Avalanche (AVAX) is the quickest platform for smart contracts in the industry of blockchain. It also has the most significant number of validators to secure any PoS protocol. Some of the main features of Avalanche are speed, meager costs, and it is also green. The platform enables any app of smart contracts to overtop its opponents. On September 21, 2020, it launched its own network with its own protocol and technology. The platform’s growth can be noticed in the more than 200 individual projects it has secured over 1000 individual validators that produce blocks. The community has 600,000 members all over the world. Whoever feels skeptical about Avalanche’s success just needs to give the app a try to understand what all the fuss is about.
Naturally, such a platform would have a token to monetize with; AVAX is the given name to Avalanche’s native token. AVAX is a scarce good that is hard-capped, commonly used to pay for fees. Mainly, it’s used to secure the platform and supply a basic unit for accounting among the variety of subnets on Avalanche. All of that while connecting the platform through the stake method.
It is possible to find Avalanche AVAX across the leading exchanges and expanded trading pairs.
Only four months after the mainnet launch of the platform and it’s already expanding faster than expected. The platform has been growing by leaps and bounds, private securities, Synthetics, DeFi, Stablecoins, Prediction Markets, etc. You name it, they have it, or they’re already working on it to make it happen. All of this is possible due to its high processing capacity, low fees of gas, which offers decentralization like no other. That by making it possible to scale the number of validators to millions with its protocol.
It is a platform of platforms consisting of thousands of subnets that create an interoperable network of numerous blockchains. Avalanche takes advantage of the revolutionary protocols to provide security, among other things, that offers decentralization while complying with regulatory requirements. Avalanche enables you to create your own app, tailor-made with specific blockchains that support several virtual machines and multiple languages. Those virtual machines can later be deployed in a particular blockchain network that is called a subnet. A subnet is a set of validators that work together to obtain an agreement on the state of a group of several blockchains.
By Aleksandra Wilson
3 min read
•
September 23, 2021
What is BUSD?
Binance USD is a stablecoin backed up by the US Dollar; it means that there is a US Dollar in reserve for every coin of BUSD. In simple terms, the amount of BUSD is directly proportional to the USD, and they’re pegged at a 1:1 proportion. It is issued by the partnership between Binance and Paxos. It is regulated and approved by the NYDFS (New York State Department of Financial Services). They have an audit report every month that can be checked on their official site. One of its main goals is to merge blockchain tech with the stability of the US dollar.
If you have ever acquired or exchanged crypto with Binance, it’s possible that you have come across or at least heard of BUSD. It is usually between the pairs most traded being offered on the Binance exchange. In short, it aims to represent the digital version of the US dollar, and it is linked to its value.
How Is It Regulated?
The state regulators of NY have implemented special measures on Binance, Paxos, and how stablecoins, in general operate. While ensuring that the coins are completely backed up, Paxos has to control the issuance and burning of Binance USD tokens. It also has the right, when considered necessary, to remove funds or freeze accounts due to illegal activity. These concepts all adhere to the banking laws of the Trust Charter and New York that apply to stablecoin.
Why Use BUSD?
It is possible to avoid fluctuations in price in the markets of crypto, with the potential to be very volatile. There exists a demand for stable assets also in crypto, mostly when the market turns too volatile. These periods can be easier for the investors when turning the assets into securities or fiat and BUSD offers that opportunity. BUSD has a lot of liquidity, so it is easy to secure profits when someone is looking to exit a position.
What Are the Differences From Other Stablecoins?
There are few significant reasons why BUSD is different from other stablecoins. It is part of a group of stablecoins that are backed directly by fiat. Another big difference is that Paxos releases an audit on a regular basis, once a month, to show that the reserves in USD match the supply of BUSD. Withum, an accounting company, completes those audits as part of the requirements as a regulated crypto. The last being something that not every project does, so there’s a risk of some stablecoins backed up by fiat not having all the reserves they say they have.
Regarding that, we can mention a case brought by the NYS Attorney General. The said case indicated that Tether did not have the reserves they claimed to have in contradiction to their previous statements.
