GM Digest #52

Gm with Valuable Alphas / Insights — Make Sure to DYOR. All of This is Not Financial Advice. Ape at Your Own Peril

Venus Prime

• @VenusProtocol introduces Venus Prime to enhance rewards and promote $XVS staking and rewards are derived from the protocol revenue

• Eligible $XVS holders will receive a unique SBT which boosts the rewards. Eligibility requirements are to stake a minimum of 1000 $XVS for a minimum of 90 days

• Venus is the largest money market on BNB and the second largest protocol with over $630m TVL in the chain

Rodeo Booster

• @Rodeo_Finance Booster Incentives is live, users can earn 100% APR boost from ribUSDC lending rewards by locking RDO/ETH LP more than 5% of ribUSDC deposit value

• When user deposit USDC they’ll get a receipt token of ribUSDC which is an interest-bearing tokens of Rodeo (interests from leveragoors).

• ribUSDC peg has been gradually improving from $0.6 to the current level of $0.77. The peg went down due to the exploit that happened 2 months ago. Since then Rodeo has drastically ramped up its securities and continued to remunerate capital to the affected users (ribUSDC lenders)

Helix Raised $2m

• @helix_finance has raised $2m in an oversubscribed pre-seed round led by Saison Capital & Superscrpyt

• Helix offers its proprietary credit assessment tools, analyzing millions of loans to provide “unprecedented credit and fraud insights into the loan portfolios to bring high-quality credit opportunities”

• It boasts a robust pipeline from a diverse pool of borrowers across various segments including consumer, agriculture, education, technology and SME across SEA

Thoughts: Glad we now have SEA-focused SME RWAs. Since I was working as Private Equity Analyst & Venture Capital Associate on traditional markets for half a decade, I’ve seen a lot of startups & SMEs struggle to secure funding (both Debt & Equity) due to lack of credibility & lack of collateral. Digital Lending has solved a small part of the problem but there’s still a lot of businesses that have no access to funding, a lot of Unbanked in SEA.

Lido Security Flaw

• On 10 Sept, @SlowMist_Team revealed an operational issue in the $LDO token contract that has recently been exploited by malicious actors for “fake deposit” attacks on exchanges

• In response, Lido didn’t confirm any exploits but acknowledged the security flaw was known and reassured LDO and stETH funds remain safe

• The stEH peg remains strong and $LDO didn’t face a huge sell-off

Thoughts: The key takeaway from this is to always diversify your LSTs so that you don’t put all eggs in 1 basket

FTX Asset Liquidation

• There were reports that FTX is likely to obtain approval to liquidate its assets on Sep 13. These list of assets include $ETH, $BTC, $SOL, $FTT, $APT, $DOGE and $MATIC

• This liquidation would result in a large sell pressure with potential price dumps especially for $SOL and $FTT with $650m+ and $500m+ of sell pressure for those coins respectively

• It is noteworthy that FTX’s $SOL holdings are still vested linearly until 2028 so the full amount will not be able to be liquidated all at once

Thoughts: It is a common misconception that the liquidator will offload all the FTX assets at once. The market impact will be less severe than what people are expecting due to the tokens vesting periods, and also the liquidator would want to try and recoup as much as possible so TWAP’ing the tokens over a period of time make more sense

FTX Sues LayerZero

• FTX seeks to recover funds withdrawn days before FTX bankruptcy filing from LayerZero

• A brief history on their relationship based on the court filing:

⇢ Between Jan to May 2022, Alameda paid more than $70m to acquire a stake of roughly 4.92% in LayerZero

⇢ In March, Alameda paid $25m for 100m $STG tokens at a public auction

⇢ In February, there was also a loan transaction between Alameda and LayerZero for LayerZero to loan $45m Alameda. The interest was set at 8% per annum

⇢ As the FTX crisis unfolded, LayerZero made a deal with Alameda for Alameda to return its 4.92% stake in LayerZero in exchange for forgiveness of the $45m loan

⇢ On top of that, there was another deal for the 100m $STG tokens at a $10m discount. This transaction, however, was never completed. LayerZero did not pay for the tokens, and Alameda Ventures did not transfer the tokens

• FTX now wants to recover approximately $21m from LayerZero Labs as a result of the deals

Thoughts: This is a complex lawsuit between both parties. FTX alleges that LayerZero Labs used insider information to withdraw their funds from FTX before the exchange temporarily suspended withdrawals due to a technical issue. The outcome will set a precedent for the future lawsuits between CEX & Defi project.

G20 Cross-Border Crypto Framework

• Leaders of 19 biggest sovereign countries are pushing for a swift implementation of a cross-border framework for crypto assets

• Affected Countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the European Union

• Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) was designed to “give tax authorities greater visibility into crypto transactions, as well as the individuals behind them”

• Could this spell the end of the Crypto Wild West era (in the West)?

Thoughts: Move to Asia → Krabi, Phuket, Bali = Best

FT Frenzy Continues

• @friendtech continues to gain traction, its TVL is now at $20m and DAU is over 9,000

• @perpstech has recently released its Alpha, users are now able to Long/Short keys of top creators. $PERPS pumped 8% overnight (while the rest of the market is red)

• @friendfarm_ is a project that is yet to launch. Friend Farm key holders will get early access, you’ll be able to “turn your friends into revenue” soon

• @FriendChipsTech, a FT Treasury Management project pumped & dumped hard earlier today. 6% buy/sell tax is used to buy more FT shares to be eligible for more FT points = more FT airdrops

Thoughts: As mentioned in the previous GM Digest episode, the current hype is driven by FT airdrop farming. There are many projects that are building on top of FT just to leverage the hype, many of these do not provide actual value. This tend to directly reflect in their price chart (quick pump & dump). Be careful watch you ape in, remember it’s heightened PvP market and everyone is out to get yo ass

Degen Section

• $BANANA Launch today at 18:00 - 21:00 UTC with a starting MCap of $1.63m and Liquidity is now richer at $309k. Contract will be released directly on Official Banana Telegram. This is gonna be one of the biggest event this month. If the contract is released well before launch, I’m likely gonna be allocating a small bag to sniping the launch with Banana Bot (Despite the warning from the team not to snipe). Will wait and see how the price performs, since the market has been so bad, all the volatility will be consolidated in $BANANA

*Reminder to Size Your Entry for Degen Plays and Take Your Principal Out (Take Profits) Whenever You Hit Your Target*