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🔥 Register now: https://baex.com
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We are excited to participate and present Syscoin Platform's ideal characteristics and capabilities towards a well-rounded Reddit Community Points solution!
Our scaling solution for Reddit Community Points involves 2-way peg interoperability with Ethereum. This will provide a scalable token layer built specifically for speed and high volumes of simple value transfers at a very low cost, while providing sovereign ownership and onchain finality.
Token transfers scale by taking advantage of a globally sorting mempool that provides for probabilistically secure assumptions of “as good as settled”. The opportunity here for token receivers is to have an app-layer interactivity on the speed/security tradeoff (99.9999% assurance within 10 seconds). We call this Z-DAG, and it achieves high-throughput across a mesh network topology presently composed of about 2,000 geographically dispersed full-nodes. Similar to Bitcoin, however, these nodes are incentivized to run full-nodes for the benefit of network security, through a bonded validator scheme. These nodes do not participate in the consensus of transactions or block validation any differently than other nodes and therefore do not degrade the security model of Bitcoin’s validate first then trust, across every node. Each token transfer settles on-chain. The protocol follows Bitcoin core policies so it has adequate code coverage and protocol hardening to be qualified as production quality software. It shares a significant portion of Bitcoin’s own hashpower through merged-mining.
This platform as a whole can serve token microtransactions, larger settlements, and store-of-value in an ideal fashion, providing probabilistic scalability whilst remaining decentralized according to Bitcoin design. It is accessible to ERC-20 via a permissionless and trust-minimized bridge that works in both directions. The bridge and token platform are currently available on the Syscoin mainnet. This has been gaining recent attention for use by loyalty point programs and stablecoins such as Binance USD.

Solutions

Syscoin Foundation identified a few paths for Reddit to leverage this infrastructure, each with trade-offs. The first provides the most cost-savings and scaling benefits at some sacrifice of token autonomy. The second offers more preservation of autonomy with a more narrow scope of cost savings than the first option, but savings even so. The third introduces more complexity than the previous two yet provides the most overall benefits. We consider the third as most viable as it enables Reddit to benefit even while retaining existing smart contract functionality. We will focus on the third option, and include the first two for good measure.

1. Distribution, burns and user-to-user transfers of Reddit Points are entirely carried out on the Syscoin network. This full-on approach to utilizing the Syscoin network provides the most scalability and transaction cost benefits of these scenarios. The tradeoff here is distribution and subscription handling likely migrating away from smart contracts into the application layer.
2. The Reddit Community Points ecosystem can continue to use existing smart contracts as they are used today on the Ethereum mainchain. Users migrate a portion of their tokens to Syscoin, the scaling network, to gain much lower fees, scalability, and a proven base layer, without sacrificing sovereign ownership. They would use Syscoin for user-to-user transfers. Tips redeemable in ten seconds or less, a high-throughput relay network, and onchain settlement at a block target of 60 seconds.
3. Integration between Matic Network and Syscoin Platform - similar to Syscoin’s current integration with Ethereum - will provide Reddit Community Points with EVM scalability (including the Memberships ERC777 operator) on the Matic side, and performant simple value transfers, robust decentralized security, and sovereign store-of-value on the Syscoin side. It’s “the best of both worlds”. The trade-off is more complex interoperability.

Syscoin + Matic Integration

Matic and Blockchain Foundry Inc, the public company formed by the founders of Syscoin, recently entered a partnership for joint research and business development initiatives. This is ideal for all parties as Matic Network and Syscoin Platform provide complementary utility. Syscoin offers characteristics for sovereign ownership and security based on Bitcoin’s time-tested model, and shares a significant portion of Bitcoin’s own hashpower. Syscoin’s focus is on secure and scalable simple value transfers, trust-minimized interoperability, and opt-in regulatory compliance for tokenized assets rather than scalability for smart contract execution. On the other hand, Matic Network can provide scalable EVM for smart contract execution. Reddit Community Points can benefit from both.
Syscoin + Matic integration is actively being explored by both teams, as it is helpful to Reddit, Ethereum, and the industry as a whole.

Proving Performance & Cost Savings

Our POC focuses on 100,000 on-chain settlements of token transfers on the Syscoin Core blockchain. Transfers and burns perform equally with Syscoin. For POCs related to smart contracts (subscriptions, etc), refer to the Matic Network proposal.
On-chain settlement of 100k transactions was accomplished within roughly twelve minutes, well-exceeding Reddit’s expectation of five days. This was performed using six full-nodes operating on compute-optimized AWS c4.2xlarge instances which were geographically distributed (Virginia, London, Sao Paulo Brazil, Oregon, Singapore, Germany). A higher quantity of settlements could be reached within the same time-frame with more broadcasting nodes involved, or using hosts with more resources for faster execution of the process.
Addresses used: 100,014
The demonstration was executed using this tool. The results can be seen in the following blocks:
612722: https://sys1.bcfn.ca/block/6d47796d043bb4c508d29123e6ae81b051f5e0aaef849f253c8f3a6942a022ce
612723: https://sys1.bcfn.ca/block/8e2077f743461b90f80b4bef502f564933a8e04de97972901f3d65cfadcf1faf
612724: https://sys1.bcfn.ca/block/205436d25b1b499fce44c29567c5c807beaca915b83cc9f3c35b0d76dbb11f6e
612725: https://sys1.bcfn.ca/block/776d1b1a0f90f655a6bbdf559ff5072459cbdc5682d7615ff4b78c00babdc237
612726: https://sys1.bcfn.ca/block/de4df0994253742a1ac8ac9eec8d2a8c8b0a6d72c53d6f3caa29bb6c171b0a6b
612727: https://sys1.bcfn.ca/block/e5e167c52a9decb313fbaadf49a5e34cb490f8084f642a850385476d4ef10d70
612728: https://sys1.bcfn.ca/block/ab64d989edc71890e7b5b8491c20e9a27520dc45a5f7c776d3dae79057f59fe7
612729: https://sys1.bcfn.ca/block/5e8b7ecd0e36f99d07e4ea6e135fc952bf7ec30164ab6f4d1e98b0f2d405df6d
612730: https://sys1.bcfn.ca/block/d395df3d31dde60bbb0bece6bd5b358297da878f0beb96be389e5f0e043580a3
It is important to note that this POC is not focused on Z-DAG. The performance of Z-DAG has been benchmarked within realistic network conditions: Whiteblock’s audit is publicly available. Network latency tests showed an average TPS around 15k with burst capacity up to 61k. Zero-latency control group exhibited ~150k TPS. Mainnet testing of the Z-DAG network is achievable and will require further coordination and additional resources.
Even further optimizations are expected in the upcoming Syscoin Core release which will implement a UTXO model for our token layer bringing further efficiency as well as open the door to additional scaling technology currently under research by our team and academic partners. At present our token layer is account-based, similar to Ethereum. Opt-in compliance structures will also be introduced soon which will offer some positive performance characteristics as well. It makes the most sense to implement these optimizations before performing another benchmark for Z-DAG, especially on the mainnet considering the resources required to stress-test this network.

Cost Savings

Total cost for these 100k transactions: $0.63 USD
See the live fee comparison for savings estimation between transactions on Ethereum and Syscoin. Below is a snapshot at time of writing:
ETH price: $318.55 ETH gas price: 55.00 Gwei ($0.37)
Syscoin price: $0.11
Snapshot of live fee comparison chart
Z-DAG provides a more efficient fee-market. A typical Z-DAG transaction costs 0.0000582 SYS. Tokens can be safely redeemed/re-spent within seconds or allowed to settle on-chain beforehand. The costs should remain about this low for microtransactions.
Syscoin will achieve further reduction of fees and even greater scalability with offchain payment channels for assets, with Z-DAG as a resilience fallback. New payment channel technology is one of the topics under research by the Syscoin development team with our academic partners at TU Delft. In line with the calculation in the Lightning Networks white paper, payment channels using assets with Syscoin Core will bring theoretical capacity for each person on Earth (7.8 billion) to have five on-chain transactions per year, per person, without requiring anyone to enter a fee market (aka “wait for a block”). This exceeds the minimum LN expectation of two transactions per person, per year; one to exist on-chain and one to settle aggregated value.

Tools, Infrastructure & Documentation

Syscoin Bridge

Mainnet Demonstration of Syscoin Bridge with the Basic Attention Token ERC-20
A two-way blockchain interoperability system that uses Simple Payment Verification to enable:

• Any Standard ERC-20 token to be moved from Ethereum to the Syscoin blockchain as a Syscoin Platform Token (SPT), and back to Ethereum
• Any SPT to be moved from Syscoin to the Ethereum blockchain as an ERC-20 token, and back to Syscoin

Benefits

• Permissionless
• No counterparties involved
• No trading mechanisms involved
• No third-party liquidity providers required
• Cross-chain Fractional Supply - 2-way peg - Token supply maintained globally
• ERC-20s gain vastly improved transactionality with the Syscoin Token Platform, along with the security of bitcoin-core-compliant PoW.
• SPTs gain access to all the tooling, applications and capabilities of Ethereum for ERC-20, including smart contracts.

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Source code

https://github.com/syscoin/?q=sysethereum
Main Subprojects

• Sysethereum contracts: Ethereum contract deployment source code.
• Sysethereum agents: External agents.
• Sysethereum Dapp: UI Dapp for reference implementation. The Sysethereum-Dapp automates the process flows depicted in “Syscoin Bridge & How it Works” within a native ReactJS application for convenience. An active implementation using the Syscoin Platform Mainnet can be used at bridge.syscoin.org.

API

Tools to simplify using Syscoin Bridge as a service with dapps and wallets will be released some time after implementation of Syscoin Core 4.2. These will be based upon the same processes which are automated in the current live Sysethereum Dapp that is functioning with the Syscoin mainnet.

Documentation

Syscoin Bridge & How it Works (description and process flow)
Superblock Validation Battles
HOWTO: Provision the Bridge for your ERC-20
HOWTO: Setup an Agent
Developer & User Diligence

Trade-off

The Syscoin Ethereum Bridge is secured by Agent nodes participating in a decentralized and incentivized model that involves roles of Superblock challengers and submitters. This model is open to participation. The benefits here are trust-minimization, permissionless-ness, and potentially less legal/regulatory red-tape than interop mechanisms that involve liquidity providers and/or trading mechanisms.
The trade-off is that due to the decentralized nature there are cross-chain settlement times of one hour to cross from Ethereum to Syscoin, and three hours to cross from Syscoin to Ethereum. We are exploring ways to reduce this time while maintaining decentralization via zkp. Even so, an “instant bridge” experience could be provided by means of a third-party liquidity mechanism. That option exists but is not required for bridge functionality today. Typically bridges are used with batch value, not with high frequencies of smaller values, and generally it is advantageous to keep some value on both chains for maximum availability of utility. Even so, the cross-chain settlement time is good to mention here.

Cost

Ethereum -> Syscoin: Matic or Ethereum transaction fee for bridge contract interaction, negligible Syscoin transaction fee for minting tokens
Syscoin -> Ethereum: Negligible Syscoin transaction fee for burning tokens, 0.01% transaction fee paid to Bridge Agent in the form of the ERC-20, Matic or Ethereum transaction fee for contract interaction.

