GM Digest #76
Gm with Valuable Alphas / Insights — Make Sure to DYOR. All of This is Not Financial Advice. Ape at Your Own Peril
FT Sim-Swap Hack
• A single scammer has reportedly managed to steal around $385k worth of ETH by SIM-swapping four different FT users
• The SIM-swap scam occurs when scammers gain access to the victim’s phone number and use it to acquire authentication which enables them to access their social media and crypto accounts
• @darengb shared what happened when he got Sim-Swapped
Hook Protocol X Gondi
• @HookProtocol is teaming up with @gondixyz prior to the launch of Odyssey with the aim of providing NFT lenders the option to hedge their loans
• Hook Protocol recently announced its V2 upgrade (Odyssey), which will introduce numerous new features and improvements. One highly requested addition will be the ability to short collections
• Hook Odyssey’s new architecture allows traders to create strategies to help scale their NFT Finance activity — Borrowers can perform Refinancing, Partial Refinancing (Multi-Tranche), Lender can add one-time Origination Fees, and Lender can purchase Put Options to hedge against downside risk in the case that the Borrower Default
• Hook is an NFT Options protocol on Ethereum that enables traders to purchase call options and allows NFT holders to earn yield. Gondi is a Peer-to-Peer NFT Lending Protocol
Blackbird raises $24M
• @blackbird_xyz announced that they raised $24M in their Series A round, led by @a16zcrypto, Amex Ventures, @QEDInvestors, and others, on top of the $11M they raised in 2022
• If you are trying to farm this, note that it is currently only available in NYC but should be coming to the West Coast pretty soon
• Blackbird is an ‘Eat-to-Earn’ mobile app that incentivizes customers and restaurants with its native $FLY token. Founded by Ben Leventhal the founder of ‘Eater’
Thoughts: Possibly one of the “different” restaurant tech projects utilizing token & NFT as incentives to attract & retain customers — Eat-to-Earn. Blackbird has been extensively covered by Taiki for the past few weeks on his journey to farm $FLY from attending different Blackbird restaurants. Recommend checking it out
DeZy Builder
• @DezyFinance Builder is Live
• Users can access your favorite protocols, combine them into different transaction flows & strategies, share & earn fees, and bundle & execute transactions, all in a single interface
• The team is connecting with more protocols to build with, adding more L2s / bridging, and adding additional Builder modules that will bring more automation
• Dezy integrates various DeFi yield protocols to provide a simple and easy-to-use interface. As a non-custodial liquidity platform, users can invest digital assets in various yield-generating platforms
Thoughts: One of the engineers working on this project is my good ex-Spartan friend, Tristan. Dezy feels a bit similar to Tortle Ninja (that recently launched on Arbitrum) where users can drag and drop actions and simplify the Defi strategies. I’m all for this kind of product that makes it easier for users to access complex Defi strategies with the tip of their fingers. However, would want to see team-made or pre-made use cases that make it very different than other solutions e.g. bundle & execute flash loans & arbitrage strats, multi/cross-chain yield farming strats, etc
Goldlink on Arbitrum
• Goldlink is building an on-chain undercollateralized lending protocol on Arbitrum combining both the architecture of the manage-wallet and the contract-to-contract lending architecture
• GoldLink recently raised $1.4m in a round led by Polychain Capital in August
Thoughts: Not much detail is out on Goldlink but there’s never not enough undercollateralized prime brokerage protocol in the space for sure. We have Gearbox as the #1 prime brokerage with leverage still only available to leverage ninja ($100k minimum) and DeltaPrime building out their products as the first Defi Prime Brokerage on Arbitrum & Avalanche (Hopefully more degen strats). Composable undercollateralized lending / farming strats unlock higher capital efficiency that we usually don’t see in normal money markets or leverage farming protocols. You’d be able to Long / Short any assets while leverage farming on top of that
OATH Foundation Aurelius
• @OATHFoundation announced the introduction of the first 'chapter' with the upcoming launch of @AureliusFi, a lending protocol on Mantle
• Aurelius' focus is on slashing capital costs for DeFi borrowers by leveraging synthetic debt instruments and money markets
• Users will be able to seamlessly borrow $AUSD without any interest. Access a variety of assets like $USDC, $USDT, $ETH, and $MNT for borrowing. Stake $AU and enjoy real yield. Or earn $xAU by providing liquidity for $AUSD
• Assets deposited into the CDP to mint $AUSD will be rehypothecated into the money market (owned by the platform) and lent out at competitive interest rates
