There are a lot of reasons to do crypto futures trading. You can bet on Bitcoin, Ethereum or any other cryptocurrency’s price movement without owning the asset class. If you obtain extremely high leverage, slight price movement can bring in high profits, but the flipside is huge! This market is unregulated, and external factors impact price movement tremendously. If the market turns against your obtained position, you can book a huge loss. Unlike spot trading, you cannot hold positions for the long term, and there is a chance of liquidation. Crypto futures trading is a high-risk game, and it is not for novice traders. But how will you try it and learn the skills needed? Theories do not always help in trading. You need to experience it.

Bitget, one of the world's leading cryptocurrency exchanges, offers futures demo trading, and here you can hone your futures trading skills with imaginary money. Take leverage up to 125x and keep on having long and short positions. Get liquidated as many times as you want. Test different strategies and see what works in this market. Try whether different types of signals are valid or not to make trade decisions. While doing this activity, you keep on learning irrespective of the trade outcome. There are no real financial consequences.

To start futures demo trading on Bitget:

• Register on Bitget. Head to the Bitget Demo trading page.

• Demo assets will be there already in your account. You can now explore the trading pairs on the demo.

  1. USDT-M Futures demo trading pairs: You get a demo asset SUSDT to trade here. The trading pairs are:  SBTCSUSDT/SETHSUSDT/SEOSSUSDT/SXRPSUSDT

  2. Coin-M Futures demo trading pairs: You use different demo assets to trade here. The trading pairs are:  SBTCSUSD/SETHSUSD/SEOSSUSD/SBTCSUSD

  3. USDC-M Futures demo trading pairs: You get a demo asset SUSDC to trade here. The trading pairs are: SBTCSPERP/SETHSPERP

Let us explore USDT-M Futures demo trading and explain every bit of it for newbies. For example, you want to trade SBTCSUSDT. You can see the TradingView Chart. If you have traded on the spot market, you should be familiar with this. Here you can bet whether the price of SBTC (a demo asset tracking the price of Bitcoin) will go up or down, without actually buying the asset. This is a perpetual pair, so the contract never expires.

• Decide your Margin:  This is the upfront amount you need to put down to open a position. The screen shows that I’ve 3000 SUSDT. I want to use 25% of that i.e. 750 SUSDT. This is my collateral amount.

• Long or Short: Now, I can go either long or short. Suppose, I think SBTC will go up within 24 hrs. I will go for a long position. It is important to take note of the “Funding Rate.” Long and short position holders will incur funding fees every 8 hours. A positive funding rate means the longs are paying the shorts (more long positions than short). A negative funding rate means the shorts are paying the longs (more short positions than long).

• Decide Leverage: Leverage is a key feature of futures trading. Through this, I can obtain a big position by using a small amount of money. High leverage is very risky, and leverage selection should be done as per your risk appetite. I am selecting 10x leverage in this trade. 10x leverage means I can open a $75,000 trade with just $750 of my funds. 

• Decide Margin Mode: There are two types of margin modes available:

  1. Cross Margin Mode: Here, all your positions share the joint margin pool. This is a more capital-efficient approach, but if liquidation happens, you lose the full margin balance.

  2. Isolated Margin Mode: Here, the risk of long positions and short positions is calculated separately. If you want to open multiple positions and proactively manage each one, go for isolated margin mode. If one of your position's margins falls below the maintenance margin level, only that position will be liquidated. You can add or reduce the margin for a position in isolated margin mode.

• Make the Trade: For this trade purpose, I am going for an isolated margin market order. I am opening a long position after selecting the TP/SL (Take Profit/Stop Loss) portion. Selecting TP/SL is not mandatory.  TP/SL will send an automated instruction to exit my position when the price hits the selected level. It will help me to minimise loss or book profit at the desired range.  When my trade order is successfully submitted, it shows under “Positions".

• Manage your Trade: After opening a position, I can see the liquidation price and need to manage my position. I have already selected TP/SL but that can be adjusted again. It is important to note the MMR (Maintenance Margin Rate). Maintenance Margin is the minimum balance required to keep my position open. If MMR is equal to 100%, my position will get liquidated. If it approaches near 100%, I need to add more funds or I can lose my position.

• Closing the Trade: If my position reaches the TP/SL level, it gets closed automatically. If I have gained good profit or am unhappy with sudden market fluctuations, I can also manually close the trade. I can close the complete position or a portion of the open position. Closing order is irrevocable.

This is demo trading only, but it can help you to experiment. You can continue to top up your account with imaginary money at any time to make numerous trades. Avoid high leverage as it does not help. Stay updated with market trends, technical analysis, and make trades regularly to observe the performance of your trades. Even if you make a good profit in a few trades, do not be jubilant and develop your “Learning Curve”. The profits and losses are settled on a real-time basis on Bitget. So, you become accustomed to a sophisticated, accurate data system. The user-friendly interface and trading experience on Bitget are always lovable.

