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Category: Featured

Stay updated with our hand-picked featured news, top market insights, and the most important stories from the cryptocurrency world.

  • Klaytn Ranks #2 as Klaytn Foundation initiates Token Buyback Program–Top Coins to Watch for Oct 31–Nov 6

    Klaytn Ranks #2 as Klaytn Foundation initiates Token Buyback Program–Top Coins to Watch for Oct 31–Nov 6

    Klaytn Ranks #2 as Klaytn Foundation initiates Token Buyback Program–Top Coins to Watch for Oct 31–Nov 6

    The cryptocurrency market performed a smaller rally mid-last week, which carried the total market capitalization of the sector back above $1 trillion, which was a first such occurrence in over a month. However, the rally was not sustained, and the market cap quickly dropped below $1 trillion again. Do you think coins from our Top 3 Coins to Watch article can carry the total market cap back above the glorified $1 trillion? The most likely answer is no, since these coins have much smaller market capitalizations compared to BTC and ETH and therefore need to post much higher gains for it to reflect in the total crypto market cap. Nevertheless, we do believe these three crypto assets have room for quite some more gains.

    3. Aave (AAVE)

    Aave is an Ethereum-based decentralized lending and borrowing platform that started out under the name “ETHLend”, a project launched by Stani Kulechov in 2017. Aave supports almost 20 different tokens and has unique and sophisticated features such as flash loans that make it stand out from its competitors. While Aave initially launched on Ethereum, the protocol has expanded to the Fantom, Avalanche, Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, and Harmony networks over the last couple of years and is now available on 7 chains. AAVE token is the protocol’s native token, which grants holders governance rights as well as discounts when interacting with Aave protocol. While the protocol is completely open source, its code is regularly audited by third parties and has been repeatedly deemed secure. With the launch of its third iteration – “Aave v3” – the protocol positioned itself as one of the top DeFi protocols. According to DeFi Llama, there are currently around $5.3 billion locked in the Aave protocol, out of which $1.1 billion are locked in Aave v3.

    Buy/Sell AAVE

    Aave will deploy its protocol to Ethereum’s Layer 2 Scaling Solution zkSync

    Recently, the Aave team filed a proposal to deploy the project’s decentralized trading platform to the testnet of the Ethereum’s layer 2 scaling solution zkSync. ZkSync is a Zero Knowledge Rollup protocol with generalized EVM compatibility, which will allow effortless onboarding of Ethereum projects.

    https://twitter.com/StaniKulechov/status/1584565654015074305

    Perhaps also due to the easy migration process, more than 200 projects have already committed to launching on zkSync mainnet once it is live. The Aave team believes that zkEVM rollups are the most eagerly anticipated innovation after the merge and the ZkSync is a leading project in this sector, which is why they believe their protocol should be deployed to the promising layer 2 network as soon as possible. In addition, the popular yet controversial commission-free broker Robinhood has recently listed AAVE. The token was added to the trading app on October 24, along with Tezos’ XTZ.  Let’s remember, Robinhood has 18.7 million monthly active users.

    2. Klaytn (KLAY)

    Klaytn is an enterprise-focused blockchain platform that aims to accelerate the mass-adoption of blockchain-based solutions. The project plans to achieve this goal by empowering businesses and entrepreneurs that want to move their operations from the classic internet networks to the blockchain. Among other things, Klaytn offers support and guidance in creating and deploying blockchain-based applications or “BApps”. The blockchain is public, but it is developed by GroundX, a company owned by a Korean mobile messaging giant KaKao. Being a public-private hybrid allows Klaytn to take the best of both worlds and facilitate low latency transfers while maintaining high scalability and decentralization. The blockchain utilizes a proof-of-contribution (PoC) Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) consensus algorithm.

    Buy/Sell KLAY

    Klaytn Foundation reduced block rewards and initiated a KLAY token buyback

    With its more than 100% gain, KLAY was the best performing asset out of Top 100 cryptos last week. But what caused KLAY to more than double its price? We have identified two main catalysts for this rally, which both took place on October 24. First, the Klaytn Governance Council (GC) has approved Klaytn team’s proposal to cut block rewards from 9.6 KLAY to 6.4 KLAY per block. In addition, the newly minted tokens will be distributed according to a new format, with 50% of it going to the GC, 40% to the Klaytn Growth Fund, and 10% to the Klaytn Improvement Reserve. The team claims, that the changes, which will see implementation to the blockchain in mid-November, were necessary to ensure sustainable growth of Klaytn ecosystem. The second announcement that provided additional fuel to the rally is regarding the initation of a KLAY token buyback program.

    According to the blog post, Klaytn team detected significant fluctuation in the token’s on-chain liquidity on October 21 and decided to buy and burn some of the tokens in order to stabilize the ecosystem. The team stated that only stablecoins from the Foundation’s reserved were used for the purchuse. Furthermore, all buybacks are said to be conducted through spot orders on centralized exchanges (CEXs) and all repurchased tokens will reportedly be burnt. However, the team did not reveal the number of repurchused and burned tokens nor the amount of USD it spent on the purchase but promised to provide more detail about the buyback at a later date.

    1. Polygon (MATIC)

    Polygon, previously known as Matic Network, is a leading Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution. The Polygon Layer 2 network consists of several simultaneously run proof-of-stake sidechains that regularly push the data to Ethereum to create network checkpoints. Currently, there two bridges that allow users to move assets between Ethereum and Polygon, the first one being the Plasma bridge and the second one the PoS Bridge. The Plasma bridge delivers supersonic speeds and throughput and allows for an easy and fast exit to Ethereum mainnet at the same time. Together with several other features and tweaks, Polygon provides a major scalability improvement to the biggest smart contract blockchain. By successfully overcoming Ethereum’s most limiting shortcomings Polygon has become attractive for DeFi projects and is establishing itself as one of the key DeFi networks.

    Buy/Sell MATIC

    Another prominent collaboration on the horizon – this time Polygon has partnered with a popular Brazilian neobank Nubank

    On October 19, Polygon took it to Twitter to announce their next high-profile partnership. This time, the Ethereum Layer 2 network has entered collaboration with Nubank, a Brazil-based fintech start-up, whose main product is a neobank platform. Nubank has raised more than $3.9 billion since its launch in 2013 and it is worth mentioning that the leading investor in Nubank is Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathway.

    At about the same time Nubank, announced it will be launching its own token called Nucoin early next year. This new Polygon-powered digital asset will serve as a some kind of crypto-focused loyalty program and will grant active Nucoin holders exclusive perks and discounts. As already mentioned in the tweet, this collaboration has a potential to quietly onboard more than 70 million Nubank users to Polygon and Web3. The partnership also proves once again that Polygon is very successful when it comes to forming collaborations with some of the largest companies in the world, including Disney, Reddit, and Robinhood. In addition, the technical analysis suggests a forthcoming bullish period as MATIC/USD price seems to be painting a bullish pattern since June this year. The pattern is a called a “bull flag” and is characterized by two strong moves upward with the price moving in a parallel descending channel between the surges. MATIC is currently approaching what seems to be the end of the descending channel, meaning that we could be aproaching a significant surge. Should a breakout really occur, technical analysis susggets that MATIC could rally by almost 100% and retest the $1.85 by the end of the year.

  • The Recently Launched Scalability-focused Layer 1 Blockchain Aptos and its Coin Rank #1–Top Coins to Watch for Oct 24 – Oct 30

    The Recently Launched Scalability-focused Layer 1 Blockchain Aptos and its Coin Rank #1–Top Coins to Watch for Oct 24 – Oct 30

    The Recently Launched Scalability-focused Layer 1 Blockchain Aptos and its Coin Rank #1–Top Coins to Watch for Oct 24 – Oct 30

    The cryptocurrency market entered Week 43 with a total market capitalization of $945 billion. While the total market capitalization remained almost unchanged as compared to the total capitalization at the start of last week, both largest cryptos ended the week in the green with BTC gaining 1.5% and ETH twice as much. Klaytn (KLAY) and Huobi Token (HT), our #1 Top Coin to Watch from last week’s article, were the best performing assets out of crypto Top 100, with a 34% and a 21% gain respectively. Can this week’s #1-coin repeat Huobi Token’s success?

