London, United Kingdom, 18th January, 2022, Chainwire
PKT Cash is the next iteration of a truly influence-free internet. Large corporations, governments, and other forms of censorship are irrelevant, granting people unrestricted access to everything they want online with no form of discrimination or control from others.
Launched in 2020, the PKT Network is a blockchain project looking to decentralize the internet. It aims to bring free and equal access for all by developing local ISP networks where large corporations currently under-served people.
The Story Behind PKT Cash
PKT replaces the SHA-256 hashing algorithm with its own PacketCrypt, while still based on Bitcoin’s codebase. PKT blockchain is the only true bandwidth-hard blockchain that utilizes a 60 seconds block time. The network speed is 10x faster than the Bitcoin network with near-zero fees. The project is currently working on integrating Lightning Network functionality will provide near-infinite transactions per second and near-instantaneous settlement.
Since the PKT Network is devoid of a central authority, the economically incentivized people to participate will support access to the internet for the good of all. Now the world can connect the remaining people to the internet.
About PKT Cash
PKT Cash is an entirely decentralized and open-source project, with no corporation, investors, or pre-mined coins. The Network Steward is funded by 20% of the coins mined per block which is used to fund opensource development. In addition, PKT has struck a partnership with the NLNet Foundation, supporting open-source internet technology
PKT Cash ($PKT) is PKT’s native cryptocurrency. PKT allows for microtransactions, so people can buy, sell and trade bandwidth leases, which are available to purchase now on Pancakeswap, and will be available to buy shortly on Bittrex.
Autonomy Network, an off-the-shelf decentralized automation protocol, has officially integrated its AutoSwap dApp with Trader Joe on Avalanche, following its successful integration with the PancakeSwap on Binance Smart Chain (BSC). AutoSwap is the first ever dApp to offer limit order, stop loss, impermanent loss protection, and recurring payment features for Avalanche-based DEXes.
Avalanche has become one of the fastest growing blockchain ecosystems because it addresses the limitations of older blockchain platforms, including scalability, centralization, and slow transaction speeds. So, it made sense for Autonomy Network to add support for Avalanche.
Autonomy Network’s AutoSwap now offers limit orders and stop losses to users on Trader Joe, the largest decentralized exchange on Avalanche by total value locked (TVL).
“Advanced trading features have been built on top of Trader Joe using Autonomy, unlocking the ability for the Trader Joe community to enhance and automate their trading experience, using limit orders and stop losses.” said Blue, the Marketing Lead at Trader Joe. The founding team of Trader Joe remains anonymous.
With trading volumes of DEXes growing exponentially, lack of automated solutions such as limit orders, stop losses, recurring payments, and impermanent loss protection had become a real pain point for DeFi users.
James Key, the founder of Autonomy Network, commented, “Advanced trading features are the key for DEX volume to overtake the volume of centralized exchanges, and it’s awesome to see it happening already with market leaders like Trader Joe already!”
By offering features in DeFi that were available only on centralized exchanges until now, AutoSwap aims to help users better manage risk and boost returns without having to stare at the screen 24/7. Since the crypto markets are open around the clock, traders can automate their orders using Autonomy to stay active in the market even when they are asleep.
Autonomy is the first fully decentralized and permissionless automation tool, powering Web3 builders and developers with on-chain conditional execution. It enables DeFi users to set up arbitrary actions to be triggered under arbitrary conditions, in a decentralized and guaranteed way. Autonomy could integrate with decentralized exchanges, lending protocols, DAO management tools, or even metaverse and NFT projects. For instance, SushiSwap’s lending platform Kashi has decided to natively integrate Autonomy to offer automating self-liquidations.
These integrations are happening even before Autonomy Network launches its token. The protocol is preparing for its Initial DEX Offering (IDO) in February.
