentralised derivatives platform dYdX Chain has completed its mainnet migration and transitioned from its beta stage to full trading, following a successful governance vote. The platform has also rolled out a $20 million launch incentive programme, which includes DYDX token rewards. 
• Cosmos Founder Jae Kwon has called for a chain split following a decision by the community to reduce Cosmos’s native token ATOM’s inflation to 10%. The forked chain, dubbed AtomOne, would support ATOM and its native ATOM1 token.
• Chainlink has upgraded its native staking mechanism to V0.2, increasing the pool size to 45 million LINK tokens. This move is part of its Economics 2.0 plan aiming to add an extra layer of security to the network and introduce greater flexibility and a dynamic rewards mechanism to its users.
• PancakeSwap has implemented a new governance system called veCAKE. It allows CAKE token holders to lock up their tokens for up to four years to receive veCAKE, giving them the ability to vote on governance proposals and direct CAKE token emissions to their preferred liquidity pools.
• Contango has integrated SparkLend, a DAI-focused lending protocol and MakerDAO sub-DAO, to offer decentralised perpetual positions. Users can now enter into leveraged perpetual positions using Spark’s liquidity via recursive lending.
• Blockchain protocol Heco Chain and crypto exchange HTX (formerly known as Huobi Global, which set up and maintains the Heco Chain) were hacked for a cumulative $97 million in various tokens last week. According to the report, blockchain security firm Cyver stated the attack resulted from a suspected private key leak, which allowed the attackers to access the Heco bridge and transfer tokens between Heco Chain and Ethereum. 
• Decentralised exchange KyberSwap was hacked for $48 million worth of funds from its Elastic Pools liquidity solution. The hack was reportedly carried out in relation to a bug in the DEX’s approval authorisation code and was a result of a directed attack against the liquidity provider pools themselves.

Recent Research Reports

• Research Roundup Newsletter [October 2023]: We present to you our latest issue of Research Roundup, featuring trending market insights in October, charts of the month, and our insights on friend.tech and SocialFi trends.
• Friend.Tech: Explore what friend.tech is, its success factors and criticisms, and some of the competing platforms that have emerged.
• Alpha Navigator: Quest for Alpha [October 2023]: US Federal Reserve holds steady on interest rates. BTC starts 4Q strong, outperforming other asset classes.

Recent University Articles

• The Maker (MKR) Governance Token: How It Works and How To Get It: Here’s how MKR — MakerDAO’s governance and utility token — works and what rights holders have.
• Liquid Staking With the Lido (LDO) Token: The Lido token was conceived to make liquid staking easier and more accessible to crypto users. Here’s how it works.
• What Is Unibot (UNIBOT)?: In this article, we focus on a Telegram trading bot called Unibot, covering how Telegram users can trade cryptocurrencies through it.

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