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DeFi To Soon Dive Into Thailand Shores

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The decentralized finance aka DeFi space amassed notable traction throughout last year. During the peak of Covid, while all the other markets were enduring a crash, the crypto-verse, particularly the DeFi space was seen booming. While several platforms, as well as countries, took interest in the decentralized finance space, Thailand became the latest one to join the list.

At the time of writing, the total value locked in the market was at a high of $53 billion. The Compound platform was seen dominating the zone by over 19% as it locked a whopping $10.48 billion.

DeFi Catches The Eye Of Thailand’s Prominent Bank

The prominent news portal Bangkok Post revealed that one of the largest Thailand banks, Kasikornbank also known as the KBank had reportedly taken an interest in incorporating decentralized finance into its system. While the bank will plunge into the decentralized space, the Kasikorn Business Technology Group [KBTG], a tech subsidiary of the KBank is all set to take over this project.

The Chairman of KBTG, Ruangroj Poonpol pointed out that the incorporation of decentralized finance would fall under the second phase of the firm’s digital transformation project. While the first phase was conducted throughout 2018-2020, the second phase kicked off in 2021 and is said to go on till 2023.

Emphasizing on the same, the Chairman said,

“DeFi is a key exploration for KBank Group this year. [..] Providing innovative financial services under DeFi should improve the country’s financial exclusion and allow Thais better access to financial services. With this asset-backed form, DeFi could also create economic value for Thailand.”

Decentralized finance has been arising as a promising field. The rapid growth of the industry continued to prove beneficial for the decentralized finance space as well. More recently, Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban also commented on the emergence of DeFi. He went on to compare the growth of the decentralized finance space to that of the early days of the internet.

DeFi TVL Exceeds $50 Billion As Compound Climbs New Record

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Several prominent Ethereum-driven DeFi protocols have posted a strong bullish move as a new week dawned. This was accompanied by the total value locked across all decentralized finance protocols has hit another milestone.

tvl

According to the latest stats compiled by DeFi Pulse, the TVL in DeFi blasted past a whopping $50 billion on the 5th of April after a renewed market push. With this, the TVL figure was currently found to be almost twice the capitalization of the third-largest crypto-asset, Binance Coin [BNB]. Since the February pullback, the total value locked in decentralized finance protocols has maintained a steady uptrend.

Side by side, the rising TVL was the increase in the token price of many of the top protocols as DeFi traders began stacking during the market lows even as the decentralized finance sector took a break from the spotlight, as opposed to 2020 summer when it was in all rage.

Ethereum Locked Hits ATH Too

As the price of Ethereum established a much-anticipated peak, the cryptocurrency locked in DeFi also surged to a fresh high of 10.78 million ETH. This amount of Ether accounts for roughly 10% of the altcoin’s total circulating supply.

Leading the chart was the decentralized lending protocol, Compound, which recently climbed all the way to $15 billion in terms of the total lending value. As it dominated the decentralized finance market, it contributed to roughly 19% of the value locked up. Next up was another lending platform, Maker with $7.73 billion and DEX platform Uniswap with over $5 billion.

Bitcoin Locked In DeFi Attempts Recovery

The world’s largest cryptocurrency has stalled its momentum around $59K. Despite weeks of consolidating, Bitcoin has failed to establish a record with respect to its value. Alongside, the dull price action, Bitcoin locked up in all decentralized finance projects recently took a tumble to a three-month low.

Its recovery to the current figure of around 138K BTC was not impressive.

Hackers Drain 183 ETH From DeFi Project ‘ForceDAO’

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A relatively new decentralized finance or DeFi project called ForceDAO reportedly suffered an attack by five hackers on the wee hours of Sunday. The exploit of xFORCE’s contract is yet another reminder of how a seemingly massive inflow of money poured into a few hour-old initiatives by FOMOed investors of the sector can have serious consequences.

Another New DeFi Protocol Exploited

In the latest attack, the exploiters reportedly drained and liquidated a total of 183 ETH [ almost $367K] worth of FORCE tokens. Force’s xFORCE contract was hacked and drained by a white hacker. As explained by Polymath Lab’s blockchain team lead, Mudit Gupta, one of the five hackers reportedly returned some amount of stolen funds.

As per the post-mortem analysis published by the portal of the DeFi platform, the hackers were able to deposit FORCE tokens that would fail the “transferFrom call and receive xFORCE tokens”, as the xFORCE contract expects a revert from the token but instead receives false.

Alberto Cevallos noted that the entire episode could have been dodged by using a standard Open Zeppelin ERC-20 or adding a safeTransferFrom wrapper in the xSUSHI contract.

Cevallos also went ahead and stated that the platform takes complete responsibility for the “engineering oversight” and has started processes to make sure any such incidents are mitigated in the future. He also added,

“We also want to thank the White Hat hacker who helped deter further FORCE tokens from being drained. We have a bounty for you. All funds on our platform are safe, only xFORCE was affected.”