About Autonomy Network
Autonomy Network is the leading decentralized automation protocol building critical automation infrastructure for Web3 dApps. Autonomy Network helps DEXes across Ethereum, Binance, Avalanche, Polygon, and other chains and Layer-2 solutions increase their volumes by enabling them to offer users a wider range of features such as limit orders, impermanent loss protection, recurring payments, and more.
January is shaping up to be the best month in OpenSea’s history in terms of the number of NFTs sold, transaction volume, and generated fees
The number of registered users who have made at least one trade has surpassed 1 million for the first time this month.
The newly-launched LooksRare NFT marketplace is showing stellar results, but many crypto analysts suspect wash trading is the culprit
OpenSea, the leading non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, has already hit its highest monthly transactional volume to date despite there being nearly two full weeks until the end of January. A renewed interest in NFTs, the spike in sales, and the growing number of registered users have all played a significant role in driving trading activity on the platform to new heights.
OpenSea’s previous monthly ATH of $3.42 billion has been broken with two weeks left in the month
According to the community-driven blockchain analytics platform Dune Analytics, OpenSea has cleared $3.5 billion in transactions this month and has thus managed to easily beat its previous record from last August, when the popular NFT marketplace recorded $3.42 billion in transaction volume.
The total number of registered users who have made at least on NFT trade has skyrocketed past 1 million earlier this month. Image source: Dune Analytics
The total number of traded NFTs will, in all likelihood, also reach an all-time high this month, as the number of NFTs sold in January already surpassed 1.42 million. The previous record of 1.65 million NFTs sold during a single month was set in August of last year.
OpenaSea seems poised to set a new record in terms of transaction fees generated in a single calendar month as well – the platform has raised $218 million so far and requires only an additional $19 million to break the previous record, which was also set last August.
LooksRare is catching up with OpenSea, prominent crypto outlets suspect wash trading is taking place
Despite OpenSea’s impressive showing in January, the recently launched community-first NFT marketplace LooksRare is taking all the spotlight in the last week.
Recently launched LooksRare NFT marketplace is dominating the daily volume charts. Image source: Dune Analytics
LooksRare offers an enticing proposition to NFT traders. Unlike OpeaSea, which charges a 2.5% fee on each transaction, LooksRare charges 2% on basic sales and offers zero percent fees on private NFT items. Throughout its first week, LooksRare dominated daily volume charts, having generated more than $500 million in transactions in five out of the first seven days since its official launch.
However, the high transaction volume on LooksRare might be a result of wash trading (which is a process of repeated buying and selling to create artificial activity in the marketplace), as reported by Cointelegraph and DappRadar. It remains to be seen whether the accusations levied against LooksRare turn out to be correct.
The announced strategic partnership between Cudos and MELD is to compliment each other’s protocol and deliver an innovative and revolutionary financial service to the crypto community. Both MELD and Cudos are focusing on providing a better mining experience with simple and efficient infrastructure for deploying miners in the cloud.
With MELDapp wallet integration into Cudos’s crypto mining infrastructure, users will be able to allocate crypto budgets to pay for cloud-based mining deployments swiftly and without any hassle. This integration will also help the users to specify their budgets for mining and low costs compute times in the cloud.
What the Partnership is Offering?
The collaboration is dedicated to offering better financial development for the future. Cudos’ functioning API will support the integration of the MELDapp, supporting the ease of asset transfer to its network along with enabling web 3.0 connectivity. On top of this, the Cudos network will deliver technical documentation to integrate the Cudos API ane network, recognizing and supporting MELD protocol tokens including its native $MELD, wrapped ones like $mBTC and $mETH, and even its own versions of stablecoins pegged to the largest fiat ($mUSD, $mEUR, $mYEN).
On the other hand, MELD is keen on offering an interface into the Cudos network API from the MELDapp wallets. This will provide MELDapp users access to the Cudos cloud mining service. MELD protocol will also announce its digital assets and payment functionality to its partner Cudos network. The reveal is dedicated to purchasing on-chain and off-chain cloud mining resources
Both Protocols are set to work together for the development of additional financial instruments related to cloud mining and how they can use their interfaces for the betterment of the crypto community.