Z-DAG

Zero-Confirmation Directed Acyclic Graph is an instant settlement protocol that is used as a complementary system to proof-of-work (PoW) in the confirmation of Syscoin service transactions. In essence, a Z-DAG is simply a directed acyclic graph (DAG) where validating nodes verify the sequential ordering of transactions that are received in their memory pools. Z-DAG is used by the validating nodes across the network to ensure that there is absolute consensus on the ordering of transactions and no balances are overflowed (no double-spends).

Benefits

• Unique fee-market that is more efficient for microtransaction redemption and settlement
• Uses decentralized means to enable tokens with value transfer scalability that is comparable or exceeds that of credit card networks
• Provides high throughput and secure fulfillment even if blocks are full
• Probabilistic and interactive
• 99.9999% security assurance within 10 seconds
• Can serve payment channels as a resilience fallback that is faster and lower-cost than falling-back directly to a blockchain
• Each Z-DAG transaction also settles onchain through Syscoin Core at 60-second block target using SHA-256 Proof of Work consensus

https://preview.redd.it/pgbx84jih8e51.png?width=1614&format=png&auto=webp&s=5f631d42a33dc698365eb8dd184b6d442def6640

Source code

https://github.com/syscoin/syscoin

API

Syscoin-js provides tooling for all Syscoin Core RPCs including interactivity with Z-DAG.

Documentation

Z-DAG White Paper
Useful read: An in-depth Z-DAG discussion between Syscoin Core developer Jag Sidhu and Brave Software Research Engineer Gonçalo Pestana

Trade-off

Z-DAG enables the ideal speed/security tradeoff to be determined per use-case in the application layer. It minimizes the sacrifice required to accept and redeem fast transfers/payments while providing more-than-ample security for microtransactions. This is supported on the premise that a Reddit user receiving points does need security yet generally doesn’t want nor need to wait for the same level of security as a nation-state settling an international trade debt. In any case, each Z-DAG transaction settles onchain at a block target of 60 seconds.

Syscoin Specs

Syscoin 3.0 White Paper
(4.0 white paper is pending. For improved scalability and less blockchain bloat, some features of v3 no longer exist in current v4: Specifically Marketplace Offers, Aliases, Escrow, Certificates, Pruning, Encrypted Messaging)

• 16MB block bandwidth per minute assuming segwit witness carrying transactions, and transactions ~200 bytes on average
• SHA256 merge mined with Bitcoin
• UTXO asset layer, with base Syscoin layer sharing identical security policies as Bitcoin Core
• Z-DAG on asset layer, bridge to Ethereum on asset layer
• On-chain scaling with prospect of enabling enterprise grade reliable trustless payment processing with on/offchain hybrid solution
• Focus only on Simple Value Transfers. MVP of blockchain consensus footprint is balances and ownership of them. Everything else can reduce data availability in exchange for scale (Ethereum 2.0 model). We leave that to other designs, we focus on transfers.
• Future integrations of MAST/Taproot to get more complex value transfers without trading off trustlessness or decentralization.
• Zero-knowledge Proofs are a cryptographic new frontier. We are dabbling here to generalize the concept of bridging and also verify the state of a chain efficiently. We also apply it in our Digital Identity projects at Blockchain Foundry (a publicly traded company which develops Syscoin softwares for clients). We are also looking to integrate privacy preserving payment channels for off-chain payments through zkSNARK hub & spoke design which does not suffer from the HTLC attack vectors evident on LN. Much of the issues plaguing Lightning Network can be resolved using a zkSNARK design whilst also providing the ability to do a multi-asset payment channel system. Currently we found a showstopper attack (American Call Option) on LN if we were to use multiple-assets. This would not exist in a system such as this.

Wallets

Web3 and mobile wallets are under active development by Blockchain Foundry Inc as WebAssembly applications and expected for release not long after mainnet deployment of Syscoin Core 4.2. Both of these will be multi-coin wallets that support Syscoin, SPTs, Ethereum, and ERC-20 tokens. The Web3 wallet will provide functionality similar to Metamask.
Syscoin Platform and tokens are already integrated with Blockbook. Custom hardware wallet support currently exists via ElectrumSys. First-class HW wallet integration through apps such as Ledger Live will exist after 4.2.
Current supported wallets
Syscoin Spark Desktop
Syscoin-Qt

Explorers

Mainnet: https://sys1.bcfn.ca (Blockbook)
Testnet: https://explorer-testnet.blockchainfoundry.co
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Thank you for close consideration of our proposal. We look forward to feedback, and to working with the Reddit community to implement an ideal solution using Syscoin Platform!

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“The TkeyNet development team is surprising to us” — recently such a quote came from our lips. Why would that be?

TkeyNet: Instant transactions

Now transactions in the TkeyNet network are instant. You won’t even notice how the TKEY delivers to the recipient. For example, when you send a payment from card to card, and after a few seconds, the money is in the recipient’s possession. Despite the fast speed of transactions, the system has not only preserved its security properties but also strengthened them and still works on the blockchain.

“The chain of information a store on every computer in the network. The addition of information occurs by using cryptographic functions, allowing you to identify the information for any period. When a new data block adds to the TkeyNet network, the integrity of all previous information confirm by the entire TkeyNet, and each node checks its integrity.”

Financial marketplace

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In early September, we completed work on one of the main functions of the system: “The Financial Module Of The Marketplace.”

What is it for, and how does the “Financial Marketplace module” work?

TkeyNet combines various assets in a single system, creating instant access to liquidity. Digital exchanges connect to TkeyNet and provide assets for exchange: BTC, USDT, ETH, and others. For example, Kraken connects to TkeyNet and provides digital assets: ETH, ETC. Binance: USD, BTC. Bitfinex: USDT, EOS, etc. Exchanges can provide any assets that trade on their platforms.
The blockchain acts as a Registrar of financial transactions. Accounts, balances, and orders store in a distributed registry TkeyNet, and copies of data to distribute across network TkeyNet nodes. Payment routing is implemented in the TkeyNet system, which allows you to track not only balances but also distribute transactions without the participation of any party.
The user, in turn, has quick access to transactions with digital currencies, regardless of the blockchain used: Bitcoin, Ethereum, EOS, or any other, transactions are recorded in TkeyNet, and transactions are processed instantly.

“The task of the platform is to automate the interaction of the parties and ensure the convenience of performing operations. — This is the core element of a trusted environment.”

In addition to digital assets, the “Financial Marketplace module” includes working with Fiat currencies, stocks, bonds, as well as raw materials: oil, gas, diamonds, etc. — This means that payment systems, banks, currency exchanges, commodity exchanges, and other financial market participants, are also connected to the TkeyNet blockchain.

Payments between companies in a few seconds

https://preview.redd.it/v84fizszvdp51.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=e501b06661b2a960fe75abe07a1aba5177db620d
Companies can make payments in seconds, not days. TkeyNet can seriously mitigate the adverse risks of extraterritorial sanctions against the financial system of the countries if such follow. Also, the ability to conduct internal and cross-border transfers through an independent financial channel directly to the counterparty at high-speed is beneficial to business and the state from any point of view.
Each user will be able to make quick transfers to counterparty wallets, exchange digital currency for another or fiat money at the current exchange rate.

What else is interesting? — Applications

Developers can connect to TkeyNet and get access to a large-scale pool of liquidity: digital currencies, stocks, precious metals, etc.
This solution not only reduces development costs but also allows you to get access to the best prices and fast exchanges. You can create any financial application, regardless of the market usage: a cryptocurrency, or financial markets.
Developers can create a digital Bank or exchange, fast connect the app, and TkeyNet using the API.

“By working with partners around the world, we can significantly increase our market share in this business, providing our partners with ready-made tools without risks.”

And also regardless of the applications that will be created by partner developers. The company will provide its interfaces that will provide access to various types of assets — digital currencies: BTC, USDT, ETH, etc.; Fiat currencies: euros, dollars, pounds, etc.; securities and commodity assets.
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Anywhere in the world, at any time, the system user will have access to the desired currency without having to exchange one for another. Also, when implementing the application for NFC payments, it will become even easier to use the system. However, even with the availability of several types of currencies, such as the pound, dollar, and euro, it is easy to make payments abroad.

“According to the World Bank, more than 1.7 billion adults are still not covered by banking services, but two-thirds of them have a mobile phone that can help them access financial services. — This tells us one thing: the traditional banking approach is exceptionally inefficient. Lack of infrastructure: a network of ATMs, fees and deposits, a network of cashiers, and internal money transfer programs are just some named obstacles to creating a real banking experience.”

Imagine that in one app you have access to Apple shares, Tesla shares, gold, precious metals, rubles, dollars, and even oil if you want. TkeyNet — makes this possible.
TkeyNet is an industrial solution designed for companies and users at the same time. Since payments in the system are very fast, a person can store and send money in any asset they want. This flexibility creates an open market, which is necessary at present.

Postscript

TkeyNet back-end — completed. Currently, we are actively working on the front-end side. Regardless of working on the front-end side, the TkeyNet system is tested on an ongoing basis.

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Dear CoinEx users, to keep you updated each week, we will share with you a recap of all the exciting events of the previous week. Below are major events that occurred in the ecosystem over the 14–20 September.

ONESWAP NOW LIVE WITH MAJOR EVENTS

OneSwap launched ONES market with support for yield farming and order mining running simultaneously. All details can be found here.
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CoinEx Launched ONES “Initial Trade Offering” (ITO) Event (To be suspended on September 21)
OneSwap, a decentralized trading platform strategically invested by CoinEx has been officially launched with an ITO event on the platform on September 18, 2020, along with its token ONES and.
TRADE ON CoinEx TO RECEIVE ONES REWARD
Users will get ONES as a reward for trading on CoinEx (no limit on tokens, trading pairs or markets). The total daily reward is 25,000 ONES, of which 20,000 ONES is for spot trading (including margin trading) and 5,000 ONES goes to perpetual contract trading. Only users who have submitted application for this event will be deemed as qualified participants. Click HERE to apply.
CoinEx Ambassadors Share to 10,000 USDT Rewards
To reward its ambassadors for their contributions towards CoinEx, ambassadors will share 10,000 USDT rewards in proportion to the number of ONES airdrops received by the invited users. More details here.
ITO TO BE SUSPENDED ON SEPTEMBER 21st
As a result of malicious behaviors by some users, the initial token offering (ITO) will be suspended on September 21, 2020. 00:00 (UTC). All ONES token initially made by users remains unchanged and rewards will be distributed accordingly while reopening time of ITO event will be announced later. Further details here.

