Week in Review | #39 | 2020
NFTs are looking to take the spotlight. Over the past week, the hype has really started to show and it feels like everyone is talking about them. Crypto Art appears to be dominating the headlines, but the potential of NFTs may go far beyond that.
Meanwhile, DeFi continues to evolve. A number of projects that have stumbled earlier are looking for a second chance. Ethereum rivals are moving and as TVL grows higher the stakes look like they are only going to increase.
Second chances and new impressions
One of the big headline makers of the food-meme-token trend was YAM. Due to an unfortunate coding error the project was forced to restart operations. Now after a relaunch, YAM has had a successful rebase. It remains to be seen if YAM will reclaim the attention of the community, but it is encouraging to see that projects try to fix their mistakes.
It is also worth noting that rebalancing is becoming popular in the defi circles. Popularized by Ampleforth, the feature has started to make its way into other projects. Recently, Original Dolar (OUSD), introduced a stablecoin which utilizes collateral assets to generate additional yield, but also uses a rebase.
C.R.E.A.M. also suffered a major setback due to a coding error. However, the error was not as critical as in YAM’s case. Still, it is interesting that not long after, the project announced a token burn. While the two may not be connected, the occurrence is a bit worrisome. If projects start to use token burns to support asset prices, speculative activity may spiral out of control.
It also looks like SAFE, despite controversy, was saved by the community. The project has migrated to COVER, and appears like it will continue development thanks to some prominent supporters.
Another project on the path to redemption is Keep Network. After an unsuccessful initial launch, it has relaunched its tBTC product this week. It offers a decentralized bridge between Ethereum and BTC, and offers an alternative to RenVM and its renBTC.
wBTC despite its custodial nature, remains the number one BTC token on Ethereum, but with decentralization being a key trend in DeFi decentralized alternatives may start to gain ground.
If projects can succeed after fixing their mistakes, it will encourage innovation. It is important for startup teams to not be afraid to make mistakes.
Here come the first dividends
It has been speculated that governance tokens will eventually give owners rights to a portion of a platform’s fee pool. Curve has now made this a reality, and has started to distribute dividends to owners of veCRV.
It is unclear what legal implications this may have, as regulators have mostly remained quiet regarding the recent developments in DeFi. If projects are allowed to distribute dividends without restrictions this may be the start of a new chapter for DeFi and the crypto industry as a whole.
The development may be particularly exciting for owners of the UNI token. Uniswap may have one of the highest projected revenue totals in the industry, which may at some point benefit its owners in the same way as in the case of Curve
Ethereum rivals and layer 2 solutions are active
With the launch of Avalanche, Ethereum sees yet another rival’s mainnet go live. Flow has been active and will see Animoca Brands’ Star Girl franchise and a game based on MotoGP come over to the network.
Polkadot’s ecosystem continues to show progress. In particular, RockX has started a $20M investment program for its ecosystem. This comes on the heels of the Polkadot Treasury being established.
There is more and more money being allocated for attracting development activities to Ethereum’s rivals.
Furthermore, while Ethereum may lead the industry in terms of TVL, other projects are trying to appeal to the non-Ethereum community projects like Bitcoin and XRP. For example, Kava’s Harvest, a decentralized loan application will be accepting BNB, BUSD, XRP and BTC for staking.
Still, while some projects may look outside Ethereum for solutions, others consider layer two options. For example, Niftex, the protocol that popularized NFT shards, has opted to use Matic Network to achieve greater scalability.
NFTs are finally getting noticed
It feels like everyone is excited about NFTs. There is NFT farming and the MEME token, insurance mining and COVER, there are game items, shards, art and more.
Now Christie’s will be joining the party, as it will be auctioning off an NFT. The emergence of well known traditional players in the space may draw the attention of the more conservative art collectors.
Rarible and its RARI token have seen a lot of hype. The platform distributes its governance token to those who use the platform, which has created an additional incentive for wash trading and creating low-quality art. The community voted to introduce market fees, and perhaps that will come things down to some degree.
So far this month, Rarible.com has accounted for 81% of $7M volume generated by marketplaces on Ethereum.
It will be interesting to see if the excitement around RARI and crypto art pushes other NFT platforms to issue their own governance tokens.
Keeping track of everything
As the amount of information increases it is important to be able to keep track of your assets and all of the relevant data pertaining to them. That is where Dappradar’s Portfolio Tracker comes in. While initially it will start with showing key data about the assets in the portfolio it will in time evolve to accommodate dynamic features like promotions and airdrops.
NB: The information provided here is for reference and informational purposes only. This is not investment advice and should not be treated as such.
