ERC-20 Tokens

Jan 11 2021

Kava DeFi Platform to Release Robo-Advisor Service to Automate Strategies for Financial Services and Other 2021 Updates

The Kava decentralized finance (DeFi) platform is “coming out the gates swinging” in 2021 with a “feature-packed” product roadmap – which includes two new native apps and crypto tokens, “decentralized bridges” to onboard major cross-chain digital assets, and several other features to “reinforce the safety and security measures already enjoyed by all users of Kava’s DeFi applications and services,” according to Scott Stuart, who works on Product at Kava Labs Inc.

As noted by Stuart, Kava’s 4-month “major release cycles are targeted for Kava 2021 Development.” The platform’s HARD Protocol Version 2 will include “borrowing with variable interest rates and a distribution of HARD [tokens] to both asset suppliers and borrowers.” As confirmed by the Kava team, HARD Governance will be enhanced to include “more protocol parameters quickly by the HARD community.”

The DeFi platform’s developers revealed:

“Kava has seen significant usage in 2020, as such a number of software optimizations are needed to be made in order for validators to validate blocks in a timely manner, there are also consensus tweaks to improve system performance based on production data.”

They further noted:

“Kava services including cross-chain claim and refund bots, app front-ends, price reference software, Full nodes, historical nodes, REST and API endpoints, and others are run on Kava Cloud infrastructure. Significant enhancements in standardization, security, monitoring and alerting tools have been added to Kava Cloud services that drive infrastructural and end-user services.”

An Autonomous Market Making (AMM) service and application will reportedly be launched and will operate as an on-chain liquidity pool for Kava users so that they can swap different assets on the platform for use in other financial services.

The Kava SAFU fund will be proposed in order to provide more protection to Kava users by insuring and underwriting “some portion of infrastructure and cross-chain activities on Kava.”

As noted in the announcement, the KAVA staking derivative is an asset “derived from KAVA that is staked for POS security.” KAVA staking derivatives “allow more KAVA (derivative) liquidity to be used in various financial services on Kava while not foregoing the security and rewards offered by KAVA POS staking.”

The platform’s developers claim that the safety of Kava users’ assets is “the number one objective which guides development of the Kava DeFi platform.” The Kava team further noted that risk management optimizations such as the enhanced Tendermint mempool queuing and “prioritization of critical services in the mempool will improve transaction safety.”

As confirmed in the update:

“A Robo Advisor service and application will be released to help automate strategies amongst the various financial services offered on Kava, and will increase user onboarding by opening up a larger pool of less hands-on Kava users to participate in yield generating strategies.”

A direct Ethereum bridge to Kava will also be introduced in order to onboard native Ethereum-based assets such as ETH and ERC-20 tokens including LINK and DAI. A fairly large number of users have reportedly requested that they should be able to transfer Ethereum assets directly to Kava and “this bridge should be their service of choice.”

As noted in the announcement, Kava is currently evaluating assets which will use Kava’s “audited Issuance module for USDT, USDC, WBTC, and HBTC amongst others, and will continue to do so through the first half of 2021.”

Kava has moved more than $100 million in asset value “automatically between Binance Chain and Kava.” There have reportedly been many requests to “apply a similar technology to Ethereum assets and Kava will deliver this in Kava 6, such that any project partners built on Ethereum will have access to Kava decentralized financial applications and services,” the update confirmed.

Kava remains focused on helping more users join the DeFi space. The Kava API will be launched as a standardized plugin for application developers and financial institutions to “unlock DeFi services for their users initially including borrowing, lending, and trading.” Prototypes have been integrated with partners such as Binance and Bitmax.io with “many more business integrations to come in 2021.”

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Jan 08 2021

Telos, One of the Most Active Blockchain or DLT Networks, Introduces its Uniswap Liquidity Implementation Plan

Telos, which is one of the most active public blockchain networks according to Blocktivity data, with over 500,000 accounts, has introduced an innovative plan in order to bring liquidity and added value to the TLOS DLT ecosystem: The Telos Uniswap Liquidity Implementation Plan (TULIP).

According to a release shared with Crowdfund Insider, the initiative is aimed at bridging the gap between the Telos and Ethereum (ETH) blockchain communities while “doubling down” on its decentralized finance (DeFi) capabilities.

Telos will be issuing an ERC-20 compliant TLOS token which will be available for presale in early January 2021 with the exact date to be confirmed on the official Telos website “48 hours before the sale commences.”

