š©āš¾ļø Farm +320% APR on Dopex and 12% via the 1st Balancer MetaStable Pool!
Also, learn about samczsunās latest major DeFi rescue, and check out the stories of the week + the governance watcher!
Welcome to DeFi Pulse Farmer - your guide to staying up on the latest and best trends in yield farming and beyond.
In this newsletter, we break down top stories, developments, and trends from the past week in tandem with two key farming opportunities to keep an eye on.
If you want to access the full DeFi Pulse Farmer experience to receive emerging Yield Farming opportunities sent to you throughout the week as part of our Alpha Tractor Series, or the DeFi Pulse Farmer Protocol Express, which consists of a weekly recap of APYs and new pools on major protocols and a highlight of an emerging opportunity, subscribe today.
At $85B today, the total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance apps continues to knock on the door of its previous ~$90B all-time record for the second week in a row.Ā
Two takeaways here: the activity around DeFi is effectively as robust as weāve ever seen it, and thereās an unmistakable acute growth trend unfolding as you can see in the TVL chart below šĀ
Not bad for a decentralized ecosystem thatās barely four years old, eh?.Ā
Anyways, zooming in at the top 5 dapps per TVL right now we find money market Aave ($16.08B) has a firm grip on 1st place, followed up for a much closer contest for 2nd and 3rd place among DeFi suite InstaDapp ($12.10B), exchange protocol Curve ($11.16B), money market Compound ($10.29B), and lending protocol Maker ($9.11B).Ā
As for big news this week, it doesnāt get much bigger than samczsunās latest DeFi rescue, one which the Paradigm research partner and whitehat auditor extraordinaire called āmaybe the biggest whitehat rescue ever.ā
To make a long story short, samczsun discovered a critical vulnerability within Sushiās MISO token launchpad and then helped coordinate a quick rescue of $350M in funds that were ultimately hanging in the balance until that point.Ā
The episodeās remarkable for a number of reasons, but one is because it shows whatās best about DeFi: principled, open collaborations. One of Paradigmās biggest portfolio positions is in Sushiās competitor Uniswap, yet samczsun didnāt flinch at that reality upon identifying the vulnerability and thereafter helping the Sushi team fix it in short order. Class act!
Lastly, letās finish up this recap by reviewing the best-performing DeFi tokens since this point last weekend. In that span, we saw strong runs from LDO (+27.6%), REN (+20.4%), CVX (+19%), FXS (+18.3%), and DODO (+17.5%), though the DeFi Pulse Index (DPI) slightly declined (-1.72%) and is now trading just above $416.
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Farm up to 321% APR via the first Dopex yield farms!
Decentralized options protocols come in all stripes these days, but most canāt offer yield farmers triple-digit APRs right now. One that can, though, is Dopex.Ā
Dopex is an options protocol thatās eyeing the public launch of the Arbitrum layer-two (L2) scaling solution to really strut its stuff. That launch is just days away at this point, but Dopex has already launched some initial infrastructure on the Ethereum mainnet both for bootstrapping and for distributing the projectās DPX governance token.Ā
Before diving further into DPX rewards, letās briefly cover the basics of Dopex:
The protocol centers around optimizing liquidity for option writers/buyers while mitigating option writersā losses.Ā
As part of this liquidity system, Dopex offers Option pools for passive yield opportunities and Volume pools for facilitating advanced arbitrage opportunities.Ā
Option writersā losses are mitigated via payments of rDPX, a rebate token.Ā
Dopexās options are European-style, fully collateralized, and scheduled per daily, weekly and monthly expiries.Ā
How to farm DPX
The Dopex team is currently running a liquidity mining program around three initial pools: single-sided DPX staking (17.7% APR), DPX/ETH Uniswap V2 LP token staking (219.3% APR), and rDPX/ETH Uniswap V2 LP token staking (321.45% APR).Ā
If youāre keen on trying out any of these yield farms, supply DPX (and/or rDPX) and WETH to your Uniswap V2 pool of choice if youāre opting for one of Dopexās two LP farms.
