Last Week in DeFi - Aave GHO Live, Stader ETHx Live, Ripple Wins SEC Case, and More...

Recap: Week of July 10th

Product Launches 🚀

• Aave GHO Live
  Aave launcehd the GHO stablecoin on the Ethereum mainnet. Those staking AAVE in the Safety Module are able to mint GHO at a discounted rate.

• Stader ETHx Live
  Stader launches ETHx along with $1M in launch incentives. The incentives include a 1.5x staking boost, 800k in LP rewards, and rewards for DAOs & communities.

• Starknet v0.12 Mainnet
  Starknet launches v0.12 upgrade to its mainnet, increases throughput by 10x, and marks the Quant Leap upgrade's beginning - providing enhanced performance and scalability.

• Kava 14 Live
  Kava 14 is live on mainnet. The ‘internal bridge’ in the upgrade enables users to transfer native IBC assets from Cosmos to EVM ecosystems.

• Ajna Live on Ethereum
  Lending protocol Ajna launches on Ethereum. Ajna has no oracle price feed nor governance and allows borrowing against nearly any fungible or non-fungible token and lend any fungible token. Ajna plans to expand to L2s in the coming months.

• Swaap V2 Live
  Market-making protocol Swaap launches v2 on Ethereum and Polygon. V2 introduces enhancements for LPs, such as optimized market-making strategies, partnerships with institutions, incentives for early participation, etc.

• Fuji V2 Live
  Auto-refinancing lending protocol Fuji Finance launches V2, becoming the first cross-chain money markets aggregator that supports major lending protocols like Aave, Compound, dForce, Morpho, etc. across Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, and Gnosis.

• Spectra Beta (APWine 2.0)
  Defi interest rates trading protocol APWine launches 2.0 with a new brand Spectra. Spectra offers features like fixed interest rates, yield marketplace, lending/ borrowing, etc for interest-bearing tokens.

• Oku Trade Live
  Oku Trade, a trading frontend for Uniswap V3, is now live on Ethereum.

• Linea Mainnet Alpha
  ConsenSys L2 Linea launches mainnet alpha and starts to onboard launch partners. Linea will open the network to the public next week at EthCC.

• CoW Hooks
  CowSwap launches CoW Hooks, an enahcenment to its code base. CoW Hooks allow devs to implement custom-coded DeFi actions that execute directly before and/or after user trades.

Project Updates 🚩

• Polygon 2.0: POL Token
  Polygon releases the whitepaper of POL, an upcoming token upgrade of MATIC. POL will be the token that allows holders to be multichain validators for all Polygon chains to receive fees and rewards.

• Liquity V2
  Liquitt founder announces V2, a new product for leverage & borrowing for staked ETH. Liquity V2 will be a sperate product from V1, it is in concept stage and will launch in 2024.

• Celo as as L2
  Celo proposes to return to Ethereum by transitioning from an EVM-compatible L1 to an Ethereum L2. The transition would use OP Stack and EigenLayer to become an L2.

• Uniswap on Avalanche
  Uniswap V3 is now live on Avalanche.

• Ondo Live on Polygon
  RWA protocol Ondo expands to Polygon, allowing investors to access tokenized Treasury products and OUSD on Polygon.

• Cega Live on Arbitrum
  Structured investments protocol Cega launches on Arbitrum, with the introduction to the L2 vault that offers ~63% APY on ARB and OP by selling options (there is market risk).

• Equilibria on BnB Chain
  Pendle yield booster Equilibria launches on BnB chain.

• yETH Deposits Live
  yearn has enabled yETH deposits. Users can now lock ETH for st-yETH to vote on which LSTs will make up the yETH basket and receive bri- incentives.

• Axelar x Microsoft
  Axelar and Microsoft teams up to develop and offer blockchain interoperability products. Axelar’s interoperability solutions will be made available to Microsoft’s customers through the Azure cloud marketplace.

• Google Play New NFT Policy
  Google Play Store will update its policy and allow devs to integrate NFT rewards in their Apps.

• Base Mainnet for Builders
  Base L2 opens its mainnet to builders and will open for the public in August.

• Metis zkEVM
  MetisDAO introduces the ZKM project.
  ZKM is developing a hybrid rollup that combines an Optimistic rollup and ZK rollup into one and will upgrade the Metis to a hybrid rollup at the first phase of its 3-phase roadmap.

Governance Highlights 📝

• Proposal: Ribbon Aevo Merger
  Ribbon community proposes to merge Ribbon into Aevo, wind down the RBN token, and launch the AEVO token to govern the protocol.

• Passed: BIFI Migration
  Beefy DAO is taking a signalling vote to migrate away from Multichain by redeploying $BIFI on Ethereum.

Regulations 🏛️

• Ripple Wins SEC Case
  After a year-long dispute between Ripple and the SEC on whether the XRP token is a security, a US judge ruled that institutional XRP sales were investment contracts, but programmatic sales were not.

Hacks/Issues 👾

• Rodeo Hacked
  Arbitrum-based leveraged farming protocol Rodeo was attacked for $880k due to oracle dependency. Rodeo has paused the protocol while investigating, and is asking the hacker to return stolen funds.

• AlgoFi Winding Down
  Algorand-based lending protocol Algofi, holding 55% of Algorand TVL, announces it will wind down the protocol due to the non-viability of its current business model. The Algofi website is now in withdraw-only mode.

Upcoming ⏳

• Arkham Token Sale, Intel Marketpalce
  On July 18, on-chain analysis platform Arkham will launch its token sale on Binance Launchpad and will distribute airdrop to early users. The Arkham on-chain wallet information marketplace will also go live on July 18.

• brc20-swap
  UniSat Wallet will launch brc20-swap, the first native swap for Ordinals on the bitcoin network.

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