The announcement noted that this will help with securing funds for Telos in order to list on Uniswap with “a strong, low-slippage pool of TLOS (ERC-20) and ETH.” The remaining funds will aim to support liquidity on other digital asset exchanges and also to pay for listing fees on various centralized crypto exchanges.

As noted in the release:

“Telos has grown [considerably] since its mainnet launch two years ago, but liquidity of the TLOS token markets remains low, impeding the growth of the network. This is the direct result of the project’s successful grassroots launch, which raised no outside funding.”

Telos planned to find the “best” exchange deals it could afford, however, the result is “simply low liquidity on small exchanges.” Potential buyers come to Telos following its real-world use cases, however, the “friction of buying TLOS on limited exchanges has inhibited many,” the developer claims.

Douglas Horn, Telos Chief Architect, stated:

“Telos has been a hotbed of activity since launching in 2018, now welcoming 30,000 new accounts per month and countless developers to its network. We are proud to have accomplished this all as a fully decentralized ecosystem with no outside funding and no whale accounts.”

Horn added that Telos recognizes the potential that the Ethereum and DeFi investor ecosystem might have, and also realizes the need to “go where the buyers are as well as support Ethereum users who are drawn to Telos for its fast, feeless transactions and features like Telos (Ethereum Virtual Machine) EVM or Telos Decide.”

Horn also mentioned that their TULIP plan is consistent with the Telos philosophy or goal of making regular contributions to the larger blockchain or distributed ledger tech (DLT) sector.

DeFi platforms and Automated Market Makers such as Uniswap offer a good opportunity to help with overcoming liquidity issues such as those experienced by Telos, the release noted. They require “no (or very low) listing fees, yet their trading volumes can be as high as top exchanges,” the announcement confirmed.

Before listing on Uniswap, Telos intends to provide its ERC-20 TLOS token with “multiple pre-sale purchasing pools of limited numbers of tokens sold at increasing prices, with a higher initial trading price anticipated once the ETH/TLOS Uniswap pool goes live.”

This will provide an opportunity for longtime Telos supporters and Ethereum traders or investors to “get in on the ground level of Telos’ next phase of growth,” the announcement noted. It added that there’ll be “a 1-3 day period before the bridge opens for Telos users to transfer their existing TLOS to the 1:1 pegged ERC-20 TLOS.”

Telos intends to sell 50-80 million TLOS tokens from “the ‘tlosrecovery’ account (recovered from 2018 airdrop accounts that remained unused after a year), resulting in a target of $2.5-$5 million in funds raised,” the release confirmed. It also mentioned that after the TLOS token presale is finalized, most of the Ethereum proceeds will be used to “create a large permanent ETH-TLOS liquidity pool on Uniswap.” Additionally, the tokens offered by Telos will be “locked with a smart contract and multisig control to ensure long-term liquidity.”

Horn added:

“With sufficient liquidity, real price discovery for TLOS can finally occur, and Telos can become a major player in the booming DeFi ecosystem. We hope that through this effort, Telos continues to foster a network where all are welcome to realize blockchain technology’s enormous potential.”

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Dec 08 2020

Algorithmic stablecoin project Neutrino launches staking for its governance token

The Neutrino Protocol, a project building algorithmic cross-platform stablecoins, announced Tuesday the launch of staking rewards for its governance and utility token, NSBT.

Neutrino uses an innovative mix of collateral backing and algorithmic supply changes to create a wide range of fiat-pegged stablecoins. The flagship stablecoin, USDN, and NSBT are available on Ethereum (ETH) as ERC-20 tokens.

The USDN generation mechanism relies on WAVES, the native token of the Waves platform. Generating the stablecoin is as simple as using its smart contract to exchange WAVES for USDN. Oracles will read the price of the asset and create an amount of USDN based on WAVES’ current price.

The assets thus form a pool of collateral that backs the USDN stablecoin. The reverse process can be performed at any time, redeeming USDN back for WAVES according to its current market price.

However, this mechanism is only valid until the price of WAVES is growing or remaining stable. If it were to fall, the stablecoin’s reserves would eventually be less than the amount of tokens circulating. This is where the mechanism relying on NSBT, or the Neutrino System Base Token, comes in.

To recapitalize the system, smart contracts will auction new NSBT off in exchange for WAVES, in a similar manner to the “flop” auction used by MakerDAO after Black Thursday.

