Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is a sector within the cryptocurrency and blockchain space which aims to provide a decentralized version of the products available in traditional finance- without central control and at a lower cost with potentially higher returns. These products include loans, interest-bearing deposits and borrowing services.
The advantages of decentralized finance are that it addresses the problems we have with the traditional banking system. For example, decentralized finance protocols are controlled by multiple people, and all participants are required to abide by the rules written into the smart contracts underlying the protocols.
Named after the principle of theory construction, Occam ($OCC), aka Occam Finance or Occam.fi, is a decentralised exchange (DEX) and the first and most significant addition to Cardano’s DeFi landscape.
Designed to deliver market-leading launchpad capabilities, DEX tools, and liquidity pools, Occam is a suite of DeFi (Decentralized Finance) solutions tailored for Cardano and managed and maintained by the Occam Association, a blockchain entity based in Switzerland. Once the Occam.fi ecosystem has matured, the project will be handed over to a carefully designed Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) to manage and guide it.
Learn more about OccamFi in our interview with Mark Berger, President of the Occam Association.
Background
Occam Finance was built by a team of individuals based in Belgrade, Serbia. Launched exclusively as an ERC20 token in its early stages, OCC shifted towards a multichain ready infrastructure after the Ethereum-Cardano bridge was released.
Mark Berger, the president of the Occam Association, is a crypto market veteran who founded Scalable Solutions. His vision is to prepare the crypto industry for institutional and enterprise adoption, holding advisory functions in various startups and traditional financial services.
Several other equally notable members and advisors comprise the Occam Association’s core team, which seeks to build the Cardano community and the Occam.fi ecosystem.
Occam Products
At the time of writing, Occam offers three separate products:
OccamRazer
OccamRazer is a Initial Decentralized Offering (IDO) platform used to raise funds for startups on Cardano. It consists of a tier system that allows users to access IDOs depending on which tier investors fall into. In order to participate, users need to complete Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures and own at least 150 OCC tokens.
OccamX
A purpose-built Cardano DEX developed by Occam.fi as a whole. It is backed by IOHK’s cFund and EMURGO, and provides liquidity and empowers trading of any Cardano Native Token.
OccamDAO
An autonomous organisation that allows token holders to vote on the direction of development.
Occam Tokens
OCC tokens can access a premium liquidity pool and will also be used to pledge stake, invest in new products in the Occam ecosystem, and more. With OCC tokens, OccamRazer is able to put a portion of project allocations back into the ecosystem. In addition, token holders are able to continuously receive a small reward in high-quality tokens from the best projects, opening up a cascade of opportunities for token holders and ecosystem participants while providing momentum for continued ecosystem diversification. As a result, this ensures that Occam becomes a thriving, self-sustaining, and flourishing ecosystem.
OCC tokens can be used for many purposes, most notably:
Staking: Users are required to stake OCC tokens to participate in any IDO on the platform.
Liquidity Mining: OCC tokens are distributed to pool participants from the liquidity pool based on their liquidity volume.
Governance: OCC token holders will have access to the governance mechanism via voting on the changes of system upgrades, system parameters, DAO investments. However, this feature will be implemented later according to the roadmap.
How to get OCC tokens
You can get OCC through multiple CEXs (Centralized Exchanges) nand DEXs such as Uniswap, SushiSwap, and Gate.io. It is important to note, however, that you will need a MetaMask web3.0 wallet in order to do anything in the Occam ecosystem.
Alternatively, instead of buying on different exchanges, you can also earn OCC via Liquidity Mining the OCC-ETH pair on Uniswap. Rebate Rewards are the amount of OCC tokens distributed via IDO pools with a specific OCC supply, and after an IDO closes, its participants will receive a portion of the OCC tokens calculated pro-rata. Continuous Ecosystem Diversification (CED) distributes CED rewards as the tokens of the projects launched on the platform. As long as you stake more than 150 OCC for a while, you will earn a portion of the rewards as project tokens.
Conclusion
Occam provides an all-in-one, feature-rich ecosystem to raise and exchange capital. While catering towards traditional financial institutions, the project boasts (KYC) regulatory compliance but simultaneously claims to have all the benefits of decentralization.
With a focus on user experience, the UI is aimed towards the institutional mass market and is primarily focused on unlocking and raising capital for upcoming IDOs through its Ethereum-Cardano bridge.
DeFi’s current obsession with speculative yield chasing often leaves out the regard for risk. With risk parity inspired smart yield farming 2.0, users get to tailor their level of exposure while receiving guidance from the protocol, which is engineered to reduce risks posed by both bull and bear cycles.
Formation Fi’s risk parity protocol is guided by the principles of the risk parity movement adopted by top hedge funds on Wall Street, opening up a playing field that was once walled off to all but the richest few.
What is Risk Parity?
Risk parity is an investment strategy that aims to spread risk exposure equally across every type of portfolio asset.
The performance of an investment portfolio is largely dictated by the risk it carries. The riskier its assets are, the higher the portfolio’s upside potential. For example, compare a 100% savings account portfolio with a 100% stocks portfolio; the former has low risk and low returns, while the latter has high risk and a greater chance of large returns. Interestingly, similar to the varying risk levels in investment portfolios, bitcoin casinos instant withdrawal services offer a dynamic environment for users seeking quick access to their winnings, enhancing the overall gambling experience. “Traditional” portfolios increase risk by concentrating money in riskier assets, while risk parity portfolios have fixed asset allocations in order to equalize risk contributions. To increase risk, a risk parity portfolio uses leverage.
The fundamental theory behind risk parity strategies is that assets in a portfolio should be balanced by risk, not by dollars. In other words, instead of allocating more money to riskier assets to achieve a performance target, risk parity balances assets by risk contribution and then uses leverage to achieve the performance target.
Risk Parity Smart Yield Farming: How Does It Work?
Formation Fi’s risk parity protocol is the first chain-agnostic, algorithmic, defi yield-management platform driven by the risk parity portfolio management strategy.
That means it’s automatic, transparent, can be tailored to everyone’s risk appetite and bag size, and won’t be tied to a single clogged chain.
It’s the latest and the most sophisticated attempt to create a DeFi risk-parity robo-advisor to algorithmically calibrate asset allocations across core asset classes such as stablecoins, alphas, and betas based on volatility and environmental changes. All under a single unified interface that finally connects all the different DeFi tools in a clear and simple way.
This simplicity is key.
Chasing different yield farming strategies, different chains, and constantly changing technical layers is painful. DeFi should be as simple as a single click to make money. And it can be.
You select your acceptable level of risk with a minimum amount of commitment determined by the algorithm in the top reserve currencies such as BTC, ETH, USDT, or BNB. The protocol will then automatically configure and recommend a chain-agnostic portfolio of yield farming strategies, tailored specifically to you and engineered to offset risks posed by both bull and bear cycles.
The protocol also uses a small amount of leverage to boost yield while maintaining the optimal level of diversification.
The protocol will then mint you an index token that tracks the underlying cross-chain DeFi assets and yield farming strategies. That’s all there is to it. No need to track and manage a million different assets. No need to go bankrupt from gas fees. Just let the index token do its work and track your yields in the dashboard.
Formation Fi will save you valuable time, headaches, and most importantly, money.
Best of all, the Formation Fi token is itself a potentially valuable crypto-asset. The index token can be sold, bought, or swapped like any other ERC-20 token. It can also be deployed into other yield farming strategies or added into a liquidity mining pool to further boost yield at the holder’s discretion.
Guiding Principles of Formation Fi
Chain-agnostic
Early DeFi is a collection of protocols, chains, dapps, tokens, pools and other inventions. Some work together, most don’t. Most only work within their own vertical ecosystems. Investing optimally across them all, one at a time, is virtually impossible manually.
Formation Fi takes a holistic view — aiming to be chain-agnostic and all-inclusive. From the ideals of crypto and Web3 will come the internet of value, where all blockchains are seamlessly connected through a decentralized infrastructure of bridges and relays.
All types of DeFi assets will be able to move from point A to point B quickly and smoothly, with no barriers. Their goal is to make the network dependency irrelevant. In other words, ultimately all users of Formation Fi will be able to add any type of uncorrelated DeFi assets available in the world of Web3 to their portfolio, regardless of the protocols of the asset and those already in the portfolio and claim profits from the network of their choice.
Low Transaction Costs
DeFi investors have learnt that fees can eat into their capital at an alarming rate, becoming a barrier to entry for some of the more complicated protocols. Costs on Ethereum made it nearly unusable in 2020–2021 for many yield farmers, forcing them to move to other blockchains with different scalability, decentralization and security characteristics. (goldchannel.net)
Formation Fi will minimize users’ costs at all opportunities. There are two types of costs to consider: fund management fees and the underlying protocols’ gas/network fees. Most Wall Street hedge funds traditionally charge in excess of 30% of fund profits as management fees and carries interest. Formation Fi will not only charge a significantly lower management fee (only 5%) but will also redistribute a share of the profits to holders of the Formation Fi token, $FORM.
Fees for gas/network and other on-chain services such as oracles will also be kept low. For example, when it makes sense, instead of using expensive price feed oracles, Formation Fi will call sets of APIs or build their own oracles to achieve the same results. Over time and with progressive decentralization, they expect on-chain costs to reduce. Formation Fi will always strive to reduce costs and pass the savings and profits on to their users and token holders.
Radical Simplification
Many of the first-generation yield farming protocols were thrown together as fast as possible to catch as much of the new booming market as they could. Aspects like the user interface and automation were not top priorities. As a result, 50% of yield farming investing is repetitive and requires a high degree of understanding and attention to detail. This creates a barrier to entry for novice investors, causing confusion and increasing the probability of costly mistakes.
