Category: Featured

The cryptocurrency markets finally showed some much-anticipated hints of recovery during week 25, as the total crypto market capitalization climbed from $940 billion to $990 billion. While $50 billion is a rather small weekly gain, it is the first market cap weekly increase in more than 7 weeks. In addition, the total market cap almost touched $1 trillion last week. We sincerely hope that the crypto market will confidently surpass $1 trillion this week. Whether this will materialize or not, we advise you to read out Top 3 Coins to Watch articles to get some ideas about which coins to follow in the upcoming week.

3. Axie Infinity (AXS)

Axie Infinity is a Pokémon-inspired blockchain-powered trading and battling video game. The game is developed by a Vietnamese gaming studio Sky Mavis and has netted more than $2 billion in NFT sales to date. Axie infinity players utilize Ethereum-issued tokens AXS and Small Love Potion (SLP) to breed, trade and battle with their virtual creatures called Axies, each represented by a one of a kind NFT. The growing userbase and protocol revenue has made Axie Infinity one of the most expensive NFTs collections.

Axies is launching new creator programs and reimbursing all Ronin hack victims

The Axie Infinity team has recently announced new community-oriented programs, including The Creator Academy and The Axie Creator Program. The team has recognized Axie creators of all sizes as very valuable element of the Axie Infinity ecosystem. However, up to now, these dedicated members of community had no official educational source and had to learn the craft all by themselves. Axie team decided to change that and launch The Axie Creator Program, through which it aims to support contributors who are impactful to the Axie ecosystem. In addition, Axie Infinity is funding 200 fellowships for creators to participate in Nas Academy’s new creator program through The Creator Academy initiative. Furthermore, Axie Infinity is relaunching the Ronin bridge on June 28. But that is not all. Sky Mavis, the company behind the Axie Infinity game, have also announced that all victims of the $600M+ Ronin bridge hack that took place earlier this year will be fully reimbursed by June 28. While the hack itself was a rather negative news for the Axie ecosystem, the reimbursement gives players hope that Sky Mavis will have their backs even in case something goes wrong. Last but not least, the Axie team has recently announced several game improvements and bug fixes, which will be implemented through the Origin update. However, the road to Origin features three-phases of development.

2. dYdX (DYDX)

dYdX is a non-custodial decentralized cryptocurrency derivatives exchange. The same named DYDX token is a governance token for the dYdX exchange. Token holders govern the dYdX Layer 2 protocol to align incentives between traders, liquidity providers, and partners. Aside from governance, traders are eligible for trading discounts of up to 50% when trading on dYdX provided they hold the required number of tokens. dYdX governance token, which launched in early September, was airdropped to protocol users retroactively based on their trading volumes on the platform prior to its full decentralization.

The dYdX decentralized exchange is launching its own blockchain

The dYdX decentralized exchange has revealed it is moving to a standalone blockchain. Called the dYdX Chain, this decentralized exchange’s blockchain will be built on Cosmos SDK and utilize Tendermint PoS consensus. The move comes ahead of the launch of dYdX v4, the dYdX team announced.

We’re excited to announce that dYdX V4 will be developed as a standalone Cosmos-based blockchain! 🔗🎉https://t.co/zQzZMIpzWO

— dYdX (@dYdX) June 22, 2022

The dYdX v4 will run an even more high-throughput fully decentralized off-chain orderbook. Orders will than be matched by the network and trades will be conducted (on-chain of course). The move to launch a standalone chain and the progress being made towards dYdX v4 has apparently been welcomed by traders and investors as the price of the exchange’s native DYDX token surged for more than 20% in the past week. In addition, the decentralized exchange still regularly records more than $500 million in daily trading volume and more than 3000 weekly active takers. We believe that this popular futures DEX could see another boost in adoption and trading volumes with the launch of v4.

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. The protocol also aims to deliver supersonic speeds and throughput by utilizing a modified version of Plasma. 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.

