Category: Decentralised Finance (DeFi)

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.

  • Top NFT Games in 2021: Ranked

    Top NFT Games in 2021: Ranked

    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

    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

    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.

    Learn more about MetaWars in our article MetaWars ($WARS, $GAM): NFT Gaming in Space.

    3. Splinterlands

    splinterlands

    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

    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.

    Read more about it in our article The Three Kingdoms: The New Era of GameFi.

    5. Gods Unchained

    gods unchained

    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 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

    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

    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

    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: A Fast and Flexible Next-Generation Blockchain

    Fantom: A Fast and Flexible Next-Generation Blockchain

    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
    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:

    1. Lachesis protocol – the core consensus layer
    2. 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.

    byzantine fault tolerance
    Byzantine Fault Tolerance

    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.” 

    More details about these partnerships can be found on their official website: https://fantom.foundation/partners/

    Conclusion

    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.

    Sources:

    https://medium.com/certik/the-blockchain-trilemma-decentralized-scalable-and-secure-e9d8c41a87b3 https://fantom.foundation/lachesis-consensus-algorithm/ https://fantom.foundation/what-is-fantom-opera/ https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/fantom-wallet-fantom-crypto-ftm-token https://messari.io/asset/fantom/profile/technology https://medium.com/geekculture/what-is-fantom-ftm-token-why-it-is-the-potential-hidden-gem-67be22a51254
    https://www.coinbureau.com/review/fantom-ftm/ https://fantom.foundation/partners/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=pmd_qs_MOAP6cGW1uLpLEUYyT98dB0iKkE4DXjCrhQSs3Ps-1632701162-0-gqNtZGzNAdCjcnBszQo9

  • HUMAN Protocol: A New Way for Humans and Machines to Interact

    HUMAN Protocol: A New Way for Humans and Machines to Interact

    HUMAN Protocol is an infrastructure that aims to redefine how humans work by supporting distributed job markets. 

    The Protocol provides tools for labor requesters to crowdsource people to perform tasks that help bolster machine-learning networks.

    HUMAN’s vision is to create a more human world: decentralized yet connected, with every viewpoint and background accounted for and represented, in which all value produced is rewarded. The Protocol facilitates direct, globally-mapped connections that bring workers closer to the rewards of their work, organizations to workforces, and machines to understanding.

    Distributed Job Markets

    To improve a digital world, we must look to its foundations: the mechanisms and systems through which people connect, interact, and collaborate. 

    HUMAN enables distributed job markets, but it is not the job market itself. Rather, it provides the tools, infrastructure, plugins, and APIs to support broad-scale data markets – which in time, will become markets to support any type of work. 

    It connects distributed workers with global opportunities to empower an already flourishing gig economy. This ensures it is the workers, not corporate authorities, that have control over the opportunities available to them, allowing the workers to receive more value for their contributions.

    AI training

    New technologies require new data. Data informs the capability of machines to accurately interpret the world. 

    If organizations can select who labels data, they can better assure the relevancy of the dataset produced. HUMAN Protocol provides the end-to-end infrastructure – the tools, plugins, integrations, and API – to hire, manage, validate, and compensate workers at any scale.

    How Does It Work?

    Three key entities within HUMAN Protocol are Requesters, Workers, and Exchanges. 

    The Requester submits work to the Exchange with a bounty attached to a smart contract. The bounty is a sum of Human Tokens (HMT) held in escrow until the Worker fulfils the specifications of the job.

    The Workers perform the work as specified by the Requester. A Worker can be an individual, a website, or derive from labor pools.

    The Exchange is the interface between Requesters and Workers. It monitors the blockchain for new jobs, manages bids for work, and serves the jobs to Workers.

    The Technology

    The Protocol enables Requesters of work to choose from job types supported by Exchanges, then create a job specification and set of tasks to complete. This is distributed by the Exchange to Workers. 

    Optimized execution of jobs by Exchanges is also possible. In this process, the Exchange can intelligently split jobs into smaller pieces. For example, when a Requester submits a medical document for labelling to a HUMAN Exchange, the Exchange can factor this into multiple sub-tasks: understanding where fields are on a page, what type of field each is, and what the contents of the field contain. Each sub-task can be represented by a standard job type.

    The Exchange then distributes these sub-tasks to other Exchanges that support those job types, which make sure that each part reaches an appropriate worker, whether human or machine or both. For example, complicated medical terminology may need to go to an Exchange with qualified doctors. Simple tasks may have no such constraints. 

    As Workers submit their individual answers, the Exchange submits results to a Recording Oracle, which does an initial evaluation and aggregates the work into chunks. These chunks are then evaluated by a Reputation Oracle, which performs payouts and computes a final result for the Requester.

    hCaptcha: The Anti-Bot Solution

    The first application running on HUMAN Protocol is hCaptcha, an online security service that distinguishes humans from bots via simple questions, e.g. selecting all image squares containing a dog.

    hCaptcha
    hCaptcha does the same thing as reCaptcha but with better security

    hCaptcha uses HUMAN Labs’s Proof-of-HUMANity tool to assist in the evaluation and compensation of the end users who get paid to solve the image-annotation challenges. 

    “Proof-of-HUMANity is a gamechanger for the blockchain industry, which has long been plagued by nefarious bot activity,” Alex Newman, hCaptcha co-founder, said in a statement.

    With the boom in decentralized finance (DeFi), front-running bots have increasingly become an issue. The bots are known to cut in line in an execution queue, right before a known future transaction occurs, in order to capitalize on a price change.

    By using hCaptcha, developers can ensure transactions on their networks are executed by humans, and this bot-buster is a more private alternative to Google’s reCAPTCHA. hCaptcha does not sell personal data and they collect only minimum necessary personal data. They are transparent in describing the information being collected, how the information will be used and/or disclosed, and they agree to only use such data to provide the hCaptcha service to Cloudflare.

    Partnerships and Integrations with Chainlink, Solana and Polkadot

    HUMAN Protocol has teamed up with Metamask and Chainlink to create on-chain proof-of-humanity, enabling ERC20 contract developers to verify that the actions in a smart contract are made by a human.

    Chainlink will be used to launch decentralized Reputation Oracles for HUMAN Protocol. These Chainlink-powered Reputation Oracles will enable the autonomous distribution of tasks and payments for HUMAN-powered work pools across the Ethereum, Polkadot, and Solana blockchains. HUMAN Protocol also plans to use Chainlink Price Feeds for payment exchange rates.

    Solana was selected by HUMAN Protocol Foundation as one of the leading choices to integrate with HUMAN Protocol. The integration is currently underway, with plans to launch new labor pools later this year.

    Polkadot functions as the middle layer that translates the information between the different chains HUMAN Protocol is operating on. Parity and MoonBeam have been implemented.

    HMT Token

    HMT is the native token of HUMAN Protocol. It is the primary mechanism of value transfer within the network. 

    Because HUMAN Protocol is built on the blockchain, it can apply smart contracts to execute high-volume micropayments across the globe. The openly verifiable smart contracts hold all funds in escrow, so there is peace of mind for all parties involved.

    The Requester spends HMT as they create a Smart Bounty for a job. The Requester prefunds the bounty, which is stored in escrow by smart contracts.

    Workers earn HMT by completing work. They bid for work in HMT and are compensated for their work in HMT. If the job is complete, the prefunded bounty is released to the Worker. If the work does not fulfil the requirements, the job is aborted, and funds are returned to the Requester.

    The Exchanges earn HMT for matching requested work with Workers. The Exchanges prioritise distribution of tasks based on the reputation, which is determined both by the quantity of HMT a Worker holds or has previously earned (Proof-of-Balance), taking into account both the total value of their past transactions as well as their balance.

    The supply of the HMT token is fixed.

    Human-Machine Collaboration

    Today, HUMAN Protocol already offers unprecedented artificial intelligence training capabilities.

    hCaptcha is interacted with by 15% of internet users, representing the world’s largest data-labeling workforce. This is only the beginning, however. 

    HUMAN and its partners are working to bring the Protocol to more applications, each functioning as an Exchange between Requesters and Workers, to realize new distributed markets and ways of working, and increase the points of human-to-machine interaction.

    Not only does HUMAN offer access to the world’s largest labor pool, and the means to effectively manage such a distributed workforce, but it is enabling systems to revolutionize human-machine interaction within AI: a mechanism for machines themselves to understand the data they need to improve their algorithms, and to have a means of asking for that data across an automated, global marketplace, where the answers can be provided.

    FAQ

    What is HUMAN Protocol?

    HUMAN Protocol is a broadly applicable technology to connect and validate human and machine workers.

    What does it aim to achieve?

    HUMAN is focused on creating the largest labor pool for humans to achieve greater potential, and machines to achieve greater understanding. They offer the ability to request work from other machines; repetitive tasks can be taken care of, and human workers can focus on more interesting, creative, or specialized tasks.

    How does it work?

    HUMAN Protocol creates a blockchain based, two-sided marketplace. On one side, it enables requests to label large volumes of data. On the other, it allows for the workers who complete this work to be evaluated and remunerated.

    Is the technology already available?

    Yes, the most widely used service by HUMAN Protocol is hCaptcha, a tool to distinguish humans from bots. HUMAN has also partnered with multiple networks to make their technology available on a global scale.

    Sources:
    Click to access 60511d72db8c7eb0b9799526_Human-litepaper.pdf
    https://www.coindesk.com/human-protocol-expands-hcaptcha-tool-launches-wallet-to-make-ai-smarter
    https://news.bitcoin.com/introducing-human-protocol-a-new-way-for-humans-and-machines-to-securely-connect-and-collaborate/
    https://www.humanprotocol.org/blog/introduction-to-the-human-token-hmt?lng=en-US
    https://www.humanprotocol.org/blog/development-update-collaborations-and-integrations?lng=en-US
    https://blog.cloudflare.com/moving-from-recaptcha-to-hcaptcha/

  • CyberFi ($CFi): Automating decentralised finance?

    CyberFi ($CFi): Automating decentralised finance?