CoinEx LISTING

To provide users with more trading and investment options, CoinEx listed YFII, CREAM, BOT and UNI on September 17 (UTC), with corresponding trading pairs of USDT, BTC as well as ETH. These tokens are centered around DeFi, and were listed after rigorous reviews.
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About YFII Website|Explorer DFI.Money (YFII) is a DeFi platform which aims to build products on aggregated liquidity provision, leveraged trading, automated marketing making.It was forked from yearn.finance (YFI), after yEarn Improvement Proposal #8 (YIP-8) which proposed to prolong the minting of the platform utility token YFI by another 2 months and with a weekly-halving emission curve was rejected.The YFII token is the native utility token of the DFI.Money platform. Users can earn it by contributing liquidity to DFI.Money’s aggregated liquidity pool, and use the token for platform governance.
About CREAM Website|Explorer CREAM. Finance aims to offer an open and inclusive financial system built on smart contracts. By building smart contracts and deploying them across EVM-compatible blockchains, CREAM aims to broaden the reach of this new financial system to a wider audience, allowing for inter-blockchain composability. CREAM. will first launch with an algorithmic money market protocol on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) together with the launch of the BSC mainnet.
About BOT Website|Explorer Bounce aims to provide different types of auctions for individuals and projects. BOT is the governance token of the bounce.finance platform and employs liquidity mining.
About UNI Website|Explorer Uniswap is a protocol for automatic token exchange on Ethereum. It is designed around ease of use, gas efficiency, censorship resistance, and zero rent.
Details

SYSTEM UPGRADE

Suspension of Perpetual Contract Trading

To provide users with better trading experience, CoinEx will carried out a system upgrade from 07:00 to 07:10 on September 18, 2020 (UTC), and the Perpetual Contract trading will be suspended. Get full details here.
TRX Deposit & Withdrawal Suspension and Resumption
As a result of the node maintenance of TRX project, CoinEx suspended the deposit and withdrawal of TRX, TRC20 USDT, BTT, JST, SUN at the designated time as required to secure the users’ assets, deposits and withdrawals have fully resumed after successful completion of maintenance.

CoinEx RESEARCH

RESEARCH REPORT ABOUT DODO
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DODO accepts liquidity providers’ assets. It gathers funds near market prices to provide sufficient liquidity. In order to minimize counterparty risks for LPs, DODO dynamically adjusts market prices to encourage arbitrageurs to step in and stabilize LPs’ portfolios.
Full Research Report by Gamals Ahmed, CoinEx Business Ambassador

Important Services

• CoinEx Lending releases: Hold & Yield at any time
• Margin promotion: 10-day FREE borrow for your FIRST margin trade
• Key Account Privileges Online: Honored Identity & Exclusive Services

ABOUT CoinEx

As a global and professional cryptocurrency exchange service provider, CoinEx was founded in December 2017 with Bitmain-led investment and has obtained a legal license in Estonia. It is a subsidiary brand of the ViaBTC Group, which owns the fifth largest BTC mining pool, which is also the largest of BCH mining, in the world.
CoinEx supports perpetual contract, spot, margin trading, and other derivatives trading, and its service reaches global users in nearly 100 countries/regions with various languages available, such as Chinese, English, Korean and Russian.
Click here to register on CoinEx
Reach CoinEx on TELEGRAM | TWITTER | FACEBOOK | WEBSITE | API| DOWNLOAD APP|

Source
It’s effectively July 2017 in the world of decentralized finance (DeFi), and as in the heady days of the initial coin offering (ICO) boom, the numbers are only trending up.
According to DeFi Pulse, there is $1.9 billion in crypto assets locked in DeFi right now. According to the CoinDesk ICO Tracker, the ICO market started chugging past $1 billion in July 2017, just a few months before token sales started getting talked about on TV.
Debate juxtaposing these numbers if you like, but what no one can question is this: Crypto users are putting more and more value to work in DeFi applications, driven largely by the introduction of a whole new yield-generating pasture, Compound’s COMP governance token.
Governance tokens enable users to vote on the future of decentralized protocols, sure, but they also present fresh ways for DeFi founders to entice assets onto their platforms.
That said, it’s the crypto liquidity providers who are the stars of the present moment. They even have a meme-worthy name: yield farmers.
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https://preview.redd.it/lxsvazp1g9l51.png?width=775&format=png&auto=webp&s=a36173ab679c701a5d5e0aac806c00fcc84d78c1

Where it started

Ethereum-based credit market Compound started distributing its governance token, COMP, to the protocol’s users this past June 15. Demand for the token (heightened by the way its automatic distribution was structured) kicked off the present craze and moved Compound into the leading position in DeFi.
The hot new term in crypto is “yield farming,” a shorthand for clever strategies where putting crypto temporarily at the disposal of some startup’s application earns its owner more cryptocurrency.
Another term floating about is “liquidity mining.”
The buzz around these concepts has evolved into a low rumble as more and more people get interested.
The casual crypto observer who only pops into the market when activity heats up might be starting to get faint vibes that something is happening right now. Take our word for it: Yield farming is the source of those vibes.
But if all these terms (“DeFi,” “liquidity mining,” “yield farming”) are so much Greek to you, fear not. We’re here to catch you up. We’ll get into all of them.
We’re going to go from very basic to more advanced, so feel free to skip ahead.

What are tokens?

Most CoinDesk readers probably know this, but just in case: Tokens are like the money video-game players earn while fighting monsters, money they can use to buy gear or weapons in the universe of their favorite game.
But with blockchains, tokens aren’t limited to only one massively multiplayer online money game. They can be earned in one and used in lots of others. They usually represent either ownership in something (like a piece of a Uniswap liquidity pool, which we will get into later) or access to some service. For example, in the Brave browser, ads can only be bought using basic attention token (BAT).
If tokens are worth money, then you can bank with them or at least do things that look very much like banking. Thus: decentralized finance.
Tokens proved to be the big use case for Ethereum, the second-biggest blockchain in the world. The term of art here is “ERC-20 tokens,” which refers to a software standard that allows token creators to write rules for them. Tokens can be used a few ways. Often, they are used as a form of money within a set of applications. So the idea for Kin was to create a token that web users could spend with each other at such tiny amounts that it would almost feel like they weren’t spending anything; that is, money for the internet.
Governance tokens are different. They are not like a token at a video-game arcade, as so many tokens were described in the past. They work more like certificates to serve in an ever-changing legislature in that they give holders the right to vote on changes to a protocol.
So on the platform that proved DeFi could fly, MakerDAO, holders of its governance token, MKR, vote almost every week on small changes to parameters that govern how much it costs to borrow and how much savers earn, and so on.
Read more: Why DeFi’s Billion-Dollar Milestone Matters
One thing all crypto tokens have in common, though, is they are tradable and they have a price. So, if tokens are worth money, then you can bank with them or at least do things that look very much like banking. Thus: decentralized finance.

What is DeFi?

Fair question. For folks who tuned out for a bit in 2018, we used to call this “open finance.” That construction seems to have faded, though, and “DeFi” is the new lingo.
In case that doesn’t jog your memory, DeFi is all the things that let you play with money, and the only identification you need is a crypto wallet.
On the normal web, you can’t buy a blender without giving the site owner enough data to learn your whole life history. In DeFi, you can borrow money without anyone even asking for your name.
I can explain this but nothing really brings it home like trying one of these applications. If you have an Ethereum wallet that has even $20 worth of crypto in it, go do something on one of these products. Pop over to Uniswap and buy yourself some FUN (a token for gambling apps) or WBTC (wrapped bitcoin). Go to MakerDAO and create $5 worth of DAI (a stablecoin that tends to be worth $1) out of the digital ether. Go to Compound and borrow $10 in USDC.
(Notice the very small amounts I’m suggesting. The old crypto saying “don’t put in more than you can afford to lose” goes double for DeFi. This stuff is uber-complex and a lot can go wrong. These may be “savings” products but they’re not for your retirement savings.)
Immature and experimental though it may be, the technology’s implications are staggering. On the normal web, you can’t buy a blender without giving the site owner enough data to learn your whole life history. In DeFi, you can borrow money without anyone even asking for your name.
DeFi applications don’t worry about trusting you because they have the collateral you put up to back your debt (on Compound, for instance, a $10 debt will require around $20 in collateral).
Read more: There Are More DAI on Compound Now Than There Are DAI in the World
If you do take this advice and try something, note that you can swap all these things back as soon as you’ve taken them out. Open the loan and close it 10 minutes later. It’s fine. Fair warning: It might cost you a tiny bit in fees, and the cost of using Ethereum itself right now is much higher than usual, in part due to this fresh new activity. But it’s nothing that should ruin a crypto user.
So what’s the point of borrowing for people who already have the money? Most people do it for some kind of trade. The most obvious example, to short a token (the act of profiting if its price falls). It’s also good for someone who wants to hold onto a token but still play the market.

Doesn’t running a bank take a lot of money up front?

It does, and in DeFi that money is largely provided by strangers on the internet. That’s why the startups behind these decentralized banking applications come up with clever ways to attract HODLers with idle assets.
Liquidity is the chief concern of all these different products. That is: How much money do they have locked in their smart contracts?
“In some types of products, the product experience gets much better if you have liquidity. Instead of borrowing from VCs or debt investors, you borrow from your users,” said Electric Capital managing partner Avichal Garg.
Let’s take Uniswap as an example. Uniswap is an “automated market maker,” or AMM (another DeFi term of art). This means Uniswap is a robot on the internet that is always willing to buy and it’s also always willing to sell any cryptocurrency for which it has a market.
On Uniswap, there is at least one market pair for almost any token on Ethereum. Behind the scenes, this means Uniswap can make it look like it is making a direct trade for any two tokens, which makes it easy for users, but it’s all built around pools of two tokens. And all these market pairs work better with bigger pools.

Why do I keep hearing about ‘pools’?

To illustrate why more money helps, let’s break down how Uniswap works.
Let’s say there was a market for USDC and DAI. These are two tokens (both stablecoins but with different mechanisms for retaining their value) that are meant to be worth $1 each all the time, and that generally tends to be true for both.
The price Uniswap shows for each token in any pooled market pair is based on the balance of each in the pool. So, simplifying this a lot for illustration’s sake, if someone were to set up a USDC/DAI pool, they should deposit equal amounts of both. In a pool with only 2 USDC and 2 DAI it would offer a price of 1 USDC for 1 DAI. But then imagine that someone put in 1 DAI and took out 1 USDC. Then the pool would have 1 USDC and 3 DAI. The pool would be very out of whack. A savvy investor could make an easy $0.50 profit by putting in 1 USDC and receiving 1.5 DAI. That’s a 50% arbitrage profit, and that’s the problem with limited liquidity.
(Incidentally, this is why Uniswap’s prices tend to be accurate, because traders watch it for small discrepancies from the wider market and trade them away for arbitrage profits very quickly.)
Read more: Uniswap V2 Launches With More Token-Swap Pairs, Oracle Service, Flash Loans
However, if there were 500,000 USDC and 500,000 DAI in the pool, a trade of 1 DAI for 1 USDC would have a negligible impact on the relative price. That’s why liquidity is helpful.
You can stick your assets on Compound and earn a little yield. But that’s not very creative. Users who look for angles to maximize that yield: those are the yield farmers.
Similar effects hold across DeFi, so markets want more liquidity. Uniswap solves this by charging a tiny fee on every trade. It does this by shaving off a little bit from each trade and leaving that in the pool (so one DAI would actually trade for 0.997 USDC, after the fee, growing the overall pool by 0.003 USDC). This benefits liquidity providers because when someone puts liquidity in the pool they own a share of the pool. If there has been lots of trading in that pool, it has earned a lot of fees, and the value of each share will grow.
And this brings us back to tokens.
Liquidity added to Uniswap is represented by a token, not an account. So there’s no ledger saying, “Bob owns 0.000000678% of the DAI/USDC pool.” Bob just has a token in his wallet. And Bob doesn’t have to keep that token. He could sell it. Or use it in another product. We’ll circle back to this, but it helps to explain why people like to talk about DeFi products as “money Legos.”

