This Week in DeFi – November 19

To the DeFi community,

This week, Paraswap distributed PSP tokens to approximately 20,000 active protocol users, a small fraction of the total number of users defined based on fairly strict criteria for recent and consistent use of the protocol and exclusion from wallets. game ‘and skill clusters.

To anyone trying to figure out why their wallets were screened for the PSP Drop, here’s a thread summarizing the eligibility criteria:

– Shresth Agrawal (@ shresth3103) November 15, 2021

Injective has launched Astro, a cash extraction program that will distribute 10 million INJ tokens with a current value of $ 120 million to market makers and traders on the platform. The rewards will be distributed over five years, with over 162,000 INJ available in the first month.

The #Astro Injective incentives are in full swing

Earn up to 180% rewards for the following boosted markets: $ BTC, $ ETH, $ AXS and $ LINK.

Now let’s exchange: https://t.co/5XToYM7vsB pic.twitter.com/R5d0KwyRcZ

– Injective (@InjectiveLabs) November 18, 2021

Pendle Finance, allowing users to lock in tokens with potential for future returns to receive those rewards immediately, was launched on Avalanche, with LP tokens from Trader Joe and BENQI eligible for staking. Deposits from these trading pairs will also be eligible for PENDLE rewards of 125% of Base Pool Rewards during Launch Week.

Update of day 1:

$ 420,000 in negotiated return, representing $ 1.2 million in notional value over the last 24 hours. pic.twitter.com/jHj4geeMbT

– Pendle (@pendle_fi) November 19, 2021

and polysynth raised $ 1.5 million for synthetic assets on Solana, aimed at making more than 100,000 synthetic assets available after the launch of the mainline. The funds will go towards building a development team and performing smart contract security audits, as well as developing a Virtual Market Maker (VMM) which Polysynth says will eliminate the need for cash. initiated LPs and risks such as impermanent losses.

Boom! 💥💥💥

We have raised $ 1.5 million in seed capital from a star list of institutional and angel investors.

Over the past 3 months we have built an amazing team of engineers, designers and marketers who are proud to present our beta.

??https://t.co/2o6Ju1biAT

– Polysynth – We’re hiring! (@ 0xPolysynth) November 15, 2021

Airdrops have come a long way since their emergence around the ICO era, where crypto startups would simply drop hundreds or thousands (sometimes millions or more!) Of investment in their project. Like most ICOs, those early airdrops were poorly designed, rarely had the desired effect, and mostly turned to worthless dust in the wallets of the day.

Not everyone is thrilled with the Paraswap drop, with many having their own argument as to how they should be entitled to a larger share of tokens, if any at all. But a careful reading of the structure and reasoning behind the tightly controlled PSP distribution reveals a thoughtful effort to only distribute tokens to users who have tried the protocol early, or who have made one or two big trades, but have had tokens. consistently and meaningfully used the liquidity aggregation service and were likely to continue to do so.

Remember that airdrops are not a reward for showing up early or for bringing a lot of value – they are a distribution channel for the keys to the castle, and ideally a reflection on the type of community distribution protocols that the distribution protocols want to promote long-term. Uniswap and ENS are examples of other approaches to performing airdrops, but Paraswap has set a new bar for thoughtful investigation and final distribution to those accounts most likely to strengthen the protocol in the long run.

A final reminder; If you really believe in a protocol and aren’t just looking for the next bag of free tokens to dump, there are almost always plenty of opportunities to grab PSP tokens or other protocols at a reduced valuation in the secondary market. Don’t expect to get rich on airdrops, but rather work on identifying quality projects and looking at the economics of distribution from the founders’ perspective, and you will be richly rewarded.

Thanks to our partner:

Total value locked: $ 102.64 billion (down -7.76% since last week)

DeFi market capitalization: $ 152.5 billion (down -9.30%)

DEX weekly volume: $ 25.96 billion (down -0.42%)

DAI To supply: 8.61B (up 0.47%)

Total number of DeFi users: 3 979 800 (up 2.35%)

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Alex is a Content Writer at Circle, with prior experience in tech startups, Fortune 500 companies, and as a freelance writer and analyst. His interests include cutting edge technologies in blockchain, energy, supply chains, transportation, city life, and more, and he has been part of the crypto community since 2014.