USDC

Jan 12 2021

New OCC Regulations Could Be a Double-Edged Sword for Crypto Sector

The latest crypto guidelines from the OCC are being hailed as a win for the industry but Avanti Bank executive Caitlin said that they could prove to be a double-edged sword in the long run. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a US Treasury Bureau engaged in regulating banks, issued a letter last week which detailed how national banks can use blockchains and stablecoins for making payments.

The news has not received much traction as it got drowned in the noise around Bitcoin’s historic rise and crash and other political events in the country. However, since then, many crypto personalities have shared their views on the letter, some hailing it as a welcome step from the authorities. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, whose company backs the USDC stablecoin said,

“The new interpretive letter establishes that banks can treat public chains as infrastructure similar to SWIFT, ACH and FedWire, and stablecoins like USDC as electronic stored value. The significance of this can’t be understated.”

The reality could be more complicated

Crypto supporters suggest that the reality is more complex than what the supporters or detractors of the letter assume. Wall Street Veteran Caitlin Long, who played an instrumental role in creating the blockchain laws of Wyoming said that the OCC letter is a “double-edged sword” for the industry. The guidance could be useful for big banks to remove all crypto startups from the bank. As national banks, they will have an advantage over startups and will not require regulators’ nod before entering into the stablecoin industry.

Crypto companies and smaller banks will need to get approval from regulators before working with stablecoins. This system is unfavorably tiled to provide benefits to large banks. This would allow the big banks in the US to create their own systems more quickly and let the network effect work for them faster.

New OCC Regulations Could Be a Double-Edged Sword for Crypto Sector

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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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Dec 20 2020

After exploit, Warp Finance compensation plan takes promising strides

In a blog post on Saturday night, Warp Finance — the latest decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol to suffer a smart contract exploit — announced promising strides towards recompensating users following a nearly $8 million flash loan attack.

As Cointelegraph reported on Friday, the DeFi protocol, which offers stablecoin loans on liquidity pool token collateral, lost $7.7 million in USDC and DAI when an attacker used multiple flash loans to create liquidity pool tokens, manipulate Warp’s price oracles, and drain Warp’s stablecoin coffers.

Following the attack, a group of whitehack hackers convened to assist the protocol in assessing the damage and creating a fix for the exploit — and, in this case, recovering a portion of the lost funds.

In a post titled, “Exploit Summary & Recovery of Funds,” the Warp team notes that they could not liquidate the attacker’s loan due to the manipulated oracle, but with the help of the whitehat team managed to reclaim the liquidity pool token loan collateral.

“The loan collateral has since been secured by the warp finance team and will allow us to return approximately 75% of users’ deposited funds, thanks to support from the Ethereum and white hat community,” said the team.

The post said that the team will disburse funds to affected users on Dec 21st, 2020, and invited users to independently confirm that the snapshot they took of addresses is correct.

The team also doubled down on a complete compensation plan, promising the distribution of IOU tokens that will have some future utility to cover the remaining 25% loss:

“While we are relieved that lost funds have been partially recovered, we see this only as a first step to making Warp Finance users whole. For this reason we will issue Portal IOU tokens to every affected user. The end goal of the IOU token is to fully refund users, and potentially even giving them a profit on what they initially deposited.”

The Warp team’s devotion to completely covering user losses is part of what may be becoming a promising trend across exploited DeFi protocols.

In a previous interview with Cointelegraph, semi-anonymous core developer for Cover — a project offering ‘cover,’ and insurance-like product for DeFi users — said that developers taking responsibility for losses will ultimately push the space forward:

“I believe protocols (and their auditors) need to start taking responsibility for the code they push out,” he said. “Whether it is through they themselves providing coverage, or reimbursing funds, this type of behavior sets a strong precedent and allows users to feel more confident in the platforms they use, which helps boost TVL, so a win-win.”

After exploit, Warp Finance compensation plan takes promising strides

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Dec 05 2020

Stellar Wants to Transform the Agric Sector Using Real-live Farming Models

Blockchain technology is gradually taking top priority in several industries, including agriculture. There are now hundreds of startups setting up a proof of concept project. Task, a mobile-first software services provider, recently launched software that uses blockchain to remit payments across borders.

Although it was a trial project, it shows that the Stellar blockchain has the capability of driving sustainability in real-life farming models.