So how much money do people make by putting money into these products?

It can be a lot more lucrative than putting money in a traditional bank, and that’s before startups started handing out governance tokens.
Compound is the current darling of this space, so let’s use it as an illustration. As of this writing, a person can put USDC into Compound and earn 2.72% on it. They can put tether (USDT) into it and earn 2.11%. Most U.S. bank accounts earn less than 0.1% these days, which is close enough to nothing.
However, there are some caveats. First, there’s a reason the interest rates are so much juicier: DeFi is a far riskier place to park your money. There’s no Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) protecting these funds. If there were a run on Compound, users could find themselves unable to withdraw their funds when they wanted.
Plus, the interest is quite variable. You don’t know what you’ll earn over the course of a year. USDC’s rate is high right now. It was low last week. Usually, it hovers somewhere in the 1% range.
Similarly, a user might get tempted by assets with more lucrative yields like USDT, which typically has a much higher interest rate than USDC. (Monday morning, the reverse was true, for unclear reasons; this is crypto, remember.) The trade-off here is USDT’s transparency about the real-world dollars it’s supposed to hold in a real-world bank is not nearly up to par with USDC’s. A difference in interest rates is often the market’s way of telling you the one instrument is viewed as dicier than another.
Users making big bets on these products turn to companies Opyn and Nexus Mutual to insure their positions because there’s no government protections in this nascent space – more on the ample risks later on.
So users can stick their assets in Compound or Uniswap and earn a little yield. But that’s not very creative. Users who look for angles to maximize that yield: those are the yield farmers.

OK, I already knew all of that. What is yield farming?

Broadly, yield farming is any effort to put crypto assets to work and generate the most returns possible on those assets.
At the simplest level, a yield farmer might move assets around within Compound, constantly chasing whichever pool is offering the best APY from week to week. This might mean moving into riskier pools from time to time, but a yield farmer can handle risk.
“Farming opens up new price arbs [arbitrage] that can spill over to other protocols whose tokens are in the pool,” said Maya Zehavi, a blockchain consultant.
Because these positions are tokenized, though, they can go further.
This was a brand-new kind of yield on a deposit. In fact, it was a way to earn a yield on a loan. Who has ever heard of a borrower earning a return on a debt from their lender?
In a simple example, a yield farmer might put 100,000 USDT into Compound. They will get a token back for that stake, called cUSDT. Let’s say they get 100,000 cUSDT back (the formula on Compound is crazy so it’s not 1:1 like that but it doesn’t matter for our purposes here).
They can then take that cUSDT and put it into a liquidity pool that takes cUSDT on Balancer, an AMM that allows users to set up self-rebalancing crypto index funds. In normal times, this could earn a small amount more in transaction fees. This is the basic idea of yield farming. The user looks for edge cases in the system to eke out as much yield as they can across as many products as it will work on.
Right now, however, things are not normal, and they probably won’t be for a while.

Why is yield farming so hot right now?

Because of liquidity mining. Liquidity mining supercharges yield farming.
Liquidity mining is when a yield farmer gets a new token as well as the usual return (that’s the “mining” part) in exchange for the farmer’s liquidity.
“The idea is that stimulating usage of the platform increases the value of the token, thereby creating a positive usage loop to attract users,” said Richard Ma of smart-contract auditor Quantstamp.
The yield farming examples above are only farming yield off the normal operations of different platforms. Supply liquidity to Compound or Uniswap and get a little cut of the business that runs over the protocols – very vanilla.
But Compound announced earlier this year it wanted to truly decentralize the product and it wanted to give a good amount of ownership to the people who made it popular by using it. That ownership would take the form of the COMP token.
Lest this sound too altruistic, keep in mind that the people who created it (the team and the investors) owned more than half of the equity. By giving away a healthy proportion to users, that was very likely to make it a much more popular place for lending. In turn, that would make everyone’s stake worth much more.
So, Compound announced this four-year period where the protocol would give out COMP tokens to users, a fixed amount every day until it was gone. These COMP tokens control the protocol, just as shareholders ultimately control publicly traded companies.
Every day, the Compound protocol looks at everyone who had lent money to the application and who had borrowed from it and gives them COMP proportional to their share of the day’s total business.
The results were very surprising, even to Compound’s biggest promoters.
COMP’s value will likely go down, and that’s why some investors are rushing to earn as much of it as they can right now.
This was a brand-new kind of yield on a deposit into Compound. In fact, it was a way to earn a yield on a loan, as well, which is very weird: Who has ever heard of a borrower earning a return on a debt from their lender?
COMP’s value has consistently been well over $200 since it started distributing on June 15. We did the math elsewhere but long story short: investors with fairly deep pockets can make a strong gain maximizing their daily returns in COMP. It is, in a way, free money.
It’s possible to lend to Compound, borrow from it, deposit what you borrowed and so on. This can be done multiple times and DeFi startup Instadapp even built a tool to make it as capital-efficient as possible.
“Yield farmers are extremely creative. They find ways to ‘stack’ yields and even earn multiple governance tokens at once,” said Spencer Noon of DTC Capital.
COMP’s value spike is a temporary situation. The COMP distribution will only last four years and then there won’t be any more. Further, most people agree that the high price now is driven by the low float (that is, how much COMP is actually free to trade on the market – it will never be this low again). So the value will probably gradually go down, and that’s why savvy investors are trying to earn as much as they can now.
Appealing to the speculative instincts of diehard crypto traders has proven to be a great way to increase liquidity on Compound. This fattens some pockets but also improves the user experience for all kinds of Compound users, including those who would use it whether they were going to earn COMP or not.
As usual in crypto, when entrepreneurs see something successful, they imitate it. Balancer was the next protocol to start distributing a governance token, BAL, to liquidity providers. Flash loan provider bZx has announced a plan. Ren, Curve and Synthetix also teamed up to promote a liquidity pool on Curve.
It is a fair bet many of the more well-known DeFi projects will announce some kind of coin that can be mined by providing liquidity.
The case to watch here is Uniswap versus Balancer. Balancer can do the same thing Uniswap does, but most users who want to do a quick token trade through their wallet use Uniswap. It will be interesting to see if Balancer’s BAL token convinces Uniswap’s liquidity providers to defect.
So far, though, more liquidity has gone into Uniswap since the BAL announcement, according to its data site. That said, even more has gone into Balancer.

Did liquidity mining start with COMP?

No, but it was the most-used protocol with the most carefully designed liquidity mining scheme.
This point is debated but the origins of liquidity mining probably date back to Fcoin, a Chinese exchange that created a token in 2018 that rewarded people for making trades. You won’t believe what happened next! Just kidding, you will: People just started running bots to do pointless trades with themselves to earn the token.
Similarly, EOS is a blockchain where transactions are basically free, but since nothing is really free the absence of friction was an invitation for spam. Some malicious hacker who didn’t like EOS created a token called EIDOS on the network in late 2019. It rewarded people for tons of pointless transactions and somehow got an exchange listing.
These initiatives illustrated how quickly crypto users respond to incentives.
Read more: Compound Changes COMP Distribution Rules Following ‘Yield Farming’ Frenzy
Fcoin aside, liquidity mining as we now know it first showed up on Ethereum when the marketplace for synthetic tokens, Synthetix, announced in July 2019 an award in its SNX token for users who helped add liquidity to the sETH/ETH pool on Uniswap. By October, that was one of Uniswap’s biggest pools.
When Compound Labs, the company that launched the Compound protocol, decided to create COMP, the governance token, the firm took months designing just what kind of behavior it wanted and how to incentivize it. Even still, Compound Labs was surprised by the response. It led to unintended consequences such as crowding into a previously unpopular market (lending and borrowing BAT) in order to mine as much COMP as possible.
Just last week, 115 different COMP wallet addresses – senators in Compound’s ever-changing legislature – voted to change the distribution mechanism in hopes of spreading liquidity out across the markets again.

Is there DeFi for bitcoin?

Yes, on Ethereum.
Nothing has beaten bitcoin over time for returns, but there’s one thing bitcoin can’t do on its own: create more bitcoin.
A smart trader can get in and out of bitcoin and dollars in a way that will earn them more bitcoin, but this is tedious and risky. It takes a certain kind of person.
DeFi, however, offers ways to grow one’s bitcoin holdings – though somewhat indirectly.
A long HODLer is happy to gain fresh BTC off their counterparty’s short-term win. That’s the game.
For example, a user can create a simulated bitcoin on Ethereum using BitGo’s WBTC system. They put BTC in and get the same amount back out in freshly minted WBTC. WBTC can be traded back for BTC at any time, so it tends to be worth the same as BTC.
Then the user can take that WBTC, stake it on Compound and earn a few percent each year in yield on their BTC. Odds are, the people who borrow that WBTC are probably doing it to short BTC (that is, they will sell it immediately, buy it back when the price goes down, close the loan and keep the difference).
A long HODLer is happy to gain fresh BTC off their counterparty’s short-term win. That’s the game.

How risky is it?

Enough.
“DeFi, with the combination of an assortment of digital funds, automation of key processes, and more complex incentive structures that work across protocols – each with their own rapidly changing tech and governance practices – make for new types of security risks,” said Liz Steininger of Least Authority, a crypto security auditor. “Yet, despite these risks, the high yields are undeniably attractive to draw more users.”
We’ve seen big failures in DeFi products. MakerDAO had one so bad this year it’s called “Black Thursday.” There was also the exploit against flash loan provider bZx. These things do break and when they do money gets taken.
As this sector gets more robust, we could see token holders greenlighting more ways for investors to profit from DeFi niches.
Right now, the deal is too good for certain funds to resist, so they are moving a lot of money into these protocols to liquidity mine all the new governance tokens they can. But the funds – entities that pool the resources of typically well-to-do crypto investors – are also hedging. Nexus Mutual, a DeFi insurance provider of sorts, told CoinDesk it has maxed out its available coverage on these liquidity applications. Opyn, the trustless derivatives maker, created a way to short COMP, just in case this game comes to naught.
And weird things have arisen. For example, there’s currently more DAI on Compound than have been minted in the world. This makes sense once unpacked but it still feels dicey to everyone.
That said, distributing governance tokens might make things a lot less risky for startups, at least with regard to the money cops.
“Protocols distributing their tokens to the public, meaning that there’s a new secondary listing for SAFT tokens, [gives] plausible deniability from any security accusation,” Zehavi wrote. (The Simple Agreement for Future Tokens was a legal structure favored by many token issuers during the ICO craze.)
Whether a cryptocurrency is adequately decentralized has been a key feature of ICO settlements with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

What’s next for yield farming? (A prediction)

COMP turned out to be a bit of a surprise to the DeFi world, in technical ways and others. It has inspired a wave of new thinking.
“Other projects are working on similar things,” said Nexus Mutual founder Hugh Karp. In fact, informed sources tell CoinDesk brand-new projects will launch with these models.
We might soon see more prosaic yield farming applications. For example, forms of profit-sharing that reward certain kinds of behavior.
Imagine if COMP holders decided, for example, that the protocol needed more people to put money in and leave it there longer. The community could create a proposal that shaved off a little of each token’s yield and paid that portion out only to the tokens that were older than six months. It probably wouldn’t be much, but an investor with the right time horizon and risk profile might take it into consideration before making a withdrawal.
(There are precedents for this in traditional finance: A 10-year Treasury bond normally yields more than a one-month T-bill even though they’re both backed by the full faith and credit of Uncle Sam, a 12-month certificate of deposit pays higher interest than a checking account at the same bank, and so on.)
As this sector gets more robust, its architects will come up with ever more robust ways to optimize liquidity incentives in increasingly refined ways. We could see token holders greenlighting more ways for investors to profit from DeFi niches.
Questions abound for this nascent industry: What will MakerDAO do to restore its spot as the king of DeFi? Will Uniswap join the liquidity mining trend? Will anyone stick all these governance tokens into a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO)? Or would that be a yield farmers co-op?
Whatever happens, crypto’s yield farmers will keep moving fast. Some fresh fields may open and some may soon bear much less luscious fruit.
But that’s the nice thing about farming in DeFi: It is very easy to switch fields.

