After the crypto crash of mid may when BTC fell from ~$59k to under $30k, I decided to take some time away from crypto.
Recently with the rise of NFTs I decided to start following crypto news again just in time for the cryptopocalypse of Nov 2021 bringing BTC down from ~$69k to under $57k. I'm still bullish on crypto but it definitively is a roller coaster. Here's a summary of what's happened in the past half year while I've been gone and what I've learned.
IRON stablecoin fails
This was a big one, I am very interested in farming stablecoins and if I did not take a break from crypto, I definitively would have gone in and farmed IRON stablecoins. Just goes to show that triple digit returns on stablecoins are probably too good to be true and that by calling a token a stablecoin doesn't automatically make it one. Keeping incentives aligned for stablecoin peg is very challenging.
While IRON fell, Terra (UST) has risen with a similar stablecoin model but instead using LUNA as a reserve asset.
More rugpulls and worthless gov tokens
Previously I wrote about polywhale, they ended up rug pulling in mid june. There were some warning signs that I should have taken more seriously
Polynetwork got destroyed
Polycat (FISH) tried to use a small minted pool but that couldn't save it from price collapse
Adamant (ADDY) used a time lock mechanism but that just slowed the inevitable decline
Fulcrum (BZX) got hit again but this time the non-ETH platforms (Polygon+BSC)
While innovation is happening on the platform side, there are always bumps in the road while the right balance of incentives are found.
New chains on the block
When I took a break from crypto, it seemed like Polygon (MATIC) was gaining traction and a good place to Defi if you didn't want to play with the shitcoins on BSC and didn't want to pay the gas fees on Ethereum. Since then, Fantom and Avalanche have both gotten very popular with curve implementing those chains. Currently the up and comer seems to be Solana but doesn't seem like the big Defi platforms have integrated this chain yet.
Cardano (ADA) still seems to need time to break out and ETH 2.0 still seems ever so far away (even though London hard fork went through). There are some nice graphics here: DefiLlama - DeFi Dashboard
Uniswap finally rolls out optimism but it doesn't seem like there's much on that L2 chain yet.
RIP gasnow
Gasnow as a great resource for checking historical gas fees and estimating how much a contract would cost to execute on ETH chain. Unfortunately, with the china crypto crackdown, they've decided to shut down their site. Some alternatives can be found here
Publish0x changes
Igor posted that the tipping amounts were going down and ETH would be discontinued =( Quite the bummer but get that it's needed for sustainable long term growth of platform but does suck for the writers here.
Anything else?
I'm still trying to get caught back up. Right now deposit rates for USDT look very good and waiting for NFTs to cool down so eth gas prices will be reasonable again. Seems like the next big thing will be cross chain connections (excited about aave v3 and compound gateway). Something big I missed (especially in defi)? please leave a comment below and I'll be sure to check it out!
