Subject
44 entries
Defi
Bookmarks
Decentralised Engagement Protocol: Bringing DeFi to Marketing
The Incent whitepaper v2.0 (2022) proposes a decentralized engagement protocol that uses DeFi mechanisms to replace centralized ad networks and loyalty programs, rewarding users directly with tokens for their attention. Frames itself as 'DeMa' (Decentralized Marketing) by analogy to DeFi for finance — an ambitious reframing of the attention economy's value flows.
DeFi Saver: Next-Generation DeFi Management Dashboard
DeFi Saver is a management dashboard for creating and tracking DeFi positions across Maker, Aave, Compound, and other protocols from a single interface. It adds automation features like automated liquidation protection that native protocol interfaces don't offer.
Awesome-MEV: MEV Research Resource List
A curated list of MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) research papers and talks — the definitive reading list for understanding how miners and validators extract value from transaction ordering on Ethereum. MEV is simultaneously a market efficiency mechanism and a form of tax on users.
DeFi Derivatives: A Comprehensive Landscape Guide
A comprehensive GitHub resource mapping the DeFi derivatives landscape — covering options, perpetuals, interest rate swaps, and structured products built on Ethereum. An invaluable reference for understanding how traditional financial derivatives translate to on-chain primitives.
Jito MEV Dashboard
Jito's public MEV dashboard tracking Maximal Extractable Value on Solana — validator tips, arbitrage volumes, and extraction rates. One of the first transparent MEV tracking tools for Solana, predating Jito's later block engine infrastructure.
MEV101: The 0 to 1 Guide for Maximal Extractable Value
A ground-up guide to Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) in Ethereum and DeFi, covering sandwiching, arbitrage, liquidations, generalized frontrunning, flash loans, and Flashbots. A practitioner's introduction to the adversarial game theory and dark-forest economics underlying transaction ordering in public blockchains.
100x Faster EVM Traces with Python
banteg's writeup on getting 100x faster EVM transaction traces using Python with an Erigon node backend — replacing slow Geth-based trace_* RPC calls with Erigon's streaming API. Essential reading for DeFi analytics and MEV research.
Maximal Extractable Value and Constant Function Market Makers
Research paper analyzing maximal extractable value (MEV) in the context of constant function market makers (CFMMs) like Uniswap. It formalizes how miners/validators can capture value by reordering, inserting, or censoring transactions, with implications for CFMM mechanism design.
Scoring Aave Accounts for Creditworthiness
Cred Protocol's paper (arXiv:2207.07008) proposing a credit scoring system for Aave v2 accounts using a tree-based classifier trained to predict 'position delinquency' — whether a borrow position's health factor will drop below 1 within 90 days. It's a direct attempt to bring FICO-style credit infrastructure to DeFi, enabling undercollateralized lending.
Dogetoshi/MEV: Curated MEV Resources
Dogetoshi's MEV repository is a curated collection of resources on maximal extractable value — papers, talks, tools, and code for understanding how searchers, builders, and validators profit from transaction ordering on Ethereum.
Flipside Crypto — Blockchain Analytics Platform
Flipside Crypto is a blockchain analytics platform providing SQL-queryable on-chain data across Ethereum, Solana, Terra, and other chains. Notable for its bounty model where analysts earn FLOW tokens for producing quality dashboards — crowdsourcing blockchain data analysis.
Overlay V1 Core: Stability and Robustness for Data-Stream Derivative Markets
Technical paper extending the Overlay Protocol — a decentralized system for creating derivative markets on any data stream — with a three-part risk framework: funding payments, bid-ask pricing, and circuit breakers. The key challenge is managing the risk that any market can have unbounded open interest against the protocol's treasury.
MEV 2.0: The Rise of MPSVs
A Reciprocal Ventures piece arguing that MEV is evolving from searcher-bot competition to MPSV (Maximal Protocol Surplus Value) — protocols themselves capturing ordering value rather than external actors extracting it. Reframes MEV as a design choice rather than an inevitable externality.
