Votes are in: over 7 million Uniswap holders in favor of Polygon’s deployment proposal.

The votes are in and the Uniswap community has spoken. Interestingly, almost 100% of the votes on a proposal to deploy Uniswap on Polygon were in favor of the integration. Thus, clearly highlighting the explosive popularity that layer-2 protocols have been receiving of late.

Almost a week ago, Polygon developers had put forward a proposal on Uniswap’s governance portal. This, in order to pitch their goals of integration to the larger Uniswap community. The first phase of the governance process was initiated on 23 November. It encompassed the Temperature Check Poll, which tried to gauge an initial consensus on whether the proposal is even worth going ahead with.

Reportedly, over 7.79 million Uniswap holders voted yes to deploying Uniswap V3 to the Polygon PoS chain. Well, only 25,000 favorable votes were required for the proposal to move on to the next phase.

Polygon stated that “this is the right moment for this deployment to happen.” Since it could drastically decrease the transaction fee and time that users spend on the network. Especially, while interacting with Ethereum. Besides, expanding the decentralized exchange’s user base and revenues through scalability solutions.

The top DEXs like Sushiswap and Aave have already been deployed on Polygon. Well, the L2 protocol is ready to even allocate huge capital for this integration. Primarily, due to Uniswap’s respectable market position.

This includes participation in the design and execution of liquidity mining campaigns. In addition to the promotion of Uniswap V3 as a “money lego.”

Now that the temperature check poll has delivered a favorable outcome, the proposal will be moving to the next stage. It will be the “Consensus Check.” It requires 50,000 affirmative votes to be passed to the final stage of governance. Well, the purpose of the Consensus Check is to start a formal discussion by creating a new poll based on the feedback from the Temperature Check.

When one Twitter user pointed out that it could take months for the deployment to go live, Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic replied: “It can be done much quicker, assuming the governance process finishes successfully.”

Furthermore, with the overwhelming support from the Uniswap community, a delay in this process would rather be unlikely at this point.

In fact, owing to the soaring gas fee and longer transaction time, many are migrating to Layer-2 protocols. It scales the network and drastically increases its throughput. Not to forget, Polygon has turned out to be one of the most successful of those, with around $4.74 billion total value locked at press time.

$31 million stolen from MonoX on Polygon and Ethereum in latest DeFi hack.

Around $31 million in a variety of cryptocurrencies has been stolen from MonoX in a DeFi hack.

MonoX is a DeFi platform that offers liquidity pools, where traders can place their tokens and receive tokens in return for providing liquidity.

The funds stolen included $18.2 million in wrapped ether (WETH) and $10.5 million in polygon (MATIC). Other tokens taken were WBTC, LINK, GHST, DUCK, MIM and IMX.

The funds were stolen across two blockchains, Ethereum and Polygon. Polygon, formerly Matic, is a proof-of-stake blockchain that helps to take some of the load off the Ethereum blockchain.

MonoX has not made a statement following the hack. We have reached out to MonoX and will update this story should we hear back.

Ethereum’s DeFi debacle and what it actually needs to recover from its plunge.

November was a difficult month not only for the spot market but for the DeFi market as well, and Ethereum is the prime example of it.

Even though Ethereum holds 66% domination in the DeFi space, halfway through the month of November the DeFi king lost about $18 billion from its total value locked (TVL) and has since been making its recovery slowly.

Ethereum’s DeFi debacle
The biggest letdown came from some of the derivatives protocols which had a pretty significant drop of 13.21%, followed by Lending and DEXs at 9.17% and 6.51% respectively.

Some dApps are making major gains and supporting the recovery of the lost TVL. Loopring, for example, turned out to be one of the biggest protocols this month, rising by over 281% from $206 million to $785 million in market cap as of yesterday.

However, there are also some other not-so-well-known dapps that made it big. One of them was a stablecoin protocol Origin Dollar which saw a 492% increase in its TVL.

