We’re excited to unveil DeFi Ticker, a monthly collection of quick takes surrounding signals from DeFi at large. These takes are meant to cover niche updates, with larger stories meriting their own article. This page will updated gradually over the course of the month, with recent new items featured at the top of the page.

To have your news featured in DeFi Ticker, please reach out or tag us – @Defirate – on Twitter.

Let’s Go!

PoolTogether Reaches $1M Dai Locked

PoolTogether, a no-loss savings game powered by Ethereum, has officially crossed $1M in total value locked.

.@PoolTogether_ has officially crossed $1M in Dai locked 🚀 Tomorrow’s prize pool will distributed over $1,400 for one lucky ticket holder Get a ticket before it’s too late! There’s literally nothing to lose 🤯https://t.co/R1NSje3wBe pic.twitter.com/0C7otUqZcU — DeFi Rate (@DefiRate) January 31, 2020

This week’s prize pool ending on January 30th will distribute over $1,400 to one lucky ticket holder. As of writing, there are currently over 2,000 ticket holders all gunning for this week’s prize. Despite the fact that there’s only $604k in committed funding, the pool has an additional $226k generating interest via uncommitted tickets for this week’s pool. On top of the ~$830k of community pooled Dai, MakerDAO has also contributed an additional ~$250k in sponsored Dai. The allocation of sponsored Dai is never eligible to win the lottery and is simply there to boost the interest generated from the pool.

Next stop: $2M!

ArgentHQ Integrates Dai Savings Rate (DSR)

Argent, one of the leading smart contract wallets for DeFi, has integrated the Dai Savings Rate into their wallet. Argent users can now capitalize on the high yielding DSR on all Dai holdings. The DSR currently boasts a rate of 7.75% APY.

We're proud to give you another way to earn without the Wolves. The Dai Savings Rate from @MakerDAO is now live in Argent. (On iOS now. Android imminently) pic.twitter.com/V3xlXC6kOd — Argent (@argentHQ) January 29, 2020

With the new integration, Argent has decided to get aggressive with its marketing efforts. The announcement features a Wolf of Wall Street-themed ad, calling out the banks for low-interest rates and poor customer service while emphasizing the permissionless, high-yielding nature of the DSR today. Given that DeFi lending rates are considerably higher than rates offered by legacy banks (with significantly less frictions), the broader DeFi community should take note from Argent by taking more aggressive marketing efforts to attract global users.

Argent is still slowly on-boarding new users to the platform via their queue system. If you’re looking for early access to DeFi’s leading smart contract wallet, feel free to follow us on Twitter and give us a dm – we’ll be sure to ook you up!

Set Protocol Breaks All-Time High for Total Value Locked

Added: January 24th, 2020

Set Protocol, a protocol for automated asset management strategies, crossed all-time highs (ATHs) in total value locked, reaching $3.12M.

.@SetProtocol broke its all-time record for total value locked (TVL) today. It rose 7.1% in the last 24 hours bumping them over $3.12M. pic.twitter.com/Bdw524BWAv — DeFi Pulse 🍇 (@defipulse) January 24, 2020

The new ATHs come after launching Set Social Trading earlier this week where DeFi users can now buy into the trading strategies of leading community members. The largest social trading set is ETH Moonshot X Set by Aaron Kruger with over 2,600 ETH locked in the portfolio.

Given that it only launched earlier this week, Set Social Trading has seen a fair amount of success given the recent surge in total value locked. Moving forward, it will be interesting to see how Social Sets continue to play a role in the DeFi ecosystem.

PoolTogether Weekly Prize Pool Surges to $1,060 DAI

PoolTogether, the no-loss lottery, surges to $1,060 DAI for its weekly prize pool ending on January 31st, 2020. Generally speaking, PoolTogether has seen an increasing amount of interest from the broader DeFi community as the capital pool reached all-time highs.

The @PoolTogether_ weekly prize tomorrow will break 700 DAI for the first time ever! 🎉🎉🎉 Congrats @lay2000lbs 👯‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/nQHb4ooBIn — DeFi Dad – defidad.eth (@DeFi_Dad) January 23, 2020

The no-loss lottery has been subsidized by MakerDAO as well as others, putting up nearly a $250,000 in sponsored funds. Sponsored funds are not eligible to win prizes as its simply there to increase the prize pool from the interest gained.

If you’re interested in seeing the growth of the PoolTogether in recent months, check out this newsletter outlining the historical growth in detail.

Dai Crosses 100M in Circulating Supply

Today, the total circulating Dai crossed 100,000,000. After launching Multi-Collateral Dai nearly two months ago, the adoption of MakerDAO’s new trustless stablecoin has steadily increased.

Dai now represents 78% of the total ~127M DAI + SAI supply. After releasing the governance poll earlier this week on stability fee adjustments, SAI users will have an arbitrage opportunity to not only capitalize on the introduction of the DSR but also access a lower stability fee by migrating over to DAI.

Looking forward, we’ll continue to keep a close eye on how the introduction of new collateral types (i.e. BAT) will affect the value of collateralized assets. As it stands today, BAT only accounts for ~1.63% of circulating DAI.

For more information on the transition towards Dai, feel free to refer to this overview.

Kyber Network Reaches $500M On-Chain Trading Volume

Added: January 22nd, 2020

Kyber Network officially reached over $500 million USD in total on-chain trading volume across 600,000 trades since its launch back in 2018.

