5 October 2020, Hong Kong – Genesis Block is excited to announce the appointment of our Strategic Advisor, Michael Gu of Boxmining. He is one of the leading experts in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space. His Boxmining website and YouTube channel provides the latest insights and resources on digital assets, decentralized finance and blockchain technology, as well as educational resources suitable for complete beginners to seasoned enthusiasts. The YouTube platform alone has grown into a leading resource with over 216,000 subscribers and 21 million views. In addition to that, the website, Boxmining.com, Twitter pages and discussion groups makes Boxmining the leading one-stop ecosystem for anyone interested in learning more about crypto and staying ahead with the latest trends.
We will be collaborating with Boxmining to create content and exchange information on the crypto industry and digital assets. Our collaboration is one step further in building a bigger and better crypto community in Hong Kong. You can keep up with our updates by following our social media channels.
About Boxmining
Boxmining was founded by Michael Gu and started on YouTube as a passion project, and has now grown to be a top informational resource in the realm of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. The creation of Boxmining was to bring unbiased and accurate information to the community as Michael noticed such information is hard to come by. What also makes Boxmining so unique is that it is able to close the knowledge gap between China and the West, bringing you the full global image of the crypto space.
The founder, Michael, has been involved in the digital asset and blockchain space since 2012, and he started his journey with Bitcoin mining in grad school. Over the years, Michael garnered tremendous experience and through his hard work and dedication to the industry. He has developed a solid reputation as an analyst in this space and has been featured in various international media, such as Forbes, Cointelegraph, TechBullion, Disrupt Magazine and on China’s Phoenix TV. But his ambition was by no means satisfied, he wanted to share his crypto journey and insights, hoping to bring more attention to this space. Hence he created a YouTube channel called, Boxmining.
Boxmining YouTube posts videos covering topics on the latest cryptocurrency trends, interesting projects, collaborations with other crypto leaders, and educational guides. It goes live every Monday and Friday at 3:00 am (UTC), with other content during the week as well.
Boxmining.com is a complement to the Boxmining YouTube channel. It gives Michael the platform to cover wider topics with more detail. It is suitable for crypto enthusiasts to consume more in-depth insights and reviews on cryptocurrency, trends, products etc. and even those who are newer looking for guidance on how to get started. The website relies on Michael and his team of talented contributors to provide the latest breaking news and insights.
Besides the Boxmining website, YouTube channel, you can also follow them on their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to keep up with the latest updates. Michael also firmly believes in the power of community building, and his Telegram and Discord channels are a global place where he and other cryptocurrency enthusiasts can share and grow their knowledge together.
About Genesis Block
Genesis Block is a premier OTC trading center for digital assets. Our head office’s location is in Hong Kong, the financial hub of Asia. The company is backed up by a team of financial professionals and industry leaders with notable experience. The company provides services to clients globally and continues to grow rapidly around the globe, with the vision to make digital assets more accessible to all. Genesis Block also operates the largest digital asset ATM machines in Asia through the company’s subsidiary, CoinHere. With over 40 commercial-scale crypto farms in the Asia-Pacific region, the company is a pioneer in the crypto space and hopes to one day bring mainstream adoption to cryptocurrencies.
We believe transparency and honesty are pivotal to sustaining our clients’ successes. So we will always be upfront and truthful regarding the information we provide and our service fees to you. Above all else we are trusted because of our emphasis on safety and the privacy we provide our clients and their data.
Building a strong crypto community is one of our focuses. Here at Genesis Block, we believe people can make great success in the crypto space if they are surrounded by like-minded people and immense resources. We built our communities to share the most up-to-date information on various social media platforms including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, and WeChat.
As the crypto industry is very young and unknown by the public in Hong Kong, we are endeavoring to help the public to understand more about cryptocurrency, and therefore we created the Crypto Classroom. It is a digital learning hub that provides mostly beginner level content that covers bitcoin and blockchain foundations and more. Crypto Classroom contents can be found on the Genesis Block website, Facebook page, and both of our YouTube channels which are catered for our Cantonese and English audience. We also create a Trader Insight series every week on our Cantonese YouTube channel for our advanced crypto enthusiasts.
Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.
CertiK aims to provide a secure platform where blockchain infrastructure and decentralized applications can be developed. Its ecosystem consists of security layers that exist below the blockchain level, including the DeepSEA compiler, the CertiK Virtual Machine (CVM), and CertiKOS. Its native token, $CTK, has launched in Binance Launchpool on 27 October 2020. Below is a detailed overview of the CertiK ecosystem, including the CertiK chain.
The CertiK Foundation supports the CertiK platform. The organization champions trust in blockchain systems. Its efforts are displayed through the development of a secure network that can boost confidence in decentralized systems. Furthermore, the CertiK Foundation is lead by renowned computer professors.
What is CertiK?
CertiK is a decentralized smart contract platform powering Dapps. Additionally, it supports inter-chain communication and runs on the Certik Chain.
The system is primed for highly-specialized use cases. The protocol employs a PoS variation called delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) and uses the Cosmos software development kit (SDK).
The CertiK Foundation has taken upon itself to restore the trust in distributed platforms by employing cutting-edge security technologies and techniques. A key milestone achieved by CertiK is the provision of provable trust in a decentralized platform. Apart from focusing on security, the network also addresses performance and token economics.
CertiK Token ($CTK)
The economic aspect of the platform relies on the platform’s native currency, CTK. CTK’s major offering is being a utility token. (Provigil) Therefore, it helps power the crucial aspects of the CertiK ecosystem.
For example, the token provides a mode of payment and settlement among the platform’s users.
However, the token does not give its holders the right to interact and does not act as an investment into CertiK Foundation. Being issued inside a PoS-powered system, the token carries various benefits to incentivize holders to participate in staking and securing the network.
Apart from being used on the CertiK protocol, CTK is a significant ingredient in the CertiK Chain. Here, the token is used to pay for transaction fees.
In return, the fees reward staking nodes on the chain. Also, the token is used to reward those who delegate their CTK holding to validator nodes.
The token’s first issuance was achieved through two private sales that sold a total of 38 million CTK tokens worth a cumulative $39,430,000. Apart from the private sale 1 & 2 (29.0% & 9.0% respectively), the token distribution allocated 1.5% of its total supply to Binance Launchpool, 10.0% to the CertiK team, 25% to the CertiK Foundation, 17.5% to the community pool, and 8.0% to the CertiKShield pool.
What is CertiK Chain?
CertiK Chain is a blockchain protocol powering the CertiK ecosystem. It is highly secure and has cross-chain interoperability. To effectively achieve its mission, the platform incorporates key components such as a security oracle and a CertiKShield pool.
The platform’s security oracle compresses audit reports to make them available on-chain. Basically, audit reports hold information as to the reliability of smart contracts. But, the reliability of smart contracts can be sabotaged by the data it uses to make decisions.
With these reports living outside blockchain platforms, it poses a security threat prompting CertiK to bring them on-chain through its security oracle. Consequently, the network can effectively verify the security of a smart contract.
Note that this component allocates scores depending on a smart contract’s latest audit report. The scores give an overview of a contract’s code reliability.
More than just scoring contracts, the security oracle can track and report unaudited smart contracts. A distributed security team handles such reports. Using the CertiK Oracle Combinator, results from the security team are aggregated into a single score that can be accessed online. And, of course, the security team is rewarded.
Luckily, this functionality is crucial in a decentralized finance (DeFi) setting where unaudited smart contracts are wreaking havoc. For example, by incorporating the CertiK’s security oracle, the responsibility of an audit is shifted from the contract creator to the contract users.
CertiKShield Pool
The CertiKShield pool is a unique component meant to minimize the risks emanating from the private nature of (most) cryptocurrencies. This may include losses from both avoidable and unavoidable circumstances such as house fires.
