Heya all, Nick here. Let’s take a look a look at what happened in decentralized finance this past week, what exciting events are coming up, and what whales are doing.

Speaking of DeFi, we recently released an interview with a top decentralized finance trader and user known as “Spider.” Here is a link to the free edition of the interview.

If you want access to the full edition of that interview, our research about DeFi and crypto trends, and the additional DeFi letter, you will need to subscribe. But have no fear, it’s only $14.99 a month, or $139.99 a year. Get yourself a belated holiday present and subscribe to Alpha Alarm today.

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We’ve seen further volatility since our last DeFi letter, published on Tuesday.

Both bitcoin and ether bounced, rallying to highs of $40,000 and $1,250, respectively. The two leading cryptocurrencies have since corrected to $35,000 and $1,150, respectively, as they have somehow become some of the worst performers in the top 100 by market capitalizations.

A number of DeFi coins are seemingly being re-rated.

First and foremost, Curve. CRV is up 50 percent today, pushing above $1.00 for the first time in what seems like forever. CRV is benefiting from a number of trends, including but not limited to, a large increase in trading volume amid the recent volatility, the introduction of new pools for Ethereum (stETH, ETH, etc.) and foreign currency assets (EURS/sEUR), and a partnership with Yearn.finance.

The Yearn.finance partnership I find pretty interesting: Through new contracts called the Curve.fi Factory, users can deploy whatever pools they want without permission. The two teams have deployed pools for BAC, MIC, FRAX, ESD, and DSD, as discussion continues to swirl about algo stablecoins.

SUSHI is also catching my eye.

SUSHI is up 15% today and over 50% over the past seven days. SushiSwap set a volume record and liquidity volume this past week, boosting returns for SUSHI/xSUSHI stakers. SushiSwap’s new product, BentoBox Lending, is also expected to launch soon.

What We’re Watching This Week

Today, I’m pretty excited about the Optimistic Ethereum soft launch with Synthetix.

As we’ve seen many times over the past few months, Ethereum can become congested due to high demand for transactions in times of volatility.

Synthetix is looking to solve this with the launch of segments of its application on Optimistic Ethereum.

Announced literally just minutes ago, Synthetix staking is now live on the layer-two scaling solution. Optimistic Ethereum is the first Ethereum “scaling solution with full cross-layer porting capabilities for smart contracts without rewriting them.”

Users can now use a migration bridge to migrate SNX from Ethereum to Optimistic Ethereum.

While this is pretty exciting in and of itself, I’m more excited about what will come in the months ahead.

Once Optimistic Ethereum undergoes a full launch (expected to be in March), will we see Uniswap on the scaling solution? How about Curve? How about *insert your favorite DeFi platform here*?

Watching Whale Addresses in DeFi

ROOK caught my eye this past week.

The native token of KeeperDAO, an on-chain liquidity protocol built to backstop lending protocols/money markets and synthetic asset protocols, surged in excess of 40% from its lows set on Tuesday.

“0xb1” remains bullish on the coin.

The address, which is farming ROOK via KeeperDAO’s liquidity mining program, added in excess of $12,000 worth of additional ROOK/ETH liquidity to Uniswap a few hours ago.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

Again, if you want access to our interviews, our research about DeFi and crypto trends, and the additional DeFi letter, you will need to subscribe. It’s only $14.99 a month or $139.99 a year!