The past week was marked by China FUD – fear, uncertainty, and doubt spread among crypto investors in the wake of further crackdowns on cryptocurrency trading and trading by the Chinese central bank. While the total cryptocurrency market cap fell nearly 5% to $1.82 trillion the day after the news was released, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology have once again proven that they simply cannot be banned. Although week 39 started with red numbers, by the end of the week the total market capitalization actually rose to $2.18 trillion. It appears that the restrictive measures taken by China have only led to further decentralization of the space, as Chinese investors and traders are simply turning to decentralized trading platforms that are not run by central entities and do not carry out know-your-customer (KYC) checks. So it’s no surprise that this week’s pick consisted of 3 DeFi protocols.
3. Rocket Pool (RPL)
Rocket Pool is a fully decentralized Ethereum 2.0 staking protocol that allows owners of less than 32 ETH to participate in staking. Rocket Pool users can participate for as little as 0.01 ETH. To dedicate their holdings to a staking pool, they receive a rETH, which is a tokenized staking deposit token. The rETH can be held or traded from the moment the ETH is deposited and will still generate staking rewards, which are also paid out in rETH. It is also possible to provide staking node services to the pool. Users who manage their own full node and participate in 16 ETH can benefit from higher rewards, but will have to deal with node setup, monitoring, and maintenance. RPL acts as a governance code for the DAO protocol. However, it is also used for incentives and to ensure the underlying value of rETH in the event of penalties or intermittent events.
Rocket Pool launches its main network on October 6
Rocket Pool Team recently announce That the Rocket Pool Home Network will see daylight on October 6, 2021 00:00 UTC. After several beta releases over the past few years and multiple protocol audits, Rocket Pool will soon claim the title of the first ever decentralized staking protocol for Ethereum 2.0. The team notes that the staking will be available at https://stake.rocketpool.net/, but beware – the Rocket Pool mainnet will be launched in 4 4 short to medium length phases. At each stage there will be a limited number of small devices and the size of the RETH deposit pool. Once the total rETH deposits reach the maximum, stakeholders will not be able to trade ETH for RETH. The same goes for the number of small widgets – once the limit is reached, node operators will not be able to join the pool. The limits will be increased as the protocol progresses to the next launch phase. The purpose of a phased launch is to make sure everything is working correctly before increasing the total locked value in the protocol. RPL recently saw a minor correction of 7% and is currently trading at around $33. However, RPL is up over 1,400% since the beginning of the year, which can be attributed to the popularity of ETH staking and the excitement about ETH’s next big upgrade. More information about the launch of the Rocket Pool mainnet can be found here.
2. Uniswap (UNI)
UNI is the governance token for the Uniswap Automated Market Maker (AMM) protocol. UNI tokens are ERC-20 tokens that allow their owners to decide on the future of Uniswap by voting on proposals. Uniswap – The platform, which facilitates fast exchanges between various Ethereum-based tokens, has recently been struggling to maintain its users and market share due to high fees on Ethereum. In March of this year, the project launched Uniswap V3, a new and limited version of the AMM protocol on the Ethereum mainnet. In July 2021, Uniswap made an effort to reduce transaction costs by launching two networks of Ethereum Layer 2: Optimistic Ethereum and Arbitrum. However, Uniswap’s Layer 2 deployments are still in beta.
Chinese traders are flocking to decentralized exchanges after the Chinese government imposed a ban on cryptocurrencies
On September 24, two documents related to the regulation of cryptocurrency issued by the Chinese central bank were announced. The documents, which revealed the next steps in China’s crypto campaign, stated that “it is illegal to provide services related to cryptocurrencies such as trading and issuing tokens and derivatives.” Furthermore, the bank confirmed that this applies to Chinesse exchanges as well as offshore crypto businesses that cater to Chinese residents. The day after the news spread like fire in crypto communities around the world, the cryptocurrency markets were hit hard. While bitcoin is down 6.5%, the exchange tokens issued by Huobi and OKEx, the high-volume coins derived from China, have suffered much larger losses. Huobi token (HT) and OKB prices have more than halved. Interestingly, the news of the crypto ban in China had the opposite effect on DeFi and especially DEX tokens, which posted high gains in the days following the event, as iinvestors expected Chinese traders to flock to DEXs now that central exchanges are not accessible. And they were right. The data shows that users have withdrawn Huge amounts of crypto holdings from centralized exchanges. The increase in the total value locked in the various DeFi protocols and the increase in trading volume on several DEXs indicates that Chinese crypto has run into the DeFi protocols. Since Uniswap is the largest DEX, it is expected to benefit most from the recent shift to decentralized trading platforms. In addition, Uniswap makes an effort to constantly improve its services. The recently introduced automatic routing function improves the final price by splitting the order path across multiple groups. Furthermore, Uniswap added support for EIP-1599 and improved user experience (UX) for Uniswap on Layer 2 networks in September.
1. dYdX (DYDX)
dYdX is a trustless decentralized cryptocurrency derivatives exchange. The same DYDX token is a governance token for the dYdX exchange protocol. Token holders control the dYdX Layer 2 protocol to align incentives between traders, liquidity providers and partners. Apart from governance, traders are eligible for trading discounts of up to 50% when trading on dYdX provided they hold the required amount of tokens. The dYdX governance token, which was launched in early September, has been retroactively dropped to protocol users based on their trading volumes on the platform before it was fully decentralized. 25% of the initial supply of tokens will be distributed to users who trade dYdX in the form of trading bonuses while liquidity providers can take advantage of the bonus pool consisting of 7.5% of the initial offer. In addition, a community treasury was set up to grow the ecosystem through grants and liquidity mining programs.
Crypto derivatives exchange dYdX has reached a daily trading volume of over $10 billion
While the reasons why DYDX came out on top of this week’s list of coins to watch are very similar to those on Uniswap, DYDX is arguably more attractive to new users, as it offers lower fees and rewards both traders and liquidity providers through DYDX. Judgment symbol. The fact that daily volumes on the dYdX exchange increased almost exponentially after the Chinese ban supports this prediction. In fact, dYdX’s 24-hour trading volume exceeded $10 billion on September 28, according to private exchange metrics. With increased volumes on dYdX and lower volumes on centralized trading platforms, dYdX routinely exceeds crypto derivatives trading volumes over its centralized counterparts. This will likely translate into higher gains and returns on the DYDX token than on UNI in the short term, which is why we have included a higher DYDX in the UNI list. In addition, DYDX technical indicators point to a continuation of the upward trend. At the time of writing, DYDX is trading at over $24. This means that the token has nearly doubled in price since documents related to the Chinese crypto ban came out.
Andrew is a writer who does most of his work on cryptocurrency related topics. While he is primarily interested in bitcoin, he also follows major cryptocurrencies and innovative ideas that new crypto and blockchain projects are bringing to the table.