DeFi

CryptoLocally Sets Up GIVernance Model to Utilize Full Power of GIV Token, Becomes Fully Decentralized P2P Exchange

November 27, 2020 by Akash Anand

The cryptocurrency market has shown that innovation and catering to the needs of users are key factors to stay afloat in the industry. Keeping up with this sentiment, organizations like Cryptolocally have taken it upon themselves to raise the bar in terms of developments.

Just recently, the cryptocurrency exchange announced the launch of GIVernance – an ecosystem model wherein participants will be involved in creating and voting for proposals related to CryptoLocally. With the latest update, Cryptolocally will become the world’s first fully decentralized P2P exchange.

The latest crypto bull run has forced a majority of the world to sit up and take notice of the cryptocurrency sphere. With prices shooting up, it became important to provide services that would resonate with the quality and accessibility of the industry. CryptoLocally chose this opportune moment to kick start the next evolution of its GIV tokens with GIVernance.

According to the organization:

“It [GIVernance] gives GIV holders the power to participate in creating and voting proposals that determine the direction of the development of CryptoLocally’s ecosystem. Those who choose to participate are only required to stake their GIV tokens. In fairness, greater weight is given to voters with higher voting rights. Initially, token holders will have the right to approve token listings, modify the utility of the token, and suggest governance model improvements.”

Hugo Campanella, co-founder of CryptoLocally, claimed that the launch was a major milestone for the company as well as for the entire virtual asset world. Cryptolocally aims to provide users with a unique, decentralized solution. All voting rights will be able to offer GIV holders the ability to choose which particular token needs to be added to the platform. Some of the other expected features include users having the ability to choose the level of inflation and to vote for proposals submitted by other community members.

The vast repertoire of features provided by CryptoLocally has stirred the conversation pot among users. Many opined that the development is a massive step in the right direction for the cryptoverse as a feature-laden trading area was just what users were promised. The adoption movement was kickstarted when CryptoLocally added a DeFi feature with its Finance Wallet. This was intended to build upon the native token [GIV token] utility features integrated within the platform.

Kraken’s CEO Goaded By Fraudulent DeFi Projects

October 27, 2020 by Sahana Kiran

Despite the fact that 2020 would go down as the worst year in history, the star of the crypto show is undoubtedly Decentralized Finance [DeFi]. Unfettered by the pandemic, the DeFi space unraveled itself into a promising alternative of investment for many. However, just like in any market, with good comes the bad. After its conspicuous performance, the DeFi space was swarmed by fraudsters looking to pocket some easy money. This abject manipulation of the market has enraged many, Kraken‘s CEO is the latest to express his infuriation about the same.

“Taking Your Losses Is The Only Way To Enlightenment”

Loss is difficult to deal with, in whatever form it may come in. However, dragging everyone else with you seems like a rather distressing option. Enraged by the same, Jesse Powell, the Co-Founder and the CEO of the prominent US-based crypto exchange Kraken went ballistic on Twitter.

Powell called out fraudulent DeFi projects for seeking aid from exchanges during times of trouble. He outrightly suggested that these scammy projects were to stop self-sabotaging and then count on exchanges to bail them out. His tweet further read,

“I will not accept your attempt at externalizing the cost of your hasty, reckless rollout. Invest in audits, insurance and please DYOR. Taking your losses is the only way to enlightenment.”

Kraken hoards several DeFi tokens and even went on to onboard several new coins including Filecoin [FIL], Yearn Finance [YFI] as well as Uniswap [UNI]. However, he was adamant about following the motto where scammy DeFi projects would be illuminated following their own losses.

Regardless of the invasion of deceitful projects, the DeFi space continued to flourish. By recording a new all-time high almost every other day, the DeFi industry recently pushed beyond $12 billion for the first time.

At the time of writing, the DeFi market had stacked about $11.3 billion with Uniswap asserting its dominance by 24.16%. The decentralized exchange, Uniswap stood first in the DeFi ladder after locking $2.73 billion. Maker is no longer the face of DeFi as several other projects have evidently outshined the former over the past months.

