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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.

  • TRON is the #1 Coin to Watch for the Week of April 25 – May 1, 2022

    TRON is the #1 Coin to Watch for the Week of April 25 – May 1, 2022

    The cryptocurrency markets have been rather stagnant in Week 16 as the total market capitalization only slightly dropped from $1.89 trillion on April 17 to $1.88 trillion on April 24. However, this does not mean that past week offered no lucrative investment opportunities. In fact, several cryptocurrencies, including the Green Metaverse Token, Terra’s LUNA, KAVA and CRV ended the week with a gain of over 10%. We believe that the coins listed in this article have a high chance to post a profit at the end of Week 17 as well.

    3. STEPN – Green Metaverse Token (GMT)

    STEPN is a Web3 lifestyle app with fun social elements and gamification design that helps you build and maintain healthy habits, as players receive rewards based on their daily step counts. This is also the reason why STEPN app has been repeatedly labeled as a move-to-earn game. STEPN utilizes a dual-token system. It uses Green Satoshi Token (GST) as the main gaming token and Green Metaverse Token (GMT), which acts as the governance token of STEPN. Besides granting governance rights, the GMT also acts as a basis for profit distribution and can be used to mint and upgrade in-game NFT sneakers. STEPN is developed by an Australian-based fintech studio Find Satoshi Lab. This Solana-based GameFi and Socialism project won the Solana Ignition Hackathon Gaming Track in 2021 and was the 28th project featured on Binance launchpad.

    Buy/Sell GMT

    GMT is the best performing crypto YTD

    Even though GMT only started trading on March 9, the token’s gain of +3,230% since than makes Green Metaverse Token the best performing crypto asset from the Top 100 cryptos on a year-to-date scale. Furthermore, as of today, April 24, GMT is also the best performing asset from the top 100 on 7 day and 1 month scales. At least part of the STEPN’s market success can be attributed to its participation in the Binance Launchpad, which grants project a great deal of exposure and thereby increases the chances of the project’s success. The other reason for success, is perhaps the STEPN’s unique market model, which allows users to earn crypto rewards by performing physical activity. However, several market observers including Michaël van de Poppe, a popular crypto analyst and full-time trader, think that the GMT’s high price is unsustainable and driven largely by the team’s marketing efforts. While it is absolutely true that GMT price can plummet anytime the exponentially growing interest for STEPN app and the team’s ambitious roadmap are lowering that risk. According to STEPN’s official website, the team plans to roll-out multichain support in Q2 2022 and launch the achievement, quest, and rental system over the course of Q3 2022. The community and SocialFi-focused Q4 2022 will kick-off with an online marathon in October 2022.

    2. Monero (XMR)

    Monero is the largest privacy-focused cryptocurrency. It that is designed to provide as much privacy and security as possible to its users. Although the Monero project is fully open-source and run by volunteers, the project enjoys a high reputation within the cryptocurrency community. The Monero whitepaper was created in 2014 by an unknown developer using the pseudonym “Nicolas van Saberhagen”. Monero has been repeatedly bashed in the mainstream media for facilitating ransomware and other hacker attacks since the performers of these illicit actions often demand the payments to be made in XMR to avoid being caught. While it is sad that the technology is being used for illegal purposes, the use case itself is a testament of Monero’s privacy features working as intended.

    Buy/Sell XMR

    Monero thrives in expectation of July Upgrade, sanctions against Russia are only accelerating the growth

    Cryptocurrency analysts have pointed out to an interesting trend that appeared on the crypto markets following the start of the Ukraine war – the cryptocurrencies that preserve the anonymity by obscuring the flow of money across their networks have started to appreciate. Many think that this is a direct consequence of the financial sanctions targeted at Russia put in place by many governments worldwide. Mati Greenspan, founder of the cryptocurrency analysis firm Quantum Economics, described how the sanctions are driving XMR price up:

    “We can probably assume that a lot of the sanctions on Russian citizens are forcing them into crypto. If Bitcoin itself is not anonymous enough for their specific needs, they may be buying more privacy-centric coins.”

    In addition, the “Fluorine Fermi” network upgrade slated for mid-July that was announced on April 20 served as an additional boost to the ongoing rally.

    The upgrade that will roll-out at block number 2,668,888 aims to improve the security and resilience of the network to rapid changes in the fee market and malicious attacks. The upgrade will increase the ring-size from 11 to 16, reduce the typical transaction size and verification performance by 5-7%. In addition, view tags will reduce wallet sync times by 30-40%. Because of the prevailingly positive sentiment, XMR price has climbed to an a five-month high last week. XMR, which is currently changing hands a few dollars above $250, is up over 70% since its yearly low at the start of February.

    1. TRON (TRX)

    TRON is a delegated proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus model 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. In addition, TRON blockchain can host custom TRON-based tokens, 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 host to some of the leading apps in the industry and sees a huge volume of data and wealth transferred across its ecosystem each day. 

    Buy/Sell TRX

    TRON set to launch its own algorithmic stablecoin called Decentralized USD (USDD)

    On April 21, TRON founder Justin Sun published an open letter, in which he announced that a TRON-based algorithmic stablecoin called Decentralized USD (USDD) will enter circulation on May 5. The UDS peg of USDD will be determined by an algorithm connected to a treasury of TRON’s native currency, TRX. Furthermore, Sun already revealed that the stablecoin will also be accessible on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Ethereum (ETH). While the announcement of the USDD caused only a small reversal of the TRX price downtrend, TRX’s 24-hour trading vol up surged by 300% following the announcement. Nevertheless, even the TRX price action is not neglectable since the coin ended the week with a slightly more than 7% gain. This was enough for TRX to climb from 27th to 21st spot by market capitalization as other coins ended the week in red numbers. Last but not least, the news of USDD caused an increased activity of TRX whale addresses. Just two whales moved 1.69 billion TRX tokens, worth over $123 million, between anonymous wallets. By launching USDD, TRON is set to enter the space of algorithmic stablecoins, currently dominated by Terra’s UST, which recently surpassed BUSD to become the 3rd largest stablecoin in the market. Do you think that cards will get reshuffled once USDD enters the sector?

  • Dogecoin is the #1 Coin to Watch for the Week of April 18 – April 24, 2022

    Dogecoin is the #1 Coin to Watch for the Week of April 18 – April 24, 2022

    The start of the second quarter of 2022 has so far been characterized by negative price movements that saw Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the majority of digital assets fall to their multi-week lows. After roughly two weeks of a notable pullback, the bears appeared to have loosened their grip over the market in the second half of Week 15. As a result, numerous coins have been posting modest gains in recent days, which helped the total cryptocurrency market cap recover from the 30-day low of $1.88 trillion recorded on April 12th. With the short-term outlook of many investors turning cautiously optimistic, let’s take a look at the top three coins that are worth following this week.