    3. Maker (MKR)

    Maker protocol was one of the earliest projects on Ethereum and remains the cornerstone of Ethereum’s decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. This protocol, which launched already in 2015, allows users to lock up their Ethereum or other Ethereum-based assets as collateral to receive a loan in the form of Dai stablecoin. Dai, which is designed to trade as close to $1 as possible, is issued in a completely trustless manner. Its issuance and peg are governed by a complex system of Ethereum smart contracts. MKR is Maker Protocol’s governance token. Holders of these ERC-20 tokens can propose changes to the protocol and participate in governance polls.

    Buy/Sell MKR

    Maker Protocol is undergoing a “makeover” as MKR governance community votes on a series of proposals that will shape the company’s future

    Maker gained roughly 45% in the past 30 days, which maker MKR the third most profitable assets in the cryptocurrency top 100 in this time frame. The rally is somehow in accordance with Maker’s historical price trends, as MKR usually goes against the rest of the market, performing well when the rest of the crypto market is in decline and vice versa. From the technical perspective, we notice that the total number of wallets interacting with Maker is in decline, but the number of wallets with non-zero balances and active wallets is gradually growing. Nevertheless, both metrics are far away from their highs reached in spring 2021, which leads us to the assumption that the positive market sentiment could be connected with the “makeover” that the Maker protocol is currently undergoing. The MakerDAO founder Rune Christensen describe his opinion on how to make the popular DeFi protocol even more decentralized and censorship resistant in his “Endgame” manifesto. Nevertheless, some Maker investors including venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) who holds on to a large amount of MKR are not on board with the founder’s plan to break up MakerDAO into smaller units. In its root the disagreement is actually because one camp favours prioritizing decentralization while the other puts boosting growth first. The fact that lots of decisive governance votes are expected may also contribute to the increased demand for MKR and drive its price up. In other news, the MakerDAO, has recently decided to diversify its balance sheet. Considering the rising interest rates, the DAO voted to convert $500 million worth of DAI stablecoin into short-term US Treasuries (80%) and investment-grade corporate bonds (20%). 

    2. XRP (XRP)

    XRP is a cryptocurrency that was launched in 2012 by Chris Larsen, Jed McCaleb and Arthur Britto. Ripple’s network uses a unique Ripple Protocol consensus algorithm (RPCA), which is neither proof-of-work nor proof-of-stake, to facilitate fast and cheap transactions. The maximum supply of XRP is 100 billion coins and all the coins were minted at launch of the Ripple blockchain. Back than 80% of the total XRP supply was given to fintech firm Opencoin, a company that renamed to Ripple Labs in 2015. As of today, Ripple Labs still hold more than half of the total XRP supply. However, most of the company’s XRP holdings are locked in escrow. In December 2020 Ripple became entangled in a lawsuit with the US SEC, which accuses that the company of selling unregistered securities. The legal battle between Ripple and the SEC remains one of the key factors influencing XRP’s price.

    Buy/Sell XRP

    Several technical and fundamental factors indicate a potentially bullish rest of the year for XRP

    During the last few months, the lawsuit related developments have caused several XRP rallies, causing it to record an almost 35% gain during the past 3 months. Nevertheless, there are currently several factors that point out to a bullish rest of the year for XRP on top of the possibility of a positive outcome of the legal battle with the SEC. For example, Ripple is seeking to bring Ethereum smart contracts to the XRP ledger. This will be done through an EVM-compatible XRP sidechain, which has already been launched on devnet. The sidechain that is set to undergo the second phase of development in early 2023 will allow XRP users to interact with Ethereum-compatible decentralized applications (Dapps). As noted by RippleX software engineer Mayukha Vadari, developers will “no longer have to choose between XRPL or EVM-compatible blockchains” and could have both: the Ethereum-grade Solidity smart contracts and Ripple’s fast low-cost transactions. Ripple is also currently handing out Creator Fund’s grants – $250M have been allocated to help creators bring their NFT projects to market on the XRP Ledger as part of this program. Furthermore, technical analysis also suggests a possible bullish outbreak. No wonder, that the on-chain data is showing strong XRP accumulation in this setting – data provided by Santiment shows rising XRP mean coin age and massice XRP outflows from exchanges to private wallets. Do you think we will see XRP at $1 this year?

    1. Aptos (APT)

    Aptos is a new highly scalable Layer 1 network brought to life by a team of former Diem stablecoin (previously known as Libra project) developers. However, team members are not the only thing that Aptos has in common with Diem, as the new blockchain utilizes Move, a programming language that was initially developed for Meta’s Diem project. Using the low latency Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) engine allows Aptos to reach consensus extremely quickly – we are talking about sub-second block finality. Combined with high scalability the team believes that Aptos is the most product-ready blockchain in the world, which is capable of facilitating the industry’s move to Web3. The Aptos project has raised $350 million in funding in early 2022 from a number of prominent investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and FTX Ventures.

    Buy/Sell APT

    Aptos Launched its Mainnet on October 17, its APT coin soon got listed on some of the most popular exchanges

    After several months in development, the Aptos mainnet went live at the beginning of last week (October 17). The mainnet launch generated a lot of buzz in the crypto sector as members of the cryptocurrency community had high expectations for the project.

    While the Aptos team claims that everything connected with the launch went smooth, several social media users noted that the network’s performance is verry poor. They have noticed that the blockchain is only processing 4 transactions per second (TPS) as opposed to the promised 160,000 TPS. However, the extremely low TPS was very likely just due to the low traffic and activity on this emerging blockchain in the first hours of its existence. In fact, Aptos has recently performed up to a maximum of 2,500 TPS. Nevertheless, only time will show how many transactions Aptos can handle, with the announced deployment of several NFT project on Aptos being the very first significant stress test. In addition, the Aptos network’s native governance and utility token APT was listed on most popular exchanges just two days after the launch of the mainnet. Binance, Coinbase, and FTX exchanges have participated in a synchronised listing, the APT order books on these exchanges opened on October 19, 1:00 UTC. Soon after that, Huobi, OKX, KuCoin and Bitfinex have also listed APT, so that the coin is now trading on almost every large centralized exchange. Decentralized exchanges, on the other hand, are considering deployment on the freshly deployed PoS blockchain. The PancakeSwap team was among the first to recognise Aptos’ potential and propose the deployment of their DEX protocol on the Aptos chain. The proposal was passed with more than 98% votes in favour of deployment. To conclude, Aptos is a small and young project that has an enormous potential to grow. Aptos’ experienced team, rapidly growing network activity and an already vibrant developer ecosystem give the project a higher chance to succeed.

  • Binance Coin Ranks #3 as Binance completes 21st quarterly BNB Burn–Top Coins to Watch for Oct 17–Oct 23

    Binance Coin Ranks #3 as Binance completes 21st quarterly BNB Burn–Top Coins to Watch for Oct 17–Oct 23

    Binance Coin Ranks #3 as Binance completes 21st quarterly BNB Burn–Top Coins to Watch for Oct 17–Oct 23

    The total cryptocurrency market capitalization dropped by some $20 billion throughout last week, causing the cryptocurrency sector to enter Week 42 with a total valuation of only $945 billion. Judging by the fact that the total market capitalization is following a slightly decreasing trend, it seems more likely that the market will dip below $900 billion valuation before we will se market caps higher than $1 trillion again. Nevertheless, each week one can find several coins that stand out from the recently mostly negative general market trend. This week, we have identified the following three “exchange coins” – 2 belonging to CEX platforms and 1 belonging to a popular DEX protocol.