As part of the processes to alleviate concerns surrounding future exploitation, the DeFi hedge fund will now have a snapshot and also a new token. Cevallos announced that the necessary steps for internal re-structuring have commenced and a pland will be unveiled over the coming days making any affected FORCE holders and LPs whole.

Earlier the DeFi protocol’s developers had announced the airdrop of its FORCE tokens, which had lost 90% of its value after the attack, to users of other protocols. This decision was made to ensure a fair launch and lure in users to their platform. According to reports, a total of 25 million FORCE tokens were to be airdropped over a period of a month to those staking on Aave, Alchemix, Badger, Balancer, Curve, Maker DAO, Synthetix, Sushi, Vesper, and Yearn Finance.

Ethereum Whale Sent ~$1.3B To DeFi Lending Protocol Compound

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The number of Ethereum whales [i.e., large entities who held massive amounts of ETH tokens] has been pretty consistent since the crash in February last week. However, in the latest development, an unknown whale just transferred more than 629,000 ETH.

According to Whale Alert’s tweet on the same, the recipient wallet to which almost $1.3 billion was sent was the smart contract for the decentralized finance [DeFi] protocol Compound contract.

The sender remained anonymous. According to the data available, the whale paid a gas fee of 0.0205 ETH, that is more than $43. However, the movement of a large sum of money coincided with the price of the second-largest crypto-asset hitting an all-time high on the 2nd of April.

Upon further inspection, it was found that the same Compound contract received around 300 ETH from another unknown wallet the previous day, and 13,000 ETH $27 million a couple of days ago.

DeFi Captures Interest of Ethereum Whales

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Over the past few weeks, large ETH holders have refrained from offloading their bags. As per the latest stats, the number of wallets holding over 10K ETH has declined by less than 1% over the last four months. Meanwhile, 100-10,000 ETH addresses have taken a much more substantial plunge of 7.2% over the same time period.

In fact. The mid-tier level addresses were found to be pouring more ETH tokens into DeFi.

This was evident in the above chart compiled by DeFi Pulse, which indicated that Ethereum locked across all decentralized finance [DeFi] protocols have soared to an all-time high of $10.224 million as of the 4th of April.

It is important to note that the amount of the token locked topped 10 million for the first time ever on the 11th of March. As price took a tumble, the DeFi figure also remained dull before establishing a major top.

Additionally, it is worth noting that some of Ethereum’s circulating supply was also directed towards its Beacon Chain, which is essentially a Proof-of-Stake [PoS] blockchain. This was indicative of the onset of Ethereum’s transformation of consensus mechanism from Proof-of-Work [PoW] to Proof-of-Stake.

Shopify CEO Consults DeFi Twitter On Potential Integration

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Decentralized finance or as popularly known as DeFi mania has captured players from different spheres. The revolution in the payment industry and every company seeks to remain ahead of the curve due to which industry giants have joined the DeFi bandwagon.

Shopify’s CEO On DeFi

The latest one to express interest in the decentralized world is the Canadian multinational e-commerce company, Shopify’s CEO, Tobi Lutke. According to his latest tweet, the e-commerce giant’s exec is looking for ways to integrate his firm with the decentralized finance ecosystem. He stated,

“Hey, DeFi Twitter. What are the commerce-related opportunities that you are most excited about? What role do you want Shopify to play?”

Lutke had also revealed “dabbling” with smart contracts and exploring ERC-20 ecosystem in yet another tweet which read,

“Speaking of crypto though- I spent the morning dabbling with ETH Smart Contracts. Mainly to understand how ERC20 works better. Fascinating world.”

The tweet by the Shopify exec drew a huge amount of responses. Some advised him to enable users to earn Bitcoin, while others requested to support Bitcoin Lightning Network [LN] payments, stablecoin integration, leveraging decentralized finance protocols to enable cash in Shopify accounts to earn yield among other responses.

It is still unclear if the CEO is serious about DeFi integration into his centralized platform. The mere endorsement by the CEO of the online retailing platform, however, speaks volumes for a space that has been long speculated to be a bubble.

It is important to note that Shopify happens to be one of the largest companies in Canada, is also among the largest in the northern hemisphere. There are more than 3 million online stores as part of its platform. Furthermore, the platform was one of the early adopters of the cryptocurrency industry after it allowed crypto payments via Bitcoin [BTC], Ethereum [ETH] among other tokens following a payment integration in 2014.

LiquidApps Employs Bifrost Bridge To Bolster The Presence Of EOS In The DeFi Space

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Decentralized finance [DeFi] has garnered impeccable traction over the last couple of months. LiquidApps, a platform focused on optimizing decentralized development seemed to be aiding the growth of the DeFi market.

