Hello Defiers! Here’s what we are covering today,

Podcast

🎙Listen to the interview in this week’s podcast episode here:

Links

Still sort of in a state of disbelief: Art Blocks

Most Read on The Defiant

We’re excited. We’re getting ready to launch The Defiant Terminal, a platform for investors and analysts to track all DeFi data in one place. Join the waitlist today to be notified as soon as it’s live. You’ll want to be the first to get your eyes on that alpha.

The open economy is taking over the old one. Subscribe to keep up with this revolution. Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button below ($15/mo, $150/yr).

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🙌 Together with:

Balancer, one of the leading DeFi automated market makers (AMM) for multiple tokens. Dive into their pools at this link.
Kraken, consistently rated the best and most secure cryptocurrency exchange, which can get you from fiat to DeFi
Aave, an open-source and non-custodial liquidity protocol where users can earn interest on deposits and borrow assets.
The DeFi Pulse Index, by Index Coop - DPI is the easiest way to capture the upside of DeFi with the benefit of diversification. Buy DPI today on your favorite DEX.

DeFi Incentives

📈 DeFi Powerhouses Curve and Aave Deploy on Avalanche to Profit from Incentives

TLDR Incentives work. Or at least they do in terms of wooing DeFi protocols to deploy on other blockchains. Case and point, Curve Finance, the automated market maker, and Aave, the leading DeFi lending project, have each deployed their offerings on Avalanche as a part of the blockchain’s $180M incentive program called Avalanche Rush.

SCALING SOLUTION It’s the first time Aave has ported to a chain other than Polygon, which bills itself as a scaling solution particularly for Ethereum, DeFi’s leading blockchain in TVL terms. Aave already ranks first in terms of total value locked (TVL) at $1.26B on Avalanche, according to DeFi Llama. Trader Joe, an Avalanche-native decentralized exchange (DEX), trails Aave in TVL, by only $180M. Curve is fifth in Avalanche’s TVL rankings at $274.26M.

TVL Avalanche’s overall TVL has skyrocketed to $4.55B as of Oct. 6, a figure more than 14 times larger than it was on Aug. 18 when Avalanche Rush was announced.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

Supercharged Stablecoins

🧙🏽‍♀️ Abracadabra’s Stablecoin Races Past $1B and Sparks Talk of Overtaking MakerDAO

NEWS New collateralized stablecoin, Magic Internet Money (MIM) is challenging MakerDAO, the grandaddy protocol of DeFi. MIM, issued by lending protocol Abracadabra, broke $1B in supply on Oct. 5, placing it seventh overall in terms of stablecoin market cap, according to CoinGecko.

REMARKABLE GROWTH That’s $5.39B behind Maker’s DAI stablecoin supply. So while MIM still has a ways to go, the stablecoin has shown remarkable growth since launching in May. For contrast, Maker launched in 2017. Yet even though it’s behind in supply, Abracadabra has surpassed the lending incumbent in terms of fees generated, according to the site byebyedai.money.

LOANS Fees on Abracadabra come from the interest paid on the protocol’s loans. If holders of SPELL, Abracadabra’s governance token, stake their asset they receive sSPELL, which accrues 75% of the interest fees.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

The Defiant Essay

✊🏼 A Call to Action: How to Mobilize and Save the Crypto Movement

Call it a manifesto, a warning, or a polemic… The truth is, this remarkable two-part essay by Connor Speliscy and Holmes Wilson is all of those things and more — a cri de coeur as DeFi faces an inflection point. In Part 2, they issue a call to action and lay out a primer for mobilizing the community to rescue the movement from regulation that could significantly impede, or even cripple, the crypto industry.

ADVOCACY The crypto industry has huge advantages over other information technology industries. Our organizational tools, capital, and passionate grassroots support (from highly connected retail investors and early adopters) enable us to run substantial education and advocacy campaigns. Historically, new entrants were nowhere near as well-equipped to advocate for their technology and were overwhelmingly outmatched by incumbents.

FUNDING The following are some ways to mobilize these inherent advantages to achieve political safety:

Fund Crypto Public Goods Tech

Funding and promoting initiatives that highlight the crypto industry’s potential for good helps improve the narrative for crypto among policymakers and regulators. That increases the likelihood they will progressively adopt a more favorable outlook for crypto and provide support for crypto advocacy organizations.

These initiatives should also be demonstrably helpful for the non-crypto public.

Potential Next Steps

Support existing public good grants programs

Fund public goods work in crypto through third-party platforms like Gitcoin, Open Grants, and clr.fund.