While the DeFi industry did bring in a lot of value to the crypto-verse, scammy projects continue to put the whole industry in the wrong light. The last few months have particularly opened the gates for untold calamities in the DeFi space.

Yield Protocol’s Beta Version Goes Live On Ethereum Mainnet

October 20, 2020 by Sahana Kiran

DeFi proved to be one of the most popular wings of the crypto-verse this year. With the DeFi space locking more than $11 billion, several platforms commenced venturing into the same. Yield Protocol is one among the many platforms that saw the light of the day this year. Announcing the launch of this platform, the founder penned down a blog post.

Yield Protocol To Soon Move Out Of Beta Version

In a recent blog post, Allan Niemerg, the founder of Yield revealed that the latest Ethereum-based platform was live on the Ethereum mainnet. The platform intends to present the community with another decentralized lending and borrowing, however, this one is a fixed-rate protocol. The latest release is the beta launch of the Yield Protocol and the platform intends to traverse out of this version by early November.

The Yield Protocol released its whitepaper back in April 2020, just before DeFi skyrocketed. The platform seems to be luring in people with the “fixed-rate” jargon as the other prominent DeFi platforms provide lending and borrowing services at a floating rate.

Elaborating on the working of the platform, Niemerg wrote,

“You can get started by pooling Dai in the automated liquidity provider to support liquidity in the system and earn trading fees and interest. Users can use Yield to borrow Dai at fixed rates with ETH collateral, or lend Dai at fixed rates, in quarterly maturities through December 2021.”

Since the platform is still in its beta version, the maturity will expire in two weeks precisely by the end of this month.

Furthermore, the platform alerted the community about pouring in funds into Yield as it still lacks the administrative key as well as the capability to alter the smart contract. However, the smart contracts have reportedly been audited and tested for the beta version. With the Yield App, the Yield Protocol Discord, Audit, Documentation, Maturities, Prefix change, Liquidator for undercollateralized positions, Bug Bounty, and Open Source Code were released by the developers of the platform.

Additionally, the founder also revealed that the Yield Protocol was hiring individuals for solidity engineering as well as front-end development.

Compound’s COMP Token Makes Its Way Into The Coinbase Earn Program

October 15, 2020 by Sahana Kiran

The crypto-verse has opened up several opportunities for individuals to earn money. While acquiring money by watching ads or referring people has been in practice for a while now, a new way of making some money seems to be causing quite a stir in the crypto industry. Coinbase’s latest initiative sheds light on the same.

Learn To Earn!

Prominent cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase had rolled out a program back in 2019 that allowed users to earn crypto by learning about different crypto assets. The Coinbase Earn Program revealed that users across 100 countries could avail this offer. Initially, the program started off with a pilot where users were mandated to educate themselves about the ERC-20 token. Following this, several quizzes pertaining to Stellar [XLM], Basic Attention Token [BAT] as well as Zcash [ZEC] were also put in place. The latest asset to join the list is Compound’s COMP token.

An array of lessons regarding Compound’s governance token were listed in on the Coinbase Earn Program. A total of four lessons were a part of this course. While the first lesson focused on earning interest with Compound, the second highlighted the procedure of borrowing crypto with Compound. The final lesson part of the “Beginner Lessons” was the introduction to the COMP token. All of these lessons were in the form of videos and users who completed these lessons would earn $3 worth of COMP per lesson.

The “Advanced Lessons” section had only one lesson that taught the users how to access Compound via Coinbase Wallet. This lesson further presented a total of $10 worth of COMP to its users. Additionally, users could earn up to $10 worth of COMP by inviting people to sign up for the “Learn Compound. Earn COMP” program.

The Coinbase Earn program offers a series of assets that users can learn to earn. The list includes Maker, Celo, EOS, Stellar, Kyber Network, Orchid, Tezos, DAI, 0x, Basic Attention Token as well as Zcash.

The DeFi space has been gaining immense traction over the last few months. Compound’s COMP token was first listed on Coinbase and this further brought significant gains to the coin. After a few weeks of rendering an exceptional performance, the coin failed to continue its hot streak. At the time of writing, the COMP token was trading for $107.49 with a 7.05% plummet in its price over the last 24-hours.

