Hello Defiers! Hereâs what weâre covering today:
News
- Skeptics Decry Crypto Bill and SBFâs âIndustry Norms Manualâ as Bad for DeFi
- Mango Markets Exploiter Says Aave Could Be Vulnerable To A Similar Attack
- Fintech Giant Plaid Jumps into Web3
đ Defiant Premium Story for Paid Subscribers (đScroll to the end!)
NFT Roundup
Podcast
Video
DeFi Explainers
Elsewhere
- Inside a Social DAO: How an Online Community Becomes a Digital City: Coindesk
- Possible Digital Asset Industry Standards: FTXPossible Digital Asset Industry Standards: FTX
- Next week kicks off the first-ever #AvalancheCreates, the free event series providing developers with new learning opportunities: Avalanche
Trending in The Defiant
- Outside Devcon Colombians Search For Pragmatic Ways to Use Crypto
- Shortage of Goerli Testnet Ether Puts the Squeeze on Devs
- Anthony Hopkinsâ Metaverse Debut Sells Out in Seven Minutes
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Crypto Regulation
đ€ Skeptics Decry Crypto Bill and SBFâs âIndustry Norms Manualâ as Bad for DeFi
Critics Push Back Against Potential Legislation that Would âKill DeFiâ
DEBATE As the cryptoverse debated a U.S. bill Wednesday that would âkill DeFi,â crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried floated a set of self-imposed industry standards to âcreate clarity and protect customers.â
đREAD THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IOđ
Exploits
đ Mango Markets Exploiter Says Aave Could Be Vulnerable To A Similar Attack
Proposed âTrading Strategyâ Would Require Hundreds Of Millions In Capital
RESPONSIBILITY Avraham Eisenberg, the trader who has claimed responsibility for the recent $116M Mango Markets exploit, has publicly revealed a potential way for highly capitalized entities to exploit the REN market on Aave V2.
đREAD THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IOđ
Sponsored Post
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NFT Roundup
đ Bored Ape Dealt Marketing Jackpot by Bicycle Playing Cards
New Marketplace Airdrops âCare Packagesâ to Collectors in Busy Week for NFTs
By yyctrader
DECK If youâve ever played a game of poker or Go Fish, chances are you were dealt Bicycle playing cards. The century-old brand thatâs a mainstay of Las Vegas casinos and used by professional magicians like David Copperfield is expanding its web3 presence with a new physical deck that will showcase the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT that the company purchased in June.
đREAD THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IOđ
TradFi + DeFi
đ Fintech Giant Plaid Jumps into Web3
Wallet Onboard Supports Over 300 Crypto Wallets
CREDIT CARDS Plaid, a leading provider of software that allows users to link their bank accounts and credit cards with applications like Venmo, has jumped into Web3 with the introduction of technology that streamlines the integration of decentralized apps (dApps) and self-custody crypto wallets.
đREAD THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IOđ
Defiant Video
đș Quick Take: ‘Solana Killer’ Aptos (APT) is Crypto’s New Controversial Chain
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DeFi Explainers
đ€ What Is Bitcoin?
A Step-by-Step Guide to the No. 1 Cryptocurrency
INNOVATION Bitcoin is the worldâs first peer-to-peer (P2P) digital payment network, producing a restricted supply of BTC cryptocurrency. Its greatest innovation is the ability to transfer assets â digital tokens â from one party to another without the need of intermediaries such as banks or payment services.
đREAD THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IOđ
Elsewhere
đ Inside a Social DAO: How an Online Community Becomes a Digital City: Coindesk
If I was part of any DAO, I would want it to be âFriends With Benefits.â It is just so darn cool.
đ Possible Digital Asset Industry Standards: FTX
This document contains a draft of a set of standards that we as an industry could enact to create clarity and protect customers while waiting for full federal regulatory regimes.
Next week kicks off the first-ever #AvalancheCreates, the free event series providing developers with new learning opportunities, community mentorship and the space to accelerate their ideasâall thanks in part to the following sponsors! đ§”âŹïžhttps://t.co/3hf6ieXEQF
— Avalanche đș (@avalancheavax) October 20, 2022
Trending in The Defiant
- Outside Devcon Colombians Search For Pragmatic Ways to Use Crypto One evening last week, three students from the Universidad Sergio Arboleda arrived at a cultural center in Bogotaâs chic Chapinero district to learn about cryptocurrencies.
- Shortage of Goerli Testnet Ether Puts the Squeeze on Devs Developers are hoarding Goerli testnet Ether, resulting in a widespread shortage of the coin, according to data from websites that distribute tokens.
- Anthony Hopkinsâ Metaverse Debut Sells Out in Seven Minutes Oscar-winning actor Anthony Hopkins made his first foray into NFTs on Thursday, and collectors snapped up the 1,000 NFTs on sale within a matter of minutes.
đ§âđ» âïž Stories in The Defiant are written by Owen Fernau, Aleksandar Gilbert, Samuel Haig, and yyctrader, and edited by Edward Robinson, yyctrader and Camila Russo. Videos were produced by Alp Gasimov. Podcast was led by Camila, edited by Alp.
