The cryptocurrency market has ended the Week 29 with a total market capitalization of $1.44 trillion, which is around $140 billion more than at the end of the week. In addition, the cryptocurrency market saw quite a significant recovery during the first few hours (CEST) of Week 30 with most of the coins jumping up by 10% or more. At the time of writing, the total market value of all the cryptocurrencies combined already exceeds $1.56 trillion. Bitcoin, the market barometer, reclaimed the 50-day moving average and the general sentiment seems to be turning bullish again. If this uptrend will be sustained for a longer period, we could see a $2 trillion total market capitalization again. Whether this happens or not, it is undoubtedly worth checking out the coins listed in our weekly Top 3 Coins to Watch series, where we list coins that have the potential to outperform the rest of the market in the week to come.
1. Uniswap (UNI)
UNI is the governance token of the automated market maker (AMM) protocol Uniswap. UNI tokens are ERC-20 tokens that allow holders to decide on the future of Uniswap by voting on proposals. Uniswap’s platform, which facilitates quick swaps between various Ethereum-based tokens, has been struggling to keep its users and market share because of high fees on Ethereum in the beginning of 2021. However, with the launch of Uniswap V3 and the rise of Ethereum Layer 2 solutions, Uniswap is confidently reclaiming the pole position among decentralized exchanges (DEXs).
Uniswap is Slowly but Steadily Reclaiming its Market Share
While Uniswap and other Ethereum-based decentralized exchanges went through a rough patch this spring and lost a significant portion of their market share to Binance Smart Chain-based PancakeSwap, things are starting to look a lot better for Uniswap. According to Messari Research, Uniswap has successfully reclaimed much of its lost share of DEX weekly volume as its weekly trading volume represented 54% of the whole DEX trading volume at the end of Q2 2021. Messari noted that this is the highest Uniswap market share ever since November 2020. It is not a secret that Uniswap’s recovery was facilitated by the development of Layer 2 Ethereum solutions such as Polygon. In addition, an alpha version of Uniswap V3 has recently launched on Optimistic Ethereum, an Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution that uses optimistic rollups to facilitate instant transaction confirmations while keeping the costs of transactions as low as possible. It is therefore not surprising that the UNI token is heavily represented in the Grayscale’s DeFi Fund, whose holdings rebase daily based on a Coindesk’s DeFi index that tracks top 10 coins and tokens from the DeFi sector. As of today, UNI represents almost 50% of the DeFi Fund’s total AUM, which currently stands at $4.7 million.
2. Polygon (MATIC)
Polygon, previously known as Matic Network is an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution that aims to provide major scalability improvements to the biggest smart contract blockchain. The Polygon protocol plans to deliver supersonic speeds and throughput by utilizing a modified version of Plasma. Its Layer 2 solution consists of several simultaneously run Proof-of-Stake sidechains that regularly push the data to Ethereum, creating network checkpoints.
Polygon Launches Polygon Studios and Integrates with Wyre to Establish a Direct Fiat Onramp
Polygon has recently revealed that it has founded Polygon Studios, a new arm of the project focused on Blockchain Gaming and NFT ecosystem. You might say Polygon is a bit late to the NFT party but at the other hand the saying goes that it is “better late than never”. Polygon Studios aims to become the go-to platform for large Web2.0 franchises looking to venture into the world of Web3.0 and the home for builders, developers, creators as well as NFT investors. In other news, Wyre has recently added USDC to their payment API allowing users to use fiat (converted to USDC) on various Polygon dApps. Wyre has essentially opened the doors for mass adoption among non-crypto users, which will hopefully boost the growth of the DeFi ecosystem on Polygon.
As already mentioned, Polygon’s success also resembles in the declining market share of BSC-based PancakeSwap and recovering market share of Uniswap V3. However, Uniswap is not the only big project that has launched on Polygon. Since the rebrand from Matic Network, over 450 projects have partnered with Polygon. Today, Polygon performs more transactions per day than Ethereum mainnet. Polygon co-founder Jaynti Kanani commented on what he thinks is Polygon’s key to success saying:
“What sets Polygon apart from other L2 solutions is our Layer 2 aggregation approach, which allows developers to pick the scaling solution best suited for their needs, be it ZK, OPR, Data availability chain or other scaling approaches like our PoS commit-chain.”
Polygon supporters believe that $10 per MATIC is not as delusional as other think, even though the token is currently trading at only $1.10.
3. FTX Token (FTT)
FTT is the official token and the backbone of the FTX cryptocurrency derivatives exchange. The total supply of FTT is 350 million tokens. FTX is a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange that offers futures, leveraged ERC-20 tokens and OTC trading. The developers of the FTX exchange aim to offer a first-class trading experience by constantly improving the platform and addressing the issues that are often left unaddressed on other mainstream exchanges. FTX focuses on developing and offering institutional-grade solutions.
FTX Raises $900 million in a Record-breaking Series B Funding Round
FTX exchange has recently completed a Series B Funding round, in which over 60 participants invested over $900 million into the popular exchange. Visible individuals like Paul Tudor Jones, Alan Howard, Izzy Englander, and firms including SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, Paradigm, Lightspeed and Third Point participated in the funding round, which now claims the title of the biggest investment round in a company from the cryptocurrency sector to date. The FTX’s record setting funding round more than doubled the previous record deal, held by Circle, which raised $440 million earlier this year. FTX’s postdeal valuation stands at $18 billion. FTT is currently changing hands at around $33 per token, its price is up by almost 30% in the last 30 days. The total market capitalization of $3.1 billion makes FTX Token the 4th largest token among the exchange tokens.
