Serhii Hryhoriev

DeFiSafety (DeFiSafety.com) is a fast-growing start-up that is already the leading technical risk analysis company in the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) space.

DeFi protocols are financial products that exist solely as blockchain software. DeFiSafety is developing and applying processes to evaluate existing and new blockchain investment protocols, based on software process, transparency, and best practices. DeFiSafety’s mantra is Objectivity, Independence and Transparency.

DeFiSafety aims to be the premier independent quality organization in the Decentralized Finance industry. Our company is focused on rating Ethereum Decentralized Finance applications on software process, as well as documentation quality and transparency. DefiSafety was founded as a resource where users can get access to effective and impartial information.

Figment is a staking, middleware, and application layer solutions for token holders and developers investing in and building on Web 3 technology. At Figment, mission is to support the adoption, growth and long term success of the Web 3 ecosystem. This is Figment’s unique approach: we make it simple to build on the next generation of blockchain technology. We provide enterprise grade node and staking infrastructure, the Hubble Web 3 explorer, and developer tools while also actively participating in community & governance.

Staking provider Figment has raised $110 million in a Series C funding round, with a $1.4 billion post-money valuation. This comes at a time when crypto staking firms are raking in the cash, due to the boom in prices for staking-based coins.

The funding round was led by private equity firm Thoma Bravo, which manages more than $91 billion in assets and has started building a growth investing business aimed at crypto and fintech. Other participants include Morgan Stanley’s Counterpoint Global, ParaFi Capital, Avon Ventures and crypto exchanges Binance, Bitstamp, and Binance.US. The funding will help the company add support for staking across more proof-of-stake blockchains and hire more developers.

A booming industry

The proliferation of proof-of-stake blockchains, in combination with a big surge in prices this year, has resulted in a gold rush for crypto staking companies. Figment itself is seeing $10 million in revenue per month, with a projected revenue of around $100 million this year. It runs validators on more than 50 blockchains and looks after $7.5 billion in assets — taking a cut from all staking revenue that gets generated.

"The majority of our staking revenue comes from our institutional clients, with some earning from retail delegators as well since a lot of our validators are public. We do stake tokens that are on our balance sheet, but it is nowhere near the majority of our revenue," said Clayton Menzel, head of protocols and opportunities at Figment.

At the same time, costs are low. Menzel said the main costs are staffing, equipment and insurance premiums. "It can be fairly profitable in terms of revenue in comparison to base cost. On some networks, you’ll see upwards of tens of millions of dollars a year if you’re doing well," he said.

Figment previously raised $50 million in a Series B funding round in August. That round was co-led by Senator Investment Group and Liberty City Ventures.

The staking provider has also launched an investment arm, Figment Capital, which will focus on investing in the crypto industry.

Tally empowers user owned governance through real time research and analysis, governance tooling, and evergreen educational content. The Tally Wiki is an accessible resource for learning about decentralized governance. Cover a range of topics including overviews of key concepts, individual protocols, and voting system frameworks.

Tally is building both open source tooling and user-facing front-ends to make governance easy for protocols and participants alike, and we believe will set the standard for good governance across the crypto ecosystem in the years to come.

The business model of Ondo is to intermediate and matchmake capital supply and demand, much like a traditional investment bank. However, Ondo differs from a traditional investment bank in a few important ways:

Ondo creates financial products from DeFi building blocks, meaning they execute according to open source code rather than opaque prose legal agreements. This avoids the need for back office staff and countless intermediaries and makes it possible for Ondo to provide its services at almost no marginal cost, making them accessible to even small investors.

Ondo's products interoperate with and typically sit on top of existing DeFi products, allowing for frictionless value transfer.

Ondo will be governed as a DAO and owned by a distributed set of participants, including by many of its users.

As a DAO, Ondo will have an incentive system to enable anyone to create a product or service or otherwise add value to the Ondo ecosystem and be rewarded for it. However, the DAO will still curate products in order to safeguard users.

Ondo has no investment minimums. Retail can access the same products and services alongside institutions.

However, Ondo differs from a traditional investment bank in a few important ways:

• Ondo creates financial products from DeFi building blocks, meaning they execute according to open source code rather than opaque prose legal agreements. This avoids the need for back office staff and countless intermediaries and makes it possible for Ondo to provide its services at almost no marginal cost, making them accessible to even small investors.
• Ondo's products interoperate with and typically sit on top of existing DeFi products, allowing for frictionless value transfer.
• Ondo will be governed as a DAO and owned by a distributed set of participants, including by many of its users.
• As a DAO, Ondo will have an incentive system to enable anyone to create a product or service or otherwise add value to the Ondo ecosystem and be rewarded for it. However, the DAO will still curate products in order to safeguard users.
• Ondo has no investment minimums. Retail can access the same products and services alongside institutions.

