The Optimist #53

Thank you fellow readers to continue reading my research about Defi on the Optimism Superchain.

If you missed the previous newsletter, it’s just one click away from you HERE.

I haven’t been exciting like this for a long time. No it’s not because i’m full shorting $ETH and Alts, but just because, there are tons of nice yield opportunities + chain incentives that i’m going to share with you, not on X to keep that (almost) secret.

Nexus Mutual has been the #1 leader in decentralized insurance alternative /cover since 2019 and is now proud to announce their new flagship product COVER with 3 very simple & easy to understand

Now you can choose between Entry, Essential, or Elite Cover that each cover a large selection of Defi protocols on all EVM-compatible chains (check the list here):

Entry Cover: For Defi beginners with Curve, Uniswap V2/V3, Sky money, Lido, etc…

Essential Cover: For Defi advanced with Aave, Pendle, Aerodrome, Moonwell, Ether.fi, Velodrome, Uniswap V4, etc …

Elite Cover: For Defi experts with GMX, Spectra, Fluid, Euler, Morpho, Mellow Finance, Extra Finance, Frax Finance, Convex, Contango, yearn Finance, etc …

In only one click, you’ll receive a quote based on the assets deployed into Defi protocols. Fast, cheap, user friendlly, securing your funds deployed must be your priority, so try it now https://v2.nexusmutual.io/cover/

🔴 Interoperability between chains of the superchain is coming for this summer

💲 Coinbase has integrated Canada, Nigeria & Brazil currency as stablecoins on Base

🔵 Coinbase Wallet has integrated Onboard P2P on/off ramp product offering users to exchange, buy, switch to Naira currency (Nigeria)

🔒 OpenCover just passed 150m$ transactions insured on Request Finance (decentralized invoicing/payment app) and is now expanding on Base too

💿 Soneium has launched a NFT campaign in collaboration with the famous Mango “Ghost in the Shell”

U Universal closed a fund raise of $9M round led by @a16zcrypto

🌊 Clearpool revealed a new product on their future Ozean chain: PORT, The First RWA Exchange-Traded Pool offering Investors an ETF-like exposure with DeFi flexibility

The ACS incentive campaign (more below) has resulted in a great growth for Soneium.

Source: https://defillama.com/chains/Superchain

So I don’t know where you are in your PF management based on this blood bath. Is it the end of the cycle, is it a local bottom? Honestly, just listen to your guts with one main goal: Sleep well. The only thing i can tell you is we are not anymore in the “buy the fear and forget it”.

So what’s next? My thesis is pretty simple. While the while CRYPTO goes to goblin town, one metric keeps going up, steadily, month after month, without any noise: STABLECOIN with a 60% increase Year to Year.

While $USDT growth is impressive in value, it has lost market share to the benefits of others. Here are the stablecoins with explosive growth:

With a risk off market, people tend to exit more risky market like crypto to less risky market like Bonds, or securities backed by government funds (T-Bill). If stablecoin inflow keeps increasing month after month, that means people have a larger appetite than accessing low but safe yield.

So, coming back to my thesis, short term, i see the market continuing bleeding, so accessing stablecoin yield farming can be really juicy for the coming months, until the market reverts to a more euphoric momentum.

One pretty good example of this thesis is this announcement from Ethena, that raised 100m$ in their own $ENA token at 0.40$ apparetly, to build their own layer 1 chain for tradfi with the integration of their new institutional stablecoin iUSDe.

Here are the best stable farms i’ve been eyeing which combined with chain incentives, beat everything else out there. Welcome back to DEFI.

Soneium, Sony L2 part of the Optimism Superchain, just launched a campaign supported by Astar Network, a web 3 collective focused on growth, which will last until 30-May.

100m $ ASTR are allocated to this campaign, equivalent to 3,9m$ at the time of writing.

Users earn ACS points: 10 ACS = 1 $ ASTR by performing some actions onchain (more details below). Points are being updated every 12h, and you can check your score here: https://acs.astar.network/

Allocation is going to be split among different activities:

• TVL based: 75% (2.9m$)

• Discretionary allocation: 26.5% (1m$) → Here are the lists of incentivized projects for a total of 2.6m $ ASTR (10% of this allocation). If you’re in gaming or NFT, might be interesting to check the below post:

• Specific ecosystem incentives: 3.5% (Astar Surge, meme contest, campaign reserve)

Finally, claiming will only be available 1 week after the event ends, so early June. So either hedge your reward by shorting $ ASTR on lending protocols, or pray for the price going up.

At the end of the event, 3.9m$ of $ ASTR liquidity will be available on the market on Soneium, with 4m$ approx liquidity on DEX => This can be a blood bath if ASTAR doesn’t increase significantly the TVL onchain!