By Aleksandra Wilson
3 min read
•
September 20, 2021
A couple of days ago, the token of Solana’s protocol, also known as Sol, went through sharp fluctuations in price. Solana’s high volatility was due to a flood in the network that took place this week. The token fell more than 15%; later on, it regained a lot of the losses. The asset fell as low as $142.86 a few days ago, at which point, the crypto had already lost about 16% after getting the intraday high amount of $171.48. All of this is according to data from Messari.
At the beginning of September, it reached a new high of $214.36. By the time of the last crash, it had already fallen a bit more than 33%. The token started recovering soon after, and at the moment of this writing, it was trading at $159.11.
The Difficulties That Caused Solana’s High Volatility
The network experienced technical difficulties, and it went down soon after; this was announced on September 14. That’s when most of that day’s action in price took place. Around 8 am that morning, the network had produced the last block, then a bit after 11 am, the CEO posted a tweet addressing the difficulties. The message stated that bots were flooding the network through a DEX that was happening on Raydium. The last being an automated provider of liquidity and market maker built on Solana. Then finally, at 3 pm, the Solana Twitter account gave an update. The post declared that the network experienced increased transactions, which saturated the processing channel and caused the web to start forking.
The Analysts Opinion
Even though it’s true that the price of SOL went down during this incident, it had been experiencing a downward trend before. More than one analyst concludes that today’s price action is a combination of standard profit-taking and technical difficulties’ impact. They say that after SOL’s price got to its overbought level, it was customary for it to go down because of profit-taking.
Despite the unfortunate situation, analysts generally provided an optimistic view on the future prospects of Solana’s project. Of course, what happened will still impact the token price, but they’re also confident about its comeback. They don’t believe it will affect the cryptocurrency long-term and set Ethereum’s early years as an example. Although, they also made it very clear that the project needs to get the network running fast. They believe that because of Solana’s high volatility, they may have a perception issue in the near future if they don’t fix this soon.
Conclusion
In this case, it has become evident that it is not the bug itself that caused Solana’s high volatility in the first place. Instead, people are more surprised that the reaction of the crypto community has come together to find a solution for it. Now the question is not if the Solana network will be able to fix it, but when. And when they do, it’s going to be soon enough for it not to suffer a lot of loss on the matter.
By Aleksandra Wilson
3 min read
•
September 20, 2021
The Background
Like Bitcoin, Ethereum uses “mining” to make and distribute new coins; Ethereum 2.0 will come to end that. The people worldwide who make mining possible, a.k.a. miners, work with equipment worth millions of dollars. Miners require sophisticated machinery to have a real chance in the race of solving mathematical problems to earn ETH. The process has become a concern due to its energy-intensive consumption and its impact on the environment. But apparently, this won’t be a concern for much longer. Next year Ethereum will go under a significant upgrade that will change how it operates and how its coins are minted. So, mining Ethereum as we know it will become only a part of history.
What is Ethereum 2.0?
Ethereum 2.0 is a set of upgrades that are interconnected, planned, and designed to help it become more scalable, sustainable, and way more secure. Several teams within the community have been working on building the upgrades necessary to make this happen.
From PoW to PoS
Since the beginning of Bitcoin, proof of work has been the concept used to make decentralized networks safer for money transactions. In 2015, when Ethereum was launched, they adopted the same protocol. In simple terms, PoW is the algorithm, and mining is the action itself, attaching the right blocks to the chain. Now that the teams have been putting effort into changing the protocol from PoW to PoS since it requires remarkably less electricity. Another advantage of it is that it will also enable a much larger volume of transactions. It will be more secure since attacks can be prevented from happening. Finally, mining will be completely turned off when the PoW and PoS chains are merged, and Ethereum 2.0 is all in. According to Tim Beiko, Ethereum developer, this can possibly happen before next year ends.
What Will Happen to the Miners After That?
Experts say it will not be such a big problem; once the merge has been completed, they believe that miners will go for either one of two easy choices. Once Ethereum 2.0 starts operating entirely, there will be divided opinions about which way to go. The most obvious options are Ravencoin with a market cap of $436 million and Ethereum Classic with $4.7 billion. Another significant change is the way miners get paid; no more transaction fees will go to them, only the newly minted coin as a reward. Although not all of them will endure, those who will keep mining ETH will have it since they will become easier to obtain.