Formation Fi will make the user experience as simple and efficient as possible. They will develop algorithms and bots to predict requirements and remove repetitive tasks. They will design the user experience to be simple and a pleasure to use. Formation Fi aims to allow users to focus on investing instead of battling a screen.
Investment over Speculation
First-generation yield farming was about speculating on the next coin to 100x and maximizing gains out of the latest scheme. Farmers rushed in, ignorant of the risks and in the long run will lose on gas, impermanent loss, slippage and other hidden fees.
Formation Fi is at the lead of the second generation. They will motivate and enable users to form coherent, sensible portfolios instead of collections of random coins. Second generation yield farming is about intelligent investing — calculating quantitative risk as well as reward.
This methodology was pioneered by Benjamin Graham in his book “The Intelligent Investor” and employed extensively by Warren Buffet. Formation Fi takes techniques and skills learnt over decades on Wall Street and applies them through algorithms to DeFi. They aim to generate personalized funds that not only catch the market highs but also provide protection from the lows.
Communal Effort
DeFi is taking off because so many people can see the benefits of transparency and community governance over the centralized banks, which so often charge hidden fees and make secret backroom deals we’ll never know about. The community is what makes DeFi so compelling — but community governance is a double-edged sword. You can cast your vote and yield the reward, but you have to invest your stake and in reality, only the whales can achieve meaningful results.
Formation Fi is turning that around. Ultimately, through progressive decentralization, their DAO will achieve open governance by financially incentivising long-term engagement and offering exclusive original research and quantitative analysis. They will empower a new generation of yield farmers to take control of their assets, achieve better risk-adjusted results and become better investors.
Long-Term Focus
Yield farming has been a fast-moving, get in and out quickly, type of business so far. The first generation of farmers were often risk-seeking ‘degens’ who loved the thrill of the 100x chase and if a coin failed, that’s ok — move on to the next one. That isn’t investing though and Formation Fi isn’t about short-term gambling.
Second generation yield farming is for investors who want intelligent, serious management for the long haul with safe exposure to crypto. Formation Fi’s algorithms will build personally risk-adjusted indexes for the long term that can automatically reinvest the yield across multiple chains so users can benefit from the laws of compound interest.
Future development, guided by the DAO community and taking advantage of progressive decentralization, will ensure a safe, intelligent and personalized haven for users.
Constant Innovation and Safety
Innovation is taken as given in DeFi but unfortunately, for many, is a buzzword that means hitching onto the latest craze and heading off on a dozen random paths. The biggest casualties are then the users when it all implodes, taking their invested capital with it.
Formation Fi has a strategic direction to build their vision of low-risk wealth for everyone. The force of innovation and safety drives the project, guided by the DAO community and regulation. The project will adopt progressive decentralization, not hide behind security audit reports, care for the TVL as if it were their own money and try to safeguard it to the best of their abilities.
$FORM Token
The Formation Fi protocol will enable the minting of an index token, the $FORM token, to track underlying cross-chain DeFi assets and strategies. $FORM is a triple-utility token with the following functions:
Governance Voting — $FORM holders vote on proposals for the FORM operational treasury.
Staking & Liquidity Mining — $FORM will be awarded to a user who deposits or stakes underlying digital assets to generate Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Parity or swap among the index coins.
Dark Pools — $FORM will confer access to investment liquidity pools which harness the wisdom of the crowd to incubate and fund the most promising new DeFi projects.
Conclusion
Every yield comes with risk. Formation Fi brings the risk mitigation strategies which let hedge funds conquer the stock market to crypto, for everyone to use.
Their focus is to better manage your risks while protecting your hard-earned yield through thick and thin. Imagine what can be accomplished as a community of smart yield farmers. The Formation Fi DAO will harness the wisdom of the crowd to make the protocol more accurate and more powerful.
The risk parity protocol is just the first chapter of Formation Fi’s ever-expanding story. Follow Formation Fi’s development on their official channels:
Sienna Network is a privacy-first decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that allows a completely private lending, borrowing, and trading experience with great scalability and low transaction fees.
Sienna Network allows users to avoid the lack of privacy on exchanges that allow others to see what users are doing and arbitrage on those transactions with front-running — a key weakness of crypto transactions today. Front-running is the act of getting a transaction first in line in the execution queue, right before a known future transaction occurs. Bots executing such front-running operations by paying slightly higher transaction fees have been a difficult problem for DeFi users.
Background
Banking, cryptography, and even decentralized finance go back a long way; as far back as the 12th Century when financial crime took place on the roads of Europe. In 1135, Sienna (known as Siena in 21st Century Italy) was an important trade city and heists were common. To stop the scourge of constant robberies to places such as Veneto, the Bishop of Sienna offered loans against collateral and interest to Sienna citizens and the people who traveled to the city to trade.
At the same time, the Knights Templar initiated a network of money transfer locations so people could deposit money in the Veneto region and travel to Sienna and Venice without the risk of losing all their money and possessions. Upon arrival at either destination, traveling tradesmen could withdraw their money from a Templar location by handing in an encrypted document that could only be decrypted by the Templars.
By today’s standards, that encryption was so primitive that the so-called algorithm could be cracked in seconds, but it set the scene for today’s intricate systems. This is where Sienna Network comes into the picture — to build on that same idea and contribute to solutions that will become the standard in privacy-first DeFi.
What is Sienna Network?
Until now, the activities of DeFi users have remained an open book — publicly preserved on the blockchain and forever vulnerable. This level of disclosure has created a chilling effect for the industry, discouraging even remotely privacy-conscious users from participation in DeFi, whilst concerning regulators who wish to ensure that users, private and professional alike, are properly protected.
Modern blockchain-based technologies fall short when it comes to preserving privacy, and Sienna Network aims to solve the same problem that has been solved by banks for their customers for many years — privacy in terms of funds and transactions, as well as computational privacy, but without the need for any third party to be involved.
With Sienna Network, transactions are private. Which means that the user — and no intermediary — decides if any of the data exchanged should be shared with anybody else. This occurs by default, and uses strong encryption to protect the data.
Sienna Network is powered by the Secret Network blockchain, a privacy-first smart contract platform by Cosmos. To share data, users need to generate a viewing key, which allows them to decrypt the contents of the data they have sent to contracts on Secret Network. Only the user can decide if they want to share this key and their viewing key only corresponds to their own transactions and cannot be used to monitor a third party’s wallet transactions.
By building Sienna Network on programmable private smart contracts, it enables a variety of powerful new use cases in DeFi. Programmable privacy allows feeding verifiable sensitive data into a decentralized world without revealing said data. Decentralized identities, credit scores, under-collateralized loans and privacy for institutions are some important examples.
SiennaSwap
At the heart of Sienna Network are robust tools for the assurance of privacy to users, including the decentralized exchange (DEX) called SiennaSwap.
SiennaSwap lets users trade “secret versions” of popular tokens like Ethereum ($ETH) and Cosmos ($ATOM), and flip them anonymously on the platform. For now, the number of assets is limited to the bridges the project has created, hence the absence of a secret version of Bitcoin ($BTC). The bridges currently available are to Ethereum, Monero, Polkadot, Cosmos, and Binance Smart Chain. Users are able to create as many swap pairs as they wish among each of the assets.
Leveraging Cosmos means gas fees are low and transactions are almost immediate. A typical transaction costs about $0.02, which is extremely low compared to other blockchains and protocols.
But perhaps the most important cost that SiennaSwap seeks to omit is that of front-running, or traders cutting to the front of the queue and scooping up lucrative trades before others. This is possible due to the platform’s privacy-first approach. Using Secret Network’s protocol, Sienna Network has found a way to turn legacy public smart contracts into Secret Contracts, which allow private interactions where Third Parties cannot monitor what’s going on. This is because the data remains inside TEEs — Trusted Execution Environments; not even the node operators of the underlying network.
What does it mean for a user? On public ledger chains where anyone with a wallet address could see others’ entire transaction history and that of their friends, with Sienna’s token and via the SiennaSwap, the wrapped ‘secret’ tokens such as secretETH the transaction history cannot be looked up and seen. This fixes several core issues including the aforesaid blight of front-running.
Sienna Lend
Another important product by Sienna Network is Sienna Lend which allows users to borrow and lend both public and private crypto assets. Moreover, users can deposit their tokens and earn interest from them or use their deposit as collateral to borrow a wide range of assets. These assets include stablecoins, cryptocurrencies, and tokenized assets such as real estate, stocks, gold, NFTs, and more.
The entire process will be private and no one can see a user’s earnings or other financial details.
The Need for Financial Privacy
Privacy is a fundamental human right — or it should be. It is a basic individual right to choose whom to share with — not just information, but other important aspects of life such as financial transactions.
But here a problem arises — while cash has relevant anonymous uses — larger transactions should not be anonymous because no system should enable money-laundering or the funding of bad actors. This is especially relevant at a time when the opinion of policy-makers has transmuted into a surveillance economy, with market actors required to police and report with severe penalties for failures. Whether we like it or not.
If a crypto user sends a beneficiary an amount of tokens, both wallets are consequently linked via that transaction. This seems like a basic and fair exchange, but it also means that the beneficiary can now see the complete transactional history of that person’s wallet. This is patently an infringement of privacy and needs to be fixed.
So, privacy matters. It is a mechanism for individuals and institutions to decide to control their data — sometimes transactionally, at other times to prove or disclose information or financial actions by choosing to share that data with relevant and selected Third Parties.
$SIENNA Token Utility
$SIENNA is a governance token which provides a dual function in the network’s ecosystem.