About Cudos
Cudos is a blockchain network that works on both layer 1 and layer 2. Designed to be run by the community, the network ensures dilution of power through decentralization and creates permissionless access to high-performance computing without compromising scalability. With access from 145 countries and boasts a sizable user base (over 250,000 users), the network is now powering the metaverse with its unique contribution in DeFi, NFTs, and gaming experiences to enable the vision of a decentralized Web 3.0.
Cudos is an interoperable open-source platform geared towards providing the right infrastructure needed to comply with the extreme computing requirements for today’s and tomorrow’s fully immersive gamified digital worlds. The powerhouse of the Cudos network is their native utility token CUDOS. This native utility token does not only work as a prominent wielder of the network’s potential but also offers a decent annual yield and liquidity for stakers and holders. The network provides secure and complete layer 2 blockchains, offering a cost-effective alternative to the extreme demands of cloud providers.
About MELD
The MELD network is dedicated to providing the crypto community control over their financial lives and having complete access to financial instruments that are available to professionals. The network focuses on providing financial freedom with its long-term goal of enabling 2 billion individuals worldwide that are underbanked or are without access to banking services to access the tools that MELD is offering.
MELD understands that the unbanked are paying the highest fees, getting the worst customer service, and they are the ones that are having the most problems and strive to create an ecosystem that empowers individuals to regain financial control by providing them with the tools and services they need to manage their money on their terms. This reduces the pressure of fulfilling and falling slave to different platforms and their terms and conditions.
MELD covers all forms of banking and financial services, including basic savings, lending, and borrowing up to a collateralized debt position (CDP) with cryptocurrency. MELD has it all and is providing its users with the functions they need to cope with the fast pace decentralized world.
The crypto derivatives market is heating up. Hot on the news that Coinbase is buying a crypto futures exchange, FairX, as part of its plans to open up crypto derivatives to US traders, we look at the current offering for those who want to trade decentralized crypto deviatives.
First of all, let’s start by looking at the difference between centralized and decentralized crypto derivatives. Centralized refers to the conventional money markets, where brokers offer listings on a variety of cryptocurrencies. Usually, the broker takes the other side of the trade, effectively as the market maker.
The benefits of decentralized derivative exchanges
Decentralized derivatives as their name suggests work in a different way. In this case exchanges like Binance, OKEx and CoinTiger offer traders the chance to trade contracts on underlying crypto assets often in a peer to peer fashion. In this case, the market makers are the market participants themselves and there is no conflict of interest in this case. Another upside of decentralized derivatives trading is that the market is transparent and there is no question that the prices can be tampered with as in the case of centralized brokers. That’s because all activity takes place on the blockchain, which automatically verifies and authenticates every transaction conducted.
The downsides of decentralized exchanges
The downside of this model is often one of depth of liquidity, meaning there are sometimes not enough market participants providing enough liquidity to take the other side of the trade. One derivatives exchange that is completely decentralized and open and is not dealing with shallow liquidity is SynFutures.
The platform allows a wide selection of assets, including Ethereum native, cross-chain and off-chain real world assets to be synthesized and traded. It features an Automated Liquidator (ALQ), which minimizes the entry barrier of liquidators and also assists with automating and balancing the liquidation process so the market is always busy and supports more exotic assets with thin liquidity.
In addition, the platform allows users to list literally any trading pairs in under a minute, that includes blockchain projects that can list their own tokens and thereby create their own margined market. It allows traders to trade and list crypto majors, altcoins, NFTs, indices and real-world assets with a single token via our sAMM model.
According to SynFutures, “SynFutures is an innovative project that is driving the growth of DeFi by bringing complex financial instruments such as derivatives to digital assets. People in TradFi have been using derivatives to gain leverage, hedge their positions, or amplify the returns for decades. Users can access the same services in DeFi, thanks to projects like SynFutures.”
