This Week In DeFi - May 27

This week, a16z raises a record $4.5B for its fourth crypto fund, Terra 2.0 is on the way and StarkWare reaches an $8B valuation.

To the DeFi community,

This week a16z has raised a mammoth $4.5 billion for its fourth crypto fund – also its largest to date. The fund will be split into $1.5 billion for seed investments and $3 billion for venture financing. Overall, the fund will focus on web3 gaming, DeFi, decentralized social media, zero-knowledge proofs, self-sovereign identity and more.

Ethereum Layer-2 scaling platform developer StarkWare has reached an impressive $8 billion valuation, following a $100 million Series D raise. The raise quadrupled StarkWare’s previous valuation of $2 billion, with Greenoaks Capital and Coatue leading the round. 

Tether has launched a new stablecoin pegged to the Mexican peso – its fourth fiat-pegged stable token. Chief technology officer Paolo Ardoino says that Tether made the move after noticing an uptick in cryptocurrency use across Latin America throughout the last year. The token, MXNT, will launch on Ethereum, Tron and Polygon.

Do Kwon's new, UST-less version of the Terra blockchain will go ahead, following 65.5% of voting power being in favor of a replacement Terra platform. Multiple major exchanges have also indicated that they will support the chain, while the original Terra blockchain will be known as “Terra Classic” going forward.

Thanks to our partner:

Nexo – Unlock the power of your crypto with up to 17% interest and borrowing starting at 6.9%. Read our Nexo review.

Interest Rates

Highest Yields: Nexo Lend at 10% APY, BlockFi at 8.50% APY

Cheapest Loans: Celsius at 0.87%, Aave at 3.45% APY

MakerDAO Updates

DAI Savings Rate: 0.01%

Base Fee: 0.00%

ETH Stability Fee: 0.50%

USDC Stability Fee: 1.00%

WBTC Stability Fee: 0.75%

Highest Yields: Nexo Lend at 10% APY, Gemini at 7.99% APY

Cheapest Loans: Celsius at 0.12%, Compound at 2.63% APY

Top Stories

Stat Box

Total Value Locked$54.43B (up 2.0% since last week)

DeFi Market Cap$48.6B (down 8.4%)

DEX Weekly Volume$13B (down 38%)

DAI Supply: 6.20B (up 1.1%)

Bonus Reads

[Owen Fernau – The Defiant] – MakerDAO Regains Top Spot on TVL Leaderboard

[Lucy Harley-McKeown – The Block] – GameStop launches self-custodial crypto wallet