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🟣 Gains, games and governance
Sky-high partnerships and fresh DeFi bets
Macauley Peterson & Donovan Choy
September 03, 2024
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Welcome back to 0xResearch. Here's what we’ve got for you today:
Sky deals with Aave
Curve funding wrap
Chart: Shuffle
Degen: Gnosis Pay cashback
Aave 🤝 Maker Sky
Big moves in DeFi today as Aave and Maker/Sky get cozy again.
Both protocols announced today a partnership dubbed “Sky Aave Force,” which will integrate Sky’s USDS (previously DAI) into Aave v3. USDS and sUSDS lenders on Aave will earn rewards in SPK, the token of Spark lending protocol, a Sky subDAO.
Sky wants to tap into Aave’s liquidity for obvious reasons, and Aave will benefit from an agreed-upon 50/50 revenue share split with Spark from the USDS markets.
The proposal may also deploy a D3M (direct deposit module) to a recently launched Lido stETH market on Aave to boost adoption of USDS in the popular stETH market. For context, the D3M is a direct DAI credit line that today is used by Spark and Morpho, but historically was also deployed to Aave and Compound.
The proposal has already passed an initial temperature check and will likely pass given the public support of top stakeholders like Rune and Stani. It’s a surprising collaboration given Aave and Maker’s thorny history, plus the fact that USDS now technically competes with Aave’s own GHO stablecoin.
The only group of players this proposal does not seemingly benefit: SPK airdrop farmers. With more rewards handed out, the upcoming SPK airdrop is seeing further dilution. Note that 30% of SPK rewards are already planned to be emitted as rewards for staking SKY as part of Maker’s Endgame proposal.
MKR has historically been a “useless” governance token with a lack of value accrual. The purported solution to that issue in Endgame is to kick the problem down to the SPK subDAO token. This begs the question in return: Can SPK — and Spark Protocol — stand on its own as a value accretive token?
— Donovan Choy (X: @donovanchoy | Farcaster: @donovan)
Curve development funded
The Curve Finance DAO proposal to grant 21 million CRV (about $6 million) to Swiss Stake AG for a year of further Curve development passed Monday with a 10-1 ratio voting in favor. Nearly 65% of the veCRV eligible to vote did so, well exceeding the 30% quorum threshold.
That’s a big vote of confidence in the stewardship of founder Michael Egorov and his development company. The Curve team itself, a major stakeholder with around 15% of the veCRV, was allowed to participate in the vote, but even if you back out those votes (presumably in favor), the measure passed handily.
Allocated CRV tokens will vest over the course of one year, and claiming rights can be revoked by the DAO if deemed necessary.
“We are committed to providing the community with regular updates on the status and progress of all technical features,” Egorov wrote in the revised proposal.
“Additionally, we will track and report the expenditure of funds across the following categories: 1) Security Audits, 2) Front-End Development, 3) Software Development, 4) Infrastructure, 5) Community & Tech Support and 6) Research & Analytics. These reports will be made available to the community on a quarterly basis through the governance forum.”
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Shuffle all-time high volumes:
Shuffle is seeing wagered volumes’ all-time highs of $2 billion in August, according to an infographic shared by co-founder and CEO Noah Dummett.
Shuffle is a centralized gambling platform that launched in February 2023. Its users — most of which are non-crypto-natives, according to Dummett — bet on a variety of activities across standard gambling games, sports, game shows and more. Its SHFL token went live on Ethereum in March 2024, and can be used to place bets, earn weekly raffle eligibility and future airdrops.
Shuffle’s recent growth can be attributed to a few different factors: an upcoming second SHFL airdrop of 90 million SHFL ($27.9 million), constant token buyback & burn initiatives, improvements around its signature VIP membership program to build user retention and aggressive marketing around social media influencers to acquire users (including Australian MMA fighter Craig Jones who publicly placed a $100k bet on himself).
— Donovan Choy
Gnosis Payback
Fans of credit card payback schemes — whether cash, frequent flier miles or other points — may have been reticent about trading in their bank issued cards for an onchain debit card alternative.
To entice those users, Gnosis has launched a new rewards program aimed at boosting adoption of Gnosis Pay, the crypto payment platform partnered with Visa. The program offers cashback to users holding GNO tokens in their Gnosis Pay Safe accounts, with rewards scaling across four tiers, depending on the amount of GNO held. GNO is the staking and governance token of Gnosis Chain.
Users can earn up to 4% cashback, paid in GNO, capped at monthly spending limits of EUR 20k, USD 22k, and GBP 18k. The rewards, distributed weekly, are calculated based on the lowest GNO balance held in the week leading up to a transaction. They are paid out in GNO, with conversions based on the USD/GNO rate at distribution.
The initiative, funded by the GnosisDAO to the tune of 10,000 GNO, aims to incentivize the use of Gnosis Pay and drive user engagement. This rewards program aligns with Gnosis' broader strategy to make crypto payments more accessible, building on the growth of Gnosis Chain and enhancing the platform's user experience.
— Macauley Peterson
This month's PPGC mainly focused on two subjects. First is a discussion about the Ahmedabad Hard Fork and the PIPs included with it (PIP-30, PIP-36 and PIP-45). The second discussion revolves around the MATIC-POL transition and the stakeholders it primarily impacts.
Recent discussions within the Ethereum community have highlighted a broader trend in crypto: L1s are converging on leaderless consensus designs to deliver higher performances and hardened censorship-resistance. Magicdhz illustrates the L1 convergence, discusses the two prevailing leaderless consensus designs (multiple concurrent proposers and directed acyclic graph based protocols), and argues that refreshing one's perspective on the L1 landscape is an advantageous position for evaluating adoption and the potential investment value of L1s and their applications.
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Bitfarms should not enter into any transaction before its October shareholder meeting, Riot said in an open letter.
The company behind ZKsync told Blockworks that the decision was made to make the team more “lean” as it moves into its next phase.
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The insights, views and outlooks presented in the report are not to be taken as financial advice. Blockworks Research analysts are not registered broker/dealers or financial advisors. Blockworks Research analysts may hold assets mentioned in this report, further outlined in the Firm’s Financial Disclosures.