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DeFi Premium: Ethereum 2.0
đ„ Ether Issuance Goes Negative as Merge Delivers on Deflationary Promise
Shrinking Supply is Attracting Institutional Investors
By: Samuel Haig
PROMISE It was one of the great promises of The Merge â the Ethereum network would become deflationary.
REALITY Now six weeks after Ethereum shifted to Proof of Stake it looks like that promise is becoming reality. The network is producing negative issuance over the past 30 days, according to data from Ultra Sound Money.
To read the full story subscribe to The Defiant newsletter.
TradFi giants have noticed. This month Fidelity Investments and European fintech N26 are just two of the institutions jumping into post-Merge Ethereum and offering their customers new ways to invest in its cryprocurrency.
âCoins with deflationary attributes are attractive to demand from traditional finance investors,â Toby Chapple, the head of trading at ZeroCap, told The Defiant.
Burn Rate
Ethereumâs burn rate has exceeded the number of new coins entering supply since Oct. 8, permanently destroying roughly 10,000 ETH. As a result, Etherâs supply is now at its lowest level since Sept. 19.
âThe first ever month of negative ETH issuance,â tweeted Evan Van Ness of Starbloom Ventures.
âAt current rate of burn, ETH [is] tracking to have been net deflationary since merge in three days,â chimed in 0xSisyphus, a popular crypto influencer.
Demand Side
âWith the reduction in supply coming over the next year for ETH, especially after the Shanghai fork, to be hit by demand side flow will mean that it is very hard from a purely trading perspective not to see price rise,â said Chapple.
Ethereumâs Proof of Work execution layer merged with the Proof of Stake Beacon Chain consensus layer on Sept. 15, booting miners from the network in favor of stakers. The move dropped the networkâs energy consumption by more than 99.8% and reduced new Ether issuance by 88%.
Staked ETH
While 13,500 new ETH entered circulation every day under Proof of Work, just 1,720 Ether are issued daily to stakers based on the current number of staked ETH. Only 3,074 ETH or about $4M worth of Ether has been added to Etherâs supply since The Merge. For comparison, 429,044 ETH worth $552M would have entered circulation under Proof of Work.
Ethereum began burning base transaction fees in August 2021 alongside the EIP-1559 upgrade. With transaction fees white hot at the time, many analysts had predicted that post-merge Ethereum would be deflationary â meaning that more ETH is destroyed through the burning of base transactions fees than is issued to validators.
However, the slump in on-chain activity amid the depths of the mid-2022 bear market suggested Ethereumâs burn rate would not keep pace with supply inflation. Just 603.4 ETH was destroyed on Aug. 21 as transaction fees reached their lowest level since April 2020.
Network Activity
But network activity picked up during October, with average gas fees now up 74% from Augustâs lows, according to YCharts. The spike in gas fees was initially attributed to XEN, an experimental farming project launched by former Google engineer, Jack Levin. XEN drove 40% of the gas fees expended by the network on Oct. 10.
Network activity has since picked up across the board, with XEN now ranking as the fifth-most gas-intensive Ethereum protocol and representing less than 3% of the daily ETH burn. Uniswap v3 tops the list with 581.5 ETH, followed by Uniswap v2 with 287.8 ETH â equating to more than a quarter of Ethereumâs 24-hour burn combined.
NFT Activity
âThis is mostly happening because of a small amount of activity surrounding memecoins,â said 0xSisyphus. âDegen FOMO make ETH again deflationary, chimed in Odin_free of StarkWare.
NFT activity is also picking up, with OpenSea, Degenheim, and GemSwap all ranking among the top 8 protocols by burn rate.
However, Van Ness criticized XENâs role in pushing Ethereum deflationary in recent weeks. âIt’s important to remember that this âdeflationaryâ month was caused by some HEX-variant ponzi,â he said.
âWhile it’s fantastic that 1559 increases Ethereum’s security when ponzis spam the chain… it also highlights that as a community we have a long way to go to produce real value.â
ETH Trading
The Merge and its impact on Etherâs supply is attracting greater interest from major financial institutions.
The digital asset subsidiary of Fidelity Investments, a TradFi goliath managing $4.5T worth of assets, will launch ETH trading and custody services for institutional investors on Oct. 28. The move came less than a month after the firm launched an ETH index fund.
Also on Oct. 20, N26, a German bank valued at roughly $9B, announced it will launch trading services for ETH among 100 crypto assets for its Austrian customers in the coming weeks. The bank will roll out digital asset services in other markets over the coming six months.
Institutional Adoption
On Oct. 11, BNY Mellon, the oldest bank in the United States, launched Ethereum and Bitcoin custody services for its institutional clients.
Mark Monfort of web3 venture studio NotCentralised told The Defiant that Fidelityâs Ethereum embrace continues the recent trend of institutional Ethereum adoption.
âIt signals the view amongst institutions (and their armies of analysts) that this evolution of the worldâs second largest blockchain fits in with typical factors they would look at such as stability, size, ability to offer yield to customers and security,â Monfort said. âExpect more news like this to come from other well-known institutions.â