Polygon co-founder hinted at a potential Polygon ZkEVM airdrop, and MakerDAO launched its lending protocol and announced its next big upgrade — read on to find out the latest news in DeFi.
The Ethereum blockchain stumbled twice over this week, failing to reach finality for more than an hour on the second incident. Decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) tooling protocol, Aragon, got caught up in a dispute over treasury funds. Finally, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal hints at a potential Polygon zkEVM airdrop, although DeFi users remain skeptical.
An eventful week! Let’s see what went down this past week in DeFi.
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Overview: Markets Grind Lower, Alts Bleed
Total value locked (TVL) across all chains continued to grind downwards as crypto prices fell across the board. Notable rises in TVL included Bitcoin Layer-2, Stacks, which saw a spike due to the BRC-20 narrative, as well as Kava and Polygon zkEVM, which saw increases in the low teens. This is likely due to Kava’s upcoming upgrade and rumors of a potential Polygon zkEVM airdrop.
Source: DeFiLlama
Welcome to Alpha Central
José Maria Macedo shares the Delphi Labs’ thesis on Cosmos and why they are bullish on the ecosystem. These factors include native USDC provided by Noble, dYdX’s upcoming v4 launch and Sei Network’s upcoming launch, among others.
Crypto Shiro dives into BRC-20s, which are tokens built on the new BRC-20 token standard, and also the latest trend in the memecoin market, this time on the Bitcoin network.
Bert Miller of Flashbots discussed how notorious sandwich attacker, jaredfromsubway.eth, has been making so much money on memecoins and how you can protect yourself from falling victim to his attacks.
Ethereum: Beacon Chain Stumbles
The Ethereum Beacon Chain went down for twice over the week, failing to reach finality for 25 minutes and over an hour in separate incidents. The chain has since been restored to full function, with consensus clients Teku and Prysm releasing fixes to avoid similar situations in the future.
DAI stablecoin issuer, MakerDAO, launches the Spark Lend protocol, allowing the borrowing and lending of ETH, DAI and their staked variants, stETH and sDAI. The service is not available in the USA.
In the same week, MakerDAO announced the next big update for the protocol, termed as “Endgame”. The update, which will encompass five phases, will revamp and upgrade the DAI and MKR tokens as well as incorporate AI tools to improve on the efficiency of the protocol.
Prime Protocol goes live on Ethereum, Avalanche, Arbitrum and Moonbeam, allowing users to borrow freely against their entire cross-chain portfolio. The Early Adopter program is currently live allowing users to earn points for participation.
DAO tooling protocol, Aragon, repurposed Aragon DAO treasury in response to a perceived 51% attack by a group known as the Risk Free Value (RFV) Raiders. They released an updated statement to clarify their actions, stating that DAO funds are not controlled by the Aragon Association but remaining treasury funds will be disbursed via a grants program.
Instadapp’s account abstraction supported wallet, Avocado, announces Avocado Multisig, bringing multi-signature features to the wallet. The feature will be rolled out soon to all ten supported chains.
Bridging protocol Multichain launches its first decentralized application (DApp) on their zkRouter technology, a cross-chain bridge between Ethereum and Fantom, on testnet. ZkRouter is a trustless and private asset transfer mechanism supported by zero-knowledge proofs (zk-proofs).
Top ETH liquid staking derivative (LSD) protocol, Lido Finance, puts their Lido V2 upgrade to a vote, with the upgrade expected to go live on May 15, if the vote passes. Lido V2 will incorporate the much-awaited withdrawal feature for ETH stakers.
DeFiLlama releases LlamaNodes, protecting users from maximal extractable value (MEV) attacks and, at the same time, sharing MEV profits with users. LlamaNodes is built in collaboration with MEV block builder, NeoConstruction.
Interoperability layer, DeBridge, launches their DLN API, enabling deep liquidity across chains while promising near-instant transfers with minimal fees.
ETH LSD-focused borrowing protocol, Gravita Protocol, shares more about their unique selling points: including support for multiple ETH LSDs and competitive borrow rates on both short-term and long-term borrowing.
