Today’s email is brought to you by INFINIT - the First DeFi Abstraction Layer
Farm INFINIT airdrop by participating in DeFi Activities!
In today’s newsletter:
🔎5 DeFi projects I'm bullish on
📊On-chain alpha
😂Crypto meme of the week
🗞️The latest DeFi news
🔎5 cool DeFi projects I'm bullish on
The latest market pump almost feels surreal.
BTC hitting new highs almost every day is something we haven’t experienced in a very long time. It is great to finally be back.
And one thing that I love to see is that DeFi is also making a comeback.
Just a few days ago, DeFi hit a new annual high in mindshare on Crypto Twitter.
So in this issue, I thought it would be interesting to cover 5 DeFi projects that I’ve been closely watching over the past few months👇
Pendle
If you’re a DeFi degen, you’re probably already familiar with it.
Pendle is the largest yield trading protocol. Using it, you can long the yield of a certain yield opportunity or earn a fixed yield on your assets.
The release of its points trading pools, which enabled speculating on the value of airdrop points, led to a huge increase in its TVL a while ago.
Now Pendle has another big catalyst on the horizon:
The upcoming launch of Boros (aka Pendle V3)
Boros is the first platform that will enable leverage yield trading.
For instance, Boros will allow the trading of funding rates from perpetual exchanges, which are being used by many delta-neutral projects to generate high returns.
There’s a huge demand for high-yield opportunities during bull markets.
Pendle’s upcoming Boros product might be able to offer that, but the timeline for its mainnet launch has not been revealed yet.
Instadapp (Fluid)
Instadapp is an OG DeFi protocol.
It started as an aggregator of some of the most popular DeFi protocols.
But a few months ago, its team also released Fluid, a novel DeFi protocol that unlocked a new level of capital efficiency.
In short, Fluid can be seen as a borrowing & lending platform.
But several things make it stand out from a regular lending protocol:
The platform’s liquidation penalties are as low as 0.1%
The Liquidation Threshold for some markets is up to 97%
Debt can be used by borrowers as trading liquidity to earn a yield
Fluid liquidity providers earn trading & lending fees at the same time
For borrowers, Fluid is offering the best conditions in the market.
Fluid DEX protocol also went live two weeks ago, and its launch was a big success as it quickly became a top 5 DEX due to its high capital efficiency.
Mantle
Mantle is a DeFi protocol with one of the largest treasuries in crypto.
It’s primarily known for its Ethereum L2 solution, but Mantle isn’t just an L2.
The team of the project has shipped several other highly successful products over the past 12 months:
mETH - a ETH liquid staking token (that reached $1.5B+ in TVL)
cmETH - a composable ETH liquid restaking token that captures rewards across multiple restaking protocols
FBTC - an omnichain asset pegged to BTC (that reached $600M+ in TVL)
Mantle L2 has also seen a 1,133% growth in TVL over the past year.
What I really like about Mantle is that its team proved to be able to constantly adapt to market trends and build products that gain a lot of traction.
cmETH, Mantle’s most recent product, is a good example - as it enables earning yield/airdrop points from 6 sources by holding only one token and it creates some interesting farming opportunities
In just a few weeks since its launch, it surpassed $250M in TVL.
Resolv Labs
Resolv is the project behind USR, a novel delta-neutral (DN) stablecoin.
Just like Ethena, the protocol uses a DN strategy that involves shorting ETH against ETH collateral in order to generate yield from funding rates for its stablecoin holders.
But what makes Resolv stand out is that it addresses a major issue:
The problem with delta-neutral strategies is that they are not risk-free.
A delta-neutral stablecoin could theoretically lose its peg during extreme market volatility or when the funding rates are highly negative.
By introducing a dual-token model, Resolv isolates most of the risks from the USR stablecoin into an insurance layer token called RLP.
If a loss occurs, it’s attributed only to RLP holders, who are earning a higher yield.
This dual-token solution is very interesting as it creates attractive yield opportunities for both high-risk degens and conservative users.
