PancakeSwap, a syrupy rabbit-themed decentralized exchange that calls the Binance Smart Chain its home, has surpassed the entire Ethereum network in terms of transaction volume over a 24-hour period. Data courtesy of DappRadar shows over 2 million transactions for PancakeSwap compared with 1.55 million for Ethereum. At the same time, Binance Smart Chain reported over 6 million transactions, with roughly 20% of them occurring over the same 24-hour stretch. The top five contributors were PancakeSwap, Mdex, Safemoon, PancakeBunny and Venus Protocol, Binance Chain Community confirmed earlier this week. Top 5 Txs contributors 1. @PancakeSwap 2. @Mdextech 3. @safemoon 4. @PancakeBunnyFin …

As the 2021 bull market cycle unfolds with decentralized finance and nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, being two of the biggest driving forces for growth, old-school cryptocurrency projects have quietly been climbing higher as their established track records begin to attract traders who value a longer history of success. One such project that has been gaining traction in recent weeks is Monero (XMR), a privacy-focused project that recently celebrated its seven-year anniversary and is now looking to take out its 2017 all-time high of $470. Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that since reaching a low of $134 on Feb. …

Uniswap’s decentralized exchange set a new weekly volume record on Tuesday, with cumulative transactions exceeding $10 billion amid the ongoing decentralized finance boom. CEO Hayden Adams tweeted the milestone on Tuesday with an accompanying chart showing a 25.7% weekly increase in volumes. If Uniswap manages to maintain its current pace, it will process over $500 billion worth of transactions in a year. @Uniswap weekly trading volume just passed $10b for the first time!!! $10b/week is over $0.5 trillion per year pic.twitter.com/ZibcDT9Zob — Hayden Adams (@haydenzadams) April 20, 2021 Uniswap’s 24-hour trade volumes are estimated to be around $1.9 billion, according …

Fractal, an established trading firm, is pushing to expand into the world of decentralized finance with Tokemak, a project the team refers to as a “decentralized liquidity reactor” for DeFi. The company announced on Tuesday a $4 million investment round led by Framework Ventures, a well-known DeFi investment fund known for its bets on Synthetix and Chainlink. Other major funds such as Electric Capital, Coinbase Ventures, North Island Ventures, Delphi Ventures and ConsenSys also joined the round. The funding comes in preparation for Tokemak’s release, slated for late second quarter 2021, which will see its liquidity network deployed on the …

ShapeShift, a cryptocurrency exchange based in Switzerland, has announced full integration with THORChain, enabling direct trading of Bitcoin (BTC) with Ether (ETH) and Litecoin (LTC). As of Tuesday, ShapeShift’s mobile users have the ability to make cross-chain swaps without the use of an intermediary, custodian or counterparty of any kind. This capability will be extended to ShapeShift’s web-based platform in the coming weeks. Erik Voorhees, ShapeShift’s founder and CEO, explained the importance of the THORChain integration: “We believe finance must be open and immutable. The THORChain team has built technology that brings these properties to the trading of bitcoin and …

Covalent’s latest findings in Cointelegraph Consulting’s biweekly newsletter investigates the anatomy of Ether (ETH) whales. The data indicates that the top 10 ETH-only whales consistently hold roughly 5 million ETH, with the largest whale accumulating more than 25% of the capital. The wallet address of the largest Ethereum whale, much like the other seven whales in the ranking, is relatively young as they only started buying in 2019. Apart from the amount of Ethereum that the whales hold, another defining characteristic of the group is its investment behavior pattern: It goes long on its assets and, probably, on the ecosystem …

Centralized cryptocurrency exchanges (CEX) have received increased attention over the past couple of months as excitement builds over Coinbase's April 14 NASDAQ listing and the exchange's recent announcement that it pulled in $1.8 billion in revenue during the first quarter of 2021. Even as decentralized finance (DeFi) and popular decentralized exchanges (DEX) like Uniswap (UNI) and PancakeSwap (CAKE) attracted investors, high transaction costs and low liquidity on separate blockchain networks means that many crypto traders stick with CEXs for lower trading costs and the sense of security they offer. While Bitcoin, DeFi tokens and a selection of altcoins have garnered …

Bitcoin’s bull run from last year has caused even some of its biggest skeptics to soften their stance. From economists to hedge fund managers, the world is opening itself up to technology, and at the center of this movement is decentralized finance, or DeFi. While the market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies has hit $2 trillion, worth as much as Apple, it’s the promise of DeFi — a small corner of the blockchain industry today — that’s grabbing the attention of institutional investors. As Bitcoin’s (BTC) bullish trend persists, interest-bearing crypto products have become all the rage. Some services offer up …

Decentralized exchange Kyber has launched a Dynamic Market Maker, or DMM, in what it claims is a world first. The new platform, which was announced on April 5, has been designed to optimize fees and enable extremely high capital efficiency for liquidity providers. One of the major differences between Kyber’s new platform and regular Automated Market Makers, or AMMs, is the fee generation system. While platforms such as Uniswap charge a fixed trading fee of 0.3%, the new DEX will calculate fees dynamically, increasing during times of high volatility and demand, and decreasing when markets are quiet. This encourages traders …

Automated market maker exchange Bancor has rolled out a new mechanism that allows users to increase their capital efficiency while providing liquidity in its pools. Called Vortex, the solution allows users providing liquidity in BNT, Bancor’s utility token, to borrow funds while continuing to obtain yield from swap fees. The Vortex mechanism reworks the existing mechanism of vBNT, a special version of the BNT token that entitles users to participate in governance. The voting token is automatically received when staking BNT into a liquidity pool, and it can be defined as Bancor’s pool token. The Vortex proposal adds functionality to …

A new cross-chain automated protocol based on Ethereum and Polkadot says it is using two parachains in its quest to deliver interoperability and layer-two scaling. KwikSwap enables users to swap tokens, create new markets and participate in yield farming by providing liquidity and engaging in staking. The project’s objective is to provide developers, liquidity providers and traders with an opportunity to participate in a decentralized financial marketplace that is open and accessible to all. At present, KwikSwap’s focus is on developing and integrating its testnet on Plasm and Acala Network — with both layer-two scaling solutions described as “best in …

Fei Labs concluded a successful genesis launch of its Fei stablecoin on Saturday, raising nearly $1.3 billion in Ethereum (ETH) from over 17,000 contributors, highlighting once again the market’s growing appetite for digital assets and decentralized finance. A total of 639,000 ETH was committed to the so-called minting of the FEI stablecoin, the company announced Saturday. At the time Genesis concluded, the ETH commitments were worth nearly $1.3 billion. The funds will be used to bootstrap Fei’s Protocol Controlled Value, or PCV, which is a category of total value locked. PCV represents all assets that are not redeemable by users, …