Whales are accumulating MATIC as Polygon goes carbon neutral and launches Polygon ID

Polygon has seen a significant uptick in the past week, gaining almost 60% in the past 7 days. In fact, MATIC was the second most successful coin from the crypto Top 100 last week, with COMP snitching the pole position by a few percent. According to several analysts the reason for MATIC’s recent exceptional price performance lies primarily in the increased rate of MATIC accumulation by whales in the past six weeks. On-chain data shows that holders with between 10,000 and 10,000,000 MATIC in their wallets have collectively added 8.7% to their holdings over the course of past six weeks. While their acquisitions alone could provide a buy pressure big enough to tip the market in one direction, whales accumulating also signal that the biggest (and often better informed and connected) investors are optimistic about the project’s future, which is usually a reliable buy indicator for the small fish. Nevertheless, MATIC rally is not created out of thin air, as Polygon developers are working hard to deliver new features and deploy improvements. For example, the Polygon team has recently announced that they are launching Polygon ID, a self-sovereign identity solution powered by zero-knowledge cryptography. This gives Polygon DAOs access to a whole set of new features, for example, decentralized communities can now issue ecosystem-wide attestations about their members in a fully private and permissionless way. In addition, the project has reached its first sustainability milestone last week as the Polygon’s network officially became carbon neutral. The network’s other sustainability objectives can be found in the project’s Green Manifesto, published in April this year. Apparently, a green blockchain translated to green numbers on the market. Jokes aside, Polygon has a bright (and maybe even green) near future.

Last week the total cryptocurrency market capitalization plunged below $1 trillion for the first time after January 2021 as bearish sentiment affected the trading of almost every major cryptocurrency. Towards the end of the week the cryptocurrency market bled out a few more billions, reaching a total market capitalization of merely $840 billion before slowly recovering back to $940 billion at the end of Week 24. While Bitcoin and Ethereum usually outperform the market average in such conditions, both biggest cryptocurrencies were hit hard by the most recent bear market. Both BTC and ETH dipped below their psychological support levels of $20,000 and $1,000 respectively for a short time and they both incurred weekly losses of almost 30%.

3. WEMIX Token (WEMIX)

Wemix is a blockchain-based Global Gaming Platform developed by Wemade that aims to lead the GameFi revolution. Wemix platform that operates on the Klaytn network allows developers to deploy gaming dApps and supports their development by offering GameFi-specific features. For example, users or players can use wallets to trade both fungible and non-fungible tokens on the platform’s native marketplace. The project’s goal is to develop an exceptional blockchain gaming ecosystem capable of hosting the decentralized games of tomorrow.

Mainnet upgrade and stablecoin announcement make WEMIX more resilient in the current bear market

The price of the WEMIX token has been showing slightly more resiliency than most digital assets during the ongoing bear market. The reason lies primarily in the planned transition to WEMIX3.0, which will include the launch of the WEMIX PLAY gaming platform (scheduled for July 1) and the launch of a new mainnet (scheduled for August 1). In addition, the project plans to onboard various DeFi services including DEXs and lending protocols in Q3 2022. The announced launch of the 100% collateralized stablecoin slated for Q3 2022 has also garnered a lot of attention. You can find more information in the official WEMIX3.0 global showcase:

In addition to the developments on the technical front, the Wemix team is also putting in a lot of effort to ensure that the platform’s adoption rates do not start stalling. In the last month alone, multiple games including Crypto Ball Z, SpoLive sports prediction game, Four Gods and Every Farm, launched or announced their launch dates on Wemix. At the same time, WEMIX has signed a few strategic investment deals. The project has recently made an investment in Jadu, an U.S.-based augmented reality metaverse start-up, as well as became the leading investor of the Old Fashion Research (OFR) crypto fund.

2. Helium (HNT)

Helium is a project building a decentralized wireless internet infrastructure owned by the people and not telecom conglomerates. This is the reason why Helium’s slogan 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. There are currently over 828,000 Helium hotspots deployed worldwide.

The implementation of HIP51 will mark the beginning of Helium Chapter 2

The Helium community approved the Helium Improvement Proposal 51 (HIP51), which will enable wireless networks such as 5G, WiFi, and VPN to join the Helium ecosystem, boosting the coverage and overall value of the Helium network. In addition, Helium 5G Hotspot bundle owners will receive a reward in the form of MOBILE tokens for helping grow the Helium 5G network as part of the campaign called the “Cellular Summer”. In late summer – after the MOBILE Genesis phase, 5G Hotspot bundle owners will also start earning MOBILE based on the 5G proof-of-coverage process and Data Credits based on the data transferred by their hotspot. Existing LoRaWAN miners will begin earning a new token, called IOT.

With the approval of HIP 51, @helium is growing to support new networks! Starting with #5G, Hotspot owners will be rewarded with $MOBILE for building coverage this #cellularsummer ☀️.

