Important DeFi News
Ethereum’s validator queue was emptied for the first time since the Shanghai Upgrade in May 2023, signaling slowed demand for $ETH staking
Uniswap has started charging a 0.15% interface fee on a set of tokens to fund its operations, it will also be launching the Uniswap wallet on Android soon
dYdX will no longer be profiting from dYdX v4 as it has officially moved to become a public benefit corporation
The first round of STIP grant voting for Arbitrum has concluded, with 50M $ARB distributed across 30 projects. GMX received the largest share of the $40M grant, while notable projects like Lido and Gains Network were left out
Binance has burned 450m worth of $BNB in its recent planned token burn
Scroll, an L2 zkEVM, has gone live after on-chain indications of it going live last week, its TVL currently sits at $4.4M
$sFRAX, a yield-bearing stablecoin that tracks and attempts to match the IORB rate has been live for almost a week with 39M minted so far
Radpie has introduced $esRDNT, a transferable $RDNT vesting token that allows users to realize their Radiant rewards without needing to wait for 90 days
THORSwap, ThorChain's leading DEX, has resumed services after updating its terms to exclude countries sanctioned by the US and Europe to prevent illicit financial flows
Racer Loans are now live, allowing users to borrow against their FriendTech keys
Lido will be discontinuing its services on Solana over the coming months, $stSOL unstaking via its Solana frontend will be open until 4th February 2024
Unibot has announced its Ecosystem Fund, which redirects 1% of the fees paid to LPs to buy back $UNIBOT from the open market
Mountain Protocol, a yield-bearing stablecoin protocol, has partnered with Wintermute. This partnership enables users to redeem $USDM for $USDC at any time
A Fantom Foundation employee lost $7M in personal crypto funds, along with $550k in Fantom Foundation funds due to a zero-day exploit in the Chrome browser
Stars Arena, a SocialFi app on Avalanche, has recovered $2.2M of stolen $AVAX after negotiating with its exploiter a 10% bounty in return for the funds
Gravitia Protocol has announced Gravitia Ascend, a points farming program where users can earn points by opening vessels and providing $GRAI liquidity
Manta Pacific, an L2 blockchain by Manta Network, will be transitioning away from the Optimism Stack and will be utilziing Polygon’s CDK to become a zkEVM validium
Platypus Finance was exploited for $2.2M. The hacker has since returned 90% of the funds in exchange for a 10% bounty
The $wBTC vault for Raft v2 is now live, allowing users to mint the $R stablecoin with $BTC collateral
Rodeo Finance has introduced Rodeo Alamo, which allows users to borrow against their yield-bearing tokens. The initial offering starts with LSTs
Flare Network will burn up to 7.9% of circulating $FLR tokens worth $18.5M to support its ecosystem development and overall health
Governance Proposals
Lido DAO is discussing to wind down operations on Polygon given the recent sunset of Lido on Solana. On another note, KyberSwap has proposed for the deployment of $wstETH on Base
Aave DAO is voting on two proposals, one for deprecating $MAI, a long depeged stablecoin, from AAVE V3 and the other to bring $FXS on it. A temperature check is also being taken regarding onboarding $crvUSD
1inch DAO is proposing to ladder buy $1M worth of $ETH using its API Pathfinder v5 and its limit order feature to showcase its the protocol’s capabilities while diversifying its treasury
Aura DAO has passed a vote to deploy on Base, while on its forum, assessing its community sentiment on swapping $200,000 worth of $AURA for $AAVE with Aave DAO
Stargate DAO is voting to deploy on Scroll L2
News
Early in the week, $BTC spiked to $30k on false news that the iShares Bitcoin ETF was approved, BlackRock confirmed shortly after that its application was still under review by the SEC
The SEC was reported to no longer be appealing its loss on the recent Grayscale ruling. As a result, GBTC discount has hit its lowest level since 2021 at 14.78%
Reddit-based tokens $MOON, $BRICK, and $DONUT saw huge price plunge upon news of the platform shuttering its blockchain-based reward service, Community Points
Binance US has halted direct dollar withdrawals for its customers
SBF trial revealed celebrity deals amounting to over $1B
Coinbase’s trading volume has continued to weaken in the third quarter of 2024
Binance announced $NTRN, a Cosmos smart contract blockchain network, for the upcoming Binance Launchpool
The CFTC has charged Voyager’s co-founder Stephen Ehrilch with fraud
Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic found indicators of Russian actors involved in the laundering of FTX’s stolen funds
Japan’s $JPY backed CBDC is set to go live in July 2024
Ferrari will begin accepting cryptocurrency for luxury car payments in the US and plans to expand the payment method to Europe soon
CoinList has launched a staking fund for US accredited investors, with initial for $ETH and $NEAR. $FLOW, $SUI, and $MINA are set to follow
Mastercard has completed its CBDC pilot project with the Reserve Bank of Australia
Standard Charted-backed Zodia Custody has expended its institutional crypto services to Australia
Trezor unveiled its newest hardware wallet, Safe 3
Coinbase issued a letter to the IRS raising concerns about its proposed tax rules, requesting digital assets be treated similarly to tradfi assets
Fidelity Digital Assets is EY’s first enterprise client utilizing its blockchain analytics tool
Metamask was briefly removed from the Apple App Store during the weekend due to an issue with Apple’s service policy
Tweets of the Week
Triangulating the valuation of $TIA tokens by hopydoc
Non-stablecoin RWA highlights in 2023 by Stacy Murr
State of Avalanche Q3 2023 by Messari
Market Watch #4 by Apes Prologue