DeFi Enclave's Chronicles #13

Airdrop mania, How I received 7k MNT, January portfolio update, Contango, WOOFI and much more.

In this episode:

1. Voyager's Observations - personal reflections and insights on DeFi and Beyond

2. Voyager's Vault - Detailed Report on My Investment Moves

3. DeFi Survivor's Bookshelf - Handpicked must-read threads and articles

4. DeFi Projects Radar - detailed survey of projects news and developments

5. Alpha/Airdrops Whispers - unexplored DeFi territory, proceed at your own risk

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🔎 Voyager's Observations

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Airdrop mania

This week I received the following airdrops - ALT, DMAIL, ZETA, SQR, JUP, MNT.

What's funny is that for the projects I specifically put effort into and was active for several months, DMAIL, ZETA, SQR, I received just a small amount, whereas for ALT, JUP I received good sums and I have no idea what exactly they were given for. Seriously, I spent several months sending daily emails through Dmail to accumulate points and received $80.

Separately, of course, it's worth mentioning Mantle Journey.

As I've written before - I made a big bet on Mantle Journey, it was obvious there would be good rewards simply because influencers weren't hyping this event.

I received a drop of 6800 MNT, which equaled about $4500. I accumulated 118k miles and almost all of it through transactions, i.e., I made just over 10k transactions and it wasn't difficult at all, the only issue was the fees, I had to wait for days when the gas was low. In doing so, I spent about $700 on fees. Now I understand that I should have tried harder, because sometimes I slacked off and couldn't be bothered even when the gas was low.

Clearly, the next season from Mantle will likely not be as lucrative due to the influx of people wanting freebies. I wrote on my X about how to make a lot of fast transactions and that post got a couple hundred views. Of course, why bother and get guaranteed rewards from Mantle when you can read major influencers about how to turn $1 into six figures :) By the way, in Mantle Journey there was also a competition between projects, so in theory, I should still receive rewards from projects like Butter & Izumi on which I made transactions.

The conclusion from this is as follows - only money will make you money and the more money you use, the more you'll get. Of course, you can spend time on testnets, Zealy and various dailies with point collections but be prepared to be disappointed.

It's also worth noting how much the information landscape of the crypto space has changed. Previously, in X, you could find interesting researches about projects, read unbiased opinions, but now it's just noise about airdrops and advertising. Hey, LayerZero V2 has launched, but nobody cares because they didn't say anything about an airdrop.

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💰 Voyager's Vault

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January 2024

Portfolio Objective: Boost the portfolio's value long-term and generate a steady income.

Portfolio Snapshot as of January 31st 2024.

New positions

• PSP

• RDP

Closed positions

• ALGB

• Stables

Increased positions

• PNP

Decreased positions

• PLX

Heat Map for January

In January, passive income from farming/staking accounted for 2.18% of the total capital, which is approximately equivalent to an annual dividend income of 26.12%.

Total portfolio growth in January is +24%.

My portfolio showed a record income for the month while both BTC and ETH showed approximately +3%

My thoughts on the positions

ALGB - Algebra released a couple of careless tweets on the topic of their tokenomics. From what is known - they will be redesigning the tokenomics again. I remind you that a couple of months ago they already redid it by canceling staking and directing more revenue to buybacks.

In general, it seems that the project is transitioning to multi-chain operation and therefore they need a new token with LayerZero functionality, and they will make the existing one wrapped.

In general, so far more questions than answers. I don't really like that the project doesn't have a clear roadmap and changes its tokenomics every month without any communication with their community. For now, I sold my position until the details of the new tokenomics are clear.

PENDLE - Pendle became number 1 in my portfolio and it seems it's not planning to stop. The project literally picks up every popular narrative.

PNP - after it became possible to literally buy LST/LSTfi project points for bribes, logically the PNP token price is rising. I've already started receiving points in Swell and EtherFi through bribes, and the yields in points there are insane. I bought more PNP with the free cash and accumulated income for the month, and I will continue to increase my position in the token.

Funding Rate Arbitrage - this is a sub wallet for earning on perpetual DEXs, I've allocated a certain part of the portfolio for this. It turns out to be much more profitable than keeping cash in lending, albeit more risky.

MOZ - Mozaic has not been able to recover after the Concentric hack, thereby giving a good opportunity to enter the project just before the launch of the new Vault + Earn Terminal + Hoplites NFT.

PLX - the project launched several of its farming vaults but can't manage to attract any TVL. Everything looks cool and the yields are good but no one is concerned about earning from farming now with all the hysteria around airdrops.

PSP - why I'm buying the token I wrote here. I'm getting good refunds from daily swaps, will continue to accumulate the position to get even more.

ALT - already managed to sell this airdropped tokens. I have no idea what the project is about and it seems the hype immediately ceased, so I directed the received airdrop to another attractive airdrop opportunities.

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📚 DeFi Survivor's Bookshelf

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• Helix Trading Hub on Injective: What You Need to Know - link

• Introducing Bitcoin Security to Thousands of Rollups - link

• IntentX: The 0 to 1 Innovation for Derivative DEXs - link

• The Need for a Chainlink DeFi Yield Index - link

• EIP-1271 Explained - link

• Navigating Restaking: Your Guide to Eigenlayer's Actively Validated Services - link

• Insider Playing #5 - link

• Insider Playing #5 (part II) - link

• Panoptiction - Panoptic addiction - link

• Panoptiction - Panoptic addiction 💊 (part II) - link

• LayerZero V2 Deep Dive - link

• The Castle Chronicle: Volume 54 - link

• Mantle Ecosystem: Key Projects to Watch - link

• A Technical Overview of zkPass Protocol - link

• LayerZero: The Language of the Omnichain - link

• 10 Things We Know About Fraxtal (Fraxchain) - link

• Let's talk about restaking and all the different airdrops and yield options - link