• OATH Foundation is creating a robust, interconnected, sustainable DeFi ecosystem rooted in governance. Projects built by OATH includes Digit, ETHOS, and Reaper Farm
Roci Token Launch
• @rocifi $ROCI previously went through LBP and has recently launched on Univ2
• While its product is pretty interesting, $ROCI barely has any utility except staking to earn more $ROCI — its token plunges 50% from its starting price
• Rocifi is a credit scoring primitive that allows web3 users to monetize their on-chain history via lower borrowing rates, higher loan-to-value ratios, or boosted token rewards
Thoughts: Why token? Also why LBP? LBP helps bootstrap liquidity for your token but often times you consolidate all the demand during the LBP phase which leads to bad post-TGE price action. Also doesn’t understand the need for token in a project that’s establishing credit scoring with on-chain credit history, sure token could be used to drive traffic and incentivize users but man, this isn’t how it should be designed lol (Sorry for the rant)
First Lybra DAO Proposal
• As covered in GM Digest #68, the @LybraFinance team had set a deadline for the token migration from V1 to V2 and tokens which did not migrate will be burnt. The Lybra DAO will now have their first proposal on handling the unmigrated tokens
• The proposal set out 3 options:
⇢ Option A: Extending the migration period with a migration fee. This option will allow V1 LBR tokens to migrate their holdings to V2 esLBR with a 3% migration fee, with a set end date of 3 months. There will also be a vesting period of 3 months for Option A
⇢ Option B: Allowing V1 LBR tokens to be migrated to V2 LBR, with a 20% migration fee and a set end date of 3 months. There will be no vesting period for Option B
⇢ Options C: Remove non-migrated V1 LBR Tokens from Token Circulation
• The proposal comes after the backlash from the community, especially from holders who have not seen the announcements and migrated in time (approximately 13% of all previous circulating V1 LBR across ~2,000 wallets did not migrate their holdings within the timeframe)
Thoughts: The migration was not well done by the protocol at all given there were many people who were passive holders of the token on exchanges or on-chain. These 2000 wallets have already faced -100% losses on their token holdings since they weren’t able to migrate. This proposal should’ve arrived before migration happened
Fuji Finance Comes to a Close
• @FujiFinance announced that they will be closing down the company due to a dwindling treasury and not being able to fundraise
• Fuji Finance is a cross-chain money market aggregator built on 4 chains namely: Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon and Fantom
Manifold Rolls Out MEV Protocol
• @mevdotio offers a new MEV Auction system that has been under development which supports multiple winners per slot, as opposed to the current paradigm of one slot, one winner in the Flashbots MEV Boost system
• This new Auction System will provide the foundation needed to support applications such as a Forward Market for priority-sensitive transactions, multi-slot bidding for block builders, restaking support for ERC-20 tokens, and various DeFi integrations
• MEV Protocol is the result of @CreamdotFinance with the first-ever ETH staking service & @foldfinance a leading figure in Ethereum infrastructure
Thoughts: Manifold’s LST — mevETH will be using the underlying migrated ETH from crETH (Cream ETH). Although the arbitrage opportunity for crETH is now gone, it is worth keeping an eye out for $FOLD which saw almost 2x increase in price the past month and is currently trading at $18.86. This increase is probably attributed to the launch of mevETH. mevETH could potentially capture higher yields than traditional LSTs due to the MEV auction component.
Misc News
• @ipor_io v2 is Live on Goerli Testnet
• @SankoGameCorp Sanko TV Beta is NOW LIVE
• veZERO Presale is Live with $120,000 veZERO Presale Bonus & $20,000 veZERO giveaway (Zero is a Retro fork on Polygon zkEVM)
• @OrderlyNetwork partners with @SweatEconomy
• @metastreetxyz announced that their security audit for punk_mstETH has passed with flying colors. 0 issues with the contracts were reported by @cantinaxyz.
• @ZhartaFinance introduces ‘Tailored Deals’. Owners of rare NFTs can submit proposals to the teams and get custom quotes.
• @ambient_finance joins the @monad_xyz ecosystem
• @MEXC_Official invests 8 figs in @ton_blockchain
• @ConvergenceRfq secured $2.5m pre seed investment at $30m valuation
• Snapshot integrates XMTP to boost secure communication with users
• $RDNT USD perps listed on @HyperliquidX with up to 5x leverage
• @KodiakFi — Berachain’s Native Liquidity Hub
• @GainsNetwork_io lists new 9 Forex Pairs
• @vertex_protocol delays their TGE to November
*Reminder to Size Your Entry for Degen Plays and Take Your Principal Out (Take Profits) Whenever You Hit Your Target*