    3. Kyber Network Crystal (KNC)

    Founded in 2017, Kyber Network is a decentralized finance infrastructure provider with the mission of making the process of transferring liquidity across the broader crypto ecosystem simple and efficient. The project’s DEX aggregator and liquidity protocol, KyberSwap, facilitates digital asset transfers between numerous decentralized exchanges (DEXs), including Uniswap, Curve, PancakeSwap, and Pangolin, to name a few. 

    Beyond decentralized cryptocurrency payments, the Kyber ecosystem is governed by the KyberDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), which allows KNC token holders to participate in the decision-making process involving key network parameters. In addition to the community governance use cases, KNC can also be used for staking purposes, which gives its owners the ability to earn a share of trading fees generated by the protocol in the form of crypto rewards.

    Buy/Sell KNC

    Kyber Network integrates with Uniswap v3, now supports trading across 10 separate blockchains

    The native token of the DeFi-focused blockchain network, Kyber Network Crystal (KNC), has gained close to 50% since mid-March. The reason for investors’ interest lies largely in a multitude of major ecosystem milestones the Kyber Network team has reached in recent weeks. 

    In the first week of Apil, the team announced integration with Uniswap v3 on Ethereum and Polygon to give users the ability to make use of market rates generated by the leading decentralized exchange protocol. Following a theme of multi-chain operations, the project has partnered with Avalanche to unlock $1 million in liquidity mining rewards as a part of the Avalanche Rush Phase 2 program.

    The Kyber Network team’s top priority is the expansion of its “DeFi liquidity hub” to as many blockchain ecosystems as possible. The project’s KyberSwap now supports trading on ten leading platforms, including Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, BNB Chain, Aurora, Arbitrum, Fantom, Oasis, Velas, and Crypo.com’s Cronos. With the total value invested across all services tracked by DeFi Llama growing past $200 billion in April 2022, Kyber Network’s ability to access liquidity from different sources via a simple and efficient interface bodes well for the project’s short-term and long-term prospects.

    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. While not yet launched on the mainnet, the co-chain system has been thoroughly tested by the Kava team and is slated to roll out soon. 

    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. 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 network.

    Buy/Sell KAVA

    Ethereum and Cosmos co-chains to go live once Kava Network 1.0 Mainnet launches in May 

    The Kava ecosystem is fast approaching one of the most significant roadmap goals – the full launch of the co-chain architecture on the mainnet. The team is currently aiming for a co-chain rollout on May 10th, according to a tweet shared earlier this month. 

    Once fully deployed, co-chains will give DApp developers the opportunity to build in the Ethereum Virtual Machine and Cosmos SDK environments with seamless interoperability and access to liquidity spanning across two of the biggest DeFi ecosystems. Moreover, KAVA stakers can look forward to the ability to use their digital holdings in tokenized form whilst participating in the process of securing the network and earning validator rewards.

    According to data from DeFi Llama, the total value of digital assets locked on Kava has increased from $96 million in January 2021 to $625 million in April 2022. More than 550% increase in TVL showcases the promise of the Kava ecosystem and suggests the network activity is bound to increase even further in anticipation of the co-chain infrastructure going live. In addition, the team has recently launched Kava Rise, a $750 million incentive program designed to boost the development of DeFi, gaming, and NFT projects in the ecosystem.

    1. Dogecoin (DOGE)

    Dogecoin launched in December 2013 as a joke born out of the Shiba Inu doge meme that went viral that same year. Despite its meme-inspired beginnings, the community quickly took a liking to the slightly inflationary digital currency boasting far lower transactions costs and throughput than some of the leading crypto networks, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

    In the 12 months between May 2020 and May 2021, the DOGE token had gone on a historic bull run that saw its price increase by more than 30,000%. The rally was driven mostly by Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s publicly shared bullish stance on the memecoin and subsequent exposure the token received from a broader audience of regular investors. 

    Buy/Sell DOGE

    Elon Musk and Robinhood CEO float ideas for new Dogecoin use cases

    Although Dogecoin started off as a joke inspired by the Reddit community, the token does offer several perks that should not be ignored. For instance, Dogecoin miners can conduct mathematical calculations that complete and record transactions on the blockchain at a much faster rate, and with much less energy used, compared to Bitcoin.

    During last year’s TIME’s Person of the Year Interview, Musk said Dogecoin could be one of the better candidates to facilitate digital transactions, highlighting DOGE’s slightly inflationary nature and high total transaction flow as its main pros. Last Friday, Robinhood CEO Vladimir Tenev expanded on the point Musk made last year and examined in a 12 posts long Twitter thread what it would take for DOGE to become the “future currency of the internet.” Tenev believes that Dogecoin developers should focus on block size optimization, since transactions speeds and fees are already competitive enough to easily take on established payments processors, such as Visa.

    Another bullish sign for DOGE came last week after Musk floated the idea of his favorite cryptocurrency being used for Twitter’s Blue premium service. For context, earlier this month Musk acquired 9.2% stake in the social media gain that sent its stock to a yearly high. Later on, Musk proposed to buy the entire business for $54.20 per share ($41.4 billion) and turn it private. Following recent developments, the price of DOGE has increased by more than 20%. Despite the significant uptick, DOGE is still trading close to 80% removed from last May’s ATH, potentially leaving a lot of room for further upside movement. 

  • LUNA is the #2 Coin to Watch for the Week of April 11 – April 17, 2022

    LUNA is the #2 Coin to Watch for the Week of April 11 – April 17, 2022

    Coins to Watch - Near Protocol, Luna, Solana

    The total market capitalisation of the crypto market has retraced back to $2.05 trillion during Week 14. We, and pretty much every other crypto investor, hope that the downtrend is not going to continue in the following week. Nevertheless, by smartly picking which coins and tokens to invest into your portfolio can end up in the green, even when the general market is in the red. And this is where our weekly Top 3 Coins to Watch articles, where you can find fresh ideas on how to make the most out of the current developments in the world of cryptocurrencies, come handy.

    3. Near Protocol (NEAR)

    Near is a highly scalable and developer friendly Layer 1 Proof-of-Stake blockchain competing with Ethereum, Solana and similar networks. The company behind Near Protocol claims that you can create simple decentralized apps (dApps) on Near in just five minutes. In addition, Near Protocol utilizes Nightshade sharding mechanism, which allows the network to perform up to 100,000 transactions per second. However, there are currently not many decentralized applications deployed on its ecosystem. According to DeFi Llama, the total vale locked (TVL) in 6 protocols running directly on Near is only $340 million. Combined with Aurora, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) running on the Near Protocol blockchain, the Near ecosystem has a TVL of $1.17 billion.

