DeFi Enclave's Chronicles #11
World of Perp DEXs, Mozaic, Parallax, Penpie, Paraswap, Symbiosis and much more.
In this episode:
Voyager's Observations - personal reflections and insights on DeFi and Beyond
Voyager's Vault - Detailed Report on My Investment Moves
DeFi Survivor's Bookshelf - Handpicked must-read threads and articles
DeFi Projects Radar - detailed survey of projects news and developments
Alpha/Airdrops Whispers - unexplored DeFi territory, proceed at your own risk
Voyager's Observations
Focus on Perp DEXs
Right now, I'm very focused on the perpetual dexes sector. There's a lot of money there, and everything is developing very dynamically.
In the last issue, I talked about how I make money on arbitrage of funding rates. If you have $3-5k, you can easily earn $20-50 per day on funding rates alone. And if you don't sit still and study other projects with their various promotions and incentives, you can also earn extra on this.
The sector is very dynamic, and you can't sit in one place for long, you need to constantly study and try new projects. In addition to this, good strategic skill will come in handy to adequately assess the potential of projects in the future, to get the most out of them.
For example, there is Hyperliquid, which has now become the top perp dex. On the one hand, the project is clearly making good money now and can reward well with an airdrop. On the other hand, the project allocates 1M points per month, for which there is now a fierce struggle and competition, and perhaps for low banks, participating in this airdrop is no longer so attractive. Their discord is full of angry messages about people who racked up 20k volume and didn't get any points.
At the same time, there are new players like KiloEx & LogX, which are not very noticed by the market yet and it is quite profitable to participate in them, of course with their own risks. And there's IntentX, where earning on funding rates doesn't work as it should and you can only find out about this by experience.
In general, the perpetual dexes sector is a whole separate world where you can make good money if you study different opportunities.
The rotten environment of crypto Twitter
Another illustrative case occurred with the launch of SatoshiVM.
ZachXBT posted a tweet showing how top influencers were simultaneously shilling this project.
I observe such behavior regularly, and for me, it's an indicator that one should not get involved in such projects but rather ignore everything associated with them.
I've spoken with a couple of top influencers, these people don't bother themselves with what the project is about or whether it has a future. They have a contract where they must release a certain number of posts over a certain period of time, they are usually paid with the project's token and are told where and how it would be more profitable to dump it on the crowd.
I'm not against advertising per se, the problem is how it's presented. For example, look at the advertising from @stacy_muur, she doesn't allow herself to release some generic thread. Each of her posts, even the promotional ones, is a work of crypto art, with disclaimers and without phrases like “spent 1000 hours and found the very best for you.”
And then look at the promotional threads from an average, sellout shillers who maybe never even invested in crypto.
P.S.
After a post by ZachXBT, one of the largest contributors of Satoshi VM sent him $10,000 in SAVM tokens (“to show some love”). In response, ZachXBT forwarded this money to charity.
These characters are trying to publicly bribe a person without any embarrassment.
Read full story here
Voyager's Vault
Once a month at the beginning, I make a snapshot of my portfolio with detailed proportions and P/L.
You can check November Report in DeFi Enclave's Chronicles #9
Today, I will share some updates regarding the changes in my portfolio over the past week.
PNP
I’ve noticed that on Penpie, projects have started to bribe not only with money but also with airdrop-currency like points from Ether.fi and Pearls from Swell.
The PNP token is gaining additional utility, and I expect it should significantly increase in value due to these and other opportunities to participate in airdrops through bribes. So, I will try my best to accumulate PNP as much as possible while the market hasn't woken up yet.
PLX
I will stop selling Parallax tokens. The project has finally fully launched its vaults and they look pretty cool. The interface and yield are pleasing. I hope now they will finally focus on the utility of the PLX token and start distributing income to token holders.
MOZ
I am also anticipating the launch of new functionality from Mozaic.
The Theseus Vault is expected to be launched soon, as well as the Earn terminal, where we will finally be able to receive a portion of the project's income on staked tokens.
By the way, on Camelot there is a Nitro Vault, where you can stake your LP tokens, obtained after staking in Hercules Vault, and get 60% APR in xMOZ token.
Seriously, 60% APR on a basket of stablecoins, which themselves get 10% APY with autocompound + participation in the LayerZero airdrop, as your stablecoins are staked on Stargate. What more do you need ?
By the way(2), the vesting of tokens from the private sale recently ended, so if participants of the private sale were creating any pressure on the token price from sales, it's no longer there.
By the way(3), I received an offer from Mozaic to become a Community Opinion Leader for their project. So now I will be bothering you even more with this great project.