The shield works by providing a flexible pool of CTK tokens. Since the token uses on-chain governance mechanisms, it can be used to compensate losses sprouting from inaccessibility and/or theft.
In other words, this operates as an insurance platform. But, its decentralized nature allows it to receive inputs from all involved individuals before settling a claim.
The CertiKShield Pool is made up of collateral providers and shied purchasers. Collateral providers earn staking rewards while shield purchasers pay for requested protection.
CertiK Chain Architecture
The main components of the CertiK Chain are baked together in an architecture that can achieve provable trust. Apart from the security oracle and the shield pool, the network’s backbone comprises a virtual machine and the DeepSEA toolchain.
CertiK Virtual Machine (CVM)
The CVM effectively eliminates the errors that may be introduced when converting smart contract code from human-based language to machine language. Although these errors may be unknown to contract developers, they pose a severe security risk.
Being a security-first decentralized platform, the CVM relies on the output of DeepSEA, a certified compiler. The compiler’s output includes bytecode and mathematical proofs. The proofs can be used to isolate smart contracts’ code that doesn’t meet the security standards.
DeepSEA Toolchain
DeepSEA is a compiler and a programming language that’s hailed for its security. Notably, the CertiK-native tool is developed in conjunction with researchers from leading learning institutions such as Columbia and Yale University.
The toolchain can determine the complex correctness properties of smart contracts. As such, it enhances the security of the network and products built on top of it.
CertiK Governance
The CertiK protocol uses on-chain governance methods to enable community involvement in decision-making. However, to vote for proposals, CTK holders can either delegate their voting powers to validators or vote directly. Validator nodes ensure the smooth running of the platform through powering activities such as block production.
CertiK accommodates five types of proposals from its community:
Plain text: These are proposals that request modification of things like altering the number of incentives paid to validators.
Software upgrade: They lead to code modifications. They may include proposals to add new features.
Bounty: Examples of proposals in this category include those touching on creating chain artifacts and conducting security audits.
Community pool spend – They cater for the transfer of funds from a pool to an individual address, for instance, an individual developing a CertiK-specific product or upgrade.
Certifier: They are submitted by a certifier with a request to add or remove a certifier. Note that certifiers and validators vote on proposals.
Conclusion
In a space where malicious actors are always on the prowl for weaknesses in DeFi-focused smart contracts, CertiK provides the much-needed peace of mind. In addition, enabling a decentralized contract audit removes the need for DeFi users to solely rely on reports provided by the team, which, in some cases, are anonymous.
From the security oracle to the reimbursement pools, to DeepSEA, the network structurally achieves a security-first approach with provable trust.
Decentralised Finance (DeFi) series: tutorials, guides and more
With content for both beginners and more advanced users, check out our YouTube DeFi series containing tutorials on the ESSENTIAL TOOLS you need for trading in the DeFi space e.g. MetaMask and Uniswap. As well as a deep dive into popular DeFi topics such as decentralized exchanges, borrowing-lending platforms and NFT marketplaces
More videos and articles are coming soon as part of our DeFi series, so be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our Youtube channel so you can be notified as soon as they come out!
Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.
The decentralized finance (DeFi) space has grown to include platforms in various sectors such as spot trading, derivatives, and futures. Interestingly, some networks such as Yearn Finance support yield farmers and liquidity providers through an aggregation service.
Instead of offering spot trading, lending, or borrowing functionalities, it allows users to deposit funds, then it distributes it based on projected returns and the risks involved.
However, this isn’t enough to drive meaningful DeFi adoption. Therefore, Yearn followed the partnership route to expand its ecosystem and to improve interoperability between DeFi systems.
In this article, we look at the most impactful partnerships in the Yearn ecosystem:
On November 3, 2020, Yearn’s creator, Andre Cronje, took to Medium to announce the coming together of his platform and Sushiswap. The connection between the two platforms meets as Sushi improves its automated market-making (AMM) outlooks while Yearn digs deeper into aggregating formulas. These qualities brought a need for cooperation between them, leading to:
A combination of development resources.
A rise in the total value locked (TVL) on each platform.
Working together to develop and launch Deriswap, a platform bringing together spot trading, derivatives, and futures trading.
Introducing Keep3r Network, an on-chain price oracle on the second iteration of Sushswap.
Additionally, liquidity providers on Sushi provide collateral for the Sushi money market.
Partnership with Cream Protocol
The DeFi aggregator platform partnered with Cream, a lending network similar to Aave, in developing the system’s second version. With the partnership, the Yearn and Cream team created Cream V2, which introduced or enhanced leverage and lending features. Notably, the new platform enables yield farming using leverage.
Additionally, Cream V2 acts as a springboard to power stable credit and yet-to-be-built lending functionalities. Apart from merging resources allocated towards development and seeing a rise in individual TVL, the partnership saw shares in Yearn Vaults qualify to provide collateral in Cream.
One feature added to Cream’s new version includes rotating multi-signature keys in order to improve deployment, iteration, and testing. Unchanged features include those that touch on governance and native tokens.
Akropolis and Yearn
The partnership is rather a unique one. Why? It aims to bring out the best in each platform’s team. Therefore, each team continues with their previous journey but leans on the other if they need help.
Furthermore, Akropolis users can access Yearn and a host of other networks such as Cream and Pickle. In return, Yearn investors benefit from Akropolis’s investment strategies and a pool of institutional networks. The partnership between the two platforms brought with it improvements on Akropolis.
For instance, there was a development of new vaults, an institutional application, some strategies, and a rotation of multi-signature. In addition, Akropolis’s native token was upgraded to be able to track losses.
The PowerPool Partnership
PowerPool is a decentralized protocol accumulating governance strengths in systems built on the Ethereum blockchain. In short, it brings together governance tokens from a wide range of DeFi protocols, such as Compound and Balancer.
The partnership with Yearn Finance connected YFI, the governance token on Yearn, with PowerPool’s PowerIndex.PowerIndex provides a DeFi index inspired by distributed exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The index exudes meta-governance functionalities and contains eight tokens, including YFI.
Note that the meta-governance aspect rides on concentrating user tokens from different DeFi platforms into a single contract. Next, the tokens’ voting weight is delegated to a group consensus. Notably, the contract generates a token that its holders can use to decide the other tokens’ fate in the pool.
So, what does the partnership bring to Yearn?
Having a share of the index gives DeFi lovers a share in Yearn.
It increases participation in YFI governance issues.
PowerIndex supports swapping. Thus, anyone can exchange another platform’s token with YFI and vice versa.
In return, Yearn benefits from more liquidity. Additionally, pooling YFI helps stabilize its price.
The Cover Merger
Although Cronje formally announced the partnership on November 28, 2020, the two platforms have been collaborating since Cover’s launch. The marriage between the two opens doors to advanced features targeting optimization, among other aspects.
The partnership allows Curve to provide backstop coverage to products built on Yearn. Their coming together allows Cronje’s network to enjoy Cover’s range of coverage known for supporting multiple collaterals. Yearn can mitigate risks for users through vault coverage. That’s not all. Underwriting coverage on Yearn becomes more profitable.
Fortunately, the benefits aren’t one way. For Cover, it’s hoisted to expand its wings to unchartered money markets. Additionally, it’s empowered to seek a bigger share of perpetual coverage and other products in the market. However, components such as the native COVER currency remain intact.
Pickle and Yearn
This is another key partnership in the Yearn ecosystem. Its uniqueness emanates from the fact that it’s supposed to eradicate duplicate works among the two teams. Doing so lets each team and individuals within a team work on what they’re extremely good at.
As a result, Pickle will launch new features such as reward Gauges. Governing members on the Pickle ecosystem receive DILL tokens when they lock their tokens for governance-related purposes. DILL holders share Gauge performance, withdrawal, and deposit fees.
On the other hand, Yearn users, especially Vault depositors, are incentivized to interact with Gauges through Vault shares. The depositors also receive more rewards by setting aside Pickle tokens to receive DILL. (www.chronicpainpartners.com)
Others benefits originating from the partnership include:
A merger of the platforms’ TVL.
