👩🌾️ Retro farm $LYRA on Optimism & harvest Balancer’s L2 pastures for +20% APRs
Also, learn about Oasis.app’s new Multiply feature & 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.
📉 DeFi TVL declines $10B — The cryptoeconomy’s charts churned red in recent days, and with that DeFi’s total value locked (TVL) acutely slouched from $90B to $80B since last weekend.
That’s considerable downward volatility in short order, of course. Yet it’s nothing we haven’t seen before in the young world of decentralized finance, where money can move fast upon the arrival of good or bad news 🎢
📵 Markets spooked by SEC, PBoC? — As you can see in the TVL graph above, DeFi’s been choppy for most of September. So I’d caution against ascribing any couple of happenings from just this week as the only reasons why the market’s been volatile lately.
That said, it’s that time of year again! No, not Halloween, but China FUD season. I kid, since it is a running joke in the cryptoeconomy that the Chinese government makes some sort of “ban crypto” attempt around autumn time every year.
The newest gust carrying that meme happened on Friday when China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), announced domestic crypto exchange services were now illegal. Another dramatic episode came days earlier per the news that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reportedly subpoenaed a DeFi builder at Messari’s Mainnet event in NYC this Monday.
This regulatory combo knocked some wind out of the crypto markets in recent days, and that’s not surprising. But are things fundamentally different now than they were one or two weeks ago? No. So DeFi and us users continue to trod forward, regardless of the macro conditions pushing us up or down as we go!
💸 This week’s best-performing assets — Since last weekend, we’ve seen notable runs from the following top DeFi tokens:
📈 OHM (+17.7%)
📈 RGT (+13.1%)
📈 MLN (+12%)
📈 REN (+6.8%)
📈 ALUSD (+2.2%)
👛 The $DPI pulse — The DeFi Pulse Index ($DPI) is presently trading at $306.89, down 18.09% on the week. On the bright side, heads up: options project SIREN Protocol just added $DPI call and put options!
Thank you to our sponsor DEXTF, an asset management protocol that makes managing and investing assets easier.
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🌾 Retro farm $LYRA on the Optimism L2!
“The old tales say Orpheus could charm anything with his lyre. The Lyra protocol may not be a musical instrument, but it is going to allow traders to “play” their on-chain options trades with levels of efficiency that could charm any DeFi derivatives fan.” — Alpha Tractor, Sept. ‘2
Lyra is a marriage of two things that have been on the rise in DeFi this year: decentralized options and Optimistic Ethereum, the latter being one of the best layer-two scaling solutions on the block (haha).
That said, Lyra is a decentralized options protocol, and notably the first dapp to be created that’s native to Optimistic Ethereum, which is also more simply known as Optimism or OE.
Lyra’s vision, then? To actualize the dream of crypto-native options like never before by building on top of Synthetix with ultra-efficient L2 infrastructure.
What’s this about $LYRA retro farming?
Lyra’s native $LYRA token is scheduled to undergo its token generation event (TGE) next month.
Accordingly, there are currently two ways you can pre-farm $LYRA to get in line for the upcoming retroactive token distribution. These avenues are via either 1) providing liquidity to Lyra’s DAI-sUSD pool on OE Uniswap, and/or 2) providing liquidity to Lyra’s in-house ETH Market pool.
For the full scoop on how to participate in these “optimistic” yields, don’t miss our Lyra Alpha Tractor guide that we published last week. It touches on everything from bridging funds to temporary withdrawal restrictions and beyond!
In conclusion though, here are handful of important warnings to keep in mind:
sUSD is off-peg currently, so minting sUSD is the preferred way to acquire the stablecoin right now.
The initial liquidity mining program for the DAI-sUSD pool ends on Sept. 27th; the initial LM program for the ETH Market pool ends on Oct. 1st.
Deposits to the ETH Market pool can’t be withdrawn until Friday, Oct. 1st.
The typical withdrawal period for moving funds from Optimism to Ethereum is ~7 days presently.
Lyra has been audited. Yet as an L2-native project it must be considered an early experiment right now. Do not deposit more money into the project than you can afford to lose.
Do you want to dive more into Yield Farming opportunities? Become a premium subscriber and get access to:
Alpha Tractor Series: giving you intel into the freshest yield for the most honest farmers only.