Another multi-currency stablecoin protocol handle.fi shot up 1580% and is currently sitting at $3.4 million. Loopring even sent out ripples in the spot market when it rallied by 813% this month.

So why is recovery slow?
The issue here is not with the protocols. Ethereum has a myriad active users on the network, but it still needs to add more. Even though it has the most number of addresses in comparison to the competing chains such as the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Solana, etc., the rate at which it adds addresses hasn’t changed in a long time.

On a daily basis Ethereum only sees an increment of 134k addresses, whereas BSC adds about 275k, and Polygon at one point this month added 1.9 million addresses in a day.

Plus out of all these chains, Ethereum has only 590k active addresses on a regular basis, which is much lower than BSC’s 1.8 million active addresses.

Consequently, the number of transactions conducted fell to just 1.2 million. On the other hand BSC and Polygon regularly conduct about 15 million and 4 million transactions respectively.

What’s important to understand here, is that dApps and protocols will rise and fall and since Ethereum has over 310 protocols, they cannot be considered as a factor of stability. However, if the participation on-chain increases it would lead to higher transaction figures and higher inflows. The tides could then change and Ethereum could recover much quicker.

Analyzing what exactly is the state of Uniswap’s investors.

Uniswap [UNI], despite being a top-20 cryptocurrency, has been going on without an entire cohort of investors in its bag. However, even though investors managed to turn that around, the altcoin has been relentless and investors are losing patience due to UNI’s ongoing price action.

Uniswap going down?
Uniswap is one of the biggest DEXs on Ethereum and in the market. And yet, its performance week-on-week has made investors concerned about their investments.

According to a Crypto.com report, Uniswap was the worst-performing DEX over the previous week with almost 24.36% of its market cap and 14% of its average weekly volumes observing a depreciation.

UNI holders, on the contrary, from September onwards, finally crossed an important milestone of holding their assets for more than 1 year, leading to 47k addresses becoming the first-ever Long term Holders on the network. Increasing Month-on-Month, their percentage crossed 17% less than 24 hours ago.

Alas, this one positive development is not enough to counter the effects of a dejected market, one where UNI is unable to rise at all.

While the month of October wasn’t as harmful thanks to its consolidation, all of that safety was stripped away after UNI finally fell through the $23-support level. At the time of writing, it was looking at the critical support of $18.9.

Furthermore, the rising losses have led to over 52% of the addresses losing their profits. It is actually the worst condition investors have been in since the dip in July.

This 2 month-long price pattern explains why investors aren’t really moving their UNI. As a result, the number of transactions has fallen to 1.2k. This further resulted in UNI not changing hands as frequently and the network’s velocity falling to a 7 month low.

On the other hand, thanks to the ongoing market movement, volatility has fallen to its all-time low. This could prove to be essential for a sustainable recovery on the charts.

Polygon: new investors take the wheel, while long term investors are…

Polygon made a significant impact within the crypto space this year both in the spot market as well as the DeFi market. Even so, the network has been witnessing a lot of its Long-term Holders turning impatient over the month and they cannot really be blamed given MATIC’s price action. So could this be just the opportunity for STHs to gain footing in the Polygon space?

Polygon, MATIC, and the LTHs
So the month of November witnessed the most movement from Long term holders (LTHs). Even though the most selling occurred in April, the numbers this month have been significantly higher than average.

Due to this almost $100 billion days have been consumed in November alone.

Now, this could also be the result of MATIC’s underwhelming performance. The altcoin is one of the only few that has failed to mark an all-time high this month and has instead been plunging continuously. Since its last local top, the coin has come down by more than 27%.

Anyhow all the aforementioned instances led to the LTHs being taken over by the ever-increasing domination of Short term and Mid-term holders, who now occupy about 97% of the supply. This has been building up over the months as LTHs have been consistently losing domination since December 2020, which was the last time their numbers actually rose.