2020 is starting on an exciting note! Kyber recently crossed USD $500million and 600,000 fully on-chain trades since launch🚀 Read about how our upcoming Katalyst Upgrade will further enhance our protocol and liquidity for #DeFi 👉🏻 https://t.co/8dox9Uvj7Z pic.twitter.com/n9cVyD7fHH — Kyber Network (@KyberNetwork) January 21, 2020

The milestone comes before the upcoming Katalyst upgrade in early 2020. Katalyst is a major protocol improvement to help drive adoption to the ecosystem along with streamlining participation incentives and reward mechanisms.

As one of DeFi’s leading liquidity protocols, Kyber Network has an exciting roadmap lined up for 2020. If historical growth is a good indicator, expect to see volume increases and hopefully, some interesting price action with KNC given the pending token rework.

MakerDAO DSR, Stability Fee, and Debt Ceiling Adjustments

Added: January 20th, 2020

The MakerDAO Foundation released a few new governance polls into the voting system. The poll features adjustments to the Dai Savings Rate (DSR), the Dai Stability Fee, the debt ceiling, and the Sai stability fee.

⬇️Lower the Sai Debt Ceiling to 45 million Sai ⬆️Raise the Dai ETH Debt Ceiling to 125 million Dai ↔️Sai Stability Fee within a range of: 5%-13%https://t.co/g9vSgxm089 Additional info here: https://t.co/ItmbuGvUyt#VoteOrDAI — Maker (@MakerDAO) January 20, 2020

The new governance proposals from MakerDAO reflect the on-going transition from Single Collateral Dai (SAI) to Multi-Collateral Dai (DAI). The lowering of the Sai Debt Ceiling along with the increase in stability for Sai holders drive an incentive for existing SAI holders to transition over to DAI and accrue a lower stability fee on their debt.

In addition, MKR holders will be able to signal their support for the Dai Stability fee within a range of 2% and 10%, giving MKR holders the option to signal an increase or decrease from the current 6% fee.

Executive votes for the new governance polls will go live on Friday, January 24th

Synthetix.Exchange Crosses $1B in Volume

Added: January 17th, 2020

Synthetix, a platform to create synthetic assets on Ethereum, crossed $1B in volume on it’s native exchange, Synethetix.Exchange.

#Synthetix exchange just crossed 1 Billion in trading volume since the beginning! #SNX pic.twitter.com/qiOEJGxuB1 — SynthAman (@SNXified) January 17, 2020

This milestone can be attributed to a number of new Synths which have been created in recent weeks including a DeFi Basket and inverse Synths, allowing traders to effectively short more obscure cryptocurrencies like XRP, LTC and LINK.

Synthetix assets (sETH, SNX, sUSD, etc.) is said to account for over 50% of liquidity on Uniswap, indicating that demand for Synthetix Exchange trading and Synth creation via Mintr is gradually rising.

Been a while since I looked at this, but I just realised SNX related pools (sETH, SNX, sUSD) now account for over 50% of total @UniswapExchange liquidity. Will be interesting to see if it increases further once ERC20:ERC20 pairs launch 😉 — kain.eth (@kaiynne) January 3, 2020

Real-time stats surrounding Synthetix and the greater ecosystem can be found here.

In the coming weeks, we expect to see Sythetix introduce Ether as a collateral option to further increase it’s potential reach.

ETH Collateral launches Jan 30 on SNX@RyanSAdams 🥳 https://t.co/lHsyh9B9y7 — Vance Spencer (@iam__vance) January 16, 2020

For more information on Synthetix, please visit this overview.

Dai TVL Crosses $50M

Added: January 16th, 2020

According to DeFi Pulse, more than $50M worth of Dai is now locked with DeFi at large.

DAI locked in DeFi just hit 50 million 🥳 That's ~56% of the current circulating DAI supply locked in various applications built on #Ethereum and, as you can see, it doesn't seem to want to slow down 🚀 pic.twitter.com/RFO8NVYvgO — Anthony Sassano | sassal.eth (@sassal0x) January 17, 2020

This milestone goes to show that the transition from Sai to Dai has now taken full form, with virtually all major DeFi projects successfully integrating and encouraging Dai usage.

The vast majority of Dai is being locked via Maker (~57%) thanks to the introduction of the Dai Savings Rate – allowing users to earn an annualized return for storing Dai via Oasis Save.

For more information on Multi-Collateral Dai, please visit this resource.

DSR Changes From 4% to 6%

Added: January 8th, 2020

Following a successful executive vote the Dai Savings Rate was changed from it’s original rate of 4% to a new rate of 6%.

Many have come to view the DSR as DeFi’s Risk-Free Rate, meaning this change is likely to impact Supply and Borrow rates on other lending platforms like Compound and Aave.

This change also increases the Stability Fee from 4% to 6%, indicating the borrowers will incur slightly higher debts when creating Dai through Oasis Borrow.

The DSR is theorized to have changed in order to further incentivize usage of the DSR and for secondary exchanges to have more motivation to incorporate Multi-Collateral Dai into their front-end.

To celebrate the Dai Savings Rate integration into @OKEx, Maker will be hosting an AMA with their Head of #OKexPool, @AlinaYao4ever, on our telegram on Sunday, 7pm (PT). Submit your questions below for Alina, and if yours is chosen, receive 20 Dai! — Maker (@MakerDAO) December 19, 2019

For more information on the DSR and why it matters, please visit this resource.