Which Crypto Projects Are Based on Ethereum?

Which Crypto Projects Are Based on Ethereum?

According to the crypto app tracker, State of the Dapps, there are over 3,000 decentralized apps (also known as “dapps”) currently running on the Ethereum blockchain.

These apps differ from regular mobile and web-based apps because they aim to hand users more control over the data the apps manage. Traditional apps, such as Robinhood or Twitter, are managed by a central authority, which ultimately has the last word on how their customers’ data is secured and used – for better or worse.

Dapps take a decentralized approach to data management, theoretically putting control back in the hands of the user with the help of blockchain technology – the basis of the Ethereum network. Ethereum is the name of both the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization (after bitcoin) and the first platform to facilitate the creation of dapps.

While the promise of Ethereum is tantalizing to proponents of the technology, it’s an open-source platform, meaning the projects built upon it are often experimental and sometimes outright scams. Conducting diligent research before investing is highly recommended.

Top Ethereum projects

Right now, many of the top Ethereum projects are focused on decentralized finance, or DeFi. DeFi aims to expand the utility of cryptocurrencies from day-to-day transactions to more complex financial use cases, such as loans and derivatives.

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The DeFi space gained significant traction in 2020, with the total value of crypto assets locked in its protocols rising over 2,000% from $650 million at the start of the year to $16.05 billion at the close.

Ethereum dapps have become so popular that the increased congestion has pushed transaction fees – the amount of ether required to send payments over the network – higher than ever. This is a direct result of dapp users competing to get their transactions processed faster by miners. The higher the fee attached to a transaction, the more likely an ETH miner will add that to the blockchain sooner.

MakerDao

Stablecoins are an effort to improve upon one of the pain points of cryptocurrencies. Crypto prices fluctuate unpredictably, making them unsuitable as a means of payment and as a reliable store of wealth. While most stablecoins are centralized, MakerDAO is different in that it has put forth a detailed plan for how to eventually decentralize the control of its stablecoin, dai.

Uniswap

Inflatable unicorn representing Uniswap logo. (Andrey Danilovich/Getty Images)

Uniswap is a decentralized exchange, meaning that unlike most exchanges it never takes control of a user’s funds. It’s the most popular decentralized exchange so far. This exchange is a cornerstone of Ethereum’s recent booming DeFi movement, facilitating trades from coin to coin. The project even attracted a “vampire” competitor, SushiSwap, which tried to suck up all its users. Another unique aspect of Uniswap is that it utilizes an automated market maker (AMM) system for facilitating trading, meaning the underlying liquidity pools that manage the actual coin-swapping are run by smart contracts as opposed to a traditional order book system.

When trading on a regular centralized crypto exchange, the market price for an asset is determined by supply and demand. In order to buy and sell, a trader must find someone on the opposite side of the order book to provide liquidity to complete a transaction. With AMM-based exchanges like Uniswap, a pricing algorithm determines the market price of each asset. Investors are incentivized to provide liquidity which is pooled together and used to execute all trades at the set market prices.

Chainlink

Chainlink is an oracle platform, which means it connects smart contracts with real-time data from the outside world such as weather information or stock prices. A smart contract uses that data to execute pre-defined instructions. For example, payout an insurance claim in the event of a hurricane.

While Chainlink has been around since 2017, the project didn’t really come to the forefront of the space until 2019 – after it partnered with Google. Chainlink is fuelled by an ERC-20 crypto token, LINK, and runs on top of the Ethereum network.

Axie Infinity

Axie Infinity is an online role-playing game where users collect and raise digital, fantastical characters called “Axies.” Under the hood, Axies are types of nonfungible tokens (NFT), which means each one is cryptographically unique, gamers have full ownership over them and in some cases have a monetary value due to their scarce, collectible nature.

Aave

Aave is a decentralized lending and borrowing platform that recently raised $25 million from leading venture capital firms Blockchain.com and Blockchain Capital.

According to tracker DeFi Pulse, Aave is currently the fourth-largest DeFi app based on the $1.14 billion locked up in the app. It was briefly the largest earlier this year.

Other Ethereum dapps

Compound : A decentralized lending platform, Compound is credited with inventing liquidity mining, where the company releases a unique coin that only those providing liquidity to the platform can obtain. This DeFi technique has since become foundational, with users tapping the technique to make money and companies copying the idea to attract users.