In the last 11 months, LTHs domination has come down from 8% to just 2.2% even though the number of LTHs actually grew by 5000.

Now, this has led to a rise in the number of new investors who are taking advantage of MATIC’s falling price to probably buy this dip.

New addresses spiked to almost 1.9 million in a day last week as MATIC consolidated around $1.5.

But out of these new addresses merely a few thousand addresses actually turn into investors, who actually seem pretty serious about MATIC.

However, with over 29 million MATIC buy orders, the network is picking up an investment pace which will be helpful in recuperating the selling by LTHs.

And with strong developer activity and dedication towards keeping the network decentralized, the network could potentially turn more new addresses into investors.

Crypto Is ‘Not Going Away’ Soon: Australian Finance Minister.

Australia’s financial services minister, Jane Hume, has said the cryptocurrency industry is “not a fad,” nor should the government be fearful of decentralized finance (DeFi), per The Guardian.

“As an industry, and as a government, we need to acknowledge [crypto] is not a fad. We should tread cautiously, but not fearfully,” Hume reportedly said during an Australian Financial Review summit today.

Hume also added that the crypto industry was “not going away any time soon.”

“Don’t be the person who thought the iPhone would never take off because people would prefer to have their music and telephone on separate devices. Don’t be the person in 195 who said the internet was just a place for geeks and criminals and would never become mainstream,” she also said.

Hume’s comments come six months after she first publicly spoke out in favor of the crypto industry.

Hume, Australia, and crypto
Back in May of this year, Hume said the government would not impede on Australians looking to get into the crypto space.

“If you want to invest in Dogecoin, I won’t stand in your way. Personal opportunity and personal responsibility are two sides of the same coin,” she said at the time.

She also said cryptocurrencies were “an asset class that will grow in importance.”

Hume’s words are a far cry from the position of other governments and regulators around the world, who have collectively warned against the risks inherent in the crypto industry

One such example is the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which has routinely warned against the crypto industry this year.

In January, the FCA banned crypto derivatives for retail investors, claiming crypto products were “ill suited” to retail customers due to a number of factors, including financial crime, price volatility, a lack of customer understanding and a lack of reliable product valuations.

The FCA has also sharply criticized Binance, the industry’s largest crypto exchange, calling the platform “incapable” of being regulated after it failed to provide basic information to the regulator.

In the United States, crypto is similarly raising the ire of regulators.

Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has previously said that crypto is in dire need of consumer protection laws. He also said the DeFi industry could well be rife with unregistered securities.

MetaMask records over $200 million YTD in revenues, surpasses SushiSwap, Curve.

Exciting as the world of DeFi and smart contracts may be, its complexities can often prove to be obtrusive in the mass adoption of the decentralized web. Although, the growth of the ecosystem has resulted in the emergence of several protocols aimed to remove these barriers. Mainly by simplifying the process of accessing dApps and other decentralized services.

Among them is MetaMask, a non-custodial Ethereum wallet that also acts as a browser extension, allowing users to store Ether and other ERC-20 tokens and make transactions. Further, with the growth of DeFi and NFTs over the past year, MetaMask has increased in prominence as an entry point for novice users. So much so that its revenue over the past year has amounted to $200 million, according to a report by Delphi Digital.

To get an idea of its enormous growth, MetaMask’s revenues can be compared to that of the top decentralized exchanges Sushiswap and Curve, which earned $70 million and $12 million year-to-date, respectively. If combined, this is less than half of MetaMask’s total revenue over the past 11 months.

These enormous profits can be attributed to its native swapping feature, which the platform had launched in September last year. It provides users with the best on-chain execution prices by collecting quotes from multiple DEX aggregators. Albeit, charging 0.875% fees for each swap, which the report noted was “exorbitant by DeFi standards,” adding,

“The simple UX of swapping via the Metamask plug-in seems to trump the ludicrous fees the wallet charges for trades.”

