Blockchain

The (Risky) Rise of Uniswap

Published

3 weeks ago

March 30, 2021

Wait, let’s back up a bit…Uni-what?

We do apologize if today’s episode is a bit of a review for the veterans, but we do have a lot of newbies here who need to get up to speed.

Back in 2016, my crypto mentor and then boss Yoni Assia told us about a project called The DAO, which was to be a decentralized alternative to corporations.

It was the original initial coin offering, before the term ICO even existed.

To get in, you needed something called ether, but all I had was bitcoin. So, after a bit of clever googling, I soon found myself on a website called ShapeShift.

It was then that I truly realized the power of cryptocurrencies.

I was able to exchange my bitcoin for ether in a matter of moments in an extremely user-friendly environment.

Unfortunately, the DAO got hacked, and shortly after, the government went after ShapeShift and forced them to perform know-your-customer due diligence on their clients.

It’s not that I have any official gripes with anti-money laundering guidelines or anything, but it does make the process a lot less frictionless and infinitely less inclusive.

Uniswap is basically the same idea as ShapeShift, with an eerily similar interface, except it is decentralized.

In this graph found on Quantify Crypto, we can see the virtual explosion in these decentralized exchanges over the last year.

Uniswap is shown in pink. The other close contender in teal is Sushiswap, which is actually a fork (meaning a copy/paste with slight modifications of the code) of Uniswap.

Monthly dex volume

The fear

Obviously, there are a lot of dangers associated with trading like this.

There are now approximately 1,797 coins available in this new marketplace, and since anyone can list a coin, it means that there’s no exchange or broker vetting the projects.

As crypto is often compared to the Wild West, we have to assume that a fair portion of these coins are outright scams.

Many may not be scams, but they could also be low-potential projects that will likely amount to nothing and could see their price go to zero.

As investors in the crypto space in general, we need to realize that this is always possible, but it becomes more likely when dealing on such an open marketplace.

There’s a term for the thing we need to do with assets like these, and that term is enhanced due diligence. Unfortunately, it’s a foreign concept to many people pouring money into this space.

The other issue is that the entire system is built on the Ethereum network, which as we know has its own issues.

Even though the average fee on Ethereum is roughly $16 at the moment, people often report paying more than $100 for a transaction and a fair few delays. Many compared Ethereum to the Ever Given, and not without merit.

Ethereum

No doubt some of these issues could be sorted by layer two solutions coming in Uniswap v3 and Ethereum 2.0 but for now, it is what it is.

The Wild West is the exact period when people started to understand the potential of the railroad system, but this took place before all the tracks were laid.

The excitement

The indisputable reason for excitement here is the democratization of finance.

More than one project from the 2017 ICO boom never made it simply because they couldn’t get listed on a major exchange.

Going forward, the market will be much more accessible, both for new projects looking to raise money and for investors who are looking to get in on the ground floor and are willing to take the risks.

Now, with exorbitant amounts of stimulus hitting the economy and more expected to come, stocks are trading at historically expensive levels, and the appetite for new ways to invest has never been higher.

This is capitalism at work here, right in front of our eyes.

Coinsmart. Beste Bitcoin-Börse in Europa
Source: https://www.bitcoinmarketjournal.com/the-risky-rise-of-uniswap/

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Blockchain

Reef Finance’s Schedules Mainnet Release for May, Promises Polkadot Integration

Published

2 hours ago

April 22, 2021

Republished by Plato

Reef Finance has announced that its Substrate-based mainnet will see the light of day in May 2021. Called Reef Chain, it promises to “make DeFi easy” by enabling developers to use a highly scalable and fully EVM-compatible network that’s integrated into the Polkadot ecosystem.

Reef Chain Coming in May

Reef Finance is a cross-chain DeFi operating system allowing traders to access liquidity from centralized and decentralized exchanges through its smart liquidity aggregator and yield machine. The project outlined the date for its long-anticipated mainnet launch in a press release shared with CryptoPotato.