DeFi Survivor's Bookshelf
15 Essential Tips for Web3 Grinders by @stacy_muur - link
Convergence Explained: Decentralized Governance Hedge Fund - link
Crypto's Three Body Problem - link
The Year of Arbitrum Orbit by
- linkWhat is Restaking? by @swell - link
Full-Year 2023 & Themes for 2024 by @BinanceResearch - link
Mantle 2024: What You Need to Know by
- linkThe Aladdin Ecosystem Overview ? by
- linkTop 7 Hyped Projects You've Heard of, but Don't Really Know What They Do by
- linkKelp DAO: What You Need to Know by
- linkThe Castle Chronicle: Volume 52 - link
Kujira: Transforming DeFi - link
Polymer x EigenDA: Open, Neutral Interoperability for Ethereum - link
Tokenomics Face-Off: KAVA vs ETH vs SOL vs ATOM vs OSMO - link
The Humble Farmer's Digest 1/17 - link
Paradigm: What comes after Ethereum's Cancun hard fork ? - link
The Future of Liquid Restaking - link
ETF Wif Hat by
- linkThe blocmates 2024 Thesis - link
Redacted ($BTRFLY) — The Dark Horse - link
$HONEY: What You Need to Know by
- link
DeFi Projects Radar
Algebra - Weekly Digest #110 - link
Algebra - Weekly Digest #111- link
AltLayer - ALT Token Launch - link
CARV - Secrets of the Ages: Journey Through the Concealed Kingdom in CARV Pass S4 - link
Cedro - December Newsletter - link
Conic - v2: A New Hope - link
Curve - What'up on Curve ? #167 - link
Frax Finance - Monthly Report #35 | January 2024 - link
Frax Finance - FRAX v3's FXB module goes live - link
Frax Finance - This Week in Frax - January 19, 2024 - link
Futureverse - News January 2024 - link
Holdstation - Weekly Recap: Week 2, Jan 2024 - link
Injective - Gas Compression: Lowest Transaction Costs in History - link
Kamino - Points is now live - link
Kunji Finance - Chronicles Recap (Episode 1) - link
Kwenta - Roadmap Update: Charting the Course for 2024 - link
Manta - $MANTA Tokenomics - link
Manta - The Evolution of Decentralization: Manta Network’s Governance Model Introduction - link
Polyhedra Network - Building the Largest Interoperable Bitcoin Ecosystem with zkBridge - link
Prisma - Digest #11 - link
Radiant - Rundown #9 December Recap - link
Redacted Cartel - 01/19/2024 Community call - link
Starknet - Roundup #100 - link
Alpha/Airdrops Whispers
Symbiosis
There are projects that you've been following for a long time, regularly using their cool product, seeing how the project evolves and doesn't stand still. But you don't invest in it, don't buy its token, simply because some doubt has settled in your mind once or the project's tokenomics just doesn't align with your ideal vision.
For me, one such project is Symbiosis. I've been following the development of the project for over a year, considering their bridge the coolest and most innovative, but I've never liked their tokenomics and the need to lock the token, which is quite inflationary and doesn't provide too much income.
Despite this, the token is rising in price, the project is receiving grants from Aave & GMX, and the product is evolving. And all this time, I admire the project but don't invest in it.
Sometimes you just need to buy what looks and works cool and forget about doubts. So, I will gradually start investing in the project.
Paraswap
I have a working wallet for farming airdrops and other activities. Naturally, I use the Rabby wallet. Over a month, I swap a lot of tokens, around $20-30k, and I've completely started doing this within the wallet through the Swap section. Rabby gives you a list of integrated DEXs, including 1inch, Kyber, Paraswap, and others. So, I thought, why not try to get some profit from my active actions.
Therefore, I started to explore these DEXs but there wasn't much to explore. None of the DEXs except for Paraswap have any incentives. And then, starting to explore the tokenomics of Paraswap, I stumbled upon a pretty interesting system for earning rewards based on the volume traded on the DEX - exactly what we need.
In short, Paraswap has a PSP/ETH farming pair on Balancer (80/20) - the project distributes 80% of its revenue there. The more you stake, the higher your Staking score.
On the Staking Score, you can get a Boost for trading, market making, pooling, referral. Ultimately, you receive a Paraboost Score which increases your yield in the PSP/ETH staking on Balancer.
Once a month, you receive income in the form of ETH. Additionally, there's a Gas Refund - if you have more than 10k Paraboost Score, you get a 25% refund of the gas you spent on the platform. The higher the Paraboost Score - the larger the refund. The system is quite interesting and seems to work well. The PSP token is quite stable.
Thus, by investing a bit in Paraswap, I earn additional income for my everyday actions. In DeFi, you can earn on anything as long as you are constantly looking for new opportunities.
I continue to make a significant bet on participating in the following projects:
Ether.fi - Have Robot NFT(wtf ?) on Ether.fan, some YT-eETH on Pendle for points
Dolomite - Lend/Borrow/Galxe OATs
Drift Trade - points/tickets
Hyperliquid - points
Nostra - Lend/Borrow
Izumi (Mantle + Manta) - LP/Swaps - The project promises to share all airdrops it receives, with the nearest being for Mantle Journey. Other relevant ones include ZkSync, Scroll, and other chains.
Gravita - The rewards for the project look promising.
Cega - Cool project for options traders.
Velvet Capital - I have been participating in the project for a while now and even successfully managing an investment portfolio there. Feel free to join.
IntentX - Making a big bet on this project, I continue to accumulate points.
Swell - I have high hopes for Swell, even though I also passed it by for quite a while, along with EigenLayer. Finally, Swell will soon launch rswETH, and they will enter L2.
Kamino - Lend/Borrow for points
CARV Gaming - exp/levels
GRVT - Boxes
Tensor - NFT trading (I am bad in NFTs but I’m trying :)
Ithaca - testnet/points
My Nodes
Nulink
Avail
Starknet
Lumoz
Idena
I'd be glad to hear any advice on what to add or change in the comments here or on my X (Twitter).