These crypto lending & borrowing services found early traction. Are they capable of bundling more financial services and winning the broader consumer finance market?
https://reddit.com/link/icps9l/video/98kl1y596zh51/player
This is the third part of Crypto Banking Wars — a new series that examines what crypto-native company is most likely to become the bank of the future. Who is best positioned to reach mainstream adoption in consumer finance?
While crypto allows the world to get rid of banks, a bank will still very much be necessary for this very powerful technology to reach the masses. As we laid out in our previous series, Crypto-Powered, we believe a crypto-native company will ultimately become the bank of the future. We’re confident Genesis Block will have a seat at that table, but we aren’t the only game in town.
In the first post of this series, we did an analysis of big crypto exchanges like Coinbase & Binance. In our second episode, we looked at the world of non-custodial wallets.
Today we’re analyzing crypto lending & borrowing services. The Earn and Borrow use-case covers a lot of what traditional banks deliver today. This category of companies is a threat worth analyzing. As we look at this market, we’ll mostly be focused on custodial, centralized products like BlockFi, Nexo, and Celsius.
Many of these companies found early traction among crypto users. Are they capable of bundling more financial services and winning the broader consumer finance market? Let’s find out.

Institutional Borrowers

Because speculation and trading remains one of the most popular use-cases of crypto, a new crypto sub-industry around credit has emerged. Much of the borrowing demand has been driven by institutional needs.
For example, a Bitcoin mining company might need to borrow fiat to pay for operational costs (salaries, electricity). Or a crypto company might need to borrow USD to pay for engineering salaries. Or a crypto hedge fund needs to borrow for leverage or to take a specific market position. While all of these companies have sufficient crypto to cover the costs, they might not want to sell it — either for tax or speculative reasons (they may believe these crypto assets will appreciate, as with most in the industry).
Instead of selling their crypto, these companies can use their crypto as collateral for loans. For example, they can provide $1.5M in Bitcoin as collateral, and borrow $1M. Given the collateralization happening, the underwriting process becomes straightforward. Companies all around the world can participate — language and cultural barriers are removed.
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The leader (and one of our partners) in this space is Genesis Capital. While they are always the counterparty for both lenders and borrowers, they are effectively a broker. They are at the center of the institutional crypto lending & borrowing markets. Their total active loans as of March 2020 was $649M. That number shot up to $1.42B in active loans as of June 2020. The growth of this entire market segment is impressive and it’s what is driving this opportunity for consumers downstream.

Consumer Products

While most of the borrowing demand comes from institutional players, there is a growing desire from consumers to participate on the lend/supply side of the market. Crypto consumers would love to be able to deposit their assets with a service and watch it grow. Why let crypto assets sit on an exchange or in cold storage when it can be earning interest?
A number of consumer-facing products have emerged in the last few years to make this happen. While they also allow users to borrow (always with collateral), most of the consumer attraction is around growing their crypto, even while they sleep. Earning interest. These products usually partner with institutional players like Genesis Capital to match the deposits with borrowing demand. And it’s exactly part of our strategy as well, beyond leveraging DeFi (decentralized finance protocols).
A few of the most popular consumer services in this category include BlockFi, Nexo, and Celsius.
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BlockFi

BlockFi (Crunchbase) is the leader in this category (at least in the West). They are well-capitalized. In August 2019, they raised $18.3M in their Series A. In Feb 2020, they raised $30M in their Series B. In that same time period, they went from $250M in assets under management to $650M. In a recent blog post, they announced that they saw a 100% revenue increase in Q2 and that they were on track to do $50M in revenue this year. Their growth is impressive.
BlockFi did not do an ICO, unlike Celsius, Nexo, Salt, and Cred. BlockFi has a lot of institutional backing so it is perceived as the most reputable in the space. BlockFi started with borrowing — allowing users to leverage their crypto as collateral and taking out a loan against it. They later got into Earning — allowing users to deposit assets and earn interest on it. They recently expanded their service to “exchange” functionality and say they are coming out with a credit card later this year.
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Security Woes
It’s incredible that BlockFi has been able to see such strong growth despite their numerous product and security woes. A few months ago, their systems were compromised. A hacker was able to access confidential data, such as names, dates of birth, postal addresses, and activity histories. While no funds were lost, this was a massive embarrassment and caused reputational damage.
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Unrelated to that massive security breach and earlier in the year, a user discovered a major bug that allowed him to send the same funds to himself over and over again, ultimately accumulating more than a million dollars in his BlockFi account. BlockFi fortunately caught him just before withdrawal.
Poor Product Execution
Beyond their poor security — which they are now trying to get serious about — their products are notoriously buggy and hard-to-use. I borrowed from them a year ago and used their interest account product until very recently. I have first-hand experience of how painful it is. But don’t take my word for it… here are just a few tweets from customers just recently.
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For a while, their interest-earning product had a completely different authentication system than their loan product (users had two sets of usernames/passwords). Many people have had issues with withdrawals. The app is constantly logging people out, blank screens, ugly error messages. Emails with verification codes are sometimes delayed by hours (or days). I do wonder if their entire app has been outsourced. The sloppiness shines through.
Not only is their product buggy and UX confusing, but their branding & design is quite weak. To the left is a t-shirt they once sent me. It looks like they just found a bunch of quirky fonts, added their name, and slapped it on a t-shirt.
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Culture
To the innocent bystander, many of these issues seem totally fixable. They could hire an amazing design agency to completely revamp their product or brand. They could hire a mercenary group of engineers to fix their bugs, etc. While it could stop the bleeding for a time, it may not solve the underlying issues. Years of sloppy product execution represents something much more destructive. It represents a top-down mentality that shipping anything other than excellence is okay: product experience doesn’t matter; design doesn’t matter; craftsmanship doesn’t matter; strong execution doesn’t matter; precision doesn’t matter. That’s very different from our culture at Genesis Block.
This cancerous mentality rarely stays contained within product & engineering — this leaks to all parts of the organization. No design agency or consulting firm will fix some of the pernicious values of a company’s soul. These are deeper issues that only leadership can course-correct.
If BlockFi’s sloppiness were due to constant experimentation, iteration, shipping, or some “move fast and break things” hacker culture… like Binance… I would probably cut them more slack. But there is zero evidence of that. “Move fast and break things” is always scary when dealing with financial products. But in BlockFi’s case, when it’s more like “move slow and break things,” they are really playing with fire. Next time a massive security breach occurs, like what happened earlier this year, they may not be so lucky.
Institutional Focus
Based on who is on their team, their poor product execution shouldn’t be a surprise. Their team comes mostly from Wall Street, not the blockchain community (where our roots are). Most of BlockFi’s blockchain/crypto integration is very superficial. They take crypto assets as deposits, but they aren’t leveraging any of the exciting, low-level DeFi protocols like we are.
While their Wall Street heritage isn’t doing them any favors on the product/tech side, it’s served them very well on winning institutional clients. This is perhaps their greatest strength. BlockFi has a strong institutional business. They recently brought on Three Arrows Capital as a strategic investor — a crypto hedge fund who does a lot of borrowing. In that announcement, BlockFi’s founder said that bringing them on “aligns well with our focus on international expansion of our institutional services offering.” They also recently brought someone on who will lead business development in Asia among institutional clients.
BlockFi Wrap Up
There are certainly BlockFi features that overlap with Genesis Block’s offering. It’s possible that they are angling to become the bank of the future. However, they simply have not proven they are capable of designing, building, and launching world-class consumer products. They’ve constantly had issues around security and poor product execution. Their company account and their founder’s account seem to only tweet about Bitcoin. I don’t think they understand, appreciate, or value the power of DeFi. It’s unlikely they’ll be leveraging it any time soon. All of these reasons are why I don’t see them as a serious threat to Genesis Block.
However, because of their strong institutional offering, I hope that Genesis Block will ultimately have a very collaborative and productive partnership with them. Assuming they figure out their security woes, we could park some of our funds with BlockFi (just as we will with Genesis Capital and others). I think what’s likely to happen is that we’ll corner the consumer market and we’ll work closely with BlockFi on the institutional side.
I’ve been hard on BlockFi because I care. I think they have a great opportunity at helping elevate the entire industry in a positive way. But they have a lot of issues they need to work through. I really don’t want to see users lose millions of dollars in a security breach. It could set back the entire industry. But if they do things well… a rising tide lifts all boats.

Honorable Mentions

Celsius (ICO Drops) raised $50M in an ICO, and is led by serial entrepreneur Alex Mashinsky. I’ve met him, he’s a nice guy. Similar to Binance, their biggest Achilles heel could be their own token. There are also a lot of unanswered questions about where their deposits go. They don’t have a record of great transparency. They recently did a public crowdraise which is a little odd given their large ICO as well as their supposed $1B in deposits. Are they running out of money, as some suggest? Unclear. One of their biggest blindspots right now is that Mashinsky does not understand the power of DeFi. He is frequently openly criticizing it.
Nexo (ICO Drops) is another similar service. They are European-based, trying to launch their own card (though they’ve been saying this forever and they still haven’t shipped it), and have a history in the payments/fintech space. Because they haven’t penetrated the US — which is a much harder regulatory nut to crack — they are unlikely to be as competitive as BlockFi. There were also allegations that Nexo was spreading FUD about Chainlink while simultaneously partnering with them. Did Nexo take out a short position and start spreading rumors? Never a dull moment in crypto.
Other players in the lending & borrowing space include Unchained Capital, Cred (ICO Drops), and Salt (ICO Drops).
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Wrap Up

While many companies in this category seem to be slowly adding more financial services, I don’t believe any of them are focused on the broader consumer market like we are. To use services like BlockFi, Nexo, or Celsius, users need to be onboarded and educated on how crypto works. At Genesis Block, we don’t believe that’s the winning approach. We think blockchain complexity should be abstracted away from the end-user. We did an entire series about this, Spreading Crypto.
For many of these services, there is additional friction due to ICO tokens that are forcefully integrated into the product (see NEXO token or CEL Token). None of these services have true banking functionality or integration with traditional finance —for example, easy offramp or spending methods like debit cards. None of them are taking DeFi seriously — they are leveraging crypto for only the asset class, not the underlying technology around financial protocols.
So are these companies potential competitors to Genesis Block? For the crypto crowd, yes. For the mass market, no. None of these companies are capable of reaching the billions of people around the world that we hope to reach at Genesis Block.
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Other Ways to Consume Today's Episode:

• Read on Medium: https://medium.com/genesisblock/crypto-banking-wars-can-blockfi-celsius-disrupt-banking-cf33d452ae53
• Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/zf9zA-doHhw
• Listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/genesisblock/15-crypto-banking-wars-can-blockfi-celsius-disrupt-banking
• Listen via Podcast (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc): https://anchor.fm/genesis-block/episodes/15-Crypto-Banking-Wars---Can-BlockFi--Celsius-Disrupt-Banking-eibj9j

Follow our social channels: https://genesisblock.com/follow/
Download the app. We're a digital bank that's powered by crypto: https://genesisblock.com/download

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DeFi has a total market cap of $13.022 billion, according to Glassnode, it covers a wide range of sectors including currencies, loans, synthetic assets, instrument architecture (such as forex), exchanges, etc. However, there is a large gap in the derivatives area, such as options. Thus, Institutions such as FinNexus and Chainlink predict that decentralized options will be the next DeFi hotspot, which could be the lifesaver of the Bitcoin contract.
DeFi decentralized options address the crucial points of current decentralized options and the points about investor participation in traditional finance.