Learn how you can get a Helium 5G Hotspot and get ready to earn: https://t.co/5yitKS3EWK pic.twitter.com/WhHYFBsSPJ

— Helium🎈 (@helium) June 15, 2022

While the Helium 5G network is currently limited to U.S., the developments around it and the HIP51 were enough to make HNT the most profitable coin to hold last week. While many major cryptocurrencies lost more than 30% of their value, HNT ended the week with an over 22% gain. In addition, almost 97% of the HNT holders that voted expressed support for HIP51 in the governance vote. With the implementation of HIP51 Helium is slated to become the network of networks and expand far beyond the original Internet of Things (IoT) use case, which is why the developers are saying that HIP51 is the beginning of the so-called Helium Chapter 2.

1. Bitcoin (BTC)

Although we believe Bitcoin does not need much introduction and that all eyes would be on it even if it were not featured on our list, here is a short summary of the history and key characteristics of the first truly decentralized digital currency. The world’s pioneer cryptocurrency was launched by pseudonymous figure named Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009 and has a capped supply of 21 million coins. The decreasing miner block rewards makes the cryptocurrency scarcer with time, ensuring a deflationary nature. Bitcoin is also often referred to as the barometer of the cryptocurrency market as other assets usually follow BTC’s price performance.

BTC trades below the 200-week SMA, which has historically been an important support level

Last week BTC dropped below the psychological support at $20,000. While $20,000 indeed acted as one of the major support levels as well, the BTC price plunged also through a historically much more important 200-week SMA (Simple Moving Average). Indeed, Bitcoin traded near the 200-week SMA only a few times in its history and it almost always bounced up from this notorious support line. But will BTC succeed to recover this time, too? The conditions are very challenging and the fact that the BTC exchange inflows reach the highest levels since 2018 are not giving Bitcoin believers much hope that $18,000 was the bottom. In addition, exchange inflows suggest that older coins are on the move, indicating that some of the long-term holders have also decided to sell their BTC. It could be due to the fact that Bitcoin is still considered a risk-on asset by most people, and many investors are lowering their risk tolerance in this uncertain times. Furthermore, the inflation for consumer prices is at a 40-year high, which is why the Federal Reserve decided to battle the raging prices by raising interest rates by a 0.75%. While both ETH and BTC experienced a short-lived rally following the interest rate hike announcement, the intensive sell pressure quickly returned to the market and dragged it even lower. To conclude, BTC is still the crypto sector’s barometer and its performance in these unprecedented conditions will very likely affect the broader cryptocurrency market. This alone is a good enough reason to follow BTC’s price movements closely.

Again, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization fell by more than $100 billion in a week and reached a low of $1.16 trillion at the start of Week 24. More than half of last week’s loses were incurred over the weekend – this is between June 11 and June 12. Interestingly but not surprisingly Ethereum and altcoins were hit harder than Bitcoin, resulting in an increase in Bitcoin’s market share. BTC dominance rose from 44.8% on Friday to as high as 45.8% on Sunday, June 12. If you are wondering how to make the most out of this bear market, then read on and find out which 3 coins we recommend keeping an eye on this week.

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.

XTZ hit a monthly high following the announcement of USDT’s launch on Tezos

At the end of last week, Tether Operations Limited announced that its flagship USDT stablecoin is expending to Tezos blockchain. Tezos will thereby become the 13th blockchain, on which the USDT stablecoin is natively available. The launch of a Tezos-based USDT token will provide Tezos community access to the most liquid and trusted stablecoin. On the other hand, the USDT’s expansion to Tezos could help Tether further grow its already big stablecoin market share or at least maintain its pole position among stablecoin projects. At the moment, USDT is the biggest stablecoin on the market – its $83 billion market capitalization leaves the second-placed USDC around $30 billion behind. The investors responded positively to the news as XTZ climbed to reach a monthly high of $2.34 following the announcement. In addition, we have also recently reported about the launch of a new Ethereum/Tezos bridge called Plenty. The bridge, which was developed and launched by a Web3 development studio Teszure facilitates faster and more efficient token swaps between the two networks. Despite the ongoing technical improvements, the Tezos platform is not neglecting other fronts of development. Its NFT sector is still booming, with new NFTs being dropped weekly. Just recently, famous clothing brand Gap announced new NFTs on its marketplace built on Tezos. The Epic and One-of-a-kind class NFTs will be auctioned on June 14 and June 15.

