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

NFTs becoming a major source of income in developing nations
Fei Protocol $1.3B sale goes awry
ForceDAO hack
Gnosis aims to reduce ICO volatility

and more :)

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Aave, an open source and non-custodial liquidity protocol where users can earn interest on deposits and borrow assets.

📺 Quick Take: What Happened in the FEI Protocol Genesis Event

📺 Tuesday Tutorials: Create DeFi Combinations with Furucombo

🙌 NFTs Are Becoming a Major Source of Income in Developing Nations

Before April 2020, Paul had never purchased cryptocurrency, let alone even heard of an NFT. Less than a year later, his NFT trading profits have netted him around 17 times the yearly minimum wage in his native Colombia (around $3,100 annually) and allowed him to buy his first house.

He isn’t the only one, either. In developing countries around the world, NFTs are offering an unprecedented avenue for income during a global pandemic.

Non-fungible tokens are unique, non-interchangeable tokens used to represent digital property stored on-chain. NFTs have boomed in the past couple months, with single tokens from renowned artists and musicians selling for hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. But Paul’s story shows it’s not just celebrities benefiting from this new technology.

A group of people playing Axie Infinity in the Philippines - Photo Credit: Emfarsis Pte Ltd.

Paul on Sorare

Paul, who goes by “Gocka” on Twitter, specializes in the officially licensed Global Fantasy Football (American soccer) NFT trading card game, Sorare, which allows players to collect and build teams to compete against one another.

Paul started out in April with an $80 euro deposit after a friend insisted that Sorare would be a good way to make money based on his interests in football and financial markets. He was scared, as it was a lot of money for him at the time.

“It is really important to understand that I am risk averse,” said Paul, who graduated from school with a degree in International Trade. “I don’t take financial risk. I only buy value.”

Initially, Paul was shocked at the high prices that so many cards fetched.

“An unknown goalkeeper [from] Belgium for 30 euros? Who will buy that card,” he wondered.

But after giving himself some time to study the market, Paul discovered that he had a knack for picking out valuable buys. After making a bit of money on a few good trades, he decided to take Sorare seriously and invest some more. By August, he was trading constantly, and other people were reaching out offering him money to manage their accounts, too.

Then, in January, Paul decided to sell his gallery and cash out —

👉 READ THE FULL STORY HERE, IN THEDEFIANT.IO 👈

Join the Open Metaverse online conference starting TOMORROW (7th & 8th April) 🔥

Leaders from Polkadot, Filecoin, Ocean Protocol, Polygon, The Sandbox Game, Arweave, Dapper Labs, R3, $MEME and many more will discuss whether NFTs will drive adoption of crypto.
NVIDIA, Ubisoft, BOSH, and HTC representatives are going to debate on the mainstream use of blockchain technology.
Music producer and DJ, Deadmau5, joined by Vivie-ann Bakos from DJ duo BLOND:ISH are going to talk about the audio collaboration economy.

Register for FREE LIVE EVENT: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/diffusion-digital-april

😱 Fei Roils Investors As Token Tumbles After $1.3B Sale

TLDR Fei Protocol was one of the most anticipated project launches this year –– an algorithmic stablecoin backed by heavyweights like Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase Ventures–– and it raised funds accordingly, attracting an eye-popping $1.3B in ether over the weekend. The high of the sale was immediately tainted by angry traders, as the project’s governance token slumped and the stablecoin has failed to hold its $1 peg. But that’s not all, today, the team found a vulnerability in its code.

TOKEN SLUMP Fei was trading as low as $0.92 earlier today and Tribe has slid 20% to $1.61 since it launched on April 3. Participants in the genesis event received both FEI and TRIBE, though some whales immediately sold TRIBE for ETH.

“PRE-SWAP” The slump in both the governance token and the stablecoin can be partly explained by some of the launch and design mechanics. Fei provided a “pre-swap” option which allowed participants to automatically swap their FEI tokens for TRIBE at launch, likely adding selling pressure to the stablecoin and making it harder for it to keep the peg. Some whales immediately sold TRIBE for ETH.

PENALIZED SALE Roughly 98% of the liquidity for TRIBE comes from the TRIBE-FEI pair. The Fei protocol has a mechanism which penalizes those who sell FEI (and rewards those who buy it) when it is below the peg. So users who want to exit their TRIBE positions for ETH need to either trade for FEI, then ETH, incurring a 49% loss at the time of writing in addition to the already depreciated TRIBE, or trade directly for ETH and take massive slippage losses due to the low liquidity.

PROTOCOL CONTROLLED VALUE Fei uses a Protocol Controlled Value (PCV) model which, unlike total value locked (TVL), is a one-way transfer of assets into the protocol, meaning users cannot withdraw their deposited ETH.

LARGEST UNISWAP POOL The project used all its PCV, in the form of ETH raised from the initial sale, for the FEI-ETH pair to become Uniswap’s largest liquidity pool. This means the protocol directly controls its own stablecoin’s liquidity (while collecting LP fees).

“RE-WEIGHT” Fei’s PCV can also be used in a “reweight” in which the protocol will withdraw all its liquidity from the FEI-ETH pair, buy FEI with the withdraw ETH to bring the former up to its peg, redeploy the PCV into the LP position, and then burn the excess FEI. There have been two reweights so far, but the stablecoin’s price has quickly dropped after the Fei protocol briefly bought the price back up to $1.

👉 READ THE FULL STORY HERE, IN THEDEFIANT.IO 👈

🏴‍☠️ ForceDAO Was Hacked for 183 ETH

TLDR ForceDAO was targeted in a hack that resulted in the liquidation of 183 ETH worth of FORCE token. In a post-mortem, the ForceDAO team explained that five hackers exploited a bug in their code which allowed them to deposit FORCE tokens and receive xFORCE tokens in exchange. One of the hackers returned the funds, while the others have already exchanged some of the tokens for ETH.

👉 READ THE FULL STORY HERE, IN THEDEFIANT.IO 👈

📈 Grayscale Aims to Turn GBTC Into an ETF

TLDR Grayscale Investments intends to convert Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into an exchange-traded fund (ETF), the asset manager said in a blog post Monday.

“While several firms have submitted Bitcoin ETF applications in the form of an S-1 or 19b-4 to the SEC, we are confident in our current positioning and engagement with the SEC,” according to the post.

👉 READ THE FULL STORY HERE, IN THEDEFIANT.IO 👈

👨‍⚖️ Gnosis Auction Aims to Solve ICO Volatility

TLDR DeFi market mechanism developer Gnosis is launching Gnosis Auction, a tool intended to solve initial price volatility for new ERC-20 tokens. Gnosis Auction combines batch auctions with limit orders. Projects launching new tokens will be able to use Gnosis Auction to set up batch auctions, where founders set the lowest price they’re willing to sell their tokens for, and bidders set a maximum price. When the auction ends and the price settles, any bidders within range will have their sales cleared for the same price. Using this method, Gnosis aims to eliminate frontrunning and “gas wars” from new ICO launches.

👉 READ THE FULL STORY HERE, IN THEDEFIANT.IO 👈

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🔗 Sacramento Kings Will Offer Bitcoin As Salary To Players: Forbes

“Vivek Ranadivé, the Chairman, CEO, and Governor of the Sacramento Kings, announced this evening on Clubhouse that everyone in his organization could receive their pay in as much Bitcoin as they wanted. The story broke soon thereafter after a Tweet from a member of the Clubhouse audience,” Forbes reported.

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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

✊ NFTs Becoming Major Source of Income in…