    3. Binance Coin (BNB)

    Binance Coin (BNB) was originally launched in 2017 as an ERC-20 token sold through an initial coin offering (ICO). In April 2019, the Binance rolled-out its native Binance Chain and all the existing Binance Coin ERC-20 tokens were replaced with BNB, which became the native cryptocurrency of the new blockchain. As of today, Binance Chain is still almost completely centralized, with Binance having complete control of block management. Binance gives users who utilize BNB to pay for trading, withdrawal and listing fees hefty discounts. While this used to be pretty much the only use case of BNB, the coin has a far greater utility now as it allows users to pay for gas fees, earn cashback on Binance Visa card purchases, stake BNB and participate in liquidity pools and other DeFi activities. BNB is also used to determine eligibility to participate in Initial Exchange Offerings (IEOs). Furthermore, the Binance ecosystem is continuously expanding, which means that new products and services are regularly added and many of them give BNB some new utility.

    Buy/Sell BNB

    $574 million worth of BNB removed from circulation as part of the 21st BNB quarterly burn

    On Thursday, October 13 Binance’s Auto-Burn program has initiated and completed already the 21st BNB quarterly burn, which forever removed 2,065,152 BNB, worth approximately $574 million from circualtion. In addition to the quarterly burns, Binance Smar Chain utilizes a real-time burning mechanism as well. The mechanism that was introduced with BEP95 in October 2021 burns 10% of the transaction fees in each block. During the last 7 days, more than $500,000 worth of BNB have been burned that way. Both burning mechanisms are slowly but steadily decreasing the supply of BNB, making this deflationary coin even more appealing to investors that are in for the long-term. In addition to the burn, BNB Chain developers have successfully patched the vulnerabilities in the cross-chain bridge connecting BSC and BNB Beacon Chain through the “Moran” hard fork that was deployed on October 12. These were the vulnerabilities that allowed a hacker to create more than $560 million worth of digital assets, or roughly 2,000,000 BNB in a massive exploit that took place on October 6. The exploit could have caused damage of significantly larger proportions if the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) validators had not reacted so swiftly. Because the validators put a stop on the blockchain’s operation almost immediately, the malicious actor only managed to move $100 million worth of BNB off-chain, while the remaining BNB were frozen before they could be transferred off of BNB Chain.

    2. Uniswap (UNI)

    UNI is the governance token of the automated market maker (AMM) protocol Uniswap. UNI tokens are ERC-20 tokens that allow holders to decide on the future of Uniswap by voting on proposals. Uniswap – the platform, which facilitates quick swaps between various Ethereum-based tokens, has recently been struggling to keep its users and market share because of high fees on Ethereum. In March this year the project released Uniswap V3, a new and improved version of the AMM protocol on Ethereum mainnet. In July 2021 Uniswap tried to reduce the costs of trades by launching on two Ethereum Layer 2 networks: Optimistic Ethereum and Arbitrum. In its 3 years of existence, Uniswap has pioneered several DeFi functionalities and supported more than $1.2 trillion in cumulative volume.

    Buy/Sell UNI

    Uniswap Labs raised another $165 million, which will be invested into the development of new tools and products

    Uniswap Labs has recently raised $165 million in Series B funding, which puts the valuation of the company to a whooping $1.66 billion. The round was led by the notable crypto investor Polychain Capital with participation of a16z, Paradigm, SV Angel, Variant Fund and others.

    While the Tweet indicated that the funds would allow them to bring Uniswap’s services to even more people, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams disclosed that the funds will also be channelled into the development of new applications, tools, and products. Labs will reportedly invest into their web application, developer tools, NFT-related products, and the mobile market. The price of UNI saw a considerable uptick after the news was published, causing UNI to jump from below $5.6 to $6.5. UNI has since faced a slight readjustment, resulting in the price of $6.15 per token at the time of writing. In other news, Uniswap’s governance community has once again demonstrated its unity as it has confirmed Uniswap’s deployment on a privacy-focused Layer 2 solution zkSync with almost 100% votes in favour. With over 100 projects, including top DeFi protocols, committed to launching on zkSync mainnet, Uniswap could onboard some new users and further increase protocol activity by being present in zkSync ecosystem.

    3. Huobi Token (HT)

    Huobi Token (HT) is the native token of the Seychelles-based Huobi cryptocurrency exchange. Huobi was founded in China in 2013 by a computer engineer named Leon Li. Since than Huobi has grown to become one of the biggest crypto exchanges, with customers and offices all around the world. HT was launched in January 2018 and initially offered its holders classic exchange token rewards, such as trading fee discounts and rebates. Later, exchange developers expanded the HT use cases by granting HT holders the ability to vote on new token listings and participate in exclusive Initial Exchange Offerings (IEOs). Originally HT was an Ethereum-based token but today the token also serves as the native asset of the HECO Chain blockchain platform, where it is needed to pay for transaction fees. Nevertheless, HT can also be staked or delegated to running validator nodes. HT has a capped supply of 500 million, but the Huobi exchange regularly burns HT using a part of its profits, which is gradually reducing the total available supply.

    Buy/Sell HT

    Huobi’s new leadership has big plans for Huobi Token

    With its +70% gain during the last 7 days, Huobi Token was the best-performing assets among the crypto top 100 last week. The reason for its positive price action lays in the developments concerning the recent change in ownership of the Huobi exchange. On October 8 Huobi published an announcement, in which they revealed that Leon Li Lin, the founder and controlling shareholder of Huobi Global has decided to sell his entire share in the company to About Capital in a deal worth around $1 billion. Two days after the contract has been inked, Chinese crypto journalist Colin Wu reported that the real buyer of Huobi and the main investor in About Capital is actually TRON’s founder Justin Sun. While Sun initially denied involvement, he soon disclosed on his Twitter account that he has joined Huobi’s board of advisors, which supports Wu’s claims. Sun, the alleged new owner, has also brought new verve into the company, as he stated he plans to revitalise the exchange. According to his Tweet, Huobi Token will play an important role in the revitalisation. He wrote:

    “We know that the key to revitalizing Huobi is to empower HT, and HT can only thrive on Huobi! In the future, there will be many big moves around HT, including brand upgrade, heavy empowerment, and business cooperation.”

    Apparently Huobi Token holders are happy to see the exchange waking up from stagnation. In addition, the big moves around HT could actually make the token more valuable in the future, which gave way to some speculative HT buying. Nevertheless, the price action proves that the investors’ sentiment is currently indeed very positive.

  • Chainlink Ranks #1 Thanks to Plans to Launch LINK Staking in Dec 2022–Top Coins to Watch for Oct 10–Oct 16

    Chainlink Ranks #1 Thanks to Plans to Launch LINK Staking in Dec 2022–Top Coins to Watch for Oct 10–Oct 16

    Chainlink Ranks #1 as the project lays out plans to launch LINK staking in December 2022–Top Coins to Watch for Oct 10–Oct 16

    With no major moves in the valuations of largest cryptocurrencies last week the total cryptocurrency market capitalization still lingers below $1 trillion. The only notable exception was Ripple (XRP), which gained almost 20% last week as investors still await the resolution of the SEC legal battle. Nevertheless, this was not enough to cause a noteworthy increase the total market capitalization, which stood at $962 billion at the beginning of this week. In hopes that we will soon see more green numbers and a market cap higher than $1 trillion, we place our bets on the following three projects this week.

    3. Tamadoge (TAMA)

    Tamadoge (TAMA) is a relatively new memecoin that serves as the native currency of the project’s metaverse dubbed Tamaverse. The main protagonists in this metaverse game that follows Play-to-Earn (P2E) mechanics are Tamadoge pets, which are essentially non-fungible token-powered animated creatures. The Tamadoge developers are also preparing a designated Tamadoge augmented reality (AR) app that will further enhance the metaverse experience. The launch of the app is scheduled for Q4 2023 while the Tamadoge NFT Petstore is set to roll out in Q1 2023.