    Decentralised Platforms (DeFi) platforms have exploded in 2020, however, their complicated user interface and user experience have hindered adoption from investors that outside into the crypto industry. And even those who are already accustomed to the mechanics of these networks still fear one thing: impermanent loss.

    Most DeFi platforms use automated market making to determine asset prices in liquidity pools. Therefore, the value of an asset inside the pool may differ from the value of the same asset outside the pool. Since the prices shift radically, it’s hard for liquidity providers to withdraw assets on time to prevent a loss.

    The solution is to use automated trading and liquidity provision on these platforms. CyberFi is among the few projects exploring this path and aiming to bring the functionality of centralized exchanges to decentralised exchanges and automatic market makers.

    Check out our podcast interview with Geralt, CEO of CyberFi.

    Background

    Geralt, Igor Sokolov, and Darius Greicius head the project as the CEO, CTO, and CMO, respectively. The CEO has over five years experience in senior management positions, four years being in the crypto sector, with three years spent in creating DeFi, centralized exchanges (CEX), and other blockchain and crypto activities.

    On the other hand, Sokolov has four years of experience in cryptocurrency, including participating in Hackathons and creating decentralized applications. Greicius is well-versed in the financial markets, crypto, and marketing.

    What is CyberFi?

    CyberFi is a blockchain-based platform allowing users to automate critical tasks when interacting with DeFi protocols. The platform uses intelligent automation to know when to exit or enter a position. The network handles the automation of tasks related to lending, trading, liquidity provision, and inter-blockchain interaction.

    Notably, CyberFi is not a know-it-all platform. Instead, it gives users the chance to define parameters on how they need things to be done.

    For example, liquidity providers (LPs) can automate processes to remove or add liquidity in a pool using set price points. Consequently, LPs don’t get rekt (wrecked) when sleeping since DeFi is a 24-hour industry.

    Geralt and his team have the vision to help DeFi enthusiasts to mitigate risks while lowering entry barriers and enhancing user experience.

    Most importantly, Cyberfi takes a non-custodial approach, minimizing the security risk to users’ funds. In addition, the protocol contains features to cater to both novice and experienced DeFi users.

    Three Areas Cyberfi Seeks to Automate

    CyberFi seeks to automate 3 major areas: Trading, Automation and MultiChian.

    Trading

    Limit orders have dominated crypto trading on centralized exchanges. CyberFi moves beyond the simplicity to tap into price divergent indicators (PDI) to enable smart order handling in DeFi. With no centralized order books, as in CEXs, the protocol uses PDIs that tap into reputable oracles to initiate controlled orders on decentralized exchanges using liquidity pools.

    To ensure its users get the best price in the market, the protocol uses the best trade value (BTV). Apart from the price, the concept also caters to the lowest fees.

    That’s not all. CyberFi uses additional tools to hedge against volatility. For example, the Change Speed (CS) tool coupled with PDIs, is baked inside the smart order feature.

    Consequently, a trader can use the price or its percentage to mark specific points during a trading session that key decisions need to be made. Some of the decisions may be to sell a token when its price falls at a given percentage within a given timeframe.

    Automation System

    CyberFi’s Automation System will feature multiple complex actions in farming, staking, Liquidity Pools and LP tokens.

    The platform uses high-end price triggers and BTV to guard users against inflation, price reduction, and other unforeseen risks.

    In addition, it makes it smoother for a user to enter or exit a strategy without the need to sign an array of transactions. As such, users can engage in high-risk yield farming, which is associated with high returns. Note that interaction with this type of DeFi strategy requires pre-defined parameters from the user.

    Multichain Activities

    The idea of moving crypto assets across different blockchains is finally catching up. Unfortunately, in the DeFi scene, the activity is still mostly manually handled. But not anymore.

    Cyberfi automates inter-blockchain activities to allow users to automate activities on popular decentralized networks such as Polkadot and COSMOS. Notably, with this functionally, DeFi users can automatically participate or move their assets on another blockchain.

    Cyberfi’s CFi token

    CFi is the protocol’s base asset and can be used in the CyberFi ecosystem. The main uses of the CFi token are:

    • Paying for gas prices;
    • access to unique products;
    • reduced commission fees; and
    • payment for multi-chain operations.

    CFi tokenomics

    CFi has a total supply of 2,400,000 CFi tokens. Key beneficiaries during distribution include strategic partners who account for 500K tokens, development (300,000 CFis), and initial liquidity team (250K).

    Around 300,000 CFi tokens were set aside for marketing and community growth, while staking rewards and liquidity providers (LPs) took 200,000 tokens. Additionally, the transaction mining program was allocated 50,000 CFi coins while the two sale rounds removed 800,000 tokens from the total supply.

    Note that allocated coins have different lock-up periods. For instance, tokens allocated to strategic partners have a six-month vesting period, while those on the transaction mining program have 24-weeks unlock period.

    The token’s major use cases include giving holders a voice on the governance table, paying for fees, paying for automation strategies, and giving holders the right to private products.

    However, automation-based activities also use ETH to cover fees. In this case, ETH coins are automatically converted to the native currency.

    Apart from exclusive access and having a voice in the decision-making table, the token gives its holders a right to earn part of the platform’s revenue. And it’s a lot! CyberFi distributes 80% of all fees collected in the native currency to CFi holders. These include those converted from ETH.

    Staking on CyberFi

    CyberFi’s staking product is called CyberEra. The offering is open for CFi and Ethereum (ETH) investors. One pool supports the native asset while the other interacts with CFi/ETH.

    Staking on CyberFi
    Staking on CyberFi

    However, staking rewards differ depending on the pool. On the CFi pool, 10,000 CFi tokens (roughly $30K) are up for grabs, while 25,000 (approximately $76K) CFi tokens are available for rewards on the CFi/ETH pool.

    Each pool has room for any amount of tokens, and each staking session lasts for 40 days upon which the staked funds are locked. Apart from the staked funds, rewards accrued during this period are also locked for the first half of the 40 days.

    On the CFi pool, the daily reward is estimated at around $750 (250 CFi tokens), while those staking on the CFi/ETH LP expect to receive about $1,898 after every 24 hours.

    Interestingly, locking the assets during the staking period attracts only serious users who share in the project’s vision. So far, over 1.5mil worth of CFi has been staked.

    However, the duration of CyberEra isn’t fixed. Depending on its success, the team will decide on how long the next staking era will last.

    A few months into its launch, the platform already boasts over $1 million total value staked. The CFi pool accounts for the largest share, with roughly $670,000, with the CFi/ETH LP having slightly above $390,000.

    CyberFi mega month January- February 2021

    CyberFi are doing huge things in January-February 2021 with product rollouts, integrations, partnerships, new development plans etc.

    The mega month will begin on 20th January 2021 with 3 major accouncements and product rollouts on-board, together with a full update of Q1 and recap.

    23rd January 2021 will be another wave of announcement including “v2” of CyberFi.

    Conclusion

    CyberFi’s entrance into the space has the right timing. Although the DeFi industry has recorded massive gains so far, the protocol could potentially boost the amount of funds locked in DeFi networks. How? By lowering the entry barriers, guarding against impermanent losses, and allowing users to comfortably initiate high-risk yield farming strategies.

    In addition, CyberFi’s implementation of CFi has more benefits to its holders. For instance, sharing 80% of all fees collected with CFi investors and keeping 20% is among the few occurrences in the cryptocurrency industry.

  • Swag Finance Token Launch guide

    Swag Finance Token Launch guide

    Swag.live is a popular adult entertainment platform with over 10 Million users worldwide with over $12,000,000 USD annual revenue (source). SWAG pioneered the Asian adult entertainment industry, offering both streaming and pay per view videos for over 10,000 content producers. The team is headed by Sam Liu and had origins in Taiwan. Currently, SWAG has set up offices in Montreal in charge of expanding operations to North America and worldwide. SWAG has signed up top global talents such as Eva Elfie to produce content for the platform.

    Swag is offering a decentralized community governance token – SWAG – to continue the expansion and move to a Decentralized Autonomous Organisation (DAO). Overall, SWAG is issuing a total of 540 Million tokens to achieve decentralized governance.


    Swag Governance Tokens

    SWAG Live platform

    SWAG has decided that instead of growing the community in a centralized fashion with few participants, they are choosing to embrace community governance. The key is to allow more participants in their ecosystem, allowing for faster product iteration and better product design by including community feedback and design making. The key is to harness the power of the community and decentralization to push SWAG’s growth to the next level. In many ways, SWAG’s token offering is an experiment, as the adult industry has been traditionally shrouded in secrecy – with big players making most of the decisions and taking most of the profit.

    Each SWAG token is entitled one vote in community governance. Governance voters will be rewarded via “Squirt pool” that have valuable rewards (see below).

    Token information:

    Initial offering price: $0.10 per SWAG
    SWAG Total Supply: 625,000,000 SWAG tokens.

    To guarantee the governance of the SWAG community, the team has stated the following

    • Team will not privately coordinate any decisions
    • Team will no actively participate in DAO governance
    • Team will not pay for DAO maintenance, and DAO management is not hired by the team.

    SWAG token offering – First Swap Event

    Swag will offer tokens via a “First Swap Event” (FSE) held on Cream.finance (you can read our take on CREAM here). The FSE event will take place on the 14th October 2020 at 2:00pm (UTC), with an initial price of $0.10 per SWAG. Cream offers the ability to swap tokens via its decentralized exchange component. The FSE will start with each SWAG token through two 50/50 pools:

    SWAG/USDC (500,000 / 50,000)
    SWAG/CREAM (500,000 / 50,000 USDC equiv)

    To swap for SWAG in the FSE, participants will need to have both $USDC and $CREAM, along with $ETH (for gas fees). The Team does remind people that after submitting a transaction, it could take 1-2 minutes for confirmation. Also, CreamSwap runs on an Automated Market Maker (AMM) mechanism. Hence it is possible that prices of SWAG may change whilst the transaction is pending confirmation. However if this happens the transaction will simply fail, but your tokens will not be lost.