Only few Defi protocols are qualified for this event. Check the list below with the associated point multiplier :

If you sum all the above protocols TVL, you end up at around 45m$, which is pretty much the chain TVL, according https://defillama.com/chain/soneium

Which means that the average extra yield on top of the farm yield is:

2.9m$ (TVL Based incentive) x 4 (because the event lasts 3 months) / 45m$ (chain TVL) = +23% extra Yield

But this must be taken with a grain of salt, cause, you also have a multiplier based on the farmed asset.

Currently, farming with stable on Velodrome gives me a +18% extra yield for info.

Velodrome: Nice farm on stablecoin, with decent TVL for small to medium size deposit. The below displayed APR is only on protocol side, you can add the above +18% on top of it.

Untitled Bank: The below displayed APR already includes ACS points.

Kyo Finance: Has pretty insane yield, mainly driven by pool trading fees, but also the discretionary ACS points talked previously. The displayed APR is the yield based on a 1-tick deposit, so check if you space your tick wider the REAL yield. For info, if you select the same tick width as on Velodrome, you end up with the same yield on USDT/USDC.e pool (27% yield, including ACS incentives).

Use Across protocol to bridge some $ETH to pay for gas on Soneium, and USDT or USDC. This is the cheapest bridge i’ve found so far.

If you prefer to bridge from Ethereum Mainnet, you can use the native bridge using Superbridge.

For swap, only use Velodrome or Kyo finance as DEX, and always verify the slippage on your trade, cause liquidity can be shallow on some pools.

Polynomial has recently received an OP grant of 450k $ OP as being part of the Optimism Superchain.

Polynomial is a Decentralized Perpetual protocol, and just launched his 2nd incentives campaign with 180k $ OP allocation:

Split between:

• Traders

• Liquidity providers or stakers how they call

By providing liquidity onchain, you earn 60% of the trading fees, that go on top of the 90k $ OP allocated to liquidity providers, making these farms very interesting as you can see below: (sUSDe yield is bbbbrrrrr)!

Here is the website: https://polynomial.fi/en/mainnet/earn

Get the native asset on Ethereum Mainnet, OP mainnet or Base, and directly click on deposit in the staking pool above. Simple as that. For info, the deposit is going into a smart wallet (created during the deposit process), so it won’t appear on Debank, don’t get you scared for nothing.

There is a 24 hours lock up once you unstake before being able to withdraw your funds.

Avantis is a perp Dex. Presented several times in this newsletter, you can deposit your funds and play the bank against the users. Hopefully, thanks to the current market, leveragers get rekt, and the bank makes money, as it is shown in the below chart:

Rewards come from trading + liquidation fees, shared with liquidity providers or stakers.

Deposit $USDC and lock it up to 6 months to enjoy maximum yield. You have 2 vaults Junior & Senior. The Junior vault encompasses the largest risk, so as well the largest reward.

There is a soft unlock mechanism with a 10% fee that decreases down to 0 until unlock time.

Avantis is conducting its 2nd point (called XP) season. By providing liquidity you earn XP and expose yourself to their incoming token airdrop that is said to happen in Q2-2025.

As a reminder, Avantis is backed by Base Ecosystem Fund.

Don’t leave now… I know, Compound is a dinausor. But, what if you can earn 24% yield on Sky (ex-maker) USDS stablecoin?

Farm available on base.

Another dinausor… but hear me out 👇

Watch out of the displayed yield, as it is based on a 28d-average. But SYnthetix displays APR based on 7d average and on 24h-average

Check this here: https://stats.synthetix.io/all/?page=base

statUSDC is just a yield bearing token representing deposit of USDC on AAVE on Base.

This is the most insane yield currently, and Synthetix has a very good proof-record in terms of security.

As any counter party vault, you’re the bank, and if traders win, then you’re the debitooor. As shown by this chart, it seems that the stataUSDC vault has some positive debt:

I hope you enjoyed this article about opportunities for stablecoin yield farming. If you have any question, don’t hesitate to reply to this email.

Stay safu!

What’s hot on Base. Doing my regular check about smart money on my Key chains, I just found out that another VC market bought 2.8m $AERO (worth 1.8m$ at an average price of 0.96$):

But are they the only one? By going into the Token God Mode for $AERO, you can track the number of smart money ad their allocation. The chart below is very healthy and shows sign of accumulation.

Aerodrome tweeted early february that a new fund market bought & locked a significant amount of $AERO. https://x.com/CryptoYieldCap

And doing some research on Nansen by filtering transactions on the vote-escrow contract, i found out a wallet who has been twapping 2.3m$ of $AERO the past 2 months + buying NFT of locked AERO (highlighted in Yellow below) on the 2ndary market. Is this this Liquid Fund? No idea…

and this wallet is now ranked #25 in the global veAERO leaderboard:

To finish on $AERO, my thesis for such protocol is that you should see the locked ratio stabilizes. Check the below orange line…

Disclaimer: Nothing in this content is financial advice. I may have some positions on the presented projects, however these articles are written in a non biais way so that you can make you own opinion out of it.

Do your own research before investing, and remember that Crypto is extremely volatile and risky. Be ready to loose everything you invest in.