Category: DeFi

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ChainLink Crypto News DeFi Stablecoins

Chainlink Becomes Sole Provider of Price Data for Origin Dollar (OUSD)

Chainlink (LINK) Oracles have now been integrated onto the Origin Protocol’s mainnet as well as becoming the sole provider of real-time price data for OUSD.

According to a press release from Origin Protocol, the integration of Chainlink price oracles are a “big deal” for the growth and security of the only stablecoin that earns a yield while still in your wallet.

What Does The Integration Mean for Origin Protocol?

By going all-in on Chainlink, we ensure that our users have the highest quality data and most secure oracle infrastructure every time they mint or redeem OUSD. Importantly, Chainlink has given Origin the flexibility to interact directly with oracles built specifically to price certain stablecoin trading pairs, leading to decreased on-chain costs and a more accurate minting/redeeming process.

Matthew Liu, Origin Protocol Co-founder

Additionally, the first Chainlink Price Feed for Origin Tokens (OGN-ETH) is now live and available for use by other DeFi protocols wanting to quickly and safely launch support for OGN markets. The OGN-ETH Price Feed is already being used and supported by the C.R.E.A.M. lending platform.

Since the DeFi boom, it has become increasingly important to use the most accurate price data, making Chainlink tech more valuable to companies working in the DeFi space. Today, Chainlink oracles are one of the most important linchpins to the security of DeFi, securing billions of dollars in on-chain value. Demand is only growing as DeFi gains more widespread adoption and protocols opt for the highest standards of data quality and reliability.

Chainlink USDT-USD Price Feed Oracle Network [Medium]

These Chainlink nodes collectively source price data from numerous off-chain data aggregators like BraveNewCoin and Amberdata, ensuring each price point has volume-adjusted market coverage across all trading environments.

Slow Price Data can Lead to Losses

Traditionally when origin was using a mixture of oracle providers:

[…] prices had to be calculated by first fetching the price of ETH and then calculating the exchange rate using ETH oracles. This increased the chance of prices being outdated, causing users to receive less OUSD than they reasonably expected. It also increased the gas costs due to additional on-chain transactions.

Josh Fraser, Co-founder Origin Protocol

One benefit of having these direct price feeds is that it simplifies smart contract code. In the Ethereum world, simpler code also means gas savings, which is now roughly 15% cheaper when minting or redeeming OUSD, thanks to this direct price feed integration.

But since they now rely on numerous secure nodes and premium data sources, OUSD users receive highly accurate, available, and tamperproof price data, which is also inherently resistant to various data manipulation attacks such as those carried out via flash loans.

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Blockchain Cryptocurrencies DeFi

Cosmos Investors On Track To Implement Inter-Blockchain Systems

Blockchain technology has led to the rise of DeFi and better banking technology. However, since Ethereum implemented the features that allow this, more and more companies have created their own blockchains and restricted tokens created on it from being accessed by those using other technologies.

Now, Cosmos – the company behind the ATOM token – has voted to include this protocol, ending it’s isolation from those not in the Cosmos Hub.

The IBC protocol aims to decentralize DeFi once again, by allowing communication between blockchains without having to go through extra steps.

Overwhelming Support

The vote for enabling IBC passed with a clear majority in favour of implementation.

According to Zarko Milosevic – the chief scientist at blockchain consulting firm Informal Systems – the move will allow any 2 IBC-enabled blockchains to pass information back and forth permissionlessly. This would also allow DeFi firms who deal in token exchanges and the like to use products confined on an application-specific blockchain from a completely different blockchain.

“At its core, IBC is a method of securely exchanging data between two independent (sovereign) blockchains. This means that any two blockchains that support IBC can send communication back and forth in a permissionless manner. Previously, ATOM was relegated to the Cosmos Hub with regard to its utility as a governance token. It is now transferable and interoperable with all blockchains that support IBC.”

Like with any technology, the adoption of a new protocol may have a domino effect. For every Cosmos that decides to adopt IBC and open up for more DeFi business, there are probably 2 more companies waiting in the wings to see if it catches on. Hopefully, this trend will catch on – and DeFi banking will gain on traditional banking systems in leaps and bounds.

