In the Loop Issue 4

Aug 28, 2023

The Farmers Club is now Sun Tzu Academy 🧮! This is our inaugural issue of In the Loop where we'll try our best to cover all things DeFi weekly - the news, fresh protocol launches, yield farming opportunities, the coins we're digging, and threads that are just too good not to share. I’m rektGEMS, and I’ve teamed up with my frens Winter and Crypto Andrew to bring you a variety of perspectives! Stay tuned for more content curated by the three of us. We appreciate your journeying with us in this new endeavor.

NEWS

Weekly News Recap by rektGEMS:

Kicking things off with some bullish Solana news.

Massive partnership with online shopping platform Shopify.

Lowest derivatives trading volume since Dec 2022.

Both CEX and DEX trading volume hit the lowest since end of last year, despite “on-chain season”.

OP Foundation proposed to give 118M OP token as grant, locked for one year. “Base has committed to contribute either 2.5% of Base’s total revenue from sequencing or, if it’s more, 15% of the profit Base makes from L2 transactions after subtracting the costs of submitting data to L1”

Aerodrome launch imminent.

- veVELO snapshot done

- Partnerships can be found under this thread

- Many familiar names, key partners including: Sonne Finance, DeusDAO, Thales Market, Inverse Finance, Tangible DAO, Liquity, Beefy

- Only BASE native projects are Based Market, Moonwell

Tangible DAO launched CAVIAR, a liquid wrapper for locked PEARL token. Staking CVR currently pays 215% APR.

Both PEARL and CVR have gone up 90% this week.

Unibot now supports BASE chain.

Decentralized GambleFi project FerdyFlip releases their roadmap.

Notable items on the roadmap including:

- More chain expansion, Arb, OP, and other non-EVM chains

- FerdyChain, their own Avalanche subnet

- Multiplayer/PVP games like Poker

- More single-player games like slots, blackjack

JustBet introduces one-click, gas free bets. No more transaction approval after every single bet.

Weekly News Recap by Winter:

FTX seeks approval to sell or hedge its remaining holdings
- Summary of holdings as below from Hal Press
- Approval would bring noticeable dump across the market with slow bleed bottom.
- BTC, ETH holdings not huge but significant in this liquidity draught for CEX
- Would expect bottom by 75% of twap sales.

Friend.Tech update
- Photos sharing enabled and brought a wave of OF girls onboard but the pump was shortlived or rather sell-the-news event (Egirlindex pumped to 1E and retraced within 3hours)
- Airdrop points criteria speculated to switch from Week #1_Trading Vol to Week #2_Holdings Value_x_Holding duration
- Easy to speculate that FT team will release another bullish news / app update right before airdrop points distribution on Friday

Game ON for Mantle ecosystem
- Latest proposal suggest to thicken liquidity in protocols in Mantle ecosystem
- Biggest focus RWA backed stablecoins up to $60M

Another Lending Protocol rugged - Magnate Finance

IT AIN’T MUCH BUT HONEST WORK

What rektGEMS Has Been Farming:

CAVIAR

Pearl Finance on Beefy

USDR stablecoin APR on Beefy really good right now, boosted by Tangible DAO with additional CVR rewards. Obviously have to deal with USDR depeg risk but worth taking imo.

CVR staking offers higher rewards for higher risk. Since CVR is a liquid wrapper of PEARL, so have to deal with price volatility and depeg risk. However, PEARL has been in a strong uptrend since CVR launched, and CVR has been trading 5% within peg. Tangible DAO and Pearl Finance have done great job with CVR so far.

Over 200% APR paid in USDR stablecoin and CVR in real time. Pearl farmers also have the option to receive their PEARL farm emission in CVR, which should reduce the sell pressure.

DEXSCREENER WATCHLIST

Chart rektGEMS Has Been Watching:

Smart Money Net Swaps by ChainEDGE

Sorted by 7D net change

Strong accumulation on OLAS

AXE

My focus will be on AXE for the next while.

- Product has done $18M in leveraged volume in just 8 days

- 1000x leverage crypto trading just went live with 60 pairs for trading

- $450K revenue distributed to token holders

AXE has a lot of stuff planned and once they have a dashboard showing more data, I will make a comprehensive thread on AXE.

SONNE

If AERO does well, SONNE will do better.

Sonne Finance is a simple money market, it has done really well on Optimism because Sonne leveraged Velodrome’s bribe mechanism and created an unique flywheel effect. If they can replicate the synergy with Aerodrome, Sonne should perform really well from here.

Chart Winter Has Been Watching:

OX
- Decent buyzone retesting prev ATH for pnchain index koin
- OPNX listed $MOG perps as per vote results
- Personally betting on it will join RLB instead of HPOS10 as utility exists

RUNE
- Recent update on Thorchain lending leads to pump on price
- Historical fractals showed it is likely to be a burj khalifa, totally retrace its gains

ALTD
- One of few multichain alts that could be interesting
- Decent amount raised during LBP
-Extensive thread by CJ linked below

Chart Crypto Andrew Has Been Watching:

WINR

some alpha: Bonanza, Blackjack and Poker are in pipeline, which the former around the corner
Only 4M MC with no big unlocks until November
DegenBet (400-1000x) leverage in September (1st half)
Recently added AA and revamped UI/UX

P.S. I am not a TA guy btw :)

NEWS

Bot that connects your Bybit account to TG and allows to trade news thru it via a special interface (super comfy)
New CEXs are in pipeline (Binance #1)
More news feed
Good and fast shipping team
Only 2.4M MC with all tokens in circulation