DeFi Update

2022–03–04

Summary

Following good rally in risk, some pullback was seen in both equities and crypto.

• Powell’s 25bp hike comment (instead of feared 50bp hike) soothed investor sentiment a little on Wednesday night; US CPI on 3/10 and FOMC rate decision on 3/16 are volatility events going forward
• BTC formed double top at 45k, while ETH continues to print lower highs and overall weaker price action vis-a-vis bitcoin
• Outperformers in the last 7 days are: LUNA (+42%), ATOM (36%), NEAR (31%), FTM (21%), WAVES (109%), RUNE (62%), i.e. L1 szn still

On the DeFi side,

• Terra (+27%), Fantom (+12%), Osmosis (+31%), Polkadot (+19%), Harmony (+24%), and Near (+16%) saw the largest TVL growth
• Terra’s growth has been fuelled by increase in Anchor TVL as Anchor reserve was refilled
• Fantom saw successful launch of Solidly, which now has $1.6bn TVL
• Ethereum (+1%), BSC (+2%), Solana (+1%, Polygon (-3%) saw the most lackadaisical performance in TVL
• On the new product/launches front, it’s relatively quiet, with the most hyped-up project EVMOS slated to be launched this week

Chart 1: TVL of Various Smart Contract Platforms

1. Project Updates

EVMOS launches Mainnet with Airdrop

• What’s EVMOS: a project bringing EVM-compatible environments to Cosmos IBC, which should allow projects to easily port over implementations of protocols that are already running on Ethereum/EVM chains. EVMOS also allows for cross-chain transactions, meaning Ethereum-based users can directly interact with contracts on Evmos.
• What happened: the airdrop was delayed, and will be enabled tomorrow; with the launch of EVMOS, Cosmos has been outperforming the market

Aurigami goes live

• What is Aurigami: first lending protocol to go live on Aurora, an Ethereum Virtual Machine; the announcement also mentioned that there would be premining incentives for $PLY, in which up to 20M tokens will be distributed on a weekly basis to the earliest users. Other lending protocol about to be launched on Aurora is Bastion, which is having liquidity bootstrapping event soon

Algorand Protocol Upgrade

• What’s the Upgrade: contract-to-contract calls to enable versatile dApps on the blockchain + introduction of AVM (Algorand Virtual Machine) + Falcon Keys, which will be used to generate State Proofs, that will allow Algorand to trustleslly be accessed in low-power environments, e.g. phone, smart watches, etc.
• Reaction: $ALGO rallied

Aave Integrates Lido’s stETH as Collateral

2. Raises

Aptos is raising $200mio at $2bn valuation

• What is Aptos: team from Libra stablecoin project which has been abandoned

Nested, a Defi trading platform, raises $7.5mio Series A

• The raise was led by Alan Howard, and joined by Republic Capital, CMT Digital, Kenetic Capital, etc.

Electric Capital raises $1bn in fundraising

• The 2 new fund ($400mio venture fund + $600mio token fund) is a step-up from the firm’s latest round of $110mio in Aug’20

Chart 1: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Defi

Chart 2: Smart Contract Platforms

Chart 3a: ETH Ecosystem

Chart 3b: BSC Ecosystem

Chart 3c: Polygon Ecosystem

Chart 3d: AVAX Ecosystem

Chart 3e: SOL Ecosystem

Chart 3f: TERRA Ecosystem

Chart 4: Algostables

Chart 5a: DEX Ecosystem

Chart 5b: Lending Ecosystem

Chart 5c: Synthetic Ecosystem