According to it, Reef Chain will be launched next month after finishing the final checks of the current Maldives testnet. The precise date will “depend on the result of the rigorous tests being conducted right now, though the team is confident that they will be completed soon.”

Upon its release, Reef Chain will enable DeFi developers to produce scalable and EVM-compatible systems integrated into the Polkadot ecosystem. Reef’s new product will be rolled out as a standalone blockchain based on the Substrate framework. This feature will simplify the integration to the Polkadot parachain network.

The mainnet’s compatibility with EVM, meaning developers can write contracts in Solidity or Vyper and deploy them on the chain, and its ability to bridge with other blockchains, including Ethereum, should enhance its interoperability features.

No Better Timing

Denko Mancheski, CEO of Reef Finance, outlined Reef Chain’s launch as perfect timing because of the “insatiable” demand for DeFi and the issues he sees with the current ecosystem. More specifically, those are the record-high transaction costs on the Ethereum network and even the struggling lately Binance Smart Chain.

Apart from promising scalability and deeper liquidity integration, Reef Chain is also “committed to helping out developers in their quest to bring their DeFi idea to life.” It plans to do so by enabling them access to Reef’s user base, network partners, investors, exchanges, and media.

“We know the struggles of up and coming developers all too well, and a lot of the time, technical skills are only a part of the equation. By tapping into Reef’s business network, DeFi builders will multiply their chances of success.” – concluded Mancheski.

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Coinsmart. Beste Bitcoin-Börse in Europa
Source: https://cryptopotato.com/reef-finances-schedules-mainnet-release-for-may-promises-polkadot-integration/

Blockchain

CEO of a Turkish Crypto Exchange Thodex Reportedly Runs Off With $2 Billion

Published

2 hours ago

April 22, 2021

Republished by Plato

Nearly 400,000 users of a Turkish cryptocurrency exchange were left out of their accounts without being able to withdraw their funds. The platform’s website has been down for several days, while reports suggest its CEO has already fled the country with up to $2 billion.

Turkish Exchange Does a Rug Pull?

Bloomberg reported yesterday that Thodex, a Turkey-based crypto exchange, has ceased trading, citing an “unspecified partnership transaction.” The founded in 2017 trading platform issued a statement explaining that all services will remain shut down for about five working days. However, the message reassured customers that they shouldn’t worry about their funds.

Approximately at the same time, though, users started to complain about their inability to access their own assets. Some took it to Twitter to exemplify the absurdity of the situation.

A local #Crypto exchange where I’d ~20% of my entire trading capital got rug pulled

-20 days no withdrawal (fiat & crypto)
-Then the website went offline
-Then the CEO run abroad

I’m not broke, but it hurts… Alot

It sucks, Even when u deal with regulated exchanges#Thodex

— Feras_Crypto (will Never DM you First) (@FeraSY1) April 21, 2021

More recent coverages asserted that the exchange’s chief executive officer and founder, Faruk Fatih Ozer, who refrained answering comments before, had fled the country.

Users Alleging of Fraud

Upon the news of Ozer’s alleged escape from Turkey, users of the local exchange hired a law firm to file a complaint against Thodex. Oguz Evren Kilic, representing an unspecified number of Thodex customers, confirmed the development, saying, “we have filed a legal complaint on Wednesday.”

He speculated that the funds on the Turkish exchange could be worth “hundreds of millions of dollars,” keeping in mind that the user base is just shy of 400,000. A prosecutor in Istanbul has reportedly launched an investigation.

According to another report, Thodex’s CEO and founder has run away in Thailand with an estimated amount of roughly $2 billion.

It’s worth noting that Turkish authorities have already taken a steep approach towards the cryptocurrency industry. CryptoPotato informed last week of the country’s latest rule on digital assets, banning users from using them as payment instruments from April 30th.