Defined.fi — DeFi Crypto Price Charts
Defined.fi is a real-time DeFi price chart and trading analytics tool covering DEX activity across Ethereum, BSC, Polygon, and other chains. Designed for active DeFi traders who want TradingView-style charts for on-chain token pairs.
Catalog: Trustless P2P Crypto Trading
Catalog is a peer-to-peer trustless trading platform for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other crypto assets — using on-chain escrow and atomic swaps rather than custodial order books. Designed for OTC-style large trades without trusting a centralized exchange.
The Layer-1 Chain Rotation Thesis: A Retrospective Analysis
A mid-2022 retrospective dissecting the 2021 L1 rotation games — capital flowing from Ethereum to Solana, Avalanche, Terra, and others on unsustainable incentive structures. A clear-eyed post-mortem of what drove and ended each cycle.
The Web3 Index
Web3 Index tracks real protocol revenue and demand metrics across decentralized networks — focusing on fee generation as a measure of genuine usage rather than token price or TVL. A useful signal-vs-noise filter for evaluating which web3 protocols have real economic activity.
DeFi Safety — Protocol Security Reviews
DeFi Safety is a security review and rating service for DeFi protocols, scoring them on code quality, documentation, admin key controls, and testing practices. One of the few systematic attempts to give DeFi users a reliable signal about protocol security posture.
Towards a Theory of Maximal Extractable Value I: Constant Function Market Makers
Kulkarni, Diamandis, and Chitra's first paper in a theory series on Maximal Extractable Value in constant function market makers, showing sandwich attack price impact scales as O(log n) in trade count. It establishes the game-theoretic framework for MEV analysis that the field needed.
Flash Boys 2.0: Frontrunning, Transaction Reordering, and Consensus Instability in Decentralized Exchanges
Daian et al. document how arbitrage bots exploit transaction ordering in decentralized exchanges through priority gas auctions, introducing the concept of miner extractable value (MEV). The paper shows that MEV isn't just a trading problem — it creates measurable consensus-layer security risks for Ethereum.
Uniswap v2 Core
The Uniswap v2 technical whitepaper describes the core design decisions behind the protocol upgrade: arbitrary ERC20 pairs, a hardened time-weighted average price oracle, flash swaps, and a deactivated protocol fee. Together these make Uniswap v2 the infrastructure layer that DeFi summer was built on.
TWAMM: Time-Weighted Average Market Maker
Paradigm's paper introducing the Time-Weighted Average Market Maker (TWAMM) — a DEX primitive designed to execute large orders over time by continuously trading against an embedded AMM. Elegant solution to the large-order MEV problem that haunts standard AMMs.
Quantstamp Audits Portfolio
Quantstamp's audit portfolio page showcasing their security work across major protocols including ETH2.0, OpenSea, and MakerDAO. Quantstamp was one of the first institutional smart contract audit firms and helped establish what professional blockchain security work looks like.
Clockwork Finance: Automated Analysis of Economic Security in Smart Contracts
Clockwork Finance Framework (CFF) is a formal verification system for reasoning about economic security in DeFi smart contracts, introducing 'extractable value' (EV) as a rigorous notion. Applied to Uniswap, Sushiswap, and MakerDAO, it automatically discovers $56M/month in MEV-like opportunities.
Flashbots Documentation
The official Flashbots documentation covering MEV-Geth, the Flashbots auction, searcher bundle submission, and the broader philosophy behind transparent MEV extraction. The canonical reference for anyone building MEV searchers or integrating with Flashbots infrastructure.
EigenPhi: MEV Analytics
EigenPhi is an on-chain MEV analytics platform that scans Ethereum blocks for arbitrage, sandwich attacks, and liquidations, showing the bots, victims, and profit flows. One of the first accessible dashboards for visualizing MEV extraction in real time.
@bertcmiller MEV Threads
@bertcmiller's chronological index of his MEV Twitter threads — the most cited informal resource for understanding MEV strategies, Flashbots, and searcher mechanics. Essential reading for anyone entering the MEV space.