It acts as the governance token of the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), allowing its holders to vote on possible changes on both the Decentralized Exchange (DEX) and the lending protocol.
It also powers the incentivization mechanism to encourage positive behavior from users. Users are awarded with $SIENNA based only on its actual usage, activity and contribution on the Sienna Network, whereas users of the Sienna Network and/or holders of $SIENNA which did not actively participate will not receive any $SIENNA incentives.
The token can be bought directly on Secret Network on SiennaSwap, but wrapped versions can also be bought on Uniswap and Pancakeswap.
Conclusion
Until now, DeFi users have had to choose between the personal freedom of decentralized finance, or the personal privacy of centralized finance. Never were both achievable at the same time.
Sienna Network solves this core problem by developing a course correction for the industry, delivering all of the many benefits within the DeFi space, while at the same time protecting users from the unwanted prying of third parties.
Sienna Network’s users can freely interact with powerful DeFi products, enjoying the same levels of privacy, or even greater, as in centralized finance. Sienna Network will seek to spur the sector onto new frontiers, providing tools that are programmatically private. Sienna Network’s protocols will also be used to empower self-sovereign identities.
These factors place Sienna Network at the vanguard of privacy-first decentralized finance. Now is the time to unlock the full potential of DeFi.
Dot Finance is a new decentralized finance (DeFi) platform designed to incentivize the growth of the Polkadot ecosystem. Similar to other DeFi applications, Dot Finance uses smart contracts instead of third parties to provide financial services to users.
By providing access to a variety of battle-tested high-performing financial instruments, Dot Finance is designed to bring DeFi to a wide range of users and will help increase user exposure to the many benefits of the Polkadot ecosystem. This will help grow the adoption of not just the Polkadot framework but the many new DeFi products and services that Dot Finance is building on top of Polkadot’s safe, secure, and resilient architecture.
What is Yield Farming?
Anybody that has been in DeFi long enough has heard about yield farming. At its core, yield farming is the practice of using DeFi protocols to make your money work for you. Instead of having funds stashed in a zero-interest account or a hardware wallet hidden under your mattress, you can use them to lend, borrow, trade, or provide liquidity. DeFi platforms incentivize user participation by rewarding them with native tokens and/or a portion of the transaction fees.
Yield Farming Strategies
Yield farming strategies are in constant flux as farmers must continuously adapt to protocol changes, market demands, and gas prices. That being said, the primary goal is to earn the highest rewards by locking up your funds. This is accomplished by supporting Automated Market Makers (AMMs) through addition of funds to Liquidity Pools (LPs).
When liquidity is added to a pool, you receive LP tokens that represent the amount of your contribution to the pool. The LP tokens can entitle you to a portion of the swap fees from that pool, but you can also stake the LP tokens in different farms to earn rewards. The staking rewards come in the form of a new token, (e.g. PancakeSwap rewards LP token stakers with CAKE tokens) that can also be swapped or staked in different farms and pools.
The complexity of strategies increases quickly with all the different options and varying returns available.
Yield Farming Optimization
Keeping up with the fluctuating rates and ever-changing market conditions takes a lot of time and energy. If you make a mistake or miss the optimal compounding times, your APY drops significantly. If you farm on Ethereum, you also must worry about the crazy high gas fees eating into your yields with every transaction. Ethereum yield farming has become a space where only whales turn a profit.
Dot Finance helps farmers avoid these issues and earn the highest returns possible with their yield aggregator. By working on the Polkadot and Kusama blockchains, the transactions are fast, and the gas fees remain low.
Dot Finance’s smart contracts automatically compound yields at the optimal frequency to increase your APY and the already low fees are shared across farms by batching the auto-compound transactions. Farmers also have access to automation and compounding at scale. It’s like farming with a tractor instead of pulling a yoke on your shoulders.
How Dot Finance Maximizes Yields
Normally, after providing liquidity to a pool and receiving LP tokens, you can stake those to earn new tokens. The rewards incentivize people to add liquidity to the pools but it takes a little more time and effort from the farmers because the funds have to be manually converted and restaked.
Optimal compounding can be almost magical in how much it increases your returns. For example, if you were to auto-compound once a day for a year, a 40% APR becomes 49%. That’s almost a 25% increase in returns!
Dot Finance’s yield aggregator auto-compounds farming yields for you by converting them to LP tokens then staking them. Using their platform means the smart contracts will compound your yields at the optimal rate and entitle you to a share of their performance fee – the Pink Distribution.
When you harvest your yields (collect rewards), Dot Finance gives you 70% of your earnings in LP tokens, and the other 30% will be issued in their native $PINK tokens. This is based only on your profits, your principal remains untouched. The 30% for which $PINK is minted is the performance fee that goes to the $PINK stakers.
$PINK Token
Governance
Staking $PINK tokens will allow you to participate in DAO governance protocols. When future changes are proposed for the platform, you will be able to vote and help steer the protocols in a direction you think is best.
Utility
The native $PINK token is more than just a regular governance token. $PINK incentivizes liquidity provision and helps increase returns when using the platform. It can be staked to earn rewards and is used as an APR multiplier when claiming profits.
The following shows the fee structure of $PINK:
30% performance fee (the $PINK distribution) – This means 30% of profits will be converted and issued as $PINK tokens upon user withdrawal. The original profits are used to reward individuals that staked their $PINK tokens in the $PINK staking farm.
0.5% withdrawal fee if the withdrawal happens within 72 hours of deposit.
$PINK Staking
There is a separate $PINK staking farm that will allow you to stake your tokens and receive a share of $PINK distribution profits. These profits come from the vault’s performance fee – the original 30% that were converted to newly minted $PINK tokens.
This is an automatic process that happens with every withdrawal, e.g., a user takes profits, the smart contract executes and 30% of those profits are converted and given to everyone with staked $PINK tokens.
Simply put, when you stake $PINK tokens in the $PINK farm, you receive a share of the $PINK distribution for the entire community.
Dot Finance prioritizes community and wants everyone to benefit from the growth and success of the protocol, therefore choosing this mechanism to share the earnings of the protocol with all the $PINK holders.
Why Polkadot?
Polkadot is a highly successful blockchain protocol that was designed to connect multiple specialized blockchains into a unified network. Isolated blockchains can only process a finite amount of traffic, and all blockchains make tradeoffs to support a variety of features and use cases. For example, one blockchain might optimize for security, while another might optimize for speed.
These are the real-life challenges that Polkadot was designed to address. With a sharded multichain network, Polkadot can process many transactions on several chains in parallel. This eliminates bottlenecks. Also, the platform supports blockchains of different designs that are optimized for specific use cases. In this way, Polkadot overcomes the interoperability problem by uniting isolated blockchains, thereby enabling its user base to access and harness all of its advantages in one holistic protocol, making it a real contender for the next generation of blockchains.
Because of these features, Polkadot has grown significantly over the last year and numerous projects have committed to building on it.
What’s Next for Dot Finance?
Users can expect additional farms to be launched such as DAI-USDC & BUSD-USDC, and other projects in the Polkadot ecosystem.
Users will be able to deploy their vault strategy and integrate with Sushi decentralized exchange, enabling users to auto-compound gains and maximize returns on Sushi farms.
Plans to launch and support additional vault strategies to offer even higher yields for current farms.
Integration with Chainlink oracles to enhance vault’s security with additional price feeds.
Dot Finance will conduct additional audits for their smart contracts to ensure the security and safety of users’ funds.
Check out Dot Finance’s official channels to learn more:
Alium Finance is a multichain decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem with an ambitious roadmap of CrossChain DeFi and non-fungible token (NFT) products. Their aim is to offer its users a single interface multichain ecosystem so they can enjoy different DeFi and NFT products on different blockchains without having to hop from one platform to another.
Alium Swap AMM DEX
Existing AMM DEXs (Automated Market Maker Decentralized Exchanges) have several limitations and disadvantages that prevent them from providing maximum profit and benefits for their users. Decentralized exchanges on different blockchains do not interact with each other and the transfer of assets between them creates serious difficulties for users.
To enable users to extract the maximum profit and choose the blockchain that best suits their needs, Alium Finance has created an advanced multi-blockchain AMM MultiChain DEX called Alium Swap.
It will allow users to safely trade assets and quickly transfer them between different blockchains. Implementing the best features from existing protocols, Alium Swap creates a complete ecosystem of DeFi products that meets a broad variety of customer demands.
Token swap on Alium Swap is a very simple way to trade one token for another via automated liquidity pools. Currently, they have integrated Ethereum, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), and Huobi ECO Chain networks. They have also launched a BSC-Polygon Bridge with plans for more bridges between chains to be released soon.
The liquidity provided to the exchange comes from Liquidity Providers (LPs) who stake their tokens in liquidity pools. When users make a token swap (trade) on the exchange they will pay a 0.25% trading fee, which is broken down as follows:
0.20% – Returned to liquidity pools in the form of a fee reward for liquidity providers.
0.05% – Sent to the Alium Swap Treasury.
For a smoother and mobile experience, Alium Swap also offers a mobile app available to users on Android and Apple devices.
$ALM Token
$ALM token is a utility token for the whole Alium ecosystem – it will be used on the DEX, NFT (non-fungible token) marketplace, in their NFT game, as well as for governance and staking.
DEX – Providing liquidity, profit sharing between $ALM holders, airdrops
NFT Marketplace – $ALM minting bonus and NFT auctions
Smart Farming – LP token $ALM farming and next gen $ALM farming
DAO – Voting with $ALM and proposals with $ALM
Staking – Dynamic $ALM staking pools
$ALM is a BEP-20 token which means that any wallet supporting Binance Smart Chain can be used for storing $ALM. In the future, ETH-wrapped ALM will also be available.