2. Solana (SOL)

Solana is a smart contract enabled blockchain platform developed with a focus on scalability. Due to its high throughput of 65,000 transactions per second and absurdly low transaction fees (an average transaction on the blockchain costs just $0.00025), Solana is considered one of the strongest Ethereum competitors. Such a high blockchain efficiency is made possible by utilizing an innovative proof-of-stake consensus mechanism combined with proof-of-history (PoH) timestamping mechanism. Because of the reasons, Solana is very popular among various non-fungible token (NFT) projects and decentralized finance applications of all kinds. In addition, the project is also backed by major investors such as Alameda Research, Polychain and Andreessen Horowitz that provide Solana Labs with more than sufficient funds for further development of the Solana ecosystem.

Will a series of integrations and a $100 million ecosystem fund be enough to finally reverse SOL’s price trend?

After months of negative price movement (SOL is down by 80% in past 6 months), Solana could be in for a trend reversal due to a series of investments and ecosystem developments. The popular privacy-preserving browser Brave recently announced that its strategic partnership with Solana in an attempt to make Web3 accessible to the masses. With Brave’s 1.39 desktop release its users will be able to trade and hold both Solana (SOL) and fungible Solana tokens (SPL) in Brave Wallet as well as buy SOL directly with fiat via Ramp. In the future, BAT holders will also be able to buy and sell NFTs on Magic Eden, the largest community-first NFT-based web3 ecosystem, directly through Brave Wallet or other Solana   wallets like Phantom. With this implementation, Solana’s NFT marketplace Magic Eden is aiming to completely close the gap with OpenSea, currently the leading NFT marketplace. At the end of May, Magic Eden already conducted six-times more transactions and had more weekly active users as OpenSea. Nevertheless, Magic Eden still fell behind OpenSea by 23% in terms of weekly transaction volume. Furthermore, the rise in the popularity of Magic Eden continued with almost no loss of momentum despite the fact that OpenSea added support for Solana NFTs earlier this year. Leaving Brave integration and the increasing adoption of Solana’s NFT marketplace aside, Solana investors have another good reason to gaze into the future with optimism as a $100 million ecosystem fund got launched last week. The fund, which was created by Solana Ventures and Solana Foundation, will invest in South Korean Web 3 projects building GameFi, DeFi and NFT applications on Solana.

1. ChainLink (LINK)

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 in blockchain gambling as well as providing a source of verifiable randomness in blockchain gaming and when minting NFTs.

ChainLink team laid out the LINK staking roadmap

The initial version of LINK staking is slated to hit the mainnet in the second half of 2022, ChainLink team revealed in an official post published on Tuesday, June 7. With the implementation of staking the developers want to enable community participation in the ChainLink network while maintaining the cryptoeconomic security of ChainLink’s services at the same time. In brief, staking will introduce a powerful incentive and penalty mechanism for ChainLink nodes, forcing them to generate accurate oracle reports and deliver them to specific recipients on time if they don’t want to see their LINK stakes slashed. Good nodes will be able to earn APY of up to 5% on their long-term staked LINK. LINK surged by more than 20% in the aftermath of the announcement, but the coin already lost all the generated gains in this weekend’s sell-off. Nevertheless, the story with LINK staking is far from over and with a price of $6.80 per token, LINK is currently trading at a heavily discounted price. Furthermore, on the same day as ChainLink laid out its plans for LINK staking, a leading crypto infrastructure provider Infura announced it is joining the ChainLink network as a node operator. Interest from big firms like Infura indicates that ChainLink is not to be written off just yet as its services still have a massive growth potential.

As there were no bigger moves on the cryptocurrency market last week, the sector is entering Week 23 with an almost unchanged total market capitalization of $1.29 trillion. Among the biggest gainers out of crypto Top 100 in the last 7 days are WAVES (+92%), HNT (+28%) and ADA (+20%). In total, 60 out of top 100 cryptocurrencies ended the week in the green, while the remaining 40 posted red numbers. The ratio is surely indicating a slightly recovering market, but the relative changes in valuation have been too little to significantly increase the total market capitalization. Do you think we could see more green numbers or higher gains at the end of this week and potentially enter a period of recovery?

3. TRON (TRX)

TRON is a delegated proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus blockchain platform that launched its mainnet in June 2018. However, TRON’s native asset TRX existed even before the mainnet launch in the form of an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain. Like Ethereum, Solana and Polkadot, TRON blockchain is designed to host smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps). TRON blockchain is known for its fast transactions and low transaction fees. TRON blockchain can also host custom TRON-based assets, issued using the TRC10 and TRC20 standards. The project was founded by Chinese entrepreneur Justin Sun, and its development is headed by the Tron Foundation, which was established in 2017. Since than TRON has grown to become a major player in the blockchain sector. Its network hosts some of the leading apps in the industry and sees a huge volume of data and wealth transferred across its ecosystem each day.  