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Crypto News DeFi Ethereum

Uniswap V3 to Launch in May with 4,000x Capital Efficiency and More Flexible Fees

Uniswap V3 to Launch in May with 4,000x More Capital Efficiency

The long-awaited next iteration of the leading decentralized exchange, Uniswap, will be deployed in the next two months, as the team disclosed in a blog post on Tuesday. 

The upcoming Uniswap V3 is essentially aimed at enabling a more capital-efficient decentralized trading platform. Interestingly, the improvements with V3 will allow cheaper gas fees for transactions on the exchange compared to the current Uniswap iteration.

Uniswap V3 to Launch on Ethereum and Optimism Network

According to the Uniswap team, the next iteration will be deployed on the Ethereum blockchain precisely on May 5 and later on the Optimism network. With Uniswap V3, liquidity can be provided on the exchange with about 4000x capital efficiency, compared to the current Uniswap V2. 

This will liquidity providers earn higher returns on their capital while also paving the way for low-slippage trade execution. 

Additionally, Uniswap V3 will allow efficient and cheaper integration of oracles, which are “capable of providing time-weighted average prices (TWAPs) on demand for any period within the last ~ nine days.” With the launch of Optimism, the gas cost of V3 swaps will likely be significantly cheaper.

These features make Uniswap v3 the most flexible and efficient AMM ever designed.

Uniswap

Uniswap TVL

The exchange has become a critical infrastructure for decentralized finance. The current iteration was deployed in May 2020 and facilitated more than $135 billion in trading volume within a period of one year. 

Uniswap was once the largest protocol in DeFi. However, its asset began plummeting following the end of its liquidity incentives last year. One can easily predict that the DEX will eventually outrank some protocols, following the features of V3. At the time of writing, there are US$4.04 billion worth of assets locked in the exchange, according to DeFi Pulse.

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Crypto News DeFi NFTs

Decentralised Music? NFTs Could Cut Out Major Record Labels

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) are providing artists and musicians independency by selling their tokenized artworks or albums in DeFi marketplaces, instead of relying on major record labels.

According to Business Insider, more artists are joining the NFT movement by selling their tokenized work for large sums. A new wave of artists is now considering directly offering their music in the form of tokenized products sold on DeFi marketplaces, rather than having it handled by traditional third parties.

Crypto Art Changing the Music Industry

The implications of this new approach appear to be quite significant, for example from a royalties perspective. Many musicians have complained how the current revenue from streaming platforms like Spotify tends to be quite small after the cut taken by labels and distributors. Experts in the music industry have stated that crypto art could indeed shift the power structure of many companies. Researcher Cherie Hu said that NFTs can potentially change the scenario for record labels and their relationship with musicians.

They could provide more incentive for labels to better serve artists. Artists will likely be asking themselves ‘Is my label doing the best job at maximizing the value of my relationship with fans? Do they deserve a cut of these NFTs?’

Cherie Hu [Business Insider]

Millions of Dollars in NFTs

Some of the first and most popular NFT sales were Kings of Leon and 3LAU. Both artists sold their NFT albums for millions of dollars.

Now it seems that artists can connect directly to fans through NFTs by offering special items, maybe even reserved to NFT holders.

NFTs are built on decentralization, connecting fans directly with creators. The current systems in place are opaque and antiquated. NFTs cut out the middleman.

Matt Colon, Steve Aoki’s manager [Business Insider]

NFTs are currently the hottest trend in the fintech space. From books to a single tweet can be auctioned. Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet, which is also the first tweet ever on the social network. Justin Sun, CEO of Tron, offered two million dollars for it.

Auctioning of Jack Dorsey’s first tweet

Users from Reddit are discussing the NFT craze with DeFi, arguing that record labels will have to adapt to new emerging technologies to stay in business.

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Australia Blockchain DeFi

Unido Partner With Moonstake To Cement Their Leading Staking Position

Unido – an Australian Polkadot-powered crypto custody service and enterprise platform has joined forces with Moonstake, whose goal is to become the largest staking platform in Asia.

Staking and Hedge Funds

Unido will gain access to the staking vaults owned by Moonstake, which will allow their clients to gain extra yields through their DeFi vaults. At the moment, Moonstake supports staking for cryptocurrencies such as Cosmos, IRISnet, Ontology, Harmony, Tezos, Cardano, Qtum, Polkadot, Quras and Centrality.

In return, Moonstake clients will have access to a wider range of custody solutions, brought to them by Unido’s network.