    After the FSE, participates will also be able to earn extra SWAG tokens via a yield farming event on CREAM. Users will be able to provide liquidity to SWAG trading pairs, thus increasing the size of the liquidity pools for SWAG. Cream liquidity pools function same as Balancer, so the more liquidity that is added, the more stable a trading pair will be. To find out more about liquidity pools and how they work, you an check out our article on Balancer and Liquidity Pools.

    To reward community liquidity providers, those who provide liquidity to the SWAG/USDC and SWAG/CREAM pair will able to stake their liquidity tokens (CRPT) for additional SWAG rewards. A total of 1,015,000 SWAG has been allocated for yield farming. This event is designed allow the community to provide extra liquidity token trading.

    How to participate in the First Swap Event by swapping SWAG

    To participate, you will need to go on Cream Finance. There you can choose the ERC-20 tokens (either $CREAM or $USDC) you want to swap for SWAG, remember to select $SWAG in the lower row. Then unlock and swap your ERC 20 tokens by clicking “Unlock” and then “Swap”. (https://www.nelsongreerpainting.com/)

    SWAG Reward Pools

    SWAG will have yield farming features. There will be 2 Reward Pools: $SWAG/$CREAM and $SWAG/$USDC. SWAG holders who want to join these Reward Pools must provide their tokens, known as liquidity. The purpose of this is to increase the depth of trading pairs, reduce the likelihood of price slippage and keep the stability of SWAG tokens. In return, SWAG hotels can benefit through earning passive returns by means of swap fees.

    How to add liquidity to SWAG Reward Pools

    Go to the Cream Finance Pools and select the trading pair (i.e. either $SWAG/$CREAM and $SWAG/$USDC). Unlock the permission to transfer ERC-20 tokens by clicking the lock icon for both tokens. Click “add liquidity”- after doing this you will get CRPT tokens.

    Then, go to the Cream Finance Rewards page. There, choose the Reward Pool (i.e. either $SWAG/$CREAM and $SWAG/$USDC). Click “Enable” to unlock CRPT transfer permission. Then click “Stake” to stake your tokens.

    Claiming your rewards is easy, simply click “Claim Reward” on the Rewards page on the side bar.

    SQUIRT and Rewards for DAO participants

    The SWAG community is rewarded in the form of “SQUIRTS” (yes, this is what they are actually naming it). SQUIRTS are a reward for SWAG token holders that participate in community governance by contributing their time to debate important issues, research and discuss important business matters to help grow the platform. To join SQUIRTS, SWAG holders can debate on a particular governance proposal, and then stake their SWAG tokens to vote.

    Squirts can be rewards in the form of a stablecoin, SWAG token, or other tokens, and are designed to be rewarded pro-rata to all voters on the SWAG DAO. The rewards are split according to votes entered – with 1 token being 1 vote. This will drastically improve SWAG governance and community participation, as users are rewarded for taking part in the DAO.

    SQUIRT 2 is ongoing and will end at 10:59 on 30th October 2020 (UTC) and note that your tokens will be locked up for 7 days from the time of your vote. There will be a total of 4 SQUIRTS in November 2020, with a total of 1million USDC to be distributed as follows:

    November 2020 SQUIRTS
    November 2020 SQUIRTS

    SQUIRT 3: Oct 30 — Nov 6: 300,000 USDC
    SQUIRT 4: Nov 6 — Nov 13: 200,000 USDC
    SQUIRT 5: Nov 13 — Nov 20 300,000 USDC
    SQUIRT 6: Nov 20 — Nov 27 200,000 USDC

    How to stake SWAG to join SQUIRTS

    Go onto the voting page. There, stake your SWAG tokens by clicking “Stake Token”. Register to vote for a proposal by clicking “Register to Vote”, and “For” or “Against” depending on your inclination. You can then collect you SQUIRT rewards by clicking “Collect”.

    SWAG exchange pool on Uniswap

    SWAG token holders can exchange their tokens through the SWAG/USDC Pool to get Uniswap LP tokens (UNI-V2). The Team have also set up a new reward pool for Uniswap liquidity providers who can stake their LP tokens to the reward pool.

    Between 22nd to 28th October 2020, as an initial incentive for liquidity providers LP Token reward distribution will be available. Rewards will be given at each block with 25,000 SWAG available daily, totaling 175,000 SWAG for staking SWAG/USDC Uniswap LP tokens. Note however that there will be a 3 day lock for any LP tokens which are staked.

    As a side note, our community has found there is a price discrepency between CREAM and Uniswap. So users who want to sell their SWAG may want to check and compare the prices on these two platforms!

    Project: Referral Rewards- Refer a friend and get SWAG

    From 12:00 on 14th October 2020 to 12:00 on 14th November (UTC+8) SWAG will be having their referral program. A total of 50,000 SWAG will be released as rewards for those who help promote and grow the SWAG community.

    To participate, go to their event website: https://referrals.swag.finance/ and complete their Referral Rewards checklist. This checklist involves tasks such as following their Twitter, Discord and Telegram and afterwards completing the form on the site. Then you will be able to get an invitation code to send to your friends.

    Completing the Referral Rewards checklist earns you 1 entry. Then if you refer a friend both you and your friend will each get one entry. So as an example, if you refer 5 friends, you would get a total of 6 entries. At 6:00p.m. on 14th November 2020 (UTC+8), the team will draw 1,000 winners who will receive 50 SWAG as a reward. There are no restrictions on multiple entries so you can refer more friends to increase your chances of winning more SWAG!

    SWAG NFTs

    SWAG will be doing non-fungible tokens (NFTs), it was only a matter of time. The NFT market is a huge opportunity for budding artists, and apparently now also the tens of thousands of SWAGGERs (i.e. SWAG content creators).

    SWAG NFTs will soon be available on Opensea– a NFT marketplace and feature the best SWAGGERs on SWAG’s platform. They will be limited edition NFTs that will also be attached to various SWAG events and rewards.

    SWAG roadmap: What’s coming up next?

    Reward pools

    The SWAG team observed that many SWAG token holders who participated in the reward pools were unable to participate in the SQUIRTS voting sessions. Therefore in future, SWAG will host less reward pool events that would result in decreased participation in SQUIRTS.

    SWAG diamond drip

    SWAG.Live is one of the leading premium adult content platforms in Asia, and many $SWAG holders also have accounts at SWAG.Live. Therefore to reward these holders, starting in November 2020, SWAG finance will build a system that would detect the amount of $SWAG in the wallets of registered SWAG.Live members. SWAG finance would then drip SWAG Diamonds which can be collected and used on SWAG.Live app for live chat, accessing stories, live streams and gifts to content creators.

    Diamond distribution time: 4:00pm every Monday (UTC +8).
    Diamond ratio: 1 SWAG.Live diamond for every 50 $SWAG in your wallet (this includes any tokens staked in the SQUIRT pools)
    Distribution method: SWAG.Live diamonds will be sent direct to your SWAG.Live account.
    Restrictions: Only one Ethereum address can be bound to one SWAG.Live account.

    How to sign up for the SWAG diamond drip

    Bind your Wallet and SWAG.Live ID:

    1. Go to diamonds.swag.finance and connect your Ethereum wallet.
    2. Enter your SWAG.Live ID and click “Sign and bind”. Your SWAG.Live ID can be found on the SWAG.Live site under “Me”.
    3. After the binding process is complete, SWAG.Live diamonds will be sent to your SWAG.Live account every week.

    VIP group

    Holders with over 200 $SWAG can join a VIP Discord group. In addition to having access to this more exclusive discussion channel with fellow SWAG holders, the SWAG.Live team have also agreed to give a number of perks such as behind the scenes access to the SWAG.Live content creation process, limited access to SWAG short films and SWAG diamond giveaways.

    Exchange listings for $SWAG

    SWAG is currently listed on Uniswap and Hotbit. Trading will begin on Bitmart from 8:00pm on 6th November 2020 (HKT) onwards.

    The team mentioned in their latest article that their mid-term strategy is to maximise the number of potential SWAG buyers and are in discussions with the following exchanges to list their token: Binance, Upbit, Bitflyer, Bitthumb, Huobi, Bitkub, Probit, Kucoin and ZG.

    See here for our picks for top cryptocurrency exchanges.

    Conclusion

    SWAG is strongly embracing decentralization and decentralized governance allows participation in the future direction of their adult industry platform. SWAG is an already profitable business of over $12,000,000 USD annual revenue (source) and a growing audience of over 10 Million users. This Decentralized Autonomous Organisation (DAO) is designed to take SWAG to the next level, fuelling future developments, and global expansion.

    Resources:

    Swag Live (18+ only): https://app.swag.live/
    Swag Finance Medium: https://medium.com/@swag.finance
    Asia Crypto Today Coverage: https://www.asiacryptotoday.com/swagfinance/
    Block Tempo Coverage: https://www.blocktempo.com/adult-streaming-platform-swag-finance-will-issue-swag/
    SQUIRTS, Rewards Pool & FSE participation walkthrough: https://medium.com/@swag.finance/squirt-voting-rewards-pool-fse-participation-walkthrough-1dad83cb4348

  • KIRA Network ($KEX): What is it?

    KIRA Network ($KEX): What is it?

    KIRA Network ($KEX) is an interchain exchange protocol that allows users to earn block and fee rewards while staking any digital assets, such as cryptocurrency, stablecoins and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

    Background

    KIRA is developed by a strong team consisting of full-stack developers, blockchain engineers, back-end developers, and technical architects. The team is led by Milana Valmont (CEO) and Mateusz Grzelak (CTO).

    In the past, Valmont had held different roles which include being a blockchain consultant at Adcoin, as well as a strategy advisor at KNOKS. Grzelak had also held prominent positions in firms such as Settle Finance, Barclays, and Bity.

    KIRA Network’s strategic partners include AlphaBit, TRG Capital, Swingby, and Math Wallet. In addition, the team also includes Roger Lim from NGC Ventures and Alssio Treglia from Tendermint.

    What is KIRA Network?