Along with the high fee, MetaMask’s profits are protected by “virtually no cost to their revenue,” according to the report, which explained,

“Metamask’s customer acquisition cost (CAC) is a big, fat zero. Metamask has no token incentives or emissions, so there’s virtually no cost to their revenue. Their profit margins are close to 100%. Imagine if they had a token.”

Moreover, Ethereum co-founder and head of MetaMask’s parent company ConsenSys, Joseph Lubin, recently teased the idea of a MetaMask token on Twitter. While further plans are yet to be revealed, this triggered speculations of an airdrop and increased popularity.

Well, MetaMask has come out to be one of the main channels through which users interact with DeFi and Web3, with the platform recently reporting 21 million active monthly users.

MANA, SAND, ENJ, ALICE: Do these gaming tokens still have steam left to rally further.

The last two months of 2020 saw DeFi tokens perform extremely well. AAVE appreciated by over 200%, while tokens like YFI and UNI rose by 140%.

In the same period, the likes of MKR and COMP registered upticks upto 70% each. In effect, the last leg of 2020’s DeFi summer ended on quite a high note.

Well, a year back, DeFi was in the process of gaining traction and becoming mainstream. According to the market sentiment, there was excitement about its underlying technology. And, people showcased their support by jumping onto the DeFi bandwagon.

Fast-forward to 2021, most of the aforementioned tokens have been in a slump. Surprisingly, their trends on the charts have become monotonous. In fact, unlike last year, the limelight is no more on them. But, on a set of tokens that are still in their nascent stage – gaming tokens.

Notably, the performance of coins like SAND, MANA, ALICE, and ENJ managed to startle everyone from the crypto space. They’ve massively rallied over the last few weeks, irrespective of the broader market trend.

Even their short-term stints have been gawk-worthy. In just the past 24-hours, for instance, the aforementioned tokens have appreciated by 23%, 10%, 9.2% and 3% respectively.

Well, rallies usually do not go on forever. They are bound to be succeeded by corrections after a point in time. So, the pertinent question here is, after having an impressive last few weeks, will gaming tokens apply brakes anytime soon?

Far from putting a full stop
As per the state of the metrics, it did not seem that the rallies of the aforementioned coins would stop in the foreseeable future.

Consider the deposit transactions first. This metric basically shows the amount of all incoming and outgoing transactions involving token deposit addresses daily. Upticks on the chart usually imply a hike in the near-term selling pressure and vice versa.

Now, the chart attached below clearly highlights the stark change in the state of this indicator when compared to the end of October to early November period.

Thus, at this stage, the selling pressure is not very imposing. And, in effect, HODLers wouldn’t really abandon their coins at this point.

Moreover, the MVRV ratio also portrayed something similar. Except for ALICE, this metric was seen hovering around local highs for the other three coins, at the time of analysis. This means that HODLers of SAND, MANA and ENJ are being fetched with more than usual returns.

Notably, a high MVRV ratio usually acts as an incentive for additional people to enter the market. So, in the coming days, it’d be fair to expect the demand for these coins to rise further.

Now, as far as ALICE is concerned, it should be noted that this ratio is hovering in the positive territory only. So, its investors are earning high returns. But, its profitability numbers aren’t that close to the August-September period.

Further, the network activity has also been going on at a swift pace for all tokens with ALICE again being an exception. The number of active addresses of SAND, MANA and ENJ have been spending more time towards the higher levels, of late.

Well, whenever the daily level of crowd interaction has been in good shape, the underlying asset’s price has, more often than not, continued its ongoing trend.

Thus, in light of the aforementioned trends, it becomes quite evident that the rallies of SAND, MANA and ENJ would continue without much obstruction. ALICE, on the other hand, would have to improve its MVRV ratio and its network activity for its rally to be sustainable.

