To the DeFi Community,

We’re on the cusp of a new spin on DeFi, social finance (SoFi).

The rising wave of social tokens is slowly finding its footing thanks to the growing set of DeFi tooling set in place by industry leaders like Uniswap.

This past month, we saw three social tokens, $ALEX, $COIN and $WHALE, take advantage of liquidity mining schemas to incentivize deep liquidity for historically volatile tokens. Just this week, grammy-winning producer RAC launched his own community token, offering retroactive rewards to past users on platforms like Patreon and Twitch while Seed Club launched the very first Social Token Hackathon. Projects like MetaFactory and Rally shared the blueprints for their creator-centric governance tokens, foreshadowing a trend many other projects deep in social tokens are soon to follow.

It seems like UNI has left its mark on projects not just in DeFi, but on anyone looking to launch a strategic token distribution to value-added actors. Once the initial distribution goes live, new tools like SuperFluid are offering ways for creators to stream rewards to multiple accounts in real-time using a single transaction, an invaluable feature for anyone who’s had to deal with manual spreadsheet distributions in the past.

This note is meant to be less of a shill to social tokens, and more of a testament for the strong foundation DeFi set in place to allow other niches to thrive. DEX liquidity is the primary place their users are trading as just about every notable project now launches with a Balancer and Uniswap pool, many of which don’t even look to BINANCE or COINBASE anymore.

Whether it be social tokens, NFTs, DAOs, or whatever comes next, it’s impossible to describe its eventual success without looking at the building blocks DeFi has set in place. With Aave‘s ongoing migration from LEND to AAVE, the V2 upgrade will give projects the potential to open delegated credit lines with trusted parties alongside innovative opportunities for composability.

It’s no wonder that Unsiwap crossed $2B in TVL on its march to becoming a household name.

Even with the markets cooling off, development is at an all-time high, an incredibly promising signal for the industry as a whole.

See you next week!

– Cooper

This Week in DeFi is now supported by Aave! 

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DAI

• Highest Yields: Fulcrum at 43.3% or dYdX at 5.0% APY
• Cheapest Loan: Maker at 2.25% w/ ETH collateral or Compound at 3.9% (plus COMP rebates!) 
• MakerDAO Updates
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USDC

• Highest Yield: Fulcrum at 39.3% or BlockFi at 8.60% (centralized)
• Cheapest Loan: Compound at 3.81% (plus COMP rebates!) or Aave at 3.8%

Find more lending & borrowing rates on our Rates page! 

Uniswap Crosses $2B in Value Locked 

The leading liquidity protocol became the first DeFi application to reach $2B in value locked

Aave Starts AAVE Token Migration

Aave has launched its migration from LEND to AAVE with staking incentives for protocol safety.

Nexus Mutual Launches Shield Mining in Partner with Keep Network

The alternative insurance protocol partnered up with Keep Network for bonus staking incentives for tBTC protection

RAC Introduces Community Token

The Grammy-winning produce teamed up with Our Zora to launch community token, $RAC.

APY Finance Launches Liquidity Mining for APY Governance Tokens

The automated yield aggregator launched its liquidity mining program earlier this week.

In Other News…

• Superfluid showcases money streaming protocol
• Flamingo Finance attracts $1.6B in TVL for NEO’s DeFi Swiss Army Knife
• Eminence Finance bug exploited, speculators lose $15M on EMN
• PieDAO announces DOUGH Farming & Initial Balancer Listing
• Rari Capital Integrates Aave for Automated Yield Farming

Stat Box

• Total Value Locked: $10.75B(up +0.4% from last week)
• DeFi Market Cap: $15.9B(down 1.4%)
• DEX 7 Day volume: $3.6B (down -24%)
• DAI supply: 869.0M (down -3.1%) 
• Total DeFi users: 486K (up +0%)

Bonus Reads

• [Cooper Turley – Bankless] The Bull Case for Social Tokens
• [Kain Warwick – Synthetix] The Shifting Sands of DeFi
• [Ria Bhutoria – Fidelity] The Role of Prime Brokerage in Digital Assets
• [Matt Cutler – Bankless] Exploring the Dark Forest
• [DappRader – The Defiant] The State of Stablecoins in DeFi 

Shoutout to Aave for supporting This Week in DeFi!

Aave is a leading lending protocol supporting dozens of the top DeFi tokens. Aave is currently undergoing its migration from LEND to AAVE which you can do directly through the migration portal!

We’ve done an extensive amount of coverage on Aavenomics – a new suite of protocol upgrades that incentives protocol safety through AAVE rewards and protocol fees. The best part about Aavenomics is that all of its parameters – including the logistics of Aave yield farming – are governed by tokenholders. There’s a ton of good activity happening on the Aave governance forum and we’d definitely recommend checking it out if you fancy yourself to be an Aavenger.

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Cooper Turley

Cooper is the Editor of DeFi Rate and an active contributor to leading DeFi media outlets like The Defiant, DeFi Pulse, and Bankless. He works with early-stage teams through Fire Eyes DAO to incubate governance models and grassroots community development. He is an ambassador to Set Protocol and an author of a weekly publication called Token Tuesdays. To stay up with Cooper, follow him on Twitter.