    Buy/Sell TAMA

    Tamadoge rallied on the tailwind of its first CEX listing

    Tamadoge saw extreme bullish activity in the days following the beginning of the TAMA trading. The project saw its centralized exchange (CEX) debut on September 27, when it was listed on the OKX crypto exchange. On the same day, TAMA trading pairs were added to the MEXC and LBank trading platforms as well.

    https://twitter.com/Tamadogecoin/status/1577569372268371969

    Since then, TAMA was listed on several other exchanges, including BKEX and Coinsbit. The avalanche of listings itself produced a notable TAMA rally, but the bulls gained true momentum only after the Tamadoge team revealed that they have applied for a Binance listing. In speculative expectations of a Binance listing, TAMA price surged up to almost $0.193 per token. Early stage investors, who bought the token during the first round of the pre-sale in July when the price was only $0.01 per TAMA token, could have pocketed hefty returns if they sold at that price on October 4. While the price of TAMA has since retraced back to around $0.04 per token, the token has not been listed on Binance yet, which could indicate that the Binance team is still reviewing the application. Should Binance list TAMA a new rally is almost certain. Could TAMA surge above $0.50 this time? Leaving speculations about a potential Binance listing aside, Tamadoge could also be a good fit for a longer-term investment if you believe in the long-term success of the project’s metaverse game.

    2. NEAR Protocol (NEAR)

    NEAR is a highly scalable and developer-friendly Layer 1 blockchain competing with Ethereum, Solana and similar networks. Utilizing delegated Proof-of-Stake combined with Nightshade sharding mechanism allows the network to perform up to 100,000 transactions per second. In addition, the developers of NEAR Protocol claim that you can create simple decentralized apps (dApps) on NEAR in just five minutes using Pagoda’s library of pre-audited templates and auto-generated contract user interfaces. However, there are currently not many decentralized applications deployed on its ecosystem. According to DeFi Llama, the total vale locked (TVL) in 11 protocols running on NEAR is only $265 million. This is likely going to change soon as there are reportedly more than 800 projects building on the protocol.

    Buy/Sell NEAR

    NEAR Protocol partners with Google Cloud  

    Last week NEAR Foundation announced a new partnership between Google Cloud and NEAR Protocol. Google Cloud has set up the infrastructure for NEAR’s Remote Procedure Call (RPC) node provider NEAR’s Web3 start-up platform called Pagoda. In addition, Google Cloud will also provide technical support for NEAR grant recipients as part of the newly established partnership. The Google subsidiary’s team will help NEAR dApp developers scale their Web3 projects and dApps to the point where they are able to withstand mainstream adoption.

    NEAR Foundation hopes that the partnership will help them supercharge innovation within NEAR ecosystem. Marieke Flament, CEO of the NEAR Foundation, stated that the partnership represents an important milestone in the blockchain’s development:

    “We are thrilled to be collaborating with those who pioneered the Internet as we know it. This partnership marks a new chapter for us as we continue to offer the best support possible for the next generation of visionaries choosing to build on the NEAR protocol.”

    Furthermore, NEAR Protocol is one of the networks that will start natively supporting USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin by the end of 2022. The ability to integrate stablecoin payments flows directly into JavaScript and Rust-based decentralized application could attract new projects to build on the secure and highly scalable NEAR network.

    Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network that provides data and price oracles, which act as a reliable feed of off-chain information for some smart contracts. The project launched in 2017, when it also raised $32 million of funding through an ICO. Chainlink’s cryptocurrency price and real-world data oracles have seen numerous implementations and their popularity is still increasing. Their oracle service is one of the most reliable and trustworthy services available and the connection with smart contracts is end-to-end secured, leaving very little space for the manipulation of the execution of smart contracts. Another Chainlink feature is Verifiable Random Function (VRF), which proved to be very useful as providing a source of verifiable randomness in blockchain gaming and when minting NFTs.

    Buy/Sell LINK

    While LINK staking is scheduled for full deployment in December, the BUILD and SCALE programs are already accepting applicants

    Chainlink developers have made several important announcements on the project’s SmartCon 2022 conference recently held in New York. While attendees were most thrilled to get to know more details regarding the LINK staking roadmap, several other programs that could prove to be beneficial for the project’s future performance were also revealed. According to Sergey Nazarov, the project’s co-founder, the long-awaited staking service will be rolled-out gradually with the initial beta version of Chainlink staking (v0.1) set to hit the Ethereum mainnet in December 2022. Initially the amount of LINK in the staking pool will be capped at 25 million tokens, but there are already plans to increase the limit to 75 million tokens if there is sufficient demand. At first, only the community members that meet the specific “Holder”, “Builder” or “Educator” criteria will be allowed to participate in staking. Chainlink team has set-up a special application, where you can check whether you are eligible for Early Access.

    The data oracle project also announced two significant programs as a part of the transition to Chainlink Economics 2.0. The two programs called BUILD and SCALE are aimed at ensuring the long-term economic and technical sustainability of the Chainlink ecosystem respectively. SCALE, which stands for Sustainable Chainlink Access for Layer 1 and 2 Enablement is a Chainlink’s initiative, in which blockchain projects utilizing Chainlink’s oracles are encouraged to offset operating costs of those oracle networks by channelling a part of their financial flow to Chainlink. Besides providing financial stability of Chainlink’s services, this practice could in turn accelerate the growth, security and innovation of the ecosystem, allowing data oracle users to benefit from it in the long run. Several projects, including but not limited to Avalanche, Metis, Moonbeam, and Moonriver have already supported the initiative. BUILD, on the other hand, is a program, whose goal is to accelerate the growth of projects within the Chainlink ecosystem. This is done by giving the teams of developers enhanced access to Chainlink services and providing them technical support. The projects opting in for participation in BUILD will have to dedicate a portion of their token supply or fees to Chainlink. In addition to these initiatives, the Chainlink team will also be hosting the Chainlink hackathon between October 14 and November 18. With up to $300,000 in prizes, the Fall 2022 hackathon has the potential to sprout some new Chainlink use-cases.

  • Optimism Earns #2 Spot Thanks to OpenSea Integration–Top Coins to Watch for Oct 3–Oct 9

    Optimism Earns #2 Spot Thanks to OpenSea Integration–Top Coins to Watch for Oct 3–Oct 9

    After another week with no bigger moves on the cryptocurrency market, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization stands at $946 billion as we enter Week 40. Bitcoin has been trading below $20,000 for the majority of the week, but the number of coins that remained unmoved in the past 90 days has hit the all-time high. This indicates that there is still a large percentage of strong-hand holders among us. With no foreseeable moves expected in the prices of Top 20 cryptos (except for XRP – which we are still following to see whether and how the SEC lawsuit will end), we have turned to smaller market cap but still reputable coins and tokens for this week’s Top 3 Coins to Watch selection.

    3. Tezos (XTZ)

    Tezos is a decentralized smart contract and application network that utilizes a modified version of Delegated Proof of Stake consensus. The blockchain launched in September 2018, following an initial coin offering (ICO) that raised $232 million in 2017. XTZ token is the native cryptocurrency of the Tezos platform. Tezos blockchain also features an on-chain governance system allowing holders to take part in the decision-making process. Developers can suggest changes or upgrades to the Tezos protocol, and if their suggestion gets approval from the community, they are rewarded with XTZ tokens after it is successfully implemented. What makes Tezos blockchain stand out among other similar blockchains is its efficient network upgrade process as the protocol allows major upgrades to be implemented without the requirement of a hard fork. This system allows Tezos to adopt new technologies quickly. Tezos also boasts with a burgeoning NFT ecosystem.

    Buy/Sell XTZ

    Tezos deployed its 11th network upgrade called “Kathmandu”

    Somewhat lost in all the news about Ethereum’s Merge and Cardano’s Vasil hard fork Tezos’ upgrade called “Kathmandu” was deployed on September 23. Tezos’ 11th network upgrade brought several improvements to Tezos blockchain including the launch of Smart Contract Optimistic Rollups (SCORUs), improvements to the chain’s randomness generator, better event logging and tweaks to the Tezos’ validation process. In addition, the “Kathmandu” upgrade introduced the support for ‘Ghostnet’, a permanent testnet that upgrades in accord with the mainnet.

    Tezos team notes that Kathmandu’s features focus on scaling and are setting up a path to 1 million transactions per second. For comparison, the current maximum capacity of the Tezos network is said to be around 1,000 TPS. However, most of the time the network operates far from its top capability as Tezos conducted around 5.4 million transactions and 1.8 million smart contract calls in September 2022. Considering how jammed Ethereum network gets from time to time, some extra transaction throughput is always a welcome resource.

