Welcome to Weekly Roundup, where our team of experts selects buzzworthy pools, news, and announcements for you to have on your radar.
Frens don’t let frens Degen without Weekly Roundup. Check out our newest pool ratings, and don’t do anything we wouldn’t do. 😈
BTW – did you know you can subscribe to alerts about your favorite pools? Hit the ⭐ follow links below, so you don’t miss a thing.
The best of the best. These pools have no major red flags, offer a competitive yield, and are at the top of the class – earning an A or B risk rating. This week, say hello to cbETH. 😻
- APR ~8%
- Exponential Risk Rating: B
- Yield source: Trading fees from cbETH-ETH volume and Ethereum validator rewards
- APR ~0.2% from lending (non-inclusive of cbETH staking APR of ~4%)
- Exponential Risk Rating: B
- Yield source: Interest earned for lending cbETH plus Ethereum validator rewards
- APR ~8%
- Exponential Risk Rating: B
- Yield source: Avalanche validator rewards
- APR ~44%
- Exponential Risk Rating: B
- Yield source: Curve fee sharing and re-invested CRV rewards
Check out the MVPs here.
New kid on the blockchain. We review thousands of DeFi investments to find the most attractive pools for you. We’re raising a toast to Sommelier. 🥂
- APR ~23%
- Exponential Risk Rating: C
- APR ~343%
- Exponential Risk Rating: C
- APR ~5%
- Exponential Risk Rating: C
- APR ~20%
- Exponential Risk Rating: C
Meet the new pools here.
Don’t degen too close to the sun. These pools have major red flags at either the chain, protocol, or asset level, with a high likelihood of being exploited or failing. Sonne is a money market with questionable collateral assets and an anonymous team. Watch your back! 👀
- Exponential Risk Rating: D
- Exponential Risk Rating: F
- Exponential Risk Rating: F
- Exponential Risk Rating: F
Step into the danger zone if you must.
New protocol reports
Protocols can be a pain to keep up with – let us help. Our team finds the most interesting protocols and breaks down what you need to know and why they need to be on your radar. This week, we’re introducing Sommelier and stake.link. 🧠
- Sommelier - hedge fund-as-a-service through off-chain computations and third-party strategists
- stake.link - one of the first liquid staking protocols for the Chainlink oracle network
Demystifying DeFi: lending and money markets Vol I 🤝
Lending protocols are hot in DeFi. Stable returns and flexible collateral options tempt even the savviest DeFi investors to overlook risk. In our new blog series, we break down the different types of lending markets and analyze a few notable exploits to see what lessons DeFi investors can learn. Check it out.
It’s about to go off – staked ETH withdrawals nearing launch. Ethereum developers launched the Zhejiang testnet on Feb 1st to support Beacon Chain withdrawals. This is merely a dress rehearsal for the network’s upcoming Shanghai and Capella upgrades, which are scheduled to go live six days later. There are currently ~16.3M ETH (worth ~$28.5B) staked in the Beacon Chain. The faster-than-expected progress on enabling withdrawals has led to a strong rally of liquid staking derivatives (LSDs) like Lido and Rocket Pool.
Let’s get ready to rumble – the rollup wars are here! The debate on whether optimistic or zero knowledge (zk)-rollups will sit atop the scaling throne is heating up. Offchain Labs, the team behind Arbitrum took stabs at the widely held belief that zk-rollups will ultimately emerge as the dominant scaling solution for Ethereum. Co-founder Steven Goldfeder points to the fact that there are still no zk-rollups offering EVM compatibility and is currently available to the public. Meanwhile, Arbitrum and Optimism, two optimistic rollups, are currently leading the scaling wars, with 51% and 31% of the sector’s TVL, according to L2beat.
Leveraged trading platform reaches new milestones following Arbitrum launch. Gains Network saw an ATH of >$200K daily fees generated on Jan 25th, according to Dune Analytics. The platform also surpassed 10K cumulative users. Gains has seen strong momentum as it offers users up to 1000x leverage on crypto assets, forex pairs, and selected stocks. The protocol was initially launched on Polygon but recently expanded to Arbitrum to compete with market leader GMX. Check out our research reports on Gains and GMX to dive deeper!
Coming soon – investing on Exponential
Accredited investors will soon be able to invest in DeFi liquidity pools across major chains directly on our custodial platform.