Are People Ready for This?
If it’s true that the news about Ethereum 2.0 is a matter of public domain, not everybody involved has done something about it. Some might have done more or even better than others to prepare for the change. It’s also true that some pools have stated their position against the merge, which also impacts the general opinion of the public, traders or not. If Ethereum 2.0 can deliver all that has been promised, it’s still yet to be seen. Although one thing is for sure, if they succeed, this will imply an astronomical jump for the protocol that could potentially cause a chain reaction with other protocols of the exact nature, but what would happen with the PoW protocols? That is still left to be determined.
By Aleksandra Wilson
3 min read
•
September 16, 2021
What Is Solana?
When we talk about Solana, we’re talking about an exceptionally functional project of open source based on blockchain technology. In simple terms, it relies on the technology’s nature of being permissionless to supply solutions to DeFi. Its protocol is meticulously outlined to make the creation process of decentralized applications easier. Its main goal is to upgrade scalability by using the PoH and PoS of the blockchain. Due to its hybrid design, it got the attention of new traders and institutional investors. Also, the central focus of the Foundation of Solana is to make DeFi accessible on a more significant scale.
When Did It Start?
Even when the idea of it and the first efforts on the project began back in 2017, it was until March 2020 it was launched. The headquarters of the Solana Foundation was established in Switzerland, in the city of Geneva.
About the Founders
The most significant person behind the project is Anatoly Yakovenko, who started his career at Qualcomm. There, in 2015 he moved fast up the ranks and got to the position of Senior Staff Engineer Manager. After that, he got a new job at Dropbox, this time as a Software Engineer. By 2017, Yakovenko was already working on a project that would later be known as Solana. It was with Greg Fitzgerald with whom he chose to team up; together they founded Solana Labs. While working on it, they attracted more former colleagues from Qualcomm and finally released the protocol and the SOL token to the public in 2020.
What Is So Unique About It?
One of the most significant differences to the game is the PoH consensus that Anatoly Yakovenko developed. The concept enables higher scalability, which at the same time improves usability. The protocol is well known in the crypto space due to its fantastic fast time to process blockchain offers. Being hybrid allows a remarkable decrease in the time of validation for the execution of contracts and transactions.
Circulation
It’s been announced by the Solana Foundation that a total of 489 million tokens (SOL) would be put in circulation. A bit more than 206 million of those have been released to the market already. Its distribution goes as follows:
- 16.23% for seed sale,
- 12.92% for founding sale,
- 12.79% for team members,
- 10.46% for the Solana Foundation.
The rest of the coins were already distributed for private, and public sales or are about to be released.
How Is it Secured?
The protocol relies on a mix of PoH and PoS mechanisms of consensus. The first being the one responsible for the number of transactions processed. The second is used to monitor the PoH process and validate the sequences of blocks created by it. The mix of both mechanisms is what makes it so unique in the industry.
By Aleksandra Wilson
3 min read
•
September 13, 2021
How Did it Start?
The net value of DeFi went above $170 billion as other projects outside of Ethereum are becoming increasingly more vital. Despite the recent $600 million hacks that cost Poly Network considerable money and an even more significant amount of users. The total value of decentralized finance got to an incredible USD 179.9 billion last week and is fast approaching the $200 billion mark. This is due to the significant momentum of growth that other DeFi projects, besides Ethereum, have been gaining during these last months. Currently, it’s Uniswap, the one dominating the second place with 3%.
According to the statistics, only during the last hours, the Total Value Locked (TVL) increased by 1%. It’s expected that it will keep growing at the same rate in the following days. After the already mentioned Uniswap, the decentralized finance app, Aave, is in charge of $16.04 billion, and Curve of $13.92 billion. This, considering that most of the TVL are actually locked into the reinforced app of Ethereum.
What About the Smaller Networks for DeFi?