Liquidity Migration
The Alium development team has introduced the ‘vampiring’ function now available on the platform. You can access it here: https://alium.finance/migrate
Liquidity migration, or ‘vampiring’, is a process that allows users to transfer their liquidity from one exchange to another within the same chain, utilizing the most profitable rates on offer across various protocols and exchanges.
The introduction of the given function on the Alium exchange is needed to allow users to easily transfer their liquidity from other DEXs to Alium Finance for farming $ALM tokens with a greater degree of convenience and profitability. The BSC, Ethereum, and Polygon blockchains, as well as the exchanges they support, are available via the ‘vampiring’ function.
Smart Farming & Strong Holders Pool
Strong Holders Pool is a mechanic developed to incentivize holding $ALM, not selling. To prevent the Farm & Dump phenomenon, which many projects and communities suffer from after the Farming Campaigns, Alium decided to introduce the Smart Farming Pools to reward the Strong Holders at the expense of Flippers.
Strong Holders Pools are available to both Farmers and $ALM holders who didn’t participate in Farming. After you harvest the Farmed ALMs, 90% of $ALM go straight into Strong Holders’ Pools of 100 participants each. When the pool is formed, the game begins. The first users withdraw some of their tokens, which will be rewarded to Diamond Hands, who withdraw last.
The first 60 users who leave the pool will be at a loss while the last 40 users of the pool will be in profit. The amount of tokens lost/gained depends on the proportion between pool participants’ holdings.
Apart from that, the last 8 users of every pool will be rewarded usable NFTs for Alium’s play-to-earn (P2E) game Cyber City Inc.
Cyber City Inc NFT Game
Cyber City is Alium’s first P2E NFT game with collectible drops set in a futuristic cyberpunk world. The play-to-earn (P2E) model is an explosive trend in the blockchain and gaming industry where players of NFT games get to collect lucrative rewards for playing.
In the not-so-distant future, Cyber City dominates the planet, and corporations run the world.
These Corporations control all the wealth and resources, leaving the inhabitants of the City in a dire existence. Cyber City Streets are ugly, cruel and dangerous. A perfect environment for the strongest and most cunning to claw their way to the top. The game features Tokenized Assets and NFT Characters set in the futuristic metaverse called Endless Megapolis.
The Cyber City Genesis Wave NFTs is currently available for purchase through partners such as NFTb, Hyperjump, and Niftify among others. The Genesis Wave will have 6,000 NFT boxes that will contain 10,000 characters, 10,000 city blocks, and 450,000 in-game resources. The game is set to release its beta version in July 2022. (morganstern.com)
Alium.Art NFT Marketplace
One of the main goals of the project is to attract attention to new and promising technologies with a special focus on NFTs. The project development team believes in the integration and use of advanced solutions based on NFTs and has announced the launch of an NFT marketplace called Alium.Art with the implementation of a cross-play NFT asset protocol for blockchain-based games.
Allium.Art is being developed using a design philosophy that is artist-centered with a high degree of customization. Some key features in development:
Multi-Blockchain
Private Collections
Collections Customization
Easy Onboarding
Customizable Galleries
Charity Auctions
VR/AR Galleries
Categories Search
Easy Onboarding
The platform aims to empower artists to sell their art on their terms, represent it in a digital environment using AR and VR technologies, and benefit from selling their art in the form of NFTs. For buyers, it will be a way to acquire unique digital artwork and enter the modern crypto art market. Easy onboarding will ensure anyone can become part of the thriving community, no matter artist, collector, or crypto enthusiast.
Tokenomics via NFTs
The Alium token economic model strives to make it resilient to fluctuations using a distribution model called Initial NFT Offering (INO). The Alium team is confident that this will provide an opportunity to reduce the volatility of the $ALM token value, despite potential high demand for the token.
NFTs are a new milestone in the development of DeFi and the blockchain in general, so the team paid great attention to the development of this direction. The main feature of their approach is the so-called NFT 2.0, which not only acts as collectible cards or tokens but can also be used in various applications as an object of interaction.
All the Smart Farming Pools are built on this principle and users with NFT cards will have the opportunity to increase their profit in farming through NFT cards.
Roadmap for 2022
Synthetic ALM Token (BSC <> ETH)
Tron Integration
Avalanche Integration
CYBR Token Launch
Cyber City Inc NFT Marketplace
Cyber City Inc Clan NFT Drops
ALM Staking – CYBR Farming
External Liquidity Pools
Staking Platform
Super ALM (Governance Token / DAO / Burn)
Cyber City Inc Light Game Launch
Cyber City Inc full release
For more information, check out their official channels below:
Lending and borrowing cryptocurrencies is becoming an increasingly important sub-sector of the crypto industry, one that may end up shaping how the underlying assets themselves are valued and priced in markets. Since many crypto enthusiasts invest in crypto with a long-term mindset anyway, the idea of letting assets generate a return regardless of the price appreciation of the underlying asset is an appealing one to many. (www.voiceoverherald.com)
With the rise of crypto savings accounts that promise high annual percentage yields (APYs), investors now have the potential to boost their earnings for crypto deposits.
What is a Crypto Savings Account
The concept behind crypto savings accounts is similar to that of traditional savings accounts. You as a crypto owner can deposit your assets into a crypto savings account, which are then lent out on your behalf by a third party provider, earning you interest for your deposits.
The key difference when it comes to crypto savings accounts is that instead of depositing fiat currency, you will instead keep your funds in the cryptocurrency of your preference. Your funds may also be exposed to the volatility and price fluctuations of the crypto market.
A crypto wallet is not the same as a crypto savings account, with the main difference being that the latter accrues interest whereas a crypto wallet does not. If you just keep your coins in a wallet where you own the private keys or in an exchange wallet, your investment will not earn any interest. To earn money for your crypto, you will need to open an account with a provider and deposit funds into your crypto savings account.
Before you open a crypto savings account, it is probably a good idea to fully understand what these products are and how exactly they differ from traditional savings accounts.
In the case of a traditional savings account, when you deposit money, you give permission to the bank to loan out the money to third parties. And in return, you earn interest from the bank.
Similarly, when your money is invested in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum, the cryptocurrency savings account provider will loan out the crypto to borrowers, and provide you a certain pre-arranged rate of interest on your crypto. The interest rates depend on many factors such as the current market rate.
You can also earn interest on stablecoins, which are fixed to the value of the US dollar if you don’t want to be exposed to cryptocurrency price fluctuations. Because the crypto market is speculative, these accounts should be viewed as investments rather than savings accounts, because that is really what they are at their core.
Crypto Savings VS Traditional Savings
Despite sounding similar, crypto savings accounts have some very distinct differences from traditional savings accounts.
Interest Yields – Crypto savings accounts offer much higher rates of return than traditional banks, reaching as high as 8% to 12% APY. To put this in perspective, the average savings account yield sits at just 0.06% APY according to recent data by the FDIC.
FDIC Insurance – Major banks have insurance from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). This insurance guarantees that, even if your bank loans out the money you deposit into your account, your funds are protected. You won’t lose money when you put it into a traditional savings account because the FDIC backs your account. Crypto savings accounts do not have FDIC insurance.
Access to Funds – In a traditional savings account, you are free to withdraw your money at any time with no fees or restrictions. Crypto savings accounts may limit access to your coins for a set period of time after you deposit them into your account. They may also charge you a fee for withdrawing your funds before a select date. However, many platforms do not have minimum lockup periods, allowing you to take out your investment at any time. These platforms are also open 24/7, unlike traditional banks.
Benefits of Crypto Savings Accounts
Crypto savings accounts have several positive impacts both to the individual investor as well as to the overall cryptocurrency economy.
Passive Income – Crypto savings accounts provide an automated method to grow crypto portfolios over time. For someone already fully invested in bitcoin, they simply need to deposit that bitcoin into a crypto savings account and can immediately earn additional interest paid in bitcoin.
Greater Liquidity – Crypto savings accounts provide an incentive to convert fiat currency into cryptocurrency. By drawing in more participants to the crypto economy, greater liquidity can be attained leading to eventual price stability for the asset.
Increased Adoption – Long time holders of crypto are incentivized to move their crypto out of storage and into the markets, facilitating adoption and helping innovate new use cases for crypto.
Higher Demand – Interest rates are important in financial markets because they fill the gap between people with a surplus of assets and the people who need the assets because they have a use for them. High interest rates being offered can be seen as high demand for the underlying crypto assets.
Risks of Crypto Savings Accounts
While the prospect of earning 8% or more in a savings account seems attractive, investors should know that there are also risks involved. Cryptocurrency in general comes with risk and one should only invest once they are fully aware of the risks associated with these investments.
Price Volatility – The value of cryptocurrencies are volatile and can easily lose their value. Cryptocurrency is not backed by the government so if something happens to cause it to lose its underlying value, then investors would lose their principal invested amount.
Lock Up Risk – Some crypto savings accounts are very flexible, allowing investors to withdraw at any time. Others may have lock up periods or additional fees for excessive withdrawal activity. Generally speaking, the more restrictive accounts will offer the higher interest rate while the more flexible accounts tend to offer the lower interest rates. Make sure to do some research before committing to a provider.
Pledge Risk – When you deposit your assets into a crypto savings account, you no longer control the crypto and are pledging it as collateral. For example, when you deposit at a bank you are staking a claim to a bank’s liability. It is a similar situation with the crypto savings account. If the crypto provider goes under due to a mismanagement of their business or an adverse market event, you will not be able to get your assets back.