Once the price of WAVES recovers, or the system is otherwise recapitalized, the NSBT will be redeemable for USDN at a rate defined by the stablecoin’s reserves ratio. For example, if there are $130 million WAVES tokens for $100 million USDN, the price of NSBT will be approximately 1.3 USDN. The formula is exponential, and it is set in such a way that the smart contract-based price of NSBT will begin rising rapidly once the reserve factor grows above a certain over-collateralization threshold. The smart contract’s mechanism only establishes lower and upper limits to the price through arbitrage mechanisms, while the market price is free to float between those values.

Both the NSBT and USDN tokens can be staked right now. The former entitles holders to 2% of smart contract operation fees, but it can only be staked directly on the Waves platform. The latter draws rewards from the Waves treasury, and can be staked on Ethereum as well by simply holding it in a wallet. Staking through exchanges is also possible.

Sasha Ivanov, founder of Waves, said that Ethereum “is just the beginning.” The Neutrino protocol is set to expand to Solana, IOST, Ontology and others, using its oracle-based Gravity bridge protocol. The team is also pushing for proposals to integrate the token into existing DeFi protocols like Compound and Aave.

Algorithmic stablecoin project Neutrino launches staking for its governance token

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Nov 08 2020

Bitcoin special! New 2020 high, election fallout, DeFi suffers: Hodler’s Digest, Nov. 2–8

Coming every Sunday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Bulls keep running as Bitcoin notches a new 2020 high at $15,950

It’s been another extraordinary week in the crypto markets. Over the course of Thursday, BTC surged by more than 10%. As well as breaching $15,000 for the first time since January 2018, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency romped to highs of $15,950.

To understand how significant this is, data from Messari shows that BTC has only been above this price point for 0.4% of its existence. A rare event indeed.

“People will never again say Bitcoin is dead,” Grayscale CEO Barry Silbert approvingly noted.

Cointelegraph analyst Michaël van de Poppe said Bitcoin was nearing the final hurdle before a new all-time high can be reached, with one last resistance zone between $15,800 and $16,800 standing in its way.

However, he cautioned: “The probability of a breakthrough in one go is not high, given that the price of Bitcoin has already surged by more than 50% in recent weeks.”

Not all analysts agree. Some believe BTC’s dazzling rally may not stop at $16,000, with the number of Bitcoin held on exchanges continuing to drop.

Three ways Bitcoin’s price and stocks may react to a Biden presidency

Bitcoin has cultivated a reputation of being a “safe haven asset,” meaning that investors tend to flock to it during times of uncertainty.

We saw uncertainty by the bucketload this week. BTC appreciated steadily when the U.S. election result wasn’t clear on Wednesday and as ballots continued to be counted. Donald Trump also claimed, without evidence, that many votes were fraudulent.

But look what happened on Saturday when major news outlets officially projected that Joe Biden would be the next president of the United States. Bitcoin fell by 5.67% in the hours that followed. And then it bounced back again in less than 24 hours.

So does this mean the crypto markets fear a Biden presidency? Love the idea? Don’t know what to think? Or are we just seeing heat leave the market now that the results are clearer? And what’s next for BTC?

Well, Biden’s election brightens the prospect of a stimulus package by the end of the year — and this could positively affect Bitcoin, boosting investor appetite for high-risk assets. Analysts also anticipate the U.S. stock market to recover now that the results have been confirmed.

There’s still something we don’t know: the president-elect’s views on Bitcoin. “For now, it really isn’t a big enough issue to warrant his attention,” Compound Finance’s Jake Chervinsky said.

Bitcoin at $15,000 is now bigger than PayPal, Coca-Cola, Netflix and Disney

Early September seems like a lifetime ago now, doesn’t it? Back then, Bitcoin was hovering at about $10,000, with a market cap of approximately $190 billion.

Fast forward to now, and BTC appears to have found support at $15,000. This has also helped Bitcoin’s market cap rise by 50% to $280 billion — and it means the world’s biggest cryptocurrency is now more valuable than most major companies.

Data suggests that, if BTC’s valuation is compared with publicly listed firms in the U.S., it would be the 18th largest. This dwarfs the likes of Verizon, PayPal, Disney, Netflix and Bank of America.

Bitcoin could now end up setting its sights on overtaking Home Depot, which is in 17th place with a market cap of $306 billion. If BTC rises further and grabs 16th place, it would also demote Mastercard — sending a powerful signal about where the future of money lies.

That said, BTC has a long way to go before it can catch up with Apple’s $2 trillion market cap, which makes it the most valuable company in the world. For Bitcoin to eclipse this, we’d need to see a price per coin of $120,000.

