Week in DeFi: UniswapX Unveiled, Chainlink CCIP and Mantle Mainnet

Ethereum decentralized exchange (DEX), Uniswap drops their latest innovation, UniswapX, a DEX aggregator designed to significantly improve the current trading experience. Oracle network, Chainlink, introduces the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol, a protocol enabling applications to easily build cross-chain functionality, leveraging Chainlink’s technology. Finally, BitDAO launched their L2 chain, Mantle, onto mainnet after 4 months in testnet.

Massive week for DeFi! Let’s see what went down this past week.

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Total value locked (TVL) across all chains dipped slightly to $43.8 billion as crypto majors continue to drift downwards after a positive week earlier. Notable exceptions include zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) chain, StarkNet, which saw a 27% rise in TVL, and Algorand, which saw a 20% TVL increase in the week.

Patrick hops on the Telegram Bot narrative, exploring the narrative, the key players and some of their numbers they’re doing (hint: they’re huge!).

Zoomer Oracle lays down his thoughts on longing cult coins, with the recent surge in on-chain memecoins in spite of a largely choppy market.

Ethereum top DEX, Uniswap, releases UniswapX, a DEX aggregator designed to provide gas-free swaps, better liquidity, maximal extractable value (MEV) protection and zero fees on failed transactions.

Leading oracle, Chainlink, unveils the highly anticipated Cross-chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), a protocol engineered to allow decentralized applications (DApps) to easily build cross-chain functions on top of it. CCIP is now available on Ethereum, Avalanche, Optimism and Polygon mainnets.

Ethereum liquid staking protocol, Stakewise, unveils their Pacific testnet. Stakewise V3 offers a marketplace to users, allowing them to choose from a variety of staking pool vaults. This gives users the choice to select their desired staking pool based on their priorities, such as slashing insurance, MEV relays, fees and more.

Yield tokenization and trading platform, Pendle, deploys Pendle Earn, a simple and easy to use interface to allow users to easily access fixed-yields on liquid staking derivatives (LSDs) and stablecoins. Pendle Earn is now live on Ethereum, Arbitrum and Binance Smart Chain.

Cross-chain interoperability protocol, Axelar, releases the Interchain Token Service, a product suite designed to allow for the minting, transfer and management of cross-chain tokens. Sushiswap’s token, SUSHI, is already using this new technology.

Weighted automated market maker (AMM), Balancer, is now supporting Aave’s new native stablecoin, GHO, in three pools on their platform. They are the GHO/bb-a-USD, wstETH/GHO and GHO/LUSD pools.

On-chain analytics tool. Arkham Intelligence, releases Arkham Oracle, a personal AI-powered tool to help make on-chain analytics even simpler. Users can now interact with Arkham Intelligence using plain English in a ChatGPT-like interface.

Telegram trading bot, Unibot, releases UnibotX, the next evolution of Unibot. UnibotX brings the platform out of Telegram to a new desktop and mobile environment, powered by Gecko Terminal. Early access is now available to selected users.

Leverage protocol, Gearbox Protocol, announces Gearbots, immutable smart contracts designed to allow users to customize specific actions and parameters to trigger specific actions on-chain such as trades, powered by Gelato Network.

Ethena Labs announces their decentralized stablecoin, USDe, a stablecoin backed by delta neutral positions in ETH. Users can deposit ETH or ETH LSDs to mint USDe. This ETH will be hedged using perpetual contracts to keep the protocol delta neutral.

Curve Finance yield booster, Conic Finance, has been exploited for 1,700 ETH and $300K in two separate exploits on their ETH Omnipool and crvUSD Omnipool respectively. All Omnipools are currently shut down for security.

BitDAO-backed L2, Mantle, is now live on mainnet, rolling out together with it the conversion process from BitDAO’s token, BIT, to Mantle, MNT. Mantle is an optimistic rollup, using EigenLayer’s EigenDA for data availability.

ZkEVM chain, StarkNet, unveils StarkNet Appchains at EthCC. This enables developers to easily deploy customized chains on StarkNet while benefiting from StarkNet’s technology. Perpetuals DEX, Paradex also became the first appchain on StarkNet in the same week.

Rysk Finance has deployed on the Arbitrum mainnet. Rysk is a platform offering market uncorrelated returns via market making on ETH option trades. Exposure on the platform is dynamically hedged to keep the protocol market neutral.

Yield protocol, GND protocol, releases gETH, a basket ETH LSD product, which can be minted with wstETH, sfrxETH, rETH, WETH, ETH or gmdETH. GETH can be used for liquidity provision in GND pools to earn yield.

Exotic derivatives protocol, Y2K Finance, drops their Gains Trader PnL Protection Vaults, a set of vaults for gDAI holders on Gains Network to hedge against losses on the platform, which are incurred when traders on Gains Network are net profitable.

LSDFi protocol, Lybra Finance, has deployed their V2 testnet on Arbitrum. Users can now test it and earn rewards for doing so. V2 brings to the protocol more collateral options, stronger support for the eUSD peg and omnichain functionality.

Popular DeFi all-in-one product suite, Trader Joe, teases the migration of their liquidity book product to the Ethereum blockchain.

Layer 1 blockchain, Celo Network, has announced their intention to migrate to an ETH L2, building on the OP stack. The Celo L2 will also use EigenLayer for their data availability needs.

Solana-based EVM-compatible layer, Neon EVM, launches on mainnet, allowing Ethereum developers to easily develop and deploy DApps on Solana. The NEON token is currently live and trading as well.

Perpetuals trading platform, Drift Protocol, launches leveraged swaps powered by Jupiter Exchange and flash loans, enabling traders to access up to 5x their buying power in a single swap.

Cosmos-based Osmosis launches supercharged liquidity, a concentrated liquidity solution built on the Osmosis DEX. This allows liquidity providers to concentrate their liquidity into specific price ranges to maximize the fees earned by their deposits.

Stride takes the step forward to adopting Inter-Chain Security (ICS). This means that the Stride chain will now be relying on staked ATOM for security, rather than staked STRD, as with most Cosmos appchains.

Cross-chain bridging solution, Wormhole, unveils Wormhole Gateway, a Cosmos appchain powered by Cosmos SDK. Wormhole Gateway seeks to connect the Cosmos ecosystem to Wormhole’s 23 supported chains, increasing liquidity to the Cosmos ecosystem.

The Arkham Intelligence airdrop goes live after the airdrop announcement the week prior. Users who have input their wallet address into the site before the deadline will be eligible to claim their airdrop based on the points they have gathered.

Optimism-based money market protocol, Exactly Protocol, releases their token, EXA, and with it, an airdrop to early users of their protocol. The airdrop will be streamed over five months to eligible users from 24th July onwards.

Multi-chain yield farming protocol, Granary Finance, announces their airdrop as well. Their airdrop will open on 28th July on Optimism and will be open to LGE participants and early users.

Arbitrum DeFi middleware product, Factor DAO, announces an airdrop together with their V2 launch, airdropping 100K FCTR tokens to veFCTR holders and early testnet users.

Markets continue to chop, but the big announcements keep coming. Stay updated and stay tuned for next week’s edition, and keep supporting your favorite projects, degens!

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