Summary of DeFi Top 20 with Arthur0x--Su-Zhu-and-Hasu Podcast
Summary
6 Major Categories
DEX - Decentralized exchanges. Competitive market.
- Uniswap UNI - Biggest trading volume, 20k daily users. Has grown 100x.
- SushiSwap SUSHI - Uniswap fork, added governance token. Grassroots/user driven.
- 0x ZRX - Not a DEX technically, more of dex protocol. Been around for a long time but never had enough volume for relayers to work well. Not an AMM, 0x is auto book. Kyber is hybrid AMM.
- Balancer BAL - Half of sushi swap volume. AMM has more flexibility. Not as good of UX as SUSHI and UNI. Balancer volume is almost all API volume because UX is so bad.
- Bancor - one sided AMM. Biggest ICO in ETH history. Working since 2018. Liquidity concentrated on token not ideal, creates a lot of user friction.
- Kyber Network KNC - Older 2017 project. Pioneered cash flow from staking coins, worse for people paying taxes. Capital efficient, 1/10th TVL. Has grown 10x.
Spot Lending - Staked coins are used as collateral to borrow coins, no new coins are created. Two top leaders are Compound and AAVE.
- Compound COMP - First mover. Older, established, so development is slower. Started the liquidity mining craze.
- Aave AAVE - New comer, fast mover. Launched Jan 2020, hit 1.5 Billion TVL in 7months. Used to be LEND coin.
Synthetic Lending - Assets are created from thin are, collateral makes new coins. Tokenized debt.
- Maker MKR - Staking makes DAI, a decentralized stable coin. Biggest defi name, but had the worst 2020 relative to a lot of other defi names. Underperformed last few years.
- Synthetix - SNX Coin. Launched as HAVEN. Leader. Vibrant community.
End Summary
Takeaways*
DEX - Volume is probably the most important factor for growth, therefore we should buy the two with the most volume, UNI and SUSHI.
Spot Lending - Buy the two leaders, COMP and AAVE.
Synthetic Lending - Buy SNX and MKR.
*THIS IS NOT NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. I HAVE NO POSITION AT THE TIME OF WRITING THIS.