Once you gain enough confidence from demo trading, jump into real futures trading. Create a trading plan and only trade with money you can afford to lose.

If you are not a user of Bitget, register on Bitget. Invite your friends to try the demo trading together. There are Rebate Perks for the inviters. If you are a Solana builder, join Bitget at the Solana Startup Village- Toronto from May 1st to 16th. 

This article was simultaneously published here also.

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Liquid Staking Derivatives (LSD) is a type of crypto asset that offers the opportunity to traders to take the benefit of staking rewards without holding the underlying token. With the growing popularity of Proof-of-stake blockchains, the LSD market is also poised for explosive growth. To simplify, LSDs are derivatives based on staked tokens but these are liquid, unlike staked tokens. Due to their liquid nature, LSDs can be used in lending, yield farming or other income-generating DeFi strategies. This provides a new structure of yield. The hype is real and LSD is the hottest trend in the DeFi world today. Bifrost is a modular, scalable, non-custodial omni-chain LSD parachain based on Polkadot. It provides standardized, high-yield, safe, and reliable underlying interest-bearing assets. Let us scout how you can use it to obtain a yield from your unlocked DOT from the first crowdloan.

We need to understand Bifrost first. It is basically a derivative issuer that provides liquidity for all pledged assets, issuing corresponding shadow assets during the bonding period of the original assets. This shadow asset is a fungible Token that can be circulated in different DEXs, pools, protocols and you can also transfer cross-chains. The vision of Bifrost is to remain omni-chain and it wants to use any LSD on any chain. Staking is often considered a win-win game for generating solid passive income but it is a cumbersome process. Let us focus on only Polkadot for discussion.

Everyone can not be a Polkadot Validator. Nomination is the easier method where you nominate validators. The problem is that here you need to monitor validator performance and regularly update nominations. Direct nominators also need to ensure that they stake more tokens than the minimum threshold amount required to be an active nominator and receive rewards. This minimum amount is currently around 500 DOT and increases as staking participation increases. You can check the minimum amount to be a direct nominator here. Nomination has some risks as if you select a malicious validator, you can lose a portion of your stake through slashing. Nomination pools are a new feature for Polkadot’s staking system and you can join with a minimum of 1 DOT. However, it is important to note that there is no guarantee of rewards for those pools that lack enough bonded funds to be included in the bags list. The inactive pool members do not receive any rewards at all.

Bifrost liquid staking solves this. Bifrost's solution for this is vToken (Staking Derivatives Voucher Token). To avail of this, you need to bring your native DOT to Bifrost parachain through cross-chain transfer. This transfer is powered by XCM, the language through which complex, cross-consensus interactions occur. XCM is very important for Bifrost as it is a multichain liquid staking protocol that communicates with many chains. With the help of XCM, Bifrost ensures that each liquid staking derivative is fully reserved by the underlying staked token. XCM also ensures the speed of transfer. The users receive vDOT at lightning speed when they stake DOT on Bifrost and can check their XCM transaction results under validated transactions rather than through a relayer. This vDOT has a yield-bearing feature of DOT staking reward.

To be precise, you earn DOT staking yield while holding vDOT. The rewards of staking automatically get added to the vDOT exchange price and you have no need to claim it manually. The longer the time of holding vDOT, the bigger the amount of reward. vDOT is a liquid asset and can be traded in the open market. Whenever you want, you can redeem it back to DOT. It can also be used in the LP farms to earn high returns. The vDOT-USDT LP Farm on Bifrost has 55% APY currently and DOT-vDOT has 25% APY. So, it gives you various options while you stake. You can decide what to do according to your risk appetite. Suppose, there is a sudden spike in DOT price and price doubles or triples in a single day. You observe that you can have excellent profit if you sell DOT. Holding vDOT enables you to take benefit of such a situation which is never possible in Polkadot’s original chain staking that has a fixed 28-day redemption period. You can sell your vDOT for any stablecoin and book profit. If you want, you can also Fast Redeem your vDOT for DOT in less than 28 days via the matching queue mechanism.

Keeping the asset liquid while earning staking rewards is a great thing! But Bifrost offers you more benefits. The protocol does delegated staking for you by selecting a set of validators and rebalances the rewards to provide more profitable solutions. The Bifrost SLP protocol screens more than 10 verified nodes through governance and adopts a filtering process that includes a number of nominees, commission ratio, and uptime history to ensure that none of the selected nodes has a slashing history. This maximises the staking return of your DOT. Last month, Bifrost launched the Polkadot Unlock Harvest event and vDOT minting volume surpassed 2.7 million in October. This event will end on November 22 and by joining you can share a $130,000 Prize in $BNC. vDOT is quite a hot asset now and the liquidity has surpassed 2.2 million USD!