    KIRA Network is a blockchain-based protocol that brings liquid staking into the DeFi market. It enables access to all virtual currencies, digital fiat, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) within a cross-chain ecosystem.

    KIRA Network: Liquid Staking
    KIRA Network: Liquid Staking (Image credit: KIRA Network Whitepaper)

    With liquid staking, liquidity providers can stake any digital asset. Consequently, they earn incentives emanating from new blocks and transaction fees.

    The protocol’s idea of liquid staking stems from the current staking space. Here, centralized cryptocurrency exchanges provide crypto trading, acquisition, as well as act as a hub for a host of digital currencies.

    Currently, a large number of those coins that are available for staking are found on centralized exchange platforms. For this reason, KIRA wants to change this by providing a decentralized platform that mirrors what traditional virtual currency exchanges offer.

    As such, even small actors in the PoS ecosystem will have access to liquidity and evade security risks found on centralized platforms. Also, the protocol removes the cap on fee and block incentives for liquidity providers.

    KIRA Network: 8 Key Pillars

    To have a profound impact on the DeFi scene, KIRA Network is supported by eight pillars, which include:

    Security

    Using the Multi-Bonded PoS (MBPoS) consensus mechanism, the network can harness its security from staked assets. In addition, MBPoS helps remove the barrier as to which virtual assets can be staked and/or can attract rewards.

    Utility

    KIRA uses IXP (Interchain Exchange Protocol) to provide market access to the wide range of assets staked on the system.

    Liquidity

    KIRA supports liquidity provision through staking derivatives. The platform has a 1:1 ratio between staking derivatives and staked tokens.

    Expansibility

    The protocol uses validators to ensure the credibility of transactions. Also, the validators operate Initial Validator Offerings (IVOs) that allow investors to raise funds for new projects without affecting their liquidity.

    KIRA Network: On-chain IVO
    KIRA Network: On-chain IVO (Image credit: KIRA Network Whitepaper)

    Investors delegate their tokens to the validators while the validators mine new tokens. Correspondingly, the former earn block rewards.

    Upgradeability

    Upgrading the system relies on developers. Therefore, to drive development, the protocol uses an on-chain contracting system as an incentive scheme.

    Sustainability

    To ensure the platform has long term viability, it uses an on-chain governance structure. To elaborate, the governing body touches on the network’s economic aspects that include inflation and interest rates.

    Scalability

    KIRA tackles scalability by removing restrictions on the number of validators and the stake value. In turn, this makes it possible to introduce shards or zones.

    KIRA Network: DeFi zones
    KIRA Network: DeFi zones (Image credit: KIRA Network website)

    Interoperability

    The Network makes use of Polkadot, Cosmos, and other cross-chain systems to power liquid staking. Notably, this staking mechanism does not discriminate against cryptocurrency assets.

    KIRA Token ($KEX)

    KEX is KIRA Network’s native token. Apart from being used as a staking token on the network, KEX is also used as a base asset upon which other currencies are valued.

    Additionally, KIRA’s native currency is a requirement when participating in the system’s governance issues. Moreover, it’s used to reward holders, delegators, and validators. Note that KEX holders are rewarded by being offered low transaction and exchange costs.

    In contrast, delegators earn almost 99 percent of all block rewards and close to 50 percent of all network fees. Validators, on the other hand, earn a commission depending on their configuration and sit on the system’s governance table. Their earnings could go up to 50 percent network fees.

    KEX is allocated to developers/team (15%), advisors (7%), the KIRA Foundation (20%), as well as reserve and liquidity (26.6%)

    $KEX Token Allocation
    $KEX Token Allocation (Image Credit: “KIRA Network Token Metrics” medium article)

    KIRA Network ($KEX) – Public Sale

    KEX token is not available to trade yet and the public sale is soon to be announced. KEX will be launching ERC-20 KEX token on Ethereum network before KIRA Network is launched with the initial supply of 300,000,000 KEX token. Users will be able to swap for the native KEX token with the equal amount of value once the mainnet is launched.

    KIRA Network has raised 3.6M during the seed (priced at $0.025) and private sale rounds (priced at $0.05), with a vesting period of 18 months starting at mainnet launch. All seed and private round participants will receive approximately 2.5% of their token after finalization of all stages of the public round distribution.

    Public round has a $400k cap, token price at $0.075. Find out more here.

    Governance on KIRA Network

    The protocol uses a governance structure that slowly hedges away from full dependency on stake and or wealth distribution. Governance is guided by rules that exclusively put whitelisted actors to execute on-chain actions that are cleared for execution.

    KIRA Network: Governance Structure
    KIRA Network: Governance Structure (Image credit: KIRA Network Whitepaper)

    On top of these rules are parameters and individually assigned permissions. The network puts checks and balances on its governance model through operators, a voting council, an electorate council, and a proposal council.

    Notable KIRA Network Partnerships

    To drive the adoption and usability of the KIRA protocol, the platform has partnered with notable players in the DeFi Space. Some of the most conspicuous are:

    • KIRA and Finance.vote – The partnership enabled KIRA to provide liquidity to Finance.vote’s social trading layer. For this reason, it opened a new revenue stream for Finance.vote users by allowing them to conduct yield farming using digital assets in their portfolios.
    • KIRA Network and Math Foundation – Here, the Math Foundation benefited from staking KEX (KIRA’s native token) tokens and the interaction with KIRA’s MBPoS.
    • KIRA Network and Swingby – The partnership brought staking functionalities to Skybridge users. Skybridge is a decentralized inter-chain asset bridge.
    • KIRA and Blockparty – This partnership made Blockparty one of KIRA’s validators.

    Conclusion

    From crucial partnerships to using a new consensus mechanism, KIRA Network is keen on expanding the possibilities in the DeFi space for liquidity miners and yield farmers. Furthermore, the protocol’s eight pillars help it to enhance security, sustainability, utility, scalability, among other functionalities that are key in driving DeFi adoption.

    Decentralised Finance (DeFi) series: tutorials, guides and more

    With content for both beginners and more advanced users, check out our YouTube DeFi series containing tutorials on the ESSENTIAL TOOLS you need for trading in the DeFi space e.g. MetaMask and Uniswap. As well as a deep dive into popular DeFi topics such as decentralized exchanges, borrowing-lending platforms and NFT marketplaces

    The DeFi series on this website also covers topics not explored on YouTube. For an introduction on what is DeFi, check out Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Overview: A guide to the HOTTEST trend in cryptocurrency

    Tutorials and guides for the ESSENTIAL DEFI TOOLS:

    More videos and articles are coming soon as part of our DeFi series, so be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our Youtube channel so you can be notified as soon as they come out!

    Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.

  • PlotX ($PLOT): Putting prediction markets on the blockchain

    PlotX ($PLOT): Putting prediction markets on the blockchain

    PlotX allows people to plot the next possible outcome and are rewarded for correct predictions. This whole concept originates from prediction markets. Prediction markets such as sports betting are expected to reach a valuation of $155.49 billion in the United States by 2024. The markets have also been supported by the uptake of online casinos and betting sites. In some cases, more than a few players have tapped into the power of blockchain technology to provide transparency in a market that has been kept in secrecy and under unfair setups.

    With the growing popularity of open finance (OpFi), blockchain-based platforms are helping users to predict the direction of the market and, just like in the traditional prediction market, be rewarded if their prediction is correct. PlotX is one such platform.

    Check out my interview with Ish Goel, Co-founder of PlotX:

    Background: Who is behind PlotX?

    The project lives by the popular mantra by Abraham Lincoln that the future can only be predicted by visualizing it in the present. PlotX has a dedicated team led by Ish Goel, Nitika Goel, Kartic Rakhra, and Satheesh A. Furthermore, the team’s vast experiences are spread across various sectors.

    For example, Ish Goel has been involved with Ethereum since 2016 and won the London Blockchain Week Hackathon in 2017. Meanwhile, Nitika Goel led the development of Nexus Mutual and co-founded GovBlocks. PlotX’s key partners also include GovBlocks, Matic, and Venrai.

    PlotX team
    PlotX team

    What is PlotX?

    Built on the Ethereum blockchain, PlotX is a network that seeks to make trading in decentralized finance (DeFi) “simple and fun!” by powering a prediction market with cryptocurrency traders in mind.

    At the heart of the platform is a decentralized application (Dapp) that enables virtual currency traders to forecast the future of Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), among other cryptocurrencies in a weekly, daily, and hourly basis. The project also takes decentralised finance (DeFi) platforms such as Uniswap that use an automated market maker model into consideration.

    Notably, the decision to provide market predictions stems from somewhere, i.e., the problems found in centralized platforms offering prediction services. The major problems include the high cost of using conventional systems, assuring fairness, and counterparty risks.

    Tried but failed, time to do it again

    Although the creation of cryptocurrency-centric prediction markets has been tried on decentralized systems, the time was not ripe. Therefore, it saw little, if any, adoption.

    Being a DeFi-focused prediction platform, PlotX aims to power crypto-based predictions using distributed ledger technology. It enables on-chain market creation using smart contracts. PlotX enables participation mining via a gamified experience by drawing inspiration from yield farming or liquidity mining as used in DeFi protocols.

    Additionally, PlotX seeks to provide instant rewards, short market cycles, and employ a mechanism that spreads the risks. Spreading risks enables a user to tailor his exposure to mitigate losses emanating from wrong predictions. With this option, users lose roughly 20% of their total prediction stake.

    PlotX platform
    PlotX platform

    However, the staked amount can be customized to mirror the users’ risk appetite starting from 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, and 5x. Note that the higher the risk, the higher the reward and potential loss.

    Governance on PlotX

    The protocol employs a community-based governance model through the use of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that votes and initiates proposals regarding changes to the system.

    This approach plays a vital role in providing on-chain governance in a blockchain-based prediction market. However, for non-blockchain dispute resolution, the platform has an advisory board. The board does not have any rights to funds, and its roles grow weaker as the community grows stronger.

    To power this model, the platform mirrors the approach used by Nexus Mutual. In addition, it incorporates smart contracts built on the GovBlocks network to strengthen community involvement.

