Finance Redefined: Uniswap builds token-swap feature for Ukraine, LUNA surpasses Ether, and more
In this week’s newsletter, we will explore some of the key developments from the DeFi space that had an impact on the Ukraine donations and look at some of the trendsetters in our industry.
The crypto community has emerged as one of the leading aid providers for Ukrainians, as crypto donations surged over $50 million. This week, many in the decentralized finance, or DeFi, community have come forward to donate and make it simpler for other people to donate to Ukraine.
LUNA continued its price dominance with another double-digit surge over the past week and also flipped Ether to become the most staked altcoin. 1Inch launched a new secure peer-to-peer, or P2P, swap that the firm claimed could open the gates to several new use cases.
Uniswap builds an interface to swap altcoins into ETH donations for Ukraine
On Tuesday, decentralized exchange, or DEX, Uniswap launched an interface which directly converts ERC-20 tokens into Ether (ETH) and sends them to the official crypto wallet addresses of the Ukrainian government, all in a single transaction.
Uniswap claimed that the address shared by Ukraine is located on a centralized exchange and only accepts Ether and Tether (USDT). Thus, the feature simplifies the donation process for anyone holding ERC-20 tokens on Uniswap’s list and who wishes to donate by connecting their wallet to the DEX. Ukraine later rolled out support for donations in Polkadot (DOT) as well. Polkadot’s founder, Gavin Wood, personally donated $5.8 million in DOT to the newly supported address.
LUNA flips Ethereum, becoming the second-largest network for staked value
Terra (LUNA) has flipped Ethereum in terms of staked value with $29.5 billion worth of LUNA locked up compared to Ether’s $25.9 billion, as per data from Staking Reward.
The platform’s data shows that there are currently 226,325 LUNA stakers, making it the second most staked crypto asset with more than four times the number of those staking ETH at 54,768. Solana leads the staking charts with $35 billion in staked value.
In terms of annual staking rewards, LUNA is estimated to yield 6.62% on average, while Ethereum fetches 4.81%. The most rewarding out of the top 10 staked assets is Polkadot with 13.92%. Data indicated that interest in LUNA has surged of late. Over the past seven days, LUNA’s TVL has increased 26.905% and sits well above third-placed BNB Smart Chain (BSC) at $12.03 billion worth of TVL.
1inch Network adds a P2P feature to facilitate secure crypto swaps
1inch Network introduced peer-to-peer order functionality within the 1inch decentralized application, or DApp. This feature allows users to specify the person or wallet that will fill the other side of the trade, as opposed to over-the-counter, or OTC, payments where 1inch matches the order with a taker.
The company website said the new feature “opens the door to a whole new world” of possible use cases including transactions within NFT marketplaces, auctions or reverse auctions. Although other services like Binance Pay or Bybit support P2P payments, the company said that they have “stepped in to fill the gap” in demand for this kind of service.
1inch claimed that their P2P service offers trustless swaps backed by smart contracts and complete decentralization. Users can send orders via email or to any messenger using URLs that bypass 1inch’s backend.
DeFi market overview:
Analytical data shows that DeFi’s total value locked has decreased across the week, reaching a figure of $110.86 billion.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView reveals that DeFi’s top 100 tokens by market capitalization performed reasonably well across the last seven days.
UMA was the biggest gainer with a weekly surge of 110%, followed by Thorchain (THOR) which gained 62.5% over the past week. LUNA continued its dominance with another week of double-digit gains and posted a 40% surge. Oasis Network (ROSE) took the fourth spot with a 15% rise followed by Chainlink (LINK) at 6.7%.
Before you go!
While the DeFi ecosystem continues to make new breakthroughs, a rising controversy around the blocking of IP addresses for users in sanctioned countries has led to much discussion over the past 24 hours. MetaMask and Infure reportedly blocked Venenzulean users, sparking a debate over the promised decentralization of these products.
In response to the concerns we have been hearing, we want everyone to know that we corrected the problem that so many of you have pointed out. In changing some configurations as a result of the new sanctions directives from the United States and other jurisdictions, we
— Infura (@infura_io) March 3, 2022
The decentralization debate is a part of the larger discussion of whether crypto platforms that claim to be decentralized and borderless must adhere to every government-enforced sanction.
Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us again next Friday for more stories, insights and education in this dynamically advancing space.
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Author: Prashant Jha
