This Week In DeFi – August 26

This week, 1inch airdrops $OP to wallet users on Optimism, Curve hints a Sept. stablecoin launch and Arbitrum completes its Nitro upgrade.

Sep 2

This week, decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator 1inch has announced that it will be airdropping Optimism ($OP) tokens to users who have made swaps via the 1inch wallet on the Optimism network.

A total of 300,000 OP tokens will be given out in the retrospective airdrop, distributed equally to all qualifying wallets.

Crypto Why Bother @CryptoWhyBother

The 🪂 airdrops are back 🥳🥳🥳 @1inch just announced 300,000 $OP token airdrop for those who have been using 1inch on #Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution Optimism between August 21, 2021 and September 1, 2022 Who's next? @optimismFND #Optimism

Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov stated during a community discussion that the protocol’s new stablecoin may launch as early as this month – the first hint of a release date for the token.

The decentralized, over-collateralized crvUSD stablecoin was first mentioned in July, during the Redefine Tomorrow 2022 virtual cryptocurrency conference.

Wu Blockchain @WuBlockchain

Curve founder Michael Egorov said in the community that Curve’s native stablecoin crvUSD is likely to be launched next month and is currently in the alpha stage. Previously, Aave also said that it will launch the stable currency project GHO before.

Ethereum Layer-2 scaling network Arbitrum has completed its upgrade to Arbitrum “Nitro”, reducing transaction costs and improving network speed. The network achieves the improvements via call data compression, as well as better compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

Coinbase Cloud @CoinbaseCloud

Congratulations to the @arbitrum team for successfully migrating Arbitrum One to Arbitrum Nitro! This is a major milestone for layer 2 scalability and we couldn’t be more excited for them! Let’s dive into this major upgrade! 1/ 🧵

The Ether market on lending protocol Compound has been frozen thanks to a bug in the code of a recent update. $800 million worth of ETH will remain stuck in the protocol for about a week, while governance attempts to pass a proposal to undo the upgrade.

Withdrawals and liquidations are frozen, however deposits remain unaffected, according to the Compound team.

Compound Labs @compoundfinance

An hour ago, Proposal 117 was executed, which updated the price feed that Compound v2 uses. This price feed, while audited by three auditors, contained an error that is causing transactions for ETH suppliers and borrowers to revert.

CompoundCompound is an algorithmic, autonomous interest rate protocol built for developers, to unlock a universe of open financial applications.compound.finance

It’s an all-round exciting time this September, with a huge range of developments happening across the space – especially on Ethereum.

Headlining the month’s events is obviously The Merge, targeting a mid-month completion of the transition to Proof-of-Stake (PoS). A growing number of protocols are clarifying their stance on a possible fork, with OpenSea becoming the latest major platform to formally commit to the PoS chain.

Compound has accidentally locked up their users’ ETH right before Merge time with a faulty (and three-times audited) smart contract upgrade, while Aave is implementing a purposeful halt to ETH lending before the Merge, to prevent any hiccups.

We also have Layer-2 networks continuing to flourish, as Arbitrum completes its Nitro upgrade and may soon resume its “Odyssey” program. Its closest competitor, Optimism, also continues to see significant activity, as well as excitement over the 1inch retroactive airdrop.

Over on the protocol side, a very interesting game is playing out as two major protocols, Curve and Aave, come closer to launching their own stablecoins. In a stablecoin market rocked by controversy and failed pegs, we may have the perfect setting for these new tokens to take a significant market share. Definitely keep an eye out for crvUSD and GHO!