Weekly Alpha #15: Using ShapeShift Bridge to Achieve Financial Sovereignty 🌉
Weekly Alpha #15: Using ShapeShift Bridge to Achieve Financial Sovereignty 🌉
Latest DeFi Alphas Delivered in a Concise Newsletter.
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekly Alpha.
Every Friday, I deliver insights on the cryptocurrency market, emerging projects, macroeconomic trends, and DeFi directly to your inbox.
Your Weekly DeFi News Digest 🗞️
In this section, I highlight the week's most impactful DeFi news. This way, you can bypass the chatter on Twitter and concentrate on the essential updates.
Mark Cuban Loses $870,000 In Wallet Hack
DeFi economic activity drops 15% in August —VanEck
Canto is moving its DeFi-focused app chain to Polygon
Ethereum’s Holešky testnet launch hits a speed bump
One Year After The Merge: ETH Supply Shrinks But Challenges Remain
friend.tech Trading Volumes Cross $220M
Hackers Compromise Balancer Website In Ongoing Exploit
Coinbase pushes ‘Pessimism’ to boost Base security
Binance account consolidation sends Ethereum gas fees soaring
Prisma Finance Pulls In $30M With LST-backed mkUSD Stablecoin
Ethereum Developers Debate New Standard For On-chain Audit Reports
Alpha Yield Opportunities 👩🌾
If you're looking for the best yield opportunities, I've curated them for you in this section.
Beefy Finance (Polygon Mainnet) - 32.07% APY on the on USDR-DAI sLP vault
Pendle Finance (Arbitrum) - 8.57% APY on rETH liquidity pool
Hop Protocol (Base Network) - 7.40% APR on the ETH pool
Extra Finance (Optimism) - 11.30% APY on the USDC lending pool
Convex Finance (Ethereum) - 35% APR on CVX Staking
DeFi market overview 📈
Total TVL
As you might know, there's significant development happening in infrastructure and protocols currently. However, considering what we have in place, the TVL isn't where it ought to be; the DeFi market has been quite stagnant.
While there's been a minor market bump since last week, it hasn't been anything substantial. The TVL currently stands at $38.054 billion.
Layer 2 Activity
Weekly Active Addresses
In terms of weekly active addresses, zkSync Era continues to lead the space, holding a 46.1% user share. Arbitrum follows in second place with a 20.8% user share.
Fees Paid By Users
Over the past 7 days, Arbitrum and Optimism have seen a significant surge, while Base Network experienced a 61% dip from the previous week. The fees paid by users have remained fairly consistent across all major L2s.
ShapeShift - Bridge to Financial Sovereignty
In recent months, following the collapse of the REN Bridge, I've struggled to find a method to bridge between Ethereum and Bitcoin. While I try not to convert my crypto to local currency, I've been keen to avoid centralized exchanges. Recently, however, I discovered ShapeShift Bridge.
I've been aware of ShapeShift for some time. In the past, it bore similarities to Changelly, as far as I remember. But I'm truly impressed with their shift towards open-sourcing everything and transitioning to a DAO. I've spent some time in their Discord and GitHub, and their engineering team is undoubtedly talented. Intrigued, I decided to explore their cross-chain bridge.
What is Shapeshift Bridge?
ShapeShift Bridge utilizes THORChain in its backend to facilitate cross-chain swaps for users without requiring KYC. Currently, ShapeShift supports a variety of networks including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Optimism, BNB Smart Chain, Dogecoin, Polygon, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Avalanche, Cosmos, THORChain, and Gnosis.
This means you can seamlessly swap between Ethereum and Bitcoin using your MetaMask. So, for individuals like myself, who are deeply involved in DeFi and looking to convert profits and yield into Bitcoin, ShapeShift offers an excellent alternative to centralized exchanges.
How to get started?
To begin using the ShapeShift bridge, visit the ShapeShift App. Always double-check the link to prevent phishing. Once you're on the web app dashboard, simply click 'Connect Metamask' and choose the EVM account where you wish to swap Ethereum or any ERC-20 tokens for Bitcoin.
After connecting your preferred wallet, click on the 'Swap/Bridge' tab on the left side of the website. While you can also use the widget on the right, I personally prefer the tab because it allows me to save my settings for later.
Here, you'll find a widget that closely resembles Uniswap, if you're familiar with that DEX. By this point, your EVM wallet should be connected, allowing you to initiate your trade
Currently, the platform only supports bridging ETH from Mainnet to BTC. Input the amount of ETH you wish to bridge to Bitcoin. In the second dropdown labeled 'You Get', select the network of your choice, in this instance, Bitcoin.
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Now you're all set to begin swapping from ETH to Bitcoin. Additionally, you can explore ShapeShift Snap, a new feature that ShapeShift developed with Metamask Snaps for key derivation and signing. It's still in the experimental phase, and I haven't tried it yet. But if you have, please share your experience in the comments below.
The final step is to enter a Bitcoin receiving address. After that, you can initiate your cross-chain swap without any KYC requirements.
Conclusion
ShapeShift stands as a solid alternative to centralized exchanges. Their integration of THORChain into their bridge underscores, in my opinion, that what we're building in the crypto ecosystem surpasses any other technology. Everything is composable, and the future for crypto looks promising.
I'm eager to see a method to bridge from L2s to Bitcoin, especially since I've been shifting much of my DeFi activity to Optimism and Arbitrum. I'm confident such a feature will emerge in time. If you're keen on exploring ways to move away from centralized exchanges, I've written an article about tools that can assist you in doing so.
That's it for this week. I will continue to share alphas and news each week, so don't hesitate to subscribe to the newsletter.
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None of the information in this newsletter constitutes financial advice. While I personally use most of the protocols that I discuss, it's important to understand that they involve substantial risk. Don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose