DODO in the News: Op-Eds, Interviews, & Featured Articles Over the Past 12 Months
It’s been a highly eventful year for decentralized finance (DeFi). Since August of last year, the space has grown exponentially: the total value locked (TVL) in all DeFi platforms leaped from $7.5 billion to more than $98.98 billion (as at 7th Sep 2021) — an increase of over 1000%.
August also marks one year since the launch of DODO’s early bird campaign, when liquidity providers joined forces with DODO ahead of the mainnet launch in December 2020. Since then, the DODO team has been working hard to make our platform the best place to trade and stake cryptocurrencies, and to provide liquidity for the DeFi world.
Throughout this journey, we’ve created innovative trading and liquidity tools, formed partnerships that expand our reach across the crypto space, and established a solid user base around the globe. We’re proud to report that the media has taken notice of DODO’s progress: our platform and core developers have been featured in podcasts, discussion panels, op-ed pieces, interviews, AMAs, and more.
A lot can happen in a year. Here’s a look at DODO in the news from August 2020 until today.
DODO in the Industry: Highlighting Speaker Sessions
The crypto world can be daunting — especially for newcomers. The crypto community has often been criticized for being cold and impersonal. DODO is seeking to change that narrative; DODO co-founders Diane Dai and Lei Mingda (also known as Radar Bear), as well as other members of the team, have made a strong effort to present themselves as the face of the platform. This has included several appearances in panel discussions at industry events.
Most recently, Diane was featured as a panelist in a discussion entitled “Globalizing Finance: DeFi for the Rest of the World” at Chainlink’s Smart Contract Summit (SmartCon), which took place from August 5–7th. The conference explored the rapidly expanding blockchain ecosystem and showcased talks from industry leaders.
Diane speaking at Chainlink’s Smart Contract Summit (SmartCon).
Before that, Diane appeared as a panelist in a discussion on current events in China’s crypto industry hosted by OdailyChina, a leading Chinese crypto news outlet.
Since DODO’s launch, the team has also spoken at several other important industry conferences, including Reimagine, which describes itself as “the world’s largest blockchain education event.”
Diane spoke at the event’s 2020 session about how DODO’s Proactive Market Making algorithm addresses the shortcomings of existing liquidity pools. This year’s edition of Reimagine also featured DODO NFT Product Manager Ethan Zhang, who spoke about NFTs’ reach beyond crypto and the Dodo NFT Vault.
DODO in Podcasts and Web Series
Podcasts are one of the most important and popular ways of keeping up with news and innovation in the cryptosphere. The DODO team has been hosted on many popular crypto podcasts and web series throughout the past year; in August of 2020, Diane was a guest on Tom Shaughnessy’s Chain Reaction, a podcast that features conversations with leading figures in crypto and blockchain.
During the show, Diane explained why DODO is more efficient than its peers. Later in the year, Diane appeared as a guest on Base Layer, another industry podcast. The show’s host, Dave Nage, commented that DODO had the potential to become a “key piece in the future of DeFi.”
Later in the year, both Diane and Radar Bear appeared on an episode of Yield TV, a YouTube series that explores DeFi innovation.
Diane and Radar Bear speak as guests on Yield TV, hosted by “DeFi Dad.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srYRlFEeklM&ab_channel=Zapper
DODO Thought Leadership: Op-Eds in Major Publications
The DODO team has also been featured in many publications across the crypto space.
Diane Dai’s op-ed pieces have appeared in several news outlets with substantial international audiences. In July, the International Business Times published “How decentralization is expanding the possibilities of finance,” a piece that Diane penned about blockchain technology’s potential to improve access to financial services:
“Traditional financial systems, controlled and operated as they are by centralized gatekeepers, are inefficient and deny access to many around the world. This is both unfair on its face and a massive economic loss for the global economy. Now, we have an alternative. It’s time to look to decentralized blockchains to move beyond these limits into a new, decentralized world of finance that offers greater access, more opportunity and fewer barriers to entry.”
— Diane Dai for the International Business Times, July 2021
Another of Diane’s thought leadership pieces, entitled “A decentralized app store might lead crypto toward more centralization,” appeared in CoinTelegraph, also in July. The article discussed the role of gatekeepers in decentralized finance as cryptocurrency moves further into the mainstream.
DODO in Written Media
DODO’s presence in written media has also emerged in the form of many text-based interviews. Most recently, CoinTelegraph China interviewed Diane alongside Nina Rong, head of Arbitrum China, on DODO’s integration with the Arbitrum mainnet. Prior to this interview, Diane was the subject of interviews on What Is Bit USD, Securities.io, and Defi Prime.
In July, Crypto Briefing interviewed Radar Bear on his perspective on the current state of DeFi, as well as the potential of Layer 2 solutions on the Ethereum network:
“Sidechains have developed strong userbases, so in the short- to mid-term, there’s going to be a split between these two solutions. Eventually, if Layer 2 delivers, that’s where the money will go. Splitting capital around different chains is a problem, but this is something DODO’s market maker algorithm is perfectly suited for, as it makes up for lower liquidity.”
— Radar Bear for Crypto Briefing, July 2021
Before that, Diane’s commentary on DeFi and the human condition was published alongside Brock Pierce’s in a recent CityAM piece on privacy in decentralized finance. Her thoughts on crypto in the mainstream appeared in TalkingBizNews in August. In January, Decrypt showcased Diane as one of the eight most influential people in crypto in China.
DODO in the Spotlight: Media Highlights and Collaborations
DODO was featured on Binance’s blog in October of last year when the exchange announced it led a $5 million private funding round for DODO. At the time, Binance CFO Wei Zhou said that “DODO is bringing a more sustainable and user-friendly DeFi product to the market by increasing capital utilization and mitigating impermanent loss.”
In May this year, DODO was listed on DeFi Pulse, a leading resource for analytics and rankings of decentralized finance protocols.
Then, in July, DODO was featured in The Graph’s video detailing the launch of the Graph Explorer and Subgraph Studio, two tools that help users curate and publish data in a Web 3 environment. DODO partnered with The Graph in early 2021.
https://twitter.com/BreederDodo/status/1413218740649426944
DODO AMAs: Connecting Directly with Users Around the Globe
Last (but certainly not least), members of the DODO team were the subjects of many Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) question and answer sessions throughout the past 12 months.
Some of these AMAs were held on DODO’s own channels, while others were hosted by other platforms in the crypto space. For example, Diane appeared alongside 0xMaki, the “Chief Chef” at Sushi in an AMA that was hosted by Puzzle Ventures in January. Several months later, Ethan Zhang spoke in an AMA session held by StealthEX.
AMAs are an important way for the DODO team to make direct connections with our community. DODO is always striving to create the best possible platform for trading and liquidity in the DeFi space. Our users are central to this mission — everything that our team builds is created with users at the forefront. The community also plays an integral role in our growth: our users’ continued support fuels DODO’s expansion throughout DeFi and beyond.
We would like to extend our deepest gratitude to the DODO community for the past 12 months. We can’t wait to see what the future holds.
#justDODOit
