The exponential growth of the decentralized finance sector increased activity on the Ethereum blockchain, and this has resulted in slow transaction times and incredibly high fees. In the last month, Ether (ETH) price has also rallied more than 100%, and gas fees are on the rise again as demand for ETH and a resurgence in the DeFi sector accelerates. Matic Network intends to solve the DeFi and decentralized applications scalability problem by using layer-two technology for off-chain computing. Multiple sidechains can be used simultaneously, and each is secured by a group of validators via its proof-of-stake system. The results are …

Stanford Blockchain Club has become one of the largest delegates for the exchange Uniswap, overtaking a student group at rival California university UC Berkeley. The student-run blockchain club verified itself as a Uniswap delegate on Tuesday, having amassed 2,524,711 votes, according to Sybil, an Ethereum governance tool. That puts Stanford in the ninth spot, just ahead of UC Berkeley’s CalBlockchain with 2,524,711 votes. Verifying myself as a @UniswapProtocol #UNIDelegate on Sybil️https://t.co/aduPp8Jyvy addr:0xEFF506a32B55D5c19847c1a4F8510c00280c27E5 sig:0x28a199454657eb2b90d096e25d7c20797f93363dec360309ce7fe82954f7a5920772acc3f1b37bd9f234eafa2ace3daaa0e61ff58e739da72deba037a30b37bd1c — Stanford Blockchain Club (@StanfordCrypto) January 5, 2021 Dharma and EOA remain the two largest delegates, with over 15 million votes each. Uniswap’s top 10 delegates now …

Blockchain at Berkley, a student-run blockchain organization, has become the tenth-largest delegate for the Uniswap exchange, highlighting the diverse groups involved with the emerging DeFi platform. The student group has amassed 2.5 million votes, where it’s tied with three other organizations, according to Sybil, an Ethereum governance tool. That gives Blockchain at Berkley a vote weight of 2.336%. Dharma is the largest delegate with 16,659,333 votes, or 14.632%. Verifying ourselves as a @UniswapProtocol #UNIDelegate on Sybil️https://t.co/SuuzI9Tj7Y addr:0x458cEec48586a85fCFEb4A179706656eE321730E sig:0xd18f9512640a34b30aa63ac13f6f8281971f2ee54ecd789c9311f57ace51a399707e37bb8b417b8ed9b54c9d6db98b8e83935c45d7521219a79fc3bb2f2eda161b — Blockchain at Berkeley (@CalBlockchain) December 21, 2020 Founded in Oct 2016, Blockchain at Berkeley describes itself as a “hub for blockchain …

Layer two decentralized exchanges Loopring and DeversiFi are joining forces by forming a committee dedicated to promoting usage of layer two solutions, named “L2 Squared” or just L². Announced on Monday, the alliance wants to ease the transition for users into these higher performance on-chain exchanges. “As things stand, Loopring and DeversiFi are the first exchanges on Ethereum to harness Layer-2 solutions, using zkRollup and StarkEx’s Validium respectively,” explained Will Harborne, founder of DeversiFi. “However the much-needed migration to Layer-2 is not a simple one, and the network effects of Layer-1 composability are very strong which stand to slow down …

Decentralized stablecoin exchange Curve Finance has added the euro as a secondary currency option following demand from users. As announced in a tweet on Sunday, Curve now has a liquidity pool for switching between the Stasis Euro (EURS) stablecoin and a synthetic euro, sEUR, on the Synthetix derivatives platform. Currently, the stablecoin market is dominated by currencies pegged to the U.S. dollar, meaning that European and Asian users often have no option but to take on some U.S. dollar exposure whether they wish to or not. Curve hopes that the new pool will develop euro markets on the platform, gauge …