A decentralized lending platform, Compound is credited with inventing liquidity mining, where the company releases a unique coin that only those providing liquidity to the platform can obtain. This DeFi technique has since become foundational, with users tapping the technique to make money and companies copying the idea to attract users. WBTC : Wrapped bitcoin is a token on Ethereum that is backed 1:1 by bitcoin. The goal is to bring bitcoin’s liquidity to Ethereum. It has grown in popularity partly because investors can earn interest on the bitcoin they lock up on Ethereum.

Wrapped bitcoin is a token on Ethereum that is backed 1:1 by bitcoin. The goal is to bring bitcoin’s liquidity to Ethereum. It has grown in popularity partly because investors can earn interest on the bitcoin they lock up on Ethereum. SushiSwap : This decentralized exchange (DEX) is a fork of the popular decentralized Uniswap exchange that rewards liquidity providers with its own native SUSHI token. To date, it is a top 10 Ethereum DeFi app, according to DeFi Pulse.

This decentralized exchange (DEX) is a fork of the popular decentralized Uniswap exchange that rewards liquidity providers with its own native SUSHI token. To date, it is a top 10 Ethereum DeFi app, according to DeFi Pulse. Status : An ether wallet and private messaging system.

An ether wallet and private messaging system. Unstoppable Domains : One of the oft-touted goals of Ethereum is to decentralize the internet by making apps that are not controlled by tech giants. Unstoppable Domains is playing its part by creating domains that can’t be taken down by a central entity or government.

One of the oft-touted goals of Ethereum is to decentralize the internet by making apps that are not controlled by tech giants. Unstoppable Domains is playing its part by creating domains that can’t be taken down by a central entity or government. Kyber Network : A popular AMM, like Uniswap, created by researcher Loi Luu.

A popular AMM, like Uniswap, created by researcher Loi Luu. Basic attention token : An ERC-20 token on Ethereum exchanged between users, publishers, and advertisers on the browser Brave. When using the browser, users receive BAT from advertisers for their attention. BAT is a project led by the creator of JavaScript and co-founder of Mozilla, Brendan Eich.

An ERC-20 token on Ethereum exchanged between users, publishers, and advertisers on the browser Brave. When using the browser, users receive BAT from advertisers for their attention. BAT is a project led by the creator of JavaScript and co-founder of Mozilla, Brendan Eich. OpenSea : A marketplace for buying and selling NFTs, including Axies (described above), unstoppable domains, digital art, etc.

A marketplace for buying and selling NFTs, including Axies (described above), unstoppable domains, digital art, etc. Livepeer : A network for decentralized live-streaming, providing an alternative to YouTube.

A network for decentralized live-streaming, providing an alternative to YouTube. Decentraland: A decentralized virtual reality game, where users own virtual plots of land and can build structures such as theme parks and casinos that can be monetized.

Additional types of Ethereum blockchain dapps

There are dozens of other crypto dapps with smaller user bases than the above services. Some were more popular prior to the DeFi boom and have historical importance.

Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs)

Lending Platforms

Stablecoins

Tether: This popular stablecoin actually lives on many blockchains simultaneously. It is now dominating Ethereum transactions.

USDC

PAX

Prediction Markets

Storage Apps

Misc. dapps

Crypto Long & Short: Could Scalable Payments for Bitcoin Undermine Its Value?

With the wild journey that is bitcoin price swings so far this year, you might have missed the accelerating rhythm of companies announcing services to support bitcoin for payments.

We’re not talking about small idealistic startups, either.

A week ago, on Visa’s Q1 earnings call, CEO Al Kelly said the company may add cryptocurrencies to its payments network. He acknowledged that bitcoin is “not used as a form of payment in a significant way at this point,” but went on to discuss a strategy to “enable users to purchase these currencies using their Visa credentials or to cash out onto our Visa credential to make a fiat purchase at any of the 70 million merchants where Visa is accepted globally.”

Related: Apple Should Launch Own Crypto Exchange, RBC Analyst Says You’re reading Crypto Long & Short, a newsletter that looks closely at the forces driving cryptocurrency markets. Authored by CoinDesk’s head of research, Noelle Acheson, it goes out every Sunday and offers a recap of the week – with insights and analysis – from a professional investor’s point of view. You can subscribe here.

Visa also currently provides credit card infrastructure for 35 crypto companies, with the aim of making it easier for users to pay with bitcoin.