Binance’s DeFi index crashes 60% as Bitcoin overshadows altcoins

Bitcoin’s time in the spotlight has been bad news for altcoins… and it appears to have taken the shine off DeFi, too.

Binance’s DeFi Composite Index is now trading under $400 — a 60% decline from all-time highs. To make matters worse, most DeFi tokens have erased 70%–90% of their gains since early September.

The exchange also said that it’s been an “underwhelming month” for large-cap cryptos such as ETH, XRP, BCH and LTC, all of which only eked out “modest gains” in October.

That said, it isn’t all doom and gloom for DeFi. Although the value of governance tokens has taken a beating (perhaps unsurprising given how some of them, such as YFI, were designed to be worthless), the total value locked in protocols hasn’t crashed. It currently stands at $12.16 billion — not far off the record highs seen in late October.

“Extreme Greed” and FOMO taking hold as BTC nudges $16,000

Bitcoin’s surge could tempt traders to take some profit, and all of this could result in a pullback.

But the bigger danger is this: With Bitcoin prices touching their highest levels in 33 months, we’re beginning to see greed seep into the crypto market once again.

The latest Fear and Greed Index rating is flashing a score of 82, placing it firmly into the “Extreme Greed” category. Earlier this week, the score hit 90. The last time it was this high was last June, when it reached 92 as BTC powered to 2019 highs of $14,000.

As billionaire and former hedge fund manager Mike Novogratz noted: “The hardest thing to do in a bull market is to sit. My pal Paul Jones calls it the ‘pain of the gain.’ This is a $BTC bull market. Your job is to sit on your hands and lock away your phone.”

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin is at $15,336.80, Ether at $452.55 and XRP at $0.25. The total market cap is at $443,512,630,806.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Aave (76.51%), HedgeTrade (56.00%) and Synthetix (49.09). The top three altcoin losers of the week are ABBC Coin (-16.15%), CyberVein (-13.61%) and Crypto.com Coin (-13.13%).

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Most Memorable Quotations

“All eyes may be on Bitcoin and the surge past the $15,000 level. However, the recent development update related to Ethereum may result in some capital rotating back into Ethereum and its broader ecosystem.”

Denis Vinokourov, Bequant head of research

“Regulation is certainly going to be an area of focus in the crypto space going into this next year. It’s only a matter of time before an increasing number of jurisdictions adhere to regulations.”

Sasha Ivanov, Waves CEO

“All in all, the sentiment is heavily bullish at this point, with the price at multi-year highs and only one major resistance level remaining at $16,000 before a new all-time high comes into play.”

Michaël van de Poppe, Cointelegraph analyst

“Thanks for flying with us today ladies and gentlemen. Off to the left you’ll see we’ve just passed $15K #Bitcoin and coming up on the right you’ll see $16K bitcoin. Please make sure to fasten your seatbelts as we begin our ascent to the moon.”

Cameron Winklevoss, Gemini co-founder

“Rising prices during an uptrend while open interest is also on the rise could mean that new money is coming into the market.”

Messari

Prediction of the Week

Bitcoin sees record 100 days above $10,000 as one analyst eyes “parabolic” 2021

If all of this excitement wasn’t enough, Bitcoin has also officially broken a new record after trading above $10,000 for 100 consecutive days.

Now, a well-known analyst believes BTC could go “parabolic” in 2021 if it follows its behavior after previous halvings.

Bloomberg Intelligence’s senior commodity strategist, Mike McGlone, says it’s a simple matter of supply and demand. The number of new Bitcoin being mined fell yet again in May, yet appetite for the crypto among institutional investors is soaring.

“New highs are a next potential iteration and may be only a matter of time unless something we don’t foresee trips up the trend of greater adoption and demand vs. limited supply,” he predicted.

FUD of the Week

“I destroyed my life” — Uniswap trader spends $9,500 in fees on $120 transaction

Away from Bitcoin, let’s have a look at some FUD stories. And we begin with a clumsy trader who says they have “destroyed” their life after inadvertently paying $9,500 in fees for a $120 transaction on Uniswap. Whoops.

On Reddit, “ProudBitcoiner” revealed that they accidentally stumped up 23.5172 ETH in fees after getting the Gas Limit and Gas Price input boxes confused in the MetaMask wallet.

Uniswap is a non-custodial exchange for ERC-20 tokens, meaning that trades are executed directly from a user’s wallet, allowing them to manually set the gas prices they are willing to pay for a transaction.

