Kyber Network has been exploited in a carefully orchestrated strategy, resulting in $47 million lost across five chains, Dopex launches the Arbitrum Frontier quest campaign and PancakeSwap announces plans for a revamp of their token, CAKE.

Big week in the world of DeFi! Let’s dive deeper into what went down in DeFi this past week.

Overview

Total value locked (TVL) across all chains surged higher this week alongside the market as the ETF decision draws closer. Notable outperformers include zero-knowledge rollup (zk-rollup), ZkSync, which saw a jump of 40%, while smaller outperformer include fellow zk-rollup, StarkNet, and alt L1, Sui, which both saw increases of around 12%.

Source: https://coinmarketcap.com/chain-ranking/

Welcome to Alpha Central

0xKun discusses the difficulty in applying traditional investing frameworks in crypto investing and how investors can adapt and play the markets accordingly.

TL;DR:

• Traditional value investing is tough as crypto is still in early adoption and future use cases tend to take precedence

• Growth investing mindsets don’t quite work as well since it is hard to project historical growth into the future with such early projects

• Key abilities for successful crypto investing include dealing with volatility well, managing risk to reward and playing off the fear and greed of market participants.

Ethereum: Kyber Network Exploited

Multi-chain DEX aggregator, Kyber Network has been exploited for $47 million across Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon and Base, via its concentrated liquidity solution, Kyber Elastic.

Universal yield marketplace, Superform, introduces itself: a protocol enabling a user to deploy into any number of vaults on any of the eight supported chains, using any token. The platform is built on LayerZero, Hyperlane and Wormhole, with two bridge aggregators, Socket and LiFi, under the hood.

Other Product Launches and Updates

• Timeless unveils Bunni V2, an advanced DEX built on top of Uniswap V4, to increase the control that liquidity providers have over the way they provide liquidity to pools through any-shape liquidity, automated shifting liquidity, rehypothecation to earn yield on out of range liquidity, dynamic fees and more.

• Money market protocol, Sturdy, introduces Sturdy V2, which enables isolated lending without the need for isolated liquidity. This is achieved through aggregation via vault protocol, Yearn Finance V3.

• Lending protocol, Beta Finance, deploys Beta Finance Omni, which introduces risk pools, gasless subaccounts and zero liquidity fragmentation to the protocol, enabling greater capital efficiency for borrowers and lenders.

• Revest Finance drops the whitepaper for upcoming project, Resonate, a project designed to bring fixed income real-world assets (RWAs) on-chain, in a fully compliant manner.

L2s: The Arbitrum Frontier

Options protocol, Dopex, partners with Arbitrum, Galxe and OKX to release the Arbitrum Frontier, a DeFi powered quest campaign through protocols such as Camelot, Radiant, JonesDAO and more. Participants will be eligible for rewards such as a share of the 100K ARB reward pool and a soulbound NFT.

LSDFi protocol, UnshETH, releases blETH, a liquid wrapper representing ETH deposits in Blast, the latest L2 on the market, which have been locked up for the upcoming three months. Upon Blast’s withdrawals, blETH holders will be able to withdraw their ETH along with the expected airdrop which will also be converted to ETH.

Other Product Launches and Updates

• Dopex launches rDPX v2, enabling rDPX to be bonded with ETH to receive rtETH, a yield bearing derivative token. Users may also deposit ETH directly into a perpetual put vault which will be used to purchase rDPX at a certain threshold.

• Zero-knowledge powered fiat on-ramp solution, ZKP2P, launches on Coinbase L2, Base. The platform currently supports on-ramping via Venmo, with on-ramping taking no more than 60s to complete.

• Movement Labs introduces M2,  a Move-based L2 built on Celestia and Celestia’s Blobstream for data availability, enabling high-performance applications and high chain throughput.

• Derivatives platform, Deri V4, is now live on the Arbitrum mainnet. Deri V4 is built on Arbitrum Orbit, Arbitrum’s scaling solution for applications to deploy their own chains within the Arbitrum ecosystem. Deri V4 brings consolidated liquidity, faster execution, lower gas and increased offerings to the platform.

• The EQB/WETH liquidity pool for Pendle yield-booster, Equilibria, has been drained due to a phishing attack on the wallet controlling the liquidity in the pool, resulting in a loss of approximately 141.5 ETH worth in EQB and ETH tokens. A portion of the compromised funds have been seized by OKX and a compensation plan is under discussion.

Solana: More Bridging Options Unlocked

Multi-chain bridging protocol, Synapse, now supports the Solana ecosystem, enabling seamless transfers of SOL, ETH and USDC between Ethereum mainnet and Solana.

Solana wallet, Phantom, releases cross-chain swaps within their wallet, powered by bridges, LiFi and Allbridge. A portion of the bridged token can also be swapped for SOL to provide for gas tokens on Solana.

BNB Smart Chain: CAKE Tokenomics Revamp

Binance Smart Chain top decentralized exchange (DEX), PancakeSwap announces plans for the revamped tokenomics for the CAKE token, with plans to introduce vote-escrow mechanisms with veCAKE and gauge voting.

Another Week, Another Airdrop

Cosmos liquid staking protocol, Stride Zone, announces plans for a 250,000 STRD token airdrop to stakers of the DYDX token in the first two months following the upcoming launch of the stDYDX liquid staking derivative token.

NFT trading platform, Blur, wraps up Blur Season 2, airdropping BLUR tokens to traders on the platform and NFT creators. Eligible users will have 45 days to claim their tokens. Blur Season 3 has also begun and will last for the upcoming six months until May 2024.

Tweet of the Week

Binance CEO, CZ, steps down from Binance after six years of leading the largest crypto exchange in the market, ushering in the era of his successor, Richard Teng.

Stay updated on your favorite projects and stay tuned for next week’s edition, and keep supporting your favorite projects, degens!