LayerZero: Trustless Omnichain Interoperability Protocol
LayerZero is an omnichain interoperability protocol that enables trustless direct messaging between any two blockchains via a lightweight on-chain endpoint and an oracle+relayer security model. Addresses blockchain fragmentation without requiring a trusted bridge custodian.
Farming stETH Yield with Curve, Convex, and Concentrator
YouTube walkthrough of farming 10% APY on stETH via Curve, Convex, and Concentrator — a 2022 DeFi yield stacking strategy combining liquid staking, AMM liquidity provision, and yield auto-compounding.
Token Terminal: Fundamentals for Crypto
Token Terminal provides fundamental financial metrics for crypto protocols — revenue, P/S ratios, TVL, and active users — applying traditional equity analysis frameworks to blockchain-native projects. Useful for evaluating which crypto protocols have real business traction.
Gauntlet: DeFi Economic Security Platform
Gauntlet is a DeFi economic security platform that uses agent-based simulation to stress-test protocol parameters — finding safe collateral ratios, liquidation thresholds, and interest rate curves for lending protocols. The risk management layer that keeps Aave and Compound from getting drained.
L2BEAT: The State of the Layer Two Ecosystem
L2BEAT tracks TVL and security risk across all Ethereum Layer 2 solutions — classifying each by how much trust is required (training wheels vs. fully trustless). The most authoritative public resource for comparing the actual security properties of different L2s.
The Defiant's Definitive Guide to DeFi
The Defiant's comprehensive guide to decentralized finance — covering lending protocols, DEXs, yield farming, stablecoins, and how they interconnect. A well-structured entry point from one of the most trusted DeFi media publications.
Theoretical Advances in AMM Understanding
A technical deep-dive on theoretical advances in understanding automated market makers (AMMs) — covering impermanent loss, concentrated liquidity, and how AMM design choices create different economic tradeoffs for liquidity providers. Essential reading for DeFi protocol design.
A3MC: Independent Blockchain Research Lab and Validator
A3MC (art3mis.cloud) is an independent blockchain research lab and validator operation — running Solana validators at 7.5% APY with 99.99% uptime, plus participation in Avalanche, The Graph, MultiversX, and Mina Protocol. Enterprise-grade validator infrastructure from a decentralized team.
Messari Crypto Theses for 2022
Ryan Selkis's flagship Messari annual crypto report for 2022 — a ~120-page deep dive into every major sector of the crypto market including DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, L1s, and regulatory outlook. Indispensable primary source for understanding the state of crypto at the 2021/2022 peak.
loldefi
loldefi.com — a DeFi-themed community or humor site bookmarked during a DeFi research session alongside Foundry, Alpha Pro, and AMM theory. Content unavailable at processing time.
Foundry: Ethereum Development Toolkit in Rust
Foundry is a blazing-fast Ethereum development toolkit written in Rust — Forge for testing, Cast for chain interaction, Anvil for local node, Chisel for REPL. Tests written in Solidity itself, with fuzzing and invariant testing built in. 2-5x faster than Hardhat.
Alpha Pro: Permissionless Options-Selling on DeFi
Alpha Pro is a permissionless DeFi platform from Charm Finance for automated options-selling strategies on Ethereum — earn yield by systematically selling options (strangles, etc.) with on-chain execution and no centralized management. The on-chain equivalent of systematic options-selling desks.
The Ultimate Guide to GMI — Bankless
Bankless's guide to 'GMI' (Gonna Make It) — the crypto-native meme-term for successfully navigating the crypto space into wealth and freedom. A document of the 2021-2022 speculative peak's cultural vocabulary and belief system.
DEX Metrics — Dune Analytics Dashboard
A Dune Analytics dashboard tracking decentralized exchange (DEX) volume, market share, and activity across major DeFi protocols. The canonical public resource for comparing Uniswap, SushiSwap, Curve, and other DEX activity in 2022.
Sommelier Finance — Automated DeFi Strategy Platform
Sommelier Finance is a DeFi protocol that uses off-chain computation (Cosmos-based co-processor) to automate Uniswap v3 liquidity position management — rebalancing concentrated liquidity ranges without requiring constant manual intervention.