Defi Farm #11 - July 2nd Weekly Update

ABY - always be yielding

Author

Andy Page
July 02, 2022

Hi everyone,

A tough market this past week after some slight relief the week before. Let's dive in 🤿Over the past 7 days:SPY: -2.5%BTC: -9.4% ETH: -14.3%

I'm also going to start including major L1 tokens in these weekly 7-day price movements. During this market, I think watching what happens to the major L1s will be interesting.

SOL: -22%AVAX: -21%Near: -17.6%Algo: -13.1%FTM: -19.2%

I have a busy weekend so this newsletter might be shorter than normal but still wanted to get something out.Today I'll go over:- Random but cool news from this past week- Cool projects and protocols I came across this week- A new defi farming strategy of the week

Interesting news and things from this week

  • Arbitrum Odyssey was halted this week. The campaign had so many people using the L2 chain that fees were actually more expensive than on ETH mainnet. Not a great look for the possibility of "ETH scaling" in the near term. They plan to resume the Odyssey once Nitro gets released. (Nitro will help Arbitrum capacity.)

  • sAVAX is now available as collateral on Aave.

  • Bitcoin has it's worse month ever. -40% on the month.

  • Polygon + Fantom RPC's were compromised via a DNS hijack.

  • Facebook testing ETH + Polygon NFTs for profiles. Solana reportedly coming soon.

  • Good thread talking about tokenization, utility, and how to build sustainable tokens that aren't a ponzi.

  • Coinbase announced instant and free payments to Coinbase Commerce merchants from Coinbase accounts. With more and more merchant solutions (Coinbase + Solana) it will be interesting to see how quickly brick+mortar start adopting these in order to escape Visa + Mastercard fees.

  • This is probably the biggest thing on this list: Near now has a Javascript Virtual Machine. Devs can now write smart contracts with Javascript. I think this is a HUGE deal for Near. Javascript is in the top 3 most commonly used programming languages today vs Solidity or Rust, which don't even crack the top 20. It will be really interesting to see if this speeds up development and innovation within Near.

Interesting protocols/projects I found this week

Novel (link) - brings web3 to shopify. Token-gates e-commerce, sell NFTs alongside physical products, add perks, etc.

DAOHQ (link) - a marketplace for DAO tokens. Discover, invest and manage your DAOs all in one place.

Magna (link) - cap table management and vesting management for crypto teams. Basically Carta but for crypto.

Interesting Farm of the week

I think the best stablecoin yield option right now is in the Near ecosystem on Ref Finance.

Their USN-USDT pool is now paying out 20%+ APR in USN and Ref. USN is a stablecoin created by the Near Foundation. It is currently fully over collateralized with USDT so this farm is essentially single-side staking of USDT for 20%.

I recorded and published a podcast interview with Helena Merk from Spirals Protocol. She's building some pretty awesome stuff.

Episode 1.2 - How Spirals Protocol is building a new Regenerative Economy

Listen to this episode from The 223 Show - Moving from Web2 to Web3 on Spotify. On today's episode, our guest is Helena Merk from Spirals Protocol. We cover how Helena made the transition from Web2 to Web3 and why, what Spirals is, and how, if they're successful, they could create a new economy that incentives positive-sum actions. If you're interested in learning more about Spirals: website: https://www.spirals.so/ twitter: https://twitter.com/SpiralsProtocol Gitcoin Grant: https://gitcoin.co/grants/6354/spirals-climate-impact-staking-on-celo Helena's twitter: https://twitter.com/HelenaMerk

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3YCQN4aEicVMbrqpRaMfWA?si=0de6555d830046ba

That's all I have for this week! Stay safe out there and as always, stay yielding!Have a Happy Fourth 🇺🇸

Very best,Andy