    The platform also uses smart contracts that allow decision points to be edited, token holders to raise issues, as well as enable the token holders to reach an agreement.

    PlotX’s components of a healthy DeFi prediction protocol

    How does PlotX create a healthy DeFi prediction protocol? This is through several features in the PlotX protocol as follows:

    Market creation – This handles the network’s creation of different cryptocurrency pairs for prediction. A typical market on the platform can be, “What will be the price of ETH/BTC on October 17 at 1800hrs GMT.”

    Market positioning and pricing – A position can range from neutral, to bullish, to bearish and can only be influenced by a user’s experience on digital currency trading. A formula is used to calculate a position price on-chain. The odds are changed in regards to participation.

    Position buying – Buying into a position requires a user to stake crypto such as ETH. A user can buy into more than one position depending on the amount of token’s staked, the amount required for each position, etc.

    Positions trading – Here, users can trade positions in a decentralized way and exit positions before they expire.

    Market settlement – Closing prices are calculated from data provided by distributed oracles such as Chainlink.

    Market reward claims – Rewards are distributed once the market closes. However, the distribution of rewards is halted in case of a dispute until the dispute is resolved. However, a dispute can only be raised within the cooling period, given after the market closes.

    PlotX Alpha and PlotX Token ($PLOT) use cases

    Alpha is a version of PlotX existing on Ethereum’s Kovan testnet network. Although the system largely uses ETH when making predictions, it has a native token called PLOT. The token allows for:

    ·         P2P commissions.

    ·         Referral mining – Existing users can invite friends and family and be rewarded.

    ·         Community mining – Attracting more people into the platform using mineable airdrop rewards.

    ·         Play mining – Users are rewarded for staking PLOT before participating in market predictions.

    ·         Governance mining – The voting strength depends on the amount of PLOT staked.

    ·         Liquidity mining via staking.

    PlotX ($PLOT) mainnet launch and listing

    On 13th October 2020, PlotX will be launched on the Ethereum mainnet. Upon launch, BTC/USD and ETH/USD trading pairs will be available for users to predict on using PLOT and ETH.

    On the same day at 1:00pm (UTC), its native token PLOT will be listed on Uniswap.

    Conclusion

    Being a non-custodial protocol, PlotX users access the platform using their MetaMask wallet or any of their mobile wallets. The network’s users can also sign in using their email addresses. However, they have to integrate centralized finance bridges to enjoy the benefits of a prediction market in the DeFi world.

    The project’s reliance on the Ethereum blockchain and the ETH token allows its users to optimally interact with OpFi protocols since most of them are built on the same chain. With online prediction markets gaining traction in the centralized space, PlotX provides a superior service for those in the decentralized world.

    Decentralised Finance (DeFi) series: tutorials, guides and more

    With content for both beginners and more advanced users, check out our YouTube DeFi series containing tutorials on the ESSENTIAL TOOLS you need for trading in the DeFi space e.g. MetaMask and Uniswap. As well as a deep dive into popular DeFi topics such as decentralized exchanges, borrowing-lending platforms and NFT marketplaces

    The DeFi series on this website also covers topics not explored on YouTube. For an introduction on what is DeFi, check out Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Overview: A guide to the HOTTEST trend in cryptocurrency

    Tutorials and guides for the ESSENTIAL DEFI TOOLS:

    More videos and articles are coming soon as part of our DeFi series, so be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our Youtube channel so you can be notified as soon as they come out!

    Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.

  • Swerve Finance ($SWRV): What is it and how are they different?

    Swerve Finance ($SWRV): What is it and how are they different?

    Swerve ($SWRV) is a fork of Curve Finance ($CRV) that is 100% community-owned and governed. Decentralized finance (DeFi) projects came about because of a need to convenient access traditional banking services without centralisation. Some of DeFi’s most controversial areas include governance, pre-mining, and fixed allocation of coins to founders or shareholders of the respective platforms. This has led to DeFi systems being forked to create more transparent products. Swerve is one such fork.

    Background

    As mentioned previously, Swerve is a fork of Curve Finance. Curve Finance is a blockchain-based platform that powers the exchange of stablecoins. Its main advantage is the fact that dealing with stablecoins leads to minor slippage, increasing the profit margin for liquidity providers.

    Curve also has a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to enhance distributed governance through voting. Unfortunately, the platform’s founder, Micheal Egorov, holds more than half of the voting power. This led to Swerve’s birth to provide a platform that’s 100% owned by the community.

    Swerve.fi
    Swerve.fi

    What is Swerve and how is it different from Curve?

    Swerve is a clone of Curve Finance but without:

    • A pre-mine;
    • token allocation to shareholders;
    • extended distribution of tokens;
    • a controlling founder or shareholder.

    Swerve has a single pool that accommodates leading stablecoins such as DAI, TUSD, USDT, and USDC. Note that the creation of new pools is a function of the protocol’s DAO.

    As such, the community can vote to introduce additional pools. Unlike other DeFi platforms, Swerve does not whitelist smart wallets allowing projects like Yearn.Finance and other DeFi-based smart contracts to participate in its votes.

    Swerve Token ($SWRV)

    Swerve’s native token is called Swerve token (SWRV) and it is supplied to the community without a reserve for founders or the team. SWRV has a total supply of 33,000,000 tokens, which are unlocked on a yearly basis, with all coins going to liquidity providers.

    However, the first distribution of nine million SWRVs occurred 2 weeks after launch. The first year will see liquidity providers receive another 9 million SWRV tokens. The remaining 15 million tokens will then be equally spread over five years at a rate of 3,000,000 tokens per year.

    How to Farm SWRV

    Visit Swerve.fi, click “Swerve app” and connect your Metamask wallet. Other wallet options include Ledger, Dapper, and Trezor. Stuck? Check out our MetaMask guide.

    Next, access the “Pools” tab. Click on “$ SWEVE POOLS $” where you will be able to see the pools for 4 stablecoins (i.e. DAI, USDC, USDT and TUSD). Note that the “POOL APY” means the APY you get for providing liquidity to the stablecoin pools, whilst “SWRV APY” refers to the APY for staking your tokens.

    Once you enter the pools you will be taken to the “BUY and SELL” tab where you can buy the supported stablecoins directly (though payments must also be in other supported coins). Alternatively, you can just obtain the stablecoins directly from Uniswap.

    Go to the “DEPOSIT” tab. Here you will be able to select the amount of stablecoins you want to add. In “Advanced options” you can also set the amount of slippage. Once you are done, you can go ahead and select “DEPOSIT”. There will be 2 transactions to confirm: (1) to approve the tokens to be used; and (2) to confirm your deposit into the protocol.

    By depositing into the Swerve pools you would be rewarded in SWUSD tokens i.e. Liquidity Provider (LP) tokens. To start earning some of the APY referred to on the website go to the “DAO” tab, go to the bottom box titled “SWUSD LIQUIDITY GAUGE”. Use the slider to select the percentage of SWUSD you would like to deposit and click “DEPOSIT”. Depositing SWUSD here gets you SWRV tokens in return.

    However, doing this does not enable you to earn the stated SWRV APY. To do so, you would have to “BOOST” their deposits to the maximum possible amount.

    To enable the “BOOST” feature, you will need to lock SWRV tokens. This is done on the same page and you can choose the amount and duration of the lock. Locking for a longer duration increases the amount of “boost” and you can see the amount of boost by going to the “CALC” tab.

    Note that locking SWRV tokens also enables you to exercise voting powers on how the protocol should be run.

    To see more about Swerve’s statistics such as total value locked, price, 24-hour volume and market cap etc, see the Swerve dashboard which was created by @Chickenpie347, a member of the Swerve community.

    Conclusion

    It is noted that Pecksheild has completed the highly anticipated audit of Swerve and no critical vulnerabilities were found. However, on 6th October 2020 the Swerve team posted findings from 0xProject concerning a high severity exploit that would allow attackers to withdraw a large fraction of token balances when the smart contract’s amplification coefficient A is updated. Note that this also affects Curve Finance, as they both use the same contracts and see here for the full vulnerability report. Swerve posted they are working to fix this exploit and are attempting to reassure users that since there are no upcoming “A” factor changes which would trigger the vulnerability, the funds locked on Swerve are not at risk. However, one equally large obstacle faced by Swerve is the overall market sentiment which seems to have taken a negative turn, possibly due to a large number of other scams in this space. One will have to wait and see if Swerve can emerge as a survivor even in the face of these difficult circumstances.

    Decentralised Finance (DeFi) series: tutorials, guides and more

    With content for both beginners and more advanced users, check out our YouTube DeFi series containing tutorials on the ESSENTIAL TOOLS you need for trading in the DeFi space e.g. MetaMask and Uniswap. As well as a deep dive into popular DeFi topics such as decentralized exchanges, borrowing-lending platforms and NFT marketplaces

    The DeFi series on this website also covers topics not explored on YouTube. For an introduction on what is DeFi, check out Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Overview: A guide to the HOTTEST trend in cryptocurrency

    Tutorials and guides for the ESSENTIAL DEFI TOOLS:

    More videos and articles are coming soon as part of our DeFi series, so be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our Youtube channel so you can be notified as soon as they come out!

    Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.

  • Flamingo Finance ($FLM): What is it?

    Flamingo Finance ($FLM): What is it?

    Flamingo Finance aims to provide everything a DeFi user needs in one swipe. The project is also built on the NEO blockchain, enabling it to evade the high cost and congestion of Ethereum. Here, we take a deeper look at Flamingo, why it chose NEO, its native token, and what it has to offer to DeFi enthusiasts.


    Background

    The protocol is a NEO Foundation project brought to life through the NEO Global Development (NGD) team and is meant to expand NEO’s vision of a smart economy. Flamingo offers an all-round service to its users by taking care of back end and front end issues under one platform.

    What is Flamingo Finance

    Flamingo is a full-stack DeFi protocol that is interoperable and powered by the NEO blockchain. Operations on the network are divided into distinct components to enable a smooth operation for the platform. (Modafinil) Currently, the system supports access using the NeoLine wallet for NEO assets, Metamask wallet for Ether (ETH) holders, and Cyano plugin wallet for ONT token holders.