1. In essence, an option is a kind of contract that gives the option holder the right to buy or sell an asset at a fixed price on a specific period. The buyer of the option has only rights but no obligations, and the seller of the option has only obligations but no rights. The risk of the buyer is the loss of capital to gain the unlimited potential of profit. The risk of the seller is to earn the option premium under the unlimited potential of loss. The imbalance of such rights and obligations leads to the difference between the risk attributes of the buyer and the seller.
   
2. Even if there are professional institutional participants, as sellers, in order to control their own risks, they still need to rely on abundant risk hedging tools to hedge their potential risks. At the moment in the DeFi market, it is clear that the selection of these hedging instruments is very scarce.
   
3. Traditional options are matched by order books and need to rely on professional market makers, which, if carried out in the chain, will cause problems of low efficiency and high cost. Recently, the GAS fee on Ethereum has reached 300Gwei, and the high cost will greatly reduce the enthusiasm of users to participate.
   
4. Due to the liquidity, for the buyer, the option buyer cannot choose the option products as they expect, such as different underlying assets, different strike prices, or products with an expiration date.
   

In view of these problems, the decentralized liquidity options of DeFi arising subsequently. By establishing the liquidity option deposit pool as the counterparty of all users who purchase options. The premium and other agreements rewards are brought into the pool and share by the joining users, all the returns and risk of investment options will also be borne by the entire pool of users.
The potential of decentralized option flow pools is that it can freely create options with the underlying asset, which not only the digital currencies such as BTC but also the traditional financial assets. Compared with the centralized options, it eliminates the middleman and counterparty, has unlimited liquidity, and the ability to pledge mines.
With the popularity of DeFi decentralized options, the trading strategy of hedging with options and contracts will be used by more people to reduce the risk of being liquidation. After the option hedging, even if the contract is under liquidation, the profit is still far greater than the contract principal, thus, the profit can be maintained eventually.
Here is a detailed description of the hedging strategy of making money under contract liquidation.
For example, now the Bitcoin price is $10,000:
Open long 20X Bitcoin at $800;
Meanwhile, buy 2 put options contracts on BitOffer (the total budget is $60).
✅ The first situation: When the Bitcoin price increases by $200 (+2%):

1. Open long 20X Bitcoin: Earning 40% in profits, $320.
   
2. Lose the premium that you use to buy put options contract: -$60.
   
3. The net profit will be $320-$60= $260.
   

✅The second situation: When the Bitcoin price decreases by $200 (-2%):
1.Open long 20X Bitcoin: Losing 40%, $320.

1. The Put Options contracts You buy earn $400.
   
2. The net profit will be $400-$320–$60=$20.
   

This is only one of the strategies of the contract, there are many other strategies that I won’t show you here. To sum up, the hedging strategy could help us profitable no matter it’s ups or downs, even when the contract hit the liquidation.
However, it should be noted that the options that we’ve mentioned in this article specifically refer to the BTC options (American version) without margin, commission fee, and liquidation mechanism, which are issued globally by BitOffer Exchange. If you choose traditional European options such as from OKEX and JEX, you cannot carry out such contract hedging, and there is a liquidity risk as well.

Formed from the original geek idea, now an industry that is constantly progressing in innovation, there are few such subversive products of Uniswap and ETX that can bring us. To be pleasantly surprised, I really look forward to their success.

Uniswap is arguably the most successful decentralized exchange so far. It is different from the traditional decentralized exchange's "chain order, on-chain matching" trading method. All transaction processes of Uniswap are completed on the chain. The key point is that it uses smart contracts for fund pool matching transactions.
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What is Uniswap's fund pool matching?
It can be understood with a simple formula: a➗b=k. The value of K is the price reflected in real time. Let’s take Ethereum (ETH) as an example. Assuming that there is no ETH/USDT trading pair in Uniswap, we first need to inject liquidity to act as a “market maker”. If we inject 1 ETH and 400 USDT at the same time, then the real-time transaction/exchange price is 1ETH=400USDT; if another market maker injects 400USDT and 0.5USDT liquidity at this time, the price will become (400+400USDT)➗(1+0.5ETH) =533.33USDT. What about players who need 'flash cash'? One-way injection of liquidity can be instantly traded and exchanged for another cryptocurrency of choice. Depending on the amount of funds injected, a certain "slippage" will occur (Editor's note: slippage refers to the point where the order is placed and the last transaction There is a gap between the points). With the increasing size of Uniswap's capital pool, most of the slippage generated by the transaction of ERC20 tokens with a large market value is within 1%. *
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Why Uniswap get succeed?
Uniswap is aimed at the fast exchange needs of price-insensitive users: if you want to make a quick transaction on a centralized exchange, you can only choose the market price and upload your personal privacy information (most centralized exchanges require mobile email authentication, KYC Verified). The market price transaction is fast, but it will inevitably bear higher handling fees and certain "slippage". Instead of this, why not choose Uniswap which is faster, more convenient and safer?
Uniswap is a combination of DEX and DEFI: the user's counterparty is not the user, but the fund pool and algorithm. Providing a fund pool can get a fee share, so a large number of arbitrage players will be attracted to deposit in the fund pool to reduce slippage. In this process, Uniswap does not even need to issue platform currency to attract the entry of the capital pool. It has completed the utopian ideal of "I am for everyone, everyone for me" on the chain; besides, there are many arbitrage market making. Business Tigers is ready to increase the liquidity of the fund pool at any time. Is it the same logic as DEFI? This is the logic of most DEFI products. If I provide DEFI product liquidity, then I can get token rewards for the project.
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Is there any problem with Uniswap that needs to be solved urgently?
Everything has two sides. In the mechanism design of Uniswap, in order to reflect the real market supply and demand, arbitrage almost occupies a key position after each transaction, due to changes in inventory, the model will assign new prices to the transaction assets. If the price deviates from the market price, it will When arbitrage opportunities appear, arbitrageurs can trade at deviated prices, obtain a return on the difference, and make up for the lack of assets into the pool.
Uniswap's arbitrageurs have pushed ETH's gas by almost an order of magnitude, and at the same time caused long-term blockage of the Ethereum network, and users are miserable.
In addition, Uniswap has its limitations. Uniswap is built on the ETH network and cannot complete cross-chain asset transactions. Many public chains that claim to be cross-chain asset transactions often have nothing to do with the hot spots.
The ETX (Ethereumx·NET) POC protocol pool breaks the ice.
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The ETX protocol pool indicates
Is there a decentralized exchange that allows mixed transactions of all different main chains?
The answer is yes.
The difficulty of cross-chain lies in the different protocols used by different digital assets. ETX's economic white paper mentions a feasible method: establishing a protocol pool interactive system. *The 'protocol pool' here has the same effect as Uniswap's fund pool. The agreement is submitted on demand, and the fully decentralized cross-chain transaction may not be far from us.
Blockchain was formed from an initial geek concept and is now an industry that is constantly progressing in innovation. Few products such as Uniswap and ETX can surprise us. The author really looks forward to their success.
*According to data from Coingecko, as of August 11, the total liquidity of UniswapV1 and V2 exceeded 200 million dollars, and the 24-hour trading volume has exceeded 250 million U.S. dollars, almost evenly sharing half of the world in the DEX world.
*According to the ETX economic white paper, after the DEX (Decentralized EXchange) is opened, there will be independent ETX trading pairs in the DEX. At the same time, there will be a certain depth of requirements for each currency connected to the protocol pool. To meet the depth requirements, you need to prepare in advance A certain amount of ETX is entered into the pending order book as the transaction target of the currency, so as to ensure that the transaction is completed immediately.
This article does not constitute investment advice.

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Right now cryptocurrency over the counter OTC is available only to high net worth individuals with some having minimum transaction requirements as high as $250,000 per trade. Such organizations are behind the social curve, they are not diverse and are not inclusive of everyone in the global crypto community. Our vision at EOG is for everyone to trade crypto decentralized peer to peer, and we need feedback from the community to improve our platform!
At Executive OTC Group (EOG) our peer to peer OTC platform for cryptocurrency is open to everyone, no minimums, no upper limits. Our MVP currently supports Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, as well as ERC20 crypto, coins, and tokens built on Ethereum blockchain. We use Tether stablecoin as our primary settlement currency, we are adopting other stablecoin APIs, and are at the forefront of research into Open Bank API integration.
Unlike mainstream Bitcoin Exchanges, at EOG we never hold your fiat money and we never hold your crypto. We use programmable smart contracts settlement, completely eliminating counterparty risk and reducing settlement times from 5 to 7 business days to just 3 to 5 minutes! Decentralized crypto trading is here, join our LinkedIn group to learn more about blockchain, cryptocurrency, and fintech.
EOG mobile smartphone MVP is publicly available in sandbox environment with virtual trades at https://www.eogotc.app (\use your* mobile smartphone and Google Chrome browser).
We would like YOU to try out our platform. Complete one (1) virtual trade, and provide feedback to us on LinkedIn.
If you are trading or investing in cryptocurrency and you share our values of integrity, diversity, and fierce inclusion of everyone in the global cryptocurrency community, check out our website, reach out to us directly at [email protected], and Let’s talk about cryptocurrency! #eogotc
Contact us at any time, Vlad Shaposhnikov (Founder & CEO) LinkedIn, Igor Zaritskyi (Director Business Development) LinkedIn.

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Dear CoinEx users, to keep you updated each week, we will share with you a recap of all the exciting events of the previous week. Below are major events that occured in the ecosystem over the past week.

CoinEx launches $50 million Ecosystem Development Fund to back visionary companies

CoinEx announced the launch of a $50 million Ecosystem Development Fund to back visionary companies whose products and services will facilitate the development of CoinEx’s ecosystem.