    Buy/Sell NEAR

    Near Protocol raised $350 million in the latest funding round

    Just three months after raising $150 million for the largest DeFi push in the history, the Near Protocol announced the successful competition of yet another funding round. This time Near Foundation, the organization behind the scalability-focused blockchain, raised $350 million to fund the platform’s adoption efforts and its development. The financing round was led by the Tiger Global hedge fund and saw participation from several notable VCs, including Dragonfly Capital, FTX Ventures, and Hashed. According to the company statement, the fresh capital will help Near increase “the number of regional hubs in key community centers across the globe.” This should bring the foundation’s goal, which is helping billions of people use decentralized technologies, closer to realisation. NEAR price jumped by 25% on the news and was at one point, on April 8, trading just 5% ($0.50) removed from its ATH price set in January this year. While this chain’s TVL remains low compared to other Layer 1 networks, it is obligatory to note that Near Protocol’s TVL has increased by over 180% in the last month. This incredible growth makes Near Protocol one of the fastest-growing DeFi chains in the space. In addition, NEAR climbed from 40th to 18th spot on the list of largest cryptos by market capitalisation in just 6 months… and we believe that this blockchain has not reached the end of its climb yet!

    2. Terra (LUNA)

    The Terra blockchain acts as the basis of the same-named algorithmically governed stablecoin platform. The Terra platform, which is built on the Cosmos technology and utilizes a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, was developed by a South Korea-based company named Terraform Labs. LUNA, which is the reserve currency of the Terra platform, has three key functions; these are ensuring the price stability of Terra stablecoins, mining Terra transactions through staking and providing incentives to blockchain validators. There are currently almost $28 billion worth of various digital assets locked in the Terra ecosystem.

    Buy/Sell LUNA

    Luna Foundation to add $100 million worth of AVAX to the UST reserve fund

    On Thursday, April 7, Luna Foundation Guard announced it will add $100 million worth of AVAX to its UST reserve fund, after signing a deal with Avalanche. Terra ecosystem keeps funds in the UST Reserve to provide help maintain the UST peg against the USD, which is especially needed in times of sharp spikes of UST demand or sudden UST sell-offs. Nevertheless, Luna Foundation representatives also stated that the acquisition of $100 million worth of AVAX will “help strategically align the two ecosystems”. AVAX will thereby become the second non-correlated asset in the UST Reserve, the other being Bitcoin (BTC), which makes up most of the reserve value. In addition to the AVAX purchase, Luna Foundation has reportedly also bought 5,040 BTC last week for its reserve fund. The significant expansion of the reserve fund comes less than two months after its creation, which took place on February 22. Given how LUNA’s price jumped on the news of previous BTC deposits to the reserve, the addition of $100M worth of AVAX will likely have a similar impact on the price of LUNA. Interestingly, LUNA is currently the only cryptocurrency from the top 15 that is in the green on the year-to-date timeframe. Its success is attributed to the growth of the Terra ecosystem, along with the growth of the UST stablecoin and the setup of the already described UST reserve fund. TerraUSD (UST) currently has a market capitalization of $16.7 billion, which makes it the fourth largest stablecoin. However, TerraUSD has a solid chance of overtaking BUSD and becoming the 3rd largest stablecoin.

    1. Solana (SOL)

    Solana is a scalability-focused blockchain platform that supports smart contracts. 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 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 blockchain.

    Buy/Sell SOL

    Solana seeks to further expand its presence on NFT markets following OpenSea integration

    After months of anticipation, OpenSea, the largest NFT trading platform, has finally integrated Solana. While OpenSea confirmed the rumours already a week before by publishing a video teaser, the official announcement of the Solana integration came on April 6. 

    The feature is currently in the beta phase, but once the integration goes alpha, Solana will become the fourth blockchain to be supported by OpenSea, joining the company of Ethereum, Polygon, and Klaytn. Even though Solana is one of the better-equipped blockchains to handle NFTs and their high trading volume, the NFT trading volumes on Solana are currently far smaller than those recorded on the OpenSea marketplace. According to data provided by DappRadar, more than the monthly NFT trading volume om OpenSea stands at $2.64 billion, while only $46 million worth of NFTs were sold on all Solana marketplaces combined in the same period. However, the OpenSea’s Solana integration is expected to boost trading activity of Solana NFTs and further solidify its spot among the quickest growing Web3 ecosystems. Nevertheless, Solana’s native currency – SOL, is changing hands at slightly less than $115, which is still 56% less than the coin’s ATH price of $260 achieved in November 2021. Do you think SOL can near in on its ATH because of an NFT market explosion?

  • Zcash is the #2 Coin to Watch for the Week of April 4 – April 10, 2022

    Zcash is the #2 Coin to Watch for the Week of April 4 – April 10, 2022

    The total market capitalisation of the crypto market has continued to increase throughout Week 13. It climbed from the starting $2.07 trillion to $2.22 trillion, even though Bitcoin, the market barometer, lost 3% in the same timeframe. Biggest gainers from the top of the chart were Solana (SOL), Terra (Luna) and Near Protocol (NEAR). But which coins and tokens are preparing for some interesting price action in Week 14 or in the longer run? Continue reading to find out.

    3. Zilliqa (ZIL)

    Zilliqa is a high-performance blockchain platform which aims to solve the scaling issues that most of the popular blockchains are facing without compromising the security of transactions. Zilliqa achieves that by incorporating sharding technology, which means that nodes are broken down into groups of 600, i.e., shards, that can run many sub-blockchains simultaneously. As more mining nodes join the network, the networks throughput increases. The blockchain utilizes a unique consensus algorithm, a combination of Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) and the standard proof of work (PoW) mining algorithm is used. In addition, Zilliqa supports smart contracts and has an active community of both users and developers, which is crucial for the long-term success of a blockchain platform.

    Buy/Sell ZIL

    Zilliqa’s Metapolis announcement caused ZIL price to spike

    On March 27, Zilliqua team announced Metapolis, the first metaverse on the Zilliqa network. But that was not an ordinary metaverse announcement, as Zilliqa has partnered with Agora, a global platform for talented creators, to build the first Metaverse as a Service (MaaS) product. After uploading their content to the Agora app and receiving enough votes from the community, creators will be able to feature their work in the Metapolis metaverse.

    The announcement was very well received by Zilliqa supporters and investors, causing ZIL to double its price in the 24 hours following the announcement. The ZIL price than hoovered around $0.10 for a day before entering the second stage of the rally, that carried ZIL over $0.22. ZIL ended the week up by more than +300%. While launching a metaverse project could help drive the project’s growth in the long run, now might not be the ideal time to buy in, as sudden surges often lead to even quicker selloffs. But once the hype around the Metapolis wears off, ZIL could become a good addition to a portfolio of an investor that is willing to take on moderate risk.

    2. Zcash (ZEC)

    Zcash is an anonymity-focused cryptocurrency that obscures transaction data to hide the sender’s and receiver’s wallets and other properties of a specific transaction. Zcash was the first project to zero-knowledge cryptography known under the name zk-SNARKs. This technology allows one party (the prover) to prove to another party (the verifier) that a statement is true, without revealing any information beyond the validity of the statement itself. Zcash is therefore a blockchain with one of the strongest privacy features.