Catalyzed by DeFi Boom, Ethereum’s Hash Rate Hits New ATH

October 7, 2020 by Reena Shaw

Ethereum miners have pushed the network’s computing power to a new high. On the 6th of October, the Ethereum network’s hash rate broke and surpassed 250 terahashes per second and was up by 80% since the beginning of the year. This was noted by the on-chain analytics provider Glassnode.

DeFi Hype

The hash rate was observed to growing consistently for the past several months. With the explosion of decentralized finance [DeFi] activity coupled with stablecoin growth, the Ethereum network witnessed months of high volatility with respect to key metrics. And the latest one being its hash rate breaking record highs can be seen as a major factor that could drive the coin’s price.

In September, when DeFi hit its peak, the miners on the network were estimated to have earned over $166 million in transaction fees while Bitcoin miners earned only $26 million from fees during the same period. Earnings from transaction fees, however, took a plunge recently as the average gas fees declined by more than 70% since peaking at $11.60 on the 17th of September to around $3 in October.

Besides, the last time Ethereum’s hash rate was hovering close to this level on the 9th of August 2018 when the figures stood at 246 Th/s this was primarily driven by the popular DApp CryptoKitties reaching its peak. The coin was valued at around $287 shortly after which it steadily declined to under $100 by the end of that year.

Higher the hash rate, the safer the network

The growing number of miners on the network essentially depicted a sentiment of confidence among market participants. Furthermore, a higher hash rate is also suggestive of overall positive health and that the network security is at the highest level it has ever been from potential 51% attacks.

In related news, TWJ had earlier reported that Ethereum Classic [ETC] had suffered a 51% attack for the third time in the month of August this year. During this reorganization of over 7000 blocks occurred on the network which corresponded to approximately two days of mining.

Ethereum Browser Wallet, MetaMask Surpasses 1M Monthly Active Users

October 6, 2020 by Reena Shaw

The DeFi ride has been wild and this rapid growth in the sector has resulted in the influx of capital, entrepreneurs, and users to the ecosystem. In the latest development, the Ethereum DApp browser wallet, MetaMask reportedly surpassed 1 million monthly active users for the first-time across its desktop and mobile apps.

The surge hit a few bumps along the way especially in the first quarter of the year. Since June, the growth has parabolic, and in tandem with the rise of DeFi. The launch of MetaMask Mobile has been one of the drivers in bringing new users into the MetaMask community In the official blog post, the platform further revealed that the USA, India, Nigeria, and the Philippines are the top four countries in volume of mobile users.

Further accelerating the growth curve was significant growth in the adoption of DAOs, Web3 games as well as the rapid consumer uptake of DeFi products and services

The blog read,

“It’s not just the ability to buy and store Eth that’s powering our new phase of growth. When you think about it, people don’t really want a wallet. They want to invest, sell, lend, borrow. They want to use sites like Uniswap, Yearn, Curve, Maker and Aave to get that job done. MetaMask is simply the connective tissue.”

DeFi’s exponential growth

Shortly after the market shocks of March, many users were quick to pivot to decentralized applications, instead of flocking to safe-haven assets such as stablecoins. According to DeFi Pulse, the total value locked in terms of USD in the DeFi ecosystem’s financial products currently stood at $10.68 billion.

Over the course of the second quarter of 2020, there were nearly 80K unique addresses that interacted with an Ethereum DeFi protocol. This was according to a report compiled by ConseSys which revealed that the daily active users across DeFi protocols remained fairly stable throughout the quarter until mid-June. The figures witnessed an abrupt spike in active users due to the frenzy around the Compound. Additionally, June 21st was the busiest day of the quarter in terms of daily active users, with 6,333 active users on Ethereum DeFi.

Ethereum’s Waning Social Volume Could be a Blessing in Disguise

October 4, 2020 by Reena Shaw

Ethereum underwent significant corrections over the past month and the coveted $400 mark remained untouched. At the time of writing, it was being traded at $347.24 after retesting several support points along the way.

