Celo's cLabs acquired the decentralized finance (DeFi) startup Summa, best known for making wrapped Ethereum tokens that can represent locked amounts of bitcoin. Summa's technical expertise in cross-chain architecture will enable seamless interoperability between Celo and various layer-one blockchains.
Trading volume on decentralized crypto exchanges (DEXs) has surged in the last year - and is up over 1500% since January 1st. The growth has been driven by a rising demand to trade ERC20 tokens, accompanying a booming decentralized finance (DeFi) sector on Ethereum (ETH). The top 3 exchanges Uniswap, Balancer and Curve accounting for over 90% of all DEX volume. Of these, Uniswap, an open-source project developed by Hayden Adams that allows users to swap in and out of ERC-20 tokens, is far and away the leader with a market share of 67%.
SushiSwap, created by animated and anonymous character Chef Nomi, is a fork of VC-backed UniSwap, a decentralized exchange. SushiSwap promised to take all of the best features of UniSwap and improve on its governance by creating a community owned fork using a voting token called SUSHI. Anyone who joined the community could become a liquidity provider by staking SUSHI and ETH on UniSwap, which would eventually be transferred to SushiSwap when it is launched. The combination of your liquidity stake, or voting power, is your *SUSHIPOWAH*. Chef Nomi swapped his Sushi LP tokens for some $13 million of Ethereum (ETH) worth about $13 million in what bears strong resemblance to an "exit scam."
As least 75 crypto exchanges have closed down due hacks, scams or simply disappeared for unknown reasons so far this year. According to the Crypto Wisser Exchange Graveyard five of the exchanges were labelled as scams, and four including Altsbit, and Nerae, were flagged as being hacked. In total 31 were shut down voluntarily while 34 were labeled as 'MIA' for disappearing with no explanation. The growth of DeFi and the rise of decentralized exchanges in 2020, increasing regulatory pressures, and hacks and scams were cited as factors.
The SOV Development Foundation, a Marshall Islands foundation overseeing the development, distribution and implementation of the Sovereign (SOV) blockchain, today announced its board of economic and technical advisors as the final phase in preparation for the first public auction of rights to the SOV, a blockchain-based cryptocurrency and the official legal tender of the Marshall Islands. The Marshall Islands and the SOV Development Foundation are ushering in a groundbreaking development in decentralized finance (DeFi), which is transforming the finance industry and now one of the fastest growing sectors in crypto.
Weekly trading volume on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) exploded over the summer, peaking at over $8 billion in late August, thanks in large part to decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols offering new incentives with the potential for huge returns. Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of crypto exchange FTX, claims that the summer surge was due to "fake volume" caused by trading between "trans miners" aimed at earning reward tokens that most DEXs were paying. Once they stopped paying people to fake volume all the volume went away.
The price of Ether (ETH) is up 266% this year - twice as much as that of bitcoin (BTC). But a lot of digital-asset investors are hedging their bets, buying tokens associated with upstart blockchains that could potentially grab market share from the Ethereum network, often referred to as a "world computer" due to its versatility and programmability. One such token is dot (DOT), of the Polkadot blockchain, whose co-founder Gavin Wood was a co-founder of Ethereum. At the heart of Polkadot is the concept of "parachains," which are blockchains that can run higher transaction throughput than Ethereum.
According to a CipherTrace study 56% of virtual asset service providers lack strong know-your-customer (KYC) practices, and 81% of decentralized exchanges (DEXs) have little-to-no user verification. The study analyzed more than 800 cryptocurrency exchanges, as well as over-the-counter trading desks and other kinds of service providers. It looked at 21 DEXs, which have seen massive trading volume growth over the past year, and are designed to let users exchange currencies without a third party and therefore bypass certain regulatory obstacles.
Cryptocurrency investors face a tricky and fast-changing tax landscape worldwide with sparse guidance in many areas, according to a new report from PwC. The report also contains the new PwC Crypto Tax Index, which ranks jurisdictions based on how comprehensive their guidance is for holders. Liechtenstein came out on top this year, with Malta, Australia, Switzerland, Singapore and Hong Kong rounding out the highest rankings. Still, very few jurisdictions have issued guidance on topics like crypto borrowing and lending, DeFi, non-fungible tokens, tokenized assets and staking income. https://www.pwchk.com/en/research-and-insights/fintech/pwc-annual-global-crypto-tax-report-2020.pdf
The price of XRP crashed following a huge airdrop that will credit all XRP holders who hold funds in participating exchanges and wallets with free Spark (FLR) tokens. On the morning of December 12, immediately after the airdrop all of the top ten coins by market capitalization were up 2-4% but XRP was down about 10%. The FLR, to be distributed by Flare Network on a yet-unreleased blockchain, is a smart contract utility fork of XRP. The pair will attempt to challenge Ethereum's dominance in decentralized finance (defi) and decentralized applications (dapps). Flare integrates with Ethereum's Virtual Machine, allowing existing Ethereum dapps to be ported over to Flare to serve the XRP ecosystem.