    Buy/Sell ZEC

    Network Upgrade 5 (NU5), largest Zcash Upgrade since 2020, to be deployed mid-April

    In April, Zcash will undergo its largest and most important upgrade since 2020. The new upgrade called Network Upgrade 5 (NU5) is set to improve the platform’s privacy and scalability through implementing recursive cryptography, proof aggregation, and blockchain succinctness. The NU5 also features Halo 2 proving system, which will eliminate the need for a trusted setup. In Zcash’s legacy proving system a select group of trusted people is required to clean “toxic waste” – data that could allow a bad actor to independently mint new ZEC. In addition, the Zcash team will also introduce Halo Arc, a suite of solutions that package new features and products with protocol upgrades like NU5 into regular releases. 

    The price action of ZEC has recently been following a slight upward trend (up by almost 50% in the last month), likely in anticipation of the new upgrade. But ZEC cud surge even higher after the major upgrade is successfully deployed. In addition, rumours are surfacing that the Zcash team is considering switching to proof of stake (PoS) consensus algorithm and implementing the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC), both of which would open up a world of new ZCash use cases.

    1. Fantom (FTM)

    Fantom is a fast, high-throughput open-source smart contract platform for digital assets and dApps. It is a Layer 1 network competing with the likes of Avalanche, Solana, and Terra to dethrone Ethereum. Fantom utilizes Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance (aBFT) consensus algorithm. The aBFT algorithm promises to solve the blockchain Scalability Trilemma, according to which only two of the crucial three components that include decentralization, security, and scalability, are possible at the same time. It is very likely that this was one of the main factors that made FTM one of the best-performing assets of 2021. The Fantom’s native asset gaining approximately 13,000% last year.

    Buy/Sell FTM

    Fantom Foundation seeks to boost blockchain growth with 335 million FTM available through the FTM Incentive Program

    On March 31, the Fantom Foundation announced that it is prolonging and expanding its developer incentive program by launching a new FTM Incentive Program. The team plans to distribute up to 335 million FTM (worth around $480 million at the time of the announcement) to teams and projects developing on the Fantom blockchain. Gitcoin Grants, a funding platform for the web3 space, will help in managing and voting on grant applicants. While Fantom is willing to fund any kind of project building in their ecosystem, be it a DeFi protocol, an NFT platform, a game or critical infrastructure, Fantom community will have a crucial role in determining who recieves the grant. Fantom also believes that small projects that are just getting started with smaller teams should be given an equal opportunities as larger teams that have already amassed some TVL. In addition to the FTM Incentive Program, the Fantom developers are preparing for the Fantom Virtual Machine (FVM) upgrade. The upgrade, which is slated to start rolling out in Q2 of this year, will improve smart contracts’ security and performance as well as speed up the Fantom network. The team hopes that the revamped network will attract new users, developers, and perhaps even more institutional investors, all of which will be beneficial if Fantom wants to re-enter the Top 3 DeFi ecosystems by TVL. According to Defi Llama, Fantom is currently at the sixth spot sandwiched between Solana and Tron, far from the company of the largest DeFi chains, where Fantom could be found earlier this year.

  • Axie Infinity is the #1 Coin to Watch for the Week of March 28 – April 3, 2022

    Axie Infinity is the #1 Coin to Watch for the Week of March 28 – April 3, 2022

    Coins to watch - Ocean, Mina, Axis Infinity

    The uptrend observed during Week 11 has continued throughout Week 12 as well, causing the total capitalization of the crypto market to further grow. While it stood at just $1.92 trillion at the beginning of last week, it has grown back above $2 trillion, to $2.07 trillion, to be exact, by the end of the week. Do you think that we are back on track to reclaim the $3 trillion crypto market valuation, or will the market cap soon drop below $2 trillion again? The fact is, nobody knows for sure, but by keeping an eye on one (or all) of our top 3 coins to watch, you can never do wrong.

    3. Ocean Protocol (OCEAN)

    Ocean Protocol is a blockchain-based ecosystem that enables people and organizations to effortlessly unlock the value of their data and monetize it using ERC-20 datatokens. Each datatoken, which represents a data service on Ocean Protocol, can be bought and sold on the Ocean Market. At the same time, the Singapore based non-profit foundation that develops the Ocean Protocol is aware of the risk posed by the massive centralization of data and shares the universal worry that a handful of organizations with both massive data assets and AI capabilities could endanger the free and open society that we (think we) live in today. Therefore, their aim is to offer a service that gives power back to data owners. In addition, the Ocean Protocol allows third parties who purchase a certain dataset to conduct operations on the data without it ever leaving the publisher’s safe enclave. This way the data storage remains decentralized.

    Buy/Sell OCEAN

    OCEAN rallies in anticipation of the Ocean v4 Upgrade

    After months of continuous downward price movement, OCEAN pulled a small rally last week. The OCEAN price initially surged from below $0.50 to $0.71, but then quickly settled at a lower value of around $0.60, where it still trades. The rally is likely a consequence of the growing anticipation of the Ocean v4 upgrade, which should be deployed to mainnet in Q2 2022. The v4 version of the protocol, which is currently in public testing, will introduce Data NFTs, data wallets, and federated learning to mention just a few novelties. In addition, data owners will have more control over fee rates, which were hardcoded in v3. V4 will also support pay-as-you-go, compute-to-data, and more innovative fee payment methods. As soon as Ocean v4 is fully operational, the team also plans to launch a Data Farming campaign to incentivize data providers to feed data into new datasets, or as the project developers like to say: “fill the Ocean”. In summary, Ocean Protocol Version 4 has the potential to disrupt the established data management systems by creating monetizable data funnels never seen before. The fact that the Ocean Protocol Foundation provides $140 million in developer grants should also help the project in securing a bright future. And since we are already mentioning the grants – the OceanDAO is currently accepting applications for the Round 16 of their grant program. Projects building or improving Ocean applications will split the 200,000 OCEAN available in this round.

    2. Mina Protocol (MINA)

    Mina Protocol is a simple blockchain, designed to minimize the system requirements needed to run a full node or interact with the blockchain. The Mina network is merely 22 KB in size, which is why it has been repeatedly dubbed the “lightest blockchain in the world”. 

    In addition, the blockchain size is designed to always stay at 22 KB and not gradually grow as the adoption of the Mina protocol increases. Despite its minuscule size, Mina maintains a balance between security and decentralization. To achieve that, Mina utilizes Zero-Knowledge Proofs technology (ZK Proofs). Mina started out as Coda Protocol in 2017 but was rebranded into Mina Protocol in October 2020.

    Buy/Sell MINA

    MINA price explodes following major venture capital inflows and Coinbase listing

    The Mina Ecosystem announced on March 17 that it has successfully raised $92 million through a private funding round led by FTX Ventures and Three Arrows Capital with participation from Brevan Howard hedge fund, Amber Group, Blockchain.com, Circle Ventures, Finality Capital Partners, Pantera, and others. The venture capital will be used to propel Mina Protocol to become the leading zero-knowledge platform within Web3. Mina Foundation CEO, Evan Shapiro, revealed that part of the fresh capital injection will be used to finance developer grants. He stated:

    “Our main goal right now is to give out grants to people who are doing effective work for Mina; this will help us do that much more effectively. We’ve given out more than a thousand grants so far to people who are running block producers, building tools, developers, and others that build community… this [funding] will help us like really double down and grow what we’re able to do.”

