DeFi renaissance?
What's being bought and sold*
TOP TRENDING ASSETS
*Trading activity in the past 24 hours on the Uphold platform, as of 8 a.m. 18th October 2024.
The combined total of buy and sell percentages can exceed 100% due to customers who engage in both buying and selling the same asset within the 24-hour time frame.
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What’s up
Decentralized Finance Sector Salivating
Interest rates on bank CDs and savings accounts have started to go lower. Could this be setting the stage for a DeFi surge?
It's already happening. Last month, Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Base saw a 51% increase in total value locked (TVL), which hit $2 billion for the first time, partly on the back of money market and yield protocols, according to CryptoSlate.
For example, Extra Finance, a leveraged yield protocol on Base, saw a 40% increase in TVL during September. Base's liquidity hub, Aerodrome, meanwhile, saw TVL nearly double last month to more than $1 billion.
Venture capitalist Arthur Cheong, whose X posts have helped spark chatter about DeFi being in the midst of a "renaissance," envisions not only monetary loosening but also an easing of structural barriers to engaging with dApps to access a full range of DeFi offerings, including loans. Lately, Cheong, CEO of Defiance Capital, has been touting lending platform Aave (AAVE) as an example of a token poised to climb as rates decline.
As of Thursday night, AAVE, 45th-largest token, was up 10% over the past seven days.
Wait, did we mention layer-1 chain Aptos' native APT is up 23% in the past week? The so-called "Solana killer" was developed a few years ago by former Meta employees to scale up smart contract execution. Earlier this week, Aptos' TVL reached above $600M and cracked into DeFiLama's Top 15.
APT is the 27th-largest token, per CoinGecko. APT has gained 67% since mid-September, or around the time the Fed cut rates for the first time in four years.
What's down
UNI Sinks After Unichain Website Scam Exposed
Someone may have forgotten to tell Uniswap (UNI) about the whole DeFi renaissance thing. UNI, 25th-largest token, had declined 9% in the past week to $7.33 (as of Thursday afternoon).
One of the oldest and largest DEXs, Uniswap's UNI rallied 10% to above $8 earlier this month after Uniswap Labs heralded the coming of Unichain, a new Ethereum layer-2 blockchain built specifically for DeFi.
On Oct. 10, a Uniswap Labs blog announced a testnet for Unichain had been launched, as well as an official website.
Unfortunately, some scammers created a phony version of the website and Google mistakenly promoted it, spamming users with requests aimed at stealing funds. Scam Sniffer, a blockchain analytics platform, discovered the deceptive search results on Tuesday. The phony website has since been shuttered (Cointelegraph).
What's next
Stellar Lumens Looks To Sustain Uptick
Stellar Lumens (XLM) remains almost seven years removed from its all-time high of $0.88 reached in early 2018, a time when Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" seemed to be playing on an endless loop and HBO's hit show "Game of Thrones" had not yet quite turned into a computerized-dragon-effects-delivery vehicle.
Over the past two weeks, XLM, the 36th-largest digital asset, rose from a recent low ebb of eight cents back toward a dime. Its market capitalization is $2.8 billion.
Mastercard, a public company with a market cap approaching a half-trillion dollars, recently announced a new partnership with the Stellar Foundation aimed at driving more efficient, secure interactions between consumers and businesses using blockchain, CryptoNews said. Mastercard intends to integrate its Mastercard Crypto Credential solution on the Stellar network.
Mastercard Crypto Credential, says Mastercard, provides assurance that the user has met a set of verification standards and confirms that the recipient’s wallet supports the transferred asset. Back in May, the first of a series of pilot transactions went live, connecting Latin American and European corridors, such that select exchange users were able to send and receive crypto using Mastercard aliases, as opposed to long, complex blockchain addresses.
Stellar has also partnered with asset management behemoth Franklin Templeton to launch the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund, which so far has garnered more than $400 million in assets.
Technically speaking, XLM has seen its Relative Strength Index (RSI) cross into bullish territory, above the neutral level of 50, indicating some momentum.
"Gains will be confirmed if [XLM] moves above the psychological level of $0.10," CryptoNews said, pointing to a descending trendline connecting this more recent autumnal uptick with an upward move witnessed this past spring.