Smart Contract Risk – Decentralized finance (Defi) lenders use automated coding called smart contracts to loan and allocate capital. This coding is viewable by everyone so it is quite transparent. Everyone is incentivized to make sure the coding is solid. However, a previously undiscovered error in a smart contract may open the door for a hacker to find their way in. Though not exempt from the risk, lenders who have been around longer and whose products have stood the test of time are generally less likely to be exposed.
Things to Consider Before Getting Started
Thanks to the rising popularity of crypto savings accounts, there has also been an increase in the number of providers. But how do you know which platform is the best choice for your investment needs? Here are some of the things you should research before selecting a crypto savings account:
Compound interest
Crypto market availability
Security
Supported coins
Withdrawal restrictions
Private key access policy
Loan-to-value (LTV) rates
Compound Interest
Compound interest is calculated based on both the initial deposit and the accumulated interest. It will make a sum grow at a faster rate than simple interest, which is calculated only on the principal amount. Not all providers offer compound interest so before deciding, it is recommended to inquire whether or not they apply compound interest to their savings accounts.
Crypto Market Availability
It is preferable to choose a savings account that has crypto market access. This will help you buy crypto through the platform and set up your account. Having access to the market also saves a lot of time and documentation.
Security
One of the most important aspects of choosing a crypto savings account is its security measures. Every company has its own security policies to safeguard the assets you save, so it is recommended to look for savings account providers who offer two-factor authentication (2FA).
Apart from 2FA, many companies also provide cold storage as an additional layer of security.
Supported Coins
Thousands of cryptocurrencies are available in today’s market, and there is nothing worse than selecting an account provider that does not support the coins you are holding. Before you deposit your crypto into an account, be sure to verify that the provider supports that crypto.
Withdrawal Restrictions
Some crypto savings accounts have withdrawal limits that cap the amount you can take from your account over a specific period of time. These withdrawal limits can put your money out of reach when you need it most, like during a financial emergency. Not only that, but you may also have to pay fees to withdraw your money. These fees can add up if you are an active crypto trader who makes a lot of transfers in and out of your account, in which case it would be more beneficial to find a provider that offers unlimited free withdrawals.
Private Key Access Policy
Unlike traditional savings accounts that allow you control over your money, not all crypto savings accounts allow you to keep control over the keys to your crypto. Noncustodial wallets like Coinbase leave you in control of the private keys to your crypto. You are the sole owner of your digital assets across transactions on the platform. Custodial accounts like Nexo require you to hand over your private keys, trusting the platform to manage it on your behalf. Thus, it is recommended to always verify the company policy related to crypto key access and understand ownership swapping.
Loan-To-Value (LTV) Rates
Another important point to research is the loan-to-value rates or the LTV rates. The LTV rates represent what the platform is ready to risk. It must be noted that the more robust LTV a platform has, the better it is for you.
Bottom Line: Should You Open A Crypto Savings Account?
While a crypto savings account can produce exceptionally lucrative returns for long-term investors, it is important to remember that the cryptocurrency market is known for its volatility. Crypto savings accounts might accrue interest like a traditional savings account, but they do not have the same financial protections that are awarded to traditional banking institutions.
If you do decide to open a crypto savings account, treat it as an investment account instead of a separate checking account. Keep your emergency funds somewhere safe, and never invest more money than you can afford to lose in cryptocurrency.
FAQ
What is a crypto savings account?
Crypto savings accounts work in a similar way to traditional bank savings accounts. In a nutshell, you lend money to an institution which lends your assets to borrowers in need of liquidity. Except, crypto savings accounts deal exclusively in cryptocurrencies and stablecoins.
Are crypto savings accounts safe?
Yes. Every crypto savings account provider has its own security policies to safeguard your assets. It is recommended to look for account providers who offer two-factor authentication (2FA) and/or cold storage.
How much interest can I earn for my crypto deposits?
That depends on the platform you use and the type of cryptocurrency you deposit. As an example, FTX lets account holders earn up to 8% APY on all crypto deposits, while BlockFi offers up to 9.5% APY on stablecoins.
Are crypto savings accounts a reliable retirement investment strategy?
No. Considering the volatility of the crypto market, there are a lot of risks associated with crypto savings accounts. These accounts should be viewed as investments rather than savings accounts.
Keep3rb Network is a decentralized keeper network built on Binance Smart Chain for projects that require external DevOps and external teams to find keeper jobs.
DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops). It aims to shorten the systems development life cycle (SDLC) and provide continuous delivery with high software quality.
Keep3rb network provides a seamless platform to connect DevOps teams (Keepers) with project teams that require DevOps tasks (Jobs).
A keeper is the term used to refer to an external person or team that executes a job. Keepers can also be bots, scripts, other contracts, or simply EOA accounts that trigger events.
The job can be as simple as submitting a signed TX on behalf of a third party, calling a transaction at a specific time, or more complex functionality that requires extensive off-chain logic. Each time a keeper executes a job, they are rewarded with $BNB, tokens, or the system’s native token $KP3RB.
Jobs might require keepers that have a minimum amount of bonded tokens, have earned a minimum amount of fees, or have been in the system longer than a certain period of time.
At the most simple level, they simply require a keeper to be registered in the system.
With the keeper network being decentralized, It is up to the keepers to set up their DevOps and infrastructure and create their own rules based on what transactions they deem profitable.
What is a Job
A job is the term used to refer to a smart contract that requires external DevOps or a team to perform an action. The action needs to be performed in goodwill and not as a malicious act to harm the project. For this reason they register as a job, and keepers can then execute on their contract.
Becoming a Keeper
To join as a keeper, you need to connect a wallet and register a bond. You do not need to have $KPR3B tokens to participate as a keeper, you can join as long as you have a wallet to hold your tokens.
There is a 3-day activation period before you can activate as a keeper. Once the three days have passed, you will be able to activate your bond.
Once activated, you are officially a keeper on the network and will be able to select jobs from the Keep3rb network jobs list.
Registering a Job
Keep in mind that the Keep3rb network does not get in the way of the job. They do not define nor restrict the action taken, hence its decentralized nature. Incentive mechanisms are available for all parties involved to ensure tasks are carried out efficiently. There are 2 core ways to create a job:
Registering a job via Governance – you can register a job simply by creating a new proposal via governance. If governance approves, no further steps are required.
Registering a job via Adding Liquidity – you will need to provide liquidity to one of the approved liquidity pairs (for example KP3RB-BNB). You put your LP tokens in escrow and receive credit. When the credit is used up, you can simply withdraw the LP tokens. You will receive 100% of the LP tokens back that you deposited.
Job Credits
Each job has a set amount of credit they can award keepers. You do not need to purchase KP3RB tokens to receive credits. Instead you are required to provide liquidity in Keep3rb network’s job liquidity pools.
You can remove your liquidity at any time, so you do not have to keep buying new credits. Your liquidity provided is never reduced and as such you can remove it whenever you no longer would like a job to be executed.
There are 3 primary payment mechanisms to pay keepers and these are based on the credit provided:
Pay via liquidity provided tokens (based on ‘ addLiquidityToJob ‘)
Pay in direct BNB (based on ‘ addCreditETH ‘)
Pay in direct token (based on ‘ addCredit ‘)
Governance
Keep3rb governance by design has a low overhead, it is not meant to be protocol intensive. The focus is simply on reviewing and approving jobs, and if absolutely required mitigate disputes or blacklist keepers.
Only bonded keepers may participate in governance. To participate in governance a keeper must first bond $KP3RB, once bonded they can delegate voting rights to either themselves or another party.
The core function of governance is to approve and include jobs, when liquidity is provided for a job, a proposal is automatically created to include them for review. Bonded keepers will review the contracts and decide if they should be included. It is important that jobs code defensively, assume keepers will only include your job to maximize their returns, as such maximum payment thresholds have been implemented.
As a last resort, governance has certain rights over managing keepers, these include lodging disputes, slashing, revoking access, and resolving disputes.
Job Interface
Some contracts require external event execution, an example for this is the ‘ harvest() ‘ function in the yearn ecosystem or the ‘ update(address, address) ‘ function in the uniquote ecosystem. These usually require a restricted access control list. However, these can be difficult for fully decentralized projects to manage, as they lack DevOps infrastructure.
These job interfaces can be broken down into 2 types, no risk delta and harvest. No risk delta is similar to an ‘ update(address, address) ‘ in uniquote, which has no risk to execution. ‘ harvest() ‘, as seen in yearn, can be exploited by malicious actors using front-running deposits.
For complete information on how these codes are executed, you can refer to the official Medium post by Keep3rb network.
$KP3RB Token
According to Coinmarketcap, the platform’s native token $KP3RB stands at a token supply of 211,450. No further details about token supply and distribution are provided at present.
Conclusion
Keep3rb network aims to facilitate DevOps projects in a decentralized environment. The scope of the Keep3rb network is not to manage these jobs themselves but to allow contracts to register as jobs for keepers, and to allow keepers to register themselves to perform jobs. Due to its decentralized nature, both the keeper and job can define and set their own parameters and rules as they choose.
It will be interesting to see how BSC’s first keeper network performs and how it will change the DevOps market and its practices.
To learn more about Keep3rb network and the project’s future developments, check out their official channels listed below:
The introduction of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) has continued to prove time and time again that they have the ability to transform the gaming industry as we know it. The emergence of NFTs brings about a new and exciting era in which gamers take on even more critical roles in the gaming economy and receive lucrative rewards in the process.
This gaming paradigm is beginning to take shape as game developers are progressively adopting blockchain technology to produce more immersive gaming experiences. In this guide, we will go through some of the top NFT games introduced this year.
But before diving in, let’s first discuss the basics of an NFT-based game.