Pickle finds its way into the Yearn ecosystem.
Pickle enjoys Yearn’s security, among other features.
Pickle’s reward Gauges rake in incentives from Yearn depositors.
The two protocols’ teams work together on strategy creation and split profits from the strategies.
There’s an overall increase in rewards for users in both circles.
Conclusion
By expanding the Yearn ecosystem, Cronje and his team seek to build an inter-connected DeFi world. With everything connected to everything, DeFi adoption naturally sets in.
Apart from interconnection and adoption, the partnerships focus on, for example, reducing the duplication of roles within teams working on DeFi projects. This encourages the birth of new products and features to help drive growth in the space.
In the process, DeFi enthusiasts benefit from enhanced products and yields, which further encourage interaction with DeFi-focused systems.
Decentralised Finance (DeFi) series: tutorials, guides and more
With content for both beginners and more advanced users, check out our YouTube DeFi series containing tutorials on the ESSENTIAL TOOLS you need for trading in the DeFi space e.g. MetaMask and Uniswap. As well as a deep dive into popular DeFi topics such as decentralized exchanges, borrowing-lending platforms and NFT marketplaces
More videos and articles are coming soon as part of our DeFi series, so be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our Youtube channel so you can be notified as soon as they come out!
Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.
Diem is a decentralized stablecoin powered by the Libra blockchain. Facebook unveiled Libra in 2019 with a vision of being a stablecoin backed by multiple government-issued currencies. Due to its global usage and a hard stab on the traditional finance industry, it received international regulatory backlash.
In April 2020, the Libra team changed its tune and indicated that it would launch an array of stablecoins, each backed by a single fiat currency. However, more had to be done. Part of it was to rename the project and to minimize connection with the social media giant. “Day,” or Diem in Latin, was born.
Libra changed to Diem on December 2, 2020. Along with the change came a revised whitepaper with significant edits and omissions.
Background
The project is operated by the Diem Association, which was earlier known as the Libra Association. Stuart Levey, Ian Jenkins, and Dahlia Malkhi are among the key members of the team. The three make up the CEO, CFO, and CTO, respectively.
Notably, other team members have extensive experience in their respective areas. For example, its lead compliance officer, Sterling Daines, has immense hands-on financial crime compliance, while its general counsel, Saumya Bhavsar, is a former banking regulator.
Note that the Diem Association is registered in Switzerland as an independent membership organization. Its board members are drawn from Xapo, Kiva Microfunds, PayU, Andreessen Horowitz, and Novi.
Key Changes Made to The Libra Whitepaper
The first significant change is the dominance of the word “Facebook” and its role in the organization. For instance, the original paper mentions the social media giant more than five times and gives it a “leadership role.” However, therevised edition states that Facebook and its team have “no special rights” beyond assisting in creating the Diem Association.
Also, Diem is pegged to a single fiat currency (United States dollar) instead of a basket of currencies, as was the case with Libra. However, in the future, it may develop a multi-currency backed stablecoin.
Diem will also comply with international regulations.
Notably, the change of name never touched on the core use cases. Diem focuses primarily on instant payments and cross-border remittances. Furthermore, Novi, a virtual wallet meant to hold Libra tokens, will now hold Diem coins. Note that Novi is a rebrand of Calibra.
Conclusion
Diem is definitely a new ‘day’ for Libra, and by extension, could pick up where Facebook left off in its vision to launch a stablecoin to power payments and remittances globally. Its significant distance from Facebook and change of contentious issues is a great way to bring regulators back to the discussion table.
Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.
The Graph ($GRT) is a decentralized and open-sourced indexing protocol for blockchain data. Developers can build and publish different APIs, which are referred to as subgraphs, and perform queries through the GraphQL.
The platform can easily be used to look for any Ethereum data conveniently through simple queries. This addresses the common problem faced by a lot of other blockchain indexing platforms.
Blockchain applications face difficulties in keeping properties like finality, chain reorganization, and security in their process of fulfilling query tasks. These are also potential complications that applications usually address, but unfortunately make the process of querying time-consuming. The Graph has a workaround for this, and it is built exactly for that purpose.
Through “subgraphs,” The Graph indexes blockchain data, which users can access via the GraphQL API. According to the team, they will make it fully decentralized in the future, where more nodes will be involved and made responsible for maintaining the index.
The interest for the platform is steadily growing. In fact, they hit over a billion queries last June 2020. This was right at the time when decentralized finance was also gaining much institutional attention.
Background
Yaniv Tal, co-founder and CEO of The Graph, together with his team, has created an indexing protocol meant to ease the process of accessing blockchain data. Tal and his co-founders had personally witnessed themselves how difficult it was to actually create new applications on the Ethereum blockchain.
Thanks to their experience on applications, they have found out that there is actually no decentralized indexing and querying softwares yet for blockchain. The problem back then was that developers had to come up with their own method to gather data and transform them from different sources.
The mission of the platform, which Tal and his team developed, is to help create applications that require no servers and make Web3 accessible to everyone.
How Does The Graph Index Data?
To index Ethereum-based data, The Graph uses the “subgraph manifest.” This refers to the description of a subgraph containing data about smart contracts, blockchain events, and the procedure in mapping event data with one another, before they are all kept in the platform’s database.
The flow of the data from transactions, subgraph manifests, and the database follows a particular structure. All of it begins with decentralized applications that are adding data to the Ethereum blockchain through the help of smart contracts.
All of that data will contain a record of all events and transactions up until the point that they have achieved finality. Then comes the Graph Node, which scans the whole blockchain database, gathers new data, and filters out those that are relevant to the queries that users make. To make the indexing much easier, it identifies every information that answers the questions from subgraphs.
GraphQL is the link between blockchain data and the application that a user wants to provide it with. But then again, it is through the Graph Node that users can deliver searches to the platform. After the whole process, users can finally look at the results of their query from their applications.
Basically, this is how the cycle of data query and indexing works in the platform. Users can refer to the Graph Explorer to scan through the subgraphs that are already in the platform. Each of these subgraphs have a playground where users can perform queries through GraphQL.
As of latest, The Graph can support the indexing of data coming from Ethereum, IPFS, and PoA networks. There are more networks that the platform will support in the future. But right now, they already have more than 2,300 subgraphs deployed, which developers for applications utilize. Some of these applications are AAVE, Aragon, Balancer, DAOstack, Uniswap, Synthetix, and many others.
There is a lot of institutional support for The Graph network. Michael Anderson of Framework Ventures, said in a press release that they “couldn’t be happier to back Yaniv and the team, and we look forward to helping grow the decentralized network when it launches.”
Hayden Adams of Uniswap also shared how useful the platform was for their analytics needs: “As a company we don’t manage or run our own databases. … Right now it’s pretty difficult to get historic data from the Ethereum blockchain in an efficient way.”
Their plan, apart from expanding to other blockchains soon, is to make it community-owned and governed in the future. This is also in response to the shift of many blockchain applications to a decentralized model of governance.
Key Roles
The platform’s whole ecosystem is composed of the following:
Consumers – These are the users who pay indexers for their searches. It could also be web services or any other software linked with The Graph.
Indexers – These are the nodes that maintain the indexing function of the platform.
Curators – Using GRTs, curators identify to the subgraphs the information that is valuable for the platform’s index.
Delegators – These are other stakers who delegate their GRT to existing indexers and earn a portion of the rewards run by nodes.
Fishermen – They check whether the network’s response to queries is accurate.
Arbitrators – They decide whether an Indexer is malicious or not.
The Graph Council
The Graph plans to decentralize its governance in the future. This will most likely be similar with MakerDAO and Compound. At the point of the protocol’s maturity, the team plans to launch a Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO) that would allow core interest groups to participate in important protocol decisions.
