Week in DeFi: Multichain Woes, the Future of Synthetix and Penumbra’s New DEX
Popular bridging service, Multichain, sees trouble as bridging routes across several chains go down. With only a short tweet from the Multichain team, users are left with more questions than answers. Meanwhile, Synthetix founder, Kain Warwick, outlines the future for Synthetix in a detailed roadmap. Finally, privacy-focused Cosmos chain, Penumbra, unveils their concentrated liquidity decentralized exchange (DEX).
Big week! Let’s see what went down this past week in DeFi.
Overview: Will the Markets Please Do Something?
Total value locked (TVL) across all chains continues to remain flat, with only a 0.04% move across the week as market volatility dies down. Notable moves in TVL include zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) chains, Polygon zkEVM and zkSync Era, which saw healthy growth of 45% and 14% respectively.
Source: DeFiLlama
Welcome to Alpha Central
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Messari dives deep into MakerDAO’s “Endgame,” covering the elements of MakerDAO’s upcoming roadmap and what it means for users and token holders.
Ethereum: Multichain Woes
Bridging routes on Multichain to Kava, Polygon zkEVM and zkSync Era go down due to technical difficulties, as Multichain claims. Other speculators are expecting worse as unconfirmed rumors of the Multichain team being arrested in China spreads, bringing about the question of the safety of funds deposited on the platform.
DEX aggregator, Matcha, releases their new upgrade — improving trade confirmation speeds, reducing trade failures by 85% and handling gas fees for users, to create a frictionless trading experience on the platform.
Inverse Finance introduces DBR streaming for stakers of Inverse Finance’s governance token, INV, providing a new source of utility to INV stakers. DBR is a token required to service a loan on Inverse Finance’s fixed rate borrowing market.
Cross-chain prime brokerage, Prime Protocol, addresses security concerns brought up by Web3 security enthusiast community, Dilation Effect, in a thread earlier in the week. Funds are currently safe and a detailed explanation will be put out by the team once fixed.
Composable leverage protocol, Gearbox, releases a slew of security improvements, as well as adding cbETH to their supported leveraged liquid staking derivatives (LSD) and MiM’s Curve and Convex pools to their support strategies.
LSD issuance protocol, Swell Network, opens up the Swell Voyage, where interested participants are able to earn points (known as “pearls”), by holding swETH or by providing liquidity in selected liquidity pools. These pearls will be integral to Swell’s future governance plans.
Bridging protocol, Connext, introduces chain abstraction, an innovative interface which allows users to interact with decentralized applications (DApps) and transact across chains, regardless of which chain they are on.
Leveraged trading platform, GammaSwap, announces Invariant Flash Loans, a novel mechanism which enables flash loans on any token and a flexible repayment structure on the loan.
L2s: Options Protocols Push Ahead
Arbitrum flagship options vault protocol, Dopex, unveils Call Options as Incentives, enabling protocols more flexibility when incentivizing users. This is done through the use of customized options in place of emissions, which are aligned to their goals in terms of expiry, strike price and other terms.
Options protocol, Premia, drops their V3 whitepaper, introducing permissionless pool creation, concentrated liquidity and several other improvements to increase capital efficiency, composability and sustainability of the protocol.
Options and perpetuals trading protocol, Lyra, rolls out their upgrade on Optimism, bringing increased fees to liquidity providers, new Synthetix markets, and USDC-enabled trading and liquidity provision to the platform.
Exotic peg hedging protocol, Y2K Finance, releases their explainer on Carousel, a new feature dropping with their upcoming V2 launch. Carousel allows users to automatically roll-over their positions into the next epoch as well as enable 24/7 deposits as opposed to the current deposit windows.
Synthetix founder, Kain, releases the next steps forward for Synthetix including plans regarding incentives, buybacks, SNX staking and distribution, among others.
Automated market maker (AMM) aggregator, Fibrous Finance, launches their alpha on StarkNet. The aggregator currently supports JediSwap, 10KSwap and mySwap, with plans to integrate SithSwap in the works.
Polygon zkEVM announces plans to reduce gas fees on the chain by approximately 20% over the upcoming weeks.
Polygon zkEVM DEX, Quickswap, launches perpetuals trading on the platform, granting users up to 50x leverage on the platform. Currently, BTC, ETH and MATIC perpetuals are supported.
Multichain DEX and aggregator, Kyber Network, relaunches their Elastic farms after a bug was uncovered in them earlier this year, resulting in the farms halting with no user funds lost.
RISC Zero collaborates with optimistic rollup, Layer N, to design the first ZK Fraud Proof system, combining optimistic rollups and zero-knowledge proofs, two technologies which have largely been perceived as competitors.
Wallet infrastructure protocol, Pimlico, launches on Scroll’s testnet, allowing ERC-4337 enabled wallets to be deployed on the Scroll testnet.
Avalanche: TradFi Rates, Now on Avalanche
Interest rate swap protocol, Voltz, releases Secured Overnight Financing Rates (SOFR) to the Avalanche blockchain. SOFR is a concept from traditional finance, which effectively impacts the interest rates we are exposed to. By bringing SOFR to DeFi, users can hedge, speculate and build products on SOFR.
Ava Labs announces Ava Cloud, a Web3 launchpad enabling builders to launch fully custom blockchains on Avalanche, using Ava Cloud’s no-code solution.
Cosmos: Penumbra Concentrated Liquidity DEX Goes Live
Privacy focused appchain, Penumbra, releases their private, concentrated liquidity DEX on their testnet. The DEX incorporates batch executions, orderbook-style concentrated liquidity and internal arbitrage to fill orders.
Cosmos chain, Nolus, goes live this week on Tuesday. Once the Interchain Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol establishes a connection with Osmosis, their token, NLS, will be released via a Streamswap token launch, where users can lock OSMO for NLS tokens.
Neutron’s liquidity auction is now live and will last until 31st May. Users can lock ATOM or axlUSDC to obtain NTRN-ATOM or NTRN-axlUSDC liquidity pool tokens. These tokens enable holders to earn trading fees, incentives and voting power on the chain.
Another Week, Another Airdrop
Rumors concerning Layer Zero’s highly anticipated airdrop have been circulating, stating that the snapshot has been taken for the airdrop. The rumor has not been confirmed nor denied by the Layer Zero team .
StarkNet NFT platform, Mintsquare, halts minting on the platform as bots overwhelm the service in light of the fourth week in Argent’s StarkNet Xplorer campaign. Users can still buy or sell NFTs to fulfill the current week’s requirement.
StarkNet perpetuals platform, RabbitX, announces their airdrop, distributing 2,000,000 RBX tokens to just under 1,600 traders on their platform.
The market continues to crab along, but builders keep pushing out new updates on their protocols. Stay updated and stay tuned for next week’s edition, and keep supporting your favorite projects, degens!
