Bitcoin Price: US$ 41,660.01(-1.63%)
Ethereum Price: US$ 3,084.02 (-2.40%)
A Peak into the Cosmos Ecosystem
- We continue to observe increased traction and user interaction on Cosmos as more apps join the ecosystem. Daily transactions pertaining to ATOM are up from 26k to 80k today.
- Cosmos has been the talk of the town lately with the impending EVMOS launch this month also driving attention. EVMOS (previously Ethermint) will allow EVM-compatible applications to integrate into the Cosmos ecosystem. EVMOS brings more interoperability to Cosmos, acting as a gateway for Ethereum assets to enter the Cosmos ecosystem. Connext and Nomad bridging solutions will also provide support.
- Furthermore, EVMOS is doing a rektdrop to distribute its tokens to ATOM and Osmosis stakers, gas spenders on Ethereum, as well as users who got ‘rekt’ by exploits and MEV.
- ATOM staking is similar to LUNA staking, where users delegate their tokens to a validator. This will allow those who delegate to non-CEX validators to have potential airdrops from Cosmos ecosystem projects. Some notable airdrops previously were $OSMO and $XPRT.
- ATOM staking now yields around 13% APR, which is on the higher end when compared to other Proof-of-Stake options.
- The increase in ATOM Bonding might not be too significant or telling though if it’s just a single or a few entities delegating large amounts of ATOM; we see a 1 day spike in delegated ATOM which appears to be driving most of this. However, from a high-level, most validators are seeing more inflows than outflows of ATOM stakes.
- we observed that Osmosis utilization was flat despite increasing TVLs. Since then, utilization has been increasing alongside TVL due to higher daily trading volume, more users (~23k DAU as of late), and the addition of more assets available for trading.
- Initiation of IBC on Terra (as part of Terra’s Columbus 5 upgrade) was likely a major catalyst for the improved metrics as it allowed capital from the Terra ecosystem to flow to Osmosis. Crucially, it also enabled support for the UST stablecoin, which is currently the only USD-pegged stablecoin on Osmosis. With this integration, LUNA and UST are the #3 and #4 assets on Osmosis by TVL and trading volume, respectively.
- Stablecoins play an indispensable role on DEXes; for instance, the majority of trades on Uni v3 are between stablecoin pairs. On Osmosis, UST trade volume has averaged ~30.7% of total volume since the beginning of this year.
- For the uninitiated, Secret Network is a layer 1 blockchain built using Cosmos SDK, with privacy preserving smart contracts, allowing users to retain privacy for on-chain transactions.
- Transactions on Secret Network have been trending upwards since the middle of last year, with the exception of 2 spikes in October related to new protocol launches.
- Last week, the Secret team announced their ”Shockwave” program to drive further growth of the Secret Network ecosystem. Improving developer tooling and expanding grants and external investments are among some of the most notable initiatives.
Crypto.com breach may be worth up to $33M, suggests onchain analyst
- Onchain analyst claims that Crypto.com’s loss in the latest security breach might have been worth more than the reported $15 million.
- Pseudonymous ErgoBTC, an on-chain analyst at Bitcoin (BTC) research firm OXT Research, claims that the Crypto.com security breach that was said to have resulted in the loss of 4.6K ETH ($15 million), may be worth up to $33 million.
- ErgoBTC tweeted on Tuesday suggesting that another 444 BTC ($18.5 million) had been stolen from Crypto.com’s payout wallet. ErgoBTC said that OXT Research discovered a suspicious transaction of 52.55 BTC ($2.18 million) from Crypto.com’s custodial wallet.
- Following the transaction, “several hundred withdrawals” were made which were then combined into four outputs worth 67.75 BTC ($2.81 million) each, as per ErgoBTC. The four batches amounted to 271 BTC ($11.25 million), all of which were laundered via Bitcoin tumbler— a service that allows customers to combine several transactions and make it more difficult for investigators to trace Bitcoin transfers.