While the DeFi space has managed to lure in an array of individuals, it still suffers from siloed blockchains. However, LiquidApps seems to be on a mission to change this by building cross-chain bridges. With this decentralized development solution provider, EOS is all set to become the “first truly decentralized chain to integrate USDC.”

LiquidApps To Boost The DeFi Space With Its Cross-Chain Bridge

LiquidApps created an uproar in the crypto market with the launch of a cross-chain medium that allows users to transfer tokens or data to different blockchains without any hassle. Now, the platform is making use of the Bifrost bridge, developed the community-led DAPP Account DAO (DAD), to allow the free flow of USDC or DAI to be bi-directionally transferred between Ethereum and EOS.

The aforementioned community, DAD has also rolled out eCurve, an EOS clone of the decentralized exchange Curve, that has witnessed over $1 million of DAI/USDC liquidity cross over it from Ethereum. eCurve stands out as the network carries out feeless transactions while being time-efficient. However, the transactions on Ethereum’s Curve cost anywhere between $1-200 each and take up to 10-15 minutes.

More recently, EOS lost one of its major DeFi projects to the Binance Smart Chain. This bridge could pose as a savior for the network in broadening and establishing ground in the DeFi space. This can be viewed as a proof of concept employing EOS.

Additionally, the DAD bridge can also pave the way for arbitrage across chains. A total of three stablecoins including, wrapped DAI, wrapped USDC, and EOS USDT are a part of the eCurve’s three-coin swap pool. The possibility of ETH users swapping their USDC or DAI to any stablecoin to a stablecoin with the highest ratio in the pool stands even though one-thirds model fall out of equilibrium.

Elaborating on the emergence of the DeFi space and cross-chain bridges, Raman Bindlish, the founder of Blockstart a prominent DSP on the DAPP network stated,

“These are exciting times for us as developers of the technology as years of hard work from multiple teams coming to fruition. We are seeing the vision of multi-chain DeFi materialize and it can really enable the solutions that can scale to the same level as traditional finance.”

The progression of the DeFi space is inevitable. With several platforms making their way into the DeFi space, the existing ones are forced to keep up with the needs of their users and LiquidApps seems to be heading in the same direction.

Binance Smart Chain Welcomes EOS’s Largest DeFi Platform

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Binance Smart Chain [BSC] has seen tremendous development. In terms of liquidity and decentralized applications [dApps], BSC is becoming a major player in the industry. Hence, it is safe to say that it has emerged as one of the most distinguished alternatives to not just the Ethereum network but also to EOS. The latter lost one of the biggest decentralized finance [DeFi] projects to the Binance ecosystem this week.

The DeFi platform in question is ‘Effect Network‘ which is headed for a switch in its development from the EOS network to the Binance Smart Chain. The developers cited concerns regarding the future and viability of the EOS blockchain as one of the most prominent reasons for relocation.

It is important to note that the founder and Chief Technology Officer of EOS’s parent firm Block.one, Daniel Larimer had left the company nearly a couple of months ago. Furthermore, the controversial departure led to many questions regarding his inability to bring about viable solutions to the many issues plaguig the EOS ecosystem.

Talking about the growing confidence in Binance Smart Chain instead, Effect Network’s CEO Chris Dawe reportedly stated,

“Look at what the Binance organization has accomplished in only the last three years. It is a testament of dedication, hard work but above all its laser-focused vision. The amount of products and services our clients and workforce can tap into with the Binance ecosystem are amazing and will help accelerate the growth of the Effect Network like never before.”

Binance Smart Chain’s Exponential Growth

Despite centralization debates, the BSC ecosystem has grown considerably over the past several months. Thanks to growing gas fees on the Ethereum blockchain that was currently hovering close to $18. BSC, on the other hand, was processing on average 2X volume of the Ethereum network, that too, at a fraction of its current transaction fee.

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Therefore, several DeFi platforms have either left the Ethereum network or have expanded their footprint across BSC as well to enable its users to choose their preferred mode of network. Gauging at BSC’s unique address count, it can be noted that the network has seen significant growth as the figures continued to maintain a steady uptrend. It was found to be at 61.7 million on the 27th of March.

Cardano To Bring In Smart Contracts With The Alonzo Testnet

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The Cardano community has witnessed an array of developments with respect to its network in recent days. Additionally, the network’s network coin, ADA seemed to have aided this upgrade by recording a new all-time high. At the time of writing, ADA was trading for $1.19 with a 2.29% rise in the last 24-hours. Now the network seemed to be inducing decentralized finance [DeFi] into its system.

DeFi gained the attention of the globe after it exhibited notable surges during the peak of the lockdown. At the time of writing, a total value locked in the DeFi space was a whopping $41.36 billion. While this rise urged several networks to incorporate DeFi into their systems, Cardano seems to be the latest to do the same. In a recent tweet, by the Input OutputHK [IOHK], it was revealed that the Alonzo testnet would pave the way to smart contracts into the network.

