February 6, 2023: "Monday 👀" 🤜🤛
Why's everybody bumping fistussies?
The past several days, speculation has been feverish about the cryptic "fist bump” images posted by several top DeFi protocols.
We’ve seen smart money go so far as to keep track of who was “liking” whom on Twitter posts to try to deduce what may be afoot. Check the newly 10k’ed DeFi Advisoor for some hefty detective work…
We happen to be in the know about the origins of the campaign, so we’ll go ahead and spill the beans. Spoiler alert tho, you may be disappointed.
The smart money is on an “Arbitrum airdrop.”
On whether an Arbitrum announcement occurs, we have no particular alpha. We know it was not the origin of the hype. It’s entirely plausible that Arbitrum, and likely several other enterprising protocols, are planning to piggyback off the hype to shoehorn in some new product announcements.
Yet the original story is not connected with any particular news — it’s been a campaign in the works for a month. It came across the Curve team’s radar pitched as the following:
“We’re organizing a group marketing campaign and we’d like to invite as many cool projects as possible to make it even bigger.
Here’s the idea:
In the wake of FTX, Celsius, Greyscale (maybe) and other CeFi lenders blowing up and losing users billions of dollars, the case for DeFi has never been stronger.
In fact, much ink has already been spilled to this end - so how can we show users why DeFi is a better alternative without repeating the same old message.
DeFi is open, permissionless, and composable. Qualities that differentiate it from CeFi and make it a space where protocols are collaborate. This is PvE, not PvP.
Let’s showcase this to the world with a one off marketing stunt, celebrating the best qualities of DeFi in a positive and memorable manner…
We’ll pick one day (let’s say Jan 15th 2023 for example’s sake), and round up as many DeFi protocols to take part as we can.
On that day - every protocol will open up their twitter feed to the others. Meaning any protocol can post on anyone else's. Making their feeds composable and permissionless.
Lido can post on Yearn. Element can post on Convex, Gearbox can post on Curve, and so on. ”
All the DeFi protocols will be posting tweets from the other DeFi protocols - an orgy of composable marketing fun.
That’s the origin story in a nutshell. It’s not designed to be any particular product announcement, but a way for DeFi protocols to highlight their composable and permissionless nature.
We asked if we could credit the originator, but the sentiment was very strongly in favor of not tying this to one particular protocol or person — emphasizing the collective nature of this effort.
FWIW, you may have observed that the Curve Twitter account did not participate. Curve is famously (?) opposed to marketing. Some at Curve felt it might be a bit of a letdown for people when they learned what was happening, feeling it might be better to participate if it was more substantial.
Not that people didn’t lump $crvUSD into the potential announcements. It’s nice to see that even though Curve isn’t into marketing, at least they’re getting into the spirit of some teasing…
Many degens may be disappointed there may be no big airdrop planned among multiple protocols or something. If you find yourself to actually be upset, ask yourself if you’re here for the wrong reasons.
DeFi remains tremendously superior to TradFi. Despite the frequently cutthroat nature of the industry, the “Monday” campaign is a reminder the future of finance can be so cooperative.
We’d urge anybody who’s disappointed by the lack of the airdrop or anything to be a good sport. Support the protocols who are engaging in the good natured fun. Odds are good that anybody who is following any of the participating protocols on Twitter already happens to be aware of the values that unite our community. Take the opportunity, then, to share this campaign to your friends outside of DeFi and start a discussion about what makes DeFi great.