October 8, 2021

It's a Multi-Chain World

Introduction

It has been another relatively quiet day in crypto land: No major news and mostly sideways price action. Adding a little excitement is the price action of the “Andre Cronje projects” FTM and YFI with the rest of the markets in neutral territory.

However, the multi-chain DeFi space is heating up…

Market Outlook

• From a macro technical perspective, the BTC chart is certainly looking much friendlier than just a few weeks ago. BTC managed to break key resistance and now finds itself again in a weekly uptrend.

Rekt Capital @rektcapital

When an old #BTC macro downtrend ends... A new BTC macro uptrend begins $BTC #Crypto #Bitcoin

• The newly formed uptrend on the weekly chart doesn’t mean however that a short-term pullback is not on the cards, especially now that the Fear & Greed Index is showing 74 (as opposed to 27 just last week!)

A “Quasi” Bitcoin ETF Gets Approved by the SEC

• Is it a sign of what’s to come? This week the SEC approved an ETF for companies holding large amounts of Bitcoin, called the “Volt Bitcoin Revolution ETF.” It’s certainly not quite a Bitcoin ETF just yet but the closest we have come so far.

Danny Scott ⚡ @CoinCornerDanny

SEC approved an ETF that just includes companies that hold or operate with #Bitcoin 25% of the fund will be @MicroStrategy stock. Step in the right direction.

decrypt.coSEC Approves ETF for ‘Bitcoin Revolution Companies’, Portfolio Includes Tesla and Twitter - DecryptThe new ETF from Volt Equity will give investors exposure to a range of companies like MicroStrategy and Square that hold crypto.

• Let’s see if a Bitcoin futures ETF gets approved next.🤞 As Bloomberg reported today, the decision for four pending ETF applications is coming up in the next weeks and months.

However, experts have suggested that the decision is likely to be made at the end of the year or in Q1 2022.

Bloomberg Crypto @crypto

Four U.S. Bitcoin futures ETFs may be allowed for the first time, just weeks from today

trib.alBloomberg - Are you a robot?

• While it’s not a reality, it’s important to think about both the short- and longer-term impacts the approval of a Bitcoin futures ETF could have:

Willy Woo @woonomic

I think the best thing about ETFs apart from their initial reach is the potential to stem BTC’s unit bias problem. The long term negatives: Spot ETFs - increased sell pressure from fees. Futures ETFs - potential for price suppression and more volatility due to futures dominance.

Yearn Finance Goes Multi-Chain

• The last few weeks have shown that multi-chain is the future – and projects that are not open to experimenting with other L1s (or L2s) will be left behind. Leading the pack of DeFi blue chips expanding from Ethereum to other chains are Sushiswap (with a record 14 chain integrations!), Curve, and Aave.

• Newly joining the multi-chain party is now Yearn Finance, which clearly doesn't want to lose its dominance in the yield aggregation space. The first alternative L1 Yearn is moving to is… Fantom. But more are to come!

*wen arbitrum, optimism, polygon, avalanche?* There’s more multichain fun coming soon. Ultimately, we’d love to bring Yearn to any chain where we can safely operate and simplify the process of earning yield for users and partners.

yearn.finance @iearnfinance

The Realm of Multichain beckons. And Yearn has heeded the call. 📯 Today, we go multichain with the launch of Iron Bank Fantom and the first Fantom vaults on beta.yearn.finance🧵

• And just because it’s such an eye-popping trend: Every new protocol implementation on alternative L1s leads to significantly increased throughputs for bridging protocols such as Anyswap…

Elias Simos @eliasimos

.@iearnfinance deploys and the Fantom Anyswap bridge goes on a rampage 7x'ing its TVL in 3 days zooming straight up to the #2 spot.

Abracadabra & MIM Are Taking the Cross-Chain Space by Storm

• DeFi magician Daniele Sesta has played a major role in growing the cross-chain crypto ecosystem. The constant innovations he and his team are pushing out bring multi-chain DeFi closer to the boundaries of imagination. They have managed to produce new DeFi blue chips at a breathtaking pace.

Daniele 🧊🧙‍♂️ (🎩, 🎩) @danielesesta

Abracadabra.money The Cross-chain Central Bank of DeFI Popsicle.finance The Cross-chain Market Maker of DeFi $SPELL + $ICE = The Cross-chain Infrastructure of DeFi

popsicle.financePopsicle Finance

• Especially, the growth of Abracadabra’s multi-chain stablecoin MIM has been impressive. It has moved to become the 7th largest stablecoins in a span of a few weeks!

Cointelegraph @Cointelegraph

Abracadabra Money’s stablecoin Magic Internet Money (MIM) has surged past a total supply of $1 billion, with MIM ranking seventh among stablecoins by market cap.

cointelegraph.comMagic Internet Money races past $1B, sets sights on MakerDaoCross-chain lending protocol Abracadabra Money earned more fees than MakerDAO last week, while its Magic Internet Money token ranks seventh in terms of market cap for stablecoins.

• Day by day Daniele and his team are improving the UX of their cross-chain DeFi ecosystem, forging new partnerships, and providing new attractive incentives for liquidity and users.

Daniele 🧊🧙‍♂️ (🎩, 🎩) @danielesesta

With the launch also of 3poolv2 on Avax we will have Arbitrum<->Fantom<->Avalanche @CurveFinance arbitrage all powered by $MIM . Is the beginning of an era where liquidity flows seamlessly across without friction taking opportunities as they become available. DeFi 2.0

Daniele 🧊🧙‍♂️ (🎩, 🎩) @danielesesta

Talking with @zhaojun_sh and the @AnyswapNetwork Team to work out a way for Abracadabra to pay the bridging fees so we can make $MIM free to move across all chains !

• By the way: You can still earn high double-digit yields on your stablecoins on Abracadabra.money, you just have to take the plunge and bridge your tokens to Fantom first…

Where the Multi-Chain Space Is Headed Next

• In the last few weeks and months, we have seen a lot of excitement around emerging L1 ecosystems: Solana, Avalanche, Fantom, and Co. have deployed massive incentive programs and attracted many projects, users, and tons of capital.

• The question arises: What happens when these gigantic incentive programs dry up? Only L1s that offer genuine innovation (new DeFi or NFT primitives) or a significantly better UX (gas fees, bridges, etc.) are going to retain users and liquidity. When it comes to the former, the Ethereum ecosystem (including EVM-compatible chains) is certainly in the lead.

• Regarding the latter, we will need to see a lot of improvement in onboarding and UX from L1s in order to bring new users on board (and not just degen yield farmers who know how to jump from chain to chain). Which chain will be in the lead in this regard?

Nick Chong @n2ckchong

The current flow for onboarding retail users onto most chains from Ethereum is extremely cost-inefficient. Users must: - Buy $x worth of the chain's native token on Ethereum or on a CEX - Bridge/withdraw that native token - Bridge their stables/reserve asset of choice

Nick Chong @n2ckchong

A growth hack for new chains is to airdrop a small amount of its native token upon bridging. You incentivize users who don't use CEXes (a growing contingent) and those who don't want to go through 50 expensive steps. Avalanche did it wonderfully. Polygon set a good example b4.

sanket @sourcex44

Abstracting away the complexity of scalable and modular blockchains and making it ready for the masses will be the next big thing. Wallet, gamification of web 3, Gaming etc. fit in here