🗡️ Why Aurora is booming

May 10, 2022 Stan

The charts are bleeding red, and the macro picture’s not looking great. Despite that, there are some great tailwinds in the crypto space.

Plants your seeds now to take advantage of the next bull cycle.

Today I’ll be Covering:

What Happening in Crypto: more crypto adoption, and $USN is here.
Aurora Ecosystem Deep Dive: an up and coming ecosystem.

Let’s dig in.

What’s Happening in Crypto

More Crypto Adoption

The Central African Republic becomes the 2nd country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, after El Salvador last year.

Panama has moved forward with Crypto regulation. Bitcoin has legal status and there are 0 capital gains taxes.

Blackrock is one of the largest asset managers ($10 trillion as of January 22′). They are launching a blockchain ETF containing assets such as Coinbase, Galaxy Digital, and bitcoin minders.

Fidelity is allowing people to put a portion of their 401k retirement savings into Bitcoin.

A lesson I learned from working out: results don’t always come immediately. Sometimes you’ll be having amazing workouts, and the results will lag. That’s how I feel about the market now. Yea the prices are horrible, but adoption’s happening.

Builders are building.

$USN is a dud?

There was hype for Near protocol’s algorithmic stable coin, $USN. People speculated that it could offer a 20% APY to compete with Terra Luna’s 20% APY (via Anchor Protocol).

Some reports indicated that initial APR’s would be around ~10% to much disappointment.

Well, now Bastion Protocol (one of the top protocols on Aurora) states USN has a pathway to offer over 20% APY. Here’s where the yield would come from:

+ Staking (11% APR)
+ BSTN Incentives
+ Borrow Revenue

I recommend reading this article. It goes into more details on how the mechanics would work.

Read the Article: The USN Wars

Optimism Does Their First Airdrop

Optimism is a layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum. They’re airdropped (aka free tokens) for select users.

Here’s their criteria:

This is well thought out. You can see that their goal is to reward early adopters, contributors, and heavy users.

This is only 5% of their supply. There are more airdrops for optimism on the way.

People are speculating that there will be airdrops from other Ethereum Layer 2s such as Arbitrum, zkSync, and Starkware.

Aurora – The Most Undervalued Ecosystem

One thing people struggle with is they always feel as if they’re too late to an ecosystem. Here’s one ecosystem that I believe we’re still early to.

Aurora is an EVM compatible Layer 2 that’s built on top of Near Protocol.

Explained Simply:
• EVM Compatible – Developers can copy & paste (fork) Ethereum projects over to Aurora.

• The closest competition to Aurora would be FTM, Polygon Matic, and Avalanche’s C chain.

• It’s cheap and fast because it’s powered by Near’s technology. Finality is achieved in 2 seconds, and transactions cost around $.01 in ETH. It feels like I’m using Ethereum 2.0.

Catalysts:

• Massive deposits are going into the Aurora ecosystem, and the funds aren’t leaving.

• Plenty of funding. $800m from the Near ecosystem fund, and 40m Near tokens ($473m at today’s prices) from Proxmity Labs.

The dAPPS you should know:

1. Trisolaris. The top DEX of Aurora.
2. Bastion Protocol. Stablecoin swap + Lending / Borrowing. Close to $1.5b TVL locked after a few weeks of launching.
3. Aurigami. Lending & Borrowing.
4. Polaris Finance. A Tomb Fork. It’s biggest innovation is being multi-pegged. Spolar is defended by pegs to Near, Luna, and Trisolaris. Ethereum and Aurora peg on the way.
5. Bluebit. Yield Optimizer. So it’s like the Beefy Finance of Aurora.
6. Rose on Aurora. Stable coin swap + Over collateralized lending (Like Abracadabra)

My Concerns with Aurora

The tokenomics suck. Potentially $8.4B fully diluted market cap. Also, the Aurora token itself doesn’t have much utility. Transactions are paid for in ETH, and the Aurora token is used for governance.

Basically I love Aurora’s tech and its ecosystem, but I don’t like the token itself. There could be some great plays if you focus on the top dAPPS.

Also, we are in a bearish environment. This is the kind of environment where I encourage you to hold more blue chips and stablecoins.

If Aurora interests you, I recommend you read my deep dive. I go into much more detail, and share different interesting DeFi plays.

The Most Undervalued Ecosystem in DeFi:

Aurora.

The TVL has grown by 150% in the past 30 days – it’s not slowing down.

If you’re reading this, you’re early.

Here’s my analysis of Aurora (and some DeFi plays): pic.twitter.com/lRGsG806wa

— The DeFi Edge 🗡️ (@thedefiedge) April 28, 2022

Additional Reading

You’re going to get wrecked if you don’t understand Tokenomics.

But what IS Tokenomics and what should you watch out for?

Here’s everything you need to know about Tokenomics:

(+ a free Tokenomics checklist)

— The DeFi Edge 🗡️ (@thedefiedge) April 6, 2022

Tokenomics is one of the most important areas to understand in Crypto.

Real wealth is created during bear markets.

But no one shares practical advice other than “buy the dip”.

Here’s your playbook to make the most out of a bear market:

(+ a few sample portfolios)

— The DeFi Edge 🗡️ (@thedefiedge) March 7, 2022

The macro environment looks horrible at the moment. Make sure you understand how to survive a bear market.