This Week in DeFi - November 5

This week, Aave governance approves V3, ENS to launch a DAO and airdrop, Avalanche announces $220m dev fund, and Stellar gets a native AMM

Nov 5

To the DeFi community,

This week, the Aave community voted to approve a proposal for Aave V3, introducing the next evolution of the DeFi borrowing and lending protocol with a host of new features including adjustable borrowing limits for improved risk management and portal bridges between Aave instances on different protocols for cross-chain liquidity.

Aave @AaveAave

1/ gm Aave Community👻 A new ARC is out for Aave V3! Read, discuss, vote 🎉 governance.aave.com/t/introducing-…

Introducing Aave V3Introduction In 2019, the first version of the Aave protocol smart contracts (the “Aave Protocol”) were deployed to the Ethereum mainnet. V1 of the Aave Protocol provided a way for users to provide and obtain liquidity autonomously, and to earn yield on any liquidity provided to the protocol. In D…governance.aave.com

ENS, the Ethereum Domain Service, announced plans to transition to a DAO for managing aspects of the operation that are not already self-running, including management of the treasury and pricing for .ETH names. In addition, 25% of the ENS token supply will be airdropped to .ETH name holders and other contributors, including hundreds of Discord participants. Claiming begins November 8.

ens.eth @ensdomains

Yesterday we announced ENS is launching a DAO & $ENS token to govern key components of the ENS protocol. Here’s more info on how the DAO will work & the token allocation. *Token claiming will still not open until Nov 8th.* Blog post or 🧵 for more: ens.mirror.xyz/-eaqMv7XPikvXh… 1/

$ENS Token Allocation (Claiming Opens Nov 8) — MirrorSince we announced that ENS would be launching a DAO and $ENS token to govern key components of the ENS protocol, we’ve had a lot of inquiries as to how the DAO will be structured and what the token airdrop to community members will look like.ens.mirror.xyz

The Avalanche Foundation announced Blizzard, a $220 million developer fund intended to accelerate growth and innovation throughout the Avalanche ecosystem. In particular, funds will be directed towards enhancing DeFi, enterprise applications, and NFT and cultural applications, and will be distributed via equity investments and token purchases, in addition to technology, business development, and ecosystem integration support.

Jay Kurahashi-Sofue 🔺 @jayks17

For layer-1 smart contract platforms like Avalanche, the ecosystem built on top of it is crucial for long-term success. Excited to see investment leaders like @cmsholdings, @polychaincap, @dragonfly_cap, @LvnaCapital, and more support Avalanche's growth!

Avalanche Launches $220 Million Crypto Growth Fund Targeting DeFi And NFTsAvalanche’s new “Blizzard” fund will focus on DeFi, NFTs and enterprise applications, among other areas.forbes.com

And Stellar, focused on fast, inexpensive blockchain-based payments, introduced automated market maker (AMM) capabilities at the protocol level, allowing greater access for Stellar users and providing improved liquidity and reduced slippage through an aggregated source for token swaps. The Stellar AMM will also make it easier for developers to access deep liquidity for decentralized exchange, making it easier to build on Stellar and focus on UI and UX considerations.

Stellar @StellarOrg

1/ The Stellar network has upgraded to Protocol 18! We're already seeing ecosystem companies launch user interfaces leveraging AMM functionality. Two examples:

Another big week for Layer 1 competition for DeFi developers and users, as protocol upgrades and funding initiatives continue to roll out to try to attract attention in an increasingly crowded industry. Decentralized governance also continues to rapidly prove its viability as protocol upgrades like Aave V3 garner support from the community and offer upgraded functionality for all users.

It may seem trivial, and the scale is still relatively small on a world stage, but it’s hard to overstate just how much of a change decentralized governance and DAOs could bring to the world in a very short time frame. Governance, for good reason, tends to evolve slowly, and has seen limited change in the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st. And while the underlying framework of democratic voting and open debate are some of the hallmarks of DAO governance, the capability to have these discussions, track consensus, and implement transparent changes - in real-time or asynchronously - could have massive implications for how the rest of society functions, well beyond DeFi and blockchains.

Imagine a world where public records for a town or city don’t live in byzantine file systems, where boring tasks like naming conventions and version control are out in the open for public input instead of in the hands of a back-office developer, or where budgetary approvals come not from a handful of appointed officials, but from a transparent process where discussion is open to the whole affected community.

We have a long way to go for infrastructure and UX to be ready for these types of applications. But it’s worth remembering just about everything available in DeFi today was simply a dream not even three years ago - this new technology stack unlocks a pace of innovation and implementation never before possible in human history. People are hungry for greater control and transparency in all aspects of their lives - and we’ve already got it in the oven. Think big!

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