Cheap Gas, DAO Updates, & DeFi Perps Plunge

Chart of The Day: Gas Is On Sale!

• Are you looking to move funds around or claim yields? Now’s a good time to do it. Gas prices have significantly decreased from their peak last month of 218 Gwei to just around 60 Gwei today, which translates to a 72% reduction.
• At the beginning of 2022, gas prices jumped due to surging volume for NFTs. However, as mentioned in yesterday’s Daily, NFT activity has been cooling off in the past week. Opensea is one of Ethereum’s biggest gas guzzlers, and an acute slowdown in NFT volume (and thus transactions) can largely impact the price of gas.

The Blood of Moloch and Ve-Everything

[Excerpt from our weekly DAO Insights]

• APWine, due to a lack of quorum in the first vote, is voting again to add a treasury fee to their AMM. The entirety of the .05% swap fee would go to the APWine treasury, which is governed by APW holders.
• Balancer is currently voting on modifying its protocol fees. With the transition to veBAL now occurring, the DAO is considering increasing their protocol fees from 10% to 50%. According to the proposal, this will increase earnings for veBAL holders, which should encourage more locking. Detailed projections can be found here.
• Fei Protocol is edging closer to releasing its new product Turbo. This proposal earmarks funds for the Codearena security audit of the new product and is required for release. The review will start in a month.
• For more details, Delphi members can visit the full post here.

Too Early to Call It a Comeback [January 2022]

[Excerpt from our Monthly Chartbook]

• When it comes to decentralized perpetuals (“perps”), dYdX is still the dominant exchange, boasting ~78% market share. Meanwhile, its native token (DYDX) is down more than 70% from its all-time high and has struggled amid broader market weakness.
• The reason for dYdX’s poor performance is in part attributable to the lack of value accrual mechanisms, since trading fees are collected by a centralized entity. However, this is set to change with the launch of dYdX V4 by EOY 2022, which could drive more value for DYDX holders (and maybe even some relief to its price action).

• GMX is now the second-largest decentralized perpetuals exchange to offer spot swaps. Its launch on Avalanche has nearly doubled GMX’s volume, helping drive down its valuation relative to average “earnings” (note: P/E is far from perfect when it comes to analyzing protocol valuations but it does provide additional context on the amount of fee’s generated relative to a protocol’s current market value).
• GMX differs from many of the other perpetual protocols due to its strong earnings and value accrual mechanisms, which directly benefit token holders; GMX returns 30% of all fees to stakers. Read more about GMX’s design in the following report.
• For more detail on the state of defi perps, see our latest monthly chartbook.

Notable Tweets

Astroport is the No.1 Scoring Protocol on Terra by DeFiSafety

1/4 With a 90%, Astroport enters our review catalog as the #1 scoring protocol on Terra and one of the highest-rated DEXs we have reviewed. The protocol excels in all areas of software documentation and is especially focused on providing its users with all the necessary details.

—DeFiSafety(@DefiSafety) February 15, 2022

Safe Foundation to Raise $100M

EXCLUSIVE: Safe Foundation, proposed steward of the Gnosis Safe ecosystem, plans to raise $100 million

by @RyanJamesWeeks

— The Block (@TheBlock__) February 15, 2022

Thread on $XPRT Founder’s Experience

1/ As a founder in crypto, you are building an early stage tech company VERY publicly

You are required to:

Manage your actual product
Manage the token as a product

A thread on the latter from my experience of managing $XPRT!

— Tushar | Persistence 🦾 (@Tushar307) February 15, 2022