TRON ecosystem’s TVL grew by over 40% in May

On May 5, the TRON DAO rolled out a new TRON blockchain-based decentralized stablecoin called USDD. The newly-launched stablecoin is designed to maintain a $1 peg through an arbitrage mechanism against TRX, much like the one utilized by the recently collapsed TerraUSD (UST). In addition, the launch of USDD came at a time when the market was still reeling from the Terra ecosystem crash. However, TRX markets responded positively to the announcement and, perhaps also due to the launch of USDD, TRON ecosystem grew a lot in May. DeFiLlama recorded a more than 40% month-over-month increase in total value locked (TVL) in the TRON ecosystem in May, which propelled TRON to the third spot in DeFi chain rankings. In addition, CoinMetrics data showed that TRON has the highest number of active addresses compared to BTC, ETH, XRP, XLM, BNB, DOGE and many other popular blockchains. In short, May has been a very successful month for the TRON ecosystem. The ecosystem growth is also starting to reflect in the price of TRX, which is up by 38% against USD in the last 3 months. It will be interesting to see whether TRON can carry this momentum over into June or even maintain it through the summer.

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.

Optimism launched and airdropped first OP tokens

On June 1, Optimism officially launched its own OP governance token. Soon after the launch, 5% of the total token supply was distributed to Optimism early adopters through the first airdrop last week. According to Optimism’s data, more than 248,000 Ethereum wallets were eligible to claim OP in the first airdrop. It is worth pointing out that the OP airdrop season is not over yet as Optimism has allocated another 14% for future airdrops. According to the Optimism’s OP allocation model, the rest of the token’s supply is intended for the so-called Ecosystem Fund (25%), funding public goods (20%), and rewarding core contributors (19%). The remaining 17% will be made available to Optimism investors. However, investors should be aware that the total supply of OP is expected to increase at a rate of 2% per year from the initial supply of 4.3 billion tokens at genesis. Since the launch, the OP token has been listed by virtually every major cryptocurrency exchange including Binance, Bybit, KuCoin, OKX and many others. Currently OP is changing hands at $1.22 per token, but the price of this governance token is likely going to appreciate as Optimism Collective gains functionality and authority.

1. Ethereum (ETH)

Ethereum is an open-source blockchain that pioneered smart contract functionality in 2015. The blockchain operates as a decentralized virtual machine that can execute scripts – also called smart contracts – in a fast, immutable, and trustless manner. Ethereum’s native asset is Ether (ETH), which is currently the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. 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 hosts a number of 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. Ethereum is currently transitioning from proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake blockchain. Once Ethereum 2.0 is fully launched, the network will be able to perform more transactions at a higher speed than today. Hopefully, this will also lower the network fees, which are a well-known Achilles’ heel of Ethereum ecosystem.

Longest-running Ethereum Testnet will transition to Proof-of-Stake on June 8

Ropsten, Ethereum’s longest-running testnet is going to switch from proof-of-work consensus algorithm to a more environmentally friendly proof-of-stake consensus on June 8. Following a successful shift to proof-of-stake on Ropsten, Ethereum developers will move their focus to the Goerli and Sepolia testnet. Since Ethereum mainnet is already the next in line, the highly anticipated event where Ethereum’s PoW mainchain and PoS Beacon Chain join, also known as “The Merge”, could be completed as soon as in August 2022 if everything goes according to the plan. While there are no official information as to when “The Merge” is going to happen, Ethereum developer Time Beiko recently revealed that we are in “the final chapter of PoW on Ethereum” and that the switch from PoW to PoS is likely going to take place “a few months after June”. Nevertheless, Ethereum’s PoS Beacon Chain is up and running ever since December 2020 and you can already stake your ETH, but you will only be able to unstake once the Beacon Chain will start processing transactions, this is after “the Merge”. In addition, several cryptocurrency analysts have noted that the Ethereum’s move to the faster and more environmentally-friendly Ethereum 2.0 has not been priced in yet. According to their analysis, ETH, which is currently changing hands at a discounted price of around $1,800, could surge as high as $2,600 once ETH 2.0 FOMO starts influencing the ETH markets.