Unido’s leadership comes from a strong corporate background – with leading members having a history in Macquarie Bank, Wipro and Goldman Sachs.

Michael Swan – the CCO of Unido – commented on the partnership, stating that the move will be mutually beneficial.

“Unido is committed to delivering a diverse marketplace of DeFi options within the Unido EP dashboard. I’m very excited to include Moonstake staking pools in our dashboard, given their strong market position and compelling yield performance to date. We look forward to providing enterprise-grade custody solutions to encourage further enterprise and hedge fund delegations to Moonstake’s platform.”

In return, Lawrence Lin – the CEO of Moonstake – thanked Unido for the trust shown by the adoption of Moonstake’s SDK API connection, and went on to say that this is only the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership.

“Moonstake appreciates the trust Unido has in our staking solution to utilize our SDK API connection, and we look forward to collaborating further with them to spread awareness and accelerate the adoption of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies globally.”

Doubts have been cast over the ability of DeFi to truly replace traditional banking solutions – but hopefully, Unido will be one of the companies to dispel those doubts.

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DeFi Hackers

PancakeSwap Has Been Hacked, Do Not Enter Your Seed Phases

Recently announced on their Twitter, PancakeSwap might have been DNS hacked along with Cream Finance. DeFi users are urged to stay safe by not entering your seed words or private keys into the website.

This highlights the chaotic world of DeFi and traders should be aware of how to stay safe when trading cryptos in order to protect their funds.

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Crypto News DeFi

DeFi Project Cream Finance, PancakeSwap suffers DNS attack

Internet administration user interface. 3D rendering Shallow DOF

A number of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) projects, including Cream Finance and PancakeSwap, have been hit with DNS attacks, following several notices shared on Twitter on Monday. Having confirmed the attack, the teams behind the affected projects warned that the websites are currently unsafe for the users to visit until stated otherwise.

Attackers requests for users seed phrase

The decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform, Cream Finance, is probably the first DeFi project to report the incident. In a tweet, they explained that the DNS or Domain Name System was compromised by a third-party, and that the users on the website are being asked to enter their seed phrase. 

A few hours later, PancakeSwap, the largest automated market maker (AMM) and decentralized exchange on Binance Smart Chain (BSC), reported a similar story.

PancakeSwap warned users to avoid the website “until we confirm it is all clear.” Users’ funds on the DeFi projects are safe, as the attackers cannot transfer any fund without their seed phrase.

The CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, took to Twitter to also warn against using these platforms, until they are confirmed safe to use.

“A number of DeFi projects are under DNS hijack attack. Pancake, Cream, etc. Please be VERY VERY careful and not use them until they recover the situation. Please also help spread the awareness,” he wrote.

Cream Finance and PancakeSwap token update

There isn’t any serious decline in the price of the projects’ tokens CREAM and CAKE, regardless of the incident. During press time, the PancakeSwap token was trading at US$9.90 percent, representing a 9.27 percent decrease in the 24-hour count, according to Coinmarketcap. Also, the Cream Finance token was trading at US$103.71, which accounts for about a 7.37 percent decrease over the last 24 hours.

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Crypto News DeFi

DeFi Trader Just Lost $188,000 in $SUSHI Forever, Sending It To The Wrong Address

A DeFi trader has lost a fortune for mistakenly sending his 1000 SUSHI coins to the wrong address. This incident reminds us that the crypto space is dangerous for the newbie, with new participants in the decentralised finance (DeFi) space don’t understand how applications work and mistakes can be easily made, which result in financial lost, that cannot be recovered.

9,999.988 SUSHI Gone Forever

A transaction was spotted on Friday, which involved about 9,999.988 SUSHI transferred from FTX exchange to SUSHI token smart contract.

The supposed DeFi trader most probably sent these cryptocurrencies to the contract address by mistake. It’s a costly mistake, as these cryptocurrencies are sometimes impossible to recover.

SUSHI refers to the native digital currency of SushiSwap (not the popular Japanese food). It’s a decentralized exchange, which forked from Uniswap. Tokens sent to SUSHI smart contract are supposedly gone (forever), except the protocol developers intercedes with a function to recover it.

Looking at the transaction details on Etherscan, the amount of SUSHI lost or transferred to the contract address was worth US$188,899 during the time of the transaction.

