DEX aims to take on Uniswap with its concentrated liquidity bet

April 21, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Concentrated liquidity has become the latest trend in the DeFi world with several projects shifting to the new liquidity model on various blockchains.

Decentralized exchange (DEX) protocols have become a key part of the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem where liquidity and liquidity providers play a pivotal role in keeping the vastly growing space moving.

While DEX protocols have seen billions in daily trading volume, the liquidity market is making a gradual shift from traditional liquidity methods toward concentrated liquidity. Earlier liquidity was distributed uniformly along the price curve between zero and infinity while in the new system liquidity is allocated within a custom price range.

For example, In the case of a stablecoin/stablecoin pair, a liquidity provider (LP) can decide to allocate capital entirely to the $0.99 - $1.01 range. As a result, traders will have more liquidity around the mid-price, and LPs will earn more trading fees with their cash.

The concentrated liquidity formula aims to improve capital efficiency by compensating for the original formula's shortcomings. Liquidity can now be assigned to a price interval in the new model, resulting in a concentrated liquidity position. LPs can open as many positions in the pool as they want, allowing them to create their own price curves based on their specific needs and preferences.

Uniswap switched to concentrated liquidity with its move to V3 in May last year and has already been reaping the benefits, seeing a 500% increase in daily volume after the switch. Similarly, another DEX called Algebra has come forward to put its contentions in the DEX race with concentrated liquidity integration.

On one hand, Uniswap works on top of Ethereum, while Algebra chose Polygon as its base layer. The new DEX claims to be more efficient with its dynamic pricing, built-in farming and cross-chain integration support.

Talking about the major advantages of Algebra over Uniswap, Alexandra Korneva, the co-founder of the DEX told Cointelegraph:

“Uniswap doesn’t have on-platform farming, so users have to apply to external smart contracts to farm tokens. To improve this situation, Algebra has introduced built-in farming; allowing users to push their extra tokens to pools and earn rewards. You don’t need to access external platforms to farm and gain profit.”

Concentrated liquidity pools seem to be the latest trend among the DEX players as not just on Ethereum, there have been several concentrated liquidity projects on Solana and Binance Smart Chain as well.

ETH Continues to Leave Trading Platforms, Ethereum Balance on Exchanges Lowest in 3 Years

March 19, 2022 Bitcoin.com

Terra, Avalanche and Osmosis lead the L1 recovery while Bitcoin searches for support

March 5, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Altcoin Watch

LUNA, AVAX and OSMO have outperformed most altcoins, hinting that a DeFi revival could be in store.

The layer-one (L1) ecosystem has received increased attention in recent months as users search for new investment opportunities in the Cosmos (ATOM), Fantom (FTM) and NEAR.

Following January's market sell-off, where Bitcoin (BTC) price dropped to bottom below $34,000, much of the L1 field has struggled to regain its momentum.

*Price performance of L1 tokens since Jan. 24. Source: Delphi Digital*

According to data from Delphi Digital, since the BTC bottom on Jan. 24, the only L1 to experience a notable gain in price include Terra (LUNA), Avalanche (AVAX) and Ethereum (ETH).

Terra ecosystem growth

The price growth seen in LUNA was in large part due to the announcement from the Luna Foundation Guard that it had raised $1 billion to form a Bitcoin reserve for the ecosystem’s Terra USD (UST) stablecoin.

Terra also saw the launch of its second lockdrop event and the Mars Protocol helped drive demand for LUNA token.

The $1 billion in reserves for UST was also a boon for Anchor Protocol (ANC), the Terra-based platform that is the main avenue for minting UST through pledging LUNA or Ether. Anchor also got an added boost to its price after announcing that developers are in the process of integrating AVAX as a collateral option for creating UST.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that since hitting a low of $1.18 on Jan. 28, the price of ANC has catapulted 268% to hit a daily high at $4.35 on March 2 where it was halted at a major resistance level.

*ANC/USDT 1-day chart. Source: TradingView*

Aside from its integration with Anchor, Avalanche has had several notable developments that have helped drive its growth since late January, including an integration with Wirex and the announcement that DeFi Kingdoms will launch on the Avalanche network.

According to Delphi Digital, based on its recent price performance, “AVAX seems to move with a higher correlation to BTC relative to other L1s.”

Osmosis and the Cosmos ecosystem

Data from Delphi Digital shows that Osmosis, a decentralized exchange in the Cosmos ecosystem, has “outperformed other major peers over the last few months by a substantial margin.”

*OSMO/USDT performance vs. other cryptocurrencies. Source: Delphi Digital*

The strength shown by OSMO is in part due to the success of Cosmos, which had a strong close to 2021 as its “thesis of interoperable app-chains has finally started to come to fruition in recent months.

Osmosis is now the largest decentralized exchange in the Cosmos ecosystem and supports 37 separate IBC chains with $1.75 billion in total value locked according to data from Defi Llama.