The bottom line
As traders and institutional investors pile more money into the crypto derivatives markets, decentralized trading is one way for traders to play the markets in a way which is transparent, permissionless and fair.
Alternative investment firm Mechanism Capital is the latest entrant to the increasingly competitive crypto gaming investment space. The company that was founded with a focus on decentralized finance (DeFi) in 2020 has just announced “Mechanism Play,” a new $100 million investment unit that is betting on the long-term success of Play-to-Earn (P2E) gaming projects.
Key takeaways:
Prior to launching the fund focused on crypto gaming, Mechanism Capital has made a series of highly lucrative investments in the GameFi space, including Ember Sword, Merit Circle Start Atlas, and Yield Guild Games.
The company has hired Steve Cho, a former Apple App Store manager with extensive experience in “NFTs and blockchain gaming,” to help lead the newly formed venture unit in the right direction.
According to a press release, Mechanism Capital plans to pursue investments in P2E gaming projects, particularly those offering their services in the mobile space.
“Play-to-earn has barely penetrated the gaming market, but we expect this to change in the next few years with mobile leading the way,” commented Andrew Kang, co-founder of Mechanism Capital.
In addition to playing the role of a financial backer, the company intends to employ a hands-on approach, forming direct partnerships with gaming studios and playing a part in game development.
Blockchain gaming is one of the quickest developing sectors in the broader crypto industry. As such, several notable investors have recently announced their long-term commitment to the space. For instance, both Solana Ventures and Gala Games launched their respective $100 million gaming funds in the past month.
Binance has just completed its BNB burn for the past quarter, which removed 1,684,387 tokens from circulation
The latest, 18th quarterly burn, was the first to feature a significant overhaul to the process, in the form of Auto-Burn
The Auto-Burn mechanic takes into account Binance quarterly profits, BNB’s price, and the number of blocks that were produced
Binance, the world’s largest digital asset trading platform, has just completed its 18th Binance Coin (BNB) quarterly burn, which forever removed 1,684,387 BNB (equivalent to $729 million) from circulation.
Binance introduces greater transparency and predictability to its quarterly BNB burns
The last BNB burn was the largest in terms of dollar value, surpassing the 17th quarterly burn by approximately $90 million. While all burns up to now employed a straightforward approach of Binance using a fifth of its quarterly profits to buy and destroy its native tokens, the latest burn is the first to feature a notable overhaul to the process, in the form of the recently announced Auto-Burn mechanic.
Binance’s Auto-Burn formula makes the process of shrinking BNB supply more transparent. Image source: Binance
B is the amount of BNB to burn. N is the total number of blocks produced on BSC during the calendar quarter.
P is an average price of BNB against the US dollar.
K is a constant value as a price anchor, initially set at 1000.
While the leading crypto exchange still follows its original goal of destroying 100 million coins that were allocated to the founding team when BNB launched through an initial coin offering (ICO) in July 2017, Binance has decided it is time to make the process more transparent and predictable. Auto-Burn has updated the old approach by not accounting only for Binance’s quarterly profits but also for BNB’s price and the number of blocks that were produced during any given quarter.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) tweeted about the latest burn news earlier today, and stated: “BNB is deflationary.”
Binance is utilizing different methods to make BNB deflationary
Auto-Burn is not the only mechanism designed to have an impact on the supply and demand dynamics of BNB. In early December, the Bruno hard fork introduced real-time BNB burning to Binance Smart Chain (BSC) as part of the implementation of a much-anticipated Binance Evolution Protocol, BEP-95. BEP-95 brought similar burning mechanics to the Binance blockchain ecosystem, as did the London hard fork, namely EIP-1599, to Ethereum.
BEP-95 has fundamentally changed the way transaction fees are processed on the BSC network – gas fees are no longer distributed to validators in their entirety as 10% gets sent to the BNB burning pool. Binance introduced real-time burning mechanics in hopes of making BSC more decentralized and intends to let the program run even after BNB supply drops to 100 million coins.