Bifrost is fundamentally different from other popular LSD protocols like Lido, Rocket Pool etc. The omni-chain vision of Bifrost is different from multi-chain or cross-chain. Normally LSD protocols replicate single-chain application on multiple chains. Bifrost offers full-chain interoperability as a pre-requisite and incorporates different parts of the application on different chains. SLP, the pallet used by Bifrost for vToken minting and redemption, facilitates the issuance of LSD assets on different chains but the SLP pallet is deployed on the Bifrost chain. It is a “headquarters + branch” model. The portion deployed on the Bifrost chain acts as the headquarters, and the parts deployed on different chains act as branches. So, the DAPPs that integrate with Bifrost only need to interact with the Bifrost chain and that reduces complex cross-chain integration. All vTokens are native assets of the Bifrost chain. It also offers unified liquidity and overcomes the problem of liquidity fragmentation.

LSD protocols offer rewards in the form of protocol’s native tokens to attract more TVL (Total value Locked) but that can not be a sustainable approach. Bifrost takes the game to a different level with its composability. The future of blockchain is multi-chain and Bifrost’s omni-chain architecture will pave the way to bring more composability in superior terms. When you deposit your tokens to an LSD protocol, you give away your governance rights of the original chain. Bifrost will surprise you here. vDOT supports Polkadot OpenGov and reserves the voting rights of the staked DOT. Yes, if you hold vDOT, you can have a say in the governance of Polkadot. Sounds amazing right? With the help of Bifriost, you can stake, participate in DeFi, and govern. Yes, vDOT is the only such LST available! Do not wait for the paradigm shift of LSD protocols - that will certainly happen. Experience the capital efficiency of Bifrost with compelling use cases by depositing your DOT and obtaining vDOT.

Follow Bifrost on Twitter to get regular updates and join their vibrant Discord.

This article was also published here.

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Ethereum is the most popular blockchain for tokenization, developing decentralized applications (DAPPs), and it is the most instrumental for moving digital ledger solutions to productions but the fact is that one size does not fit all when we try to leverage the blockchain technology. Customizability to a blockchain network at the protocol level is absent at Ethereum. As more organizations are trying to extract value from blockchain, we need a more dynamic framework for blockchain solutions across their lifecycles.

EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) is a software environment that executes smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. EVM can be considered the backbone of the Ethereum blockchain as it allows the creation and execution of smart contacts. The EVM also manages the states like – data storage, transaction processing and gas fee calculations. The developers prefer the Ethereum blockchain to develop and deploy their DAPPs as the EVM offers a high level of programmability. There is no wonder that due to this reason, Ethereum has taken centre stage in the smart contract ecosystem.  

Horizen is a general-purpose blockchain that is composed of the main Horizen blockchain and sidechains. The mainchain does not natively support smart contracts but natively supports the creation of sidechains. The mainchain maintains a parent-child relationship with the sidechains and the horizontal scaling solution Zendoo allows communication with the sidechains irrespective of their structure. This unique sidechain solution of Horizen allows the developers to build their own scalable blockchains with flexible design. The best thing is that the customization comes at the protocol level. This consistently made Horizen very powerful but the flexibility of the EVM was missing. Horizen EON fills that gap.

Horizen EON (Ethereum Open Network) is a fully EVM-compatible sidechain and smart contract platform. EON has adopted Ethereum’s Account-based transaction model to represent assets as balances within accounts. This is completely different from the mainchain of Horizen which is a UTXO model chain like Bitcoin. The account model of EON has two account types - Externally-Owned Account (EOA) and Contract Account. Due to EVM compatibility, EON opens the ability to use smart contracts on chains. The developers can easily deploy their Ethereum-based DAPPs on EON and take advantage of Horizen’s growing ecosystem.

To interact with applications on EON, you need to have a valid EVM-compatible wallet. The recommended wallets are Cobalt and Metamask. Cobalt is a web browser extension wallet that is compatible with Chrome or Brave browser and it is optimized for the Horizen ecosystem. You need to connect to the Horizen EON mainnet in Cobalt. You can import your existing EVM wallet keys to Cobalt or create a new wallet. If you are a Metamask fan, you can add the Horizen EON mainnet to Metamask from this Chainlist link. Wanna add the network to Metamask manually? Here is the manual configuration:

Network name:  Horizen EON

New RPC URL:  https://eon-rpc.horizenlabs.io/ethv1

Chain ID: 7332

Currency symbol: ZEN

Block Explorer: https://eon-explorer.horizenlabs.io/

Once you have got your EON wallet, you need to have ZEN, the native token of the Horizen blockchain. The gas fees on EON are paid by ZEN. Presently, no centralized exchange supports withdrawal to the Horizen EON chain. So, if you have ZEN in any centralized exchange, you need to deposit it into your Sphere by Horizen wallet. Sphere by Horizen is the official Horizen wallet. You can download Sphere from here. It is a desktop wallet and supports Windows, Mac, and Linux. The current version is 1.13.0. Once you have deposited ZEN to your Sphere by Horizen wallet, you can do a forward transfer from the mainchain to EON. Old versions are not recommended to be used and you may not find a forward transfer option there.