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Coinsmart. Beste Bitcoin-Börse in Europa
Source: https://cryptopotato.com/ceo-of-a-turkish-crypto-exchange-thodex-reportedly-runs-off-with-2-billion/

Blockchain

Chainlink is uniquely placed to play this out in the market

Published

2 hours ago

April 22, 2021

Republished by Plato

2021 has been a good year for Chainlink, the project growing leaps and bounds over the past few months. What’s more, LINK has continued to build on its foundations from last year, with the altcoin surging up the charts over the past few months. In fact, on the back of the wider market’s bullishness, LINK touched a new ATH on the charts just a few days ago.

At the time of writing, however, the aforementioned bullishness had given way to a wave of corrections, with the altcoin trading at a price level that was 18% away from its ATH.

Source: LINK/USD on TradingView

What does this mean then? Has LINK’s price rally finally exhausted itself? On the contrary, a closer look at factors such as ecosystem-centric developments, metrics, and technical fundamentals would suggest quite the opposite.

The most crucial of these ecosystem-centric developments came to the fore a few days ago when the project released the whitepaper for its next protocol upgrade – Chainlink 2.0. As the DeFi sector’s leading decentralized oracle provider, this is a significant development, especially in light of the inflows that have been moving into DeFi over the past few months.

The whitepaper in question proposed a roadmap of Chainlink’s future, one which sought to address the limitations that were part of the initial whitepaper. Smart contracts with limited functionality, for instance. According to a recent report by OKEx Insights,

“Chainlink 2.0 addresses these limitations by enabling hybrid smart contracts in DONs — allowing blockchain protocols to access off-chain data sources and perform off-chain computations.”

What’s more, 2.0 also seeks to make oracles much more scalable, with the addition of the ability to perform off-chain calculations and the introduction of a “transaction-execution framework for Decentralized Oracle Networks which processes off-chain transactions and oracle reporting.”

Finally, Chainlink 2.0 will also be a step towards strengthening privacy protections on the blockchain network with the addition of confidentiality-preserving adapters and support for confidential layer-2 systems.

Needless to say, this a major update, one that could have major repercussions on the value of LINK on the price charts. However, contrary to expectations, when the paper was first made public on the 15th of April, the altcoin’s market failed to react. In fact, it corrected instead.

Why? Well, because the rest of the market corrected too on the back of Bitcoin’s depreciation and fall below the $60,000-level. In doing so, what can be argued is that LINK’s price is yet to price in the aforementioned development. This means that when the bearish phase passes and consolidation ensues, there is potential for a lot more upside in the Chainlink market.

In fact, it can be hypothesized that LINK, more than most altcoins in the space, is better placed to see more upside in its price action in the near term. This, because despite how it has performed over the past week, LINK’s fundamentals remain pretty strong.

Consider this – According to Glassnode, the top 1% of LINK addresses now hold over 84.44% of the altcoin’s supply, a 3-year high. This finding is a testament to the accumulation trend in the Chainlink market, one that underlines the confidence the market’s whales have in the alt’s long-term credentials.

Source: Glassnode

Further, LINK’s Exchange Outflow Volume (7d MA) also touched an ATH of $3,753,855.00 recently, with the same suggesting that more and more people are now moving their crypto-assets off exchanges to HODL, with these unlikely to be sold anytime soon.

Here, it’s worth noting that in the past, whenever this metric has risen, the altcoin’s value has fallen on the charts immediately after. However, LINK’s price has also touched higher highs whenever recovery has ensued, meaning, this could be a sign to buy in.

Source: Glassnode

Finally, the number of active LINK addresses also surged to a 1-month high in the last 48 hours, despite the general market bearishness another sign of there being a lot of optimism associated with the alt’s price performance.

It’s no wonder then that many in the community expect the cryptocurrency to reignite its rally in the near term, especially since traditionally, the cryptocurrency has maintained a lower correlation with the king coin, when compared to the likes of Ethereum and Litecoin. This, coupled with its strong fundamentals, might allow LINK to surge again, independent of the rest of the market.

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Coinsmart. Beste Bitcoin-Börse in Europa
Source: https://ambcrypto.com/heres-why-chainlinks-price-rally-isnt-over-yet