    Just a week after the competition of Mina’s funding round, the coin already began trading on the leading U.S. centralized exchange Coinbase. The funding round alone was very well received by investors, but the Coinbase listing provided an additional boost to the already ongoing MINA rally. In this two-step surge, MINA’s price increased by over 45%, from $1.79 on March 17 to $2.59 on March 27. Do you think Mina could once become the smallest blockchain with one of the biggest price tags?

    1. Axie Infinity (AXS)

    Axie Infinity is 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.

    Buy/Sell AXS

    AXS spikes by 40% on the tailwind of ecosystem growth

    Axie Infinity native AXS token has earned a spot among the best-performing crypto assets last week as it entered a smaller bull run that pushed its price from $51 on March 23 to as high as $74 on March 25. While AXS price has since retraced to $66, the token still ended the week with a gain of almost 30%. Analysts attributed the positive price action of AXS to the growth of the broader AXS ecosystem, as both the number of players and AXS stakers are on the rise. According to Dune Analytics, the number of addresses interacting with Axie Infinity is fast approaching 210,000. At the same time, there are more than 25,000,000 AXS (worth around $1.7 billion) being staked in the Axie Infinity ecosystem. It is believed that both players and investors are amassing AXS in anticipation of the “Origin” update. Doing so they are essentially betting that the revolutionary update will improve the gaming experience and positively influence AXS price. But this could be a high-stakes game as a recent report from Delphi Digital, revealed that Origin will bring a “completely reimagined version of the popular Axie Battles game that everyone is familiar with.” The new version will reportedly feature completely new game mechanics and a redesigned storyline, both designed to improve the overall player experience. In addition, Origin will introduce free starter packs that will help attract new players to the game and make their first steps in the game a bit easier. As usual, the update will also bring new in-game items like runes and charms, used to power up players’ Axies. To add to the reasons that make AXS a top coin to watch, the Axie Infinity developers plan to release the game for iOS and Android devices in the first half of 2022 Axie Infinity is already among the leading blockchain gaming projects, but going mobile could further boost its userbase. The fact that blockchain-based gaming is still booming and that ”play to earn” is gaining popularity, leaves Axie Infinity plenty of space to grow its potential.

  • Ripple is the #1 Coin to Watch for the Week of March 21 – March 27, 2022

    Ripple is the #1 Coin to Watch for the Week of March 21 – March 27, 2022

    Following two weeks of stagnation in terms of the end-of-week total crypto market capitalization, it now seems that investors have slowly started to increase their crypto stakes. This week, the total market capitalization has climbed from $1.77 trillion to $1.92 trillion. It is still less than 10%, but who are we to complain? Biggest weekly gainers were Ethereum Classic (ETC), THORChain (RUNE), Aave (AAVE), Mina Protocol (MINA) and Avalanche (AVAX), which all appreciated by more than 20%. The sector’s benchmark, Bitcoin, is also up by almost 7% in the past week. Let’s hope for a continuation of this trend in the Week 12. 

    3. ApeCoin (APE)

    ApeCoin is a new ERC-20 token that was recently launched by the ApeCoin DAO. The total supply of APE stands at 1 billion tokens, our of which 150 million tokens (15%) can be claimed by holders of the NFTs from the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) collections. Another 16% of the ApeCoin supply has been allocated to Yuga Labs, the company behind BAYC and another 8% will remain in the hands of the four Yuga Labs founders. 14% of the total supply will be gifted to “launch contributors”. The remainder will be held in the ApeCoin DAO treasury. The tokens will be issued gradually over the period of four years. Besides being a decentralized currency that facilitates monetary transactions, APE will have a few additional use cases, including granting its holders governance rights in the ApeCoin DAO and providing access to exclusive events and services. 

    Buy/Sell APE

    APE rallied from $1 to almost $18 in the first 24 hours of trading

    ApeCoin started trading on several centralized exchanges on March 17. While the first recorded price of APE was $1, the simultaneous listing on several renowned exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase, FTX, KuCoin, Gemini, immediately carried the price above $8 per token. After the first 24 hours of trading, the price reached $17.94, which is still the token’s ATH valuation. According to ApeCoin’s official tweet, holders of the NFTs from the BAYC and MAYC collections have 90 days to claim their share of APE. If you own any of these virtual monkeys, be sure not to miss the deadline as this is not a small amount of money. Owners of BAYC apes are eligible to 10,094 APE (more than $100,000), while owners of the MAYC apes can claim 2,042 APE (more than $20,000 at the time of writing). Nevertheless, be sure to do extensive research before you sell, because it might turn out that hodling APE would have been a better option as Yuga Labs, the creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club and several other NFT collections, basically said APE will be a de-facto primary token for the BAYC ecosystem. Yuga Labs also deserve a big round of applause for deciding to donate 6.25% of its APE token allocation to the Jane Goodall Institute. The organization advances the vision and work of Dr. Jane Goodall, which includes protecting chimpanzees and inspiring people to conserve the natural world. So, whether APE price goes up or down, real-world chimpanzees will benefit from the donation.

    2. Aave (AAVE)

    Aave is an Ethereum-based decentralized lending and borrowing platform that started out as ETHLend, which was funded 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. AAVE token is the protocol’s native token, which grants holders governance rights as well as some discounts when interacting with Aave. While the protocol is completely open source, its code is regularly audited and has been deemed secure. There are currently over $19.5 billion worth of crypto assets locked in the Aave protocol.

    Buy/Sell AAVE

    Aave V3 deployment caused AAVE to rally by more than 30% last week

    On March 16, the Aave developer team deployed the new version of the protocol dubbed Aave V3. The upgrade deployed several new features including increased capital efficiency and enhanced decentralization. In addition, the developers tweaked the interactions with the protocol, which now consume 20 to 25% less gas, and deployed portals that facilitate cross-chain transactions. Furthermore, the protocol now includes risk management tools, allowing users to set risk caps for additional protection of their assets held in Aave’s smart contracts. While the upgrade is definitely one of the key factors contributing to AAVE appreciation, on-chain data provided by Santiment shows that AAVE accumulation started up to 2 months before Aave V3 deployment. In fact, AAVE sharks and whales, these are addresses holding between 100 and 10,000 AAVE, are the ones that have amassed most tokens in the past few months. According to Santiment’s data these addresses have threw 70,000 AAVE ($10.7 million) on the top of their already existing piles of AAVE tokens, which indicates that retail investors and big individual investors are optimistic about the project’s future.

    1. Ripple (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 created at launch. 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 and can only be accessed periodically. In 2020 Ripple became entangled in a lawsuit in which the U.S. SEC claims that the company sold unregistered securities. The legal battle between Ripple and the SEC remains one of the key factors influencing XRP’s price.