    Flamingo’s 5 Key Components

    Flamingo ecosystem (Image credit: NeoNewsToday)

    Swap

    This handles automatic on-chain market making. The module interacts with wrapped tokens on the parent blockchain to provide liquidity. Uniswap, a leading DeFi platform, inspires its approach to automated market making. Liquidity Providers (LPs) converge on a pool by providing tokens with NEO’s standard, NEP-5.

    Wrapper

    Flamingo uses this component to power inter-chain interaction of blockchain assets. Wrapper works with Bitcoin, Ethereum, NEO, and Ontology, where tokens from these platforms can be ‘wrapped’ by being converted to NEP-5 tokens and used on the NEO network.

    Vault

    The Vault module provides an interface for managing, mining, and staking assets. Also, it handles the issuance of collateralized stablecoins. Vault stakers earn rewards in the form of the platform’s native token, FLM (more on the token later).

    Vault is projected to go live anytime between September 25 and 29 in 2020.

    Perp

    Perp is derived from the word perpetual and is designed with perpetual contracts in mind. It uses automatic market-making to power a perpetual contract exchange that deals with a host of assets. The exchange has a leverage of up to 10X for both long and short positions.

    Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO)

    In the decentralized world, everything should be distributed, including governance. Flamingo uses DAO to allow for optimum community involvement in the running of the platform. Issues that fall under DAO include token economics, functionality changes, and parameter configuration.

    Generally, DAO has a say in things happening on the Wrapper, Swap, Perp, and Vault modules.

    Flamingo Finance Token (FLM) and Flamingo USD (FUSD)

    FLM is Flamingo’s native currency dedicated to governance. It’s built using NEO’s NEP-5 standard. Interestingly, the token does not have a cap on its maximum supply.

    FLM coins are distributed to the community with regards to participation on the network. For example, the token will be given for staking cross-chain assets, staking LP tokens, minting FUSD, depositing stablecoins to provide a margin when interacting with perpetual contracts, and contributing to governance proposals.

    Note that before DAO takes over the governance, the Flamingo team will address governance issues through proof-of-authority (POA). FLM can be held by anyone wishing to join the NEO DeFi ecosystem. Furthermore, FLM holders are entitled to submit proposals to the DAO and also be able to vote for submitted proposals.

    Flamingo supports FIP and FCCP proposals.

    Flamingo Improvement Proposal (FIP) involves anything related to system design features such as risk control, liquidation, and liquidity improvement. Flamingo Configuration Change Proposal (FCCP), on the other hand, contains proposals directed towards the FLM release schedule, staking, fee structure, FLM distribution mechanism on the Perp module, etc.

    FUSD is a stablecoin on the platform that is pegged to the US dollar (USD). Staking LP tokens allows one to mint the stablecoin. However, to unlock their collaterals, the minted FUSD has to be burnt.

    Key strengths of Flamingo Finance

    Interoperability

    Flamingo is part of an ecosystem made up of NEO and the Poly network. Poly is a protocol developed on NEO in conjunction with Switcheo Network and Ontology. The protocol connects to other blockchain platforms such as Cosmos, Bitcoin, Ontology, and Ethereum.

    To bring the interoperability factor, Flamingo connects to NEO, NEO connects to Poly, and Poly connects to other decentralized networks.

    Capital Efficiency

    Popular decentralized exchanges (DEXs) using an automatic market maker model underutilize capital from LPs. Flamingo provides capital efficiency by clustering individual aspects such as a liquidity pool (LP) and a collateral pool.

    For instance, Swap handles the LP while Vault provides the collateral pool. Therefore, LPs can provide liquidity in Swap and still stake their tokens in Vault.

    Fair Launch

    To enable a fair launch for all, the platform does not support a pre-mine. Neither does it allocate coins to its founding team. Instead, all FLM tokens are distributed to the community.

    What is Flamincome?

    Being a DeFi-focused platform, it has a dedicated platform for yield farming or liquidity mining; Flamincome. The system provides yield farming functionalities identical to those offered by Yearn.Finance (YFI).

    Flamincome
    Flamincome (Image credit: Medium)

    Flamincome comprises an optimizer and a normalizer. An optimizer converts staked assets into interest-focused assets, while a normalizer changes interest-based assets into synthetic assets with a 1:1 peg ratio to the underlying asset. Synthetic assets can be transferred to other DeFi networks for additional liquidity mining.

    Flamingo Swap: What is it?

    Flamingo Swap is one of the modules on Flamingo Finance’s DeFi platform. It is an on-chain automated market maker powered exchange that allows users to swap one token from another. Similar to other swapping platforms, Flamingo Swap needs users to add token pairs into these pools which in turn creates a supply for traders to come in and exchange tokens. Users i.e. LPs who add tokens to specified pools are rewarded for their contribution as they receive a distribution of the trading fees (currently 0.3% per swap) and LP Tokens. The LPs can then stake these LP Tokens in the Vault and get FLM in return.

    Note the below section titled “Flamingo swap launch and change of $FLM distribution: 5th Oct 2020” to see which Vaults are eligible for distribution of FLM rewards.

    How to add liquidity to Flamingo Swap and what are my rewards?

    By way of example, if you wanted to be a LP for the FLM/nNEO trading pair you would need to do the following steps:

    1. Go to the “Pool” tab on the Swap page;
    2. connect your NeoLine wallet;
    3. click “Add Liquidity” and choose FLM and nNEO. Note the the amount deposited must be of equal value based on the market price of the tokens but this will be calculated for you;
    4. check the respective exchange prices for the FLM and nNEO tokens and the share of the pool your liquidity will form after adding the same. If this is confirmed by you, click “Supply” and confirm; and
    5. the NeoLine wallet will pop up and you will be asked to adjust and agree to the GAS fee to be paid for this transaction.

    For a full walkthrough on how to provide liquidity to Swap and withdraw your liquidity from the same, click here.

    LPs will be rewarded with LP Tokens, in this illustration, the LP would get FLP-FLM-nNEO tokens. They will also get a share of the fees collected from traders equal to the proportion of their liquidity in a pool. So for example, if their deposited liquidity forms 2% of the FLM/nNEO pool they would get 2% of all the trading fees paid by traders, which is 0.3% per swap.

    LPs can then stake their LP Tokens in specified trading pairs to get FLM. For a walkthrough on how to stake assets, claim FLM and remove your staked assets from the Vault, check out the detailed guide from Flamingo here.

    LATEST NEWS

    Are you eligible for refund of Flamincome withdrawal fees?

    Due to an issue with the Flamincome interface, some users who withdraw USDT before 5:00am (UTC) on 26th September 2020 were charged 0.5% withdrawal fees without their knowledge. Flamingcome will refund the withdrawal fees to these users, which Founder Da Hongfei said on Twitter he will “personally subsidize”.

    There is also a proposal being put forward to extend this refund period to any deposits that were made before 5:00am (UTC) on 26th September 2020 but “…withdrawn before 3 hours after the MintRush Resume.” Which from our understanding would be 4:00pm (UTC) on 25th September 2020.

    Flamingo swap launch and change of $FLM distribution: 5th Oct 2020

    At the initial launch of Flamingo Swap, only 6 trading pairs will be supported i.e. FLM/nNEO, pnWBTC/nNEO, pnWETH/nNEO pONT/nNEO, nNEO/pnUSDT and pnWBTC/pnUSDT.

    As Mint Rush 2 has finished distribution of rewards, FLM tokens will no longer be distributed to single-asset stakers. Instead, only users who stake LP Tokens from specified trading pairs in the Vault will continue receiving FLM. From 1:00pm (UTC) on 5th October 2020 to 1:00pm (UTC) on 7th October 2020, 2,857,143 FLM will be distributed per day to these trading pairs in the following proportions:

    • FLP-FLM-nNEO 20%
    • FLP-pnWBTC-nNEO 20%
    • FLP-pnWETH-nNEO 10%
    • FLP-pONT-nNEO 5%
    • FLP-nNEO-pnUSDT 20%
    • FLP-pnWBTC-pnUSDT 25%

    From 1:00pm (UTC) on 7th October 2020 to 1:00pm (UTC) on 14th October 2020, 1,071,429 FLM will be distributed per day in the same proportion as above.

    SCAM ALERT: Flamingo airdrop

    There is currently a Flamingo airdrop scam which asks participants to send their NEO tokens to a “designated contribution address” where you can get FLM tokens at a rate of 1 NEO=1,000 FLM.

    The @FlamingoAirdrop as well as the FlamingoFinanceAirdop Telegram Channels are FAKE. Be careful!

    Fake Flamingo account
    Fake Flamingo account

    I have all this FLM? What happens next?

    FLM is currently listed on the following exchanges: Binance, FTX (FLM-PERP)

    Conclusion

    A full-stack DeFi protocol, like Flamingo, presents numerous advantages to DeFi users. And among them is capital efficiency, where LPs can provide liquidity and collateral at the same time.

    The inclusion of a yield farming system gives DeFi enthusiasts a similar but improved network to YFI and SushiSwap.

    Decentralised Finance (DeFi) series: tutorials, guides and more

    With content for both beginners and more advanced users, check out our YouTube DeFi series containing tutorials on the ESSENTIAL TOOLS you need for trading in the DeFi space e.g. MetaMask and Uniswap. As well as a deep dive into popular DeFi topics such as decentralized exchanges, borrowing-lending platforms and NFT marketplaces

    The DeFi series on this website also covers topics not explored on YouTube. For an introduction on what is DeFi, check out Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Overview: A guide to the HOTTEST trend in cryptocurrency

    Tutorials and guides for the ESSENTIAL DEFI TOOLS:

    More videos and articles are coming soon as part of our DeFi series, so be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our Youtube channel so you can be notified as soon as they come out!

    Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.

  • MEME ($MEME): A DeFi Joke?

    MEME ($MEME): A DeFi Joke?