Horizen EON mainnet Alpha was released some months back. The ecosystem is developing fast but you have fewer options to explore EON now. A $75,000 bug bounty program is still running for reporting vulnerabilities to strengthen the security and integrity of the EON chain on the permanent public testnet Gobi. The beauty of Horizen is that the sidechains and the mainchain are independent of each other. Horizen’s mainchain operates on a Proof-of-Work consensus but EON operates on Proof-of-Stake.

Yes, you can stake ZEN on the EON chain in order to participate actively in the network consensus. Forger nodes play a critical role in the Proof-of-Stake consensus of EON by creating blocks, validating transactions, enhancing security, and promoting the efficiency of decentralization. To be an active participant, you can lock a certain amount of ZEN and become a Forger. The higher the stake, the greater the chance that you will be able to forge a block. The recent submission of ZenIP 42206 states that the reward currently paid to Secure Node in the Horizen mainchain block will be redirected to an EON Forger Subsidy Fund. It is significant as the allocation of Horizen’s block reward will be changed. Check this link if you want to run a Forger node.

There will be a DAO-controlled address called “EON Forger Subsidies” set up on both EON and the Horizen blockchains. The 10% of the block reward currently paid to the Secure Nodes of Horizen mainchain is supposed to go to Forger Nodes when the proposal is passed. So, the deprecation of the Secure Node tracking service is inevitable. Forging on EON is yet to become public but a mechanism to automatically forward transfer 10% of the block reward to the EON chain’s “EON Forger Subsidies” address has been added to the mainchain. Please note that Horizen DAO is already launched and Horizen community members are already getting involved in governance and making their voices heard in the direction of the project. ZEN serves as the governance token for both the Horizen mainchain and the EON sidechain.

With the addition of EON, Horizen goes one step ahead to build the industry’s most complete blockchain platform. Massive scalability without compromising decentralization can be delivered by Horizen due to its networked structure. 10,000 sidechains can run in parallel with a TPS (transactions per second) limit of 1000 and thus the total network can support up to 10,000,000 TPS. With EVM compatibility of EON, Horizen now can take benefit of the already developed and vibrant Ethereum ecosystem. NFTs, DeFi and many blockchain games will gradually arrive on Horizen now. EON is destined to supercharge the utility of ZEN also. Smart contracts, the “build-your-own” blockchain nature of Zendoo, and an intra-ecosystem secure bridging protocol – Horizen offers everything that the industry stands in need of!

Follow Horizen on Twitter to get regular updates and join their vibrant Discord.

This article is also published here.

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“The key is in not spending time, but in investing it”— Stephen R. Covey.

All financial markets go through turmoil from time to time but the crypto market is characterised by abnormal price swings. Volatility is a feature here. A declining market can be daunting for traders, especially newbies. If you got rekt in this bear cycle, you can blame yourself for your misjudgement but navigating a crypto bear market is challenging even for pro traders.

The good news is that all bear markets turn into bull markets, eventually. In the meantime, you can prepare to survive the downturn. Do sufficient research and try to understand the projects deeply. Buy the dip using dollar-cost averaging and use indicators to find the best entry points. You can also find ways to earn cryptocurrency by methods other than trading. This article will take you through some methods which you can use to make earnings or future potential earnings. In maximum cases, you have no need to make any investment and you can earn potential rewards by performing regular tasks.

Reading & Writing Blogs

Publish0X: Publish0x is a publishing platform where both authors and readers get paid. It was launched in December 2018 and gained a stream of popularity very fast. Publish0x is crypto-agnostic. Anybody can become a reader by simple registration but to be a writer, you need to apply. A writer can create his/her own blog here and post articles on various topics. Upvotes are not used for earning on Publish0x. There is a tipping option. A reader can tip the writer from a cryptocurrency tip pool. The pool most probably comes from the sponsors of Publish0x. Presently tipping is done from the pool of $SPOT, $AMPL & $ETH. The reader can choose the percentage of the tip to be given to himself/herself and the writer. Publish0x is a no-ICO project and they do not have any own token. You can find top-notch posts on this platform.