Cross-chain MEV-protected swap protocol, Cashmere, deploys their testnet v1.1, implementing optimizations to improve transaction speeds and user experience. In the same week, Cashmere also integrated the Linea blockchain, taking their total supported chains to 11.
Blockchain research and development firm, GFX Labs, draws up a proposal to turn on the Uniswap fee switch, which would channel a portion of fees generated from pools to the Uniswap treasury. Some users have expressed doubts however, citing losing competitiveness to Uniswap V3 forks, regulatory risks and wasting a price catalyst in the current bearish conditions.
Hourglass goes live, providing a liquid staking layer for Frax liquidity pool positions. Currently, frxETH-ETH liquidity pools are supported for four different durations.
L2s: DeusDAO Exploiter Returns Majority of Funds
The exploiter of DEI stablecoin issuer, DeusDAO, returns 2023 ETH to the protocol. Combined with funds that were successfully intercepted by white hat hackers, the total reclaimed funds totals almost $6 million, recouping most of the losses.
Exotic peg hedging protocol, Y2K Finance unveils their V2, which will introduce automatic rollovers, 24/7 deposit queues, increased revenue streams for Y2K token lockers and increased number of supported assets.
Directional liquidity protocol, PoolShark, introduces Cover Pools, an innovative solution allowing stop-losses in liquidity pool positions to protect the capital of liquidity providers. The feature will be launching in testnet first before hitting mainnet.
Solidly fork, Ramses Exchange, introduces Ramses Concentrated Liquidity to the platform, combining the Solidly bribes system and concentrated liquidity to achieve a more efficient model. The feature is expected to go live in the week of May 24.
Arbitrum-based option vault protocol, Dopex, launches 0DTE (days-to-expiry) ARB option vaults, providing short-term trading opportunities to options traders on the platform.
Synthetix will increase perpetuals trading rewards to 300K OP tokens, up from 200K OP tokens last week. The increased rewards will last for the next 16 weeks and front-ends built on Synthetix such as Kwenta and Polynomial Finance will also be distributed additional rewards.
DeFi insurance protocol, Cozy Finance, unveils Cozy V2, allowing users to get protection against smart contract exploits, depegs and more. Users can also earn yield from backing these insurance contracts, taking the opposite side of the contract.
Leveraged yield-farming and lending protocol, Extra Finance, is now live on Optimism. The team has also stated that the EXTRA token will be released in the coming weeks and an airdrop has been planned.
Money market protocol, zkLend, deploys on StarkNet, facilitating the borrowing and lending of WBTC, ETH, USDC, USDT and DAI.
Avalanche: GoGoPool Supports Subnet Deployment
Permissionless staking protocol, GoGoPool launches on Avalanche, facilitating the rapid deployment of subnets and at half the upfront cost.
Cosmos: Neutron is Live
Cosmos-based chain Neutron launches, making it the first live chain to be secured by the Cosmos Hub via Replicated Security. The Neutron airdrop will occur in the third week from their launch to kickstart governance and decentralization efforts.
Perpetuals trading protocol, Levana Protocol, launches on testnet on finance-focused Cosmos chain, Sei Network, announcing a set of missions for Sei testnet users in collaboration with Blocked Protocol.
Modular blockchain network, Dymension, hints at their upcoming incentivized testnet.
Another Week, Another Airdrop
Decentralized leveraged trading protocol, Pika Protocol, announces PIKA token sale, where selected whitelisted users will be able to participate. PIKA’s token distribution also includes 11% for retrospective and future airdrops, although details have not been released yet.
Polygon founder hints at the possibility of a “massive airdrop” for Polygon zkEVM in response to discussions on the chain’s low TVL as a result of Polygon already having a circulating token, MATIC.
Mysten Labs announces their Active Contributors & Early Supporters (ACES) program, where users who were members in the Sui’s Discord server before May 3 will be allowed to register as one of their ACES. Users will have to register before May 17, 11 am PDT to qualify and will receive an exclusive NFT as part of the program.
Blockchain game and infrastructure layer, Fusionist, confirms rumors of an airdrop of their token, ACE, to reward early supporters and testers.
The market grinds lower as market participants take a breather from the prior weeks of euphoric memecoin trading. Stay tuned for next week’s edition, and keep supporting your favorite projects, degens!
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