But nowadays, it’s not all about Ethereum. On the other hand, we have several other smaller networks contributing to the TVL. That is the case of Binance Smart Chain (BSC) that has a bit over $19.05 billion of the TVL. Terra follows BSC with 7.4 billion USD, then Polygon with 5.3 billion USD, Solana with a TVL of 2.36 billion. Not far below is Klaytn with a little over 1.29 billion USD total.
Other Platforms
Now, we talk about the platforms for the exchange of DeFi; then we can conclude that Curve counts as the highest TVL. Currently, Curve has a TVL of 13.92 billion USD, and after it comes Pancakeswap 5.94 billion, driven by the BSC. And Uniswap, with a TVL of 5.3 billion USD. To set a better picture of the growth of decentralized finance, only for the chain of Ethereum, among 16 other different platforms of dex, statistics reflect that so far there was a total of 19 billion USD global worth of exchanges, only during the last week. Of course, Uniswap had the most considerable dex volume of them all, across all 16 platforms of dex, with 69.2%.
The Future
As you can see, Uniswap is the main dex of Ethereum. The statistics mentioned above prove that the decentralized exchange got about $12,952,621,793 in total trading transactions around the globe. A significant percentage of it comes straight from dex apps, but the rest is channeled through other aggregators of dex. Such is the case of 0x API, 1inch, Paraswap and Matcha.
Another worth mentioning relevant statistic in the sector is the total of DeFi users or unique addresses in defi apps based on Ethereum. The last already went above the 3.3 million users. Today’s biggest loan apps include platforms like Compound, Aave, Anchor, Cream Finance and Venus respectively.
By Aleksandra Wilson
3 min read
•
September 5, 2021
The token of Cardano, ADA, has exceeded other coins on top positions and just became the third-largest cryptocurrency worldwide. Now, developers of different networks aim to capitalize on the rise of DeFi that is taking the world by storm. At the moment, the currency is being traded on various exchange platforms. ADA challenged a big crash in price by a warning to jump into a historic high, going even above its previous record.
On Friday, August 20, the token’s rate went over $2.56, registering an increase of 154.54%. The culmination of a movement that had already begun on July 20. All of that despite expert’s opinions who warned about a fall in price. Now that the price of ADA skyrocketed by 50% only during last week, the trust in the advancements in new technologies has also grown.
The Alonzo Upgrade
The previous also boosts confidence that Cardano will enable payment systems on its platform earlier than expected. This improvement is known as the “Alonzo” upgrade, and its release has been officially scheduled for September 12. The investors of ADA keep driving the value of Cardano even higher in anticipation of said upgrade. The upgrade will present smart-contract functionality to the blockchain, which will allow Cardano to settle as a significant player in the DeFi universe.
Due to the low price, Cardano ADA has become one of the most sought-after currencies by traders. Now, with Cardano’s ability to work with smart contracts, the currency has been gaining consistently. On the other hand, its main competitor, Ethereum, dominates the $100,000 decentralized finance space.
Smart Contracts
These are also known as blockchain contracts and distinguish themselves for the methodology in which they ensure conformity between the parties involved in a transaction. These contracts are comparable to the standard traditional contracts. They function between two parties or more that don’t require the involvement of a third party to ensure the enforceability of the agreement.
Without traditional middlemen like banks, people who use DeFi can transfer financial functions straight onto digital ledgers. That allows them to lend cash or borrow it and collect interest in an account of savings.
The Future of Cardano ADA
The rises in crypto like Bitcoin, Ether, ADA, and others contributed to the market surpassing $2 trillion in total value last weekend. The first time it happened since the crash was in mid-May. And now, on September 12, all eyes will be on the Cardano ADA “Alonzo” upgrade. We’ll have to wait and see how this affects the whole crypto market. If it goes well, ADA could be considered a severe competitor for Ethereum, probably starting a new age in crypto history.
By Aleksandra Wilson
3 min read
•
September 3, 2021
What Is Chainlink?
Chainlink is a layer of blockchain abstraction that allows smart contracts to be connected universally, it enables blockchains to interact in a secure way. That happens with data feeds from the exterior, different payment methods, and events. That provides essential information needed by complex smart contracts to develop into the predominant configuration of digital agreements. The Network for Chainlink is mainly driven by a community of data providers, operators of nodes, researchers, developers of smart contracts, and so on. The company’s primary focus is to ensure that decentralized participation can be guaranteed for all the operators of nodes and all users who look to make contributions to the network in general.