Before any investment, our team will conduct a thorough and multi-dimensional assessment of the project to ensure its quality and potential,” said Haipo Yang, Founder and CEO of CoinEx. “Recently we have been focusing mainly on finding promising DeFi projects.

Since the establishment of the Ecosystem Development Fund, the CoinEx team has conducted in-depth researches and analysis on dozens of DeFi projects worldwide. Finally, OneSwap successfully got the first investment from the Fund.
OneSwap is a fully decentralized exchange protocol on smart contract, with permission-free token listing and automated market making.

CoinEx To Host Mining Pools And Exchange Meetup

Themed ‘NiceTo Meet Again”, CoinEx is excited to host China Tour meet up to gather together for blockchain.
First stop — Shanghai
Date: 8 August 2020
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BCH 3rd Anniversary Celebration, 3 Exclusive Events Are Ready for You

As a way of showing gratitude to esteemed users for their long term support, CoinEx will launch a series of exclusive events for BCH 3rd anniversary with big rewards of 20,000 USDT and 20 BCH.
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Event 1: Invite new users to register on CoinEx can share 10,000 USDT
Duration: August 1 — August 10 (UTC)
Event 2: Trade to get 20 BCH airdrop
Duration: August 5 — August 15 (UTC)
Event 3: Conduct Perpetual Contract Trading to share 6,000 USDT
Duration: August 15 — August 25 (UTC)
FULL DETAILS AND RULES HERE

MORE TRADING OPTIONS ONLINE

To provide users with more,better trading and investment options, more projects centered on DeFi were listed after rigorous reviews.

UMA Online: A Protocol for Building Synthetic Assets

UMA is designed to power the financial innovations made possible by permissionless, public blockchains, like Ethereum. Using concepts borrowed from fiat financial derivatives, UMA defines an open-source protocol that allows any two counterparties to design and create their own financial contracts. But unlike traditional derivatives, UMA contracts are secured with economic incentives alone, making them self-enforcing and universally accessible.
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Listing details
About UMA Website | Explorer | White paper

BAL Online: A Protocol for Programmable Liquidity

Balancer is an automated portfolio manager, liquidity provider, and price sensor. Balancer turns the concept of an index fund on its head: instead of a paying fees to portfolio managers to rebalance your portfolio, you collect fees from traders, who rebalance your portfolio by following arbitrage opportunities. Balancer is based on an N-dimensional invariant surface which is a generalization of the constant product formula described by Vitalik Buterin and proven viable by the popular Uniswap dapp.
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Listing details
About BAL Website | Explorer | White paper

CoinEx SERVER UPGRADE

To provide users with a better trading experience and further realize our ambition of building a world-leading digital coin exchange, we carried out an upgrade on our system at 9:00 on July 29, 2020 (UTC). Some related services was suspended at that time. See details of the upgrade here.

NODES MAINTENANCE

SUSPENSION OF ETC Deposit & Withdrawal

As a result of maintenance of ETC nodes, CoinEx suspended deposit and withdrawal of ETC to ensure users’ assets security until completion of maintenance. Trading is not affected.

CoinEx to support Augur (REP) Token Swap to Augur (REPv2)

CoinEx supports the token swap from Augur (REP) to Augur (REPv2), as result, deposit and withdrawalof REP was put on hold until completion of swap.
REP Deposit & Withdrawal: Close on: July 28, 2020 (UTC) Estimated time to reopen: Depends on the swap progress.
Notes: 1. After Augur (REP) has been successfully swapped to Augur (REPv2), REP token name and its trading pairs on CoinEx will remain unchanged. 2. Trading and inter-user transfer of REP on CoinEx will not be affected during this period. 3. We will keep you updated if there’s any latest information.
For more token swap info, please refer to: Countdown: Augur v2 Launch & REP Migration

CoinEx Token CET weekly update

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Important Services

• CoinEx Lending releases: Hold & Yield at any time
• Margin promotion: 10-day FREE borrow for your FIRST margin trade
• Key Account Privileges Online: Honored Identity & Exclusive Services

ABOUT CoinEx

As a global and professional cryptocurrency exchange service provider, CoinEx was founded in December 2017 with Bitmain-led investment and has obtained a legal license in Estonia. It is a subsidiary brand of the ViaBTC Group, which owns the fifth largest BTC mining pool, which is also the largest of BCH mining, in the world.
CoinEx supports perpetual contract, spot, margin trading, and other derivatives trading, and its service reaches global users in nearly 100 countries/regions with various languages available, such as Chinese, English, Korean and Russian.
Click here to register on CoinEx!
Website: https://www.coinex.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/coinexcom
Telegram: https://t.me/CoinExOfficialENG

Author: Gamals Ahmed, Business Ambassador
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One of the key themes in 2020 is the rise of decentralized financing (DeFi), a new type of financing that works on decentralized protocols and without the need for financial intermediaries. Lately, the number of DeFi apps has increased significantly, but many have not been seen or heard by many of us.
In this Article I will be building a list of the best DApps, which will likely lead the next phase. DeFi apps can be categorized into different subcategories such as:

• Finance
• Exchange
• Insurance
• Gambling
• Social

And much more…
Note: Some of the projects in the report categorized into more than one section in the types of dApps.
The rise of DeFi Bitcoin (BTC) was the first implementation of decentralized financing. It enabled individuals to conduct financial transactions with other individuals without the need for a financial intermediary in the digital age. Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies were the first wave of DeFi. The second wave of DeFi was enabled by Ethereum blockchain which added another layer of programmability to the blockchain. Now, at the beginning of 2020, individuals and companies can borrow, lend, trade, invest, exchange and store crypto assets in an unreliable way. In 2020, we can expect the amount of money held in lending protocols to increase as long-term investors diversify into interest-bearing offers, especially if the market fails to rise towards the 2017/18 highs. On the other hand, active crypto traders are becoming increasingly interested in decentralized trading offers. The increasing level of money security offered by decentralized trading platforms should not only see an increase in trading of DApp users, but also in the number of non-custodial trading and exchange platforms available.
Lending: DeFi allows anyone to obtain or provide a loan without third party approval. The vast majority of lending products use common cryptocurrencies such as Ether ($ ETH) to secure outstanding loans through over-collateral. Thanks to the emergence of smart contracts, maintenance margins and interest rates can be programmed directly into a borrowing agreement with liquidations occurring automatically if the account balance falls below the specified collateral. The relative benefit gained from supplying different cryptocurrencies is different for the asset and the underlying platform used.

Compound

Source: https://images.app.goo.gl/SGttwo4JWadHTxYe7
Compound is a money market protocol on the Ethereum blockchain — allowing individuals, institutions, and applications to frictionlessly earn interest on or borrow cryptographic assets without having to negotiate with a counterparty or peer. Each market has a dynamic borrowing interest rate, which floats in real-time as market conditions adjust. Compound focuses on allowing borrowers to take out loans and lenders to provide loans by locking their crypto assets into the protocol. The interest rates paid and received by borrowers and lenders are determined by the supply and demand of each crypto asset. Interest rates are generated with every block mined. Loans can be paid back and locked assets can be withdrawn at any time. While DeFi may seem overwhelming complex to the average individual, Compound prides itself on building a product that is digestible for users of all backgrounds. Compound is a protocol on the Ethereum blockchain that establishes money markets, which are pools of assets with algorithmically derived interest rates, based on the supply and demand for the asset. Suppliers (and borrowers) of an asset interact directly with the protocol, earning (and paying) a floating interest rate, without having to negotiate terms such as maturity, interest rate, or collateral with a peer or counterparty. Built on top of that principle is cTokens, Compound’s native token that allows users to earn interest on their money while also being able to transfer, trade, and use that money in other applications. OVERVIEW ABOUT COMPOUND PROTOCOL Compound Finance is a San Francisco based company, which raised an $8.2 M seed round in May of 2018, and a $25M Series A round in November of 2019. Financing rounds were lead by industry giants including but not limited to Andressen Horowitz, Polychain Capital, Coinbase Ventures and Bain Capital Ventures, Compound Finance is a sector-leading lending protocol enabling users to lend and borrow popular cryptocurrencies like Ether, Dai and Tether. Compound leverages audited smart contracts responsible for the storage, management, and facilitation of all pooled capital. Users connect to Compound through web3 wallets like MetaMask with all positions being tracked using interest-earning tokens called cTokens.
Compound recently introduced a governance token — COMP. It holds no economic benefits and is solely used to vote on protocol proposals. The distribution of COMP has absolutely exceeded expectations on all fronts. Compound is now the leading DeFi protocol both in terms of Total Value Locked and in terms of COMP’s marketcap relative to other DeFi tokens. COMP was recently listed on Coinbase — the leading US cryptocurrency exchange and has seen strong interest from dozens of other exchanges including futures platforms like FTX. Compound’s new governance system is well underway, with close to close to 10 proposals being passed since it’s launch. What’s unique about COMP’s governance model is that tokenholders can delegate their tokens to an address of their choice. Only those who hold more than 1% of the supply can make new proposals. Besides earning interest on your crypto assets, which is a straightforward process of depositing crypto assets on the platform and receiving cTokens, you can also borrow crypto on Compound. Borrowing crypto assets has the added step of making sure the value of your collateral stays above a minimum amount relative to your loan. Compound and DeFi more broadly wants to help people have more access and control over the money they earn and save. While the project has had its criticisms, the long-term goal of Compound has always been to become fully decentralized over time. The Compound team currently manages the protocol, but they plan to eventually transfer all authority over to a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) governed by the Compound community. For following the project:
Website: https://compound.finance/
Medium: https://medium.com/compound-finance
Github: https://github.com/compound-finance/compound-protocol
DEXs: Decentralized exchanges allow users to switch their assets without the need to transfer custody of basic collateral. DEXs aim to provide unreliable and interoperable trading across a wide range of trading pairs.

Kyber

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Kyber is a blockchain-based liquidity protocol that allows decentralized token swaps to be integrated into any application, enabling value exchange to be performed seamlessly between all parties in the ecosystem. Using this protocol, developers can build innovative payment flows and applications, including instant token swap services, ERC20 payments, and financial DApps helping to build a world where any token is usable anywhere. Kyber’s ecosystem is growing rapidly. In about a month, the team got an investment and partnered with some of the best projects. ParaFi Capital, a blockchain-focused investment company, has made a strategic purchase of KNC codes. The company will assist the DeFi project by qualifying new clients and improving professional market manufacture. The project’s recent partnerships seem impressive. Includes Chainlink, Chicago DeFi Alliance, and Digifox Wallet.
An important DeFi integration was also made with MakerDAO. KNC can now be used as a DAI warranty. The project has reached a milestone worth $ 1 billion of total turnover since its inception. More importantly, volume on an annual basis is moving and accelerating from $ 70 million in the first year to more than $ 600 million in 2020. Recently five million KNC (about 2.4% of total supply) were burned, improving Kyber’s supply and demand ratio. In July, the Kyber network witnessed a Katalyst upgrade that will improve governance, signature, delegation and structural improvements.
When Katalyst hits the main network, users will be able to either vote directly or delegate tokens to shareholder groups led by either companies like Stake Capital or community members. The KNC used to vote is burned, and in turn, voters get ETH as a reward. This setting creates a model for staking an uncommon contraction for the Kyber network. KyberDAO will facilitate chain governance, like many other projects based on Ethereum. An interesting partnership with xToken has been set up to help less-participating users stake out via xKNC. xKNC automatically makes specific voting decisions, making it easier for users to join and enjoy the return. The pool was created to draw BTC to Curve. Users who do this are eligible for returns in SNX, REN, CRV, and BAL. The more BTC lock on Synthetix, the more liquid it becomes, and the more attractive it is for traders. The project plans to continue expanding its products and move towards more decentralization. Synthetix futures are scheduled to appear on the exchange within a few months. The initial leverage is expected to be 10 to 20 times. The team aims to neglect its central oracle and replace it with one from Chainlink during the second stage of the migration. This will significantly increase the decentralization and flexibility of the platform. For following the project:
Website: https://kyber.network/
Medium: https://blog.kyber.network/
Github: https://github.com/kybernetwork
Derivatives: In traditional finance, a derivative represents a contract where the value is derived from an agreement based on the performance of an underlying asset. There are four main types of derivative contracts: futures, forwards, options, and swaps.