Cardano Dives Into DeFi

Speaking at the Cardano60 online conference, the CEO of IOHK, Charles Hoskinson elaborated on the prospects of the Alonzo testnet that is scheduled to live in April. While the testnet would be rolled out through a hard fork, smart contracts would be made available only for testing during this phase. However, later in August during the launch of the mainnet, smart contracts would be ready to be employed.

IOHK went on to announce the same through Twitter. the tweet read,

Hoskinson elaborated about the same and said,

“For the first time ever, publicly, people will be able to write smart contracts and deploy them on Cardano,”

The Cardano network recently underwent a network-wide update with Mary. This update helped the network become a multi-asset blockchain. The hard fork currently supports multiple assets along with its native cryptocurrency.

It was very evident that the network has been making immense progress without encountering any blips. This imminent upgrade could prolong the network’s advancement.

Gemini Aims To Capture The DeFi, NFT Mania With Latest Addition

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DeFi and NFTs have been the talk of the town. To capture this growth, Gemini has become the latest platform to have jumped into the bandwagon.

The Winklevoss twins led cryptocurrency exchange, Gemini announced support for new decentralized finance [DeFi], gaming, non-fungible tokens [NFT], and infrastructure tokens on the 22nd of March. The new addition which will be supported for both trading and custody are Bancor [BN], 1inch [1INCH], Loopring [LRC], The Sandbox [SAND], Skale [SKL], and The Graph [GRT].

Furthermore, the Ethereum-based Enjin [ENJ], which is currently supported for custody, will also be available for trading, said Gemini.

With the latest development, the New York-based cryptocurrency exchange becomes the first regulated platform to offer trading and custody support in the State of New York for SAND and 1INCH. In fact, the additions have also increased the number of tokens and cryptocurrencies that Gemini trades all the way to 33 in total, along with another 10, that are supported for custodial services.

According to the official press release, deposits for the aforementioned crypto-assets are now open, and trading availability for all six new tokens and ENJ will soon follow. These are set to roll-out first on its API/FIX and ActiveTrader platforms for USD trading pairs.

Trading on Gemini’s mobile application as well as the website will open on a rolling, token-by-token basis for USD, GBP, EUR, CAD, AUD, HKD, and SGD trading pairs. The cryptocurrency exchange also noted,

“As the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) revolution has come into bloom, over the past weeks we have seen an explosion of interest around digital art and NFTs (non-fungible tokens), and we are excited to continue supporting the development of the space”

The latest news comes amidst rising decentralized exchanges [DEX] such as Uniswap, Sushiswap, 0x, Curve, Serum, that have managed to thrive in a short period of time threatening to disrupt the centralized counterpart.

More Ethereum-based DeFi Platforms Expand To Binance Smart Chain

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Binance Smart Chain [BSC] has grown leaps and bounds over the course of the last six months. Its activity and volume have outperformed that of Ethereum in the first quarter of the year alone. More and more decentralized finance [DeFi] platforms are making a move to the rival BSC or have built a bridge as transaction fees remained on Ethereum showed no signs of retreat.

The latest one to announce expansion plans to BSC was DeFi platform, 0x which revealed that v4 is now live on BSC.

0x API has added support for Binance Smart Chain, aggregating liquidity across all existing liquidity sources including PancakeSwap, SushiSwap, DODO, among others.

The official press release also read,

“We are proud to be launching 0x API’s BSC support alongside our initial partners Matcha, Zapper, Dex Guru, Zerion, Dodo, and DexKit.”

0x API essentially drives several DeFi teams on the Ethereum network. With the latest expansion, the platform intends to help its integrators and the broader Binance Smart Chain developer ecosystem onboard the next 100,000 users to the crypto industry.

The platform also noted that BSC is one of the many EVM blockchains where 0x API will be available. It revealed its plans to add support for more L1 chains and L2 solutions in the near future and to work with more teams in a bid to help their users explore decentralized exchange [DEX] in a multichain world.

Another DeFi platform to announce a launch of services on BSC was bZx. The margin trading platform asserted that even if it be moving to BSC, it would continue to remain primarily “Ethereum focused”.

Binance Smart Chain Growth

bsc

Thanks to its immense popularity and strategic launch during the DeFi explosion, Binance Smart Chain has attracted a massive inflow of users on its platforms. TVL has also rallied close to its all-time high level of $13 billion. The total market cap of on-chain BEP-20 tokens has also surged to a whopping $15 billion this month. Weekly active address on BSC has also climbed to 560k, i.e., ~56% of Ethereum. Furthermore, the daily volume of Binance Bridge has also hit 10 million.