
Our weekly updates are put together by folks deep in the crypto scene, giving you a clear picture of what's happening without overwhelming you.

To Watch This Week
AIRDROPS + ALPHASep 6, 2024

DeFi
Christensen Balances New Sky Governance With User Choice Amid Freeze Function Debate
Sky, the DeFi protocol formerly known as MakerDAO, is under pressure from its community after co-founder Rune Christensen confirmed last month the protocol’s upcoming USDS stablecoin could feature a freeze function sometime in the future. Although the function will not be enabled at launch on Sept. 18, the idea of including the mechanism has sparked concern about the centralization of Sky’s ecosystem. Christensen, addressing recent concerns in an interview with Decrypt during Korea’s Blockchain...
Jan 2, 2024

Business
Over $80 Million Stolen in Orbit Chain Exploit, Assets 'Remain Unmoved'
Cross-chain bridge project Orbit Chain was hit by a "cyberattack" Monday, with over $80 million drained from its bridge. The project stated that following "unidentified access" on Orbit Bridge, an attacker had taken and was holding $84.5 million worth of assets across multiple wallet addresses. The stolen funds total 26,741.6 ETH held across five addresses (worth around $64.5 million at current prices), with just under $20 million worth of the stablecoin DAI held in another three addresses. The...
Feb 18, 2023

DeFi
DAI Finds Its Spark With Spark Lend
Decrypting DeFi is Decrypt's DeFi email newsletter. (art: Grant Kempster) Last week a Maker DAO cluster launched a new lending market. Think Aave, because, well, it is actually using much of the same code. And the term cluster here is intentional; the group of developers who built what is now called Spark Protocol were quite literally called the “Crimson Cluster.” Now, they’re called Phoenix Labs, and they’re led by protocol engineer Sam MacPherson. He told Decrypt that the key motor behind the...
Jan 18, 2021

The Coins
How To Use DAI Stablecoin: Beginner's Guide (2021)
There are plenty of stable digital currencies available, but only one can claim to be widely used, decentralized, and trustless. In this article, we find out why DAI stands out from the rest of the stablecoin pack. Crypto with steady value isn’t new or rare. Tether has been around for years and is by far the largest stablecoin available. We also have stablecoins such as USDC, PAX, Gemini Coin, and Facebook's upcoming Diem (formerly Libra) all competing to be the stable cryptocurrency of choice,...
Nov 17, 2020

Coins
Ethereum-based Origin Dollar Hacked for Estimated $7 Million
Origin Protocol co-founder Matthew Liu on Monday night confirmed an attack on the Origin Dollar (OUSD) vault. "The team is all-hands on deck attempting to figure out what vulnerability was exploited and how the hacker was able to access users’ deposits," he wrote. Though the exact exploit—some form of flash attack—isn't yet known, the Origin team estimated $7 million—a combination of ETH and DAI stablecoin—had been taken. Origin Dollars' $OUSD got exploited for $5.5M in ETH, around 11,800 ETH A...
Sep 17, 2020

Business
Argentina’s New Dollar Tax Is a Boon for Cryptocurrency
Some countries promote a culture of saving, but for Argentinians, that’s becoming a nightmare. Argentines’ recent tendency to hoard US dollars because of high inflation of the local currency has led the central bank to hit back. Hoarding dollars could have starved the government of dollar reserves within a year. So, yesterday, the central bank hardened measures to avoid this practice by imposing a new 35% tax on purchases made in dollars. Argentines, however, have already countered by buying u...
Sep 10, 2020

DeFi
DeFi Money Market Adds Yield Farming Atop Interest Rewards
Another DeFi project has joined the great yield farming experiment of 2020. DeFi Money Market (DMM) announced today the introduction of yield farming-style rewards in addition to the 6.25% yields it already provides on stablecoin deposits. Yield farming allows users that provide liquidity to a DeFi protocol to earn interest on deposited assets. That means DMM users can soon stake the stablecoin-pegged tokens they receive for being liquidity providers to other decentralized exchanges, such as Uni...
Sep 1, 2020

Coins
MakerDAO Eyes Adding Gemini and Binance USD as Collateral
Maker (MKR) holders have voted to prioritize adding Gemini USD, Binance USD, and several other tokens as collateral assets to the Maker DAO protocol so those tokens can be used to generate DAI stablecoins. As a result, Maker "Domain Teams"—elected community members—will analyze these tokens and determine whether or not the protocol can handle them before the community takes a final vote to accept or reject them as collateral assets. According to the Maker white paper, protocol users can put up E...
Jul 29, 2020

Business
Coinbase is giving daily rewards to users holding the DAI stablecoin
Crypto exchange Coinbase has announced that its customers from the US, UK and other select countries can now earn rewards for holding the DAI stablecoin in their accounts, according to a press release. “Today, we’re introducing Dai Rewards, with 2% APY [Annual Percentage Yield] for customers in the US, UK, Netherlands, Spain, France, and Australia,” the platform announced. DAI is a cryptocurrency pegged to the value of the US dollar. Image: Shutterstock. Customers from the eligible countries can...
Jul 9, 2020

Coins
Why blacklisting stablecoins could undermine DeFi
When the decentralized stablecoin, DAI was on its last legs amid the mid-March coronavirus market crash, its community elected to have a chunk of its peg to the US dollar collateralized by the centralized US dollar-pegged stablecoin, USDC. Now, Centre, the company behind the centralized US dollar-pegged stablecoin, USDC, has blacklisted an Ethereum address holding $100,000 worth of the token. Suddenly, MakerDAO’s DAI doesn’t seem so decentralized. “Imagine if some of the USDC is sitting in a M...
Jun 8, 2020

