Lido Expands To Optimism

Quick Take

• Maker Governance greenlights a 500 million DAI bond investment.
• Nethermind introduces UniStark.
• Gitcoin announces a Grants Protocol.
• Lido expands wstETH to Arbitrum and Optimism.

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Optimism Highlights 🔴✨

Lido Expands To Arbitrum And Optimism
Lido Finance expanded the availability of its wrapped liquid staking token to Arbitrum and Optimism. Users can now bridge wstETH across the L2 rollups. Lido is also allocating 150k LDO tokens for liquidity mining incentives on each network. Applications that will distribute LDO rewards include Balancer, Curve, and Velodrome. A future rollout will include direct ETH staking on L2.

MakerDAO $500 Million Bond Investment

Maker Governance approved a proposal that allocates up to 500 million DAI toward U.S. Treasury and Corporate Bonds. The funds would come from the USDC Peg Stability Module (PSM), which allows USDC to be swapped one-to-one for DAI. The investment allows MakerDAO to diversify assets on its balance sheet. The investment is being split with 80% allocated toward U.S. Treasury Bonds and 20% allocated toward Corporate Bonds. A pilot transfer of 1 million DAI has already been executed, marking the DAO’s first balance sheet investment in bonds. Additional Executive Votes are needed to deploy the remaining capital.

The bond portfolio is being managed by DeFi asset manager Monetalis. Sygnum Bank and Baillie Gifford will each onboard up to 250 million DAI. Maker Governance previously approved a $100 million DAI credit facility with Huntingdon Valley Bank (HVB) back in March.

Nethermind Introduces UniStark

Nethermind announced UniStark, a StarkNet version of Uniswap created by transpiling and compiling Uniswap V3 into Cairo. UniStark was created using Warp, a transpiler that takes code written in Solidity and produces the equivalent code in Cairo, the native programming language on StarkNet. Some modifications to the Uniswap source code were still required as Warp does not support all Solidity features. Nethermind plans to release a Hardhat plugin that allows developers to run Solidity Hardhat tests on the transpiled Cairo. StarkNet is StarkWare’s permissionless zkRollup-based L2 scaling solution.

Gitcoin Announces Grants Protocol

Gitcoin announced plans for Grants Protocol, a new tool that allows any community to launch its own grants program. Grants Protocol will include modular and open-source tooling for building customized grant programs. Communities will be able to fund essential projects and incorporate community-driven decisions. Gitcoin’s goal is optimal coordination, the connection of resources, contributors, and ecosystems by way of open-source tools. Gitcoin Grants, the public goods platform that has distributed over $69 million in funds, will remain a separate platform. Grants Protocol is currently in closed beta with a public release planned for 2023.

Dapper Labs Blocks Russian Users

Custodial wallet provider Dapper Labs announced that it is blocking all Russian users from its services. Dapper cites new EU sanctions as the reason for the ban even though the company is incorporated in Canada. The sanctions prohibit EU companies from offering crypto wallet, account, and custody services to Russian persons. Russian users on Dapper are unable to buy, sell, gift, make purchases, or withdraw their tokens and NFTs. Since the wallet is custodial, users are left without an alternative for accessing their assets. Manifold Finance notes that the ban goes against Dapper’s own ToS, which promises to return all NFTs in its possession to users.