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🛰️ DeFi Projects Radar

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• Algebra - Bringing the DEX Innovation to opBNB - link

• Algebra - Weekly Digest #113 - link

• Avail - Road to Mainnet: January 2024 - link

• Balancer - Keeping your wallet safe - link

• Cakepie - January Wrap-Up - link

• CARV - Bi-weekly Newsletter - link

• Curve - What'up on Curve ? #169 - link

• Eigenpie - Integrating Chainlink CCIP - link

• Frax Finance - This Week in Frax - link

• HMX - Additional HMX’s utility: Staking for trading fee discount - link

• Holdstation - Weekly Recap: Week 4, Jan 2024 - link

• Injective - January Community Update - link

• Magpie - January Wrap-up - link

• Mantle - January 2024 - link

• Metavault - Monthly Digest: January 2024 - link

• Metis - Monthly Report - January 2024 - link

• Mode - Sunrise Mainnet & Airdrop 1 - link

• Penpie - January Wrap Up - link

• Render Network - 2023 Metrics Recap + Q4 - link

• Root Protocol - Unveiling ISME Tokenomics - link

• Silo - Monthly Report — January ‘24 - link

• TaskOn - January 2024 Monthly Report - link

• Tusima - January 2024 Monthly Report - link

• ZetaChain - Mainnet Beta Launch - link

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🪂 Alpha/Airdrops Whispers

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Contango

Contango allows you to make a lending loop with a single click with 4x leverage (and for some pairs even more).

Personally, I use this project to buy a short on ETH/USD.e on Silo, thus earning about 13% on lending and 40% due to ARB STIP incentives. By opening such a position, I hope that the price of ETH will not go much higher, but will fluctuate sideways or fall. Thus, I pay off the borrow debt through interest income and gradually my position grows. Naturally, this is a medium-term and long-term strategy, not an immediate benefit.

And of course, they recently launched a system for accumulating points for a future airdrop but in my opinion, the project needs to make a proper interface first, rather than thinking about airdrops.

By the way, while browsing through Silo I stumbled upon this

For those who didn't get it, the WOO token generates income both for lending USDC.e and for borrowing the WOO token, naturally all thanks to ARB incentives. This pair hasn't been added to Contango yet, so you'll have to take advantage of this opportunity manually, moreover, I decided to talk more about the WOOFI project next.

WOOFI

The project is already quite serious, but now it's undergoing some quite positive changes.

If it started as a regular DEX, now it has become what is now commonly called a DeFi Hub. The project has a DEX, Perp DEX WOOFI PRO, CEX, and WOOFi Earn for Liquidity Providers with Supercharger single-token vaults.

The WOO token can be staked on the platform to receive 80% of the project's revenue in USDC, or you can activate autocompound, and your WOO position will automatically increase.

Currently, the yield there is not very interesting, about 5%, but the project's profit from their Perp DEX was not distributed here, and just a few days ago, it was announced that this cash flow has now been directed to WOO stakers and the yield will significantly increase soon. In addition to this, the project constantly performs buybacks of its token and continuously increases the number of chains on which it can operate. Right now, the project is distributing its share of STIP incentives, and practically for any action on the platform, you will receive refunds in the form of ARB.

So, I lent USDC.e on Silo, borrowed WOO, and staked them on WOOFi. I will use the income received to pay off the debt on Silo.

By the way, WOOFI Pro operates on the becoming popular trading infrastructure Orderly Network, which, according to rumors, might distribute a good airdrop.

Maverick

And finally, here's the Maverick chart for you:

Despite everything that has happened over the last six months, someone very impatiently and methodically buys up the token as if someone knows something about the future of the project.

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

• Eigenpie - I unstaked my swETH from EigenLayer and transferred them to Eigenpie. Making big bet on this.

• Dolomite - Lend/Borrow/Galxe OATs

• Drift Trade - The project introduced its points system and after the first week, I found myself in the top 1000 without even trading much there, it seems that one could try to get a good drop here.

• Hyperliquid - Rumors say that each earned point can give about $4 in airdrop, but the competition and scramble for points here are certainly fierce.

• Nostra - Possibly, the project will distribute the airdrop right after the StarkNet airdrop, which is already happening in the coming days.

• Izumi (Mantle + ZkSync + Scroll) - LP/Swaps - The project promises to share all airdrops it receives.

• Gravita - The rewards for the project look promising.

• Cega - Research from Nansen shows that some funds are putting serious money into the project, the same thing they did before the drop from Maverick.

• 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.

• Kamino - I'm not counting on a big airdrop here, the competition is too fierce.

• CARV Gaming - The project remains unnoticed, with many interesting tasks, and the airdrop looks promising.

• GRVT - collecting boxes, not much is happening in the project.

• Ithaca - looks interesting and quite unique, a serious options platform.

• Butter - top DEX on Mantle with points system

• Merkle Trade - getting levels and APT refunds

• KiloEx - trying to get 100k points to earn VIP badge

• Paraswap - staking PSP for fee refund + Paraswap revenue share

• HMX - all-in for their token

• Mode Network - thanks to having a Degenscore, I immediately received 10k points in this project

• Init Capital - new lending protocol is shilled by Mantle, so don’t skip

• Vertex - going to accumulate VRTX, they have crazy roadmap

• LogX - new promising perp DEX aggregator with a lot of incentives

• Chromatic Finance - new perp DEX, mainnet launch soon

My Nodes

• Nulink

• Avail

• Starknet

• Lumoz (Opside)

• Idena (have invite)

I'd be glad to hear any advice on what to add or change in the comments here or on my X (Twitter).

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