The recently launched Empty Set Dollar (ESD) stablecoin is built to be the reserve currency of decentralised finance. It sidesteps the centralisation risk of USDC, USDT, and TUSD, avoids AMPL and BASED's death spirals, the 100+ percent collateralisation requirements of sUSD & DAI, and, most importantly, it integrates perfectly with existing DeFi protocols. The ESD protocol expands on the work of Basis.io, which voluntarily shut down before launch due to regulatory pressure on the team. https://www.emptyset.finance/
"Roxe's full stack solution knits together issuance, management, distribution, and interoperation of different CBDCs with banks, central banks, cross-border money transfer companies, and peer-to-peer payment providers in a single network. This is an audacious vision, to rework the global payments system. DeFi and CeFi are losing their distinction. The global payments system needs a rework, integrating CBDCs into it and providing payment rails come as the first step in true digital asset trading towards a global capital market."
Cardano will hard fork on September 12, at which point the crypto-asset will get functional smart contracts. These can be used for decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other types of decentralized applications (Dapps). Cardano has managed to capture the third-largest crypto market capitalization among 10,000+ crypto assets.
Is your DeFi project covered? Take the "owner/operator" test: Does an individual or entity exhibit control over assets or over the service's protocol itself? Does an individual or entity have "a business relationship between yourself and customers, even if this is exercised through a smart contract." Does an individual or entity profit from the service being offered to customers? Is there other indicia of an owner/operator?
The Avalanche Foundation has announced a new $220 million investment fund, named Blizzard, that it hopes will attract developers focused on decentralized finance (DeFi), enterprise applications, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and culture. The program will also assist promising projects with equity investments, token purchases and other kinds of operational support. Outside funding came from Polychain Capital, Three Arrows Capital, Dragonfly Capital, CMS Holdings, Republic Capital, R/Crypto Fund, Collab+Currency, Lvna Capital and Finality Capital Partners.
"The attacker of the $611 million Poly Network exploit has started returning the stolen crypto assets, less than a day after their ID information was reportedly obtained by blockchain security firm Slowmist. The attacker's move came less than a day after the initial exploit, which was the largest DeFi hack to date. But hours after the heist, blockchain security firm Slowmist claimed that they already tracked down the attacker's IP and email information while the investigation on other ID intel relating to the attacker continued."
"Algorand, a blockchain-based cryptocurrency platform with a native cryptocurrency called ALGO, is making waves as a new altcoin in the cryptocurrency market with its smart contract core architecture. This article explains why Algorand has generated interest for decentralized finance (DeFi) and decentralized apps (dApps) solutions."
Ripple's development team is launching an engineering preview for an upgrade to the XRP Ledger (XRPL) that will enable "federated sidechains." Ripple says these sidechains could unleash decentralized finance (DeFi) and smart contracts across the broader XRP ecosystem without decreasing XRPL's efficiency. Each sidechain acts as its own blockchain, while federation enables value in the form of XRP and other tokens to move efficiently from the sidechain to the Mainnet, without compromising the speed, efficiency, and throughput of the public XRPL Mainnet.
The UK government announced moves that will see regulated stablecoins recognized as a valid form of payment as part of wider plans to make Britain a global hub for crypto-asset technology and investment. Measures include legislating for a 'financial market infrastructure sandbox' to help firms innovate, an Financial Conduct Authority-led 'CryptoSprint', working with the Royal Mint on a non-fungible token (NFT), and the establishment of a Crypto-asset Engagement Group to work more closely with industry. The UK government will also explore ways of enhancing the competitiveness of the UK tax system to encourage further development of the crypto-asset market in the UK, including reviewing how DeFi loans are treated for tax purposes.
Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB) is starting to work on the second phase of its wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) Project Delphi. The first phase focused on simulating delivery versus payment for an Austrian Treasury Bond issued on a blockchain and settled by commercial banks on the same platform using CBDC. The second phase will explore more advanced functionality, business models as well as non-fungible tokens and DeFi.
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