Binance has recently made great strides in making BNB more deflationary, which should, in theory, provide significant upward price momentum. However, BNB, along with a number of other major coins, has been caught in a relatively tight trading range as of late. Despite the quarterly burn announcement, the price of BNB dropped by 3.85% in the last 24 hours and stands at $465, 0.41% removed from its 2022 low, at the time of this writing.
Monster Galaxy (GGM) is the latest blockchain project to be featured on Bybit Launchpad, a platform that provides Bybit users with an opportunity to gain early access to tokens from promising crypto projects. A total of 10 million GGM tokens at an initial sale price of 0.025 USD will be distributed to Bybit users.
Monster Galaxy is a blockchain-powered Play-to-Earn (P2E) video game inspired by fan-favorite classics such as Pokemon and Moster Hunter. Players are tasked with collecting monsters called Mogas, which can be used in PvE battles. Each Moga is tokenized and can be freely traded and exchanged among players in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The game’s native GGM token is used to incentivize player adoption and retention via in-game rewards.
Here’s a timetable of important dates for the Monster Galaxy IEO:
Start
End
Snapshot Period
January 13 (00:00 UTC)
January 17 (23:59 UTC)
Subscription Period
January 18 (03:30 UTC)
January 18 (10:59 UTC)
Distribution Period
January 18 (11:00 UTC)
January 18 (11:59 UTC)
Launch Period
January 18 (12:00 UTC)
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How to invest in the Moster Galaxy (GGM) IEO on Bybit Launchpad?
Read along to learn how to participate in the Moster Galaxy sale on Bybit Launchpad. Keep in mind that participation in the IEO is limited to verified Bybit users who hold BitDAO (BIT) in their accounts.
1. Create an account on Bybit and complete KYC
In order to participate in the GGM IEO, you will first need to create an account on Bybit. You can skip this step if you are already a registered Bybit user.
Once you’ve completed the account registration process, you can proceed to the account verification procedure. Bybit offers two verification tiers, which primarily differ in the amount of Bitcoin you can withdraw. Do note that both KYC levels unlock access to Launchpad functionality.
Once you’ve supplied the required personal information and completed the KYC process, you can proceed to the Launchpad section, which can be found by navigating to the bottom of the “More” drop-down menu.
2. Select Monster Galaxy IEO
Locate Monster Galaxy from the list of ongoing and finished Launchpad projects. The most recent project should typically be listed at the top of the site.
3. Moster Galaxy IEO requirements and token distribution
Bybit users get a chance to take part in public sales by committing an amount of BIT that will be used to buy new tokens as soon as they are first available on the exchange. The amount of new tokens a user receives in the sale is directly proportional to the amount of BIT committed. You will need at least an average of 50 BIT in your Spot, ByFi, or Derivatives account during the 5-day snapshot period, to be eligible for the public sale.
Bybit has set a hard cap per user at 14,000 GGM (350 USD) in order to ensure an equitable distribution of new tokens among as many users as possible.
Do note that participation in the Moster Galaxy public sale is restricted to residents of the following jurisdictions: the United States, mainland China, Singapore, Quebec (Canada), North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Crimea, Sevastopol, Sudan, and Syria.
4. Monster Galaxy IEO timeline
The Monster Galaxy IEO will follow a strict Launchpad schedule; below you will find a complete overview of the important dates you will have to keep in mind.
Disclaimer: Committed BIT will be locked for the duration of the sale, meaning transfers, withdrawals or other trading functions will be unavailable until after the final token distribution.
Here’s the full breakdown of the GGM public sale on Bybit Launchpad, as explained by Bybit:
January 13 (00:00 UTC) to January 17 (23:59 UTC) – Snapshot Period: The daily average amount of BIT in your Spot Account, ByFi Account, and Derivatives Account during the snapshot period must be equal to or greater than 50 in order to participate in the token sale.