Similar to other DAOs, the Graph Council, which will be the governing body for the technical parameters of the protocol, is also in charge of how The Graph Foundation allocates its native, utility tokens.
Among their basic functions include decisions on allocating grants and ecosystem funding, protocol upgrades, protocol parameters, and other emergency decisions.
GRT Token ($GRT)
The Graph Token, or $GRT, is its native ERC-20 based token, which can serve as a medium of exchange and the reward distributed to community participants who function as Indexers, Curators, and Delegators.
GRT also has a vesting and distribution schedule ranging between 6 months to 10 years depending on the bucket. Around 12.5% of the total token supply (i.e. 1,224,999,438 GRT) is expected to be in circulation at launch. However this figure is exclusive of stakeable but locked tokens.
GRT token distribution at mainnet launch
The Graph launched its mainnet at 9:00a.m. (PT) on 17th December 2020. Upon launch, GRT has been distributed to all of the participants of the public sale. Members of The Graph’s Curator Program also received an initial USD $1,000 worth in rewards, with the remainder to be distributed to them on a quarterly basis based on their contributions to the Program.
The Graph Foundation also received around 20% of the supply for the future development of The Graph. In particular, contributors who want to help building on The Graph can apply to their Grants Program, around 1% of the total supply of GRT will be allocated to support these participants in 2021.
Here’s a graph showing the GRT circulation over the course of 5 years from the date of launch (i.e. 17th December 2020 at 9:00a.m. PT)
5-year GRT circulation schedule by Bucket (Image source: The Graph)
Indexers that assisted during the Testnet phase have also ben rewarded between USD$10,000 to USD$100,000 in GRT as a reward for their contributions.
In addition, around 2% of the total GRT has been granted to several Education Programs and loans totalling around 2.5% had been made to independent ecosystem partners.
Indexer Staking
In order for users to stake in the nodes that operate the whole platform and sell their services in the query market, they have to lock their GRT. In return, they are given financial rewards. If the indexers work maliciously, like altering data intentionally, the GRT that they staked will be slashed.
Mainnet now live!
The Graph Network launched its main net on 17th December 2020 after 3 years of development! According to the team the mainnet launch includes the following components: Deployment of The Graph Network contracts on Ethereum mainnet, deployment of the GRT contract, distribution of GRT to takeovers, launch of the Bug County Program and new docs for network roles.
With the mainnet launch, Indexers will first stress test and improve performance before supporting real query volume, which will be upwards of 5,000 queries per second. Of course, there will be rewards for Indexers who will now begin earning on-chain indexing rewards and query fees.
Graph Roadmap: What’s next?
Now that mainnet has launched, The Graph will continue building. The Team has stated that the Graph Foundation will work on building a production-ready Graph Explorer dApp and Gateway that will support all network contributors.
The Graph is also open to any individuals or third-parties that want to build for the network and as mentioned previously, they an apply to the Grants Program or collaborate with other community contributors.
Conclusion
Looking at the current boom of the DeFi space, we can see how important it is for developers to be able to freely access blockchain data. Making the process faster and less difficult for everyone could potentially influence the growth of the space as well as its reliability, security, and capacity.
Everyone saw the need to create a bridge of information between applications and blockchain data. The Graph sought out to answer that.
And with the deployment of smart contracts that depend on user data, The Graph has proven itself to be easy to use, cost-efficient, and fast. The platform is seen as a promising tool to empower everyone in the community, especially those who are developing more use cases for the blockchain.
Decentralised Finance (DeFi) series: tutorials, guides and more
With content for both beginners and more advanced users, check out our YouTube DeFi series containing tutorials on the ESSENTIAL TOOLS you need for trading in the DeFi space e.g. MetaMask and Uniswap. As well as a deep dive into popular DeFi topics such as decentralized exchanges, borrowing-lending platforms and NFT marketplaces
More videos and articles are coming soon as part of our DeFi series, so be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our Youtube channel so you can be notified as soon as they come out!
Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.
Benchmark Protocol ($MARK) is a supply elastic, stablecoin-alternative that connects traditional finance with the cryptocurrency market by revolving around the volatility index. It provides liquidity to the DeFi space during periods of high volatility to optimize value and stability.
Background
Founded by David Mass, the Benchmark protocol aims to bridge the digital currency market to traditional financing. The project was set in motion by a team composed of investors, blockchain engineers, and financial experts to strengthen security and the efficacity of loan collateral within the blockchain.
The sudden selling pressure experienced by the crypto market in march of 2020 prompted the team to act as they understood the risks within DeFi. The Birth of Benchmark exhibits the unique drive of the ambitious team behind the platform.
Ultimately, Benchmark’s team looks to be a household name within the market by staying relevant within the mainstream DeFi space and optimizing their product to the needs of the blockchain.
What is Benchmark Protocol?
Benchmark Protocol is a supply-elastic collateral and hedging system driven by a volatility index. Simply put, the Benchmark Protocol lessens liquidation events and hedges risk with its very own cryptocurrency, the $MARK token.
Furthermore, Benchmark’s algorithm functions as a rule-based utility that adjusts supply, and is supported by the CBOE volatility index (VIX) and deviations from the target metric, which is equal to 1 Special Drawing Rights (SDR) unit. The Benchmark team believes that implementing the SDR creates a larger and far more efficient use case rather than exposure to just one currency.
The Benchmark Protocol provides a dynamic and supply-elastic token in the MARK token, as it manages to connect traditional capital markets to DeFi. The platform’s protocol is unique and efficient; completely separate from the crypto market prices and trends.
The protocol prides itself as an ideal hedge exhibiting total transparency with all users and transactions making a secure and reliable solution for the DeFi sector. Its immutability is robust enough to prevent systematic risk arising from cease and desist orders.
Benchmark’s innovative approach has isolated the recurring issue of overshooting the target peg within the varying market conditions. Through the MARK token, the platform can effectively rebalance supply within a 5-hour window after the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) ensuring the reduction of arbitrage activity for token users.
The distinct algorithm effectively adjusts to trends within DeFi while implementing traditional finance market strategies. The protocol actively monitors and regulates the total supply of tokens to compensate for anticipated price movements. This method helps in reducing excessive amplitudes of price percentage changes.
Since its implementation by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the international reserve asset SDR has been an important factor concerning the health of the international financial system. SDR value is supported by five currencies: the Euro, Chinese renminbi, Japanese yen, U.S. dollar, and British pound sterling.
The Benchmark Protocol has been targeting the SDR’s historic price of $1.4075, with a long-term view utilizing macro-exposure to the world’s most established currency basket. The SDR is a superior and secured peg that will not face a tough path should the US Dollar experience strong inflation.
The Benchmark Protocol primarily benefits from SDR diversified and global currency risk instead of single currency risk, which will attract more users globally, thereby, contributing to the growth of the project long term.
Volatility Index (VIX)
Described as the market’s “fear indicator”, VIX is a real-time market index used to estimate the market’s expectations for the relative strength of near-term price changes and volatility typically within the S&P 500 index (SPX).
The blockchain-based platform relies on the VIX as an accurate and suitable predictive element for price development. The VIX enables the platform to be ahead of its competitors by allowing it to be more dynamic and proactive in the DeFi market.
The Press
The platform values Liquidity providers a great deal, as they are essential for the proper operation of the MARK token as a stable collateral utility. Furthermore, liquidity mining is an essential component of the Benchmark Protocol during the bootstrap phase.
The Press is the second phase of Benchmark’s liquidity providers rewards distribution program. It is the largest token allocation with 27% of the total supply provided to liquidity mining initiatives that compensate the liquidity providers’ active participation in the Benchmark network. The Press will feature core MARK Pairs, such as MARK-ETH and MARK-USDC on Uniswap.
The team plans to implement The Press for a period of 3 to 7 years, all depending on distribution velocity.