Steemit & Hive: Steemit is the first decentralized social media or publishing platform in history. It has Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) mechanism which protects the blockchain. The contents published are immutable here. Hive is a fork of Steem and the blogging platform on Hive blockchain is also called Hive. You can earn cryptocurrency for blogging or curating on both platforms.

read.cash: read.cash is a blogging platform where you can earn some $BCH by producing content on the platform. The present traffic to the site is a bit low but you will get a variety of content.

ReadON: ReadON is a decentralized content distribution platform. It was the winner of the BNB & Solana Riptide & Arweave Hackathon. The mobile app works on ios and Android. You gain points as you interact with the app. ReadON is a tokenless protocol and is expected to reward early users with the $READ token. ReadON Testnet Loki has been launched some days back.

Web3 Social Media & Networks

Lens Protocol: The Lens Protocol is a Web3 social graph on the Polygon PoS blockchain. It is designed to empower creators to own the links between themselves and their community, forming a fully composable, user-owned social graph. Since users own their data, they can bring it to any DAPP built on top of Lens Protocol. Creators have no need to worry about losing their content, audience, and livelihood based on the whims of an individual platform's algorithms and policies. At present, Lens Protocol is not open to everyone. You can join the waitlist if you want to access the protocol free of cost. You can also buy a lens profile from Opensea if you are ready to spend 50-100$. It is expected that the active users of the protocol will be rewarded in the future. Some popular DAPPs in the ecosystem are Lenster, Lenstube, Orb, Buttrfly etc.

TORUM: TORUM is a collaboration between a multifunctional crypto-powered social media platform and an integrated crypto exchange. TORUM ecosystem is powered by $XTM, an ERC-20 token. $XTM is the native currency of the social media ecosystem. The platform is like Facebook and you get free cryptocurrency for your social media activity. The platform has a nice user interface and it is growing rapidly. Torum has 18+ investors including KuCoin and Huobi.

Link3: Link3 is a Web3 social network of verifiable identities where teams build meaningful relationships with communities. It is built with CyberConnect and focuses on the need to reconstruct the idea of community building in Web3 in a way that shifts the narrative focus from short-term, speculative activity to long-term, trust-based connections. The W3ST (Web3 Status Token) token Link3 is a non-transferable NFT with on-chain issuer reference and it enables communities to build meaningful connections with their members by placing signal over noise. CyberConnect token is getting launched soon and you can think about collecting the CyberConnect FanPass at Link3. The active users of the protocol are supposed to be rewarded in future.

Phaver: Phaver's decentralized social app brings you the best of Web3 without the complex UX that usually comes along with it. It is powered by Lens Protocol and CyberConnect. Lens Protocol is in beta and requires invitation so, you can use Phaver to discover and follow the on-chain content, even before you get yourself a coveted Lens profile. Without having any crypto knowledge, you can use the mobile app. It works on ios and Android. Recently, they have launched Cred or Credibility Score which is a new way to identify and reward genuine users. You are going to be rewarded with the platform token later based on your Cred Score.

DeBank Stream: DeBank is a web3 infrastructure company. Recently, they have launched a social media called DeBank Stream. Connect your Metamask and start using it. DeBank has no governance token and the early users should be rewarded. DeBank has 9 investors including Coinbase Ventures and Sequoia Capital. So, it may be big.

Farcaster: Farcaster is a sufficiently decentralized social network. Farcaster is built as an open protocol and has many client apps. You can pick your favourite one, or even use many at the same time. With Farcaster, public data is freely available, and you can always switch between apps. It is an invite-only network as of now. If you want to explore the platform, join their Telegram. Farcaster is a tokenless protocol and it may reward the active users in future.

Yup: With the help of this app, you can cross-post across Farcaster, Bluesky, Twitter and see the content of all web3 social in one feed. The native token is $YUP and it is rewarded to the users. The mobile waitlist link is here.

Firefly: Firefly is a Web3 Social Aggregator Powered by Mask Network. It provides a seamless social experience across Lens, Twitter and Farcaster integration is planned. Here is the mobile app waitlist link. The early users may get rewarded in future.

KlubX: KlubX recently launched beta. Use your Metamask to join KlubX. Progress in a secure and anonymous ecosystem. Personalize your profile with your assets. The mobile app works on ios and Android. There is no native token of KlubX and the early users of the app should get rewarded. The users are already getting an off-chain $KXP bonus.

Damus: Damus is a supercharged social network built on nostr, an open protocol that enables a truly censorship-resistant and global social network. Social media has developed into a key way information flows around the world today but unfortunately, our current social media systems are broken. Damus wants to solve that with nostr. The mobile app works only on ios. Neither nostr nor Damus has any native token. It is possible that the early users will be rewarded.

