Harvard Law BFI throws 10.5M votes behind own proposal to fund DeFi lobby with UNI

May 28, 2021 Coin Telegraph

It is not the first time Uniswap governance has been dominated by a whale.

The effect of whales on Uniswap governance is a topic of hot debate once again after Harvard's blockchain group threw a massive amount of voting power behind its own proposal.

The proposal, made on May 27 by the Harvard Law School Blockchain and FinTech Initiative, is for the creation of a fund that would finance existing and new political groups engaged in crypto policy making and lobbying to defend decentralized finance against regulation.

The proposed fund would have a chest of 1-1.5 million UNI, worth approximately $28 million to $42 million at current prices. At the time of writing Harvard Law BFI has pledged 10.46 million UNI tokens, or 99% of the votes, in favor of the proposal. There are just 766,460 votes against it so far.

Industry observer and critic of centralized governance, Chris Blec from DeFi Watch, was one of the first to comment on the heavily weighted voting mechanism.

⚠️ @HarvardLawBFI just cast a 10.45m UNI vote in favor of its own proposal to pay a bunch of lawyers 1.5m UNI out of the treasury.

Their vote accounts for 99.9% of the "yes" votes so far.

Here we go again, y'all. https://t.co/9M9Da6XyVz pic.twitter.com/r3axyG35QW
— Chris Blec (@ChrisBlec) May 27, 2021

The “here we go again” quip refers to Uniswap’s first governance vote in October 2020, proposed by trading platform Dharma to reduce the proposal submission threshold. The proposal would have given the majority of the voting power to the top two token holders (Dharma and blockchain simulation platform Gauntlet). The two of them dominated the ballot with their own heavy bags bringing Uniswap’s governance into question, however, the vote was defeated by a tiny margin.

The lobbying fund, if passed, would have four primary goals according to Harvard, consisting of educating policymakers to preempt regulatory, legal, political, and tax threats to DeFi, secondly achieving regulatory clarity for DeFi related activities. The third goal would be to advance laws that support DeFi and decentralized governance, and finally encourage other DeFi protocols’ governance communities to contribute to the effort.

Harvard Law BFI responded stating that it was only natural for them to vote for their own proposal, adding:

“Additionally, we have this voting power from UNI holders who delegated their votes to us (which they are free to retract at any time).”

It stated that there were enough votes to create a snapshot proposal, but it cannot unilaterally get it through a consensus check without a majority of votes.

At the moment the proposal is in “temperature check” mode which means it needs a minimum of 25,000 UNI in support, which it already has. To pass a full proposal after the “consensus check” stage, it needs a quorum of 40 million UNI in favor.

Qtum price rallies 160% as the project’s focus on DeFi pays off

May 7, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

QTUM price hit a 3-year high above $35 as the team's focus on DeFi and staking attracts new users.

After rallying 1.510% in 2021, QTUM price hit a $35.70 all-time high on May 7. This relatively obscure altcoin launched in September 2017 is a fork of the Bitcoin Core 0.13 version, but it also integrates the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) and smart contract execution capability.

Following Bitcoin's (BTC) April 23 crash down to $47,500, QTUM faced a 52% correction in 4 days before bottoming at $10. However, the situation for the altcoin improved on May 5 as QTUM initiated a 160% rally in two days, reaching the $35.70 peak.

*QTUM price at Binance, USDT. Source: TradingView*

Qtum combines Bitcoin's transaction model with Ethereum smart contracts

The open-source platform's primary goal is to provide simple tools that anyone can use to create decentralized applications (dApps) while maintaining a high level of network security. The project opted for a slightly different Proof of Stake (POS) version to prevent malicious nodes, and a certain number of blocks are needed for the staking tokens to become valid.

Qtum blockchain supports smart contract programming languages beyond Solidity, besides having an on-chain decentralized governance protocol. Token holders vote on network parameters such as block size and base gas fee.

While Qtum blockchain features an on-chain governance system, it also has an off-chain process for approving and handling more significant protocol changes. The protocol has recently identified decentralized finance (DeFi) as a focus area and steps to attract new projects.

This strategy seems to be finally paying off, as the number of daily network transactions peaked on May 6.

*Qtum blockchain transactions per day. Source: qtum.info*

Staking improvements and DeFi pivot send Qtum price higher

Offline staking was implemented in August 2020, and it has grown to more than half the staking activity on the Qtum blockchain. Investors who don't want to handle their own nodes can make a non-custodial delegation for their coins.

On March 17, Value Network announced plans to migrate away from Ethereum due to network congestion and high costs. It is now moving to the Qtum smart contract and DApp platform and has received a development grant to accelerate the transition.

On March 31, Qtum founder Patrick Dai said that the protocol was working to enable smart contracts for Filecoin (FIL) through the Qtum network.

The network transitioned from a 128-second block average to a 32-second block average via a hard fork on April 30. The average four weeks that it took for an average-size staker to become valid now has been reduced to a single week.

Ethereum compatibility means increased interoperability

Interoperability is another reason for QTUM's recent rally. The team is developing Neutron, an agnostic interface that allows virtual machines to run on multiple blockchains. Moreover, its own DEX called QiSwap enables users to build DeFi applications and provide liquidity on top of the Qtum blockchain.

VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for QTUM on May 5, before the recent price rise.

The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historical and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points, including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements, and Twitter activity.

*VORTECS™ Score vs. QTUM price (white). Source:* *Cointelegraph Markets Pro*

As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score began to climb on May 5 and reached a high of 71. It's worth noting that the VORTECS™ Score peaked roughly 24 hours before the price spiked 100% to a new all-time high at $35.70.

Qtum is aiming to compete with some serious smart contract contenders like Cardano (ADA), Polkadot (DOT), VeChain (VET), and Solana (SOL) and the project has an impressive $2.74 billion market capitalization.

However, for QTUM to increase its valuation, investors will likely want to see more decentralized applications and total value locked (TVL) on the network.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Lending giant Aave set to launch liquidity mining program

April 24, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Aave

Can governance token distribution help Aave overtake Compound?

With a liquidity mining program set to launch on Monday, Aave could be on the cusp of becoming the dominant decentralized finance (DeFi) ledning protocol.

Earlier today, Aave Improvement Proposal (AIP) 16 reached quorum, meaning that starting on Monday, 4/26 liquidity providers and borrowers in Aave’s USDC, DAI, USDT, GUSD, ETH, and WBTC pools will earn stAAVE rewards in addition to their standard interest yield.

Per AIP 16, providers and borrowers in these pools will split 2,200 stAAVE tokens per day from the protocol’s current 2.9 million AAVE Ecosystem Reserve, currently worth nearly $1 billion.

The proposal, written by Aave investor Parafi Capital’s Anjan Vinod, notes that the goal of the program is to “drive lending and borrowing activity across markets,” as well as increase the decentralization of the protocol’s governance by distributing governance tokens to more users.

The move is something of a novelty for Aave. The lending platform has consistently been ranked among the largest DeFi protocols, despite not having a liquidity mining program like many of its competitors. Per their respective apps, Compound is currently the top lending protocol with over $15.4 billion in total value locked (TVL) across their markets, while Aave counts $6.8 billion across their Polygon, Ethereum v1, Ethereum v2, and AMM LP token markets.

Aave co-founder Stani Kulechov told Cointelegraph that he expects that the added incentives will bolster the protocol’s TVL significantly.

“The proposal allocates most of the rewards on stablecoins meaning that we will see substantial increase in TVL,” he said.

As the governance proposal notes, the lack of a liquidity mining program has historically put Aave at something of a competitive disadvantage. For instance, at the time of writing money market Compound offers 3.31% yield on stablecoin USDC, along with 2% in COMP governance tokens for a total of 5.51% yield. Aave’s market, meanwhile, also currently offers an identical 5.51% in pure interest yield.

A recent Tweet from Aave developer Emilio Frangella indicates that the new program will bolster yields by orders of magnitude, and notably offers yield to borrowers — yield which, at current rates, would well outstrip the APR borrowers owe on their loans.

Here is the estimate, if market conditions remain the same pic.twitter.com/3cLisnArPy
— Emilio Frangella (@The3D_) April 24, 2021

While the current program is slated to end 07/15/2021, the door is open to some form of liquidity mining continuing for the protocol for the foreseeable future. Per Vinod, “this program is being proposed as a beta to further investigate how the inclusion of liquidity mining rewards will benefit the Aave ecosystem,” and at the 2,200/day rate of distribution, the program would deplete only 5% of the Ecosystem Reserve tokens per year.

When first proposed in governance forums, liquidity mining only received 60% support from the community. Kulechov believes that the turnaround is due in part to the community seeing other liquidity mining programs successfully play out.

“Aave community has for and against views on the topic previously, against mainly because Aave Protocol has been successful in organic growth. However, since now liquidity mining network effects are proven to work, it gives an opportunity to experiment it in Aave and that might been grounds for the swing.”

Yearn “Buyback and Build” Boosts YFI Token Price at Launch

April 15, 2021 The Crypto Briefing

Analysis

The start of Yearn Finance’s buyback program has already created a positive effect on the token’s value as prices have surged 13% in the last 24 hours.

Steady Growth, Healthy Finances Driving Yearn Rally

Crypto Briefing reported that Yearn Finance had reached the $2.5 billion total value locked milestone. Days later, the protocol has now reached $3 billion in the vault’s protocols.

Total value locked in Yearn.Finance vaults. Data from Yearn.Science.

This growth is due primarily to the success of various yield-bearing strategies within different Yearn “vaults.” Members of the project develop different strategies for generating profits. These strategies are then offered to the public through the protocol’s interface.

With these new profits in hand, the protocol’s governance passed a buyback and build resolution in January, whose application will start this week.

The profits from staking the protocol’s native asset, YFI, will be used to buy back YFI from the market and increase buying pressure on the asset price.

YFI value in the last 14 days has seen a sustained increase. Data from CoinGecko. — YFI value in the last 14 days has seen a sustained increase—data from CoinGecko.

So far, only $300,000 have been committed to buying back YFI; over time, this number will grow and will increase the scarcity of YFI.

Disclaimer: The author held ETH and several other cryptocurrencies at the time of writing. Andre Cronje, the founder of Yearn Finance, is an equity-holder in Crypto Briefing.

Governance