About the Founders
Chainlink was co-founded in 2017 by Sergey Nazarov, who is also CEO of Chainlink Labs. Nazarov has a degree in business administration from the University of New York. In 2009 he co-founded ExistLocal; in 2014, he was a co-founder of CryptaMail. He also joined forces with Steve Ellis and launched SmartContract, which led Nazarov to start Chainlink. Steve Ellis has a computer science degree from New York University. He was a software engineer at Pivotal Labs, and in 2014 he founded the Secure Asset Exchange.
What Makes “Link” Unique?
This is one of the networks that allowed the incorporation of off-chain info into smart contracts for the first time. Chainlink has become a significant player when it comes to data processing. In recent years it has been attracting the attention of different data providers, such as Brave New Coin, Huobi, and Alpha Vantage. Data providers can monetize the data they possess by selling access directly to Chainlink. Since it’s a network that’s not centralized, it enables users to be operators and earn some revenue by running an infrastructure of data that is mandatory for the success of blockchains.
Circulation of Chainlink
Since the beginning of it, Chainlink announced that there would be a total maximum supply of 1,000,000,000 tokens of Link. The collection at the moment of writing this article is around 419,009,556 of Link tokens, about 42%.
About Security
It is secured by the mechanism of proof-of-stake (PoS), which relies on the total of stacked tokens to select validators. The protocols of PoS were created to help with the power consumption issue, plus they’re scalable in an easy way. Now that PoW has proven itself to be a reliable mechanism, a vast variety of ERC-20 tokens have grown fast, marking trends in the space.
By Aleksandra Wilson
3 min read
•
September 2, 2021
At the end of July, Bitcoin jumped over the $30,000 mark after Elon Musk mentioned that Tesla is “most likely” to accept it again as payment. Back in May, the carmaker stated that Tesla would not take the crypto for purchases. That is due to his concerns about the impact that mining Bitcoin could have on the environment. This came out only after two months that the company started receiving the crypto as payment. During the B-Word crypto lecture, Elon Musk stated that the company would likely accept Bitcoin again.
Early this year, a group of investors and environmentalists vigorously attacked Tesla for starting to take Bitcoin as a payment method. They criticized that Tesla was seen as an environmentally responsible company, and taking energy-intensive crypto was a contradiction.
Elon Musk Direct Influence
The founder of Tesla has also been in the spotlight to use his privileged position and popularity to back up different crypto. While in a conference earlier this year, he commented that besides Tesla and SpaceX, his rocket company, he owned a variety of cryptos, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin. His statement, of course, caused an increase in said cryptocurrencies. He also mentioned that he had already participated in the artificial rise in cryptocurrencies before he planned to sell them but would like to see Bitcoin succeeding.
After those comments, there was an increase in Bitcoin of 6% at $31,952, Ethereum 10.6% higher at $1,979. All this according to the website Coindesk.
Long-term Investments
The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has stated on several occasions that he has no plans of selling his crypto anytime soon. If you decide to invest in Bitcoin, experts on the subject suggest sticking with a strategy long-term instead of trading short-term. Some recommend planning to hold for about ten years at least.
When we consider that costs for crypto can be high, we can conclude that buying and holding can be of benefit in that regard. A good approach is to view Bitcoin as something you should hold on to for a more extended period. Even though it might be tempting to trade while following social media, experts recommend fighting this urge.
Understanding the Risk
Before launching yourself into an investment in Bitcoin or any other coin, you should learn about it and understand all the possible risks. It’s important for new investors to understand that the asset is very volatile. One has to be comfortable with fluctuations and also the possibility of losing money. There are no guarantees. The cryptocurrency universe is hardly regulated, so you should ensure that whatever you choose to invest is something you can afford to lose.
By Aleksandra Wilson
2 min read
•
September 1, 2021
New business models have emerged from the concept of decentralized finance since the advent of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. The idea of the decentralization of the monetary economy has been prowling the world in an increasingly expansive way. Especially within the environment of Bitcoin and Ethereum, the most popular cryptocurrencies at the moment. But why will it be the future of the economy?
