In this episode:
Voyager's Thoughts - personal reflections and insights on DeFi and Beyond
Voyager's Portfolio - Detailed Report on My Investment Moves
DeFi Survivor's Bookshelf - Handpicked must-read threads and articles
DeFi Projects Radar - detailed survey of projects news and developments
Alpha/Airdrops Whispers - unexplored DeFi territory, proceed at your own risk
My newsletter is completely free, but there are my referral links to the projects I recommend. I would be grateful if you use them as a small token of appreciation for my work.
🔎 Voyager's Thoughts
Today, I'm dropping the list of letdowns I've stacked up regarding different projects I've been using and investing in.
Tough times for Frax believers.
Frax probably chose the worst possible time to launch Fraxtal, if you can even call it a launch. Fraxtal was launched with one empty project, Ra, from the creators of Ramses Exchange, which isn't really popular on standard L2s either.
The new trends show that it's not enough just to launch your product and tweet about it, expecting billions in cash flow. The audience has been spoiled by gamification in the form of quests and rewards like points and other incentives.
I get the feeling that Frax does well when the rest of the crypto industry is struggling, like during events with FTX or the exploit on Curve, when this pyramid was saved by rich guys buying tokens at a big discount. Back then, everything seemed really bad, but Frax Finance somehow became stronger.
At the same time, Frax-believers continue to sit and watch, waiting for the FRAX collateral to finally reach that magical 100% figure so they can finally start earning by staking FXS. It feels like everyone made money off this bull except for Frax. Maybe just put some free cash into farming on Uniswap ? Seems like that way the collateral would reach 100% much faster.
I continue to hold my tokens, but I'm full of FOMO because these funds could have been utilized much better today, even considering that I bought most of my tokens at $5.
Paraswap
In the latest episodes, I've spoken quite favorably about this DEX aggregator. As soon as the gas price went up, it became clear that 1inch has no competitors in terms of exchange benefits. Exchanging on 1inch is more profitable despite all the incentives and refunds at Paraswap.
By the way, for some reason, the project refuses to provide refunds for swaps on Arbitrum, apparently realizing that it would no longer be profitable for them. Moreover, staking PSP/WETH gives just about 15% APY over the past weeks, even though I have a significant boost in profitability thanks to Paraboost score. In the end, I decided to sell my position in PSP since the risk/reward does not satisfy me, even though I made a good profit on the rise of PSP.
WooFi
I haven't invested in this project yet, but I've seriously considered it as a candidate. The project recently announced that commissions from its perp dex Woofi Pro would start going to WOO token stakers, however, this has not happened. The Perp DEX is setting records in volume & fees, but stakers don't see this and continue to receive 4% APR. By the way, the project was hacked a few days ago, and $8 million was stolen. Is this profit now going to compensate for the losses ?
Izumi Finance
The project is currently ignoring its promise to share airdrops with its users. The project recently received quite a lot of MNT after the Mantle Journey, but there are still no news about these rewards.
The only project that mentioned these awards is Butter, which promised to distribute 100% of the tokens received from this event next week. A couple of other projects promised to use these tokens as rewards for using their project in the future, which raises questions.
Revelo Intel Subscription
I got myself a premium subscription to their analytics. Although the price is pretty high, it's probably worth it because their project breakdowns alone make me feel like an insignificant writer. Their articles are truly demotivating because it's quite hard to write at such an awesome level :). Besides the monster breakdown articles, there's a lot of other cool content for all tastes. In general, I recommend it, but man, the subscription is expensive.
Blast euphoria
The launch of Blast showed that in the crypto industry, everyone really doesn't care about technology; let it exist, but it's probably the last factor attracting money. Launch a site with gamification elements, distribute the attracted investments in the form of grants to projects that want to make their product, and give the other half to users so they use these projects - that's the whole secret.
You can pour millions into solving the problem of liquidity fragmentation or the issues with security in cross-chain transfers, but everyone will ignore your project because all the money will go into projects that reward their users and help small projects.
Wormhole Airdrop
As an active DeFi user, wormhole and particularly their main project portalbridge is probably the most pathetic experience I've had interacting with cross-chain bridges. However, as I've already said, everyone doesn't care about technology; even if it's pathetic but allows you to earn, then welcome. It seems I will receive about 6k tokens from which I will immediately get rid of, as I don't even want to bother exploring the reasons why this token isn't worth holding onto.
💰 Voyager's Portfolio
Once a month at the beginning, I make a snapshot of my portfolio with detailed proportions and P/L.