    Buy/Sell XRP

    Ripple Labs allocates 1 billion XRP for developer grants

    Ripple Labs, the company behind the XRP token, has recently announced the extension of the company’s XRPL Grants program, which was launched in 2021. In the continuation of the grant program, the company will be giving out 1 billion XRP tokens (approximately $800 million at current market rates) to encourage developers to build on the enterprise-oriented XRP ledger over the course of roughly 10 years. The third wave of developer grants will reportedly focus at financing open-source projects for enterprise remittance assistance. It is worth mentioning that despite the legal battle with the U.S. regulator, Ripple managed to grow its cross-border payment technology outside the U.S. in the past few years. Ripple’s foothold is especially significant in the Asia Pacific region, where the use of XRPL-based remittance technology called RippleNet is most widespread. However, Ripple aims even higher – it wants to become a direct alternative to SWIFT. According to a recent report, Ripple partner The Clearing House is in talks with Wells Fargo to develop a SWIFT alternative based on the RippleNet payments settlement system. In fact, The Arab Regional Fintech Working Group, which serves as an advisory group tp the Arab Monetary Fund listed RippleNet as a direct alternative to SWIFT in its publication about CBDCs issued in February 2022. The future sure looks bright for XRP and in addition, shall the SEC withdraw or lose the lawsuit against Ripple Labs, XRP will rally for sure.

  • Shiba Inu is the #1 Coin to Watch for the Week of March 14 – March 20, 2022

    Shiba Inu is the #1 Coin to Watch for the Week of March 14 – March 20, 2022

    Again, the total market capitalization of the cryptocurrency market was virtually the same at the beginning of Week 10 ($1.76 trillion) and at the end of Week 10 ($1.77 trillion). While the increased volatility is not evident in the big picture, there were, of course, several coins that made big moves in the previous week. With its over 50% gain in the course of last 7 days THORChain’s RUNE (#1 Coin to Watch in our last week’s article) was the most profitable coin to hold last week from the group of Top 100 cryptocurrencies. Therefore, make sure to read through and take advantage of the valuable information concentrated in this week’s “Top 3 Coins to Watch” article as well.

    3. Mines of Dalarnia (DAR)

    Mines of Dalarnia (MoD) is a play-to-earn (P2E) action-adventure blockchain game. The players’ objective is to mine minerals and use them to upgrade their characters by equipping them with various in-game items. Players roam the MoD universe’s and use the acquired skills and gear to fight enemies and claims rare relics and artifacts. DAR acts as an in-game medium of exchange. The tokens can be purchased on the market or earned by renting or trading your equipment at an in-game marketplace. Players can stake their DAR to earn oxygen and level-ups. The developer of Mines of Dalarnia is Workinman Interactive. The game runs on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and it was the 23rd project to launch through Binance Launchpool. The game is a direct competitor to more established blockchain gaming projects such as Axie Infinity and The Sandbox. 

    Buy/Sell DAR

    MoD seeks new game testers and initiates the second Mining Plot Sale

    Mines of Dalarnia launched its Testnet 2.0 on March 4. Since than the team has already added a few new features and fixed plenty of bugs in a patch deployed last week. But to gain even more feedback from the player community and find more bugs and glitches the MoD team has decided to expand the tester base by sending out the next round of invitations. Interested players should visit the game’s official Telegram channel for more information. The MoD developers have also recently initiated the second Mining Plot sale, in which 500 mining plots will find their rightful owners. According to the announcement, the users eligible to buy a mining plot will be determined based on a lottery. To participate in the lottery, users must deposit at least 100 DAR (BEP20) tokens and hold one of the 10,000 Mining Ape NFTs that were given out to the early explorers on the Dalarnia planet. In case you were not among the early adopters but are still interested to play, the Mining Apes are also available for purchase on OpenSea (minimum price at the time of writing is 0.34 ETH). The MoD team will be collecting account snapshots from March 14th, 2022 to March 21st, 2022 to determine eligibility and number of lottery tickets for the Mining plot raffle. Additional lottery tickets can be earned by depositing more DAR and staking it in the DAR-ETH Liquidity Pool on Uniswap V2 Staking or DAR-WBNB Liquidity Pool on PancakeSwap. Note that the staking process must be done through the MoD land sale portal!

    2. Theta Token (THETA)

    The Theta Token is the native asset of Theta, an end-to-end infrastructure for decentralized video streaming and delivery that provides both technical and economic solutions. Arguably the best way to describe Theta by calling it a blockchain alternative to video streaming services like YouTube and Twitch. The Theta platform incentivises various network participants via the use of cryptocurrencies. Several big players from the crypto and IT industry, including Sony, Samsung, Google and Binance, are participating in Theta’s consensus algorithm by running enterprise Theta nodes. In addition, the project underwent significant upgrades in February, including the launch of a DEX platform ThetaSwap in February and the roll-out of the TDROP token, which is used to incentivize usage of Theta’s NFT marketplace.

    Buy/Sell THETA

    Theta hard fork, slated for March 14, will lower the staking requirements to become a Theta node validator

    Theta project has recently announced that ist developers will deploy the next network upgrade, Theta v3.3, through a hard fork. The upgrade is going to execute at block height 14,526,120, which is estimated to be confirmed at 12:00 PB PT on Monday, March 14. The upcoming Theta v3.3 will lower the staking threshold for becoming a validator node from the current 2 million THETA to 200,000 THETA. This will allow many more community users to run VNs and lead to a greater decentralization of the Theta protocol. While certain crypto exchanges, including Binance, have already announced they will be supporting the hard fork, make sure to check that with your current exchange or wallet provider in case you are a THETA holder. The features rolled out in February combined with the expectations of Theta v3.3 and the fact that most investors and users are optimistic about Theta’s future success, resulted in the increase in Theta’s TVL. According to Defillama, the TVL in Theta increased from merely $3 million in mid-January to over $230 million today.

    1. Shiba Inu (SHIB)

    Shiba Inu (SHIB) is a meme token that was launched in August 2020 by an anonymous founder known as “Ryoshi”. Shiba Inu aspires to be an Ethereum-based alternative to the more popular and longer-running meme coin project Dogecoin (DOGE). At launch, 50% of the Shiba Inu’s total supply was sent to Vitalik Buterin’s Ethereum wallet, making SHIB a unique community experiment as well. Ethereum co-founder ended up donating 10% of the supply to a COVID-19 relief effort in India and burned the rest of his SHIB holdings. His donation was worth around $1 billion at that time. While SHIB began as a fun experimental currency it is now transforming into a decentralized ecosystem with a growing number of users and use cases. In fact, the team behind the Dogecoin-inspired memecoin launched several new features over the past couple of months, including ShibaSwap DEX and NFT marketplace.

