In perhaps the most important SEC move since former Jay Clayton informally declared Ethereum decentralized, Gary Gensler and the SEC have gone after Kraken for its retail staking offering. ETH tanked, decentralized staking provider Rocket Pool (RPL) mooned. The crypto industry is united in admonishing the regulation-by-enforcement style, but this is a major line drawn by U.S. regulators. It’s become clear over the last few months that any CEX “earn” programs will fall under the SEC’s regime going forward, but there was some hope that custodial staking, whose yield comes from the protocol, could be classified as a technology service.
That dream appears to have died. Once again this is good news for DeFi. As damning as this seems to Coinbase and Kraken, it’s hard to imagine a similar case against Yearn, Compound or Maker. Like the Celsius & FTX debacle, this will push the existing crypto industry more and more into DeFi. Existing CEX users are easier to convert than mass retail.
The juiciest story this week was the drama in Uniswap governance over deploying to BNB Chain and what bridge to use – Wormhole or Layer Zero. A16z caused some controversy by trying to prevent the deployment and by pushing Layer Zero in community governance. Ultimately, the BNB delployment proposal passed – with several of a16z delegated University blockchain clubs voting FOR (and against a16z). Uniswap governance is trying to front run the expiration of the v3 business license on April 1 and prevent copycats from taking marketshare on other chains.
Anyway, the chart above is from Messari’s Q4 report on BNB chain. We sometimes get a little too Ethereum-focused around here, and it’s important to remember there are other ecosystems with lots of users. Uniswap v3 has done well everywhere it has deployed, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out in Binance’s back yard.
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Maker moves closer to launching special fund and another direct deposit Link
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WSJ: The unusual crew behind Tehter, crypto’s pre-eminent stablecoin Link
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Hegic revenue surprises to the upside Link
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Compound v3 launches WETH lending market Link
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ENS DAO executes 10k ETH order through Cow Protocol Link
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Lido announces v2 and “Next step in decentralization” Link
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MakerDAO integrates Chainlink Link
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Aave’s new stablecoin GHO launches on Goerli testnet Link
That’s it! Feedback appreciated. Just hit reply. Written in Nashville, where it’s February, so there’s not much to say about anything. Oh the Super Bowl, right!
Dose of DeFi is written by Chris Powers, with help from Denis Suslov and Financial Content Lab. Caney Fork, which owns Dose of DeFi, is a contributor to DXdao and benefits financially from it and its products’ success. All content is for informational purposes and is not intended as investment advice.
