The decentralized finance (DeFi) sector faced its first real challenge during last week’s market sell-off that saw more than $1 trillion wiped from the global cryptocurrency market cap as traders feverishly ran for the safety of stablecoins amid tumbling prices. Despite rapidly declining token prices, the nascent DeFi sector held its own as decentralized exchanges experienced a record $11.7 billion in trading volume on May 19. Uniswap (UNI) led with $5.7 billion in volume, followed by SushiSwap (SUSHI) which saw $2.8 billion in 24-hour trading volume. According to the recent DeFi Uncovered report from Glassnode, blue-chip DeFi tokens including, UNI, …

The circulating supply of the four-largest stablecoins has spiked to new all-time highs, suggesting buyers could soon spark another leg up for the Bitcoin and crypto markets. The combined capitalization of Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC), Binance USD (BUSD), and Dai (DAI) has surged almost 190% from $27 billion to almost $78 billion since the beginning of this year. In its May 3 Week on Chain report, on-chain analytics provider, Glassnode, noted that Tether is firmly positioned as the stable token sector’s leader, representing two-thirds of the top four stablecoins’ combined capitalization. USDT’s total minted supply hit an all-time high …

Decentralized lending and stablecoin protocol MakerDAO has opened governance voting to allow new tokens as collateral. A number of new collateral types have been proposed for MakerDAO, potentially increasing the number of digital assets that can now be used to mint its stablecoin, Dai. Voting began on Monday and will run for 14 days. Seven tokens have been suggested as collateral for the Maker (MKR), including Moss Carbon Credit (MCO2), Rocket Pool’s staked Ethereum (rETH), the 1inch decentralized exchange token (1INCH) and the BadgerDAO Sett token (bBADGER). Three liquidity provider tokens are also being voted on as prospective collateral, including …

Stablecoins have become a significant foundational piece for the cryptocurrency sector because they serve as a deeply liquid base pair for most assets and also offer investors a secure place to capture gains. Data also shows that stablecoins play a significant role in functioning as a gateway for capital inflow to the crypto ecosystem. While the largest stablecoins in the market are currently controlled and issued by centralized entities like Tether or Circle, DAI and its issuer Maker (MKR) is one stablecoin project that keeps with the ethos of decentralization that the cryptocurrency community is founded on. Data from Cointelegraph …

The Dai stablecoin produced by decentralized lending protocol MakerDAO is getting some speed and fee enhancements with its forthcoming upgrade on layer-two. Ethereum scaling solutions provider Optimism will provide the technology as announced on the MakerDAO forum on March 9. Co-founder and CTO of gaming firm Bellwood Studios Sam MacPherson explained the "MakerDAO community will be launching an ‘official’ DAI on Optimism L2" and that the Optimism Dai Bridge would offer improvements on other implementations. He stated that currently, Optimism requires a seven day lockup period when withdrawing tokens back to layer-one (Ethereum) as the rollups rely on publishing the …

New Ethereum-backed stablecoin RAI hopes to be the savior of the DeFi sector by providing a truly decentralized stablecoin alternative. Developed by blockchain startup Reflexer Labs, RAI is not pegged to any fiat currency and its monetary policy is managed by an on-chain, autonomous controller. It's a fork of Maker's DAI. RAI co-founder Ameen Soleimani explained: “RAI is an asset backed only by ETH, governance-minimized, and programmed to maintain its own price stability without needing to peg to an external price reference like the USD.” Soleimani believes that RAI, which he dubbed “A Money God,” has far greate potential than …

A Reddit user by the name of “satoshinakamoto7” claims to have used their free MOON tokens to pay this month’s rent, offering another sign that cryptocurrencies are beginning to add real value to people’s lives. In a post that appeared on Tuesday, satoshinakamoto7 said they had burned through all of their cash savings and gold during the pandemic after being without a job for ten months. That’s when they remembered that they had over 14,000 Moons in their possession. The user explained: “I was wondering what to do for the rent, for a week now. And just remembered I had …

A Reddit user by the name of "u/Cryptorich13" has capitalized on the social media platform’s crypto reward system by converting his stash of free coins into Bitcoin (BTC). In a Sunday post, u/Cryptorich13 explained how he converted his 80,000 Moon reward into Bitcoin earlier this year. The value of his holdings has ballooned following the latest Bitcoin price pump. He said: “I shitposted a lot in 2017. I was awarded 80k reddit moons earlier this year which I sold on the rinkeby testnet using XDai and honeyswap and immediately bought BTC with it. (0.92 BTC to be exact).” U/Cryptorich13 claims …

Throughout 2020 a handful of new stablecoins launched and many analysts have suggested that stablecoin growth is the backbone of the crypto sector and partially responsible for the current Bitcoin rally. For many traders, stablecoins provide a safe place to shelter during volatile periods in Bitcoin and altcoins but there are other ways to interact with these fiat-pegged assets. Terra Protocol aims to create a programmable algorithmic stablecoin available on every blockchain. Similar to its better-known competitor, Maker (MKR), Terra Protocol has a native stabilizing crypto-asset called LUNA. The project was created by a partnership of 15 large Asia-based e-commerce …

On Monday, the majority of the Compound Finance governance community voted against a proposed compensation plan for users affected by the Dai liquidations that occurred on Nov. 26. Figures from the Compound governance dashboard show 681,290 votes against and only 212,952 votes in favor. Also, COMP whales such as Polychain Capital and Dharma were against the plan, judging by their “no” votes cast. As previously reported by Cointelegraph, some leveraged COMP farmers suffered massive liquidations amid a temporary glitch in the oracle price feed for the Dai stablecoin coming from Coinbase on Nov. 26. With Dai at a 30% premium, …

The crypto market suffered a powerful crash on Thursday morning UTC, which sent prices of major currencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) tumbling in excess of 10%. When traders rush for the exits, the price of stablecoins generally increase as the demand for stability rises. In today’s crash, however, the effect became particularly pronounced on Dai, which briefly traded for $1.3 between 7 am and 8 am UTC. Most notably, Dai traded at this inflated valuation only on Coinbase and Uniswap, while other exchanges including Kraken and Bitfinex seem to have maintained a relatively stable price. Coinbase and …

An Ethereum-based decentralized finance platform known as Cheese Bank recently suffered a $3.3 million loss — the product of a hack in early November. The thieves utilized a somewhat newly found weakness in the DeFi sector that harnesses flashloans. The Cheese Bank thieves stole the cheddar via dollar-pegged stablecoins USD Coin (USDC), Tether (USDT) and Dai. A number of other platforms have also suffered similar fates in recent days. “In the string of attacks, we have seen malicious actors use flash loans to instantaneously borrow, swap, deposit and again borrow large numbers of tokens so they can artificially manipulate the …