Synthetix

Source: https://images.app.goo.gl/1UsxQ7a3M5veb5sC7
Synthetix is a decentralized artificial asset issuance protocol based on Ethereum. These synthetic assets are guaranteed by the Synthetix Network (SNX) code which enables, upon conclusion of the contract, the release of Synths. This combined collateral model allows users to make transfers between Compound directly with the smart contract, avoiding the need for counterparties. This mechanism solves DEX’s liquidity and sliding issues. Synthetix currently supports artificial banknotes, cryptocurrencies (long and short) and commodities.
SNX holders are encouraged to share their tokens as part of their proportionate percentage of activity fees are paid on Synthetix.Exchange, based on their contribution to the network. It contains three DApp applications for trading, signature and analysis: Exchange (Synths at no cost). Mintr (SNX lock for tuning and fee collection). Synthetix Network Token is a great platform in the ethereum ecosystem that leverages blockchain technology to help bridge the gap between the often mysterious cryptocurrency world and the more realistic world of traditional assets. That is, on the Synthetix network, there are Synths, which are artificial assets that provide exposure to assets such as gold, bitcoin, US dollars, and various stocks such as Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). The whole idea of these artificial assets is to create shared assets where users benefit from exposure to the assets, without actually owning the asset.
It is a very unique idea, and a promising project in the ethereum landscape. Since it helps bridge the gap between cryptocurrencies and traditional assets, it creates a level of familiarity and value that is often lost in the assets of other digital currencies. This will make Synthetix take his seat in the next stage. On June 15, BitGo announced support for SNX and on June 19, Synthetix announced via blog post that Synthetix, Curve, and Ren “collaborated to launch a new stimulus group to provide liquidity for premium bitcoin on Ethereum”, and said the goal was to “create the most liquid Ethereum — the BTC-based suite available to provide traders with the lowest slippage” In trade between sBTC, renBTC and WBTC. “ For following the project:
Website: https://www.synthetix.io/
Blog: https://blog.synthetix.io/
Github: https://github.com/Synthetixio
Wallets: Wallets are a crucial gateway for interacting with DeFi products. While they commonly vary in their underlying product and asset support, across the board we’ve seen drastic improvements in usability and access thanks to the growing DeFi narrative.

Argent

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Source: https://images.app.goo.gl/mYPaWecFfwRqnUTx6
It is the startup for consumer game-changing financial technology, which makes decentralized web access safer and easier. The company has built a smart and easy-to-use mobile wallet for Ethereum, which gives users the ability to easily retrieve their encrypted currencies on the go.
Argent Benefits:

• Only you control your assets
• Explore DeFi with one click
• Easily retrieve and close your wallet
• The wallet pays gas for in-app features, for example Compound and Maker

The Argent crypto wallet simplifies the process without sacrificing security. It is a type of wallet that allows you to keep cryptographic keys while keeping things simple. The Argent wallet is secured by something called the Guardians. If you lose your phone (and your Argent wallet), just contact your guardians to confirm your identity. Then you can get all your money back on another device. It is a simple and intuitive method that can make cryptocurrency manipulation easier to do without experience. Argent is focused on the Ethereum blockchain and plans to support everything Ethereum has to offer. Of course, you can send and receive ETH. The startup wants to hide the complexity on this front, as it covers transaction fees (gas) for you and gives you usernames. This way, you don’t have to set a transaction fee to make sure it expires. Insurance cooperative Nexus Mutual and Argent Portfolio Provider are planning to offer a range of smart and insurance contracts to keep Argent user money safe from hackers. First, the smart contract is designed to prevent thieves from draining the wallet by temporarily freezing transfers above the daily spending limit for addresses not listed in the user’s whitelist. The user has 24 hours to cancel the frozen transfer — very similar to the bank’s intervention and prevent fraud on the card or similar suspicious activities in the account. By contrast, the default coding state is closer to criticism: once it disappears, it disappears. “We are thinking not only of crypto users but also new users — so the ultimate goal is to duplicate what they get from their bank,” said Itamar Lisuis, one of the founders of Argent. For following the project:
Website: https://www.argent.xyz/
Medium: https://medium.com/argenthq
Github: https://github.com/argentlabs/
Asset Management: With such a vast amount of DeFi products, it’s crucial that tools are in place to better track and manage assets. In line with the permissionless nature of the wider DeFi ecosystem, these assets management projects provide users with the ability to seamlessly track their balances across various tokens, products and services in an intuitive fashion.

InstaDapp

Source: https://images.app.goo.gl/VP9Xwih6VQ1Zmv2E9
It is a smart wallet for DeFi that allows users to seamlessly manage multiple DeFi applications to maximize returns across different protocols in a fraction of the time. With InstaDapp, users can take advantage of industry-leading projects like Compound, MakerDAO and Uniswap in one easy-to-use portal. Instadapp currently supports dapps MakerDAO and Compound DeFi, allowing users to add collateral, borrow, redeem and redeem their collateral on each dapp, as well as refinance debt positions between the two. In addition to its ease of use, InstaDapp also adds additional benefits and use cases for supported projects that are not already supported. The project focuses on making DeFi easier for non-technical users by maintaining a decentralized spirit while stripping many of the confusing terms that many products bring with them.
InstaDapp has launched a one-click and one-transaction solution that allows users to quadruple the COMP Codes they can earn from using quadruple borrowing and lending. A good timing feature for sure, but this kind of simplification is exactly why Instadapp was created. Its goal is to create a simple interface into multiple DeFi applications running on the Ethereum Blockchain and then automate complex interactions in a way that enables users to maximize their profits while reducing transactions and Ethereum gas charges. To use Instadapp you will need Ethereum wallet and you will also have to create what is called Instadapp smart wallet in which token you want to use. For following the project:
Website: https://instadapp.io/
Medium: https://medium.com/instadapp
Github: https://github.com/instadapp
Savings: There are a select few DeFi projects which offer unique and novel ways to earn a return by saving cryptocurrencies. This differs from lending as there is no borrower on the other side of the table.

Dharma

Source: https://images.app.goo.gl/4JhfFNxPfE9oxoqV6
Dharma is an easy-to-use layer above the compound protocol. It introduces new and non-technical users to transaction encryption and allows them to easily borrow or lend in DeFi markets and earn interest in stable currencies. You can start by simply using a debit card. Funds are kept in a non-portfolio portfolio, which constantly earns interest on all of your deposited assets. The value of Dharma’s DeFi lending experience is:

• Easy entry.
• Simple wallet.
• High protection.
• Depositing and withdrawing banknotes.

Dharma, the prominent DeFi cryptobank bank, has made it extremely easy to bring any Twitter user into the crypto world. Dharma users can send money from the Dharma app by searching for any Twitter handle, setting the required amount, and clicking on one button. The Twitter Dharma Bot account can send a unique notification with a link to download the Dharma mobile app. Senders are encouraged to retweet the notification to ensure that the receiver does not lose it.
To raise money, recipients simply download the Dharma app. After creating a Dharma account, users connect their Twitter account to receive access to the money sent. They can choose to transfer money to US dollars and withdraw to a bank account, or leave DAI in a Dharma account where it will earn interest like all Dharma deposits. The submitted DAI will gain interest even before the receiving user requests it while waiting for the claim. In her ad, Dharma demonstrated a number of ways in which the new social payments feature can be used, including tips for your favorite Twitter personalities, accepting payments for goods or services in a very clear way, charitable donations across borders or transfer payments. The Dharma app is available for both Android and iOS. Dharma and Compound
Dharma generates interest by DAI signing the Compound Protocol. Dharma also appeared in the news recently after the release of a specification outlining a Layer 2 expansion solution allowing the platform to expand to handle current transaction volume 10x, ensuring users can transfer their money quickly even in times of heavy congestion on the Ethereum network. Dharma is developing its “core” and “underwriting” contracts within the company. Underwriting contracts are open source and non-custodian, while each loan contract is closed source. This means that the receiving address contains nodes that interact with a script on a central Dharma server.For following the project:
Website: https://dharma.io/
Medium: https://medium.com/dharma-blog
Github: https://github.com/dharmaprotocol
Insurance: Decentralized insurance protocols allow users to take out policies on smart contracts, funds, or any other cryptocurrencies through pooled funds and reserves.

Nexus Mutual

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Source: https://images.app.goo.gl/b7HwB8ifvTXwFhrh6
Nexus Mutual uses blockchain technology to return mutual values to insurance by creating consistent incentives with the smart contract symbol on the Ethereum blockchain. It is built on the Ethchaum blockchain and uses a modular system to aggregate smart Ethereum nodes, allowing to upgrade the system’s logical components without affecting other components.
The way Nexus works is members of the mutual association by purchasing NXM codes that allow them to participate in the decentralized independent organization (DAO). All decisions are voted on by members, who are motivated to pay real claims. It sees plenty of opportunities in a gradual transition of Ethereum to Eth 2.0, which is expected to start later this year. Eth 2.0 moves the network from the power-hungry Proof-of-Consensus (PoW) algorithm to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), a way to sign cryptocurrency in order to keep the network afloat. Having a steady return on signature from the Ether (ETH) can be somewhat compared to the way in which insurance companies invest in the real world the premiums they collect.
By setting a strong set of conditions for Nexus Mutual, anyone will be able to bring in and acquire a new form of risk for mutual coverage — assuming that members are willing to share NXM. With this design, the mutual discretion will be able to expand into much broader fields beyond smart contracts. In addition to defining multi-layered term agreements, Nexus Mutual also has some other advantages needed to achieve this visualization. For following the project:
Website: https://nexusmutual.io/
Medium: https://medium.com/nexus-mutual
Github: https://github.com/NexusMutual
Disclaimer: This report is a study of what is happening in the market at the present time and we do not support or promote any of the mentioned projects or cryptocurrencies. Any descriptions of the jobs and services provided are for information only. We are not responsible for any loss of funds or other damages caused.
Resources:
https://compound.finance/
https://kyber.network/
https://instadapp.io/
https://www.synthetix.io/
https://www.argent.xyz/
https://dharma.io/
https://nexusmutual.io/