MARK Token
Built on the Ethereum blockchain, Mark Token is Benchmark’s native asset. MARK is an ERC-20 utility token and was released to the market while taking into consideration SDR and the VIX. So, MARK is secured to the world’s most stable currency (the SDR). Additionally, the token’s rebalances are smart and fast, derived from VIX.
Overall, Benchmark’s native token can be described as a supply-elastic collateral utility designated to increase liquidity during periods of high volatility and in direct correspondence with global equities markets.
MARK is a dynamic digital asset separate from other crypto implementations as it does not rival traditional fiat or paper currencies, which enables token holders to rely on a global currency risk profile versus a single currency risk profile. Additionally, through the platform’s utility token, users are shielded from inflation and further benefit from collateralization of risks.
XMARK Token
xMARK is another ERC-20 utility token within the platform, which represents MARK but is not affected by rebases. xMark is designed to help move the platform towards on-chain governance. The token is minted by holders staking MARK tokens within the single-asset staking platform and is currently available on Binance Smart Chain and Quickswap.
Conclusion
Overall the Benchmark protocol manages to deal with the issues of volatility and inconsistency within the blockchain elegantly. Through MARK and xMARK utility tokens, users are ensured that rules-based, non-dilutive, and supply-elastic collateral will facilitate their crypto journey.
The DeFi sector is set to benefit tremendously from such technology, which provides a unique product that is currently lacking in the blockchain.
Decentralised Finance (DeFi) series: tutorials, guides and more
With content for both beginners and more advanced users, check out our YouTube DeFi series containing tutorials on the ESSENTIAL TOOLS you need for trading in the DeFi space e.g. MetaMask and Uniswap. As well as a deep dive into popular DeFi topics such as decentralized exchanges, borrowing-lending platforms and NFT marketplaces
More videos and articles are coming soon as part of our DeFi series, so be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our Youtube channel so you can be notified as soon as they come out!
Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.
TotemFi is a blockchain-based prediction platform that operates on both the Ethereum and BSC networks, interfacing the prediction markets world with the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.
In the predictions market, it’s either you agree with the system or leave the space. The ecosystem exists as a closed cave without a way to know whether you’ll get to enjoy the rewards even if you make a correct prediction. Blockchain technology came to the forefront to offer multiple solutions to the problems of traditional markets, and the predictions market should not be left out. Unfortunately, decentralized projects in the prediction world are yet to solve critical issues such as counterparty risks, accessibility, and bias.
Fortunately, TotemFi is among the few reliable blockchain-based prediction platforms that aim to solve significant problems in traditional prediction markets through the use of, for instance, audited smart contracts. Additionally, it guards against cases where an individual’s prediction gets influenced by another. In this guide, we shall take a comprehensive tour of this project.
Table of Contents
Background
Jolyon Layard leads the team as the CEO. He has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and economics. Before joining TotemFi, he was a corporate tax associate at Grant Thornton LLP, CFO at Happy Space UK, and worked at One Young World in different capacities.
Other key members include Harry Horsfall (CMO), Henry (CBO), and Dan (PR & Community). Note that the team members’ backgrounds cut across various industries such as cryptocurrency, brand management, and communications.
DuckDao incubates the project in collaboration with Trustology, Ferrum Network, BlockPass, Certik, Lauchpool, among others. Its list of strategic partners includes Bluenode Capital, Alphabit, MoonWhale, and Nabais Capital.
What Is TotemFi?
TotemFi is a blockchain-based prediction platform operating on both the Ethereum network and Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Notably, the protocol interfaces the prediction markets world with the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. TotemFi offers solutions to five major ills in the prediction markets world.
Financial risk – The platform guarantees that stakers will receive their incentives. As such, there is no way a staker will lose their input in the protocol.
Incentivization – The conventional prediction market fails to form a clear incentivization route for individual and group participants. TotemFi breaks this hurdle by rewarding both parties for logical predictions.
Accessibility – TotemFi uses decentralized applications (Dapps) to reduce and hopefully eradicate friction during the prediction process. It does this using a professional but easy-to-use user interface. The protocol take’s it a level higher by not penalizing inaccurate projections.
Echoed influence – This happens when the market is influenced by factors such as partial media highlights and politics. The effect is largely felt on centralized prediction networks. To counter the impact, the project employs decentralization. Consequently, it distributes viewpoints and media sources.
Counterparty risk – Verified and audited staking smart contracts help in building a trustless prediction platform. In return, it boosts user confidence and ensures that participants maintain ownership and control of their stake.
How does TotemFi Work?
The protocol works by interacting with various critical sections. Some of the areas include staking pools, prediction ranges, as well as results and tie breakers. (brownshvac.net)
Staking Pools
TotemFi staking pools provide a safe place for users to deposit their coins while waiting for the prediction of the price of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. These pools have varying maturity durations between 15 and 60 days. However, a pool only takes to the skies if it either reaches the maximum time limit or the pool’s allocation becomes full.
Furthermore, the maturity date marks the end of the prediction date. For instance, a pool with a maturity length of sixty days means participants must predict the price of Bitcoin (BTC) in the next two months.
Notably, TotemFi uses a single data source such as an oracle to check the prices of the assets, which enhances consistency and trust.
TotemFi automatically births another pool with similar specifications to provide timeliness once a pool hits its allocation threshold.
Prediction Range
The range determines how far a participant can go with their price forecast. The number of the protocol’s native tokens, TOTM, held by a participant determines their projection range. More tokens mean a higher range and vice versa.
However, TotemFi’s step function determines the range. The function gives the correlation between the TOTM stake size, the step size, and the range increase.
Results and Tie Breaker
In a prediction, the possibilities of a tie are very high. In case of a tie, the first person to provide the correct prediction becomes the winner. Also, this process applies in case a tie situation involves more than one participant. In such a scenario, users ranking is done in a chronological format.
Staking Rewards and Price Pools
Stakers receive guaranteed incentives. However, the rewards depend on the pool’s maturity time, staked amount, and staking time. Assuming that a staker lets their stake run peacefully for their entire pool maturity time, they’re likely to receive a tentative annual percentage rate (APR) of 60%, 65%, and 75% for pools with a maturity time of 15, 30, and 60 days, respectively.
On the other hand, the prize pool contains both BTC and TOTM tokens. For example, in the case of a correct prediction, the winner takes home 0.03375 BTC and 1,687 TOTM coins, while the third in the winning queue gets 0.0110 BTC and 495 TOTM tokens.
TotemFi Tokens (TOTM)
TOTM has a fixed supply of 10 million tokens. This entire amount was excavated during the token generation event (TGE).
The tokens go to advisors (8.5%), community development (10%), team (15%), seed (4.5%), and public sale (4.5%). Additionally, staking rewards get 16.5%, while strategic development, liquidity pool, and private sale get 15%, 6%, and 20%, respectively.
Notably, the allocated coins are locked for varying months. For example, TOTM issued to staking have a lockup period of 48 months, while those meant for private sale have a five-month lockup period.
Apart from rewarding predictions, TotemFi’s native asset acts as a governance token. Therefore, its holders are capable of taking part in critical decisions such as pool mechanics.
Conclusion
TotemFi is set to revolutionize an industry that is relatively underserved. Fortunately, a decentralized approach allows participants to blame themselves for not getting the forecasts right. Additionally, its use of blockchain increases participants’ confidence.
Moreover, guaranteed incentives for stakers, as well as not penalizing incorrect predictions, allows everyone to participate, opening the door to broader adoption. Most importantly, the experience of the TotemFi core team, incubators, and advisors sets the project apart from other blockchain-based prediction networks targeting.
Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.
The cryptocurrency industry has enjoyed rapid growth and adoption thanks to its accessibility and open-source nature. Different people from all over the world can participate freely in crypto projects, with the option of anonymity. And thanks to this ease of access, the total locked value (TVL) in DeFi grew to over $3 Billion in 2020 and $44 billion in 2021, according to DeFi Pulse.
