Airdrop and interaction boom year, seven potential DeFi projects to try

Original Title: 7 cool DeFi products you should try out

Original Source: THE DEFI INVESTOR

Original Compilation: 深潮 TechFlow

Introduction

This article aims to list some innovative DeFi products that I have been using frequently recently. By practicing on-chain applications, it is easier to understand cryptocurrency-related concepts compared to just reading about them. More importantly, early adopters have often reaped significant rewards from airdrops in many cases. In this issue, I will introduce several interesting DeFi products that I highly recommend.

Pendle's Re-staking Pools

Some may already know that Pendle is the largest yield trading protocol.

By using it, you can bet on whether the yield of a certain opportunity will increase or decrease, earning fixed returns from your capital, and more.

But in this article, I will mainly focus on its newly launched liquidity re-staking pools, as Pendle has done an excellent job in leveraging the re-staking narrative.

So far, Pendle has launched yield trading pools for three types of liquidity re-staking tokens:

Kelp DAO's rsETH

EtherFi's eETH

Renzo Protocol's ezETH

All these liquidity re-staking protocols are built on EigenLayer, providing a real-time points program for their ETH depositors.

The interesting thing about the re-staking pools on Pendle is that anyone can speculate on the airdrop value of EigenLayer and liquidity re-staking projects through them.

Here is an example of the rsETH pool on Pendle:

If you believe that the airdrop from EigenLayer and Kelp DAO will be very successful: buy YT rsETH on Pendle to earn up to 27 times Kelp DAO points and 9 times EigenLayer points (this is a high-risk strategy because you can only make money if these points have significant value; you are essentially buying points).

If you think these airdrops are overvalued and you would prefer to earn over 30% fixed APY on ETH rather than airdrop points, then buy PT rsETH.

If you want to retain your Eigenlayer points while earning additional yield on your ETH, you can provide liquidity for the rsETH pool.

Regardless of whether you are optimistic about the EigenLayer ecosystem airdrops, you can use Pendle to speculate on them or just to earn extra yield.

Rabby Wallet

If you are still using Metamask, I highly recommend you try Rabby.

Rabby is a cryptocurrency wallet for Ethereum and all EVM chains, built by the team behind the popular Web3 portfolio tracker DeBank.

Here are a few reasons I like it:

Pre-signature checks for security: This is the primary reason I recommend Rabby. The wallet displays many useful details for each transaction you attempt to sign.

Smoother multi-chain experience: When you use a dApp, the wallet automatically switches to the corresponding chain based on the website you are visiting.

Transaction simulation results: For each interaction with a dApp, the wallet shows your estimated balance changes.

Revoking token approvals: As an additional security measure, you can check which dApps can access your funds and easily revoke their permissions.

Additionally, performing specific actions on Rabby can earn you Rabby points, which may qualify you for a future Rabby airdrop.

Its points program was launched just a few weeks ago.

Whales Market

Whales Market is a decentralized exchange (DEX) for over-the-counter (OTC) trading.

It seems to be one of the most interesting native dApps on Solana. What sets it apart from other OTC DEXs is that it allows trading not only tokens and NFTs but also points and future airdrop allocations.

Whales Market has enabled its users to trade points from EigenLayer, FriendTech, and Hyperliquid, and will soon enable trading for Blast, Kamino, Drift, and MarginFi points.

If you are collecting airdrops and want to sell your future airdrop allocations, or if you want to buy future airdrop allocations, you might want to check out this platform.

I also find it useful for estimating the potential value of the airdrops you want to collect.

For example, currently, the price of 1 Hyperliquid point on Whale Market is $2, but it has fluctuated significantly over the past few weeks.

RocketX

There are now many different cryptocurrency bridges.

But the problem with most bridges is that they only support a few blockchains, usually the most popular ones.

If you want to bridge your funds to Cosmos L1 or other less popular chains, in many cases, you may find it difficult to do so without using a centralized exchange.

RocketX is essentially a hybrid CEX and DEX aggregator.

For every cross-chain swap you want to make, it searches for the best price for your order across dozens of bridges and centralized exchanges.

What’s interesting is that it supports transferring assets across over 200 blockchains, so almost every relevant blockchain is supported.

For those who sometimes find it difficult to find bridges that support specific cross-chain transactions, I recommend trying RocketX.

Picasso

Re-staking is undoubtedly the hottest topic on Ethereum right now.

There is not much discussion about re-staking on other blockchains, but Solana is certainly one of the hottest ecosystems at the moment.

Just last week, Picasso launched the first re-staking project on Solana.

Users can now deposit SOL or SOL liquidity staking tokens into Picasso's re-staking vault. These re-staked assets will be used to secure validators in the upcoming Solana-IBC connection.

In simple terms, due to Picasso's re-staking, Solana will seamlessly interoperate with IBC-enabled chains for the first time in a minimally trusted manner.

IBC-enabled chains include Cosmos Hub, Cosmos SDK chains, Polkadot, and Kusama parachains, among others.

SOL re-stakers on Picasso earn a 71% APY reward on their capital through token issuance. The protocol's treasury cap is currently full, but it will be increased soon.

In the long run, re-staking has the potential to significantly increase the demand for L1 tokens, so it's exciting to see re-staking expand to other chains beyond Ethereum.

Orca

Orca is a product built by Kujira, a Cosmos L1 project whose core team has developed a wide range of products.

In short, this product allows for discounted asset purchases through liquidation.

Typically, only bots can participate in the liquidation process on money markets and exchanges.

Orca democratizes this process by allowing anyone to bid on liquidated collateral without coding skills or bots.

On the Kujira network, users can borrow USK stablecoins against various collateral assets. If their loan-to-value ratio rises too high, their positions will be liquidated, and their collateral will be auctioned on ORCA.

Orca users now have the opportunity to purchase these liquidated assets at a discount below the current market price. All they need to do is decide after accessing the platform:

• Which liquidated assets to bid on
• The bid amount
• The bid discount (offer)

Once these actions are completed, Orca will handle the rest.

Currently, the bidding value for liquidated collateral is relatively low (only $26,000 in the past 7 days), so not many bids are being executed.

But as the Kujira ecosystem grows, this value is likely to increase.

Avocado Wallet

Avocado Wallet is a smart contract wallet with advanced account abstraction features.

It was created by Instadapp, one of the most popular DeFi projects on Ethereum, with over $2 billion in total locked value (TVL).

For users who use DeFi across many different blockchains, Avocado makes your on-chain activities easier, thanks to some key features:

Network abstraction: Like Rabby, the smart contract wallet automatically connects to the correct network for each dApp you attempt to interact with.

Gas abstraction: Avocado abstracts gas fees by using a unified USDC gas reserve. You only need to top up with USDC from any network, and your transaction fees on major chains including Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, etc., will be priced in USDC (it’s worth mentioning that Avocado charges a 20% fee on gas costs).

Cross-chain sending: You can easily send funds from one blockchain to another directly from the wallet.

Since it is a smart contract wallet rather than a regular wallet, you can connect to any other dApp just like you would with Metamask or other wallets.

You don’t need to download any extensions. The poor cross-chain user experience is one of the biggest problems in the crypto space, and the Avocado wallet is one of the best solutions for this issue.