May 30, 2023: Common Adder 🐍🏠
Vyper 0.3.9 patch opens path for TriCrypto-NG, and the $crvUSD debt ceiling showdown
TradFi took long weekend.
For the sake of your sanity, you probably should have taken a long weekend too.
As always though, cryptocurrency did not take a long weekend.
Here is everything you missed while you may have been touching grass.
Vyper 0.3.9
If you took a week off for the Memorial Day holiday, you might find you’re the only sap still using version 0.3.7 to build your smart contracts in Vyper.
Before the holiday weekend, we covered some of the features of Vyper 0.3.8, most notably support for PUSH0 opcodes. Read the prior link to get caught up on why PUSH0 support is kind of a big deal.
Traditionally, Vyper likes to use even numbered releases for major updates, with odd numbered releases tending to being minor patches. In this case, an issue with blueprint contracts was spotted by the great fiddy in the release of v0.3.8, necessitating the rushed upgrade.
Fortunately, blueprint contracts are not commonly used in run-of-the-mill contracts. Blueprinting involves deploying the skeletal structure of a contract onchain, which gets used as a template elsewhere to help with additional contract deployments (typically with varying constructor arguments).
Blueprint contracts didn’t impede the $crvUSD rollout, and therefore we’re already enjoying its rollout. However, TriCrypto-NG contains a full factory for easy deployment of your own pools with three volatile assets. These pools get deployed from blueprint contracts, so the fix was necessary to usher in the TriCrypto-NG era.
The release of Vyper v0.3.9 means the entire world has full visibility into when TriCrypto-NG may be ready for release.
In fact, just this morning Dan Smith spotted fiddyresearch.eth deploying a test suite to kick the tires on TriCrypto-NG. Notably, a test transaction between ETH and USDC was executed with lower gas fees than an equivalent transaction on Uniswap. Probably nothing tho…
To be honest, the Vyper feature we’re irrationally most excited about has nothing to do with Vyper itself, but rather comes from the fine folks at Etherscan. We may never know if it was the rapid updates of Vyper versions that compelled their action, or if it simply took years of developer effort to accomplish this miracle, but Etherscan no longer names all Vyper contracts as Vyper_contract
To achieve this, simply set the @title parameter in your contract-level natspec, which you should have been doing anyways.
A new Vyper dev gripe has asserted itself to fill the gap… hopefully next up, Etherscan will fix programmatic verification so devs can busy themselves with work other than solving the CAPTCHA on manual verification…
$crvUSD
While loan offices across the globe shut down due to the “holiday closure bug” plaguing TradFi, crypto kept humming.
$crvUSD is now ~75% of the way to its initial borrowing cap and continuing to grow, with most of the activity clustered towards the most degen possible borrow amount.
We also enjoyed a rare period of prices of Ethereum ticking upwards instead of its usual downwards. If you’re borrowing $crvUSD at the extrema and using a popular emerging trading strategy, you may have found yourself celebrating over the holiday weekend.
Of course, this is not financial advice. Had prices gone down against this max loan, you start to enter into riskier territory.
Fortunately, $crvUSD’s friendliest innovation is making the liquidation process friendlier. Generally when prices liquidate and deliquidate, users may lose some money. However, in some cases it’s not too bad…
A few good threads and articles also got released on $crvUSD over the weekend. Blocmates had a great explainer:
So too did Blockworks Research, which released the second part of their banger thread on the subject.
This even inspired a follow-up thread that added some flavor.
Blockworks also released a good article on the topic of on-chain oracles.
All of this frenzy happened amidst our Llama Party last week with Dan Smith, which had some nice details within it I’ve not yet seen reported elsewhere
Meanwhile, we may soon see some synergies between $crvUSD and Frax.
If you are a veCRV holder patiently waiting for $crvUSD to move the needle, you probably still need to wait until a few more collateral types with higher debt ceilings get added.
The good news is that Curve’s intricate flywheel continues to shed money. Occasionally some piles of money accrue until the pile gets so big we have to burn it for fees. So possible salad days for veCRV holders coming shortly.
Maybe somebody got the message and has been busy over at Stake DAO to prepare?
Finally, for those of you who follow the society pages, you may want to send along congrats to a certain Curve founder for purchasing a reasonably sized house.
Given the magnitude of the impact he’s had on DeFi, you might justifiably complain this house is too modest… why not a private island?
That said, we’re pleased that at least the intelligent readers were smart enough to recognize that no dumping of $CRV was in fact necessary to make said purchase. Mich is abundantly transparent about his on-chain activity which demonstrates no dumping.
Rather, he’s put several houses worth of $CRV to work in lending platforms where the token is supported. He used this experience as a power lender to reimagine lending platforms, all of which accrues to the benefit of veCRV stakers. In other words, the house led indirectly into $crvUSD, not the other way around.
A new wen just dropped… wen housewarming party?
Insane home!