Ethena Labs launches the second epoch of their Shard program, raising the caps for USDe liquidity pools and introducing new integrations. Solana’s MarginFi drops their yield-bearing stablecoin, YBX, collateralized by SOL liquid staking tokens. Finally, controversial L2, Blast, is finally live, allowing users to bridge in and interact with applications on the chain.

Overview

Total Value Locked (TVL) across all chains show no signs of slowing the ascent of the last three weeks, with TVL increase accelerating this week due to the large bullish move in the markets after the Bitcoin ETFs see several days of record inflows. Notable outperformers include Bitcoin, after new inflows from campaigns launched by Bitcoin L2s, Merlin and B2 Buzz, and Coinbase L2, Base, which saw inflows after renewed interest on the chain.

Source: https://coinmarketcap.com/chain-ranking/

Welcome to Alpha Central

As the market heats up, Shoal Research shares their watchlist and the sectors that they are focusing on going into the bull cycle as well as the projects in these sectors:

Ethereum: Uniswap Native Limit Order Swaps

Ethereum top decentralized exchange (DEX), Uniswap, introduces Limit Orders, now live in the Uniswap app. In the same week, they also announced their upcoming wallet extension, the Uniswap Extension, which opens in the browser’s sidebar as opposed to as a popup.

Stablecoin protocol, Ethena, kicks off Epoch 2 of their Shard Campaign, raising caps for sDAI and GHO liquidity pool, USDe lock caps and adding support for depositors of USDe with yield derivative platform, Pendle.

Other Product Launches and Updates

• Multi-chain DEX, PancakeSwap, proposes an affiliate program, allowing new DEXs to fork their code. Holders of the CAKE token will benefit from receiving native tokens of successful forks.

• DeFi suite, Frax Finance, proposes to reintroduce a revenue share for veFXS stakers again, inspired by the recent proposal for revenue share by the Uniswap team. Frax Finance revenue is currently stored in their treasury.

• Leverage protocol, Gearbox Protocol, now supports Renzo for leveraged liquid restaking, enabling depositors to earn more points in EigenLayer and Renzo. The strategy currently also yields 2x the usual Renzo points for depositors.

• Prisma Finance launches new collateral options for ULTRA, their liquid restaking token backed stablecoin. These options include EtherFi’s weETH, Renzo’s ezETH and KelpDAO’s rsETH.

• Ethereum privacy layer, Railgun, unveils Railgun Connect, a browser extension designed to easily offer privacy to any user on any DeFi app, without the need for integration from the app.

• Real-world asset trading platform, Ondo Finance, introduces Ondo Global Markets, a platform which seeks to bring all publicly traded securities on-chain, while having access to the liquidity from traditional exchanges such as the Nasdaq or the NYSE.

• Cross-chain interoperability layer, Wormhole, releases Native Token Transfers (NTT), a flexible and compossable framework to enable the transfer of native tokens across chains without affecting their intrinsic properties. This framework enables integration with any kind of token standard, opening the door to a myriad of possibilities.

• F(x) Protocol releases fxUSD, a stablecoin collateralized by ETH, ETH liquid staking tokens and stablecoins. Users can now deposit supported assets to mint fxUSD. Incentives have also gone live as of 29th February to support the launch.

Story continues

L2s: Blast is Live

The Blast L2 goes live, unlocking the close to 2 billion in assets that had been locked up during their initial airdrop campaign. Users can now bridge to the chain from a variety of source chains and interact with more than 30 applications that are already live.

Bridging protocol, Synapse, launches the testnet for the Synapse Interchain Network and the Synapse Chain. The Synapse Interchain Network is an optimistic proof-of-stake network while the Synapse chain is an Optimistic rollup based on the OP Stack.

Other Product Launches and Updates

Solana: MarginFi Introduces Its Yield Bearing Stablecoin

Money market platform, MarginFi, introduces YBX, a yield bearing stablecoin backed by SOL liquid staking derivative tokens. The starting supported collateral will include JitoSOL, mSOL, bSOL and MarginFi’s own LST.

Solana decentralized infrastructure platform, io.net, launches the Ignition Program, a series of Galxe quests which will lead up to the IO token airdrop, which is expected to be later in the year.

Another Week, Another Airdrop

Solana-based real estate perpetual trading platform, Parcl, announced their upcoming token launch in April, with a planned 7-8% of the token supply to be airdropped to users who have participated in the point campaign.

ETH liquid restaking protocol, KelpDAO, launches the KEP token for claiming. KEP is a representation of EigenLayer points earned by KelpDAO and can be freely traded currently.

Perpetuals DEX, Aark Digital, announces their upcoming token airdrop, which will go out to TIA and PYTH stakers, JUP holders, and Aark users. Eligible users will have to participate in their Moon Festival, opening 4th March to receive their airdrop.

Innovative DEX, Ambient Finance, announces the launch of the Ambient Points Season 1, rewarding users with points that are distributed weekly. Retroactive points will also be awarded during Season 1.

GambleFi platform, Shuffle, announces that their airdrop will finally go live on Monday, 4th March, after 12 months of being live, to reward the users who have supported them.

Tweet of the Week

JD points out the irony of having a full-blown memecoin rally weeks after we legitimized the crypto industry with the Bitcoin ETF approvals.

Stay updated on your favorite projects and stay tuned for next week’s edition, and keep supporting your favorite projects, degens!