*Total value locked on Osmosis. Source: Defi Llama*

Osmosis also got a boost to its price and trading volume following the release of interchain and superfluid staking on March 1, which allows liquidity providers (LP) on the Osmosis DEX to also earn staking rewards for the assets they have provided liquidity for, making this the first time users can do both staking and LP at the same time.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Altcoin Roundup: JunoSwap, Solidly and VVS Finance give DeFi a much-needed refresh

March 4, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Altcoin Watch

DeFi is undergoing a revival and this time, it’s happening on Ethereum network competitors.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) was the talk of the town in early 2021, but it has since taken a back seat to more appealing sectors like nonfungible tokens (NFTs), memecoins and blockchain gaming.

Now that cross-chain bridges and interoperability have allowed for the easier migration of assets to competing chains, a new class of DeFi protocols is arising to challenge those left from 2021.

Here’s a look at three DeFi projects that have launched on some of the up-and-coming layer-1 blockchain networks, catching the eye of the crypto community.

VVS Finance

VVS Finance is the largest DeFi protocol on the Cronos network, a project that emerged out of the Crypto.com ecosystem which has since been fully rebranded to Cronos (CRO).

The goal of VVS Finance is to offer instant swaps with low fees, low slippage and attractive yields for liquidity providers (LPs).

As a reward for providing liquidity, two-thirds of swap fees collected on the exchange are distributed to the LPs of the respective pools and LP tokens can also be locked in the protocol’s Crystal Farms to earn VVS rewards.

VVS holders also have the ability to single stake their tokens in the “Glitter Mines,” where they can currently auto-compound for 65.78%. Future plans include the addition of VVS rewards for those who swap tokens through the exchange.

According to data from DefiLlama, the current TVL for VVS finance is $1.35 billion, accounting for more than half of the $2.37 billion in value locked on the Chronos network.

*Total value locked on VVS Finance. Source: DefiLlama*

The steady rise in TVL on VVS has come as the protocol has added support for new assets including Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIBA), TrueUSD (TUSD) and Cardano (ADA).

Solidly

Solidly is a decentralized exchange (DEX) on the Fantom network and it claims to offer “low fees, near-zero slippage on correlated assets and a strong focus on secondary markets for tokenized locks as NFTs.”

In simpler terms, Solidly is designed to function as an interface for swapping stablecoins and other crypto assets.

The DEX is the latest creation by Andre Cronje, DeFi architect and founder of Yearn.finance. It was launched in January 2022 with the goal of offering fair and balanced access to decentralized finance.

The protocol’s focus on stablecoins has thrust it into the Curve Wars debate with its own twist. This comes at the time when Solidly Wars have broken out among the Fantom DeFi community, with the Solidex protocol currently accounting for 33.74% of all Solidly emissions.

Despite launching just a little over a month ago, the total value locked (TVL) on the protocol recently hit a high of $2.19 billion and saw more than $317 million in volume on March 3 as the wider crypto market experienced a sell-off.

*Total liquidity and 24-hour trading volume on Solidly. Source: Solidly*

SOLID, the native token, holders can stake their tokens on the network for varying lock-up periods ranging from one week to four years. They are also able to receive vested equity nonfungible tokens (veNFT) that represent the staked assets and confer voting rights.

Liquidity providers are also rewarded with veNFTs and earn between 40% and 100% based on their own ve-token balance. Fees generated from activity on the Solidly exchange are distributed to veNFT token holders.

Juno

Juno is a decentralized, public and permissionless network for cross-chain smart contracts that is part of the Cosmos ecosystem. While it is not necessarily a DeFi-specific protocol, Juno has enabled the creation of multiple decentralized applications (DApps) and DeFi protocols like Junoswap with others currently in development.

The protocol was created by a group of developers, validators and delegators within the Cosmos ecosystem to become a kind of sister hub to the Cosmos Hub, which can help “preserve the neutrality of the Hub by offloading smart contract usage/congestion to a designated contract zone.”

Juno is also home to CosmWasm, a program that enables WebAssembly (WASM) virtual machines in the Cosmos SDK. The addition of WASM allows software to be written in many different coding languages, making it so that developers don’t need to learn a new language just to build on Cosmos.

Activity for the JUNO token saw a noticeable uptick near the end of December 2021, climbing from a price of $7.70 on Dec. 20 to a record-high of $45.85 on March 3.

*JUNO/USD 1-day chart. Source: CoinGecko*

Alongside interest in the cross-chain smart contract capabilities of Juno, investors have also been attracted to the protocol for several high-profile airdrops that have been distributed to JUNO holders and stakers such as the GovDrop for Neta (NETA) and Marble DAO.

