Balancer, a leading automated market maker, has launched version 2 of its protocol, promising faster speed, lower costs and improved liquidity. In addition to revamping the user interface, Balancer’s backend will provide more efficient routing for trades through “Protocol Vault.” The platform claims that this upgrade will reduce gas costs and produce better pricing mechanisms. Expected gas costs are said to be 40% lower in version 2 – a figure that jumps to 53% with internal balances. Balancer Labs, the development arm behind the AMM, also announced a partnership with DeFi protocol Gnosis to deliver an enhanced user experience to …

Centralized exchanges play an important role in the cryptocurrency industry. While their decentralized exchange counterparts have been growing in popularity and usage since 2020, the overwhelming majority of crypto trading volume is still concentrated on centralized exchanges. The supremacy of CEXs can be clearly observed in the size and popularity of trading platforms like Binance and Coinbase, which are now so recognizable and mainstream that Coinbase has recently become the first crypto company to be listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Acting as a necessary bridge between fiat and crypto, centralized exchanges provide unparalleled convenience. Nevertheless, industry leaders often see …

Every significant transformation comes with a new toolset, one that is always surprising at the time and obvious in hindsight. If we look at the past few years, we can notice that events around Bitcoin (BTC), the Black Lives Matter movement, climate change and GameStop — to name a few — are individual vectors of the same movement that highlights the need to refine inefficiencies of current systems and drives solutions led by an aggregation of individuals with a collective belief. This follows the recent events in which certain users were unable to access platforms such as Reddit, Parler and …

As the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem evolves and expands to encompass the whole of the cryptocurrency sector, the race to become the top decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator is heating up as new entrants to the field seem to emerge on a weekly basis. One of the top DEX aggregators that has recently seen its price reach a new record high is 1INCH, a protocol that offers “access to the most liquidity, lowest slippage and best exchange rates across Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain” according to the projet’s website. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that after hitting a …

IDEX, a San Francisco-based decentralized exchange, has unveiled new protocol upgrades designed to solve two of the biggest issues with decentralized finance, or DeFi — slippage and front-running. The exchange claims that its Hybrid Liquidity protocol solves these challenges by combining an order book and trading engine with the liquidity pools of an automated market maker, or AMM. “The novel exchange design protects users from the most glaring pitfalls of AMMs, including failed trades and front-running, by instantly executing trades against the best combination of limit orders and pooled liquidity,” the company said, adding: “This approach generates higher returns for …

The ability to send money to anyone, anywhere, at any time was one of the original motivations behind Bitcoin (BTC) that helped give rise to the expanding cryptocurrency ecosystem that exists today. Blockchain-based global remittance platforms are one sector of crypto projects that have evolved over time to help meet the needs of peer-to-peer money transactions, and Telcoin (TEL) is one such project that has made significant gains in 2021. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the price of Telcoin has surged more than 4,100% since Feb. 1, rallying from a low of $0.00066 to a new …

A high-frequency trading company has launched liquidity mining for holders of its native token. The new service is hosted on Uniswap, meaning users can still take advantage of the familiar, simple interface that this decentralized exchange provides. Black Ocean’s CEO, Andrei Grachev, says this feature gives users a chance to provide liquidity to decentralized markets — unlocking a wealth of new opportunities. Co-founder Vladimir Demin added: “Liquidity mining for FLy is a very important step on the development roadmap. As the FLy ecosystem is growing, we wish to give more benefits for early contributors. We also believe that taking a …

With the total value locked in decentralized finance on Ethereum now $89 billion, the market is eagerly waiting to see if the launch of Uniswap v3 could be the catalyst for DeFi’s next big bull run. Uniswap v3 promises advanced new features and opportunities for yield generation with its launch scheduled for Wednesday. Uniswap is emphasizing three new features for liquidity providers — customizable capital deployment across a market’s entire price curve in the form of concentrated liquidity, tiered market maker fees offering boosted returns for volatile pairs subject to impermanent loss, and cheaper access to oracles for improved data …

A DeFi platform says its decentralized approach to leveraged trading offers crucial advantages over centralized rivals. Gains.farm says it offers real-time prices and lightning-fast transactions — and boasts a network of five Chainlink nodes that delivers up-to-date information from seven trusted data sources, with results that are aggregated by taking the median two times. This approach has delivered users an all-important upper hand during the recent bout of volatility that shook the crypto markets, which saw the values of Bitcoin and Ether fall dramatically within a few hours. Gains.farm claims its platform was one of the few protocols that delivered …

Real-world adoption and the ability to service the needs of a wide range of industries are key qualities to have for blockchain projects that seek long-term viability in an increasingly crowded and evolving landscape. One cryptocurrency project from 2016 that has seen its price breakout to new highs in May is Waves (WAVES), a multi-faceted blockchain protocol that has seen significant growth in 2021 thanks to recent strides in decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFT) and real-world adoption. Data from Tradingview shows that after hitting a low of $12.22 on April 25, the price of Waves has swelled more than …

Decentralized finance (DeFi) has taken a well-deserved break from the spotlight over the past couple of months after being one of the hottest sectors at the start of 2021, but recent growth on several top platforms may hint at another DeFi run in the near future. While projects that operate on the Ethereum network continue to deal with wild fluctuations in gas fees and transaction times, several that operate on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) have seen an uptick in protocol activity and token value over the past week. Three projects on BSC that have seen increases in trading volume, price …

Decentralized exchanges have indelibly changed the way that cryptocurrencies are traded. But in the grand scheme of things, the technology that’s driving these platforms is relatively young… meaning it’s inevitable that teething problems have emerged. Some of the heavy hitters that dominate the market at present are known as non-orderbook markets. While it’s tantalizing and somewhat romantic that these platforms are controlled purely by supply and demand, it often results in some unexpected downsides. There’s one glaring disadvantage that we don’t need to mention too extensively — high swap fees. We currently live in a world where it can cost …