Is the top altcoin losing momentum? Maybe not.

Ethereum’s social volume was in a state of ongoing decline shortly after the cryptocurrency topped out close to $387. The popular blockchain intelligence platform, Santiment revealed that Ethereum was nearing a 6-month low level across social discourse platforms as traders appeared to be “elsewhere” for volatility to trade. However, when the crowds are disinterested, the top crypto-assets such as Ethereum typically witness the biggest buying opportunity.

Rising confidence among Ether’s deep-pocket investors

Ethereum’s influence in leading rallies for its peer altcoins diminished as Bitcoin’s dominance saw a steady incline to 57.9%. Despite the fact that the coin sustained a double-digit price pullback, the number of Ether held by the top 10 non-exchange addresses has increased by approximately 20% to 10.87 million, at press time, from 12.96 million on the 5th of September when the price of the coin fell to $329.

Even during the period of high-sell off which was followed by the price bottoming out to $327 two weeks later, the figures maintained a consistent uptrend. This accumulation during the price drop evidenced that investors were showing confidence in the coin’s long-term prospects.

Thanks to the growing DeFi boom which hints no signs of stopping, this trend is expected to strengthen in the coming days. This was indicative of the fact the top holders were buying the dip in anticipation of a potential price rise.

Users make a comeback, but why now?

One of the main shortcomings of the Ethereum network is its perennial problems of high transaction fees. This exacerbated due to the DeFi explosion and stablecoins growth which, undoubtedly, had a material impact on Ethereum’s economic output. Since then, the market actions have been shaky and despite that, there was rising confidence with respect to market participants returning to Ether which further validated the accumulation trend.

It was not just the whales and miners who drove the accumulation of Ether. Regular users were also found to be returning to the network in response to lower and relatively affordable transaction fees. This can be noted in the above charts compiled by BitInfoCharts which depicted a significant fall in the transaction fee from its all-time high of $14.583 to $2.02, a decline of more than 86% in a period of one month. Still high as compared to its rival blockchains, but considerably low as per Ethereum’s standards.

Binance’s Stablecoin hits a milestone of $500 Million Supply

October 1, 2020 by Reena Shaw

Stablecoin supply has now exceeded the whopping $200 billion mark. With this, the market noted more than 300% year-to-date rise for stablecoins. A sharp rise was first triggered by the significant decline in the price of cryptocurrencies following the Black Thursday market crash.

Interestingly, it is not just the big names such as Tether and USDC that saw a huge influx. Smaller and relatively newer stablecoins also considerable traction. In the latest development, Binance’s stablecoin BUSD was currently sitting at a market cap of $504 million. This was first observed by the Founder and CEO of the Malta-based crypto firm, CZ who tweeted,

#BUSD has hit 500m market Cap. The fastest growing stablecoin in the market, +161% in the past 30 days.

BUSD is actually not issued by #Binance, but by our partner @PaxosGlobal. pic.twitter.com/EMRYvwmLCv

— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) October 1, 2020

Binance had partnered with Paxos Trust Company in September 2019 to launch a USD-denominated stablecoin, BUSD after receiving a green signal from the New York State Department of Financial Services [NYDFS].

The rise of smaller cap stablecoins such as BUSD can also be directed to the increasing in user interest with DeFi. Generally, stablecoins are used by DeFi yield farmers to accept crypto stocks from various decentralized platforms such as Uniswap, Aave, and Curve which have been popping up in ever greater numbers this year. What has further added to the popularity is their offerings of larger and larger yields in the competition to attract locked funds.

Binance Chases DeFi

The cryptocurrency exchange has continued to grow its offerings in the DeFi space with new product launch almost every day. Hence, it is possible that BUSD may become a larger player in the stablecoin and the wider DeFi space which has largely been dominated by USDT.

Binance recently unveiled its new decentralized Binance Smart Chain which acts as a “bridge” between its DeFi and CeFi offerings. Since then the platform has continued to expand its footprint in the space. These developments were occasioned by huge BUSD inflows into Binance exchange over the past couple of weeks demonstrating a high potential buying power.