What Are NFT Games?
NFT games combine conventional gaming features with novel gameplay mechanisms to provide players more control over in-game assets such as skins, characters, weapons, virtual lands, and much more. This is made possible by launching games on blockchains and anchoring them in economies powered by digital assets. These digital assets are often NFTs so that they are distinctive and tamper-proof.
The adoption of NFT token standards have allowed game developers to preserve the rarity and uniqueness of some of these in-game items. This is why some blockchain game assets are considered more expensive than others.
With the NFT system in place, the players can claim ownership of game assets through 3 main strategies. They can create or breed new characters, purchase digital items on native or third-party marketplaces, or unlock and earn new items. Regardless of how the player chooses to access these game assets, they have exclusive ownership rights over them. The player may then distribute or sell these assets and keep all the profits.
What Are the Top NFT Games in 2021?
Like all emerging and established sectors, certain platforms have positioned themselves at the top of the NFT gaming world. These games are at the forefront of the current NFT craze because they have successfully integrated NFTs with popular game themes. As a result, players get to enjoy some of their favourite game genres and at the same time engage with a profitable NFT market.
Without further ado, here are some of the top NFT games in 2021.
1. Axie Infinity
Axie Infinity takes inspiration from the Pokemon game franchise and adds a blockchain twist to make the final product even more interesting. Players breed and gather NFT-based digital creatures called Axies in this Ethereum-based game with the primary goal of combating other players.
Each Axie has its own unique genetic fingerprint. As a result, the strengths and shortcomings of Axies are handed down to their descendants. These digital creatures can be traded on Ethereum NFT markets, with prices varying depending on their rarity and distinctive characteristics. To begin playing the game, players have to purchase 3 Axies.
Smooth Love Potion ($SLP) — the platform’s native ERC-20 utility token – is awarded for each mission, player-versus-player (PvP) fight, and adventure mode that the player completes. Players pay a certain amount of $SLP for each attempt to breed a new Axie. $SLP can also be bought through exchanges.
Another ERC-20 token native to Axie Infinity is Axis Infinity Shard ($AXS), which functions as the platform’s governance token. It will anchor the game’s staking service scheduled to go live at some point in 2021.
2. MetaWars
MetaWars is a futuristic sci-fi multiplayer strategy and roleplaying game in space that allows players to monetize and earn from the game’s war economy. Players can immerse themselves in realistic space exploration through the vast MetaWars galaxy that is constantly evolving and shifting from the collective actions of every player.
MetaWars enables cooperation with other players to discover and revolutionize different galaxies through missions while earning NFTs and collecting limited edition robots through various auctions. Players can stake and complete challenges to earn $WARS tokens, the in-game and governance token.
The gameplay also allows players to widen their army with unique ships, classes, and various optimization options. Players can combine modules, weapons, devices and equip perks, helping their characters level up their strength, rank up and receive amazing rewards across the metaverse.
Splinterlands is a tradable card game that lets users earn as they play, similar to Gods Unchained. Players can earn rewards when they win card matches.
To begin playing Splinterlands, you must first purchase a starting pack of cards, create a Steem account, and then reveal the purchased cards in the game.
You could be lucky and get rare cards in your first set of bought cards in some situations. You could also come across multiples of the same sort of card. If that’s the case, you can combine identical cards to increase their strength or sell one of them in exchange for cryptocurrency.
After you’ve become comfortable with the cards, you may go on to combat other players or take part in missions. The outcome of these actions will influence whether or not you earn more cards.
4. The Three Kingdoms
The Three Kingdoms is a strategic third-generation NFT game that is based on the historical characters of the Three Kingdoms period in ancient China. The play-to-earn game is the first to incorporate the idea of battling and besieging cities through staking, complete with a deep and engaging storyline, providing a breath of fresh air to the blockchain gaming landscape.
The team behind The Three Kingdoms set out to build an NFT game that features multiple methods never seen before in the blockchain gaming market to earn tokens. $TTK is the game’s native token, used to purchase new characters in the NFT marketplace, upgrade armies, and invest in land. It can also be staked to farm more valuable NFTs.
$TTK will also be needed to acquire $CHI, the secondary in-game token. Inspired by the actual use of Chi in Chinese history as the energy that runs through all living things, players will be able to convert $TTK to $CHI through the mastering of energy. Some future uses of $CHI include the ability to besiege cities, battle other players and even fuse new heroes.
Gods Unchained is a free-to-play game designed to infuse elements of NFT into a familiar card trading gaming genre. Players accumulate cards by purchasing them from other players or winning PvP matchups where the quality of cards and the gaming skill of players often determine the winner. Notably, more emphasis is being placed on skills and strategy. This is because the game utilizes a ranked game mode where players with the same ratings are matched.
You win matches when your gameplay causes your opponent’s life to drop to zero before yours. For every win, you receive experience points. As soon as the experience bar is filled up, you will move to the next rating or level and receive a new pack of cards to add to your collection.
Note that each card is backed by an ERC-721 token. Therefore, you can trade them on the platform’s native marketplace or the open market. Those opting to sell cards within the game ecosystem will receive the platform’s native token, $GODS, as payment.
It is worth noting that the $GODS token has not been officially launched at the time of writing. Be sure to confirm that the development team has released GODS tokens to the crypto market before proceeding to purchase or receive any token marketed as GODS tokens.
6. The Sandbox 3D
The Sandbox is a voxel-based game metaverse and one of the most popular NFT gaming platforms for creating and trading virtual assets. Players may modify and monetize voxel objects in this game.
Consider it a blockchain-based version of popular games like Minecraft and Roblox. The platforms provide tools for creating and animating objects, which can then be sold on markets. On the platform, users can also develop and play their own games.
$SAND, an ERC-20 coin, has been presented as the metaverse’s native token by Sandbox 3D. Players may use this to buy in-game products from the platform’s marketplace. There are also $LAND tokens, which are NFT tokens that are among the most valuable and sought-after assets in the Sandbox game.
7. Battle Racers
Battle Racers is inspired by popular games such as Super Mario Kart and F-Zero, as its name suggests. The goal of the game is to mix various weaponry and equipment to build the most powerful vehicles possible. Players may mix and match various components and weaponry to get an edge on the arcade-style circuits. You may register your treasured or winning automobiles as NFTs on the blockchain and then sell them for cryptocurrency on OpenSea.
Each player aims to build the ultimate automobile by prioritizing various talents and attributes. You could choose handling over speed or defense over firepower, all in the hopes of emerging victorious.
8. Cryptosnake
The gameplay of Cryptosnake is really easy. It’s based on the old-school snake game. Cryptocurrencies on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) blockchain provide food for your snake. The more you consume, the higher your pet’s stats will be. You may also use fiat to level up your snake, which will allow you to earn even more money in the future.
If the snake doesn’t make you nostalgic, the gameplay may appear monotonous. On the other hand, you spend less time on in-game activities that aren’t essential and instead earn more consistently.
9. Gold Fever
Gold Fever is a jungle-themed role-playing game where players choose a character and try to outplay other players for a chance of mining gold in the form of the game’s native token, $NGL. Players also go about collecting limited NFT-based items like clothes, weapons and other supplies.
Similar to the workings of most NFT games, Gold Fever tries to enable blockchain-initiated scarcity for its in-game assets. You can pick any of the main characters of the game and play your part in the formation of a fiercely contested gold economy.
Note that the in-app game items are tradable on marketplaces. Therefore, you can exchange $NGL earned for fiat or cryptocurrencies on exchanges or earn by trading collectibles on NFT marketplaces.
10. Neon District
Neon District is a cyberpunk role-playing game (RPG) that allows users to collect characters, gears and crafts. All of the game objects are blockchain components and almost everything may be purchased or sold. As is usually the case, the price is determined by supply and demand.
The goal is to build a team and compete against other players in missions or real-time combats. One multiplayer competitive game mode, called Neon Pizza, in particular, pitches players against each other for the chance of earning the platform’s native token – $Neon, as well as gears, parts and so on.
All you need to do is send your characters on pizza delivery runs to feed hungry citizens. You can also take up a more villainous strategy by ambushing the pizza delivery team of other players and stealing their earnings.
$Neon earnings can be used to purchase characters, weapons, parts, armors, juice, and other in-game items required to upgrade characters. The tokens are now NFTs that are linked to the blockchain, but they cannot yet be traded on a genuine cryptocurrency exchange.
Conclusion
NFT games are not tough to master as they make use of popular gaming genres, with the added combination of blockchain features that are ideal for establishing rarity and uniqueness. With the raging popularity of NFT games, more and more people are starting to realize that it is possible to make a decent profit from these games.
These games are also highly entertaining and have made great strides for the understanding and adoption of blockchain. It is exciting to see the next big game that will emerge and where the industry will go from here.
Fantom (FTM) is a smart contract-enabled blockchain that provides a robust environment for dApp (decentralized application) development.
Using advanced Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) technology, this project aims to provide near-infinite scalability and instant transactions at nearly zero cost. They are also working on a high-performance virtual machine with safe, secure smart contract execution.
Check out our explainer video on Fantom (FTM) will it be the next hotbed for DeFi?
Fantom (FTM) explained: Will it be the next hotbed for DeFi?
The Blockchain Trilemma: What is it?
blockchain trilemma
The blockchain trilemma is a concept coined by Vitalik Buterin that proposes a set of three main issues that developers encounter when building blockchains. More often than not, creators are forced to sacrifice one aspect for the sake of the other two.
Decentralization – creating a blockchain system that does not rely on a central point of control
Scalability – the ability for a blockchain system to handle an increasingly growing amount of transactions
Security – the ability of the blockchain system to operate as expected, defend itself from attacks, bugs, and other unforeseen issues
For some in the industry, achieving all three aspects is an impossible feat that will never be done, at least in the near future.