Another Trader Loses $10,000 Worth of DAI

A similar case today involved DAI, the decentralized US dollar-backed stablecoin developed by MakerDAO. A trader also mistakenly sent 10,083.935 DAI to the protocol’s smart contract address, losing about US$10,000.

As per DeFi Pulse, the total value of digital currencies locked in decentralized finance protocols are currently worth over US$42 billion. The increasing reports of losses simply indicate that the industry is still in its nascent stage, and some traders lack a clear understanding of the DeFi applications. Hence, there is more room for the industry to grow further as the new participants get acquainted with the protocols.

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DeFi Stablecoins

Introducing Origin Protocol, The First Stablecoin That Earns a Yield

Blockchain-powered commerce project Origin Protocol has created the OGN token (nicknamed the “Origin Dollar”) which can be staked to earn up to a 25% yield.

Using the OUSD platform you can select from 3 options OGN staking options, which you will be able to claim your OGN principal plus interest at the end of the staking period.

  1. 30 days lock-up earning 7.5% APY
  2. 90 days lock-up earning 12.5% APY
  3. 365 days lock-up earning 25% APY

In order to participate you need to use a DeFi wallet to connect and deposit your funds which will then be secured using an Ethereum smart contract. See the OGN token details which include supply and unlock schedule. Yield-generating DeFi products are brand-new and you should read the risks involved before participating.

About Origin Protocol

The team has a lot of pedigree with serial entrepreneurs including a founder of PayPal, early employees at YouTube, and engineering managers at Google and Dropbox.

Fortune Magazine’s Balancing the Ledger with Origin Protocol’s Founders

The company is projecting that blockchain ecommerce is going to be one of the fastest growing areas in the blockchain industry during the next few years.

Benefits of Origin Protocol include:

  • Lower fees – Buyers and sellers share 20-30% in savings when middlemen are removed
  • Better incentives – Everyone can own a stake in the network by contributing to its growth
  • Increased access – 2 billion unbanked people can access new markets globally
  • More resilience – Blockchain-powered commerce can’t be banned or shut down

Dshop: Blockchain-powered Online Commerce

Along with the stablecoin, Origin also introduced a new service called Dshop. It’s an e-commerce platform that can be used to create a free online store, harnessing the power of a decentralized platform and allowing customers to pay in cryptocurrencies.

It seems clear that blockchain technologies will redefine online commerce and allow both buyers and sellers to benefit from lower costs and improved infrastructure.

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Basic Attention Token Crypto News DeFi

BAT Price Rises 30% on Brave Browser Building a DEX Announcement

Privacy web browser Brave are planning to build a Decentralized Exchange Aggregator which will enable its users to swap tokens using the browser.

The browser recently achieved more than 25 million monthly users, who can get rewards using the Basic Attention Token (BAT) and will now be able to receive further benefits, like discounts on transaction fees for BAT holders.

New features of the Platform include:

  • A new, native Ethereum wallet implementation, replacing the existing Crypto Wallets in Brave.
  • Redesign of the current UI with UX designed to reduce friction among accounts.
  • Mobile as well as desktop support.
  • A JavaScript Ethereum Provider API (window.ethereum) supplied to web pages by default, without the need to install a separate extension.
  • Custom experiences for DeFi and NFT use-cases.
  • Options for buying crypto with fiat payment methods such as credit/debit cards, bank accounts, and smartphone wallets.

Benefits of BAT token holders include:

  • Discounts when utilizing BAT for paying transaction fees.
  • Discounts for users that hold BAT balances in their wallet.
  • Multi-chain support with many assets and blockchains.

One of our goals is to make tokens and crypto easy to use for all of our users. The custom DEX which we plan to explore could help achieve this goal by enabling users to exchange BAT and other assets at lower fees, and with better user interface and security, by being built into Brave.

Brendan Eich, Brave CEO and co-founder

Good News for BAT HODLers

Fans, holders and HODLers of the BAT token were rewarded with a recent price jump since the announcement.

source

Decentralized Web

The new features will be the first of any web browser and will provide a new “decentralized web” for Brave users, including:

  • BAT utility for search engines.
  • Use of BAT for e-commerce.
  • Use of BAT for VPN and various private communication platforms.
  • BAT rewards for content verified on IPNS.
  • Ability to use BAT for content pinning on IPFS (file sharing).

Take a look at the BAT Roadmap 2.0 for more information.