    MEME ($MEME) is a hybrid between decentralised finance (DeFi) and non-fungible token (NFT) on the Ethereum blockchain. NFTs are tokens that represent unique digital items with verifiable scarcity. They can be used to represent digital ownership as with the case of rare cryptocurrency art. MEME allows users to stake tokens to farm limited edition NFT memes.


    Background

    MEME started out as a meme. Yes, it was a joke made by Jordan Lyall, the DeFi Product Lead at ConsenSys. Lyall’s Twitter post joked about an offering that could allow easy and fast (less than five minutes) creation of a DeFi platform.

    A Twitter user took the joke seriously and created MEME coin. “I was commenting on the silliness of it all. But in doing that, I’ve created the very thing I sought to destroy,” Lyall commented after the coin went live.

    The birth of memes dates back to 1976 when the word appeared on ‘The Selfish Gene’, a book by Richard Dawkins. In the book, memes are portrayed as ideas quickly spread from one person to another within a community. They have since found their way into our daily lives to refer to the viral spread of information on the internet.

    What is MEME?

    MEME is a decentralized project connecting the DeFi world with NFTs through yield farming or liquidity mining. The network stresses that it does not offer coins for sale but allows farming. The system was launched on August 14, 2020, and has since attracted a ton of attention from the crypto community.

    MEME’s Meteoric Rise

    The genesis of the project’s meteoric rise dates back to Lyall’s tweet, which garnered 1,200 likes and a high number of retweets within minutes. After its launch, it was listed on CoinGecko with a hard cap of 28,000 tokens.

    It was followed by an exclusive Telegram airdrop that was done 30 minutes after launch. After launch, the protocol’s Telegram community grew to over 3,000 participants. In its first few days, MEME reached a 24-hour trading volume of $1.2 million with a single coin changing hands at $40.

    MEME token
    MEME token (Image credit: Coingecko)

    Roughly a month later, MEME was trading at $795, had a one-day trading volume of $8.8 million, and a market capitalization of $18.7 million. Also, the coin moved from position 610 in early September 2020, to 276 as of September 18, 2020, based on market cap.

    By September 18, MEME token holders were roughly 1,400 while the NFT holders were about 700.

    How to farm MEME?

    Farming requires staking MEME and then receiving rare NFT versions. This increases liquidity mining opportunities for DeFi enthusiasts. As with other DeFi systems that support yield mining, farming MEME involves liquidity mining pools.

    Note that the NFTs up for grabs are created by a select number of artists. The first digital artist listed is Sven Eberwein, a popular digital artist living in Los Angeles.

    MEME Artist - Sven Eberwein
    MEME Artist – Sven Eberwein (Image credit: dontbuymeme.com)

    Eberwein combines internet culture with computer graphics. Sven “works of the internet, by the internet, for the internet.” The artist’s first MEME-themed collections are titled ‘Don’t buy MEME,’ ‘Volatile Pineapples,’ The MEME Shitcoin Cycle,’ and ‘Crashtest (Because it will).’

    According to Eberwein, MEME’s uniqueness comes from being the first to capture the DeFi and meme worlds.

    MEME farming pools

    Genesis pool

    MEME farming pool - Genesis
    MEME farming pool – Genesis (Image credit: dontbuymeme.com)

    This accommodates the staking of MEME tokens.

    • The first step is to access the pool from https://dontbuymeme.com/farms .
    • Then the next step is to unlock your Web3 wallet. Note that Web3 wallets are just browser functionalities added to the standard self-custody wallets to allow access and usage of decentralized applications (Dapps). Wallets in the Web3 ecosystem include Metamask, imToken, Huobi, AlphaWallet, Enjin, infinito, Opera, Trust Wallet, Coinbase, Dexwallet, Ledger, exodus, Trezor, and Mist.
    • Approve MEME
    • Enter between a maximum of 5 and a minimum of 1 MEME token. Rewards from farming on the platform are called pineapples. For instance, staking 5 MEME results in five pineapples per 24 hours.
    • Claim NFT. This can only be done when the required number of pineapples has been farmed.

    MEME Genesis LP pool

    MEME farming pool - Genesis LP
    MEME farming pool – Genesis LP (Image credit: dontbuymeme.com)

    Here, Uniswap V2 liquidity pool (UNIV2-LP) tokens are staked to earn pineapples.

    • To get the tokens, stake Ether (ETH) and MEME tokens on the Uniswap pool. However, to receive approximately 0.0002 UNIV2-LP tokens, one needs to stake roughly 50 MEME coins and ETH of equal value.
    • Access https://dontbuymeme.com/farms to join the LP Genesis pool.
    • Unlock your wallet.
    • Approve the tokens from Uniswap and specify your stake amount. The pool supports a maximum of 0.0002 and a minimum of 0.00004 UNIV2-LP tokens. As with the previous pool, the minimum amount staked births one pineapple per day while the maximum stake results in five pineapples per 24 hours.
    MEME Genesis Economics
    MEME Genesis Economics (Image credit: Don’t Buy $MEME Medium article)

    A pineapple farmer can claim their NFT of choice when they have enough pineapples. Note that pineapples cannot be shared between pools and the amount staked must not exceed the set limits to avoid failed transactions.

    NFTs earned from mining MEME can be sold on OpenSea, a marketplace for trading NFTs and virtual currency collectibles. OpenSea lists assets created using Ethereum’s ERC-721 and ERC-1155 standards.

    MEME at OpenSea
    MEME at OpenSea (Image credit: OpenSea)

    Governance

    As with other non-custodial financial systems, MEME handles governance issues through a decentralized autonomous organization called MemeDAO. To be a member, you have to hold a minimum of 100 MEME tokens. Towards the end of August 2020, $1.7 million worth of capital was locked in the DAO.

    Conclusion

    In the cryptocurrency community, memes are used as a universal language and MEME joins others like Doge and CoronaCoin that started as a joke but attracted interest from the crypto community.

    MEME’s uniqueness comes from its connection with the DeFi and NFT world, which adds a new reward stream for yield farmers. However, it’s yet to be seen how long ‘a joke’ can be taken seriously.

    Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. (https://colorreflections.com) Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.

  • Kyber Network ($KNC): On-chain Liquidity Protocol

    Kyber Network ($KNC): On-chain Liquidity Protocol

    Kyber Network is an Ethereum-based protocol that can access any ERC-20 tokens, bridging liquidity pools and enabling tokens swaps all under a single platform. It is a tool for payments, financial applications, and liquidity providers.

    Background

    Loi Luu, CEO of Kyber Network, conceptualized the platform out of the need to link liquidity pools across different blockchains to facilitate cost-efficient trading. The team also decided to do away with the centralized model for creating new exchanges because of their dark history with hacking and fraud, with Mt. Gox being a notorious example.

    With decentralised finance (DeFi) leading the crypto space, it was also ideal for the team to create an ecosystem born out of the same model. Through DeFi, Kyber can connect liquidity pools with one another to create a cost-efficient exchange that can accommodate smart contract innovations as well.

    What is Kyber Network?

    Kyber Network Explained
    Kyber Network Explained

    Kyber Network is a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange (DEX) powered by smart contracts. It is designed to support liquidity pools from different blockchains for market-making, allowing traders to get the best rates out of their transactions. The DEX currently lists 81 cryptocurrencies and 82 trading pairs.

    Kyber’s main goal is to aggregate different liquidity providers in a single, unified ecosystem where users can conduct their trades conveniently. Since the network is decentralized, even users can provide liquidity by staking in Kyber’s partner pools.

    The architecture of Kyber allows for instant transaction settlement while offering a wide array of use cases, such as building new financial services and operating crypto-based payment systems. Through its flagship models like Peace Relay and the Waterloo Relay Bridge, Kyber connects multiple blockchains together in creating a liquidity network that can be deployed in almost every other protocol.

    Included in Kyber’s thrust is to create a community-guided network through governance tokens. Like other decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO), users can help maintain the network by voting on important protocol updates, parameters, and implementation features.

    Features of the Kyber Network

    The design of the network is mostly facilitated by smart contracts that can work cross-chain. As mentioned, the end goal is to make a market that offers the best token exchange rates for traders and the best returns for liquidity providers.

    • Aggregated Liquidity Pool: The protocol can put together different liquidity sources into a single pool to reduce the risk of huge spreads and help traders get the best value out of their transactions. Users do not have to broadcast multiple trade calls in order to find the best prices themselves.
    • Diversified Liquidity Source: Since the system of the network is designed for cross-chain functionality, any other liquidity network can connect with Kyber to join the platform.
    • Permissionless: Unlike centralized exchanges, the network is not governed by a single company. This gives more freedom for liquidity providers or developers to work on their own strategies without the risk of an entity monopolizing control over the exchange platform.
    Kyber Network: Features
    Kyber Network: Features

    Users can receive the best return out of their transactions with Kyber, whether they are the ones initiating trades or providing liquidity.

    • Quick Transaction Settlement: Through the help of smart contracts, traders can make orders and complete them with just a single transaction. Smart contracts are coded to complete a series of transactions without requiring the user to make multiple trading calls just to achieve their own objectives.
    • Atomicity: Kyber does not allow transactions to be partially executed, differentiating them from centralized exchanges where users are exposed to the risk of their trading calls not being completely executed. With Kyber, it is either the trade is finalized wholly, or they do not get executed at all.
    • Transparency: Anyone can launch a query from smart contracts to check the rates offered by liquidity providers. This gives the public the best transparency over their transactions.
    • Interoperable: Since trades are trustless and atomic, they can be easily plugged into other smart contracts in the platform. This enables the network to simply execute trades through smart contract functions.

    Network Actors

    Kyber Smart Contracts: They are the backbone of the protocol, supporting functions such as listing and delisting of trading pairs, reserves, and queries, among others.

    Takers: These can be any blockchain entity that gathers the liquidity coming from reserves listed within the network to facilitate trades from token-to-token.

    Reserves: These are liquidity sources for the network that supply the token inventory and prices in Kyber’s smart contracts. Reserves determine the price for a particular asset as well as their supply.