Fantom is designed to overcome these limitations of old-generation blockchain platforms by providing a steady balance of scalability, security, and decentralization.
Fantom Overview
Fantom operates atop a bespoke “leaderless” PoS consensus mechanism dubbed Lachesis that secures the Fantom network and ensures both transactional speed and security. Lachesis is an aBFT consensus mechanism, which means that network data can be processed at different times, and the network can tolerate up to one third of participants engaging in faulty or malicious behavior without causing undue harm to network processes.
Lachesis also boasts near-instant finality. This means that transactions are confirmed and finalized in an average of one second, without the need to wait for laborious block confirmation as experienced in Proof-of-Work (PoW) networks. By avoiding the relatively lengthy block confirmation process, this aBFT system is much faster and more scalable than many of its Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) counterparts.
The Fantom Foundation has turned its focus towards decentralized finance (DeFi) use cases with the help of Yearn Finance founder Andre Cronje, who serves as a technical advisor to Fantom. Andre has advised and helped promote Fantom’s multi-chain efforts, such as the launch of Fantom’s bridge to Ethereum.
As an ultra-high speed and high-performance platform, Fantom believes it can become the IT infrastructure backbone for the emerging smart cities. With a goal of executing 300,000 transactions per second, and the ability to communicate across multiple service providers, Fantom believes it is the solution to storing vast amounts of data securely.
It hopes to achieve this by being accessible to stakeholders for smart city data-driven smart contracts and dApp adoption. The Fantom team envisions the platform being used across a wide variety of sectors, including public utilities, smart home systems, healthcare, education, traffic management, resource management, and environmental sustainability projects.
Fantom Technology
Fantom features two core technologies:
Lachesis protocol – the core consensus layer
Opera – an application development layer
Lachesis uses a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) based algorithm to achieve asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerance (aBFT). Lachesis has four key qualities:
Asynchronous: Participants have the freedom to process commands at different times
Leaderless: No participant plays a “special” role in block production
Byzantine Fault-Tolerant: Supports one-third of faulty nodes
Near-Instant Finality: Transactions are confirmed in 1-2 seconds.
Fantom has implemented Lachesis as a consensus layer that can extend to additional layers within the system.
Opera is a permissionless and open-source environment for development. It boasts the full range of smart contract capability that Ethereum has due to its support of the Solidity programming language and integration with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Applications built on Fantom can be designed to be interoperable with platforms built on Ethereum, while still maintaining the transactional efficiency of the Fantom network.
A proprietary software development kit (SDK) known as the Fantom Virtual Machine will eventually be released for native Fantom-based development alongside continued support for the EVM — a strategy meant to entice Ethereum-based dApp developers to make an easy transition over to building applications on Fantom.
Fantom DeFi and FTM Token
Fantom promises to be the all-in-one DeFi (decentralized finance) suite for users. Fantom’s EVM-compatible blockchain gives users the ability to mint, trade, lend and borrow digital assets directly from their wallets. And all of this comes with near zero fees and instant transactions, making DeFi ideal on Fantom.
Fantom currently supports the following:
Liquid staking – using staked FTM tokens as collateral for DeFi applications. All FTM delegations are liquid within the Fantom ecosystem.
fMint – users can mint dozens of synthetic assets on Fantom, including cryptocurrencies, national currencies, and commodities.
fLend – lending and borrowing digital assets to trade and to earn interests without losing exposure to held FTM.
fTrade – trading Fantom-based digital assets without leaving the wallet. This makes for a fully non-custodial and decentralized AMM exchange.
What is the FTM token?
FTM is the primary token on the Fantom network. FTM tokens and sFTM tokens can be used as collateral to mint fUSD, which can then be used to trade and swap for synthetic tokens and fiat, and much more. All of this is accomplished through the progressive web app Fantom fWallet, where users can store, send, receive, and stake FTM tokens.
Fantom partnerships
Fantom is working together with Chainlink to build secure and scalable DeFi products like decentralized stablecoins, lending protocols, and synthetic assets. All developers building on Fantom can access Chainlink’s oracle infrastructure. The integration enables the whole Fantom ecosystem to combine tamper-proof real-time data for on-chain and off-chain assets from trusted sources.
Travala, a blockchain-based travel booking platform, is leveraging Fantom to help users book over 3,000,000 travel products worldwide, including hotels, homes, flights, tours, and activities. This will be a huge boost to Fantom’s adoption.
SuperFarm, a growing NFT ecosystem, simplifies the process for builders on projects like Fantom to set up NFT farms and expand use cases for their tokens. In addition to launching exclusive NFT drops for Fantom users, SuperFarm offers Fantom builders new ways to engage their communities. By setting up NFT farms via the SuperFarm platform’s intuitive and simple interface, builders can incentivize community members to stake their tokens, earn rewards, and interact with each other.
DABS is Afghanistan’s national and fastest-growing electricity company. It manages electricity production, import, transmission, and distribution across the country. Fantom has signed an MoU with DABS where they have agreed to cooperate on the digitalization and implementation of advanced audit software within DABS’s operations. This a huge partnership to support smart energy in Afghanistan, which can help more adoption & validation of the Fantom platform.
Fantom has secured many partnerships and integrations in its quest to become the “nervous system for smart cities.”
Fantom’s approach to the DeFi and dApp landscape is innovative — as is its staking reward program structure. Further proposed use cases for Fantom’s highly scalable smart contract platform are dApps related to supply chain management, payments, and smart city programs, some of which are already being piloted around the world.
As the first of its kind with its complex and unique infrastructure, Fantom’s approach to fast, scalable dApp development is still establishing its place in the wider blockchain ecosystem. Although there is already much competition in the burgeoning dApp sector, the speed and benefits that Fantom offers dApp developers are notable, and the platform is poised to gain further traction.
FAQ
What is Fantom?
Fantom is a smart contract-enabled blockchain that provides a robust environment for dApp development.
What does Fantom do?
The Fantom network architecture intends to provide a viable solution to the blockchain trilemma by providing a steady balance of scalability, security, and decentralization.
How does Fantom work?
Fantom’s fast, scalable platform for decentralized applications (dApps) draws its speed from a unique consensus mechanism called Lachesis. Fantom also offers tools that make it easy to integrate existing dApps, a nuanced system of staking rewards, and a suite of built-in decentralized finance (DeFi) tools.
What is Lachesis?
Fantom is a Layer-1 blockchain that uses a single consensus layer to support the creation of multiple execution chains. The network’s independent consensus layer called Lachesis, featuring a novel consensus mechanism developed by the Fantom Foundation dubbed the “Lachesis Protocol.” Lachesis can provide security to multiple other layers, the first of which is Fantom’s EVM-compatible smart contract chain called Opera.
Has Fantom been adopted?
Yes. Fantom is an ambitious project that has already partnered with numerous blockchain projects, as well as governments and enterprises.
On September 12th, 2021, Cardano’s Alonzo hard fork upgrade went live on the mainnet. As a result, users can now create and deploy smart contracts on the Cardano blockchain.
For an overview of what is Cardano, its features, and advantages and disadvantages, check out our video below:
In an official blog post by the development company behind Cardano, IOHK disclosed that the Alonzo hard fork would enable new capabilities through the integration of Plutus scripts on the blockchain. Plutus is a purpose-built smart contract development language and execution platform using the functional programming language Haskell.
The integration of Plutus will enable a host of new use cases for decentralized finance (DeFi) and decentralized apps (dApps) on the Cardano network. Interestingly, during my research on blockchain advancements, I came across a guide on 온라인 슬롯, which detailed the benefits of integrating blockchain technology into online gambling. This integration will also allow dApps to be built within the ecosystem and facilitate more complex computational programs. This is expected to bring Cardano to the same level as other smart contract-enabled blockchains such as Ethereum, while facilitating energy and cost-effective blockchain operations.
The update is an important development in Cardano’s roadmap, which is divided into five stages — Byron, Shelley, Goguen, Basho, and Voltaire. The Byron era focused on development, while the Shelley era introduced staking and helped Cardano transition from a centralized federated system to a fully delegated proof-of-stake system. Cardano’s entry into the Goguen era is marked by the launch of its smart contracts.
The official website of Cardano states that the Goguen era will also feature the addition of a multi-currency ledger, enabling users to create new native tokens. This will lead to the creation of fungible and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), as well as the creation of new cryptocurrencies on Cardano and tokenization of many types of digital and physical assets.
Cardano creator Charles Hoskinson described the Alonzo upgrade as a game-changing moment for the platform. “This upgrade is the culmination of six years of incredibly hard work with some of the brightest minds in blockchain and beyond,” he said. “The focus is now on improving the platform further, and ensuring that Cardano is adopted by corporations and governments. With this launch, commercialisation is as much in the hands of the community as it is the system architects, and they are already delivering – in less than 24 hours, over 100 smart contracts have already been run on the network.”
Cardano Announces Collaboration with Chainlink
Cardano hosted a hybrid-virtual summit across all continents on September 25th & 26th, 2021. During the 2-day event, IOHK announced their plans to integrate with Chainlink Labs to obtain real-time market data that will help developers build smart contracts for DeFi applications on the network.
Access to real-world databases will be supplied through Chainlink’s decentralized ‘oracle’ networks which provide tamper-proof, high-quality external data to blockchains. This collaboration between IOHK and Chainlink Labs will give access to a wealth of secure data, helping DeFi achieve its promise of building a less costly and more inclusive global economic system.