    Buy/Sell SHIB

    Turkey’s Minister of Economy met with key members of the country’s SHIB community to discuss Shiba Inu adoption

    According to a tweet from the Turkish Shiba Inu community published on March 9, key members of the Turkish “SHIB army” had a face-to-face meeting with Mustafa Elitas, Turkey’s Minister of Economy. Reportedly, they were discussing the use cases of the Shiba Inu ecosystem and its growing adoption. It remains unknown, whether an integration of SHIB within the Turkish legacy financial system was also on the table. Nevertheless, a meeting with the country’s key decision maker is, itself, good news. It is also important to mention that the meeting took place in the time that Turks are increasingly turning to cryptocurrency, which has resulted in a tremendous growth in interest for SHIB as well as other digital assets. Quite possibly, the reason that people living in Turkey are turning to crypto is the accelerated weakening of the country’s national currency – the Turkish lira has lost nearly half of its value against the U.S. dollar over the last 12 months. While the Turkish discussions can have speculative influence on SHIB, we also recorded a SHIB integration that has materialized last week. Leading digital payments platform Wirex, which is regularly utilized by more than 4.5 million users, has added support for four new tokens, including the meme-inspired SHIB. In fact, even Ethereum whales seem to be confident in Shiba Inu’s success. According to WhaleStats, SHIB briefly flipped FTT token to become the second-largest token position (right behind ETH) by dollar value among the top 1000 Ethereum whales. At that time, top 1000 Ethereum addresses by ETH amount owned more than $1.4 billion worth of SHIB tokens.

  • Harmony is the #3 Coin to Watch for the Week of March 07 – March 13, 2022

    Harmony is the #3 Coin to Watch for the Week of March 07 – March 13, 2022

    We’re closing in on two weeks since Russian forces invaded Ukraine and the largest land war on European soil since 1945 is continuing to cause increased volatility on financial markets worldwide. Nevertheless, the prices of certain commodities are skyrocketing. This is especially evident when we look at crude oil and natural gas markets, as Russia is a major player in the global energy market. However, as investors are searching for financial safe havens, to weather the storm, the cryptocurrency sector has not, at least during Week 9, attracted massive amount of attention as some expected. While there was a smaller bull run in the middle of the week, which drove the total market capitalization of the sector up to $2 trillion, the market correction in the second half of the week negated all the gains. In fact, the total market capitalization of the cryptocurrency sector at the end of Week 9 ($1.76 trillion) was almost exactly the same as it had been at the beginning of the week ($1.75 trillion).  

    3. Harmony (ONE)

    Harmony is a cross-chain Layer 2 protocol that facilitates super-fast transactions while maintaining low fees at the same time. Currently, the network has five deployed bridges allowing it to support transfers between five different blockchains aside from Harmony, including Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. Harmony puts a big emphasize on its scalability since one of the project’s goals is to scale the network to 10 million transactions per second (TPS), allowing it to handle a decentralized economy for 10 billion people and 100 billion devices. The project is currently offering more than $300 million in developer grants.

    Buy/Sell ONE

    The already fast blockchain is set to become even faster

    The Harmony developers have announced that a network update will take place on March 15. The aforementioned update will cut Harmony’s transaction finality time in half. The reduction from the current 2 seconds finality down to just 1 second will be facilitated by implementing several networking upgrades. After network update, Harmony’s transaction finality time will finally match the name of the platform’s native token: ONE. However, Harmony is not only becoming faster, but also more connected. According to the project’s roadmap Polygon Bridge is scheduled to launch at the end of March, while the much anticipated Trustless Ethereum Bridge that is already running on a Harmony testnet is expected to go live on the Harmony mainnet in mid-April. Furthermore, the project’s developers are also nearing in on the launch of 1Wallet – Harmony’s own non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet that will be packed with features. In addition to advanced security solution and a promised APY of up to 20%, 1Wallet will also come with a wide spectrum of social features aimed at bringing Harmony community members closer together. Nevertheless, the wallet’s social features will also facilitate a social recovery mechanism for regaining access to your wallet in case you forget the password. Nevertheless, in preparations for 1Wallet launch, the project is discontinuing its Harmony Chrome Extension Wallet as of March 15. If you are using the extension wallet, make sure to migrate to Metamask or another wallet provider by then.

    2. Kava (KAVA)

    Developed by Kava Labs the Kava blockchain boasts with the title of the first multi-blockchain DeFi platform. Kava currently consists of 3 main projects: Kava Mint, which allows users to use their assets as collateral to obtain USDX, Kava Lend, which allows users to earn rewards by lending crypto assets, and Kava Swap, which allows users to buy and sell tokens on the Kava chain and earn rewards by providing liquidity to the trading pool. The Kava blockchain utilizes the Tendermint consensus and is secured by numerous validators but only the top 100 validators are eligible to receive staking rewards. The KAVA token is an asset on the Kava Chain, which is used across the chain as a transport medium and a store of value. Kava Labs have established close partnerships with industry leaders such as Binance, Kraken and Ripple.

    Buy/Sell KAVA

    Kava Network will combine Ethereum and Cosmos into one single Layer 1 blockchain

    According to an official announcement, the Kava Network is set to debut its co-chain concept on March 8, 2022. Under the slogan “One Network. Two Chains. Infinite Ways to Build”, the project will roll-out the Alpha release of the first co-chain blockchain, combining two most often used permissionless ecosystems, Ethereum and Cosmos, into a single scalable network. A successful implementation could be a massive positive news for the project, as the Cosmos Co-Chain will connect Kava to more than 35 IBC-enabled chains, holding more than $70 billion in various digital assets. At the same time, the Ethereum Co-Chain’s EVM-compatibility and developer friendliness, could attract projects to migrate to Kava or develop on Kava, especially as the platform is currently providing 100,000 KAVA through its Kava Pioneer incentive program. Several project participating in the Kava Pioneer program including a popular Ethereum yield optimizer Beefy and a multi-chain DeFi platform Autofarm Network will be onboarded to Kava’s Ethereum co-chain on March 8, this is as soon as it launches.

    1. THORChain (RUNE)

    THORChain is one of the more widely recognized DEXs. The THORChain developers believed that centralized exchanges have numerous flaws and therefore developed an exchange that addresses all these issues in 2018. The DEX’s protocol allows its users a to effortlessly trade their tokens across multiple blockchains while its AAM model permits traders to switch between various pools that are all connected through platform’s native RUNE tokens. The THORChain boasts with consistent liquidity, allowing both buyers and sellers to always find competitive offers. In addition, unique cross-blockchain trading pairs provide unique trading opportunities.

    Buy/Sell RUNE

    RUNE rallied on the tailwind of Terra integration: can it sustain the uptrend, or will RUNE price see readjustment?