    Kyber Network's Protocol Overview
    Kyber Network’s Protocol Overview

    Kyber Network Crystal Token ($KNC)

    Kyber Network Crystal ($KNC) is Kyber’s economic, governance, and treasury token. KNC was launched in September 2017 with the aim to raise 200,000 ETH. The KNC token distribution is as follows: 61.06% to public; 19.47% to team; and 19.47% to founders, advisors and seed investors.

    How KNC is used differs across chains. But mainly, here are the use cases for the KNC token:

    • Economic Facilitation: KNC can be used to facilitate system operations, such as payments for every transaction made within the network, or to incorporate into the market spread. To get instant liquidity, users can also pay fees in KNC and get their transactions confirmed right away.
    • Treasury Funds: The distribution of all KNC in total supply will include an allocation for the platform’s reserves. This reserve can be used by network maintainers and members of the DAO to fund network development. This is designed to support developers and network contributors by giving them an economic return for their work with KNC.
    • Governance Token: Holding KNC gives users the chance to vote on important protocol decisions such as token parameters, network upgrades, and token listing, among others.

    KyberDAO

    KyberDAO, above all the things that have already been mentioned, incentivizes users to remain active in the network. But the following are key network parameters that KNC holders can vote upon:

    • Voting Rewards: This is the allocated reward for stakers and governance participants.
    • Burning: KNC holders can vote on whether to decrease the total supply of the KNC token.
    • Reserve Incentives: This is the allocated reward for Kyber’s reserve managers.

    As of now, Kyber is in charge of maintaining the DAO. They are facilitating community discussions, decision making, and execution of community decisions. This will remain so until more operational parameters in the network can be integrated with DAO votes.

    KyberDAO rewards
    KyberDAO Rewards

    Staking and Voting

    There is a fixed period of time where users are allowed to stake and vote. These are called “epochs,” which is a denomination of Ethereum block times. Each epoch lasts for two weeks until the next cycle starts.

    This allows Kyber to hasten the reward period for KNC holders and DAO participants, which also incentivizes them to vote within a fixed amount of time.

    Delegating

    If a KNC holder decides not to vote but keep a share in its rewards, they can delegate their voting power to another party who will do so on their behalf. They then retain their control of their KNC, which they can withdraw or use to transfer delegation to another party.

    Conclusion

    Many DeFi projects had their weaknesses exposed due to the volatility of crypto assets. However, Kyber Network is one of the few to have weathered the price instability of a lot of digital currencies in recent months.

    So far, Kyber seems to be a very promising DeFi innovation that promotes a community-governed network. With the progress that it has made, Kyber is considered to be one of the toughest players in the DeFi space.

    Decentralised Finance (DeFi) series: tutorials, guides and more

    With content for both beginners and more advanced users, check out our YouTube DeFi series containing tutorials on the ESSENTIAL TOOLS you need for trading in the DeFi space e.g. MetaMask and Uniswap. As well as a deep dive into popular DeFi topics such as decentralized exchanges, borrowing-lending platforms and NFT marketplaces

    The DeFi series on this website also covers topics not explored on YouTube. For an introduction on what is DeFi, check out Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Overview: A guide to the HOTTEST trend in cryptocurrency

    Tutorials and guides for the ESSENTIAL DEFI TOOLS:

    More videos and articles are coming soon as part of our DeFi series, so be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our Youtube channel so you can be notified as soon as they come out!

    Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.

  • DeFiPie ($PIE) – The SuperApp of DeFi?

    DeFiPie ($PIE) – The SuperApp of DeFi?

    DeFiPie ($PIE) aims to launch the first decentralised finance (DeFi) SuperApp that integrates data and information from all the disconnected DeFi services and protocols. Built on Polkadot, the app focuses to improvise user experience (UX) and interconnectivity of the DeFi ecosystem.

    Background

    DeFiPie boasts of a team of highly skilled and experienced professionals. The Core team members include CEO and Co-founder Aleksei Kopievskii, a well-known web developer with over 8 years of experience. He has been actively involved with several tech startups and has functioned as an investor and advisor to many of them.

    Kopievskii also brings his years of experience to the DeFiPie ecosystem. Other important members of the team are Co-founder and CTO, Maksim Malikov, and CMO, Alymbek Sariev.

    What is DeFiPie?

    What is DeFiPie?
    What is DeFiPie?

    DeFiPie is a marketplace that aims to unify the current DeFi space, which is quite fragmented. It will provide a single gateway to crypto staking, liquidity mining, lending, yield farming, etc.

    The platform is concerned with bringing interconnectivity and better UX to the highly disjointed DeFi space. It functions as a super app that provides users with easy access to a wide variety of DeFi services from a single interface. DeFiPie users will enjoy several interesting benefits, amongst which are:

    • Automatic lending on the platform’s P2P loan market.
    • A wide variety of assets like XTZ, ATOM, DOT, and ADA, which are available for staking
    • Effective matching of loans with DeFiPie’s advanced matching algorithm.
    • The ability to create lending, staking, and liquidity pools.

    One of the announced blockchains that will join the DeFiPie ecosystem is TomoChain, a scalable proof-of-stake blockchain geared towards enterprises.

    DeFiPie Use cases

    Lending-as-a-Service (LaaS)

    One very important aspect of most DeFi protocols is lending. Many protocols, however, offer automated lending solutions. This means that users have no control over their loan offers. With DeFiPie, both lenders and borrowers have the option to choose between automated, semi-automated, and manual lending options. This provides users the freedom to choose which service is most beneficial to them.

    Users deciding to choose an automated DeFiPie lending option will receive loans at an automatically determined interest rate. The drawback to this option is that they might not get the best interest rate available. However, manual lending options furnish a user with total control over the lending process.

    This allows them to determine important details like interest rate, loan timeline, loan-to-collateral ratio, amongst several others.

    Staking-as-a-Service (SaaS)

    Users with large holdings of PIE tokens have the option to create a staking pool on DeFiPie. This is where other interested users can merge their tokens for staking, subsequently, increasing the interest rates of all parties involved.

    Stakers on DeFiPie pools also pay one of the lowest fees in the entire DeFi space. And what’s even more exciting is the fact that despite being in a staking pool, users still retain absolute control over their assets. Staking rewards paid in PIE tokens also attract higher rewards compared to those who are paid in other tokens.

    Liquidity Pools-as-a-Service (LPaaS)

    On DeFiPie, users have the option of investing their crypto in any liquidity pool of their choice. They subsequently earn rewards based on the number of assets they invested. All pool members also receive a share of trading fees. When a user places a certain amount of crypto assets in a liquidity pool, they immediately receive a corresponding amount of PIE tokens.

    These tokens will help improve liquidity in the entire ecosystem. Users on the platform can also create their own liquidity pools easily. They will, however, have to determine important details like interest rates, collateral choice, and many more.

    Custom lending pools

    As earlier stated users with enough PIE tokens can create their decentralized lending pools. Users in this pool decide on the workings of the pool. This is unlike conventional DeFi protocols where mechanics are determined by algorithms. In this case, members decide on details such as PIE holdings required to become an admin or to receive voting rights, utility rates, lending rates, collateral, etc.

    Collateralization Options on DeFiPie

    Simply put, this means allowing users to earn rewards on their stand-in PIE tokens. Unlike conventional DeFi protocols, users will earn PIE on their assets. PIE earned this way can furthermore be used as loan collateral.

    Yield farming

    Users receive PIE tokens as incentives for each day that they are active on the system. In addition, actions carried out on the platform are rewarded with PIE. This helps to ensure a balance between supply and demand on the DeFiPie system.

    Interested users can also farm PIE by simply locking up assets on DeFiPie.

    DeFiPie use cases
    DeFiPie Use Cases

    DeFiPie ($PIE) token

    PIE is the native token of the DeFiPie ecosystem. It is a huge way to earn passive income as users are rewarded with PIE in the DeFiPie ecosystem. The token is required before users can carry out specific tasks on the DeFi platform, including:

    • Creating and participating in a custom lending or liquidity pool, as well as partaking in P2P lending.
    • Creating or accepting manual loan service offers.
    • Users also need PIE tokens to start a staking pool.

    PIE token holders will also be eligible to receive annual yield farming rewards of up to 150%.

    The total supply of PIE token is 220,000,000, of which 45.45% are for staking rewards, 21.05% were sold during the seed round and private sales, 6.82% are reserved for DefiPie Vault, 6.82% for operations, 11.36% for team and advisors, 2.27% for community and 2.27% for the DeFi fund.

    Where is DeFiPie listed?

    PIE is currently listed on Uniswap and TomoDex.

    DeFiPie roadmap: What’s next?

    DeFiPie’s roadmap will be in 3 major categories: Development, Marketing and Operational. The project is expected to be fully completed in Q4 2021 and currently they are on track in terms of the timetable they have set out.

    DeFiPie roadmap
    DeFiPie roadmap (Image credit: Twitter)

    Conclusion

    DeFi is already in the limelight despite its myriad of protocols that lack refined UX. Many analysts have pointed out that more substandard DeFi protocols are expected to come in the crypto space. However, DeFiPie is out to change this narrative.

    The DeFi platform has designed an app with 360° coverage and connectivity of other protocols, which would help weed out subpar projects in the space.

    Decentralised Finance (DeFi) series: tutorials, guides and more

    With content for both beginners and more advanced users, check out our YouTube DeFi series containing tutorials on the ESSENTIAL TOOLS you need for trading in the DeFi space e.g. MetaMask and Uniswap. As well as a deep dive into popular DeFi topics such as decentralized exchanges, borrowing-lending platforms and NFT marketplaces

    The DeFi series on this website also covers topics not explored on YouTube. For an introduction on what is DeFi, check out Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Overview: A guide to the HOTTEST trend in cryptocurrency

    Tutorials and guides for the ESSENTIAL DEFI TOOLS:

    More videos and articles are coming soon as part of our DeFi series, so be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our Youtube channel so you can be notified as soon as they come out!

    Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.