Initially, information feeds for real-time market prices will be linked to Cardano. Over time, additional data feeds on sports and weather will follow, for use with insurance, gaming, and NFTs.
Hydra: Cardano’s Layer 2 Scalability Solution
During the Cardano Summit 2021, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson revealed that a new venture called “Hydra” is in development on the new Alonzo hard fork to improve aspects of scalability and storage.
David Orr of IOHK explained that although there are plans to improve Cardano fees in order to balance user costs, stake pool operator rewards and network security, the fees likely won’t be low enough for “real world use cases,” which is what Hydra intends to address.
Hydra is a layer-2 scalability solution that seeks to address these concerns by providing more efficient means of processing transaction off-chain for a set of users while using the main chain as a secure settlement layer. Orr also says that Hydra can lower the barrier to entry for customers wanting to build things on the Cardano network like wallets or applications.
According to a blog post by IOHK, Hydra could make transactions on Cardano’s blockchain take less than one second to complete.
“Terms like ‘one million TPS (transactions per second)’ have been used before. It is a bold number, and while this remains as an aspirational target, the ultimate goal of any system is the flexibility to grow capability with demand,” says Orr. “ In principle, by adding increasing numbers of Hydra heads to the system, arbitrarily high throughput can be achieved by the system as a whole.”
Cardano Introduces the Plutus dAppStore
Cardano has revealed that it’s building a storefront for certified decentralized applications (dApps).
In a blog post, IOHK published a preview of its new “integrated approach” to the development of the Cardano ecosystem ahead of Cardano Summit 2021. The centerpiece of the announcement is the upcoming launch of the Plutus dAppStore, a storefront where developers can upload their decentralized applications running on Cardano and make them easier for discovery.
According to Shruti Appiah, head of product and smart contracts at Cardano, the dAppStore addresses two barriers to entry. The first is that there is currently no formal discovery process for dApps running on the network, and the second is that there is no consolidated view of all dApps available in a given ecosystem for end-users.
The Plutus dAppStore will allow Cardano users to explore the entire ecosystem of dApps running on the protocol through a single “storefront” or web page.
In addition to the dAppStore, IOHK is also launching a formal certification program for third-party decentralized applications on Cardano. The program’s goal is to give users assurance about the integrity of the dApps they use through automated logic checks, manual smart contract auditing, and formal verification.
According to Appiah, the dAppStore will provide a “democratized environment for developers to publish their dApps without facing censorship,” meaning both certified and uncertified applications will be listed on the storefront, as the site intends not to act as a gatekeeper but rather provide “a platform for transparent user assessment.”
Climate Restoration Partnership with Veritree
Cardano has teamed up with global land restoration and tree planting verification company Veritree to store reforestation verification records on Cardano’s blockchain.
Going forward, organizations using Veritree’s platform will be provided with an immutable, transparent and auditable blockchain based report on all of Veritree’s afforestation and reforestation efforts – using a fraction of the carbon footprint of other blockchains.
To celebrate this, Cardano and Veritree launched The First Global Cardano Impact Challenge, inviting its global community to make donations to Veritree using Cardano’s native token ADA. Every ADA donated equals one tree planted and these donations will be used to plant the world’s first Cardano Forest. Once at least 15 ADA have been pledged to the campaign, donors will receive 15 Veritree tokens or more in return for their donations. These tokens are redeemable for a tree planting certificate with details of all actual trees once these have been planted next year.
Within 24 hours of the announcement, the Initial Tree Offering (ITO) has already collected enough donations to plant more than 150,000 trees.
Partnership with COTI to Issue Djed Stablecoin
A new stablecoin is arriving on the Cardano blockchain as Cardano founder, Charles Hoskinson announced fintech company, COTI as its partner to be the official issuer of Djed, a new DeFi-focused stablecoin for the Cardano network. The announcement was made at the 2021 Cardano summit event alongside COTI CEO, Shahaf Bar-Geffen.
Djed will be used on the Cardano blockchain as a tool for decentralized finance (DeFi) operations and avoid transaction fees. It will be based on an algorithmic design using smart contracts to ensure price stability and providing an instrument for DeFi transactions. The stablecoin is designed for paying transaction fees on the Cardano network in order to avoid “volatile and exorbitant gas fees” and make transaction costs “more predictable.”
According to Djed’s research paper, its stablecoin protocol will behave like an “autonomous bank that buys and sells stablecoins for a price in a range that is pegged to a target price.” The stablecoin will operate by maintaining a reserve of base coins while minting and burning various other stable assets and reserve coins.
Telecom Integration with Dish Network
Cardano has announced that it is partnering with a Fortune 250 company, Dish Network, a major American satellite TV and wireless service provider. The announcement was made by Chris Ergen, the head of Innovation at Dish.
Chris Ergen made this announcement at the Cardano Summit 2021 with Charles Hoskinson. Hoskinson stated that the partnership will help integrate Dish’s telecom business into the Cardano blockchain so as to help provide digital identity services to Dish customers. He further stated, “Ultimately, the collaboration is going to be both innovative, safe and suitable for the customers and regulators of this industry.”
The partnership aims at bringing the telecoms industry to the blockchain space. It’s the first collaboration of its kind, unlocking significant value for Dish’s customers while growing adoption for Cardano.
NFT Marketplace with eSports Platform Rival
Cardano has partnered with leading esports and gaming platform Rival to develop agnostic NFT marketplaces, fan rewards, and more for Rival and their partners. The partnership will see Cardano facilitate the ability to create and distribute NFTs, the redemption of NFTs for physical goods, and marketplace-based royalties within the Rival platform, whose clients include the National Football League’s (NFL) Seattle Seahawks, National Basketball Association’s (NBA) Detroit Pistons, and Aston Villa and Watford of the English Premier League (EPL).
Matt Virtue, CEO of Rival, said, “Our partnership with Cardano marks Rival’s entry into blockchain and is a significant step in our evolution as an enterprise platform solution to unlock the unlimited potential in gaming and esports. Rival’s integration with Cardano will help us maximize and personalize the entire Rival experience – for both gamers and partners.”
Cardano Summit 2021
Cardano announced several other strategic partnerships and development plans during the Cardano Summit 2021.
Cardano confirmed support for AID:tech, which provides identity based solutions for finance, payments and insurance through blockchain. The collaboration aims to develop verifiable credentials for trusted identity management and ownership; enable customers and consumers to quickly process payments and disbursements; and reliably process vast volumes of transactions.
Cardano also announced their emergence into the world of artificial intelligence (AI) through Grace, a robot designed for the healthcare industry. The AI robot is developed by Awakening Health, a joint venture between Hanson Robotics and SingularityNET. They have chosen Cardano to ensure that Grace meets the stringent guidelines set out by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) framework. Grace has been designed to interact with the elderly and others who have been isolated.
In addition to these partnerships, Cardano took strides to increase on-chain DeFi activity through a strategic collaboration with UBX. UBX, the fintech venture studio and fund spun out of UnionBank, has launched its own public stake pool featuring Cardano. UBX stakers are now able to earn rewards on their ada for helping to secure and operate the Cardano blockchain.
Cardano also announced the ‘lightwallet’, which will enable users to interact with Cardano without internet access. The wallet will be the first ever blockchain wallet able to carry out transactions, hold NFTs, make purchases and more all in one mobile application.
EMURGO, the global blockchain solution provider, will allocate $100 million in the Cardano ecosystem to hasten DeFi and NFT education in the space. DeFi and DEXs are already being developed and perfected on Cardano as new development and updates are rolled out on the ecosystem.
The summit took place in six locations around the world between the 25th and 26th of September, 2021. It was also held in a virtual world, where bobbing avatars representing ADA fans from across the world huddled together to watch Charles Hoskinson and other keynote speakers explain the future of Cardano.
The summit served to showcase the new Cardano smart contract capabilities and to give a small precedent for where Cardano wants to focus its resources.
What’s next for Cardano?
After the Goguen era, Cardano will move into Basho. Cardano Basho will focus on optimizing and scaling the Cardano network to improve its performance.
To implement this scaling, Basho will add sidechains to the Cardano blockchain, using these new chains to take the pressure off Cardano’s main chain. These sidechains may also be used to test features, without affecting the security of the main chain.
Basho will also give users the option to use an account model for transactions. Currently, Cardano only uses UTXO (unspent transaction output), but in the Basho era, users will be able to switch between UTXO and account-based models. The Basho era will see Cardano become one of the most high performance, resilient, and flexible blockchain platforms in the industry.
Given the Goguen era is still in its early stages, Cardano Basho does not currently have an official release date. However, we do know that work on Cardano scaling has already started, enabled by the Alonzo hard fork.
FAQ
What is the Alonzo hard fork?
The Alonzo hard fork is an upgrade that introduced smart contract capabilities to the Cardano network, marking its transition into the Goguen era.
What is Hydra?
The Alonzo hard fork is an upgrade that introduced smart contract capabilities to the Cardano network, marking its transition into the Goguen era.
What is the Cardano Summit?
The Cardano Summit is a mix of virtual and live events that brought together blockchain enthusiasts, industry experts, and special guests to reflect on Cardano’s progress and discuss its future. The most recent summit took place on September 25th and 26th, 2021.
What happened during the Cardano Summit 2021?
Cardano unveiled multiple strategic announcements with blockchain projects, governments, and enterprises. These partnerships include Chainlink for real-time market data, Veritree for climate restoration, COTI to issue a new stablecoin, Dish for digital identity services in telecoms, and Rival for a new esports NFT marketplace.
Cardano also revealed upcoming developments such as a new app store for decentralized apps, a venture into artificial intelligence in healthcare, and a ‘lightwallet’ that can carry out transactions without internet access.
