Optimism Surprise Airdrop 2

Quick Take

• Aave’s $GHO stablecoin is now live on testnet.
• Kraken shuts down staking services for U.S. clients.
• MakerDAO announces a DAI lending protocol.
• Optimism conducts a surprise OP token airdrop.

Listen on: Apple | Castbox | Spotify | YouTube | Lens

Optimism Highlights 🔴✨

Optimism Surprise Airdrop 2
Optimism conducted a surprise airdrop of 11.7 million OP tokens to 300,000 eligible wallets. Users are not required to claim the tokens as they were airdropped automatically. Optimism users who either delegated the voting power of their OP tokens or spent more than $6.10 in Optimism gas fees were eligible for the airdrop. Optimism Airdrop 2 aimed to reward users who maintained a delegated OP balance for longer periods of time. The airdrop also featured multipliers, which included a bonus for users who were active on the network across six consecutive months. Roughly 13.7% of the OP token supply remains available for future airdrops.

GHO Stablecoin Now Live On Testnet

$GHO, a USD-pegged stablecoin native to Aave, is now live on the Goerli testnet. Users can try out $GHO on testnet via gho.aave.com. The stablecoin is over-collateralized and multi-collateral, allowing users to supply highly liquid assets as collateral to mint $GHO. The stablecoin is burned when a debt position is repaid. Interest payments accrued by $GHO minters go to the AaveDAO. AAVE stakers will also receive a discount on the $GHO borrow rate. The codebase was released on GitHub and has been audited by OpenZeppelin, Sigma Prime, and ABDK Consulting. A bug bounty program is currently live for $GHO with up to $250,000 in rewards.

Kraken Shuts Down Staking In U.S.

In a settlement with the SEC, Kraken agreed to shut down its staking services for U.S. clients. The exchange must also pay $30 million in penalties to the SEC as part of the settlement. Kraken was charged with failing to register the offer and sale of its staking as a service program, which stakes assets on behalf of clients. Kraken has automatically unstaked all U.S. client assets with the exception of staked ether, which will be unstaked after the Shanghai upgrade. Staking services remain open for all non-U.S. clients. SEC Chair Gary Gensler stated that services offering investment contracts in exchange for investors’ tokens are subject to securities requirements.

MakerDAO Announces Spark Protocol

MakerDAO announced Spark Protocol, a fork of Aave V3 that serves as a front-end for interacting with DAI. The protocol’s initial product is Spark Lend, a lending market for highly liquid and high market cap assets. The protocol will tap into Maker’s Dai Direct Deposit Module (D3M) for accessing DAI liquidity. D3M is a custom DAI vault that serves as a credit line to DeFi protocols. The protocol also aims to integrate fixed rates, Maker teleport, and EtherDAI. Spark Protocol will be built by research and development firm Phoenix Labs. If approved by governance, Spark Lend will launch in April with an initial debt ceiling of 200 million DAI.

zkSync 2.0 Testnet Regenesis

zkSync completed its zkSync 2.0 testnet regenesis, a reset to the network that introduces updates to account abstraction, SDKs, L1 contracts, and new contract libraries. Dapp developers are required to redeploy contracts and update dependencies since all chain history is lost in a regenesis. A public mainnet release for zkSync 2.0 is currently planned for Q2 2023.