However, as an industry based majorly on the internet with trillions of liquid digital assets, it is no surprise that it makes the perfect attraction for hackers hoping to run off with a score.
Luckily, in the decentralized finance (DeFi) corner, liquidity providers (LPs) can still protect their investment through insurance protocols, each of which is armed with their unique solutions – one of the more promising ones is InsurAce.
Background
InsurAce was created by Oliver Xie, a cryptocurrency enthusiast and computer programmer. The decentralized insurance protocol was developed during the peak of DeFi growth in the third quarter of 2020, launching officially in October of the same year.
The protocol is headquartered in Singapore, led by Oliver’s vision and steadfastness. After just two months of existence, the protocol was able to raise $1 Million in seed funding, from renowned institutions such as DeFiance Capital, Signum Capital, and Parafi Capital. Later, in February 2021, and an additional $3 Million was raised during its strategic round.
They currently run a tight team, with a few experts and professionals at the helm of affairs, most of which are based in Singapore.
What is InsurAce?
InsurAce is an insurance protocol that offers DeFi assets a reliable, decentralized, and flexible coverage. Users are also able to enjoy low premiums and a sustainable investment return.
InsurAce’s flexibility is its major highlight as it gives users the ability to cover their assets with a portfolio-based product design that optimizes cover cost. Users would also benefit from their cross-chain coverage and wallet accessibility, along with the protection of their assets and investments.
How Does InsurAce Protocol Work?
As both a DeFi and Insurance protocol, InsurAce runs two different arms that work synergistically to benefit all parties involved. As a decentralized platform, each role is filled by its users, each of which are rewarded with the INSUR token.
The protocol also offers a more streamlined experience with its permissionless feature, where users can enjoy full anonymity without the KYC process that complicates other DeFi Insurance platforms.
The Two Arms of InsurAce Protocol
The first part of the investment arm involves contribution by a first-party known as the investor. As the name suggests, investors finance portfolios, each portfolio with its own risk/reward ratio which investors can choose from.
The next party is the insurer, and these are participants that stake assets in the mutual insurance pool created by investors. The more direct class of users are the “insured” – they are the insurance customers, and they get the benefit of buying insurance covers, either in single or multiple pools.
The InsurAce protocol will be responsible for providing a supporting architecture for the smooth operation and integration of the arms. To start with, the protocol will function to ensure adequate evaluation of risk to manage losses.
Two risk assessment procedures exist. One with experts analyzing potential assets and pools with thorough auditing and code analysis. After which, a community assessment is carried out by volunteer members for further analysis and to come up with a risk score.
It will also be in charge of claim requests, for insurers to check out their buys.
More important, however, is the availability of liquidity for all users. To ascertain this, InsurAce plans to develop an enriched product line that is capable of covering a diverse number of DeFi protocols. By providing insurance services to multiple DeFi projects the platform retains its flexibility, remains open to opportunities while keeping tokens moving.
The insurers would enjoy access to a wide range of asset pools in addition to considerably reduced cover costs and zero premium protection.
SCR Mining and Governance
When users bring in capital to stake into different mutual pools, they are rewarded with INSUR tokens as incentives. This process is known as Mining, and it offers rewards based on the magnitude of user contribution to the platform.
As with most other DeFi projects, a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) would be responsible for managing and regulating the activities of InsurAce protocol. To be eligible to become a member of the DAO, users must own INSUR Tokens.
An advisory board made up of InsurAnce employees and independent experts will oversee the affairs of the DAO community, provide guidelines for its operation, and provide a contingency plan if the decentralized voting mechanism should fail.
INSUR Token
The INSUR token is the standard token on the InsurAce platform. It is based on Ethereum’s ERC20 standards and serves a variety of utility functions.
As a governance token, it confers voting rights on its holders. Users who have the INSUR token can propose changes, vote on issues and proposals, and participate in claim assessments on the protocol. When a token holder participates actively in governance, he becomes entitled to a share of the fees generated on InsurAce.
The token also incentivizes involvement in all the different roles available on the protocol. It serves as the reward for mining through capital provision, liquidity support, staking in investment pools and products.
There will be a total of 100 million INSUR tokens in supply. And it is planned to be launched through a Liquidity Bootstrapping Pool (LBP) on Balancer from March 15th to March 17th, 2021. The proposal would see a total of 6,675,000 tokens vested after the LBP ends – with about 45% of the total token distribution kept in SCR mining reserves.
Conclusion
The sheer amount of fortune going into DeFi project and associated mining mechanisms is too much to leave to the whims of hackers and project developers. The impressive progress made by pioneer insurance projects like Nexus Mutual and Augur should not be taken for granted either.
However, these insurance protocols are still scarce in numbers and hardly enough to cover the ever-growing need of the DeFi sector. Which makes it difficult not to root for a platform like InsurAce that puts everything in place, taking the best out of existing protocols and adding a fresh detail.
Decentralised Finance (DeFi) series: tutorials, guides and more
With content for both beginners and more advanced users, check out our YouTube DeFi series containing tutorials on the ESSENTIAL TOOLS you need for trading in the DeFi space e.g. MetaMask and Uniswap. As well as a deep dive into popular DeFi topics such as decentralized exchanges, borrowing-lending platforms and NFT marketplaces
More videos and articles are coming soon as part of our DeFi series, so be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our Youtube channel so you can be notified as soon as they come out!
Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.
Unido ($UDO), powered by Polkadot, provides enterprises crypto-asset management solutions, that specialize in governance, security, and interoperability within the crypto banking sphere guaranteeing the satisfaction of all users.
Background
Powered by Web3 blockchain Polkadot, Unido was founded by Chris Weddle who has over 20 years of experience within the blockchain sector. The project was initiated in 2017 and is anchored by an experienced team of finance experts, software developers, and blockchain developers. They all come from well-known financial and development firms such as Goldman Sachs, Wipro, and Macquarie.
Unido’s Founder: Chris Weddle (Source: Unido website)
Through the Unido project, the team has successfully managed to solve security and accessibility challenges with its distinct and dynamic implementation of a blockchain-based management tool that facilitates the handling of crypto assets.
What is Unido?
Unido is a technology ecosystem that addresses the governance, security, and accessibility challenges of decentralized applications, and enables companies to manage crypto assets and capitalize on DeFi.
Unido’s distinct protocol facilitates investment in DeFi by leveraging its efficient proprietary and multi-sig key signing technology. Furthermore, users have the unique capability to manage crypto banking operations in complete security.
Under the decentralized platform, assets management enterprises and crypto native companies are ensured agility and efficiency for the custody of their respective digital assets. This creates a strong bridge for firms and organizations to interface with DeFi networks as they remain compliant with licensing and regulatory requirements.
The platform’s algorithm works best by leveraging, as well as supplying clients with a great deal of crypto trading, payments, and banking solutions.
Through Unido’s user-friendly protocol, participants essentially have access to three main features all responsible for the system’s special implementation of the blockchain, namely, Enterprise Crypto Banking Suite, DeFi Vault Access, and Governance/Security features.
Enterprise Crypto Banking Suite
A business banking portal, through which firms can manage day-to-day operations and capital expenditure. This feature empowers users with a multi-user wallet management protocol that creates, assigns, and manages clients’ wallets.
Additionally, it is equipped with user governance tools providing access to rights and access requirements unique to the blockchain solution. Overall, this business banking portal is a simple and intuitive instrument with an interoperable, modular architecture that provides analytics on DeFi transactions, activities, and trends.
DeFi Vault Access
The vault access is a multi-signature enterprise wallet or DeFi vault used to store, manage, and invest digital assets in an efficient and safe manner.
The team behind the wallet describes it as a secured and most importantly, a well-integrated bridge into several prominent DeFi investment solutions such as UniSwap, Yearn Finance, and Balancer. Additionally, the vault provides users with a complete overview of investment opportunities within the DeFi space, as well as potential returns and benefits within specific DeFi networks.