In PayPal’s (PYPL) Q4 earnings call this week, the first since the company started allowing the purchase and sale of a handful of cryptocurrencies via their PayPal account, the company revealed that it was planning to start allowing customers to use their crypto balances to pay for goods and services at any of the approximately 29 million merchants on the network, and that it was “significantly investing” in the crypto business unit.

Large crypto companies are also moving into payments. Last month, crypto exchange and custodian Gemini launched a credit card with a 3% reward on purchases. In December, crypto lender BlockFi announced that it would launch a similar product in early 2021.

Story continues

Related: Tesla Invests $1.5B in Bitcoin

This is just scratching the surface. Binance, Coinbase, Paxful and BitPanda are just some of the crypto exchanges that over the past few months have introduced crypto debit cards for retail spending. This week, crypto platform Uphold announced the acquisition of card issuer Optimus Cards U.K.

Also this week, Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world in terms of volume, announced the launch of a payments system called Binance Pay, aimed at encouraging the use of crypto in cross-border payments. Binance CEO and founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said: “We think that payments is one of the most obvious use cases for crypto.”

Not so fast

Is he right?

Obviously “crypto” encompasses a range of assets, but let’s focus on Bitcoin for a moment.

The white paper that introduced Bitcoin to the world in 2008 opens with:

“A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”

Whether Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous writer of the paper, meant for payments to be the main use case or not (this is a point of contention, as he* also wrote elsewhere about its potential role as a store of value), over the years it became clear that scaling limitations inherent in the protocol design made the network impractical for high transaction volumes.

(*I am not assuming Satoshi is a he, but I am using this pronoun to avoid linguistic clutter.)

Another critique of Bitcoin-as-a-payments rail is its relative lack of speed, although this can be misleading. A bitcoin payment will take around 10 minutes on average, and up to an hour for assumed settlement finality. Credit card and contactless payments are faster, but they usually don’t have settlement finality until days later. And data gathered in electronic transactions removes any financial privacy. Cash, on the other hand, is instantaneous and private, but you need to be physically present.

What’s more, bitcoin transactions are relatively expensive. This week the average fee reached its highest point since January 2018.

Solutions such as the Lightning Network aim to solve for these barriers by offering fast and cheap throughput on a transaction layer that anchors to the Bitcoin blockchain at certain intervals. Adoption of this technology is growing, but is still in its early stages.

The existential question

Then again, most of those who complain that Bitcoin doesn’t work for payments have access to other mechanisms that work well. That’s not the case for much of the world. Some jurisdictions have strict capital controls that block payments to other regions. Some countries don’t have sophisticated payment rails that make even simple internal transfers easy. Even some demographic groups in developed countries don’t have access to online payments and are still largely dependent on bank relationships.

For many, bitcoin is a tool for freedom in that it facilitates online payments where previously they were inaccessible. For others, using bitcoin is a way to support the network by giving the asset a broader utility.

This raises an important question: Should bitcoin be encouraged to be both a store of value and a payments mechanism?

Some reasons why it should:

It can be argued that bitcoin’s worth as a store of value depends on its utility. The more there is residual demand for bitcoin as a payment token, regardless of its price, the more investors will believe that demand for it will rise in a sustainable way.

It can also be argued it is essential for the health of the network that bitcoin’s use as a medium of exchange be encouraged. As successive halvings reduce the block subsidy (in which miners get new bitcoin as compensation for the work expended in successfully processing blocks of transactions), miner incentives will increasingly rely on transaction fees.

And current demand for this use case is not insignificant. Binance Research this week published the results of a survey of 16,000 crypto users across 178 regions, which found that 38% see bitcoin as a medium of exchange. In December, Susquehanna Financial Group revealed a survey of PayPal customers that showed 53% would use bitcoin to pay for goods, if they owned it.

Some reasons why it shouldn’t:

There is a not totally unfounded concern that if bitcoin becomes seen by governments as a widely used payment token and a potential threat to fiat currencies they may decide to act, and not in bitcoin’s favor.

While it may seem that governments care more about markets and asset prices, it’s payments that matter for monetary policy, consumption and wages – all things that get you votes. Investments sit there (and hopefully grow) while payments move, and both animal and regulatory instinct is to focus more on things that move.

In addition, you have the theory that if bitcoin is seen as a store of value, it will not be spent. Gresham’s Law dictates that bad money crowds out the good – if bitcoin is “good” money, people are more likely to hold onto it, and use other assets with less potential value.