Ondo is a decentralized investment bank accessible to anyone and that is owned by and exists to serve DeFi participants, including DAOs. Ondo's vaults allow investors to better balance risk with rewards while gaining exposure to yield-generating crypto-assets on Ethereum. ‌Ondo vaults generate yield through providing liquidity on DeFi protocols like Sushiswap and pay out returns to investors in fixed and variable yield tranches. Fixed tranches provide liquidity providers with a steady yield and reduced downside risk. Variable tranches provide liquidity providers with leveraged exposure to both the upside and risks of the invested collateral. ‌ Ondo has complete three audits -- one by Quantstamp, one by Peckshield and one by Certik. Ondo is highly experimental software. As always, please be aware that audits do not guarantee a protocol's security.

What is the subscription period?

Before each Ondo Vault is deployed, there is a subscription period -- a set amount of time during which LPs can make requests to invest in either the fixed or variable tranche. Once the subscription period ends and the Vault is deployed, additional capital cannot be added to that Vault.

Why is there a subscription period?

Ondo forces the fixed and variable tranches to each comprise 50% of a Vault's assets. This way, the risk profile of each tranche is knowable in advance. The fixed tranche is initially a 50% loan-to-value position and the junior tranche is initially a 2x levered position. Additionally, with a 50 / 50 constraint on the size of the tranches, liquidity providers to the fixed tranche can contribute one of the two assets comprising an AMM's liquidity pool and liquidity providers to the variable tranche can contribute the other asset.

What is Ondo’s guarded launch?

Ondo’s guarded launch implements an approximately $5m protocol-wide cap. The purpose of the guarded launch is to minimize the risk of losses of particularly large amounts of liquidity provider assets in the event of a security exploit. We will increase then remove the TVL caps over time.

How does the guarded launch work?

The core Ondo smart contracts enforce the caps at the end of the subscription period, but users can technically still deposit an unlimited amount of assets until the end of the period. We will remove Vaults from the ondo.finance web application once the cap is hit, and we would discourage users from making subscription requests to a Vault after it has been removed from ondo.finance as those requests are very unlikely to be filled. Subscription requests that come in after the cap is reached will be available to be reclaimed by users at the end of the subscription period.

Does Ondo have a token?

Ondo has no token at this time. The Ondo team will not contact you requesting funds or advertising a token sale. Please report anyone advertising an Ondo token to the moderators.

Exactly is building an open source, non-custodial protocol on Ethereum, that will bring fixed-income solutions for lenders and borrowers.

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is a new initiative based on blockchain technologies that aims to create a new financial system by creating a network of interconnected distributed apps (or dApps) that are open source and non-custodial protocols. By combining some of these dApps, not only we can recreate instruments of traditional finance, but also we can create new ones that were not possible before.

Exactly is building an open source, non-custodial protocol on Ethereum, that will bring fixed-income solutions for lenders and borrowers.

Exactly’s mission is to create a protocol that brings a missing important piece to the ecosystem: the “Time Value of Money”; that is, to be able to make a deposit/loan at a fixed rate for a certain amount of time, which is known in the traditional financial world as “fixed income”. This way, users will have an efficient way to hedge the interest rate volatility.

Some protocols approach this problem using a P2P strategy, where borrowers and lenders are being individually matched. This approach, while being conceptually simple, has a lot of inefficiencies due to both amount and time matching for each transaction. Systems like AAVE take a different direction, in which they can offer a stable (not fixed) rate if the market condition stays in a certain threshold of liquidity (Utilization Rate). While this helps have more predictability, it doesn’t eliminate the risk and it works only for some borrowers.

On the other hand, there is a series of protocols that were recently launched that use one token to create an element resembling a “Zero Coupon Bond” (Yield/Notional) and others that use two tokens (one for the principal and one for the interest) as if it were a “Coupon Stripping” (Element/Pendle) to try discover the fixed interest rate from the price of one or more assets with certain expiration date represented by one or two ERC-20 tokens.

This kind of protocols had not managed to capture enough liquidity yet (less than $1bn in TVL or less than 5% of the TVL of the money market protocols) because of its complexity to be implemented in the Ethereum blockchain and other smart contract architecture challenges. The key metric in this type of protocols is the stock of loans, so far the fixed income protocolos have borrow less than $0.4bn (2%) compared to over $18bn in the case of money market protocols.

Dune App

While navigating Dune Analytics, it helps to have a good understanding of queries, visualizations, and dashboards. These are the basic building blocks that act as your portal to the world's blockchain information. As a blockchain analyst, you can create custom queries to fetch data, visualize the results of these queries, and then tell stories with your data using dashboards.