Stellar is an open-source decentralized technology that is utilized to connect banks, payment systems, and people. The platform was designed to facilitate secure, low-cost, and fast cross-border transactions.

Driving sustainability in the Agric sector

It was founded by Joyce Kim and former Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb in 2014, and supported by the non-profit Stellar Development Foundation.

On the other hand, Task enables users to create initiatives on the platform and set credits like stablecoins on the project’s wallet. After the initiative, the program manager will now establish the activities that will track.

The tracking includes requiring certain documents or images to show that a particular task has been complete. After the remote ream finishes the assigned task and submits the proof of concept, the tTask portal immediately credits their wallets.

To carry out the trial project, a U.K.-based program manager who has farming communities in Thailand was invited by Task. The trial project was developed on the Stellar blockchain, which allows remittance of the funds at a significantly improved speed of fewer than 5 seconds and very low fees of $0.00002.

While speaking about the choice of the company on Stellar, Task founder and chief executive officer Steve Walker stated that one of the reasons for choosing the Stellar technology was the platform’s focus on low-cost cross-border payments. Generally, Stellar is set up to make fiat money more accessible and useful.

Transformation of the Agric sector using Stellar

And with Task payments done via stablecoins, it can suppress the volatile nature of crypto coins. As it stands, the Task platform offers support for BRLT stablecoins, Circle Internet Financial’s USDC token, as well as AnchorUSD’s USDX token.

During the trial project, Task enabled the administrator to set up an initiative to incentivize Biochar production. The company offered support for local dialects, which enable less-tech savvy farmers to have smooth interaction with the platform.

After producing the Biochar, the farmer can easily upload the document and images as evidence on the Task platform. After the platform has received the evidence, payment is released by the administrator. The system is a simple one that intends to carry all farmers along.

Stellar Wants to Transform the Agric Sector Using Real-live Farming Models

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Sep 09 2020

USDC Now on Algorand Bringing “Major Scalability and Performance Improvements”

The Centre Consortium has announced that USD Coin or USDC is now using Algorand – the second major blockchain after Ethereum to offer native support for the stablecoin.

The Centre Consortium was founded by Circle and Coinbase – the creators of USDC which was announced in 2018. Centre was formed with a mission of creating a global standard for fiat based digital currency that can be exchanged with very little friction and at speed. Centre wants to ensure that its stablecoin standards, formats and protocols work across multiple major blockchain platforms.

So why is this important? Using Algorand will help boost speed and scale – something that is important when you are talking about payments and financial applications.

Algorand is said to bring over 1,000 tps and transaction fees of 1/20th of a cent to the USDC ecosystem – far better than Ethereum. Future improvements include the potential of scaling throughput by 8-10x on Layer 1, accompanied by new secure smart contracts for tokens.

USDC has grown rapidly with over 1.8 billion in circulation jumping by 3x in the past 6 months.

Earlier this year, Centre announced its Multichain USDC Framework, an effort to increase interoperability. The Centre Multichain USDC Framework is said to establish a “rigorous set of criteria for the issuance and operation of USDC on new blockchains, while also supporting innovation and experimentation by third-party developers and blockchain platforms.”

Centre reports that it has been encouraged by the growing interest in using USDC within regulated financial institution settings.

Silvio Micali, founder of Algorand, called USDC on Algorand a defining milestone for frictionless payments as well as sophisticated financial applications:

“This launch brings together the convenience of USDC and an advanced protocol for global financial exchange in which Layer-1 smart contracts are as simple and secure as ordinary payments.”

Alesia Haas, Chief Financial Officer at Coinbases, said expanding USDC beyond Ethereum will ensure USDC has the ability to support a diverse range of services in DeFi or large financial service firms.

“Today’s launch represents a significant improvement to USDC’s scalability, improving its utility and making it a significantly more useful protocol for solving real-world financial problems,” said Haas.”We look forward to supporting USDC on Algorand for both our retail and institutional customers in the future.”

Jeremy Allaire, Chairman and CEO of Circle, said that Algorand has been at the forefront of scalable blockchain:

“Algorand’s focus on providing capabilities that are geared towards regulated financial institutions is also important as digital dollar stablecoins such as USDC become a core market infrastructure in the financial services industry more broadly.”

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