Sovryn, a decentralized finance platform operating on the RSK Bitcoin sidechain, announced on Tuesday its public launch. Users can now access a full suite for trading Bitcoin (BTC) in a trustless, noncustodial environment, benefiting from powerful leverage and yield opportunities. The platform presents a mix of major DeFi building blocks, including a collateralized lending protocol and automated market maker exchange. Users can trade long or short with up to five-times leverage, while holders of Bitcoin (BTC), Tether (USDT) and the Dollar on Chain (DOC) stablecoin can earn interest by lending their assets. Later in December, the project plans to launch …

Leading decentralized exchange Uniswap has surpassed $50 billion in all-time trade volume, a major milestone for the DEX sector. On Dec. 15, Uniswap creator Hayden Adams tweeted data indicating the platform has processed a life-time volume of $51.7 billion across 26,000 unique trading pairs — equating to nearly $2 million per pairing on average. Looks like @UniswapProtocol passed $50b in all time volume last week. This is split across 26,000 unique trading pairs Just need to do this 19 more times to hit 1 trillion pic.twitter.com/P4eQTnX4Aq — Hayden Adams (@haydenzadams) December 14, 2020 If Uniswap were to maintain its recent …

Polkastarter, a decentralized exchange on the Polkadot platform, is launching a mechanism for crowdfunding, with several projects lined up to offer token sales through the platform. Through a so-called “Fixed Swap Pool”, projects can list their tokens and set up a pool with a fixed per-token purchase rate. The product will go live on Dec. 15, and three projects will be using the platform to raise funds in the first three days of launch. These include two decentralized autonomous organizations, SpiderDAO and MahaDAO. Initial Decentralized exchange Offerings, or IDOs, first came into existence in the second half of 2019, although …

LINKSWAP, a decentralized exchange (DEX) on Ethereum (ETH) has become the eighth-largest DEX by total value locked (TVL) on Dec. 14, a week after its launch. YFL, the governance token of the DEX, has also started to recover in the past week. There are several key reasons behind the growing momentum of LINKSWAP: staking, highly-anticipated launch, the uptrend of Ethereum, and the decentralized finance (DEFI) market’s overall recovery. 20% of total YFL supply staked in Governance Vault According to the YFLink team, over 10,000 YFL have been staked in the Governance Vault. Data from CoinGecko shows YFL has a total …

Uniswap serves as a massive player in the decentralized finance, or DeFi, niche of the crypto space. Incognito, a blockchain focusing on crypto privacy, has reopened pUniswap, a way to participate on Uniswap privately. “Uniswap, Ethereum’s largest DEX, just went Incognito. Again,” Incognito announced in a blog post on Thursday. Aimed at enhancing the project, Incognito put pUniswap on hold back in September. Participating in the DeFi ecosystem often means interacting with the Ethereum blockchain, as many platforms operate on its network. That said, some folks value privacy. Without pUniswap, transactions on the DeFi exchange can be traced back to …

Eosfinex, the Bitfinex-backed noncustodial exchange running on the Eos network, announced the listing of more than 15 ERC-20 tokens, primarily consisting of governance tokens of major decentralized finance protocols on Ethereum. The listing is made possible by a collaboration with pNetwork, a crypto-asset wrapping network that already brought cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin (LTC) to Eos and Ethereum. The pNetwork tokens are distinguished by their lower case "p" prefix — for example, “pBTC” and “pLTC.” The listing on Eosfinex will occur in several phases. The first, scheduled for Thursday, will bring Uniswap’s token (pUNI), Band Protocol (pBAND), Balancer …

The team behind the 1inch protocol, which combines an automated market maker protocol and an aggregator for other DEXs, announced on Wednesday a successful Series A round for $12 million. Pantera Capital, a major venture fund active in the cryptocurrency space, led the round. A total of 10 other funds joined in the round, including: ParaFi Capital, Nima Capital, LAUNCHub Ventures, Spark Capital, Gumi Cryptos, Fabric Ventures, Struck Capital, Rockaway Blockchain Fund, Spartan Capital Securities and Blockchain Capital. Three business angels also participated in funding, including Josh Hannah, partner at Silicon Valley fund Matrix Partners; Kain Warwick, founder of Synthetix; …