Distrikt: Distrikt is a decentralized social media network that empowers users. It runs on the Internet Computer blockchain and gives users ownership and authority over their identity and data. All Distrikt’s engagements, uploads, and exchanges occur on-chain. In comparison to existing platforms, Distrikt is a combination of LinkedIn & Twitter, except it is decentralized, user-governed, and user-owned. The mobile app works on ios and Android. There is no native token of Distrikt and the early users of the app should get rewarded.

Web3 Campaign Platforms

Galxe: Galxe is the leading platform for building the Web3 community. With over 11 million unique users, Galxe has propelled the growth of Optimism, Polygon, Arbitrum, and more than 2900 partners with reward-based loyalty programs. You can earn NFTs/OATs/tokens by contributing to your favourite Web3 community here. A lot of campaigns are run regularly here.

Layer3: Layer3 is a DAPP discovery platform, mainly designed around learning experiences for new web3 users. It familiarizes users with new projects and helps them to answer quizzes and do on-chain activities. While you do activities, you grow your reputation inside the Layer3 ecosystem. Layer3 has no governance token now. The adopters are supposed to be rewarded in future. Layer3 has 12 investors including Lattice Capital and Third Prime.

Zealy: Zealy helps web2 and web3 companies engage with their communities by giving them tasks that they can achieve in exchange for various rewards. The platform was known by Crew3 earlier and changed its name to Zealy months back. You can find different quest boards there and earn potential rewards.

Soquest: SoQuest, backed by Kucoin Ventures, is a Web3 portal to earn rewards and build identities. The platform is like Galxe and you can get crypto rewards, NFT, and OATs. To ensure an equitable distribution of future token airdrops, Soquest mining kicked off some days back. The social mining will be continued for 6 months and a total of 500 million Gemstone supplies will be allocated. Gemstones can be converted to the platform token later.

Questn: Questn is a quest-to-earn platform. The gas fee is generally covered by QuestN when claiming rewards from several communities on BSC. The number of each type of reward can be different, and the faster questers complete, the better prize they win. The mobile app works on ios and Android. This platform does not have any governance token.

Intract: Intract is a new platform to learn web3, participate in quests and contests, earn engaging rewards, and have fun, all in one place. Recently, their zkEVM Saga received excellent popularity. This platform does not have any governance token.

Taskon: TaskOn is a platform that boosts the completion of various Web3 tasks in a decentralized way. It helps task initiators and implementers to collaborate. The site is new and often problematic. This platform does not have any governance token.

Web3 Wallets

Web3 Wallets have set a new industry standard in creating new ways to own. Every day new decentralized wallets are being launched and maximum have no governance tokens. You can import your Metamask or original wallet keys to them and use but consider the risk factor. Zerion, Rabby and Taho are some projects which show good promise. None of them have any governance token. It may be a good idea to use these.

Web Browsing through Brave

Brave Browser is a simple browser just like google chrome (3 times faster than Chrome) but it comes with several features to improve your web browsing experience. The browser comes with a built-in ad blocker and makes your web browsing experience awesome. Brave is available to download on Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS operating systems. If you enable Brave ads, you can earn $BAT tokens for viewing ads while you browse. Please remember that BAT is a top cryptocurrency project.

Using Presearch instead of Google

Presearch did their ICO in 2017. It was born from the realization that Google was attaining monstrous power. Google’s market dominance was already killing competition. The alternative to Google can not be another Google. Could there be a decentralized alternative to Google? Presearch saw the day of the light with this thought. $PRE is the native token of Presearch. You can use Presearch (mobile app/browser extension) and get some free $PRE tokens for searching. Presearch also has a nice referral scheme.

There are many more applications or platforms which you can use for potential future rewards. This article tries to compile the popular ones and may miss quite a few options. Every option may not fit every individual’s needs, so please judge what suits your requirement and time. Also, please DYOR before opting for any of the projects cited in the article.

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Polynomial Trade is a new product from Polynomial Protocol. The project started in HackMoney 2021 by ETHGlobal with the objective of automating financial derivative strategies. Polynomial also received an allocation from the OP governance fund and it is dedicated to the ecosystem adoption of low-cost and lightning-fast Ethereum L2 blockchain Optimism. The DeFi Options Vault (DOV) of Polynomial aka ‘Polynomial Earn’ received a great response earlier as it optimized yield by selling options directly to an AMM. ‘Polynomial Swap’ simplified the swapping experience on Optimism, especially the synthetic assets. Now the team wants to storm the decentralized perps market. The newly launched perps marketplace powered by Synthetix Protocol allows leverage trading up to 50x with a fast, smooth UI and lower fees than other derivative exchanges. Let us have a deep dive into Polynomial Trade.

