The decentralized finance (DeFi) sector continues to grow apace. Read about the most important events of the past weeks in ForkLog’s special report.
Market capitalisation, DEX volumes and value of frozen assets
According to DeFiMarketCap, at the time of writing the market capitalisation of DeFi tokens stood at $12.272 billion. Over the last three weeks this figure has risen by almost $5 billion.
Following other valuation metrics CoinGecko shows the market capitalisation of the 100 largest DeFi tokens at $14.295 billion, which is $6 billion higher than three weeks ago.
Data: defipulse.com
As of writing, Maker accounts for $1.42 billion of all funds in DeFi protocols. In this metric, Aave and Curve Finance followed closely with $1.34 billion and $1.11 billion respectively. Three weeks ago Aave and Curve Finance were in 4th and 5th places, overtaking Compound and Synthetix.
Latest News
The yearn.finance token has risen above Bitcoin
The yearn.finance token (YFI) over the month since launch has shown dizzying growth, outpaced Bitcoin in value this week. One catalyst for the rise was the listing of the asset on Binance in early August.
Yearn Finance has no development fund or venture investors backing the project. The project did not conduct a presale, and its governance is run by YFI holders who receive tokens in exchange for providing liquidity on the yearn platform. According to the project’s creator, Andre Cronje, YFI has no intrinsic value.
On Thursday, August 20, the token price rose to around $16,000. At the time of publication YFI was trading near $14,000.
Data: CoinGecko
André Cronje also announced a new project – yinsure.finance, which will become “the prototype of a new kind of tokenized insurance.” Its launch is expected in the coming weeks. The service will be built on decentralized mechanisms, where insurers are liquidity providers, and users will pay a percentage of their assets for the service provided. The first asset to be insured will be the USDC stablecoin.
Uniswap tops gas usage
One of the platforms playing a central role in the DeFi boom is the decentralised exchange Uniswap. According to EthGasStation, over the past 30 days Uniswap accounted for the largest share of gas spent on the Ethereum network. In total users spent 17,700 ETH ($6.99 million) to transact on Uniswap.
The second place in this list is held by Tether (USDT) – 16,100 ETH ($6.39 million). Third is the project SmartWay Forsage, which exhibits signs of being a scam.
Popularity of Uniswap is also evident from the fact that appear on the network as fake clone sites of the exchange, through which attackers steal users’ funds.
The exchange itself, as it turned out earlier this month, had already attracted $11 million in funding back in June.
The Compound platform launched a cryptocurrency price oracle
The decentralized finance protocol Compound expanded with its own price oracle for cryptocurrencies. The new option was added as part of the transition to Open Price Feed, a price-streaming channel with open access.
Data from the aggregator, which lets users obtain price information, is available directly from each issuer via API and does not depend on the protocol’s infrastructure, developers emphasised.
For auditing the price feed, developers engaged OpenZeppelin, and for verifying contracts — Certora representatives.
1inch launches Mooniswap, an automated market maker
The liquidity aggregator developers from the decentralised exchanges 1inch presented their own automated market maker (AMM) algorithm named Mooniswap. Users can now access liquidity from platforms such as Balancer, Bancor, Kyber Network and Uniswap, and swiftly swap tokens while bypassing centralised exchanges.
Mooniswap draws on an idea voiced by Vitalik Buterin in 2016. According to 1inch, early AMMs suffered from flaws, such as large slippage on large trades. They claim their AMM model will deliver liquidity providers 50-200% more earnings than Uniswap v2.
Concurrently, the 1inch team announced successful completion of a financing round of $2.8 million. Led by Binance Labs; other participants included Galaxy Digital, Greenfield One, Libertus Capital, Dragonfly Capital, FTX, IOSG, LAUNCHub Ventures, Divergence Ventures, founder of Kyber Network Loi Luu and Near Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin.
The funding will help the team expand the list of products. Among the upcoming products are:
- a new API algorithm;
- a native token;
- a yield-farming solution.
In July the number of daily active wallets on 1inch reached 1,200, and their total surpassed 17,700.
Liquidity on 1inch for the ETH/USDC pair was also comparable to that on centralised exchanges.
An investor compared the liquidity of the ETH/USD pair on centralised and decentralised exchanges
Gate.io will build a DeFi ecosystem on GateChain
The cryptocurrency exchange Gate.io announced the creation of a highly secure DeFi network GateChain with its own stablecoin (USDG), a decentralised exchange, decentralised lending and liquidity mining.
https://t.co/8kWqgEeplL Building DeFi Ecosystem On its Public Blockchain, GateChain https://t.co/cbalVNucoh @Cision pic.twitter.com/bCW9LyH0aA
— Gate.io Exchange (@gate_io) August 18, 2020
The public GateChain Mainnet, developed by the exchange, is already live and features a built-in mechanism to reverse stolen funds.
An important element of the ecosystem will be the platform’s own token, GateChain Token (GT). It will be used as collateral to obtain the stablecoin USDG, as well as to payout liquidity mining rewards and participate in governance.
Waves platform strengthens its presence in DeFi
A number of major announcements were made by Waves Platform. The project announced a joint creation with Ontology of cross-chain infrastructure, and also an partnership with the TRON Foundation.
As part of the partnership with Ontology, which will be one of the key chains in Waves’ Gravity Hub protocol, it is expected to enable a range of capabilities:
- ONT and ONG tokens will become compatible with the Waves protocol, allowing them to be listed on Waves-based decentralised exchanges;
- The WAVES token will be available for use and staking on the Ontology blockchain;
- Data providers in Gravity will be able to deposit ONT and pay fees for operations in the protocol;
- Third-party developers will be able to create cross-chain DApps.
Additionally, all tokens created on Waves and Ontology networks will gain full compatibility.
Collaboration with the TRON Foundation envisages a unification of the Waves and Tron blockchains via the Gravity protocol and enabling interaction of smart contracts written in Ride and Solidity.
Within the integration, TRC-20 tokens will be available on the Waves blockchain via decentralised gateways and will automatically appear on Waves-based decentralised exchanges.
Tokens from the Waves ecosystem will be available on the Tron blockchain and will appear on DEX and DeFi services on Tron.
Huobi forms a DeFi consortium with MakerDAO, Compound and dYdX
The DeFi-focused arm of the cryptocurrency exchange Huobi has formed Global DeFi Alliance — “an international consortium of centralised and decentralised providers of financial services and platforms.”
The aim of the consortium is to promote DeFi projects and develop the ecosystem, including by uniting dispersed DeFi communities in the Asia-Pacific and Western regions.
Among the members already are MakerDAO, Compound, Nest and dYdX.
Also read:
- The pace of Bitcoin tokenisation outpaced its issuance amid the DeFi boom.
- Vitalik Buterin earned some percentage from yield farming.
- An anonymous developer released native Curve tokens without the project team’s knowledge.
- The DeFi protocol Yam’s token with $600 million in assets plunged 99% in a 24-hour period.
- An expert called the estimates of the volume of DeFi funds locked up incorrect. Later his arguments were refuted.
- A new DeFi meme project Spaghetti Money raised $200 million in 12 hours.
- Ricardo Spanyi: most DeFi projects have no real decentralisation.
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