January 18 (03:30 UTC) to January 18 (10:59 UTC) – Subscription Period: You can commit a certain number of BIT in your Spot Account towards the new project. The number of BIT you’ve committed will be locked until the public sale ends.
January 18 (11:00 UTC) to January 18 (11:59 UTC) – Distribution Period: Based on your final GGM allocation result, the corresponding BIT equivalent will be deducted from your committed amount, while your GGM allocation and the remaining BIT will be credited back to your Spot Account.
January 18 (12:00 UTC) – Launch Period: The new Spot pair, GGM/USDT, will be live for trades as long as liquidity conditions are met.
5. Monster Galaxy step-by-step Launchpad guide
Now that you are familiar with the project and the intricacies of Bybit’s Launchpad program, follow our step-by-step instructions to learn how to commit your BIT holdings.
Step 1 – After selecting the active IEO during the Subscription Period, you will be able to see if you are eligible to participate or not. Click “Commit Now” to invest your BIT.
Step 2 – Enter the amount of BIT you wish to commit to the sale and click on the “Confirm” button to proceed.
Step 3 – Congratulations, you have successfully committed your BIT. You can choose to commit additional funds, up to your daily average BIT balance, which was calculated during the Snapshot Period.
6. Performance of previous Bybit Launchpad projects and closing thoughts
Purchasing tokens as soon as they are available carries a substantial amount of risk, so make sure to do your own research before committing any money. However, the Launchpad program has historically been one of the more lucrative investment opportunities for Bybit users, with most tokens experiencing a distinctly positive market reception.
Here’s an overview of some of the past Bybit Launchpad projects and their USD adjusted returns:
The blockchain has created an environment of decentralized finance, which could well challenge the traditional money markets. Decentralized finance comes with many advantages, not least the investing opportunities it brings to its users, often unparalleled in the conventional markets.
Nowadays, DeFi isn’t just for investing, you can also get mortgages and loans without ever having to sign a document or meet a mortgage broker face-to-face, in a permissionless format. Vaults and liquidity pools on various platforms like Yearn Finance, give investors the chance to stake their idle crypto assets in return for yield that is unparalleled in the centralized marketplace.
One platform, Drops, is even giving its users the chance to use their crypto assets and NFTs in order to take loans or stake them in exchange for passive income by way of APY..
Drops, which currently has a total value locked in of over $2.5 million, allows users to put literally any asset to work harder, in order to create a lending pool, which can be used to get a loan and to generate extra income. These pools are composed of collateralized assets, covering the spectrum from gaming NFTs, metaverse gaming items, financial NFTs and DeFi tokens. The goal of this is to bring extra value to their NFTs by reducing the opportunity costs of holding NFTs or giving users the ability to access liquidity without selling their collectibles.
How to put your NFTs to work
According to Drops, borrowing against DeFi And NFT Tokens allows users to earn sizable returns and rewards on short-term loans. Users can put down their NFTs as collateral while receiving access to a trustless loan.
A Drops spokesperson told us, “Idle assets are lost opportunities. With Drops, you can get more from your portfolio by supplying stable coins & governance tokens to fungible or NFT lending pools in exchange for attractive returns & rewards.”
So here’s how you use your NFTs to make some money, potentially enough to pay off your mortgage:
Visit the Drops website and click on the Connect Wallet button.
Scan the QR barcode.
Create your own liquidity pool with the asset of your choice.
The platform features its native governance token, the DOP, which IDO’ed on Polkastarter and can now be purchased through both Uniswap and Gate.io.
The Bottom Line
Currently you can get mortgages for around 3.5% interest rate, with many yielding and loan platforms based on the blockchain you can take advantage of yields of around 6% or even greater. It might sound like a wild idea, but perhaps using the blockchain is the most efficient way to pay off your mortgage?
