Weekly DeFi Report: Jackson Hole, Here We Go

Summary

Crypto assets slightly recovered after the steep correction since last Friday (BTC +3.5%, ETH +9.4%). The market has recently become more macro-driven. Major crypto assets shed lower today following the higher-than-expected US initial jobless claims (243k vs 253k expected). The annual economic symposium (Jackson Hole) will be closely watched tonight as the Fed will give a crucial speech about the current economic situation, inflationary concerns and Fed’s next more. Although major economists were expecting the Fed to give a relatively neutral speech prior to upcoming economic data releases, investors and traders tried to be risk-off ahead of the volatility brought by the Fed Chair’s speech. It is also worthy to note that the probability for 75bps rate hike in September increased to 64% this morning.

Top 100 in the last 7 days:

Outperformers: EVMOS (+34.8%), EOS (+15.2%), BIT (+13.3%), ATOM (+10.2%), DFI (+10.2%), DCR (+9.7%), NEXO (+8.5%), CHZ (+6.5%)

Underperformers: CEL (-58.4%), FLOW (-16.5%), FIL (-15.6%), GMT (-14.1%), OKB (-14.0%), NEAR (-11.5%), SOL (-11.4%), LDO (-11.3%)

In the DeFi space, total TVL was slightly up this week, currently at $84B (+0.7%). Major blockchains’ TVL stayed flat despite the steep price correction since last week: Ethereum $50.4B (+0.8%), Binance Smart Chain $7.5B (-0.1%), Tron $5.8B (+0.1%). The Layer2s had an increase in TVL while their token prices were declining: Optimism $1.9B (+0.6%), Arbitrum $1.6B (+0.5%). Except BSC, all major blockchains had a smaller Mcap-to-TVL ratio this week, with Ethereum and Solana having the greatest reduction.

Deep Dive

Sam Trabucco stepped down to “Relax”

• The co-CEO of Alameda Research, crypto investment firm, stepped down the role of leadership and will stay on as an advisor. Caroline Ellison will remain as the company’s sole CEO thereafter.

Tether not to freeze Tornado Cash addresses

• The stablecoin issuer reiterated that they have not yet been asked by any US authority or law enforcement to ban Tornado Cash addresses. The team of the stablecoin giant also noted that freezing any secondary market addresses is highly disruptive and reckless. On the other side, Circle, Tether’s largest competitor, blacklisted Tornado Cash smart contracts within hours after the mixer protocol being sanctioned by the US agency.

Singapore High Court recognized 3AC liquidation

Coinbase offering liquid staking

• Coinbase will be offering its own liquid staking token for Ethereum (cbETH) ahead of the September Merge. The wrapped token can be used for selling and transferring staked ETH and also acting as collateral on Defi protocols.

TribeDAO planned to shut down

• The community-based Defi protocol (Fei Labs, Rari Capital, Turbo) managed to shut down and send a total of $157m to token holders ($TRIBE) and victims of recent hack ($80m theft from Rari Capital’s Fuse protocol).

Following: Big Money Raises

Nailwal, the founder of Polygon, and Kenzi Wang, co-founder of Cere, raised $50m for web3 venture fund. The fund will be supporting companies building dApps, and web3 development.

Bitcoin Depot, the Fintech company, planned to go public in the US at $885m valuation through SPAC deal with merging blank check company GSR II Meteora Acquisition Group Corp.

Thirdweb, a web3 building platform, raised $24m funding at $160m valuation from Haun Ventures, Shopify and Coinbase. The fresh fund will be used to enhance its developer toolkits.