    2. Optimism (OP)

    Optimism is a popular Ethereum Layer 2 network that approaches solving the scalability issues by reducing the cost and latency of Ethereum transactions through the use of Optimistic Rollups technology. OP is Optimism’s freshly launched governance token. OP holders will form the so-called Optimism Collective, a large digital democratic governance community that will vote on protocol upgrades, direct incentives to projects, and determine the allocation of treasury funds.

    Buy/Sell OP

    Optimism-based NFTs hit OpenSea, the world’s most popular NFT marketplace

    OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace by trading volume, has announced support for Optimism last week, enabling the trading of Optimism-based NFTs. That way Optimism became the sixth network supported by the OpenSea marketplace, joining the company of Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Klaytn and Arbitrum. Since the integration, more than 1 million Optimism-based NFTs from more than 100 different collections have been published on OpenSea. No wonder that even the Optimism team is optimistic about the recently established partnership:

    However, the OpenSea integration is not the only Optimism integration that has recently appeared in the crypto news. Circle, the company that issues the USDC stablecoin has announced that they will be rolling-out USDC on five new blockchain networks, including Optimism, by the end of 2022. With the expansion, Circle aims to “open the door for institutions, exchanges, developers and more to innovate and have easier access to a trusted and stable digital dollar”. Nevertheless, with a native access to the second largest stablecoin also Optimism blockchain has to benefit.

    1. Cosmos (ATOM)

    Cosmos is developing a network of blockchains that would facilitate the interoperability of multiple, otherwise incompatible blockchain applications and cryptocurrencies. Cosmos’ Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol currently supports already 49 different blockchains. The Cosmos network consists of two layers – the Tendermint BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerant), which combines the networking and consensus layers, and the application layer. In the application layer, developers can utilize the Cosmos Software Developer Kit (SDK) to translate the code from popular programming languages into one that is readable by the Cosmos protocol. The project’s success is best reflected by the rapid growth of the Cosmos network, which grew from a small ICO into a thriving ecosystem in less than three years.

    Buy/Sell ATOM

    Cosmos comes out with a revamped white paper; Delphi Labs stated they would focus on Cosmos development

    The Cosmos team has presented a new project white paper on Monday, September 26 at the Cosmoverse conference that took place in Medellin, Colombia. The conference attracted more than 1500 attendants making it the largest event of this kind in the project’s history.

    The proposed new white paper includes changes to Cosmos Hub and repurposes the ATOM token. For example, the new version of the Cosmos Hub will enable other Cosmos blockchains to utilize the Hub’s validator pool to secure their networks, rather than having to establish their own validator community.  The network will also transition to Interchain Security, which will make Cosmos “legally and defensibly decentralized” as well as allow “third parties to utilize the Hub’s essential infrastructure to build commercial applications”. ATOM tokens will see changes in the tokenomics, as they transition to becoming the interchain reserve cryptocurrency. 1,000,000 ATOM will be issued in the first month of the transition phase and the issuance will decrease until a steady state is reached 36 months later. In the steady phase, only 300,000 ATOM tokens will be entering circulation every month. While the changes presented in the new white paper are technically still proposals, they are expected to be implemented on-chain on October 3.

    In addition, a few weeks ago Delphi Labs, Delphi Digital’s research and development unit, announced it would put its focus on Cosmos development. They have put considerable effort in exploring various blochchians and identified Cosmos as the one with the highest potential. However, they also identified a few weak points of the ecosystem, such as relatively low TVL, which may be due to the “lack of hype, funding, and memeability” that could originate from the “lack of a schelling point L1 token to rally around”. Nevertheless, more and more projects are onboarding Cosmos because of the wide reach of its Inter-Blockchain protocol. Perhaps one of the most prominent projects that is coming to Cosmos is Circle’s USD Coin (USDC), which we already wrote about in the Optimism section. The only difference is that USDC will be deployed to Cosmos a bit later than to other networks as the launch is estimated to take place in the beginning of 2023 (and not by the end of 2022 as for other 4 newly-supported blockchains). To conclude, Cosmos is a unique interoperability-focused project that has many use-cases and very likely a bright future.

  • XRP Claims #1 as Investors Expect Favorable Resolution of SEC vs Ripple Legal Saga–Top Coins to Watch for Sep 26–Oct 2

    XRP Claims #1 as Investors Expect Favorable Resolution of SEC vs Ripple Legal Saga–Top Coins to Watch for Sep 26–Oct 2

    Ripple Ranks #1 as the SEC allegedly cannot find legal ground to classify XRP as security–Top Coins to Watch for Sep 26–Oct 2

    The total cryptocurrency market capitalization is again in a slow but steady decline. The total valuation of all cryptocurrecies in circulation combined accounted for $945 billion at the beginning of this week. However, while the average price change last week was negative several crypto assets defied the market trend and stood out by posting high gains. Best performers of last week were Ripple (XRP), Quant (QNT) and Algorand (ALGO).

    3. Compound (COMP)

    Compound is a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that allows users to either take out crypto loans or lend their crypto assets in order to earn interest. COMP is an ERC-20 token built on the Ethereum blockchain that functions as the platform’s governance token, giving its holders the power to propose and vote on changes to the Compound protocols. The Compound team even describes COMP token as a way to achieve full decentralization and ultimately remove the original developers of Compound as a point of failure for the protocol. While Robert Leshner launched the Compound platform in 2018, COMP governance tokens were created later – the initial distribution of the tokens to Compound protocol users took place on June 16, 2020.

    Buy/Sell COMP

    Compound Treasury has launched a borrowing product for institutional clients

    Recently the Compound Treasury announced the launch of a borrowing product for institutional clients. The new product allows institutions to take out a loan in USD or USDC through Compound, using Bitcoin, Ether or supported ERC-20 tokens as collateral.

    According to the announcement the institutional loans are offered at fixed rates starting at 6% APR and with no repayment schedule. This gives institutions a high level of flexibility as it allows them to repay their balances whenever it is best for their business. Nevertheless, the loans must remain overcollateralized throughout the whole borrowing period. The launch of “Borrowing for institutions” is already the third in a series of institution-focused features launched by Compound. Last year, the protocol introduced an institutional cash management solution that offers a 4% APR on USD and USDC deposits. In addition, the Compound Treasury became the first DeFi-backed company to receive a credit rating from a major agency in May 2022. The S&P Global Ratings gave Compound a B- credit rating. If Compound’s bid to enter the institutional market is successful, we could soon see significantly higher transaction volumes and total value locked (TVL) in the protocol.

    2. FTX Token (FTT)

    FTX is a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange that offers futures, leveraged ERC-20 tokens and OTC trading. The developers of the FTX exchange aim to offer a first-class trading experience by constantly improving the platform and addressing the issues that are often left unaddressed on other mainstream exchanges. FTX focuses on developing and offering institutional-grade solutions. The official token and the backbone of the FTX cryptocurrency derivatives exchange is FTX Token (FTT). The maximum supply of FTT is 350 million tokens, but the exchange uses one third of all fees collected from the trades to buy back and burn FTT. Users of the exchange can utilize FTT as collateral for futures positions, use it for earning rebates on trading fees, or even stake the coins. Furthermore, the exchange promises to add more FTT use cases in the future.

    Buy/Sell FTT

    The FTX exchange seeks to cement its place among the largest digital assets platforms by trying to raise $1 billion of fresh capital

    The FTX crypto exchange has recently made several moves to cement its place among the largest digital assets platforms and is reportedly holding talks for even bigger deals.

