The Kyber Network exploiter releases a long list of extreme demands to the team, including full control over the protocol, Chainlink unveils Chainlink staking v0.2 and finally, Solana airdrop season is on, with Jito announcing their upcoming airdrop and Jupiter Exchange dropping their airdrop checker for users.

Massive 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 continue their climb for the third week in a row as cryptocurrency majors push towards new yearly highs. Notable outperformers include BitDAO-backed L2, Mantle, and ConsenSys-backed zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) chain, Linea, which saw increases of 35% and 25% in TVL respectively.

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

Welcome to Alpha Central

0xShual covers how he looks at on-chain trading, using two examples.

TL;DR:

• Check the behaviors of top holders and top liquidity providers: are they buying, selling, holding etc.

• Observe the behavior of recent buyers and sellers in terms of size, reason, frequency

• Look into how much liquidity there is in the liquidity pool, on V2 and V3 pools, how long liquidity providers have been in the pool and what they are trying to achieve, among other factors

Stacy dives deep into the growing decentralized Physical Infrastructure sector, or DePIN for short.

TL;DR:

• Covers industries such as cloud services, telecommunications, sensor analytics and energy networks

• Crypto presents an interesting use case for uniting decentralized infrastructure together for a common cause using the token model to create a positive flywheel between network usage and token price

Ethereum: Kyber Network Exploiter Demands Full Control

Oracle protocol, Chainlink, officially deploys Chainlink Staking v0.2 on the Ethereum mainnet. Access to staking will open up in three phases, starting with existing v0.1 stakers to migrate their positions, Early Access users and then finally, General Access.

ETH liquid staking protocol, Stakewise, unveils Stakewise V3 on the Ethereum mainnet. V3 introduces the ETH staking marketplace, allowing users to choose their favorite node operators based on APYs, fees, insurance and more. V3 also introduces osETH, Stakewise’s own liquid staking derivative (LSD) token.

Other Product Launches and Updates

• The Kyber Network exploiter uploads his demands to take over full control over the Kyber Network protocol among others over Etherscan, in an unprecedented case for blackhat hackers in the DeFi space.

• Real-world asset (RWA) lending protocol, Maple Finance, partners up with USDC issuer, Circle, via Circle’s funding from its treasury to Maple’s Secured Lending Pool. The move seeks to further adoption for USDC for more corporate finance use cases.

• Undercollateralized lending protocol, Wildcat Finance, is live on the Ethereum mainnet. Wildcat is designed to give control to the lenders to pick their borrowers, based on customizable conditions, designed for funds and market makers.

L2s: Velodrome Hit With Two Frontend Exploit

Optimism liquidity hub, Velodrome, and sister protocol on Base, Aerodrome, have suffered a frontend exploit. Although they initially quickly regained control, the frontend provider suffered a second exploit later in the week, rendering the frontends unsafe to use again.

Other Product Launches and Updates

• Quickswap partners up with Steer Protocol to bring V3 farms to Manta Pacific L2, with eight supported pools to start with. V3 farms enable auto-compounding, automated liquidity management and lower fees with deeper liquidity.

• Cryptex Finance launches Pi, a cutting edge on-chain perpetuals market. Pi is built on the infrastructure of Perennial Labs and is now exclusively available on Arbitrum.

• Directional liquidity DEX, Poolshark, introduces their token, FIN. From December 11th, users will be able to bond WETH to FIN on Arbitrum to seed liquidity for the token launch. The initial price will be set at $2 per token or at a $40 million fully diluted valuation (FDV).

• Lending market, Timeswap, begins the premine for the TIME token on the Polygon zkEVM chain. Premined tokens will be redeemable for TIME tokens on a 1:1 basis after the Token Generation Event (TGE), which is expected in Q1 2024.

• Money market platform, Myso Finance, goes live with swaps, enabling peer-to-peer swaps on the platform with zero slippage or swap fees. Swap offers can also be made to specific addresses, enabling better due diligence on swap counterparties.

Cosmos: Jae Kwon Forks Cosmos Hub

Cosmos co-founder Jae Kwon proposes the forking of the Cosmos Hub, after the passing of the recent Cosmos Hub proposal to curb emissions. The new chain will be named AtomOne with the corresponding token, ATOM1.

DYdX chain finally goes live with trading and trading rewards. Traders can now earn from a pool of 50,000 DYDX tokens daily for successful trades based on the trading fees incurred. Additionally, a pool of $20 million in incentives will be provided for the next six months to incentivise trading on the chain.

Cosmos-based L1, Sei, announces Sei V2, seeking to bring parallelization to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The move would enable any EVM-based application to deploy on Sei V2 to leverage its high throughput and low cost. The upgrade is expected to launch in Q2 2024.

Another Week, Another Airdrop

Dominant Solana liquid staking protocol, Jito, announces their upcoming token, JTO, and retrospective airdrop. 10% of the total supply, or 100 million tokens, will be used for the airdrop. The snapshot for Jito points has been taken on Nov. 25 2023 and points will no longer be updated.

Solana DEX aggregator, Jupiter Exchange, releases their airdrop checker for the first wave of their retrospective airdrop to users of the platform.

Tweet of the Week

Collapsed crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital founder, Su Zhu, announces his return, after being arrested in late September earlier this year.

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