Supported by a portfolio performance dashboard, this feature facilitates the management and investment of digital funds.
Governance and Security
Through this blockchain-based feature, the Unido enterprise platform (EP) provides users with an array of security and management instruments ensuring the safety of all funds within the platform.
The Unido platform guarantees blockchain-based security and agnostic architecture, rendering it versatile and applicable to any given on-chain use cases. Powered by a key signing technology, Unido EP ensures flexible and trustworthy governance, which provides assets access only to permitted entities and parties.
Unido Token ($UDO)
The platform’s utility token, $UDO, is the fuel behind Unido’s efficient implementation as it is used to drive network access, ensure transaction security, governance, and network management. Overall, the token is built on a trustworthy smart contract algorithm guaranteeing the development and expansion of the Unido network in the future.
Furthermore, the token facilitates access to the platform’s variety of products to all users, including institutions and developers. UDO has three main use cases, being network access licenses, consumption fees, and DAO Governance.
$UDO Tokenomics
Total Supply: 115,000,000 UDO
Initial Market Cap:$487,813
Seed/Private/Pre-Public Sale Fundraising: $1,400,000
Seed Sale: $0.04, 0% TGE, 20% monthly unlock
Private Sale: $0.05, 25% TGE, 25% monthly unlock
Public Sale:: $0.06, full unlock
Deflationary Economics:
Phase 1: From consumption fees, 60% burn, 20% to EDF, and 20% into reserve. Phase 1 when token supply is reduced by 20%.
Phase 2: After enterprise products take off, 50% of fees to be invested into EDF & 50% into reserve.
UDO Use Cases
Network Access License
All applications and Unido EP features will only be available via a license purchasable with the UDO token. Once the license is bought, the tokens are removed from circulation and placed into a secured smart contract until the license eventually expires.
Companies are provided with annual licenses for the Unido platform, where fees are determined by the volume of usage for the target clients and the number of users.
Consumption Fees
All fees and consumption charges within the Unido ecosystem and auxiliary platform will be based on the volume of usage within the platforms. Additionally, UDO will be used to authenticate each transaction within its parent platform.
All operations from developers will either be charged under a subscription model, Freemium model, paid model, or In-App model, all depending on the user specifications and needs.
DAO Governance
In general, the DAO will oversee Unido’s Ecosystem Development Fund (EDF) and allow for the subsidizing of new applications implementation and development, which will contribute to the diversification of the platform.
Unido EP aims to be a leader within the blockchain space by spearheading the race toward mass adoption; especially within the traditional financial sector. The platform’s drive to provide secured banking management tools is a great boost for wide DLT acceptance.
Overall the Polkadot-based platform is a dynamic implementation of decentralized technology, which guarantees total accessibility and security through key features lacking in most solutions of its genre on the market.
Unido Enterprise Platform is ahead of the curve as it provides a sure connection with blockchain giants, ensuring its growth and development in the future. Unido will likely become a leader within the blockchain given the protocol’s current algorithm and products.
Decentralised Finance (DeFi) series: tutorials, guides and more
With content for both beginners and more advanced users, check out our YouTube DeFi series containing tutorials on the ESSENTIAL TOOLS you need for trading in the DeFi space e.g. MetaMask and Uniswap. As well as a deep dive into popular DeFi topics such as decentralized exchanges, borrowing-lending platforms and NFT marketplaces
More videos and articles are coming soon as part of our DeFi series, so be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our Youtube channel so you can be notified as soon as they come out!
Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.
Linear Finance ($LINA) understands that decentralized finance (DeFi) has opened new possibilities for derivative offerings and that many exchanges have the apparent problems of front-running, expensive gas fees, and liquidity issues. Linear Finance seeks to go around those issues with its cheap, quick, and transparent synthetic asset exchange platform. With Linear, users can simply make a synthetic asset that contains a portfolio of different underlying tokens based on the exposure that they are willing to take. This presents new yield-making opportunities for anyone based on their customized financial goals.
Check out our interview with Linear Finance!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcXsEwj5hpI
Background
Drey Ng and Kevin Tai, Co-founders of Linear Finance, built the project with a vision of an inclusive and more democratized access to investment opportunities. By their team’s expertise in different crypto initiatives and financial instruments, Linear made a cross-chain, Ethereum-based protocol that seeks to fulfill their vision.
With Linear, users can make their own portfolio exposures and manage them on their own. This initiative enables investors to easily invest, save, and earn efficient profits from their assets.
What is Linear Finance?
Linear Finance is a decentralized delta-one asset protocol where users can make, manage, and trade synthetic assets. This gives users exposure to different kinds of assets without having to actually own their underlying assets.
An additional feature that Linear Finance has introduced is a cross-chain compatible and decentralized protocol that can support a faster, more affordable, and secure exchange of synthetic assets.
Linear Finance’s platform is powered by its native token, LINA. It can be used for many purposes such as payments, staking, liquidity mining, governance, and investing in “Liquids.” Liquids are Linear’s synthetic assets composed of different underlying tokens or investment options.
LinearDAO
LinearDAO is the governance community who controls important platform designs and system parameters including pledge ration, LINA inflation reward and frequency, transactions fees, proposal implementation, and many more. Furthermore, they also regulate the profit and loss regarding liquidation.
Perks and Special Features
The project promises infinite liquidity and no slippage. Here are some of the perks users can find with Linear Finance:
Convenience: The protocol promises quick transactions with low transaction fees. Any kind of user can enjoy the platform as well, whether they are a market maker, staker, or trader.
Transparency: To prevent front-running, every transaction made within the exchange is made transparent to all users. This also reduces systemic risks on the part of each network participant.
Ethereum-based: Because it is built on the Ethereum network with cross-chain compatibility, it can work alongside other DeFi projects too.
User-tailored options: There are different exposure options that users can freely choose from, such as other tokens, commodities, or market indices.
The whole Linear platform is built on two different blockchains but they complement each other thanks to cross-chain compatibility. For users, they only need to open an Ethereum-based wallet and an EVM-compatible wallet.
Linear automatically links these two together through smart contracts. Here are some of the advantages of an infrastructure modeled around that concept. They are:
Maximized DeFi support: While LinearDAO and LINA tokens are based on Ethereum, its use of EVM and smart contracts make it easy for the platform to interact with other DeFi protocols.
Affordability: Buildr and Exchange function through smart contracts on top of EVM-compatible blockchains. This enables Linear to support the building and trading of Liquids at very minimal gas fees.
Fewer risks of front-running: The block time confirmation for other EVM-compatible blockchains are much faster than Ethereum. This allows users to create their own Liquids at more updated prices through the help of oracles. This way, the risk of users front-running the exchange becomes much lower.
LINA Token
LINA can be used for payments, staking, and governance participation. But mainly, LINA functions as the base collateral needed to mint Liquids through Buildr, the decentralized application (dApp) designed to manage synthetic assets.
To create Liquids, users have to “pledge” 100% of their digital assets, which also means collateralization. This is to ensure that Liquids are fully-backed by an underlying asset, saving the stability of the system from the volatility of synthetic assets. The pledge requirement can be reduced eventually if the LinearDAO deems it necessary.
Collateralization
Buildr takes a hybrid approach in terms of collateralization. For Liquids, users need to deposit a mixture of LINA and other cryptocurrency tokens to generate a synthetic asset. The ratio is 80:20, where at least 80% of the collateral must be in LINA and 20% can be in other cryptocurrencies.
Staking
Staking LINA offers users many incentives. These are the following rewards that users can receive by doing so:
Exchange Fee Reward: The transaction fees collected from users of the Linear.Exchange platform, currently set at 0.25%, is redistributed weekly to LINA stakers on a pro-rata basis. For non-LINA stakers, these rewards can also be provided too but it will depend on the decision of the community governance council.