    After already having raised $400 million earlier this year, the FTX exchange is now reportedly trying to raise another $1 billion of fresh capital through a new funding round. The firm does not hide that the potential new funding would be used to finance acquisitions during this “crypto winter”. It is already an open secret that FTX and Binance are competing to purchase assets of the bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital. According to sources close to the matter, FTX is currently in the lead to acquire Voyager’s remains. The auction will run until September 29, when the winners of the auction and the bidding process will be disclosed to the public and presented to the judge in a bankruptcy courtroom hearing. In addition, after FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s purchase of $600M worth of Robinhood stocks in May rumours started circulating that FTX is exploring the acquisition of Robinhood. Although they have not gone through with the deal yet, FTX is still believed to be interested in the popular app-based stock brokerage firm. If FTX ends up purchasing any of the aforementioned companies, the FTX Token could rally.

    1. XRP (XRP)

    XRP is a cryptocurrency that was launched in 2012 by Chris Larsen, Jed McCaleb and Arthur Britto. Ripple’s network uses a unique Ripple Protocol consensus algorithm (RPCA), which is neither proof-of-work nor proof-of-stake, to facilitate fast and cheap transactions. The maximum supply of XRP is 100 billion coins and all the coins were minted at launch of the Ripple blockchain. Back than 80% of the total XRP supply was given to fintech firm Opencoin, a company that renamed to Ripple Labs in 2015. As of today, Ripple Labs still hold more than half of the total XRP supply. However, most of the company’s XRP holdings are locked in escrow. In December 2020 Ripple became entangled in a lawsuit with the US SEC, which accuses that the company of selling unregistered securities. The legal battle between Ripple and the SEC remains one of the key factors influencing XRP’s price.

    Buy/Sell XRP

    Both Ripple Labs and the SEC want the lawsuit to end as soon as possible, analysts believe in Ripple’s win

    XRP has seen a considerable uptick in its price following the recent development in Ripple Labs vs. the SEC lawsuit. The legal battle, started by the SEC in late 2020, is centered around the SEC’s claim that XRP is a security and should therefore be regulated as such. Ripple’s defence, on the other hand, has been recently centered on a former SEC official’s explanation of why Bitcoin and Ethereum are not securities. Former SEC official William Hinman stated that “a digital asset transaction may no longer represent a security offering, if the network on which the token or coin is to function is sufficiently decentralized”. Ripple argues its network is “sufficiently decentralized,” and should thus be treated as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

    As the lawsuit has been dragging out for almost two years, both parties filed a motion on September 18, calling for the federal judge to reach a verdict on the case as soon as possible. This development alone has caused XRP price to surge by more than 30%, which indicates the cryptocurrency community, investors and market analysts all expect a favourable outcome. The most recent news from the courtroom floor have seem to be turning the scale in Ripple’s favour. The Chamber of Digital Commerce, for example, has recently filed an amicus brief in the case of Ripple vs. SEC. In the document, the group refrained from calling XRP a security and called for regulatory clarity above all. In addition, Ripple’s general counsel Stuart Alderoty believes that the SEC is unable to find legal ground to classify XRP as a security.

    Furthermore, both Alderoty and Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse believe that the SEC has overstepped its authority in this case. While we are aware that almost all of the described information is coming from the Ripple’s side and is therefore inevitably biased, the other party is scarce with publicly shared statements almost as if they have run out of arguments. Provided Ripple Labs exit the courtroom as the winner, do prepare for a XRP price rollercoaster.

  • SweatCoin, a Recently-Launched Move-to-Earn Token, Ranks #2–Top Coins to Watch for Sep 19–Sep 25

    SweatCoin, a Recently-Launched Move-to-Earn Token, Ranks #2–Top Coins to Watch for Sep 19–Sep 25

    SweatCoin, a Recently-Launched Move-to-Earn Token, Ranks #2–Top Coins to Watch for Sep 19–Sep 25

    Despite the successful competition on The Merge on the Ethereum mainnet on Thursday, September 15, ETH and the majority of other cryptocurrencies lost value last week. While the total market capitalization peaked at $1.1 trillion on Tuesday, it took a dive towards the $1 trillion line on Wednesday and dropped below this psychological line soon after The Merge was completed. Possible culprits for the downward trend include growing inflation as crypto market plunged in correlation with the stock market. Furthermore, the red numbers could also be a result of hype-driven investors and speculative traders dumping their ETH soon after the big event was behind us, as ETH ended the week as one of the biggest losers, ending the week with an almost 20% loss.

    3. Binance Coin (BNB)

    Binance Coin (BNB) was originally launched in 2017 as an ERC-20 token sold through an initial coin offering (ICO). In April 2019, the Binance rolled-out its native Binance Chain and all the existing Binance Coin ERC-20 tokens were replaced with BNB, which became the native cryptocurrency of the new blockchain. As of today, Binance Chain is still almost completely centralized, with Binance having complete control of block management. Binance gives users who utilize BNB to pay for trading, withdrawal and listing fees hefty discounts. While this used to be pretty much the only use case of BNB, the coin has a far greater utility now as it allows users to pay for gas fees, earn cashback on Binance Visa card purchases, stake BNB and participate in liquidity pools and other DeFi activities. BNB is also used to determine eligibility to participate in Initial Exchange Offerings (IEOs). Furthermore, the Binance ecosystem is continuously expanding, which means that new products and services are regularly added and many of them give BNB some new utility.

    Buy/Sell BNB

    Binance introduced Binance Account Bound (BAB) token and established a collaboration with Google Cloud

    While the limelight of the crypto community’s attention was shining on Ethereum, Binance has launched Binance Account Bound (BAB) token – a soul-bound token that will serve as an identity verification tool across BNB Chain-based projects.

    Users, who have completed their KYC procedure with Binance are already able to mint their own unique BAB token. Each verified user can only mint one BAB token and the tokens are non-transferable as this would defeat their purpose. However, should users change their mind, the minted tokens can be revoked (destroyed). Minting a BAB tokens incurs a BSC gas fee, which was initially set at 1 BUSD but Binance promises mentions that users with BAB tokens will be able to “participate in building the supporting projects on the chain and receive rewards”. In addition, BNB Chain has recently entered a high-profile collaboration with Google Cloud, which will provide services to BNB Chain-based Web3 projects as part of the partnership. Furthermore, around 150 projects from the BNB Chain’s Accelerator program will now have priority access to the start-up support program offered by Google Cloud.

    2. SweatCoin (SWEAT)

    Sweatcoin is a cryptocurrency project that aims to encourage people to maintain a healthy lifestyle through incentivising walking and moving around by foot. Users can earn SweatCoins tokens by recording their activity with the SweatCoin app, where they can also exchange the earned coins for rewards. The SWEAT cryptocurrency is built on NEAR but was also made available as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum ever since the token generation event (TGE) on September 13. According to the team, the Sweatcoin app has more than 110 million users across Android and iOS platforms.

    Buy/Sell SWEAT

    The recently launched Move-to-Earn token gets listed on several prominent exchanges

    Fitness app SweatCoin launched its own SWEAT token on September 13. The NEAR-based SWEAT token allows the Sweat Foundation to develop a better economic incentive environment for its users. Consequently, the move to a blockchain-based incentive model could also expose SweatCoin’s massive 110M+ user base to Web3 and blockchain.

    At launch of the native token users of SweatCoin platform were able to exchange their in-app points for SWEAT tokens at a 1:1 ratio. It is important to note, that as time progresses, a greater number of steps is required to mint 1 SWEAT, which gives early adopters an advantage over new and future users. To cut is short, the SWEAT token has absolutely made an impressive entry as the token trades on a few prominent exchanges including OKX, FTX and KuCoin less than a week following the token’s launch. In addition, the token could prove as a good short-term investment as it is still in its very early stage. However, the long-term success and performance of the token largely depends on whether the app’s economic model is sustainable or not and whether move-to-earn projects will continue to enjoy so much attention.

    1. Cardano (ADA)

    Cardano is a decentralized blockchain platform focused at creating a smart contract-enabled environment on which developers can build decentralized applications (dApps). By utilizing a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus model, Cardano aims to deliver 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. Together with a team of co-workers, Hoskinson raised $62.2 million for Cardano’s development through an ICO. Today, the development of the project is overseen by three main organizations: the IOHK, Cardano Foundation and Emurgo. Hoskinson and IOHK strive to follow the principles of academic peer review in the project’s 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 Cardano blockchain as well. In September 2021 smart-contracts debuted on the Cardano mainnet, which was a major milestone for the ecosystem.

