[Community Post] DeFi Week of Sept. 23 - The Defiant

Summing up: It was a tough week for crypto markets and ether –but not for DeFi. Ether plunged below $200, short positions jumped to the highest since July. The sell-off caused collateral liquidations in decentralized finance, but more loans were generated. Bancor shared more details of its airdrop exclusively with The Defiant, and co-founder Guy Benartzi chatted with me about the company’s long-term plans. Parity Technologies said it doesn’t have enough resources to maintain Parity and MakerDAO is debating whether to accept non-trustless assets as collateral for Dai. Crypto investor Spencer Noon’s guest post talks about the future of business in an open world.

Guest Post

Open Gardens are Reshaping Business and the Internet: Spencer Noon

Spencer Noon, who leads investment for cryptocurrency fund DTC Capital, writes about the shift in business models from walled gardens, which are good for businesses and bad for users, to open gardens, brought on by public blockchains like Ethereum. Open gardens are showing promise in being good for users, but it remains to be seen how they can be good for business. (Read more here).

Interview

We're Bringing 60,000 Super-Users to DeFi Overnight: Guy Benartzi

In a series of changes Bancor rolling out in the coming months, co-founder Guy Benartzi wants to prove that a platform token can be useful, it wants to gradually transfer control from management to the community, and it wants to entice more people to become liquidity providers by giving them a taste of market-maker fees, for free. He’s also proving that it’s possible to have a blockbuster ICO and also deliver a product. (Read more here).

News & Views

Wednesday

• Ether Shorts Jump Amid Market Bloodbath: Short positions on ether jumped to the highest in three weeks, a sign bears are betting ETH hasn’t found its floor years, while short positions on Bitcoin decreased.
• Tons of Collateral Was Liquidated, But Tons More Loans Sprung Up: The plunge in ether forced $3.8 million of liquidations, the highest since July, according to LoanScan. Four times as much, or $11 million, of loans were originated, of which 82 percent was in Dai.
• Bancor Bets on Multi-Blockchain Future With Airdrop: Bancor recently announced it’s airdropping the entire ETH reserve backing its BNT token, or about $2.6 million. The move highlights how the Tel Aviv-based team plans to reduce reliance on Ethereum.

Tuesday

• Parity Says It’s Prioritizing Polkadot Over Ethereum Client: Parity Technologies, the firm behind Ethereum’s Parity client, is focusing most of its resources on building Polkadot over its Ethereum client.
• Connext V2 Means Payments on Ethereum Get Easier: Connext, which uses state channel technology to enable micropayments, released its version two to mainnet.
• Dolomite is the New DEX in Town Decentralized exchange Dolomite launched with a native integration to Wyre for fiat-to-crypto conversions, and incentives for market makers.

Monday

• MakerDAO Weighs Whether to Remain Fully Trust-less: The MakerDAO community is debating the risks and merits of the system accepting non-trustless assets as collateral for Dai.

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