DeFi & L1L2 Weekly — 💸 14.6% of Polymarket wallets have profited; Uniswap Labs unveils its own Layer-2 network

14.6% of Polymarket wallets have made profits. Uniswap Labs unveils its own Layer-2 network. Avalanche negotiates to repurchase 1.97 million AVAX from Terra’s LFG.

Weekly DeFi Index

The market capitalisation and volume indices were positive at +4.53% and +25.44%, respectively, while the volatility index dropped by -10.43%.

• Uniswap Labs unveiled its own Layer-2 network, Unichain, built on Optimism’s OP Stack technology. Set to debut on a private testnet, Unichain aims to enhance transaction speed and reduce costs while improving liquidity. Uniswap CEO Hayden Adams emphasised that the network could serve as a DeFi hub across multiple chains, similar to how Uniswap functions on Ethereum. Unique features include a trusted execution environment for secure block building and a community validation network planned for 2025.

Chart of the Week

Polymarket has facilitated over 13 million betting trades to date, recording more than 300,000 daily trades on average between 6 and 15 October. The platform’s rising popularity is due to ongoing regional conflicts, as well as the upcoming United States presidential election.

To date, only 14.6% of Polymarket wallets have profited, with a majority winning less than US$100.

News Highlights

• The Avalanche Foundation is negotiating a deal to repurchase 1.97 million AVAX tokens from Terraform Labs’s bankrupt estate. In 2022, the foundation sold AVAX to the Luna Foundation Guard, a nonprofit organisation that supported the defunct Terra ecosystem, for $100 million, and now plans to buy it back. The repurchase is pending approval from the court overseeing Terraform Labs’s estate.
• The Ethena Protocol announced its intention to invest $46 million into real-world assets (RWA). This includes an allocation of $18 million into BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, $13 million into Sky’s USDS stablecoin, $8 million into Mountain’s USDM stablecoin, and $7 million into Superstate’s USTB.
• Ethena Labs proposed adding SOL to its treasury as collateral for its USDe synthetic stablecoin. This move aims to enhance USDe’s stability, which is maintained through a combination of collateralised stablecoins and hedged trades. If approved by Ethena Lab’s independent Risk Committee, SOL will be gradually integrated into the treasury with an initial allocation target of $100 to $200 million.
• Hyperliquid, a decentralised perpetuals trading platform, is preparing to launch its native token, HYPE, in a genesis distribution conducted by the Hyper Foundation. HYPE will play an important role in Hyperliquid’s Proof of Stake consensus and Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
• Circle launched a native version of its USDC stablecoin on the SUI blockchain. 

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