How Dune Analytics works

At its core, Dune analytics aggregates the raw data from the blockchain into SQL databases that can be easily queried. For example, there is a table to query all Ethereum transaction, nicely separated into columns. Columns cover the sender, the receiver, the amount, etc.

All this information is available for free. The free tier (requires opening an account) covers:

• Searching queries
• Writing new queries
• Creating visualizations and dashboards

All free tier queries are available for everyone to see and search. Making queries private requires a pro tier account. The pro tier offers some additional benefits, such as exporting data and hiding the watermark from graphs.

Information from blocks is parsed and populated into the database of Dune with a few minutes of delay. Besides raw blocks and transactions, Dune also has information on asset prices, and specialized tables such as all the eligible addresses for the UNI token.

Now, let’s get familiar with how to use Dune without writing a single line of code, and later take a look at some SQL basics.

Data available on Dune

Behind the scenes, Dune transforms difficult-to-access data into human-readable tables. Using SQL queries, you can query for exactly the information you need.

Dune has raw blockchain data and decoded blockchain data available. Decoded data is only available if somebody signaled to us before that a contract needs to be decoded. You can signal a decoding request to us via our website.

You can currently query data from Ethereum, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, Optimism and Gnosis Chain.

Dune picks up events and internal calls from the blockchains we index, we don't have state/storage data.

Dune is a collaborative effort

On Dune, all queries and datasets are public by default.

This introduces an interesting dynamic in which you, the user, can fork and remix the queries of other creators with ease and build on top of their knowledge. On the other side, every time you write a new query, you contribute to the collection of queries that help people query for data on dune. That way, the Dune Community succeeds together through an ever improving range of queries that allow you to easily query for just the stats you need.

KYVE is a decentralized archiving and caching solution that allows modern blockchains and decentralized applications (dApps) to store and serve data reliably. Our mission is quite ambitious but necessary: as fierce advocates of Web 3.0, we want to help projects reach infinite scalability by reliably and permanently storing their data.

What is KYVE, and how is it solving these issues?

With our decentralized archival framework, we offer a unified solution for all blockchain data needs. We standardize, validate, and permanently store any generated data stream. By leveraging Arweave, our solution secures the scalability, immutability, and availability of these resources over time.

Data providers can seamlessly store and verify their data streams by setting up their archiving pool. Each pool is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) powered by SmartWeave, the Arweave smart contracting language.

Uploaders and validators secure the validity of the data inside each pool:

Uploaders fetch data from a source and can perform computational work before storing it on Arweave.

Validators determine the integrity of the data and have the ability to vote on the slashing of an uploader’s stake if terms are not respected.

Once data is stored it can easily be retrieved using KYVE’s query interface, or by accessing it directly in Arweave. KYVE’s validation and Arweave’s immutability, combined, guarantee data integrity towards downstream users.

A pool is funded with $KYVE tokens. By staking and slashing $KYVE tokens, the system ensures participants behave in harmony with the pools’ objectives, punishing misbehavior and rewarding valid entries.

With KYVE, anyone can participate in the storage initiatives by funding the pools and depositing $KYVE tokens.

Its founders, both early team members at Acorns, are excited to launch Hedgehog after three years of development and eight months of trading beta testing. In addition to providing professional trading tools, Hedgehog makes understanding cryptocurrency easy for first-time investors, with detailed explanations of the biggest currencies and unique wiki pages for each of the 2000+ coins on its platform.

Hedgehog is a cryptocurrency robo-adviser that connects to all your wallets and exchanges to connect you with the best prices, automatically. Clients already manage $80 million in assets on the platform using 170 centralized exchange APIs, and we are adding support for layer 2 DeFi protocols.

Active Founders:

Taylor Culbertson

A programmer, filmmaker and crypto currency advocate with broad experience in all aspects of web design, commercial production, and trading. As the 10th employee at Acorns, I built the strategy that acquired the first 2m downloads. As CEO of Infinite Sum Ltd, a Digital Consultancy, I helped startups raise $79m across industries ranging from gaming to transportation, including the recently IPO'd Hyliion. Bullish on Bitcoin and Ethereum. Bearish on Fiat.

Colton Dillion

I attack everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius & naive incompetence; it's up to you to tell which is which.

Currently CTO at Hedgehog, formerly founding CMO & Global Director at Acorns

Jason Dillion

An industrial engineer and developer, Jason Dillion was the 5th team member at the recently IPO'd Hyliion where he confirmed their proof of concept. Later, at Panasonic Avionics he managed contracts valued at $200 million for China's three largest airlines. As a co-founder at Hedgehog, he has built many crucial parts of the product as a full-stack developer. He has also brought in investors, introduced project management and administrative processes, and continues to define company operations.