Throwing the stone a little further
Inflation numbers have been rising in almost all economies across the world. Furthermore, with every passing day, it is becoming difficult for people to maintain their usual standard of living. The whole play-to-earn incentive is quite attractive in such a scenario. Gaming is just an easy and non-strenuous way to mint additional pennies.

Interestingly, the same has the potential to bring in more people to the gaming space. If such a scenario indeed materializes, then gaming tokens would end up becoming even more relevant with time.

Crypto DeFi crime hit $10.5 billion in 2021, research shows

Fraudulent activities have been running rampant on Decentralized Finance (DeFi) platforms, according to new research conducted by crypto analysis firm Elliptic.

The losses have amounted to up to $10.5 billion, illustrating the real risks associated with DeFi—an industry that is still considered an unregulated part of cryptocurrencies.

DeFi platforms make crypto transfer easier for many by allowing the users to lend, borrow and save crypto using smart contracts. The technology has excluded traditional banks as intermediaries and made crypto transfers direct and simple, a step regarded by many as transformative for the broader financial sector.

However, DeFi platforms have frequent hacks and frauds, which according to blockchain data analytics firm Elliptic, amount to $10.5 billion in 2021.

DeFi and associated risks factors
According to Elliptic, DeFi has grown increasingly popular with the masses and has attracted a lot of investors ready to invest their stake. The sudden outpouring of funds in the sector has given birth to soaring crime associated with money laundering, where a large part of funds has been employed in sponsoring illicit activities.

“A tempting honeypot for hackers and a deep pool of liquidity that can be taken advantage of by money launderers,” the reports noted.

It also highlighted how the hackers have exploited the platform by utilizing dApps or decentralized applications to engage in illicit financial activities or “DeCrime ” as per Elliptic.

“The DeFi ecosystem is an incredibly exciting and fast-moving space, with financial services innovation happening at light speed, this is attracting large amounts of capital to projects that are not always robust or well-tested. Criminal actors have seen the opportunity to exploit this,” said Tom Robinson, chief scientist at Elliptic.

The continuous exploitation via thefts and scams has caused DeFi platforms to shed approximately $10.5 billion (as of November 9, 2021), reporting a striking increase of 600% from last year.

The majority of the losses have been borne by dApps, which have lost roughly $8.6 billion, followed by Binance Smart Chain with losses amounting to $2.5 billion.

Coinbase is looking at support for third-party DeFi apps on its platform, says CFO.

Coinbase's interest in decentralized finance has long been known, but new comments from the publicly traded crypto exchange's chief financial officer suggest that the company is eyeing a broader scope.

Alesia Haas spoke during a fintech-focused event hosted by Citi on Monday. Early in that appearance, Haas provided insight into the exchange's overall strategy, dividing it into three "pillars." The third one, she said, centers around the Coinbase platform as one that users can access an array of applications and uses within.

"The third pillar for us is crypto as an app platform, and here's where we serve the broader crypto ecosystem," Haas explained, going on to say: "We plan eventually to service third-party apps inside our main product and so that we're going to be agnostic between a customer choosing a Coinbase product or a third-party DeFi product. We want to introduce and find the best product for our customers."

Haas later spoke to the overarching relationship between Coinbase, a centralized platform run by a company, and DeFi, the composition of which is defined by ecosystems run by smaller development teams or token-holding governance stakeholders.

Still, Coinbase aims to become "a bridge to DeFi," according to Haas: "So how do we think about Coinbase in relative to DeFi? So earlier, I talked about our...crypto as an app platform strategy, and this is where this all comes in. As crypto as an app platform, will help DeFi in two ways. One, we're building tools to accelerate the builders in the ecosystem through Coinbase Cloud. And we believe this opportunity itself will be large in the future because more and more companies are going to want to offer crypto services to their end customers. So the second thing we do is that we're helping with distribution. Just like we've been a bridge to crypto buy, sell, we'll be a bridge to DeFi."

Ultimately, the company thinks it "can bring billions of users to DeFi by making it easy to use" according to Haas.