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3 reasons why Lido DAO Token could be on the verge of breaking its downtrend

February 26, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Altcoin Watch

LIDO price made a double-digit move after the liquid staking platform added support for KSM and partnered with Apricot Finance to form a lending marketplace for SOL.

Ethereum (ETH) and decentralized finance (DeFi) are undergoing a seismic shift as the transition to Eth2 and a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism is helping to increase the value proposition for the network which has historically has been plagued with scaling issues and high transaction costs.

Alongside this transition has been the introduction of liquid staking, which is helping to add utility to DeFi and giving investors the option to do more with their assets than just lock them up indefinitely. Liquid staking could also help investors build more capital efficient portfolios.

One protocol that has benefited from the shift toward liquid staking is Lido (LDO), a platform that allows investors to earn staking rewards on their tokens while also enabling them to put the resulting LP tokens to work in a variety decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the price of LDO has rallied 28% from a low of $1.27 on Feb. 21 to a daily high of $1.64 on Feb. 22.

*LDO/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView*

Three reasons for the price reversal for LDO include the launch of support for Kusama (KSM) staking, an increase in the total value locked on the protocol and the rising popularity of liquid staking in the cryptocurrency market.

LIDO adds KSM staking

The most recent development to come from the Lido platform was the addition of support for Kusama liquid staking.

Lido for Kusama on Moonriver is here ️

Stake your KSM with Lido for daily rewards and to put your staked assets to use across the Kusama DeFi space.

Learn more here: https://t.co/BOqLg6oFAv
— Lido (@LidoFinance) February 18, 2022

This integration was made possible through a developmental partnership with the Moonriver Network, a protocol that focuses on compatibility between Kusama and the Ethereum (ETH) network.

KSM holders who choose to stake on Lido will be able to continuously earn staking rewards at an APR of 18% while also being able to use the staked Kusama (stKSM) on various DeFi platforms to earn additional yields.

Other benefits include staking without the delay of bonding and un-bonding periods and the ability to maximize staking rewards through Lido’s dynamic reallocation to the most profitable KSM validator nodes.

TVL soars

A second metric to note is the total value locked on the platform. Lido's current TVL stands at $10.97 billion according to data from Defi Llama.

*Total value locked on Lido. Source: Defi Llama.*

After reaching a peak of $13.26 billion on Dec. 26, 2021, the total value locked on Lido fell to a low of $7.74 billion on Jan. 31 as the market-wide sell-off significantly reduced the value of tokens held on the protocol.

Since that time, the TVL has recovered to $10.97 billion, despite the fact that the total market cap of the cryptocurrency market has remained flat. The addition of new assets like KSM could be a reason for the rising TVL.

Lido also supports Ether, Terra (LUNA) and Solana (SOL).

Liquid staking makes interacting with DeFi more pragmatic

Another factor helping bring a boost of momentum to LDO is the rising popularity of liquid staking.

*History of searches for liquid staking. Source: Google Trends*

Prior to the addition of liquid staking, token holders had to choose between earning rewards through single staking on the network and removing them from circulation, or by putting them to work in DeFi protocols through paired liquidity pools.

With liquid staking, investors can benefit from the best of both worlds by staking tokens to help secure the network along with the ability to earn a yield by in DeFi by pledging staked assets as collateral.

For example, users who stake Solana (SOL) on Lido can also lend their stSOL on Apricot Finance for an additional APR of 32%. There is also a proposal vote on AAVE that suggests adding stETH as collateral on the AAVE v2 marketplace.

If Lido continues to add multi-chain assets for staking and liquid staking, it could open the door for further price appreciation from the platform's native LDO token.

Furthermore, as the cryptocurrency ecosystem continues to embrace the transition to POS, liquid staking is likely to rise in popularity, which might also result in future gains for LDO.

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Softbank backed startup to offer retail crypto trading

February 8, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

DriveWealth aims to be a crypto liquidity provider to compete with Coinbase while giving its partners’ retail clients the ability to trade crypto on their platforms.

Stock brokerage firm DriveWealth has entered the cryptocurrency industry by launching two subsidiaries designed to allow its partners to offer crypto trading to retail investors.

DriveWealth is a New Jersey-based company backed by Japanese tech giant Softbank and is valued at $2.85 billion.

The push into the crypto space was motivated by traders who are forced to trade across what DriveWealth CEO Bob Cortright told CNBC is an “unsustainable” transaction spread on Coinbase. He continued:

“As regulatory environments tighten around crypto and customers get more focused on spreads and efficiency, we can’t continue in a world where you can charge 200 basis points on a transaction.”

Coinbase is the largest US-based crypto exchange and charges fees as high as 4.5% of the transaction value plus a spread fee on its platform. The exchange earned 88% of its $1.2 billion in total revenue from those transaction fees in Q3, according to its financial report at the time.

