Rise of Velodrome, Umami's USDC Vault

🚨 In Case You Missed It

Michael Saylor stepped down as the CEO of MicroStrategy to become the firm’s chairman, and focus solely on its bitcoin acquisition strategy. The firm reported a net loss of $1.1 billion in the latest quarter.
A massive hack originating from the Phantom wallet was reported on Solana. More than $4 million of SOL and USDC were stolen with over 15k wallets affected.
Magic Eden, Solana-based NFT marketplace, expanded to Ethereum. Users will be able to trade NFTs on either chain using ETH or SOL.
Nomad bridge has recovered $9 million (~5% of total loss) from white-hat hackers. The team has announced a process for white-hats to return funds.
Moonbeam Network resumed normal operations, after determining that Nomad hack was unrelated to the Moonbeam codebase. Network TVL is still down 64% is last 2 days.

📊 Velodrome Gives a Boost to Optimism TVL

On July 31, the total value locked (TVL) on Optimism touched an all-time high of $596 million, led by the rising popularity of Velodrome, a decentralized exchange protocol. The TVL on Velodrome currently makes up 23% of all TVL on Optimism.
Over the last week, TVL on Optimism has grown by 35% while TVL on Velodrome has grown by 55%. Since Velodrome launched on June 2, TVL on Optimism has grown by 73%.
Velodrome is a fork of Solidly, a decentralized exchange built by Andre Cronje on the Fantom blockchain. The key innovation of Solidly was to direct emissions to pools that generate the highest fees, instead of pools that have the most liquidity.
The surge of value locked on Velodrome can be attributed to users depositing assets to liquidity pools, and locking the LP tokens to earn VELO token rewards. Previously, the APR earned on Velodrome pools has ranged between 56-221%.
For more on Velodrome yield farming, Delphi members can read a previous Delphi Insights report here.

⚡Umami Stablecoin Vaults

Umami creates strategy vaults that generate sustainable, risk-hedged yields on core crypto assets including USDC, BTC and ETH. All of its vaults source yield from reliable on-chain revenue streams, and not inflationary native token emissions.
All of Umami’s vaults are tokenized via the ERC-4626 standard, providing users with a fungible receipt token.
Yield calculations are provided here. To access Umami, you’ll need to configure your MetaMask to run Arbitrum One using this guide.
Marinate
- This vault delivers the value Umami creates from its fee-generating products to long-term UMAMI stakers in ETH.
- Marinators can deposit UMAMI in exchange for mUMAMI. They can deposit at any time throughout the month, but can only withdraw UMAMI on the 1st of each month.
- Marinators can claim ETH rewards when they’re available but must hold the mUMAMI token when a given reward is issued.
Compound
- This vault boosts the returns generated by Marinators by auto-compounding ETH rewards.
- The mUMAMI auto-compounder automatically uses ETH rewards paid to mUMAMI holders to market buy more UMAMI and redeposit into Umami’s Marinate contract.
USDC Vault
- This vault accepts USDC and generates yield by providing liquidity to GMX’s leveraged perpetual exchange. In exchange, the vault receives the GLP token, comprised of ETH (28%), BTC (25%), stablecoins (45%), and other tokens (2%).
- The vault safeguards against market volatility by using 3x leveraged short tokens issued by Tracer as a hedge. Tracer currently incentivizes its pools with its native $TCR token. Umami stakes its 3x leveraged short tokens to collect $TCR incentives which are swapped for USDC.
- The vault stakes $esGMX rewards earned by providing liquidity to GMX. It automatically compounds $esGMX emissions and Multiplier Points (MP) to earn a higher APR on its liquidity.
- Over time, the vault’s overall yield should trend upwards as it accumulates and compounds more $esGMX and MPs. The vault does not place $esGMX into its 12-month vesting contract, and it does not burn MPs.
For more, Delphi members can read our Delphi Insights report here.

🐣 Notable Tweets

Intro to GMX

It’s always “What is GMX”
and never “How is GMX”
Here, we answer both questions
1/x 🧵👇

— Chain Debrief (@ChainDebrief) August 2, 2022

MakerDAO’s Governance Incentives

MakerDAO rewards contributions that result in measurable changes to the way the Maker Protocol or MakerDAO operates.

Through the Proposal Bounties Pool, we seek to reward all those contributions favorably voted by the community.

How to get involved? 🧵

1/

— Maker (@MakerDAO) August 2, 2022

Daniele of Abracadabra on Lessons Learnt

1/

Abra continues to produce the most incredible yields in DeFi. Yesterday, we refilled our Stargate USDC and USDT cauldrons. Both were depleted within an hour.

This reminded me of our famous (now infamous) $UST strategy. Some lessons learned and changes we’re making 👇🏻

— Daniele never asks to DM (@danielesesta) August 2, 2022

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