THORChain brings DeFi yields and swaps to DOGE
- Cross-chain liquidity network THORChain has enabled support for Dogecoin (DOGE) — bringing a new suite of decentralized finance (DeFi) capabilities to the popular memecoin.
- Beginning this week, users have the ability to swap DOGE or earn yields on their DOGE holdings using THORSwap, a non-custodial decentralized exchange. In practice, this means users can swap DOGE for native assets such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB), Litecoin (LTC) and stablecoins such as Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC) and Binance USD (BUSD). All swaps between THORChain assets, including DOGE, can be completed in one step without the need to bridge, wrap or peg assets.
- A THORChain developer informed Cointelegraph that a liquidity pool has been established for DOGE. The pool gives DOGE liquidity providers the ability to earn yields on their deposits from trading fees. Like other liquidity providers on THORChain, depositors have impermanent loss protection based on the length of time of each deposit. The developer also confirmed that, as of Jan. 19, the DOGE pool had almost $4 million in liquidity and was yielding up to 15% APY for liquidity providers.
UMA Launches Hats Finance Vault with Protected Tokens
- Hats Finance is a protocol for providing bounties to whitehat hackers who report smart contract vulnerabilities. UMA has partnered with Hats to offer such bounties on UMA’s contracts.
- This partnership is unique in that UMA has funded the Hats vault not with raw $UMA, but with protected tokens backed by $UMA. Protected token pairs are a powerful new primitive backed by UMA’s Optimistic Oracle and can protect tokens from smart contract risk and user error. These protected tokens shield the underlying UMA assets from theft or loss if the vault itself has an issue.
Pangolin Introduces ‘Super Farms’ — The New Yield Farming Model Changing DeFi
- Pangolin is leveling up the yield farming game within the Avalanche DeFi ecosystem and reDeFining the DEXperience in 2022!
- Today Pangolin is officially launching a new product, Super Farms, the ultimate liquidity bootstrapping program.
- To attract liquidity, we’ve designed a new version of yield farming that enables you to earn $PNG and other project tokens simultaneously.
Hedera Governing Council to buy hashgraph IP, and open-source projects code
- The Hedera Governing Council has officially voted to purchase the intellectual property rights to the hashgraph consensus algorithm from founding architect and inaugural member of the council, Swirlds Inc, for an undisclosed fee.
- A Wednesday announcement also details plans to transition their code to an open-source model this year under Apache 2.0 license, in addition to transferring core team members such as CEO Mance Harmon and chief scientist Leemon Baird from Hedera to Swirlds Inc. as the CEO and chief technology officer, respectively, and deploying community staking and node opportunities, among other updates.
EU securities regulator calls for proof-of-work crypto mining ban
- Erik Thedéen, the vice-chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority, has raised concerns over the growing use of renewable energy for Bitcoin mining.
- In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Thedéen said that Bitcoin (BTC) mining has become a “national issue” and warned cryptocurrencies could pose a risk to climate change goals.
- He called upon European regulators to take special exception to proof-of-work (PoW) mining, which is primarily used by Bitcoin and a few other forked altcoins. He also advocated for proof-of-stake (PoS) as a better, energy-efficient alternative:
- “We need to have a discussion about shifting the industry to a more efficient technology.”
43% of Bitcoin trading volume during US market hours: Arcane Research
- Uncle Sam dominates the Bitcoin (BTC) trading arena, according to a report published by Arcane Research. Bitcoins’ 90-day correlation to the S&P 500 is currently at its highest since October 2020 while the United States trading hours show the most Bitcoin activity.
- For 2022, the U.S. trading hours show a marked increase in trading volume, making up 43% of the 24-hour volume on average.
- Trading volumes have trended up during U.S. market hours since late 2021. The 43% figure is up from 36% from the period from Nov. 1, 2021 to Jan. 16, 2022.
