Open An Undercollateralized DeFi Credit Line With Union Finance

DeFi Alpha is a weekly newsletter published for our premium subscribers every Friday, contributed by Defiant Advisor and DeFi investor at 4RC, DeFi Dad, and our Degen in Chief yyctrader. It aims to educate traders, investors, and newcomers about investment opportunities in decentralized finance, as well as provide primers and guides about its emerging platforms.

Two years ago, DeFi investors could easily name every yield farming opportunity without much effort. It was a simpler time, when only a handful of teams had launched with any liquidity to trade, lend, borrow, provide liquidity, or even demonstrate new primitives such as no-loss savings by PoolTogether.

But times have changed! Before the current bear market took hold, DeFi liquidity had grown to hundreds of billions of dollars across Ethereum with new burgeoning DeFi economies taking shape on EVM-compatible chains such as Polygon and Avalanche and non-EVM chains such as Cosmos and Solana. Any given day, a new DeFi or NFT project is launched.

So, after writing and creating countless DeFi guides and tutorials since 2019, we at The Defiant agreed it’s time we publish a more detailed weekly guide on all you need to know to keep up with new opportunities. 

This is DeFi Alpha by The Defiant.

Any information covered in DeFi Alpha should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions. Any mention of a token or protocol should not be considered a recommendation or endorsement.

Each week we will provide options to earn yield on ETH, WBTC, stablecoins, and other major tokens.

• ETH -21% APR with wstETH/ETH LP staked in KyberSwap on Optimism

• WBTC – 6.22% projected vAPR with Curve tBTC2 LP staked in Convex

  • This yield is accrued in CRV, CVX, and trading fees.

  • To participate, one must first deposit tBTC, renBTC, sBTC and/or WBTC into this Curve tBTC2 pool and then stake the LP here in Convex.

• AVAX – 8.97% APR with AVAX in Vesper Grow Pools

  • This yield is issued in 8.14% AVAX + 1.38% VSP.

  • To participate, one must deposit into the AVAX pool here in Vesper

  • There is a 0.6% fee on withdrawal from Vesper Grow pools and a 15% platform fee on yield generated by the deposited assets.

• SOL – 11.02% APY lending stSOL on Tulip Protocol

  • This yield is backed by 5.35% APY paid by borrowers on Tulip + 5.67% APY in staking rewards thanks to Lido.

  • To participate, one must deposit stSOL in the Tulip lending tab.

  • To obtain stSOL, one can trade on a Solana DEX or mint it here on Lido.

• MATIC – 18.43% APY with 50/50 MaticX-WMATIC LP on MeshSwap

  • The yield is backed by validator rewards using the MaticX liquid staking derivative + MeshSwap trading fees + MESH rewards + SD rewards.

  • To participate on Polygon, I use the Stader MaticX dApp to mint MaticX.

  • Then, I deposit into the MaticX-WMATIC pool on MeshSwap and stake the LP.

• ATOM – 18.6% APR staking ATOM with Keplr Wallet on Cosmos Hub

  • The yield earned is issued in ATOM.

  • To participate, one must set up a Keplr Wallet, go to the Cosmos Hub validators on Keplr Dashboard, rank by APR, choose a validator, and click Delegate.

  • Then, I specify how many ATOMs and follow the prompts to Delegate.

• FTM – 4.7% APY staking sFTMx liquid staking derivative by Stader

  • The yield is issued in FTM rewards, as sFTMX is earning FTM via validator rewards to support Fantom’s PoS network.

  • To participate, one must deposit FTM to receive sFTMX here on Stader.

• HBAR – 10.88% APY staking with HBARX liquid staking derivative by Stader

  • The yield is issued in HBAR rewards, as HBARX is earning validator rewards.

  • To participate, one must deposit HBAR to receive HBARX here on Stader.

• Stablecoins (USD) – 30.28% APY with sUSD in an auto-compounding vault strategy on Reaper Farm on Optimism

  • This yield is accrued in sUSD.

  • To participate, one must deposit and stake in the sUSD Sonne Crypt.

  • Caution: This farm is in a higher risk protocol that launched on Fantom in summer 2021 and has since suffered a $1.7M exploit in August 2021.

In case you missed it, check out the recording of this week’s call.