Hello defiers, hope everyone’s having a great weekend!

Summing up this past week: Collateral locked in DeFi crossed 3 million ETH and the space is a bit closer to uncollateralized loans. There’s a new margin trading platform and crypto on-boarding through Apple and Google pay. Gods Unchained becomes a safe haven against censorship. Jinglan Wang talked to me about the DeFi scaling engine.

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Interview

The DeFi Scaling Engine is Here and You Need It: Jinglan Wang

Plasma Group cofounder Jinglan Wang believes she and her team have cracked the DeFi scalability puzzle. They’ve shifted gears from plasma to optimistic rollups, which can processes fewer transactions per second than plasma but supports smart contracts. The first demo of this technology was unveiled last week during Devcon with Unipig Exchange. DeFi projects often say they don’t need many transactions per second right now –and Jinglan explains why that view is flawed.

News & Views

Friday

• Synthetix Surges on a16z Rumors: SNX is surging on speculation that Andreessen Horowitz, a.k.a. a16z, is loading up on tokens.

• Joe Weisenthal Lights Up Crypto Twitter Criticizing Bitcoin: Joe Weisenthal of Bloomberg News said in a recent Twitter thread that until Bitcoin is truly anonymous it hasn’t delivered on its promise.

Thursday

• Gods Unchained Surges After Blizzard Gamers Get Banned: Ethereum-based game Gods Unchained is surging after gaming company Blizzard banned four players from its Hearthstone game in the past 10 days. The gamers had signaled their support for Hong Kong protests.

• There’s A New Way to Go 5x Long or Short ETH: There’s a new margin trading platform in the DeFi space. DDEX launched a revamped version, which allows users to borrow lend and trade.

• Two Notable Coins Missing in eToro’s Twitter Portfolio: eToro and The TIE partnered to launch a cryptocurrency portfolio that’s based on Twitter mentions. Among the five tokens included in the initial basket there are two notable names missing: Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Wednesday

• New DeFi Milestone: There’s now a record 3 million ether locked in decentralized finance protocols.

• Going From Fiat to DeFi Just Got Easier: Crypto on-ramp Wyre released their Version 2, enabling users to get ETH on their wallets in a few minutes using Apple or Google pay.

• Aave is Giving Uncollateralized Loans a Try: Uncollateralized loans, or the ability to borrow without locking up an amount of crypto that’s greater than the loan itself, is becoming the holy grail of DeFi. Aave is trying to crack it.

💜Community Love💜

Thanking all the amazing defiers for the support and love this week (and always!)

Linda Xie @ljxie

The Defiant by @CamiRusso is hands down one of the best newsletters in crypto. It's extremely thorough, well-researched, and dives into topics that other newsletters don't. Highly recommend subscribing The DefiantA daily newsletter decrypting the intersection of blockchain and financethedefiant.substack.com

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