    I the beginning of last week THORChain’s native crypto RUNE rallied by over 70% in just 2 days following the announcement of a successful integration with Terra – a popular blockchain protocol that powers algorithmic decentralized stablecoins. The integration has brought LUNA token and TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin to the THORChain ecosystem, which now supports already six wallet types and eight different blockchains. While the rally caried RUNE price to $6.00 and even slightly above, this crypto is now trading at just $4.80. Nevertheless, RUNE might be preparing for a second push as developers are making everything ready for the upcoming launch of the THORChain mainnet. While a specific date for the mainnet launch has yet to be revealed, the team recently said that the deployment is “on the horizon”. Another factor that could help RUNE achieve a sustained rally is the THORChain’s high yields. Liquidity providers on THORSwap currently receive 55% APR for Binance USD (BUSD), 30% for the DAI stablecoin and 26% on Litecoin (LTC). Dogecoin (DOGE), which was added to THORChain earlier this year gives a 24% APR to DOGE liquidity providers. In addition, THORChain developers have set an ambitious project roadmap, which reveals that the project aims to deploy market orders, limit orders, leverage trading, and even peer-to-peer credit lending to better compete with centralized crypto exchanges.

  • Terra is the #2 Coin to Watch for the Week of February 28 – March 06, 2022

    Terra is the #2 Coin to Watch for the Week of February 28 – March 06, 2022

    After a rather chaotic Week 8 on cryptocurrency markets the total market capitalization lies at $1.75 trillion. On February 24, the crypto market moved in high correlation with the stock market as both reacted negatively to the news about Russia launching a ‘Special Military Operation’ in Ukraine. Bitcoin and the majority of other top cryptocurrencies lost more than 10% of their valuations that day. Nevertheless, most cryptocurrencies managed to rebound the next day, returning to their pre-war valuations. The world geopolitical situation is getting more heated each day which will inevitably have some monetary repercussions. Can cryptocurrencies actually benefit from this dire situation or will Week 9 be full of red numbers as investors move towards less riskier assets? 

    3. Anchor Protocol (ANC)

    Anchor Protocol is a decentralized lending and borrowing protocol that offers up to 20% annual yield on Terra stablecoin deposits. While many project boast with high returns to attract users and then gradually lower the APYs, Anchor aims to maintain the 20% APY on UST at all times. The protocol’s native token is the ANC token, which is currently trading at a price of $3.80 has a total market capitalization of nearly $1 billion, while there are over $10.5 billion worth of digital assets locked in the Anchor Protocol.

    Buy/Sell ANC

    ANC becomes the largest weekly and monthly gainer in the crypto top 100

    ANC gained over 70% last week, which propelled this token on the top of the leatherboard of both weekly and monthly gainers from the crypto top 100. The rally started earlier this month when Terra announced it is injecting $450 million into the project to deliver the promised returns as there wasn’t enough borrowing demand to keep up with an influx of UST lenders. 

    Although a massive injection was needed to bridge this imbalance, Terra’s developer believes that a 20% APY is sustainable in the long run as Terra also stakes borrowers’ collateral to earn yields. In addition, Terraform Labs plans to allow compound liquid staking derivatives to be used as collateral in Anchor v2. This will allow users to take part in the so-called “double-dipping”, which means staking and earning yields as a liquidity pool provider with the assets placed as a collateral for their Anchor loan. Terraform Labs aim to attract more borrowers to enter the Anchor protocol and restore equilibrium with this feature.

    2. Terra (LUNA)

    The Terra blockchain acts as the basis of the same-named algorithmically governed stablecoin platform. The Terra platform, which is built on the Cosmos technology and utilizes a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, was developed by a South Korea-based company named Terraform Labs. LUNA, which is the reserve currency of the Terra platform, has three key functions; these are ensuring the price stability of Terra stablecoins, mining Terra transactions through staking and providing incentives to blockchain validators. There are currently more than $20 billion worth of various digital assets locked in the Terra ecosystem, with Anchor Protocol accounting for more than half of the ecosystem’s TVL.

    Buy/Sell LUNA

    The Luna Foundation Guard has raised $1 billion for a UST reserve fund

    The Luna Foundation Guard (LFG), a non-profit organization that was set up to ensure the stability of the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin peg and accelerate the Terra ecosystem’s adoption and growth, recently revealed that they have raised $1 billion to establish a Bitcoin-denominated UST reserve fund that will play a vital role in maintaining the UST’s algorithmically-controlled peg to the USD. According to official Twitter account of TerraUSD (UST), the new reserve fund will prove to be especially useful at preventing UST depreciation in case of a “bank run” – a state when a large number of users withdraw their funds from the protocol at the same time. The funds were raised through a private sale of $1 billion worth of LUNA tokens, which was led by Jump Crypto and Three Arrows Capital and saw participation from several other prominent venture capital firms. LUNA price jumped by more than 12% in the 24 hours following the announcement of what has been proclaimed as one of the largest private sales of its kind in the industry. However, LUNA appreciation did not end there. In fact, LUNA is still in a full-blown bull run that managed to defy, to some extent, the market-wide sell-off triggered by the Ukraine crisis. With its nearly 50% gain, LUNA was last week’s second-best performing coin from the top 100 cryptocurrencies, with the only other more profitable asset being ANC, a Terra ecosystem token. At the time of writing, LUNA is changing hands at $74, but Terra bulls are already aiming for $100 valuation. In addition, Terra’s TVL increased by 18% last week, which further increased Terra’s lead and left once more popular Binance Chain (BSC) further behind in terms of DeFi market share.

    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.

    Buy/Sell BTC

    Will Bitcoin continue to correlate with the stock market or will it start to act like a safe haven asset?

    On the one hand, Bitcoin’s price has historically closely correlated with U.S. equities and has continued to do so in the last few days. On the other, its safe haven and gold-like properties have been repeatedly touted by the community as one of its core characteristics. The thing is that both claims can’t hold true simultaneously. We believe that Bitcoin’s price action this week will reveal much about its long-term prospects as a safe haven asset since the heated political tensions and rising interest rates will act as a stress test for the world’s “digital gold”. If Bitcoin remains in lockstep with U.S. tech stocks, we will likely see a prolonged bearish market sparked by rising interest rates. However, if Bitcoin’s safe haven properties prevail, this largest cryptocurrency could actually benefit from the current geopolitical situation. 

    Blockchain analyst Willy Woo believes that Bitcoin is already a safe haven asset, but only in times when risk on the world markets is perceived as low and investors are eager to engage in riskier investment. In times when risk is perceived as high, such us in war time, however, investors still tend to gravitate towards gold, which he describes as risk-off safe haven asset. 

    Famous Bitcoin educator Anthony Pompliano also published a podcast on the topic of the war in Ukraine and Bitcoin. In the piece, where he writes about the importance of non-state-issued currency in times of conflict, he also wrote that there is a small yet existing chance that Bitcoin will become the global reserve currency in the next 50 years as countries like China and Russia could move away from USD-based reserve systems. In his opinion the U.S. has to be ready for this, even if the chance is super small, which is why he is pushing for removal of the capital gains tax on Bitcoin and incentivization of U.S. Bitcoin miners. As always, he also advocated for educating Americans about digital currencies and the global monetary system.