Perpetual Trade UI looks like the UI of any centralized exchange. You need to connect your Metamask or any other Web3 wallet. You must be connected to the Optimism mainnet. Polynomial Trade uses smart contract wallet. So, you need to create a Polynomial Smart Account. The wallet creation consumes nominal gas. After the creation of the wallet, you need to deposit sUSD. If you do not have sUSD, do not worry. You can swap your ETH or other stablecoins to sUSD on Polynomial Swap. You can also use any other AMM DEX to get sUSD. Once you have got sUSD, you can deposit it into the smart wallet. After depositing funds to the smart wallet, you can add margin to the respective markets. The minimum margin to start trading is $50 and there is no maximum margin limit. More margin can be added whenever you want. Are you wondering who is providing liquidity on Perpetual Trade? The exchange obtains deep liquidity from Syntheix and SNX stakers are the counterparty for the trades here. SNX stakers get fees from the platform for providing liquidity.

So, you have margin to start trading now. Suppose, you have added margin to ETH-PERP market. You can long or short ETH. You can trade $50 worth ETH with $1 because the exchange lends out the remaining $49. Trading with high leverage may be risky as you can earn 50x gains, but you should note that a 1% price move against you can wipe out your capital. If you are not a pro trader, you should take less leverage to test the water. You can use the slider bar to set leverage. Polynomial offers two types of trades – Standard Orders and Limit Orders. Standard Order is a market order and it is executed at the current market price. A Limit Order is an instruction to buy/sell an asset at or below a specified limit price. Suppose you want to place a limit buy order on Polynomial. You will see two new things on the screen – Trigger Price and Limit Price. You need to select that as per your choice. Suppose, ETH current price is $1900 and you have selected Trigger Price as $1910 and Limit Price as $1930. Your order will get executed when ETH price lies between $1910 and $1930 for some time. There will not be any instant trigger. The order will get executed only when the price on the chain is the same as the price of the execution bot.

Synthetix perp v2 uses Delayed Off-chain Orders and Polynomial processes all the orders through this. Delayed orders are next-price orders but with a time delay. It avoids any issue created due to arbitrary price updates by Chainlink price oracle. Front-running risk also gets eliminated due to this. While you put long or short orders, do not forget to look at the ‘Funding Rate’. It can help you to judge the market situation. Since perpetual futures contracts never settle, exchanges use funding rates to ensure that futures prices and underlying spot prices converge on a regular basis. You can see the average funding rate in the UI. If the futures price is higher than the spot price, the long position traders will pay a funding fee to the short position traders. If the funding rate is positive, it means that many traders are bullish and they are willing to pay the funding rate to short traders. If the funding rate is negative, it means that short position traders are dominant in the market and they are willing to pay the long position traders. If you are going long with high leverage in a market where the funding rate is negative, you may get liquidated even during low volatility as you are continuing to pay for funding. ‘Open Interest’ - long and short both are visible on the trade screen and that should help you to make informed decisions. Also, look at ‘Skew’. It depicts the total no of long and short contracts expressed as a percentage.

Are you a pro trader and want to explore something adventurous? You can deploy your funding rate arbitrage strategy on Polynomial Trade as within the Synthetix ecosystem, the funding rates on Synthetix Perps are currently long-skewed. Funding rate arbitrage is a popular trading strategy in perpetual futures contracts in crypto exchanges. It involves taking advantage of differences in funding rates between exchanges to profit from the interest rate differential. For blue-chip assets like ETH or BTC, DeFi yield farming rates are generally very low and funding rate arbitrage yields can be very high due to the amplification of returns with leverage. Suppose, the funding rate for ETH-PERP on Polynomial Trade is positive and it is negative on another exchange called ‘A’. It opens the door to making profits. You can easily shorth ETH on Polynomial Trade with 3x leverage and long ETH on ‘A’ exchange with 3x leverage. As you go long and short on the same position, you are hedging your risks with perfection. It is suggested not to go for high leverage as this strategy is not immune from liquidation risks. Never try this if you do not have any idea about what you are doing!

The size of the orders continuously varies in the futures market due to leverage, and the traders look for potential volume to suit their trading strategies. A deep market allows traders to execute large orders efficiently without causing significant price movement. Polynomial Trade looks promising in this area as the deep liquidity from Synthetix provides a lot of scopes to bring high-volume traders. The Chainlink and Pyth oracles provide the up-to-date token price data to smart contracts here and you can be assured not to see ‘scam wicks’ of CEXs. The platforms’ interface also displays a lot of information about the user’s trade and position which makes it very transparent. You can trade BTC, ETH, SOL, AVAX and many more perpetual products efficiently without any KYC or professional investor requirements that are found on CEXs. The trading fees are as low as 5-10 bps which is significantly lower than other perps exchanges. While you trade on Polynomial Trade with multiple assets, you become eligible for OP rewards too. This OP season started on April 19th and it is going to be a 20-week-long event in which 300,000 OP tokens will be distributed weekly to traders. Polynomial has a plan to launch Power Perps later this year. Power Perps are derivatives that provide convexity without expiry and strike prices such as ETH², BTC² etc and the crypto community is eagerly waiting for this. The trade volume can burst anytime on Polynomial Trade. Keep a close watch on this potential DeFi derivative powerhouse.