DeFi
DeFi market cap doubles to $2 billion in under two months
DeFi tokens are so hot right now. The total market cap for decentralized finance (DeFi) products crossed the $2 billion mark over the weekend, just weeks after the initial DeFi Market Cap launch measured the total at just over $1 billion. Well, that was quick! All your Google searches in the past 24 hours paid off 🎢 Introducing a more detailed Google featured snippet for #DeFi Market Cap 💸 https://t.co/jVOniOJTto pic.twitter.com/YVUVF1ktcX — DeFi Market Cap 🎢 (@defimarketcap) June 5, 2020 T...
May 30, 2020

Coins
MakerDAO’s MKR token surges in price following Coinbase listing
The price of Maker (MKR), the governance token for the MakerDAO stablecoin, increased by 20% after Coinbase Pro announced yesterday that it would support the token. In the past week, it’s increased by over 50%, according to CoinMarketCap data. MKR started the week at $343; as of May 30, its price is $518. Coinbase said that users can transfer the token on its Pro platform—used by more experienced traders—from 9am PT (4pm UTC), June 8. Then, they’ll have to wait: trading will occur only if “li...
May 18, 2020

Coins
Bitcoin locked in DeFi doubles just weeks after Maker vote
Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) has found new life thanks to its new use case as collateral on the Maker platform. The number of Wrapped Bitcoin has more than doubled since the cross-chain currency was added as a collateral option on the Maker protocol. Total Bitcoin locked rose from about 1,000 to nearly 2,300 since the Maker proposal was passed, with more Bitcoin locked in under two weeks than all that were locked since the WBTC launched in January 2019. The total value locked reached an all-time high...
May 4, 2020

DeFi
Bitcoin can now be used to generate DAI on DeFi protocol Maker
The Maker Protocol is going long on Bitcoin. Wrapped Bitcoin, or WBTC, the ERC20 “wrapped” Bitcoin token has been approved as a collateral asset in the Maker Protocol following an Executive Vote on Sunday. WBTC joins ETH, BAT, and USDC as collateral assets that have been approved for use in the protocol via MakerDAO governance. Maker users can now get loans using Bitcoin as collateral, expanding the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem and opening access to Bitcoin’s more than $163 billion ma...
May 1, 2020

DeFi
DeFi platform Compound approves interest rate upgrade in historic vote
DeFi just got a bit more decentralized. Following Compound’s shift to community governance earlier in April, DeFi bank Dharma submitted the second-ever Compound Governance proposal, which sought to change the interest rate model for DAI exchange. We are pleased to announce that our proposal has passed! We are very excited to improve the Compound experience for capital suppliers. https://t.co/vYraHqARXh — Dharma (@Dharma_HQ) April 30, 2020 It marks the first time a major DeFi product has approv...
Apr 24, 2020

Business
Your odds of winning this crypto no-loss lottery just got better
PoolTogether, the prize-linked savings account built on Ethereum, today announced a new feature: a way to increase the odds of winning its “no-loss” crypto lottery. PoolTogether users can now combine their lottery tickets, purchased with DAI or USDC stablecoins, into Pods. The Pods allow users to combine their tickets into a secondary basket. If the winning ticket is part of a Pod, the prize money is split proportionally among participants—the more tickets an individual submits to a Pod, the gre...
Apr 22, 2020

Coins
Dharma brings DAI stablecoin payments to Twitter
Dharma, the prominent DeFi cryptobank, has made it incredibly easy (and free) to introduce any Twitter user to the world of cryptocurrency. Dharma introduced “Social Payments” on Tuesday, allowing users to send USD-pegged DAI stablecoins to any Twitter handle, even if there is no associated Dharma account. Why would someone want to do this rather than, say, use Venmo? Well, to use Venmo, both parties need a Venmo account and under certain conditions, hefty transaction fees are applied. As mentio...
Apr 9, 2020

Coins
Winklevoss-backed Gemini to list Chainlink, price soars 15 percent
New York-based cryptocurrency exchange Gemini today announced that it’s adding three new cryptocurrencies to its list of digital offerings: Chainlink (LINK), Dai (DAI) and Orchid (OXT). While the three tokens will not be available on the exchange until April 24, news of the forthcoming listing is already driving considerable interest for these coins: prices for OXT and LINK, for example, skyrocketed today between 10% and 15%, respectively. Once the coins are listed on the Winklevoss-backed exch...
Apr 8, 2020

DeFi
DeFi’s newest dapp helps users buy crypto with interest from DAI
A new DeFi app is taking on two key components of growing the decentralized finance industry: managing risk and making it easy for novice users to enter the ecosystem and start earning returns. dPiggy launched yesterday and is built atop the Compound and UniSwap protocols. It provides a simple interface for users to earn interest on DAI deposits and have their returns automatically used to purchase a variety of crypto assets at the end of each month. Our first DeFi product is live on Ethereum...
Apr 2, 2020

Coins
Investors pick winners and losers in red-hot stablecoin market
Amid sky-high economic uncertainty from the effects of the coronavirus, stablecoins have experienced stunning inflows of value—but not all platforms have benefitted equally. Between March 18 and April 1, the supply of stablecoins grew more than 60%. BUSD and HUSD, the Paxos-powered stablecoins built for Binance and Huobi, added a stunning 278% and 56%, respectively, to their total supply in that short time. On the other end of the spectrum, DAI supply increased just 10% as investors shunned the...