Other Reddit users are now calling for MetaMask to introduce safeguards that would force users to confirm a transaction when the inputted gas price significantly exceeds the estimated price calculated by the wallet.

QuadrigaCX trustee only has $30 million to pay claims worth $171 million

Ernst & Young has received $171 million worth of claims from customers who lost their funds when the doomed crypto exchange QuadrigaCX collapsed. There’s just one problem: The trustee only has $29.8 million in funds to distribute.

More than 17,000 users filed claims — with $90.2 million in Canadian dollars, 24,427 BTC, 65,457 ETH and 87,031 LTC among the assets that are missing.

Gerald Cotten, the founder of QuadrigaCX, died in India of complications linked to Crohn’s disease. He was the only person who had keys to the exchange’s wallets — and in recent months, speculation has grown that he may not be dead at all.

Ernst & Young also noted that Cotten traded using customer funds, which has likely contributed to the discrepancy between assets and liabilities.

$1 billion from Silk Road wallet moves for the first time since 2015

An anonymous crypto user has just moved 69,370 BTC from an address associated with the Silk Road darknet market.

According to CipherTrace, the transfer was made in two transactions. The crypto user first sent 1 BTC, likely as a test transaction, before moving the bulk of the coins.

The blockchain intelligence firm speculated the anonymous user made the transactions “to stay up to date with the Bitcoin network” by switching between address formats.

It’s possible that hackers may have been responsible for moving the funds.

Best Cointelegraph Features

Bitcoin price nears $16,000, but it’s Ethereum that may shine in November

After Bitcoin’s strong breakout above $15,000, analysts are looking toward Ether as the market sentiment around Ethereum strengthens.

Coinbase, Gemini and others join forces to combat human trafficking

Leading exchanges are tracing suspicious crypto transactions to combat human trafficking.

The cryptocurrency sector is overflowing with dead projects

Blockchain technology is just a tool that solves a problem, it cannot be the goal of the entire project.

Bitcoin special! New 2020 high, election fallout, DeFi suffers: Hodler’s Digest, Nov. 2–8

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Oct 23 2020

Enterprise Blockchain Platform Waves Launches ERC-20 WAVES Token to Enable Access to Ethereum Network Apps

Waves (WAVES), a blockchain-based platform for developing enterprise-grade applications, will be issuing an ERC-20 compliant token as part of its collaboration with the Ethereum (ETH) network.

The Waves development team noted:

“As Waves continues to foster interoperability between various protocols, the WAVES token has been ported to Ethereum….a gateway facilitating transfers of the WAVES token to the Ethereum blockchain has been launched. This will enhance interoperability between the two blockchains and introduce Waves functionality to Ethereum users.”

The Waves team also mentioned that the gateway launch will allow WAVES token holders to gain access to many different decentralized applications (dApps), crypto-asset exchanges, and various decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. These services are operating on the Ethereum blockchain, whose users will gain “easy access to the WAVES coin.”

Users will have the option to transfer the WAVES token between the two independent blockchains through a gateway that has been launched in the Waves.Exchange client interface. There will be a minimal 2 WAVES withdrawal fee and the deposit fee will be 0 WAVES (so it’s currently free to make deposits). As explained in the announcement, users must lock one WAVES token so that they can issue one ERC-20 WAVES token.

The Waves team confirmed that a WAVES to USDN (an algorithmic crypto-collateralized stablecoin pegged to the US dollar) pool has now emerged on Uniswap, a major non-custodial Ethereum token exchange. (Note: for more details, check here.)

The Waves developers have acknowledged that Ethereum currently has the largest ecosystem in terms of the number of dApps and total active users. They claim that the launch of the WAVES token in the ERC-20 format “opens up new opportunities for interaction between the two ecosystems.”

They added:

“As of 2021, the gateway [to Ethereum] will be operated through Gravity, a data protocol that connects disparate blockchains with a truly agnostic and untokenized hub, acting as an oracle between systems. Waves is also going to implement the option of staking WAVES tokens directly from Ethereum wallets.”

They further noted:

“Two Waves ecosystem tokens — Neutrino USD (USDN), an algorithmic dollar-pegged stablecoin, and Neutrino System Base Token (NSBT), a system and governance token for the Neutrino protocol — have been available in the Etherum network for several months.”

The Waves team revealed that there are approximately 15.3 million USDN that have been moved to Ethereum. These coins are available via the pools of several different DeFi protocols, including Curve, 1inch, and Uniswap.

As reported recently, the Waves Association is offering 1 million WAVES or $2.9 million via its blockchain developer grant program.

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