Inflationary Reward: LINA has a starting inflation rate of 75% which decreases on a weekly basis. The inflation reward is given to LINA stakers on a pro-rata basis as well.
Yield Farming: Yield farmers help maintain Linear’s debt pool and the whole platform. For the first two years of the project, users who actively use the exchange can receive token bonuses. These token bonuses can then be deposited by yield farmers in other liquidity pools such as Balancer, Curve, and Uniswap.
In facilitating faster trade activities with almost unlimited liquidity, Linear is building their own exchange. As of now, Liquid is collaborating with other public blockchains to reduce transaction settlement timeframes to as quick as one second every transaction coupled with instant finality.
With a plan of partnering with oracles, Linear also believes that they can solve problems with front-running as they gain the capability of refreshing prices on a frequent and quick basis at much lower prices for the underlying assets.
Linear Finance ($LINA) token public sale
The token public sale took place on 14th September 2020. A total of 47,222,222 LINA tokens were sold in 2 rounds. The first round had 25mil tokens at $0.00400 per token. The second round, 22,222,222 tokens at $0.00450 per token.
The sale was 40 times oversubscribed and closed earlier than expected (it was supposed to last for 24 hours). Each participant in the sale had to purchase 500 USDT/USDC worth of LINA. Hence only 400 participants were able to get the allocation on a FIRST COME FIRST SERVED basis. This was determined by the time/date stamp on their Google Form submission. The first 200 users were allocated LINA tokens from round 1, and the remaining 200 participants from round 2. This was however subject to the registrants completing the KYC process in a period of 24 hours.
$LINA was first listed on Uniswap and reached more than 20x from public sale price (and around 60x from private sale round 1). It is now stabilized at around $0.005 (as at 3 November 2020).
Linear pre-staking platform
Immediately after listing, Linear Finance has launched its staking platform. Holders can participate in the 8 weeks pre-staking program and get rewarded. The APY has been around 600% for weeks and has now decreased around 370%. All the earnings will be claimable 6 months after mainnet launch but users can withdraw their staked funds at anytime.
Partnership announcements
In the weeks following the launch, Linear has announced partnerships with Nervos, Moonbeam and Hex Trust.
Nervos is an open source blockchain that offers security and trustlessness without compromising on scalability and performance with its unique layered architecture. The collaboration is focused on improving Linear’s cross chain capabilities and penetration of the Chinese market.
Moonbeam, an Ethereum ($ETH) compatible smart contract parachain, is a strategic partner to help set the feet into the Polkadot ($DOT) ecosystem and level up Linear’s interoperability. Finally, the partnership with Hex Trust as a custody partner, will give Linear the chance to offer secure, institutional grade custodial services for institutional investors.
A next announcement has revealed a new partnership with 3Commas, a cryptocurrency trading platform that helps users build automated trading bots. The investment is meant “to include future integration of the platforms and tools, streamlining operations and allowing for a greater range of features and offerings”.
Testnet is live
On 16th October 2020, the first testnet for Buildr has been released. Buildr is one of the core dApps of the Linear suite, where users can stake their $LINA (and soon more collaterals) to build ℓUSD, the base currency of Linear Exchange. Stakers are entitled to rewards and to a part of the transaction fees generated by the exchange. ℓUSD tokens can be minted to purchase synthetic assets within the exchange itself and can be moved to other protocols.
The last testnet update has just come out allowing users to purchase “Liquids” with ℓUSD on Linear.Exchange. Meanwhile, mainnet launch is allegedly happening in a couple of weeks.
If you want to read more and discover how to contribute to the testnet, please have a look at the articles here and here.
More than 222 million of $LINA tokens are staked, for a total value of more than USD$1 million.
New Partnership with Band Protocol
In this article dated November 16, Linear Finance has ufficially announced their partnership with Band Protocol, cross-chain decentralised oracle.
The biggest problem this collaboration is trying to solve is front running. As Drey Ng, Co-Founder at Linear Finance said: “Front running is a fundamental problem not just for current synthetic asset trading but all trading in general”. Not solving this problem would jeopardize all “the benefits of cross-chain compatibility (such as speed and cost), and a superior creative selection of synthetic assets”.
How Band Protocol Oracle works with Linear
Other reasons why Band Protocol was chosen are the minimized network risk., end-to-end customizability for real-time data and truly decentralized oracle mechanism. The partnership will start securing the Linear Protocol on Binance smart Chain, the first project’s cross-integration, where the BEP token has just been created (the common $LINA we see on exchanges is an ERC-20 token).
The team is now working on features to allow users to seamlessly swap chains.
Mainnet Buildr Launch and new staking program
The Linear Mainnet Buildr v1.0 went live on December the 21st, after months of extensive testing. The Buildr dApp is the heart of Linear’s decentralised application suite. Users can stake $LINA tokens to build ℓUSD and earn rewards. Here is a complete and detailed guide on how to use Buildr to the fullest.
All of the $LINA from the pre-staking program were migrated seamlessly to the mainnet and while previously earned rewards will be blocked until next June, new mainnet staking rewards will be locked for 1 year from launch. They will count towards the P-Ratio and can be used to build $LUSD. It is important to note that in order to be eligible for rewards, users are required build ℓUSD or any subsequent Liquids.
Binance Smart Chain’s Buildr v2.0 launch
As anticipated, Linear wants to bring Cross Chain compatibility and ease of use to Defi and Ethereum users. The team had, in fact, previously declared that “Linear was designed for all users (no matter how much LINA you hold) and transaction costs will not become a barrier to entry. Nobody will get left behind”.
The promise has been kept and Linear.Builder Mainnet v2.0 with full Binance Smart Chain (BSC) integration and swap has gone live on January the 15th, 2021. Users can now enjoy almost gasless fees when interacting with the platform.
The transaction was seamless and old stakers only have to connect to Buildr via MetaMask using the BSC Mainnet (they can also use Binance Chain Wallet) and they will see their Lina tokens and rewards already there. For new holders who would like to stake for the first time, there is an internal ERC-20 -> BEP20 swap whithin Buildr itself. More info and complete instructions can be found on the Medium article.
Be careful!: There are now two versions of the $LINA token. If you send the Etherum version to a BSC wallet or vice-versa (whether it is a custodial or non-custodial address) you will lose your tokens! If in doubt on what to do, contact the support team via the official channels which you can find on their Website.
Linear will be listed on Binance Innovation Zone
Binance has announced it will list Linear Finance’s $LINA token on its Innovation Zone. Trading for $LINA/$BTC, $LINA/$BUSD and $LINA/$USDT trading pairs will start at 12:00pm (UTC) on 18th March 2021.
Furthermore, Binance Launchpad is offering 21,084,000 LINA tokens for sale at at 0.00031044 BNB for 1 LINA. Subscription has already ended at 1:00p.m. (HKT) on 18th March 2021 and tokens will be sent to successful applicants at 6:00p.m. (HKT) on the same day.
Conclusion
With the rising gas prices in Ethereum, as well as the emerging trend of yield farming, the DeFi space is presented with new financial opportunities but is discouraged by its costs. Projects such as Linear is a promising addition to the space as it seeks to go around these problems.
With Linear as a platform to easily build and manage investments, users can now enjoy quick and affordable profit-building opportunities. And in recognition of the real purpose of decentralization, Linear appears to be on the right track after putting in the pipelines a roadmap for a planned transition to community governance.
Linear is certainly on the radar of a lot of renowned investors in this space. They have recently completed a USD$1.8m seed round with notable backers in the investment space such as NGC Ventures, Hashed, CMS Holdings, Genesis Block, Kenetic Capital, Alameda Research, Evernew Capital, Soul Capital, Moonrock Capital, Black Edge Capital and PANONY. According to Linear, this funding will go towards accelerating the development of their testnet and mainnet, as well as promoting their platform. It will certainly be exciting to see what the Linear Finance team will be releasing in the months to come.
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