    Buy/Sell ADA

    Cardano Mainnet to undergo Vasil hard fork on September 22

    Following Ethereum’s Merge, another major blockchain is slated for a big upgrade next week – this is Cardano. After the Vasil upgrade was successfully deployed on the Cardano testnet in July 2022, the time has finally arrived for this major update to hit the Cardano mainnet.  According to Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) the Vasil update, whose launch was delayed several times, is finally going to be deployed on the mainnet on September 22, 2022.

    The Vasil update is Cardano’s 5th major upgrade and requires to be deployed via a hard fork. It will bring several scalability improvements, which could result in even lower fees. Among other improvements, Vasil will reduce the size of transactions, which will allow the network to handle more transactions while using the same processing power and blockchain size. The developers, on the other hand, will benefit from enhancements to the Plutus Developer Portal, which will feature novel tools that will facilitate the development of even more powerful and efficient blockchain-based applications. Vasil upgrade will be launching almost exactly a year after the smart contract-focused Alonzo hard fork, the most recent major Cardano upgrade. Since than (this is in 1 year), perhaps also due to the lack of/delayed development, Cardano’s ADA lost over 80% of its value. Do you think the Vasil hard fork could jumpstart an ADA rally and carry it back to Top 5 biggest cryptocurrencies, where it once stood?

  • Ethereum Ranks #1 as The Merge is Expected to Execute in the Middle of the Week –Top Coins to Watch for Sep 12–18

    Ethereum Ranks #1 as The Merge is Expected to Execute in the Middle of the Week –Top Coins to Watch for Sep 12–18

    Ethereum Ranks #1 as The Merge is Expected to Execute in the Middle of the Week –Top Coins to Watch for Sep 12–18

    After a few weeks of rather sideways trading, the cryptocurrency market has demonstrated a slight growth in valuation last week. While the total market capitalizations accounted for almost exactly $1 trillion last Sunday, the total valuation of all cryptocurrencies combined stood at almost $1.1 trillion at the beginning of Week 37. Nevertheless, some cryptos exceeded the market average growth of 10%. These include LUNA, LUNC, RVN, HNT and ATOM to mention just a couple currencies that have demonstrated the fastest growth in terms of relative price change throughout last week. To find out which coins could end up dominating the list of gainers for this week, continue reading this article.

    3. Nexo (NEXO)

    Nexo started out as a centralized lending and borrowing platform that allows people to take out stablecoin loans as well as fiat cash loans by using their crypto holdings as collateral. The platform also offers high yield interest accounts to its users, which acts as the source of liquidity for the platform’s loans. Through its history Nexo kept expanding its range of services, which now also include a cryptocurrency exchange with over 300 trading pairs and a Nexo Card, which allows you to spend your crypto without selling it. Nexo Token is the native cryptocurrency of the ecosystem and the basis of the Nexo loyalty program. Users who hold a larger percentage of their portfolio in NEXO can enjoy reduced trading fees as well as higher interest rates when lending and lower interest rates when borrowing. In addition, Nexo has also committed to buy and burning $50 million worth of Nexo Tokens as part of its most recent Buyback Program.

    Buy/Sell NEXO

    Nexo introduces Nexo Pro – a centralized cryptocurrency exchange packed with features and liquidity

    Last week popular crypto lender Nexo introduced its advanced trading platform called Nexo Pro, which supports limit and market orders, margin trading with up to x5 leverage, as well as Take Profit and Stop Loss functionalities and is fully integrated with other Nexo’s services. In addition, Nexo Pro aggregates liquidity from more than 10 liquidity providers, allowing the platform to offer traders one the most favourable price available on connected markets, one of the tightest spreads and a near-zero slippage. Furthermore, Nexo Pro also offers perpetul futures contracts and API gateways to cater the needs of more advanced crypto traders. To allow users to incur even lower costs while testing out the platform, Nexo has halved the trading fees utnil November 30.

    Looking at other developments in the crypto lending sector we can see that Nexo is one of the few centralized crypto lenders that has been left relatively unscathed by the bear market. Two of the platform’s major competitors – Celsius and Voyager, recently filed for bankruptcy, while others such as BlockFi are reportedly struggling to keep their businesses alive. Nexo, on the other hand, is holding talks with another struggling crypto lender competitor Vauld.

    According to a Vauld spokesman, talks with Nexo are still ongoing. Sources close to the deal are saying that Nexo is conducting its due diligence in relation to the potential acquisition and that the Nexo’s exclusivity period has been extended to October 6. If Nexo ends up buying Vauld, Nexo will restructure Vauld’s operations and focus on growing its market share in the Southeast Asia and India. This could consequently lead to the appreciation of NEXO, which is currently changing hands at a price of $0.98 per token.

    2. Terra Classic (LUNC)

    Terra blockchain was the basis of the same-named algorithmically governed stablecoin platform that was built using Cosmos technology. The blockchain, which utilized a proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, was developed by a South Korea-based company named Terraform Labs. LUNA, once the reserve currency of the Terra platform started losing its dollar peg on May 10, 2022, which pushed the entire Terra ecosystem into a downward spiral that ended with the halt of the Terra blockchain just 3 days later. Consequently, both UST and LUNA tokens lost almost all their value and became practically worthless overnight. Once Terra blockchain relaunched, the old, failed blockchain was renamed to Terra Classic, and ex-LUNA tokens got a new ticker: LUNC. While the Terra Classic blockchain is operational again, its market cap and activity are still far from the ones seen in the months preceding the collapse. However, the Terra Classic ecosystem is growing again and LUNC is currently 31st largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

    Buy/Sell LUNC

    The renaissance of LUNC: the token is up by more than 500% in last 3 months 

    After the collapse of the Terra Classic ecosystem in May, and the subsequent 99.99% drop in the price of LUNC, the token has formed a massive rally over the past three months, gaining more than 500% in the time period. Furthermore, the LUNC price is up by almost 20,000% from its lowest valuation in May 2022. The uptrend could be attributed to the series of upgrades made to the Terra Classic protocol including the recent activation of LUNC staking. The protocol promises stakers whopping (and likely unsustainable) APYs of up to 37.8%, but the majority of investors seem to have learned a lesson this spring as only around 9% of circulating LUNC tokens are currently staked. In addition, a large part of the LUNC appreciation can be explained by the 1.2% burn tax that came into effect on September 1. Every transaction, even wallet and smart contract interactions within the LUNC ecosystem are subjected to the 1.2% tax, whose aim is to reduce the enormous supply of LUNC that was minted during the ecosystem collapse in May and make LUNC a deflationary asset. Last but not least, the Terra governance has recently opened the LUNA airdrop claim portal.

    LUNC or other Terra-based asset holders “who either did not receive the correct allocation of LUNA at Genesis due to technical constraints or issues associated with indexing” are now able to claim their rightful share of LUNA tokens. The team will airdrop more than 19 million LUNA tokens, but eligible users need to place a claim through the claim interface that will remain open up until October 4. Some of the liquidity from this airdrop could eventually be chanelled into LUNC providing extra fuel for the already strong rally. Nevertheless, the effects of this will be all but sudden as all airdropped LUNA will be vested over the period of 2 years to avoid the instability in market liquidity.

    1. Ethereum (ETH)

    Ethereum is an open source blockchain that pioneered smart contract functionality in 2015. The decentralized network operates in a fast, immutable, and trustless manner. Ether (ETH), which is currently the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, is Ethereum’s native asset. Although it can also be used as a medium for the transfer of value between different Ethereum addresses, it is more commonly used to execute various smart contracts. The Ethereum blockchain has enabled several blockchain-powered innovations, including ICOs, DeFi, NFTs, and DAOs. The Ethereum blockchain also hosts countless ERC20 tokens with different utilities – these include Exchange tokens (OKB, HT, UNI), DeFi tokens (LINK, MKR, COMP, SNX, etc.) and several stablecoins such as USDC, DAI, TUSD, and USDT. As The Merge is right behind the corner, Ethereum is closer to ending the process of transition from Proof-of-Work to a Proof-of-Stake blockchain than it has ever been before.