Hedgehog is a one-stop shop for all your cryptocurrency needs, allowing people to trade on almost any exchange, track all their wallets, and learn about every cryptocurrency. The Hedgehog app and financial engine were built to help people transact seamlessly across exchanges and to manage a diversified portfolio of coins at every stage of growth. The app can also help educate customers on how different cryptocurrencies work, and provides tools for tracking all the various wallets and coins. Unify all your crypto services on one platform with Hedgehog. Trade. Track. Learn. Crypto.

Kalao’s framework accounts for several key features, including:

Kalao’s framework accounts for several key features, including:

Kalao Marketplace engine :

The Kalao NFT marketplace offers capabilities to trade, collect and secure digital collectibles on the Avalanche blockchain protocol. Non-fungible tokens are “unique” and cannot be replicated, which allows traceability and clear token ownership.

Powered by Avalanche blockchain and combined with our engine, the Kalao marketplace offers a fast, secure and low fees transaction, supporting both X-chain and C-chain networks, offering multiple auction types and rewarding users for their loyalty.

Creating NFTs to exhibit your paints, books, musics, movies and selling them is possible directly from Kalao marketplace without having to switch between several applications. Users can also create NFTs leveraging on Avalanche Creator-Studio which is fundamental for creators, as they can mint their NFT in a simple and cost-effective way.

Kalao’s framework accounts for several key features, including:

1. NFT Marketplace
2. Customized 3D Gallery, opening capabilities to display your own NFT art gallery
3. Buying and Selling of Virtual Land
4. Event Ticketing
5. Art Exhibits
6. Live Watch-along for virtual concerts

While Solana has its fair share of exchanges Slope Finance separates itself from the pack via the following:

• Slope Wallet is the first cross-platform wallet built for Solana
• Slope DEX is the first Serum-based mobile App with a decentralized automated full limit order book
• Slope NFTs Market
• Governed by the Slope DAO

Slope Wallet

Slope Wallet, available for iOS and Android devices, is the first

cross-platform non-custodial mobile wallet developed for Solana.

Existing Solana wallets are unable to offer more utility to its users than just a visual representation of Solana assets and NFTs.

In addition to Solana assets Slope Wallet also supports Ethereum assets and users can import existing Ethereum wallets into Slope Wallet with ease.

Slope Wallet has lofty ambitions and looks to disrupt what Solana users should expect from their wallet by providing a revolutionary mobile trading experience.

Cryptocurrency trading is no longer solely done by sitting in front of a PC for hours mundanely waiting for perfect entry and exit points.

Instead, as a result of a society constantly on the go, it has migrated to trading on mobile devices thanks to Robinhood and Coinbase breaking down the previously high entry barrier for retail customers.

Now all one needs to trade is a mobile device, a data connection, and a few seconds of free time.

Unfortunately trading on mobile devices is a clunky endeavor due to poor visual interfaces and users being at the mercy of centralized exchange created spot prices with built-in exchange fees.

This is where the Slope Wallet really shines as it provides mobile access to the Slope Dex.

Slope DEX

One of the key problems identified by the Slope team is that there is no Serum-based DEX that is geared towards the mobile experience.

So what is Serum and why is it so important to the Slope Finance suite of products? Serum is a decentralized exchange protocol built on Solana that lets ecosystem partners interact with Serum’s on-chain central limit orderbook and matching engine to share liquidity and price-time-priority matching to institutional and retail traders.

The integration of Serum into the Slope DEX allows for the first mobile decentralized automated full limit orderbook.

In layman’s terms this means that Slope Wallet users can have the same trading experience with access to limit order capability through Slope DEX whether they are using their mobile device or their PC.

Slope DEX also provides the user with several proprietary trading bots to aid in high-frequency trading.

Slope NFTs Market — Metaplex

Metaplex is an infrastructure application on the Solana Ecosystem that allows artists and creators to mint their own NFTs and launch self-hosted NFT storefronts via Slope Wallet.

All NFTs created through Metaplex are permanently stored on the blockchain with Arweave and have an average minting cost of less than a dollar with no platform fee.

In addition to minting NFTs Metaplex allows users to auction, store, transfer and resell their NFTs all within the Slope Wallet.

Metaplex is shifting the power from NFT marketplaces back to the artists and creators where it belongs.

Slope DAO

Slope finance is run by a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO,

where all community members who hold SLOPE, the Slope Finance token, can participate in project governance and drive its direction.

Holders of SLOPE may also stake their tokens and earn passive income through the distribution of 5% of net fees generated by Slope Dex as well as receive reduced transaction fees.

Slope Finance is a strong addition to the Solana Ecosystem and its suite of innovative user friendly products will make sure it stays a major player well into the future.