The new crypto offerings are made possible by DriveWealth’s recent acquisition of Crypto-Systems, a separate crypto startup. Through that acquisition, DriveWealth launched its DriveLiquidity subsidiary which will provide liquidity for partners wishing to invest in and trade crypto assets.

DriveWealth has also launched DriveDigital as a subsidiary crypto exchange. It plans on providing API (application programming interface) access to its partners to allow retail investors to make trades on Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).

Cortright said that an increasing number of companies across various fields are requesting access to crypto liquidity to let their users trade or earn crypto rewards. He continued:

“Even the established, large e-commerce players are finding that, when surveying their clients, a huge percentage want to own some crypto.”

If it intends on competing with Coinbase, DriveWealth has a veritable uphill battle to climb. The exchange had over 68 million users as of Q3 2021. Coinbase (COIN) also touts a $39 billion market cap with an enterprise valuation of about $36.5 billion.

Battle of the bots: WTF token launch drains 58 ETH

January 14, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Airdrop

The WTF token airdrop got off to a wild launch. Users reportedly lost thousands of dollars while one bot disappeared with 58 ETH.

Fees.wtf is a simple service that shows Ether (ETH) users their lifetime spend on Ethereum blockchain transactions by measuring gas. You plug in your wallet address on their website and they tell me how much gas you spent.

The project released their token, WTF, in an airdrop Friday at midnight. Essentially, users would be able to claim WTF tokens as well as a “Rekt” NFT for 0.01 ETH. The Rekt NFT grants lifetime access to the pro version of fees.wtf.

According to their Discord announcement, the initial launch would offer 100 million of WTF and the “circulating supply will be the main attraction in the tokenomics.” However, it didn’t quite go to plan.

Following a series of frantic trading behavior between bots in the opening hours of the airdrop, one bot ran off with a reported 58 ETH, or $180,000. On Etherscan, 58 ETH was drained from the wrapped ETH (WETH) to the WTF liquidity pool.

Social media channels were quick to respond because many airdrop participants lamented losing thousands of dollars in ETH. The WTF team chimed in two hours after the airdrop to calm their ranks:

“Immediately on launch there was only a tiny bit of liquidity and there were ape bots that were chucking in 100s of ETH into a pool with an ETH or two of liquidity. They also had high slippage and ended up being sandwiched by the other bots which essentially drained all their ETH.”

Basically, within five minutes of the token launch, poor liquidity pool management from the WTF devs left the liquidity pool exposed. As there was low liquidity, bots were able to manipulate the price of WTF to then sell for WETH.

The bots would battle it out till one winner would take home the pot. In effect, the bot stole from users who provided liquidity to the pool, trying to claim their WTF tokens and Rekt NFT. The victor managed to send an “ultra-fast transaction at 3,000 Gwei”, making a 6x return on their initial investment.

The WTF team sent out another Discord update two hours after the airdrop, stating that “The core contracts are all fine, this was a war on Uniswap.” The team added, “We hope no one was affected by it.” However, as has become a common occurrence in airdrops of late, lots of users lost a lot of money.

The price graph of the token since launch paints a thousand words. The initial spike shows the bot activity, swiftly followed by a 10x loss in value.

The official WTF Discord group is brimming with users sharing stories of losing money. Some are “shaking” with rage while death threats and lawsuit claims are rife.

One Etherscan transaction points to one user losing 42 ETH, or $135,000, for 0.000044170848308398 WTF, effectively $0.01.

As daylight dawns on the project, some Twitter users have called out the project as a Ponzi scheme. The referral element to the project is spurious. Referrers of the WTF project claim a 50% on fees “to make wtf go viral,” while the WTF team earns 4% from each transfer. In total, the WTF team claimed almost half a million in token transfer fees in a little over 8 hours.

Twitter user Lefteris Karapetsas didn’t mince his words:

Summing up.

WTF "team" made an app any dev can do in 1 hour
Slapped a token + ponzinomics on it
Anons aped without thinking and lost ETH in gas and claim fees
Team has so far made 116 ETH + 6,168,806 WTF. Roughly around $855,665 and this is getting bigger by the second
— Lefteris Karapetsas | Hiring for @rotkiapp (@LefterisJP) January 14, 2022

The WTF project states merely that the supply of tokens is “deflationary”, and that 40 million WTF tokens will go to their treasury. There is not a great deal of detail regarding the token distribution. Meows.ETH concluded their Twitter thread with a zen approach to the controversial project launch:

“If you were fortunate enough to claim a big amount of $WTF and cash it out for a profit, be happy. Unless you're attempting to bot the initial liquidity, don't FOMO into buying a newly launched altcoin with high slippage.”

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Liquidity

Terra ecosystem growth

Osmosis and the Cosmos ecosystem

VVS Finance

Solidly

Juno

Want more information about trading and investing in crypto markets?

LIDO adds KSM staking

TVL soars

Liquid staking makes interacting with DeFi more pragmatic

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