Such an approach is perhaps unsurprising, given the exchange's support to DeFi protocol tokens and its participation in groups like the DeFi Alliance. From a practical sense, it appears that Coinbase sees DeFi as an avenue for future business.

As Haas put it at one point: "[W]e believe that Coinbase and DeFi can and will successfully grow and coexist."

Everything you need to know about Polygon’s pace of growth right now.

The Defi race continues with more chains picking up pace, but in the midst of all the growth, Polygon changed paths and turn back around. Over the last couple of weeks, the way Polygon’s rise has slowed down is making investors and developers equally concerned.

Polygon goes back
In just one year Polygon grew from 30 dApps to almost 3000. Developers are drawn to the chain due to its competitive advantages. The network is the biggest DeFi chain on Ethereum. And, it achieved that sovereignty by solving the inherent issues native to Ethereum itself.

Well, the biggest of it was bringing Proof-of-Stake to the network. Even though the Ethereum mainnet is now transforming into POS itself, Polygon brought it already.

Secondly, using Optimistic Rollups and zkRollups, Polygon has been working on making transactions quicker and reliable. At the same time, it solves Ethereum’s high gas fees issue by making transactions cheaper as well.

Further, even in comparison to other DeFi chains Polygon was rising rapidly. Until recently, that rise not only slowed down but also kind of reversed.

At one point Polygon used to clock well over 1-2 million addresses a day, leaving behind both Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Today that figure has dropped to merely 200k – 400k.

Similarly, active addresses on-chain used to range around 500k, beating Ethereum and BSC again, which have since dropped down to under 300k.

Consequently, on-chain transactions have also diminished from almost seven million a day to less than 3.5 million today.

The biggest matter of concern here is that all of these developments have occurred in the span of merely one and a half months.

As a result of the reducing demand and participation, the total value locked (TVL) on the network has stopped growing altogether. Since September, TVL has increased by only $100 million.

In turn, this led to Tron and Fantom flipping Polygon and dropping it back to the #8 rank.

Even though Polygon is focusing on gaining more traction on social fronts which is paying off looking at the social volumes and adding more dapps onto the network, Hermez being an example, it’s actually not really working out in terms of network growth.

The network needs more organic growth to take back its place in the DeFi space.

Hedera Network will soon see its first DeFi project.

Akt.io, in partnership with the HBAR Foundation, is launching on the Hedera network, becoming the first DeFi app on the carbon-negative blockchain.

The HBAR Foundation fuels the development of the Hedera ecosystem by providing grants and other resources to developers, startups, and organizations that seek to launch decentralized applications in DeFi, NFTs, CBDCs, ESGs, gaming, and other sectors.

The HBAR Foundation fuels growth of the Hedera ecosystem by providing grants and resources for technical assistance, marketing, and business development to developers, startups, and organizations building on the network.

Hedera awards ecosystem grant
Akt.io has been awarded a grant and will receive organizational support from the HBAR Foundation to fuel its launch and growth on the Hedera Network. Their forthcoming app will enable users to automate investments with intelligent algorithms, generate income with digital assets, and be seamlessly connected to the akt.io Wealth Card, an internationally recognized payment card that will allow for direct payments with invested capital.

“We’re impressed with akt.io’s revolutionary platform and pleased with their choice of the Hedera Network to enable their vision for providing retail investors with a seamless, integrated model that puts their capital to work while enabling the convenience of immediate liquidity that you’d associate with having cash in the bank,” explained Shayne Higdon, CEO and Executive Director of the HBAR Foundation, in a statement.

Hedera offers 10,000 transactions per second, near the real-time settlement, and low fees and bandwidth consumption. Since launching in 2018, the public network has processed over 1.75 billion transactions generated by real-world applications and has over 410k accounts.

Akt.io’s parent company Automata is engaged as a tied agent with regulated payment service providers in the UK and Ireland. This positions the company to quickly move forward in the UK and European markets.