Decentralized finance (DeFi) was the driving force behind the growth in the cryptocurrency market in early 2021, but lately, the sector has taken a back seat to nonfungible tokens as famous artists and legacy auction houses jump into the NFT ring. A break from the spotlight has allowed some of the more popular DeFi projects like Balancer to regroup and plan out the next steps for their protocols as they work toward creating a more interoperable, user-friendly DeFi ecosystem. Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that Balancer Protocol Governance Token (BAL) reached a low of $28.95 on Feb. 23 …

The explosion of interest in non-fungible tokens over the past two months has taken some of the attention away from the decentralized finance sector but this doesn't mean that some projects are not seeing bullish breakouts. One project that has continued to work on expandin the capabilities of its ecosystem is the Kyber Network (KNC), an on-chain liquidity protocol that aggregates liquidity from multiple sources to enable instant token swaps on any decentralized application (DApp). Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that the price of KNC surged 50% over the past 24-hours, climbing from a low of $1.93 on …

Solana and Serum announced the winners of a recent two-week hackathon focusing on building decentralized finance projects on the Solana blockchain. A total of nine projects were eligible for the hackathon’s official prize pool, with an additional project winning a community prize. The winning projects are primarily new DeFi protocols, though some infrastructure and tooling solutions also made the cut. The two first-place winners, Mango Markets and PsyOptions, won $50,000 in USDC-SPL, or USD Coin (USDC) based on Solana. Both projects focus on creating new trading platforms on the Solana blockchain, with Mango Markets building a margin trading and derivatives …

The 1inch team has released the third iteration of its Aggregation Protocol, a tool that routes trade orders across all decentralized exchanges on Ethereum and, as of recently, Binance Smart Chain. The Aggregation Protocol calculates the most profitable trade for a given token and size of the order, potentially splitting a large order into several chunks across several decentralized exchanges. Previously, the tool was mostly useful for wealthy traders for whom slippage was an important factor when trading in decentralized finance. The system consumed more gas than using a DEX protocol directly, which meant that the product was unattractive for …

Decentralized exchanges have continued to increase their market share, spurred on by high Ethereum gas prices, a rapid release of decentralized token sales, and layer two networks incentivizing developers to make their protocols accessible to users on different networks. The latest findings by Covalent in Cointelegraph Consulting’s biweekly newsletter indicate that the top DEXs on Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche C-Chain, and Polygon (formerly Matic) began to rise in volume as Ethereum gas prices pushed higher. PancakeSwap became the first DEX on BSC to breach the $1 billion mark in volume over a 24-hour period, despite entering February with only around …

A DeFi-focused crypto platform has entered into a partnership with CoinMarketCap — enabling its users to access more comprehensive decentralized finance data. DEXTools says the collaboration with CMC is the latest milestone in its rapidly growing operation, which has already come a long way since launching early last year. “CMC has recognized our product and its quality and has chosen us to be a reliable partner to move forward and strengthen their position into the DeFi sector,” the platform said. As a result of the partnership, CoinMarketCap will be using the data provided by DEXTools’ API — and integrating the …

Decentralized finance transaction combination tool Furucombo will compensate the victims of a recent “evil contract” exploit that cost the protocol $15 million in stolen funds. Following an internal call with affected users last week, Furucombo released a compensation plan Tuesday, announcing that they will issue 5 million iouCOMBO tokens to the victims of the breach. Issued in the form of ERC-20 tokens, iouCOMBO tokens will represent the rights to claim Furucombo’s COMBO tokens in the recovery pool. Out of a total of 100 million COMBO tokens, 5 million coins have been allocated to the recovery pool, and are subject to …

The native token of leading decentralized exchange Uniswap has surged by nearly 50% this week, ranking UNI as the eighth-largest crypto asset with a $17.7 billion market cap as speculation builds for the exchange’s coming V3 overhaul. Messari currently ranks UNI as the -second-largest Ethereum-based asset by market cap behind Tether, beating out the Chainlink by nearly 50% of its capitalization. UNI broke into the top 10 on March 5, becoming the first native token of a DeFi DApp to hold the distinction. In 24 hours, UNI’s capitalization increased from $8.8 billion on March 4 to $14.7 billion, according to …

As blockchain technology increasingly becomes part of the mainstream conversation, its integration with today's most used technologies is bound to increase. This means that it's only a matter of time before video streaming, digital music and social media see gradual blockchain integrations take place. Audius (AUDIO) is one project that is chasing the first-mover advantage in the music streaming sector. The music-sharing and streaming protocol facilitates transactions between creators and listeners, making it relatively effortless for users to distribute and monetize audio content. The project has received increasing attention for its approach to decentralizing the music industry and on March …

The rising popularity of decentralized finance (DeFi) has brought fresh attention and optimism to the cryptocurrency sector with the total value locked on all protocols increasing from $1 billion to $59 billion in less than a year and the top 5 platforms accounting for $24.33 billion of the total value. Rising gas fees have been one of the most noticeable results of the increasing interaction with DeFi protocols and currently, the Ethereum (ETH) network hosts the majority of the top DeFi projects. Gas fees have been steadily rising since November 2020 and reached a peak on Feb. 23 when the …

Major DeFi protocols are moving to cultivate a multi-chain decentralized finance ecosystem, with SushiSwap deploying its contracts on five networks, and Balancer announcing ports onto Moonbeam and Polkadot. On March 3, SushiSwap CTO, Joseph Delong, announced the DEX had deployed contracts on xDai, Moonbeam Network, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon (previously called Matic), and Fantom. Delong noted Sushi is planning additional future deployments, including on Optimism. A Solana port is also under consideration. While the CTO stated users can expect “relatively complete” experiences on Fantom and Binance as both networks currently “have good support for token lists,” the three other networks …

Polygon-based DEX QuickSwap has attracted more than $105 million in worth of liquidity since the start of 2021. The Uniswap clone began the year with only $300,000 worth of assets locked in its protocol, with more than three quarters of the exchange’s total value locked being added in the past fortnight. QuickSwap is currently the leading second-layer decentralized exchange by daily volume with $38.5 million worth of trades over the past 24 hours. The second-largest L2 DEX by volume is Loopring with $8.4 million, followed by ZKSwap with $2.5 million. L2 DEX trading volume in the last 24hrs: 1 @QuickswapDEX …