Hot on the heels of launching its crypto-powered crowdfunding platform in May, a blockchain firm dedicated to supporting R&D for hi-tech projects is entering the DeFi space with its own decentralized exchange. The core of Tecra’s business is the Tecra Space crowdfunding platform, which supports start-ups focused on technology, innovation and sustainability. It supports them by tokenizing the intellectual property (IP) of these fledgling businesses for small investors interested in backing projects that can do well while doing good. Each project supported by Tecra Space offers its own tokens, which can be purchased with Ether, Tether stablecoins and TecraCoin (TCR) …

Decentralized finance (DeFi) was one of the driving forces behind this year's surge in the cryptocurrency market as projects like Yearn.finance (YFI), Aave (AAVE) and Uniswap (UNI) quickly climbed to ‘blue-chip unicorn’ status and older protocols like Maker (MKR) and Compound (COMP) saw their prices skyrocket to new record highs. But as the old saying goes, “markets take the escalator up and the elevator down,” and given the volatile nature of the crypto market, it seems that the elevator is in a free fall. Previously hot DeFi sector tokens have on average seen their token values fall by at least …

On May 21 the crypto market was hit with a fresh round of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) which sparked another, albeit more muted, sell-off in Bitcoin (BTC) price and a majority of the altcoins. For the second time in less than 3-weeks, China was again the culprit as rumors that regulators were looking to crack down on Bitcoin mining and trading. Media also reported that authorities in Hong Kong proposed banning retail traders from cryptocurrency trading. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that Bitcoin (BTC) bulls were holding the $40,000 support level prior to the announcement from …

HaloDAO, a decentralized marketplace for stablecoins, has raised $3.5 million in seed investments, setting the stage for the creation of an all-in-one DeFi ecosystem for swapping, borrowing and lending. Founded by former employees of ConsenSys, HaloDAO aims to develop liquid markets for stablecoins beyond the U.S. dollar. As part of its initial rollout, HaloDAO will focus on asset-based stablecoins for Asian fiat currencies. “Asia has one of the most tech-savvy and blockchain-aware populations in the world and will likely reach mass adoption of digital assets before other regions,” Julian Gropp, portfolio manager at Parataxis Capital, said, adding: “We believe that …

Cryptocurrency investors are still picking up the pieces from the May 19 market-wide implosion which saw Bitcoin (BTC) drop to an unexpected low at $30,000. Post-mortem analysis now shows that the correction catalyzed a mad dash among traders running for the exits as the cascading sell-off resulted in a record 10,525 BTC liquidated across all exchanges. Altcoins were quick to follow suit as they joined Bitcoin in its plunge and hardly a token was left unscathed by the downturn as a wider-sell-off rippled across the market, resulting in a $437 billion haircut to the total market capitalization to $1.672 trillion, …

A new exchange aiming to build some tricky bridges between decentralized and centralized systems. On Thursday, Cryptocurrencies.Ai (CCAI) announced a $8 million raise led by a host of major funds, including Alameda Research, DFG, Rarestone Capital and half a dozen others. The raise will be used to help bolster the exchange’s efforts to provide a bevy of user experience perks and features often lacking in decentralized exchanges. Among the features touted are built-in tools for automated trading and bots, as well as notes, calendars and performance tracking — all of which are hypothetically available to users of exchanges like Uniswap, …

Despite launching to the Ethereum mainnet just two weeks ago, Uniswap v3 has already overtaken SushiSwap to rank as the second-largest Ethereum-based decentralized exchange by trade volume. On May 20, Ryan Watkins of crypto data aggregator Messari noted that v3 had hosted 81% of the volume hosted by v2 over 24 hours earlier this week. The researcher shared data showing that as of May 16, v3 had processed 15% more weekly volume than major Ethereum-based DEX SushiSwap, beating out Sushi’s $5.6 billion with $6.5 billion. 0x ranked behind SushiSwap with $3 billion, followed by Curve with $1.9 billion, and Balancer …

DeversiFi, an Ethereum-based layer-two decentralized finance platform, has secured $5 million in strategic investments from some of crypto’s biggest venture capital firms, sending a strong signal that demand for DeFi opportunities remains strong. DeversiFi intends to make DeFi trading more accessible, allowing users to invest, trade and send tokens without having to pay gas fees. The platform announced its DVF governance token on March 25 with a fixed supply of 100 million. The decentralized exchange relaunched as DeversiFi 2.0 in June 2020, incorporating the Starkware kSTARK layer-two scaling technology. Will Harborne, DeversiFi’s co-founder, described the importance of layer-two scaling for …

Polygon, a leading platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development, has attracted 75,000 new users over the past seven days, highlighting growing demand for layer-two decentralized applications. The data, courtesy of DappRadar, shows that the top 20 Polygon decentralized applications, or DApps, were responsible for the increase. In this case, new users refer to active wallets interacting with Polygon DApps. The influx of new users brought in nearly $1 billion in volume. In the last four weeks, the number of Polygon DApps tracked by DappRadar has grown to 93 from 61. Forty-six of these DApps are in the decentralized finance, …

This year decentralized finance (DeFi) has proven to be a transformative sector for the cryptocurrency ecosystem and it is also making waves in among global financial markets as institutional investors become entranced with the potential to earn high yields on stablecoins, altcoins and Bitcoin. While the price action from Dogecoin (DOGE) has dominated the headlines in recent weeks, Delphi Digital has been chronicling the growth of the DeFi ecosystem on the Ethereum (ETH) network which has steadily been gaining strength over the past month. According to Delphi Digital researchers, while the majority of growth occurred on Ethereum-based DeFi platforms, protocols …

Incumbents in traditional capital markets, as well as new entrants looking to capture market share, should heed the innovations within the crypto ecosystem collectively known as decentralized finance, or DeFi. These innovations present a model for the direction that traditional capital markets are likely to take in the coming years as regulation catches up with the capabilities of distributed ledger technology, or DLT, and as the technology itself is refined through “in-the-wild” usage. Decentralized exchange protocols, also known as automated market makers, or AMMs, are one of these innovations that has been widely adopted in the crypto space. Real-time settlement …

1inch Network, a leading decentralized exchange aggregator, has officially expanded to Polygon — a move that opens up additional liquidity sources on Curve, SushiSwap, QuickSwap, Aave V2 and Cometh. 1inch announced Thursday that the exchange liquidity pools will be added immediately, with more protocols to be gradually phased in over time. Polygon was described by 1inch as a “vital” infrastructure protocol for ensuring efficient Ethereum scaling as the developer network transitions to proof-of-stake. Sergej Kunz, co-founder of 1inch Network, said user requests for Polygon swapping were “massive” after 1inch integrated Binance Smart Chain: “After the 1inch Network has expanded to …