Where Is The Crypto Market Headed?
Plutus x Lodestar | Future of DeFi | Optimism Public Good Funding | Wallet-drain Exploit
GM, this is your Daily Bolt briefing.
In today’s edition, we’ve made sure to include excerpts from the most popular DeFi projects and protocols, including Optimism, Reserve Protocol, Beefy Finance, CIAN, and more. Also included; Lodestar’s Finance Twitter space ft. Plutus DAO, where they discuss how the two projects collaborated to help recover and implement new security features following Lodestar’s exploit.
And later; read our note of the day to gain key insights into the current macro and regulatory situation in the US, as well as some details surrounding the mysterious new exploit that is draining DeFi users’ wallets…⬇️
Stay alert and informed.
1/ Plutus x Lodestar AMA
Preview: In this Twitter Space hosted by PlutusDAO with Ethersole joined by Lodestar Finance, they talked about Oracles, Improvements, and Strategies of the plvGLP. Click here to listen to the full episode (25 mins).
Read our Note (3 mins) and save 22 mins.
Back in November, Lodestar Finance launched a prototype, it failed and they got exploited.
In collaboration with Plutus, Lodestar Finance managed to get back the lost funds. Lodestar Finance spent three months hardening the protocol.
Lodestar Finance's aims are money markets through Arbitrum assets, DeFi strategies, and improving yield.
Lodestar finance was 100% community funded and the people who funded the protocol couldn't let them down and they owe something to the people who got exploited.
In the future, when Lodestar Finance is releasing the stacking module, 750,000 tokens will be allocated to the victims that invested in their wallets.
The rise oracle of $plvGLP uses Time-Weighted Average Price (TWAP).
If someone manipulates the price within a few blocks, that person will not be able to join the protocol by manipulating the price and that's the first improvement.
2/ Halo Wallet Twitter Spaces - Tune in to the future of DeFi
Preview: In this Halo Wallet Twitter Spaces, panelists from different DeFi projects join to discuss DeFi opportunities and challenges. Click here to watch the full episode (93 mins).
Read our Note (3 mins) and save 90 mins.
Here are some key takeaways:
Sohan introduces Reserve Protocol, a permissionless platform for creating asset-backed currencies; the platform enables users to build, launch, and govern these currencies effectively.
Frondoto discusses Beefy Finance, a yield optimizer platform in the DeFi space; the platform constructs vaults on various yield opportunities to maximize returns.
CIAN provides advanced automation tools for savvy DeFi users to create personalized strategies and is centered around LSTs (Liquid Staking Tokens); ready-made strategy vaults are available for regular investors who prefer not to design their own strategies.
Helio Protocol emphasizes that liquidity and security measures are closely intertwined within their platform; the protocol is designed to ensure that both aspects are well-integrated and balanced.
DeFi is prepared to support changes in the world order and currency usage.
DeFi opportunities in 2023 include improving UI/UX for mass adoption, innovative product development, and the inclusion of real-world assets (RWAs).
The integration of real-world assets and increased participation from traditional financial institutions can help expand DeFi's size and volume.
Infrastructure development, such as layer-2 solutions and high-frequency protocols, will help DeFi mature and accommodate more users.
3/ OP Radio #24: Announcing The Results of RetroPGF 2
Preview: In this episode of OP Radio, Optimism Foundation members; Benjamin Jones, Founder of Collective, Bobby Dresser, General Manager at Optimism, and Jonas Seiferth who works at RetroPGF together with Alisha, Kris Kaczor, Charlie Feng, and Ludens discuss the results of RetroPGF 2 and how RetroPGF3 Will Be Different? Click here to listen to the full episode (60 mins).
Read our Note (7 min) and save 53 mins.
Here are some key takeaways:
Retroactive Public Good Funding is the heart and soul of the entire crypto economy.
Ultimately a public good has this abstract academic definition that basically says anything that people produce that they can't charge for and they can't prevent people from accessing it is a public good. Those public goods go underfunded in relation to the rest of what happens in the ecosystem.
RetroPGF is the experience that Bobby hopes to snowball into an improvement in people’s modern economy.
The scope of RetroPGF round 2 is public goods that support the development and usage of the OP stack, the core protocol that runs optimism.
L2BEAT is a website that gathers all the different research and statistics about different layer2 tools and scaling solutions for Ethereum.
Out of the 195 projects on Optimism, everybody got some amount of OP tokens; and as long as people are not impersonating another project or as long as they’re not completely not relating to the scope of this round, RetroPGF will let you participate.
If you read these 3 Notes on Revelo Intel you would have saved: 2 hours and 45 minutes!
Blockbytes - The Daily Live Show - Apr. 19, 23
In this episode, Austin Rampt, Corval and Tali discuss Fed rates, Gary Gensler getting grilled at Capitol Hill, Apple’s new savings account product and more.
Read our notes below to learn more.
Market Watch
$BTC dropped from $30,000 all the way to $29,000.
A lot of leveraged long positions worth about $185M got liquidated.
People were getting ahead of themselves.
Zooming out is really good for mental health.
Target Fed Rate Lookout
The amount of market participants that believe there will be a quarter-point rate hike in May is up to 82.8%.
The market participants keep altering their estimations as they get closer to the date.
Gary Gensler getting grilled on Capitol Hill
The chairman of the SEC is appointed by the president but the president does not have the authority to remove the chairman of the SEC.
Warren Davidson introduces a bill that does away completely with the position of chairman of the SEC and puts in place an executive director who reports to the board.
If you wanted to replace the SEC chairman, you’d have to impeach him.
The SEC chairman’s term is 5 years.
To become an accredited investor, you’d have to have 2 years of income greater than $240,000 per year or have $1M cash in the bank which does not include your house.
What makes crypto revolutionary is the transparency and the ability to have a community within that transparency.
Hong Kong just classified cryptocurrency as property.
Other countries, like the UK, are trying to create regulations that are fair and will not hinder innovation.
Mystery Hacks
Tay posted about a massive wallet-draining operation that drained 5000+ $ETH and other tokens, NFTs and coins across 11+ chains since December 2022.
Some people with hardware wallets were caught up in this wallet draining, it seems like a systematic draining by sophisticated actors.
This is not a Metamask-specific exploit and the source of this exploit is unidentified.
When you generate a seed on your Ledger device, it only displays on your Ledger and it does not go online in any shape or form. Somehow, seed phrases were obtained.
If somebody with a hardware wallet-generated seed gets hacked, it’s because they put it online.
Remember to take security seriously.
Apple and Goldman Sachs Savings Account
Goldman Sachs is a smaller bank more focused on investment banking trying to get into retail banking.
The advantage of retail banking is you have a lot of cash.
The less risk assets you have per cash, the more you’re flexible in high-volatility environments.
At the end of the day, this influx of capital because of the Apple card is probably just going to be zero-sum and taken from the market.
Elon Musk is overtly hinting that he wants to turn Twitter into a payments platform as well.