All referenced data can be accessed directly on the Gearbox dashboard by RiskDAO.
Summary
Memecoins are at the center of market action with coins like $PEPE whose market cap peaked at $1B market cap, generating a 4,000% return from its price just 17 days earlier (per Coingecko data). The memecoin mania also pushed Uniswap users to new highs - not seen since May 2021 - and contributed to a significant gas price spike on Ethereum Mainnet.
Tether, the company behind USDT, published a new attestion report showing it generated $1.5bn in Q1 ‘23 profits. The report also shows direct US T-bill holdings of over $53bn (a new ATH for Tether) representing more than 64% of total reserves. A significant reduction in bank deposits, which Tether confirms is part of their risk management to lower unsecured counterparty exposure.
The memecoin mania is also spilling over onto the Bitcoin ecosystem: The recent popularity of Ordinals Inscriptions and BRC-20 transactions pushed transaction fees on the Bitcoin chain to US$3.5 million on May 3, the highest since late May 2021.
Aave’s stablecoin GHO is getting closer to launch stage as the Aave DAO polled community members for initial parameters. A borrow rate of 1.5% and a bucket capacity of $100m were among the key parameters.
Talking about new stablecoins, Curve’s crvUSD has been deployed on Mainnet. The first 1m crvUSD are backed by Frax’s sfrxETH.
Stablecoin monitoring
GUSD liquidity decreased from $62m to $35m. sUSD liquidity recovered from $19m to $20m. LUSD liquidity stayed flat at $23m. sUSD backing slightly declined from 408% to 366%. LUSD backing declined from 270% to 260%.
There are no significant oracle deviations between DEX and CEX prices. The only deviations that stand out are the sUSD & GUSD CEX prices which are 3% & 2.1% below the oracle price, respectively.
Watchlist
stkcvxcrvPlain3andSUSD has an outsized share within the collateral pool as it accounts for 34% (unchanged) of the total. The ratio has come down a lot over the last weeks from a peak of ~40%. We continue monitoring this ratio to avoid concentration risk from building up.
Pools summary (weekly comparison)
DAI
Total pool size stayed flat at $13.4m. stkcvxcrvPlain3andSUSD remains the #1 asset at $7.8m (-$0.6m), followed by stkcvxgusd3CRV at $3.4m (+$0.5m) and yvDAI at $1.3m (unchanged).
Total debt remained unchanged at $11.3m.
The pool remains predominantly collateralized by stablecoins.
USDC
Total pool collateral stayed flat at $20.2m, with the largest collateral assets being stkcvxcrvPlain3andSUSD at $13m, followed by stkcvxgusd3CRV at $3.8m and stkcvxFRAX3CRV-f at $1.3m.
This pool also remains largely backed by stablecoin assets.
Total debt remained unchanged at $16.5m.
WETH
The pool declined from $25.5m to $24.5m. The largest collateral assets are stETH (-$0.9m to $17.7m), stkcvxsteCRV (-$0.1m to $5.8m) and FRAX ($0.5m, unchanged).
The pool remains collateralized by mostly ETH or staked ETH assets.
Total debt declined from $20.8m to $20m.
FRAX
This pool has total collateral of $3.7m (unchanged), mostly in the form of stkcvxFRAX3CRV-f ($1.4m) and stkcvxgusd3CRV ($1.2m) as well as yvDAI ($0.8m).
Total debt stands at $3m.
WBTC
This is a relatively small pool with $0.4m in deposits (denominated in stETH) and $0.3m in loans. It’s heavily concentrated with one depositor and one borrower.
wstETH
Demand for borrowing stETH continues to be subdued with no active credit accounts. This is a continuation from the previous week.