Binance’s Launchpool platform also provided a new venue allowing its users to farm assets such as BUSD. Additionally, first project on the platform was revealed to be Bella protocol where users will be able to stake their BNB, BUSD, and ARPA tokens.

“ICOs Gave Crypto A Bad Name,” Says Bitcoin Bull Mike Novogratz

September 30, 2020 by Sahana Kiran

The decentralized wing of the crypto-verse has taken over the community. Despite the increase in the scammy projects, DeFi has continued lounging under the crypto-spotlight. While several pointed out that the DeFi boom was nothing but a bubble in formation, the space garnered funds in large numbers. Appearing in a recent interview, the Chief Executive Officer of Galaxy Investment Partners LLC, Mike Novogratz elaborated on the fervor around DeFi.

“It’s Kind Of Gamifying Money”

It isn’t news that the latest DeFi boom was compared to the 2017 ICO bubble. Several of the DeFi platforms and DeFi tokens were seen as a means of becoming rich as soon as possible. Novogratz continued to stress the comparison between ICOs and DeFi and suggested that ICOs had previously given a bad reputation to the cryptocurrency industry and that Ponzi-like coins were seen pouring into the market.He added,

“It’s kind of gamifying money. There are still lessons we are going to get out of that, but it’s not great for the ecosystem.”

Yield farming became a huge hit amongst investors looking to acquire increased returns. At present, the entire DeFi market has more than $10 billion locked in it. While several have started noticing a surge in fraudulent projects, a few others continue to invest in them. However, Novogratz believes that DeFi could give banks a run for their money and he suggested that DeFi “is not a fraud, not something that’s going to come and go.” Most of the DeFi platforms offer lending and borrowing services. With transparency and decentralization as its main motive, DeFi has evidently lured in an increased number of people.

During the time of writing, a total of $10.95 billion was locked in the DeFi space. Prominent decentralized exchange, Uniswap had recently surpassed $2 billion and was touted as the first DeFi platform to do so. Maker was seen right behind Uniswap at $1.92 billion. The former looked like it was soon joining Uniswap in the $2 billion club. As the zeal around these projects continue, Novogratz added,

“It was a frenzy, people got a little bit silly,”

Additionally, Novogratz revealed that 5% of his capital was invested in DeFi through ParaFi Capital, where Galaxy is a minority shareholder.

DeFi Hackers Drains $15 million From Unaudited Project Related to Yearn.Finance

September 29, 2020 by Reena Shaw

The DeFi community woke up to the news of a hacker draining $15 million from untested and unaudited codes of Andre Cronje’s latest project. Cronje, who happens to be the Founder of Yearn.Finance, was working on a new economy for a gaming multiverse, called Eminence, and wasn’t planning on releasing the project for at least another three weeks.

Following which he revealed deploying staging contracts on ETH to continue developing on it. The unaudited version was launched on the decentralized platform, Uniswap. Cronje tweeted the project’s logo last night.

pic.twitter.com/tV9LSzPXlV

— eminence.finance (@eminencefi) September 28, 2020

However, he woke up in the middle of the night to find that almost $15 million was deposited into the contracts as speculators driven by FOMO rushed in to purchase the platform’s native EMN tokens.

A hacker discovered a rogue function that allowing the minting of unlimited EMN tokens, burn an equal amount of EMN tokens against another crypto-asset, and sell that to those rushing in to buy the token. The hacker went ahead and exploited the flaw in the contracts leading to a loss of $15 million. In a rather bizarre event, Cronje revealed that the hacker returned over $8 million of the stolen funds to his own deployer contracts.

The returned funds will be directed to all those who rushed into buying the EMN token. Despite this, he continued to receive threats. Revealing the same, Cronje tweeted,

“As I am receiving a fair amount of threats, I have asked yearn treasury to assist with refunding the 8m the hacker sent. The multisig is safer and as such I feel more comfortable with them having the funds. Funds will be returned to holders pre-hack snapshot.”

Following this episode, the developer urged the community to wait for official announcements and further added,