The endgame?

This segues into what is perhaps the endgame of many of the crypto payments providers.

It’s perhaps not about Bitcoin at all.

Bitcoin is the crypto asset with the least regulatory uncertainty at the moment. Even stablecoins are not totally out of the regulatory woods yet. (The letter from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency that allowed banks to handle stablecoins could be walked back under a new chief.)

So, maybe Bitcoin is the safe starting point for these new rails. Ethereum will probably come next, and where Ethereum goes, so do stablecoins.

Maybe the banks and payment companies working on bringing crypto payments services mainstream have their eyes on a potentially bigger pie – that of tomorrow’s payments, the bulk of which could run on blockchains that handle a range of assets. Maybe the forward-thinking institutions are preparing for a day when we hold cryptocurrencies in our digital wallet right along with our private stablecoins and our digital dollars and our tokenized GameStop (GME) shares.

Maybe they’re all looking at a financial landscape where the user has more choice.

The crypto payment functions today serve their purpose. They offer a useful service to many, nudge along the sophistication of market infrastructure, and set the scene for mainstream adoption of a range of assets with a range of utilities.

And with more choice, it is more likely that the market will decide whether Bitcoin is a good payment rail or not. With each new service, we experiment with market adoption, and we learn more about what today’s and tomorrow’s users will value. I’m all for bringing on more experimentation.

CHAIN LINKS

Investors talking:

This interview, in which MicroStrategy (MSTR) CEO Michael Saylor interviews NYDIG CEO Ross Stevens, is a must-see.

Chief economist and managing director of CME Group Bluford Putnam said his firm has begun to notice gold’s waning appeal as a hedge against global political risk, and that he believes bitcoin is an “emerging competitor” to gold.

Takeaways:

Visa (V) is piloting a suite of APIs that will allow banks to offer bitcoin services such as buying, selling and custody, with a view to extending the service to include other cryptocurrencies and stablecoins. TAKEAWAY: Initiatives like this (last month, NYDIG made a similar announcement) are a step towards mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies. The “endorsement” of traditional banks, while far from the original ethos of the industry, will go a long way toward encouraging trust in the concept from mainstream clients. This could encourage new investment in the space, both from investors and small savers as well as from startups working on improving market and payment infrastructures.

New York-based crypto exchange and custodian Gemini is now offering deposit accounts with a 7.4% APY, via a partnership with Genesis Capital (owned by DCG, also parent of CoinDesk). TAKEAWAY: The “bankification” of crypto exchange platforms is gathering steam. Gemini is a crypto asset trading platform, stablecoin issuer, credit card issuer and now also an interest-bearing deposit taker. The yield offered is sufficiently higher than traditional deposit yields and so should attract attention, perhaps even serving as an onramp into crypto asset markets.

Bitwise Asset Management has applied to publicly trade shares of its bitcoin fund on the OTCQX marketplace. TAKEAWAY: The fund aims to compete with market leader GBTC fund (managed by Grayscale Investments, owned by CoinDesk parent DCG), which quotes on the same exchange. GBTC’s premium to underlying value has dropped over the past few days to around 10%, from a three-month high of around 40% in mid-December. More competition should keep the premium down, giving retail investors a better deal as well as more choice. GBTC’s $24 billion market leadership position will be hard to assail, however.

We saw above in THE BRIEFING that BTC transaction fees are increasing. ETH transaction fees are spiking even more. TAKEAWAY: This reflects the ETH price increase as well as growing demand for stablecoins and decentralized finance tokens. In spite of increasing fees, transaction volume also continues to rise. (For background on Ethereum’s gas costs, see our recent metrics report.)

Cryptocurrency investment firm Arcane Crypto (ARCANE) is now listed on Sweden’s Nasdaq First North following a reverse takeover of Vertical Ventures AB. TAKEAWAY: With this, Arcane joins the growing roster of listed crypto companies, and is one of the few broad industry plays (as opposed to pure funds or market infrastructure plays) to have a transparent market valuation (approximately $200 million at listing).

CalPERS, the largest public pension fund in the U.S., increased its stake in bitcoin miner Riot Blockchain (RIOT) nearly sevenfold over the last quarter, to $1.9 million at year-end price. TAKEAWAY: This highlights that direct ownership is not the only way to play BTC exposure. RIOT’s share price has moved up with BTC, but since Sept 30, 2020, has produced a return of over 750% vs BTC’s 250%.