It’s well known that decentralized finance is rising as a tool for businesses in markets that are still developing. The industry of banking is starting to suffer the consequences of the inflexibility of their current processes. Since last summer DeFi has had a revival. Crypto such as Ether and Bitcoin are becoming more and more accepted as payment methods. USDC has progressed towards becoming an asset that will maintain the value without depreciating. Also, the technology of blockchain is on its way to have the financial infrastructure to offer a system similar to the infrastructure of tradicional finance.
New Opportunities That Decentralized Finance Offer
New business opportunities have opened up within the world of cryptocurrencies. Such as open lending protocols, issuance and investment platforms, prediction markets, open exchanges and markets, as well as more stable currencies. On the other hand, the issuance platforms are oriented towards the creation of new tokens. Currently this market has focused more on the issuance of security tokens, so issuance platforms seek to provide issuers with the conditions so that they can launch tokenized securities within the blockchain.
Decentralized finance comprises all financial services offered by automated applications hosted on blockchains that include services such as loans, the trading of currencies that earn interest that no bank offers, and implement investment strategies.
About the Advantages
The advantages of decentralized finance are that the source is open and anyone can participate, without a central body that places restrictions or can manipulate it. Their flexibility and possibilities are innumerable. It is still early to tell the real potential of it when implementing it in day to day life. Although the growth within the cryptocurrency sector has been gigantic, cryptocurrencies have not yet reached mass adoption. There is an opportunity for growth. It’s also important to understand that the risks are many and varied. One should always keep in mind not to invest or dedicate money that you are not willing to lose.
By Aleksandra Wilson
3 min read
•
August 23, 2021
A Bit of Background
We shouldn’t question why Bitcoin has had one of the biggest fallouts this year but look for reasons why the crypto market constantly falls. To deal with crypto is to deal with highly volatile financial assets. Bitcoin went from $64,000 to $37,000 in a month, and this doesn’t mean that the market bubble burst. This is not the first time it happens, nor will it be the last one, since it’s an item of constant speculation. It is the third time we have seen the burst of the crypto market bubble since it began. The fascinating thing is that the main reason why it collapsed every single time has been the same.
On May 12, Bitcoin, which represents over 40% of the cryptocurrency market in the world, collapsed 30%, reaching $30,000 per coin. Its lowest price since the beginning of the year. But since we live in a global economy, and it’s all connected, Bitcoin was not the only crypto to fall. Other currencies suffered a plunge, too; such was the case of Ethereum that dropped over 40%; Dogecoin and Binance about 30%. Bitcoin recovered a little bit by next Friday, reaching $37,000, still far from its highest-ever reached just a month before at $64,000. This exceptional growth is what allured a large number of professionals and inexpert speculators to make a quick profit. Those speculators get alarmed when awful news starts coming out, causing substantial market movements.
External Factors
On top of that, on May 12, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a statement that caused another Bitcoin drop of 12%. He retracted in public the commitment of his company to accept Bitcoin as a payment method, claiming to have concerns about the “carbon footprint caused by the crypto.
Yet again, the Bitcoin price dropped, although not as dramatically as before, at the beginning of August. It somehow managed to recover by thousands of dollars last week and even went over the $40,000 barrier that it hadn’t been able to surpass since the significant fallout. On August 2nd, the coin was quoted a little over $39,000 because of tremendous withdrawals from investors. That caused yet another drop, caused by the analysts who follow others’ behavior and trends. However, it is a price way higher when compared to the one registered in mid-July, when it was below $30,000 a coin. The fall was caused by prohibitions in various countries, which generated a lack of trust in the market.
About The Future
Experts around the world have stated that Bitcoin’s golden days are still to come. The crypto has consecutively been rising for more than three consecutive weeks. It looks like it’s on its way to get the second successive month growing. After all, this has been the most significant spike since February when it was about to jump to historic highs. Experts are leaving most concerns aside for now. Instead, they’re setting bullish targets of price. What will the outcome be? It is yet to be seen; for sure, we’ll be hearing about this currency in the future.
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