    Buy/Sell ETH

    The Merge is expected to execute between September 13 and September 15

    Thanks to Bellatrix, the last Ethereum mainnet upgrade that was successfully deployed on September 6, everything is prepared for the deployment of arguably the single most important update in the history of Ethereum.

    After several months of Merge-related hype, the final stage of Ethereum’s transition from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake will all but certainly take place next week. According to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, the Merge mechanism will trigger once the so-called Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) reaches 58750000000000000000000, which he expects to happen “around September 13 to September 15”. TTD therefore represents the total difficulty required for the final block that will be mined using PoW consensus. While a lot of things will change after the Merge, some metrics such as the network throughput and fee prices will take a bit longer to be affected. You can read more about the Merge and Top 5 Myths about it in one of our recently published articles. The hype before the Merge can also be felt on the markets, as ETH gained almost 14% against USD and is currently changing hands at the price of $1,790. Should the Merge execution go through smoothly a short-term rally is very likely to accompany the event.

  • Kava Ranks #2 as Kava 11 is soon to be deployed on mainnet–Top Coins to Watch for Sep 5–Sep 11

    Kava Ranks #2 as Kava 11 is soon to be deployed on mainnet–Top Coins to Watch for Sep 5–Sep 11

    Kava Ranks #2 as Kava 11 is soon to be deployed on mainnet–Top Coins to Watch for Sep 5–Sep 11

    After another week of rather sideways trading the total cryptocurrency market capitalization still hoovers around $1 trillion as we enter Week 36. Perhaps, as the Ethereum Merge approaches a new trend cryptocurrency market trend will crystalize, causing the total capitalization to either lift off or take a dive even deeper, below the current $1 trillion valuation. Either way the market plays out, you are more likely to end the week in the green if you follow the news from the crypto world. So here is our Top 3 Coins to Watch article – essentially a short summary of future (and past) events that are likely going to influence the prices of associated cryptocurrencies this week.

    3. Helium (HNT)

    Helium is a project that aims to build a decentralized wireless internet infrastructure owned by the people and not telecom conglomerates. This is the main reason why Helium project calls itself is “the People’s Network”. Anyone who wishes to contribute to a more connected future can join the decentralized machine network by setting up a wireless network in their city and operating a Helium Hotspot, for which the operators are rewarded in HNT tokens. The People’s Network utilizes two units of exchange: HNT and Data Credits and their circulating supply is determined based on a Burn-and-Mint Equilibrium token model. The Helium blockchain also relies on a special Proof-of-Coverage (PoC) algorithm to verify that Helium hotspots are located where their operators claim they are. According to Helium’s explorer, there are currently over 942,000 Helium hotspots deployed worldwide.

    Buy/Sell HNT

    Helium developers have proposed a transition to Solana blockchain to accommodate the rapid growth of the network

    Helium core developers have recently made a bold move as they have proposed to ditch Helium’s native blockchain and transition the network to Solana to accommodate the rapid growth of the network. The transition to Solana is part of the Helium Improvement Proposal 70, which has been presented to the public and the Helium governance community on Tuesday, August 30. Besides moving to Solana, the HIP 70 also includes two protocol tweaks, which aim to minimize Helium’s need for on-chain processing, these are moving Proof-of Coverage and Data Transfer Accounting to Oracles.

    The Helium developers believe that “improving operational efficiency and scalability” of the network is of crucial importance if they want to attract “significant economies of scale” to the network. The governance vote on HIP 70 will start on September 12 and end on September 18. The proposal to migrate to Solana comes after Helium’s native token lost almost 90% since the start of the year. However, if HIP 70 gets approved, the move to Solana blockchain could spark some positive HNT price activity. In addition, operating in a more scalable ecosystem will allow Helium to keep up with the growing number of hotspots and users in the future as well.

    2. Kava (KAVA)

    Kava is a high throughput Layer 1 blockchain developed by Kava Labs. It is designed to use an innovative blockchain architecture of two co-chains working side by side to create a unified scalable network and facilitate a myriad of decentralized finance (DeFi) use cases. Kava’s own Tendermint consensus engine combines Ethereum’s smart contract capabilities with Cosmos’ interoperability to facilitate transactions for thousands of supported decentralized applications. To achieve cross-chain communication and asset transfers, the Kava ecosystem utilizes IBC Protocol and ChainLink’s decentralized blockchain oracle network. Kava Labs have also established close partnerships with industry leaders such as Binance, Kraken and Ripple. The platform’s native token KAVA is used to transfer value on the network and plays a key role in the governance of the blockchain.

    Buy/Sell KAVA

    Kava 11 mainnet launch date revealed – the update is going live on September 8

    According to a recent announcement, Kava 11 mainnet is launching on September 8, 17:00 UTC. The revamped version of the Kava protocol brings several liquidity improvements, including introducing support for Kava EVM assets in Mint and Lend products, the launch of Kava Earn Yield Optimizer and rolling-out a feature that will allow users to Sign SDK transactions for Ethereum assets in a single Metamask Wallet. But that’s not everything yet! Kava 11 will also introduce liquid staking, a feature that will allow KAVA stakers to earn them additional rewards on top of their normal staking rewards.

    Kava is known for its continued development as Kava 10 got deployed only a few months back, this is in May this year. The high-paced development will apparently continue in the future as Kava users can expect two additional developmental milestones in Q3 2022. According to the project’s roadmap, the developers are soon going to launch the ETH bridge, which will allow ERC-20 assets and ETH to be seamlessly utilized on the Kava Network and vice versa. The team also plans to launch the Kava Foundation, a non-profit organisation that will serve as an advisory body to the Kava DAO and its community, this quarter. As you can see Q3 2022 is going to be packed with Kava-related events.


    1. BNB (BNB)

    BNB (BNB) originally launched as Binance Coin in 2017 as an ERC-20 token sold through an initial coin offering (ICO). In April 2019, the Binance Chain was launched, and all the existing ERC-20 tokens were replaced with the BNB coin, which became the native cryptocurrency of the new blockchain. Binance Chain is still completely centralized, with Binance having complete control of block management. Binance users who utilize BNB to pay for trading, withdrawal and listing fees enjoy discounts. While this used to be pretty much the only use case of BNB, the coin has a far greater utility now as it allows users to pay for gas fees, earn cashback on Binance Visa card purchases, stake BNB and participate in liquidity pools and other DeFi activities. BNB is also used to determine eligibility to participate in Initial Exchange Offerings (IEOs). In addition, the Binance ecosystem keeps expanding, which means that new products and services are regularly added.

    Buy/Sell BNB

    BNB showed more resilience than the majority of crypto assets in the most recent bear market

    Historical price data shows that BNB has shown significantly more resiliency to the latest bear market than most top digital assets. While Bitcoin, for example, lost almost a third of its value during the last 3 months, BNB is down by only 8% in the same time frame. Furthermore, BNB bounced by over 50% from its June yearly low. The Binance Coin’s defying price action is likely as a result of growing BNB Smart Chain activity and Binance’s stature as the largest crypto exchange. According to Arcane Research no other cryptocurrency exchange comes near Binance, which attracts more than 300 million users in a 90-day period.

    In addition, Binance is still adhering to the accelerated BNB burning program, where a portion of the exchange’s profits are allocated to purchase BNB and forever remove it out of circulation. Besides quarterly BNB burns, a small portion of each BSC Chain transaction fee is also forever destroyed. Both mechanisms ensure that the amount of BNB in circulation is decreasing. In other news, BNB Beacon Chain (BEP2) Mainnet recently underwent the “Godel” Upgrade. This Binance-supported hard fork that was executed on September 2, deactivated the DEX module on the Beacon Chain as all AMM protocols have been running smoothly on the BSC. Binance noted that this will give leave Beacon Chain “more computing power for future computing and governance focuses”. Was that a hint that new features are coming to the BNB Beacon Chain?