The total balance of BTC held in “accumulation addresses,” which have at least two incoming transfers over the past seven years and have never spent funds, has reached a 3.5-year high of over 15% of the total circulating supply. TAKEAWAY: As more investors buy to hold, more bitcoin is removed from circulation, which supports further price rises as new demand comes in. This type of detail is one of my favorite things about crypto asset metrics – imagine if we had this level of insight into investor behavior with traditional assets.

The amount of stablecoin USDC held on exchanges has soared since the beginning of the year, hinting at institutional intention to buy. TAKEAWAY: The balance of stablecoins on crypto exchanges is watched as a signal for investor intent. It does not, however, indicate which asset(s) the buyers will favor, nor is it a reliable indicator of institutional interest as many institutions prefer to (or have to) use fiat to invest in crypto assets.

Related Stories

For Indian crypto industry, the devil lies in the definition

Just like the price swings in cryptocurrencies, the news on regulations for the Indian crypto industry has been coming in thick and fast. While the government on 29 January listed a bill in Lok Sabha to ban all private cryptocurrencies, recent reports suggest that it might now bring in an ordinance to put that into effect. With the contents of the legislation unknown, experts say that the fate of investments worth $1 billion in digital currencies by Indians rests on how the Center defines a ‘private cryptocurrency’.

The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021 seeks to ban all private cryptocurrencies and also provides for the creation of a legislative framework on an official digital currency.

Also Read | Scarcity on high seas hurting India’s exports

According to experts, a blanket ban would hit over eight million investors in India who own over $1 billion worth of cryptocurrencies. “Cryptocurrency is a sunrise sector employing thousands of people in India. The regulation is the need of the hour, but a ban will set our economy back by a decade," said Nischal Shetty, chief executive officer of WazirX.

As the draft of the bill is not public, experts say it is hard to determine what the government may consider as private cryptocurrency. However, the key argument is that terming major digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum as ‘private’ would be incorrect.

“The term ‘private cryptocurrency’ could be applied to some rare experimental projects but not to Bitcoin, Ether, or most popular cryptocurrencies. There software is open source and they are not owned by any entity, private or otherwise," said Vikram Rangala, CMO, ZebPay.

Some of the public blockchains and their corresponding cryptocurrencies such as Ripple are created by privately-owned enterprises but find their application in the public domain and have corporate governance considerations similar to traditional finance corporations. “In reality, there are public blockchains and there are private blockchains, and many large Indian corporations are already using private blockchain infrastructure such as hyperledger," said Sumit Gupta, co-founder and CEO, CoinDCX.

Notably, this is not the first time, when the government has sought to come up with a regulation for the industry. An earlier bill in 2019 reportedly sought to ban cryptocurrency and criminalize its possession in India. However, it was not introduced. Moreover, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had banned cryptocurrencies in 2018, which was later overturned by the Supreme Court of India in March 2020.

“The government may likely be considering every cryptocurrency except introduced by RBI or the government to be private. The ban would be a disaster at both the legislation level and the enforcement level to ban cryptocurrencies," said Sathvik Vishwanath, CEO and co-founder of Unocoin.

Industry experts argue that as the ownership of major crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ether are ‘public’, the government may need to come up with some other term than ‘private’ to define and regulate non-government cryptocurrencies.

Nonetheless, industry experts are hopeful that there won’t be a blanket ban on cryptocurrencies.

While the prices of cryptocurrencies in India slumped soon after the bill was listed by the government, the prices recovered a bit after it failed to find a mention in the Budget speech of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on 1 February 2020.

“The majority of Bitcoin, Ether and other investors are holding on to their crypto assets and will continue to do so. Overall, the crypto community seems to be resilient and confident that in the end, the government will make the right decision," said Rangala.

Meanwhile, the crypto industry is actively engaging with the government and to try and find an amicable solution. “All stakeholders associated with the crypto and blockchain industry are working together to resolve the issue at hand. We have reached out to the government and are looking at a continuation of dialogue which leaves room for better understanding and cooperation from the competent authorities," said Gupta.

Meanwhile, leading cryptocurrency companies such as CoinDCX, WazirX, Unocoin, CoinSwitch Kuber, Zebpay and PocketBits have joined hands to launch a campaign called, #IndiaWantsBitcoin, which aims to educate and build greater awareness amongst policymakers and the public about cryptocurrencies.

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