Create your own public goods grants program

SUPPORT Create a dedicated grants program that funds projects that accelerate crypto public goods technology. This is likely more appropriate for an organization with more resources, but groups like Uniswap, Compound, Aave, the Interchain Foundation, and the Ethereum Foundation have grants programs which, at least in part, support these initiatives. For instance, your grants program could support projects that are providing public goods that could not be provided without crypto.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

Sponsored Post

PieDAO Staking just went live! Designed to align incentives with long-term DAO members, the new system encourages participation by rewarding active governance members with monthly cashflows.

Referred to as ‘Governance Mining’, PieDAO distributes its profits (including protocol fees and yield farming with the treasury’s assets) in the form of $SLICE - an index which can include $BAL, $CRV, $SUSHI, and other farmed assets. The longer you stake for, the more voting power you get - and the bigger your $SLICE.

Reserved just for those who stake during the first month, there’s a stacked-up $600k+ worth of rewards, waiting to be distributed at the end of the 30-day period.

Want to participate?

You can! Get some DOUGH, stake it, vote on at least one issue per month, and receive your paycheck. Sounds simple? It is!

Stake Now!

The future of work is here, and it’s driven by DAOs.

Video

📺 LiveStream: Everything That's Wrong With NFTs

🧑‍💻 🦄 🌈 NYC DeFi Hub: The Defiant has just launched Colony, a co-working space in Dumbo for teams building DeFi and Web3 to join and find a community. There are 20 desks in an open floor plan at a reformed factory building. Fill out this form if you’re interested in working there or sponsoring the space.

Links

🔗 US FDIC Said to Be Studying Deposit Insurance for Stablecoins: CoinDesk

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), a key U.S. banking regulator, is studying whether certain stablecoins might be eligible for its coverage, five people familiar with the agency’s thinking said.

🔗 MoneyGram launches USDC settlement using the Stellar blockchain: CoinTelegraph

Financial services company MoneyGram International has partnered with the Stellar Development Foundation to enable consumers to send money using Circle’s popular stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC), and convert directly to and from fiat.

🔗 Perpetuals on CryptoPunks: Futureswap

Wait, NFT perpetuals? Yes, that’s right! With Futureswap V4 you’ll be able to trade leveraged perpetuals on CryptoPunks and any other NFTs!

🔗 The Hashes: DEX Labs

Hashes is a new kind of NFT: a foundational construct that can serve as an origin point for users, while providing content creators an infinite source of entropy and versatile network of distribution.

Art Blocks @artblocks_io

Still sort of in a state of disbelief how the last 10 months have unfolded for Art Blocks as a project, our artists, collectors, and investors. When this hobby platform was launched last year the LAST THING we were thinking was that we would be raising capital of any kind. 👇

CoinDesk @CoinDesk

EXCLUSIVE: @artblocks_io, the generative art market where chromatic squiggles sell for millions, raised $6 million in an equity round led by @trueventures, CEO Erick Calderon told CoinDesk's "Opinionated" podcast. @realDannyNelson reports https://t.co/miibTuCNGK

Chelsy Escalona Suárez @chelsyescalona

@opensea Hi! I am Chelsy Escalona, visual artist and NFT artist from Cuba I like to reflect everyday scenes from a positive feminine perspective, where the woman can enjoy the details of life and herself. You can find my collection Daily Life Girls in @opensea opensea.io/collection/dai…

Most Read in The Defiant

Crypto Endangered: Confronting An Existential Threat In Part 1 of this Defiant Essay, Connor Spelliscy and Holmes Wilson argue that the cryptocurrency industry is confronting an existential crisis. The cause: unwise and unjustified regulation that could thwart the promise of the crypto movement.
Vibe! Cryptoadz Floor Price Soars as Snoop Dogg and Other NFT Buyers Pile In If someone types “!vibe” into Cryptoadz’s Discord, a bot prints out what looks strangely like five turtles bobbing their heads.
XRP Holders to Get Huge Airdrop of New Blockchain Songbird Not only is DOGE a very good boy, its coin is about to be very smart, too — as in, smart contract-ready.

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🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in The Defiant are written by Brady Dale, Owen Fernau, Bailey Reutzel, DeFiDad and yyctrader, and edited by Edward Robinson, Bailey Reutzel, and Camila Russo. Videos are produced by Robin Schmidt, Alp Gasimov and Daniel Flynn. Podcast is led by Camila, edited by Alp.

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The Defiant is a daily newsletter focusing on decentralized finance, a new financial system that’s being built on top of open blockchains. The space is evolving at breakneck speed and revolutionizing tech and money. Sign up to learn more and keep up on the latest, most interesting developments. Subscribers get full access, while free signups get only part of the content. Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button above ($15/mo, $150/yr.

DeFi, NFT & Web3 Insights - The Defiant

✊🏼 A Call to Action: How to Mobilize and…