I expect delta-neutral projects like Resolv to gain more popularity over the next months, driven by the attractive yields from the high funding rates.
Thorchain
THORChain is a network that facilitates native cross-chain swaps.
It has been around for a long time, but its cross-chain swap solution started exploding in popularity especially in the past year.
I’d say that one of the things that led to its surge in growth is its large number of recent integrations with tier-1 crypto platforms like Ledger Live and Trust Wallet.
Many people who are doing cross-chain swaps on Trust Wallet are using Thorchain without even knowing it.
The project also has a major upcoming catalyst: The release of its App Layer, which will include several high-quality DeFi apps built on Thorchain
Kujira, a popular Cosmos project, announced a while ago that it is joining the Thorchain ecosystem to build its App Layer.
With that being said, those are the 5 projects I wanted to cover today.
Obviously, those are not the only DeFi projects I’m paying attention to, but this issue is getting too long, so I’ll stop here now.
I hope you found this overview helpful🫡
Together with INFINIT
THE BEST AIRDROP FARM FOR STABLES
If you hold stablecoins, you might be interested in this opportunity.
INFINIT, the first DeFi Abstraction Layer, is supercharging on-chain yields with its rewards program.
By using INIT Capital, a popular money market on Mantle powered by INFINIT, you can farm 3 different airdrops at once:
INFINIT airdrop
INIT Capital airdrop
Ethena airdrop
Here’s how:
Sign up on INFINIT’s rewards page to join its points program
Buy USDe stablecoin on Ethena
Bridge it to Mantle L2 using Stargate
Go to INIT Capital and click on ‘Hooks’
Deposit USDe & borrow against it using the ‘Neutral USDe Looping Hook’
By doing that, you’ll start earning 1x INFINIT points per USDe lent and 2x INFINIT points per USDT borrowed on a daily basis.
Assuming that INFINIT’s token will have a $250M-$500M FDV at launch and 5% of its supply is allocated to the airdrop, the value of every INFINIT point could be somewhere between $0.00066 and $0.00133.
This equates to a ~50-100% APR on stablecoins just from the INFINIT airdrop!
And on top of this, you’d also qualify for another 2 airdrops from INIT and Ethena.
Start farming INFINIT Points today!
On-chain Alpha🔎
BlackRock's BTC ETF has surpassed its Gold ETF in size
No chart is more bullish for BTC than this one imo.
Despite most institutions publicly bashing crypto for years, the success of the spot BTC ETFs has exceeded all expectations.
And with the retail investors finally starting to pay attention to crypto, I think the spot BTC ETFs will see a lot of inflows over the next months.
Crypto Meme😂
The latest developments in DeFi
Pendle introduced Boros, a new platform for leverage yield trading, and announced an airdrop for vePENDLE holders
MicroStrategy acquired an additional $2 billion worth of BTC
BlackRock expanded its tokenized fund BUIDL to Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism, Polygon, and Aptos
Eclipse, the first Ethereum L2 powered by Solana Virtual Machine, launched its mainnet. Its goal is to combine Solana’s speed with Ethereum’s security
Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson announced he will work with the Trump Administration to help shape crypto legislation
pSTAKE Finance is discussing a major tokenomics upgrade proposal that would enable PSTAKE holders to earn yield in BTC
Linea L2 announced plans to release its LINEA token by Q1 2025
Sonic Labs (prev. Fantom) announced that it will take an airdrop snapshot on Dec. 1
Blur’s proposal to turn on the fee switch for $BLUR went live
Kernel DAO, a restaking protocol on BNB Chain, launched its testnet
ENS introduced Namechain, a new Ethereum L2 for scaling blockchain identity
Symphony, the first agnostic execution network, announced its upcoming launch on Nov. 25
Coinbase has launched cbBTC, its BTC-backed token, on Solana
OG Labs announced that it raised $290M in funding
That’s all for this week!
Until next time,
The DeFi Investor
Want to sponsor this newsletter?
Please send me a DM on Twitter (X). I have a sponsorship deck that I can send you.
