Cryptocurrency markets experienced a huge rally in the 2nd week of 2023, which saw the total market capitalization of the industry jump from $848 billion to over $1 trillion (an increase of more than 18% in a single week). The rally was led by SOL (Solana), which gained more than 70% last week, but BTC, ETH and ADA also had a standout week in price performance as all three coins appreciated further. by 20%. Does this small bull-run mark the beginning of a reversal in the long-term market trend? Well, we don’t know about that, but one thing is for sure; cryptocurrency investors are starting to feel a bit more optimistic again.
3. Osmosis (OSMO)
Osmosis is a decentralized exchange (DEX) for the Cosmos ecosystem, which operates as an “appchain” on its own blockchain. This gives Osmosis greater control and much more flexibility compared to DEXs which must follow the code of a parent chain. Osmosis aims to become a cross-chain native DEX that connects all chains on IBC with the best trading experience and liquidity provision. To achieve this goal, Osmosis works with external developers to build, test and deploy features such as margin, lending, credit, fiat on-ramps, DeFi vaults, NFTs, stablecoins, etc. . OSMO, which is the governance token of the protocol, has a total supply of 1 billion and is currently changing hands at a price of around $0.85 per token. Given that only 49% of all tokens are in circulation, this translates to a total market cap of $425 million, which puts OSMO in 80th place.
OSMO/USDT trading rolled out to KuCoin on January 13
After listing on Binance in October, Osmosis was listed by another major crypto exchange on Friday January 13th. KuCoin announced the listing and activated OSMO deposits a day before on its official website. website and Twitter:
While users can trade OSMO/BTC, OSMO/BUSD, and OSMO/USDT trading pairs on Binance, KuCoin currently only supports OSMO/USDT trading. Nevertheless, the listing of KuCoin could also increase OSMO’s trading volumes and bring new liquidity to the Osmosis project. The KuCoin listing follows a very successful 2022 for Osmosis, which was named the most active project in the Cosmos network. In 2022, Osmosis recorded a transaction volume of more than $17 billion, more than 9 times the total TVL within the Cosmos ecosystem. Throughout 2022, Osmosis maintained an average of over 70,000 unique monthly visitors, with more than half making 6 or more trades per visit. This indicates that Osmosis DEX is a key gateway to liquidity not only within the Cosmos ecosystem, but due to its use of the Inter Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol also to other ecosystems. The developers of Cosmos claim that there is also significant potential for developments and collaborations in 2023, which means that OSMO could also prove to be a good investment in the medium and long term.
2. Polygon (MATIC)
Polygon, formerly known as Matic Network, is one of the leading Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solutions. The Polygon Layer 2 network consists of multiple concurrently running proof-of-stake side chains that regularly push data to Ethereum to create network checkpoints. Currently, there are two bridges that allow users to move assets between Ethereum and Polygon, the first being the Plasma bridge and the second being the PoS bridge. The Plasma Bridge offers supersonic speeds and throughput and enables easy and fast egress to the Ethereum mainnet at the same time. Along with several other features and tweaks, Polygon provides a major scalability improvement to the largest smart contract blockchain. By successfully overcoming Ethereum’s most limiting shortcomings, Polygon has become attractive for DeFi projects and established itself as one of the leading DeFi networks.
Developers aim to improve network performance and stability with recently announced Polygon hard fork
On Thursday, January 12, the Polygon team announced a hard fork of the Polygon mainnet. The hard fork, which aims to improve network performance by reducing the severity of gas spikes and reducing finalization time (the time it takes for a block to be finalized after a transaction is included in it), is planned. for January 17.
After the hard fork, the Polygon network will double the denominator in the equation that calculates gas charges, resulting in a much flatter distribution of gas charges around peak times. In other words, the update aims to eliminate ridiculous gas price spikes. The second change will reduce the depth of blockchain reorganizations, as a single block producer will produce only 16 consecutive blocks compared to 64 currently. At the time of writing, MATIC is trading at $0.985 and is up 22% over the past 7 years. days. Still, several cryptos, including BTC and ETH, posted a similar weekly gain, meaning the news about the upgrade may not have fully factored in yet. Moreover, the MATIC price recently climbed above the $1 level, but then quickly returned to levels below $1. Another confident push above this psychological price could lead to sustained trading above $1 or even higher valuation.
1. Gimbal (ADA)
Cardano is a decentralized blockchain platform focused on creating a smart contract environment on which developers can build decentralized applications (dApps). Using a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus model, Cardano aims to provide a more sustainable, scalable, and transparent operation compared to other smart contract blockchains. The project was started in 2017 by Charles Hoskinson, a mathematician who was once part of the Ethereum developer team. Along with a team of colleagues, Hoskinson raised $62.2 million for the development of Cardano via an ICO. Today, the development of the project is overseen by three main organizations: the IOG, the Cardano Foundation and Emurgo. Hoskinson and IOG strive to follow the principles of academic peer review in the project development process. The native asset of the Cardano blockchain is called ADA, but in 2021 the project rolled out an update, which allows users to issue other tokens on the Cardano blockchain as well. In September 2021, smart contracts debuted on Cardano’s mainnet, which was a major milestone for the ecosystem.
Developing and deploying custom sidechains on Cardano will soon become a reality
The developers at Cardano Input Output Global (IOG), formerly known as Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), will release a software kit later in January that will allow developers to deploy sidechains on Cardano.
According to the IOGs official announcement, EVM-enabled and mission-specific sidechains will connect to the Cardano mainchain via a bridge that enables the transfer of assets between chains. The toolkit will allow sidechain developers to determine the consensus algorithm and sidechain functionality. Nonetheless, sidechains rely on the mainchain for security, as the finality of the block is determined based on the mainchain’s consensus. The sidechain toolkit has already been used to create a custom sidechain as a proof of concept. IOG also revealed that the toolkit is currently being audited and will be made available on the public testnet later this month. Likely also because of the announcement, Cardano has seen a huge rally, which has seen ADA gain over 20% in the past week. Also, ADA seems poised for more appreciation.
Andrew is a writer who does most of his work on cryptocurrency-related topics. Although he is primarily interested in Bitcoin, he also follows major altcoins and the innovative ideas that new cryptocurrency and blockchain projects are bringing to the table.