The Protocol Express: a weekly recap of APYs and new pools on major protocols and a highlight of an emerging opportunity.
Access to the Alpha Tractor Premium Discord channel.
Introducing Olympus Pro
TLDR: Olympus DAO unveils Olympus Pro, a “liquidity-as-a-service” treasury solution for DeFi projects that relies on bonds.A Retrospective on the 1st SMART Alpha Epoch
TLDR: Tokenized risk protocol BarnBridge details how the initial pools of its new SMART Alpha system fared during the project’s first epoch.Uniswap Product Update #2
TLDR: The Uniswap Labs team outlines how it’s made various Uniswap advancements around L2, ENS, and EIP-1559 support.DAI Token Bridge now live on Arbitrum One
TLDR: The MakerDAO protocol engineering team rolls out the DAI Token Bridge on the Arbitrum One optimistic rollup.Aztec 2.0 Updates
TLDR: Privacy rollup project Aztec announces its V2 updates, which includes raising the system’s transaction cap, UI improvements, and more.On-chain perpetual swaps notch daily ATH
TLDR: The daily trade volume of perpetual swaps on Ethereum reached +$2.8B on Tuesday, a new 24-hour record.
👨🏭️ DeFi Pulse Power Tool Pro Tip: Oasis.app’s Multiply 👨🏭️
Oasis.app is DeFi’s most popular gateway to Dai and Maker Vaults. Now get the most out of your vault — literally — with Oasis.app’s new Multiply feature: get 3x leverage on your ETH (and beyond) with just 1 transaction!
Want to dive deeper? Learn more about the tool and the new Oasis integration with DEX aggregator 1inch in the DeFi Pulse Blog 🔥
Disclosure: This section is part of our paid promotional Partners Program; We’ve partnered with Oasis to help educate and inform the community about Oasis.app. As always, we’re committed to providing the entire community with quality, objective information, and any opinions we express are our own.
🚜 Farm +20% APRs on Balancer’s Arbitrum pastures
Balancer is one of DeFi’s top decentralized exchanges, and thus one of the top dapps to use on the Arbitrum scaling solution right now.
That said, the DEX’s L2 pools got that much more attractive this week as the Balancer community decided to distribute +14k BAL in weekly rewards to their LPs for the foreseeable future!
First things first though. Before proceeding, make sure 1) you’re familiar with Arbitrum, 2) you have the Arbitrum network added to your MetaMask wallet, and 3) you’ve moved funds over to the L2 via the Arbitrum Token Bridge (read this bridging tutorial for extra help).
Once you’re done with those preliminary steps, you’re ready to pick your pastures. This week we’re recommending the WBTC/WETH/USDC pool (~19% APR) and the USDC/USDT pool (~20% APR) as interesting farms to consider at the moment. After you’ve settled on an option and deposited liquidity, you’ll automatically start farming BAL Arbitrum-style.
Balancer has been audited and built by a public team. Yet this is an L2 deployment, so there are added complexities and unique risks in these early days. These pools should be considered more experimental than their L1 counterparts. As such, approach them with even more caution and never deposit more money than you can afford to lose.
The Compound community votes on a dynamic COMP rewards distribution model.
The Compound community approves a streaming grant to retain Gauntlet Network’s services.
The Instadapp community considers a proposal to discontinue its existing liquidity mining program.
The Ribbon community considers expanding the Ribbon DAO multi-sig.
Upcoming token and NFT trading protocol Genie will handle slippage very efficiently.
Twitter is reportedly planning an NFT authentication feature.
SushiSwap’s NFT platform Shoyu is building a virtual world that will allow “free roam” adventures.
Coinbase Pro launches support for Loot-linked Adventure Gold (AGLD) token.
Interested in giving Balancer’s Arbitrum yield farms a go? You’ll need the right tools for the job. For this, a great resource to add to your personal DeFi toolbox is Balancer Tools, a community-managed analytics service for tracking all things Balancer V2!
Should we be worried about DeFi regulation? 🤔
We should be focused, practical, and realistic in the face of these recent regulatory updates, to say the least. Choppy seas lie ahead.
At the same time, never has our ecosystem and its builders been in positions of such strength. We’re as ready as ever for the rumbles of tumbles of tomorrow, whatever they may be.
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!
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