Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of keys decentralized finance (DeFi) insights – a newsletter designed to bring you some of the major developments of the past week.
Last week, the DeFi ecosystem saw several new developments related to the DeFi lending crisis as Celsius filed for bankruptcy. At a time when bears are more dominant in today’s market, DeFi protocols with a revenue system can thrive.
Lido Finance has announced its intention to offer its Ether (ETH) staking services across the entire L2 system. Aave plans to leverage Pocket’s 44,000-node distributed network to access on-chain data from various blockchains, and gamers connect to DeFi through the Razer reward partnership.
The majority of the top 100 DeFi tokens have traded green, with many seeing double-digit gains over the past week.
DeFi slowdown worsens, but protocols with revenue and fee sharing could thrive
As the crypto winter drags on, savvy crypto investors have realized that one of the reliable sources of passive income that still exists can be found in protocols that generate revenue and share some of it with their respective communities.
Data from Token Terminal shows that revenue-positive platforms are primarily non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces like LooksRare and OpenSea.
Ethereum Lido Staking Service Announces Layer 2 Expansion
In a blog post on Monday, the Lido team noted that they would initially start supporting Ether staking via bridges to the L2s using wrapped stETH (wstETH). In the future, this will eventually allow users to stake L2s directly “without needing to link their assets” to the Ethereum mainnet.
In terms of partnering L2, the team said that prior to the announcement, it had already integrated its bridged staking services with Argent and Aztec. He added that the next collection of partnerships and integrations will be unveiled over the next few weeks.
Aave taps Pocket Network to boost decentralized app development
Aave, an open source DeFi protocol, is partnering with decentralized infrastructure provider Web3 Pocket Network to offer developers increased scalability and ease of use when building decentralized applications (DApps) on the Aave protocol.
According to Tuesday’s release, Aave will use Pocket’s distributed network of over 44,000 nodes to access on-chain data of various blockchains to power decentralized applications. Developers building DApps powered by Aave can now access Pocket Network’s blockchain data on demand following the new integration.
Gamers are connecting to DeFi with new Razer rewards partnership
Gamers and customers of computer and gaming hardware company Razer are ready to plug into the world of DeFi with a new rewards trading program in partnership with Cake DeFi.
Razer remains a favorite brand of gamers around the world, with its Razer Gold rewards program allowing gamers to earn and redeem Razer Silver Points for a variety of physical and digital rewards, including Steam games and coupons .
DeFi Market Overview
Analytical data reveals that the total value locked in DeFi registered an increase of almost $5 billion compared to last week, posting a value of $58.65 billion. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the top 100 DeFi tokens by market capitalization had a mixed week, with several tokens trading in the red while a few others even recorded double-digit gains.
Lido DAO (LDO) was the biggest gainer among the top 100 DeFi tokens with an 80% increase over the past week, followed by Fantom (MTF) with a 28% increase. Avalanche (AVAX) was up 26% over the past week, while ThorChain (RUNE) has seen its price increase by 21% in the last seven days.
Thanks for reading our roundup of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, ideas and education in this dynamically evolving space.