You can check February Report in DeFi Enclave's Chronicles #15
📚 DeFi Survivor's Bookshelf
Deep Dive on Sui - In Search of The Right Niche - link
ETH Dencun: What You Need to Know - link
Understanding Vaults: Your Key to DeFi - link
The State of Arbitrum And the Year Ahead - link
Curvance Explained: A Modular Multi-chain Money Market - link
Bluefin: What You Need to Know - link
Points Trading & Pre-Launch markets - A Comprehensive Analysis - link
The Castle Chronicle: Volume 58 - link
Avail - Accelerating the Unification for Web3 - link
An Introduction to RedStone Oracles - link
Lava Network: What You Need to Know - link
XCeption Trading Tools: What You Need to Know - link
How Restaking & Oracles Could Transform DeFi ? Part 1 - link
The Greatest Hits Vol.2: 30 Best Articles - link
ERC404, DN404, ERC404m, ERC-X, NAP and Other Similar Standards Explained - link
Stablecoin & Synthetic Dollar Landscape: What You Need to Know - link
Injective airdrops: What You Need to Know - link
Curvance: The Modular Multichain Money Market - link
Monthly Market Insights - March 2024 - link
The Castle Chronicle: Volume 59 - link
Good DeFi UI: More Than Meets the Eye - link
🛰 DeFi Projects Radar
Algebra - Weekly Digest #117 - link
Algebra - Algebra Weekly Digest #118 - link
Arbitrum - Introducing Arbitrum Arcade - link
Beefy Finance - 2023 Annual Report - link
CARV - Bi-weekly Newsletter - link
Frax Finance - This Week in Frax - March 8th, 2024 - link
Gains Network - gTrade Quarterly Report: Q4 2023 - link
HMX - Introducing Enhanced $HMX Staking Mechanics & Increased Benefits for Stakers - link
HMX - HMX on Blast - link
Injective - CW20-Reflection Standard with DojoSwap - link
Injective - The February Community Update - link
LogX - $LOGX Airdrop Update 2: Road to TGE - link
Lyra - Announcing Lyra V2 - link
Mantle - February Report - link
Magpie - February Wrap-Up - link
Metavault - Monthly Digest: February 2024 - link
Penpie - February Wrap Up - link
Primex Finance - Introducing Primex V2: A New Era for the Protocol - link
Radpie - February Wrap-up - link
Radiant Capital - Radiant’s Journey to v3 and Beyond: Meet The Team - link
Ra Exchange - Launch on Fraxtal - link
Redacted - Pirex ETH Multi-Chain Expansion - link
Router Protocol - Router Tech Fortnightly Update - link
Silo Finance - 2024 Roadmap - link
Symbiosis - Unlocking Full $SIS Utility - link
🪂 Alpha/Airdrops Whispers
Mozaic Finance
Mozaic, until recently, was a project whose token grew due to the general hype around AI themes. Now, this project has officially become a value distribution as it has started to share profits with the stakers of its token.
Almost 80% of the tokens are now locked on the platform, indicating investors' confidence in the long-term potential of the project. Meanwhile, the project itself has already increased the cap on its recently launched Theseus vault several times. The project is developing, the vault is showing excellent growth in TVL and profitability, and many interesting events await us in the future.
Velocore
The project launched an event for earning loot boxes.
Every day we can collect 3 free boxes, the rarity of which will depend on your activity from the previous week while using the project. It's all straightforward, you need to swap as much as possible, provide LP, and stake some of their VC token to vote on bribes.
Once a week, loot boxes can be exchanged for rewards. The boxes may contain USDC/ETH/VC/partner tokens and ZkSync airdrop allocation NFT.
So far, I have only received rewards in the form of HOLD tokens, which reimbursed me for the fees spent on swaps, but I had not used the platform before, so it's already not bad.
ZkFair & Lumoz campaign
Projects have launched an event for slaying a dragon. You need to go to Galxe and start completing tasks, which involve interacting with various projects in the ecosystem.
The points earned on Galxe should then be used to inflict damage on the dragon, which we need to take down in this way. The damage you inflict eventually equals your points on the leaderboard, and at the end, you will be rewarded with Lumoz points, for which the project will then distribute an airdrop. I am participating in all this even though it all looks extremely sketchy and one needs to be cautious here.
Orderly Network Airdrop
Orderly Network seems to be on the verge of distributing an airdrop soon. Essentially, Orderly is a backend with all the necessary functionality on which one can launch a perpetual DEX.
Currently, such DEXs as LogX & WooFi Pro, along with a couple of lesser-known ones, are operating on Orderly. So, it's all simple - we trade volumes while simultaneously participating in events from LogX on different chains. WooFi is not known for its generosity, and trading on this DEX can only earn you an OAT on Galxe.
My newsletter is completely free, but there are my referral links to the projects I recommend. I would be grateful if you use them as a small token of appreciation for my work.
I continue to make a significant bet on participating in the following projects:
Ether.fi - Have Robot NFT(wtf ?) on Ether.fan, some YT-eETH on Pendle for points
Dolomite - Lend/Borrow/Galxe OATs
Drift Trade - points/tickets
Hyperliquid - points
Nostra - Lend/Borrow
Gravita - The rewards for the project look promising.
Cega - Cool project for options traders.
Velvet Capital - I have been participating in the project for a while now and even successfully managing an investment portfolio there. Feel free to join.
IntentX - Making a big bet on this project, I continue to accumulate points.
Swell - I have high hopes for Swell, even though I also passed it by for quite a while, along with EigenLayer.
Kamino - Lend/Borrow for points. Snapshot March 31.
CARV Gaming - exp/levels
GRVT - Boxes
Ithaca - testnet/points
Merkle Trade - getting levels
KiloEx - points + NFTs. Finally got VIP OAT for 100k trading points.
Paraswap - staking PSP for fee refund + Paraswap revenue share
HMX - all-in for their token
Vertex - going to accumulate VRTX, they have crazy roadmap
LogX - $LOGX tokens airdrop campaign started
Chromatic Finance - seems very complicated, invested some in it
INIT Capital - getting points in Blast & Mantle
My Nodes
Nulink
Avail
Lumoz
Idena
I'd be glad to hear any advice on what to add or change in the comments here or on my X (Twitter).
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