❈ DEFI TOTAL TVL ❈

$53.66 Billion (+6.47% last week)

❈ Chain TVL Winners & Losers ❈

zkSyn Era (+53%)
Aptos (+26.58%)
Algorand (+24.76%)
Ronin (+20.72%)
Canto (+14.28%)

❈ $88.5 million VC deals this past week

This is down from the $251 million last week but there were still some notable raises.

Sei Labs, the company behind layer-1 blockchain Sei, raised $30 million in its two strategic fundraising rounds. It included some of the most notable firms in crypto: Jump Crypto, Distributed Global, Multicoin Capital, and Asymmetric.

Absolute Labs raised $8 million to build a CRM for Web3 protocols. (Watch the video on their home page, it’s actually really cool!

❈ Tradfi experimenting with AVAX subnets

Avalanche has introduced its latest Evergreen subnet, “Spruce,” with support from institutional partners T. Rowe Price Associates, WisdomTree, Wellington Management, and Cumberland. These financial institutions will utilize Spruce as a testnet to evaluate the advantages of executing and settling trades on-chain for different assets and applications.

You can read more about it in the announcement here.

❈ Shapella smoothly launched

On Wednesday, the Ethereum network successfully executed the Shanghai/Capella (Shapella) upgrade. The upgrade enables withdrawals from Ethereum’s consensus layer, unlocking staked ETH and staking rewards for validators.

Roughly 18 million ETH — about 15% of ETH supply, worth about $34 billion — are currently staked.

Many feared that this would create a lot sell pressure, however, that turned out not to be the case. Roughly 18 million ETH — about 15% of ETH supply, worth about $34 billion — are currently staked.

❈ Uniswap app launched on iOS

❈ Other Headlines

• Uniswap DAO passed a proposal to launch on zkEVM

• Apple put the Bitcoin whitepaper in every Mac since 2018

Mean Finance

Mean is a protocol that gives users the ability to Dollar Cost Average (DCA) any ERC20 into any ERC20 with a set preferred period frequency.

What is DCA? This is a common tool investors use to build positions in assets over time with the goal of eliminating the short-term volatility of your entry. In DCA, the purchase of an asset occurs at regular time intervals, regardless of the asset price. With DCA, the goal is to get away from “timing the market”.

One of the cool things about setting up a DCA position with Mean Finance is that you don’t have to pay a gas fee for each scheduled buy, rather you just need to pay a gas fee when you interact with your position (i.e. creating/modifying/terminating).

The second really cool thing is that they just recently announced “yield-while-DCA” which allows you to automatically start earning yield with both sides of your DCA position. In the example below you can see that we have set up a DCA position to convert DAI into ETH over time. We’re also earning yield via Aave on the DAI AND yield on the ETH after it’s bought via Aave.

a16z came out with a ‘23 State of Crypto, I think it’s worth a scan.

The below graph is from the a16z report. Active addresses are at all-time highs as more and more individuals start exploring web3 and become on-chain participants.

That’s all for this week! As always - stay safe and stay yielding. 🌾

-Andy