Then just navigate to the Dopex Farms page and stake your DPX or LP tokens through your selected interface. Remember, youāll have to allow Dopex to spend your funds with an approval transaction before you fire off your final staking transaction!Ā
Dopex has been audited, but itās also a young project and all young projects in DeFi should be approached first and foremost as experiments. That means do your own research, understand the risks, and never invest more money than you can afford to lose.
Liquidity Mining Rewards v2
TLDR: Yearn Finance pioneer Andre Cronje in collaboration with Pods Finance and Sushi introduces a new liquidity mining model that centers around call options.ĀQuickSwap Introduces Limit Orders
TLDR: Courtesy of Ethereum automation protocol Getlato, popular Polygon DEX QuickSwap integrates support for limit orders.ĀPower Perpetuals
TLDR: Paradigm publishes a paper introducing power perpetuals, a new DeFi primitive offering āglobal options-like exposure without the need for either strikes or expiries.ādYdX Liquidity Staking Pool
TLDR: Derivatives protocol dYdX introduces its Liquidity Staking Pool, an incentive system that will help the protocol ācompete with centralized exchanges.āāTis the Season for Listing
TLDR: AMM project Integral announces that ITGR token vesting will begin upon the token being listed on a leading exchange next month.ĀOndo Raises $4M
TLDR: The team behind upstart risk management protocol Ondo Finance raises $4M in an equity round led by Pantera Capital.ĀBalancer Launches MetaStable Pools
TLDR: Balancer V2 now supports MetaStable Pools, which are āgreat for tokens with highly correlated, but not hard-pegged, prices.ā
Earn 12% APR with Balancerās ETH/wstETH poolĀ
This week Balancer revealed support for MetaStable Pools, i.e. liquidity pools for highly-correlated assets that are āwell suited to handle pegged tokens that gradually accumulate fees.ā
To kick off this new release, Balancer unveiled a collaboration with Ethereum staking solution project Lido on an inaugural MetaStable Pool for wrapped Lido Staked ETH (wstETH) and wrapped ETH (WETH) šĀ
Notably, the liquidity pool is being incentivized with both BAL and LDO rewards and is presently fetching depositors nearly 12% APR, so this farmās certainly not one to ignore.Ā
The first reward distributions will take place on Aug. 24th, so if you want to start racking up these tokens early simply head over to the new MetaStable Pool and make a single-sided or two-token deposit. Then going forward youāll simply claim your accrued rewards through the Balancer app whenever you please once theyāre live!Ā
Balancer V2 has been audited and built by a public team. However, just because Balancer is a blue-chip DeFi project doesnāt mean we should throw caution to the wind as users. Unlikely incidents can still happen, so never invest more money than you can afford to lose!
Do you want to dive more into Yield Farming opportunities?Ā Become a premium subscriberĀ and get access to:
Alpha Tractor Series: giving you intel into the freshest yield for the most honest farmers only.
The Protocol Express:Ā a weekly recap of APYs and new pools on major protocols and a highlight of an emerging opportunity.
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The Aave community approves adding DPI as a supported collateral type to the Aave protocol.Ā
The Aave community considers extending AAVE liquidity mining rewards.Ā
The Curve community considers launching a deployment of Curve on the Harmony blockchain.Ā
It wonāt be long before a lot more of us are yield farming ETH via Eth2 staking. If youāre interested in modeling yield implications for Ethereum validators and ETH supply trajectories, consider checking out the simulator dashboards at ethmodel.io!
šāāļø The state of DeFi is strong and seemingly growing stronger all the while. Glance around the ecosystem right now and youāll see amazing opportunities everywhere you look. Find where you want to make the most of your attention and resources and keep taking swings, albeit cautiously!
All info in this newsletter is purely educational and should only be used to inform your own research. We're not offering investment advice, endorsement of any project or approach, or promise of any outcome. This is prepared using public information and couldn't possibly account for anyone's specific goals or financial situation. Be careful and keep up the honest work!