Follow Polynomial Protocol on Twitter to get regular updates and join their vibrant Discord. DYOR before investing your hard-earned money.

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But why is Starknet for gaming when other L2s are available? State Channel (Ex- Celer Network) allows two or more parties to conduct multiple transactions off-chain, without the need for each transaction to be broadcast to the entire network but the adoption curve is very poor. Plasma (Ex – Polygon) allows specific assets to be transferred between the Ethereum mainnet and the sidechin but such a sidechain is not secured by the mainchain. Optimistic Rollups (Ex - Arbitrum and Optimism) are adaptive but the withdrawal of funds takes up to 7 days. zkRollups (Ex - zkSync) generalizes computation with zero-knowledge and provides instant withdrawal while being quite fast and secure but the use case is limited to DEXs.

Starknet powered by Validium technology is more promising as it is a hybrid of State Channel, Plasma & zkRollup. It is fast, secure and provides a better user experience. The usage of ‘zero-knowledge’ eliminates the chances of cheating by bad actors and makes the protocol highly decentralized. It is also engineered for scalability, ensuring that it can accommodate exponential growth without sacrificing security and decentralization. STARKS rely on minimal, time-tested cryptographic assumptions, provides quantum security and eliminates the need for a trusted setup. The potential of trustless Web3 gaming can be captured with ease on Starknet. 

Cairo, the programming language for blockchain developers to build applications on the StarkNet, is the first Turing-complete language for creating provable programs for general computation. It is optimal for harnessing the benefits of algebraic proof systems and ensuring efficient computation and verification processes. The best thing about Starknet is that it is designed to be future-proof. This Starknet roadmap of 2023 describes how the upcoming Starknet v0.12.0 will incorporate significant improvements in throughput and latency and in v0.13.0, the transaction costs will be reduced dramatically. All these will be beneficial for gaming DAPPs. 

Ethereum’s EIP-4844 (Shard Blob Transaction) is expected in Q4 of 2023. Starknet will get tremendous benefits from it as soon as possible, in addition to the introduction of Volition (off-chain data availability). There will be a dramatic reduction in the cost of data. Volition will allow developers to build Starknet applications with a hybrid Data Availability (DA) mode: both on-chain and off-chain data. In Starknet v0.15.0, proof will attest to the integrity of one or more Starknet blocks. This will fix the block interval, and improve Starknet’s UX. Gaming is a computation-heavy exercise and the users expect a good experience. The Web2 gaming DAPPs just need to get their blockchain moments to be onboarded into Web3 and only Starknet can help them to shine. 

Let’s talk more about Starknet’s UX. Starknet allows users to pre-approve a DAPP’s a transactions based on parameters like duration, maximum amount of gas, maximum transaction volume of a certain token, or a particular function on a particular contract. Generally, the on-chain games require users to sign multiple transactions to interact with different smart contracts and this hampers the game experience. With wallet like Argent or Braavos, you can generate a session key that is held in the browser’s local storage and it authorizes the DAPP to sign transactions for a limited time. This improves the gaming experience astonishingly. There is no wonder that the gaming ecosystem is finding great traction on Starknet. Let’s explore the prominent gaming DAPPs on Starknet. 

GoL2: Game of Life of GoL2 is an experiment in L2 gaming. The project was founded in February 2022 and it became live on Starknet mainnet in September 2022. The game is a reworking of the classic Game of Life by John Conway. The main rules of the game are: the normal rules of Conways’ Game of Life (3 to revive, 2 or 3 to stay alive) and the boundaries wrap — a glider may travel infinitely within the confines of the grid. Two game modes are there in GoL2 — Infinite and Creator modes. GoL2 is a play-to-earn game where you earn $GOL while you play the game.

The Ninth: The Ninth is an upcoming player-made and revolutionary real-time evolving game powered by Starknet. It is a fully on-chain metaverse and the team is focusing on building PVP arena games for players to compete using NFT equipment that they forge from staking. Nine arena games will be there and the players will be able to buy lands. Players can run private or open games there and act as hosts while socializing with their peers.

Realms: Realms is an upcoming massively multiplayer on-chain game of Economics and Chivalry from Bibliotheca DAO. The game was born out of the Loot phenomenon and can flawlessly incorporate all Loot assets. There are multiple games in the Realms universe and those are connected by a shared economy, resources, and game assets. ‘Realms: Eternum’ will be the first title launched in Realms Autonomous World. You can own zero-knowledge-proofed land in the game and be rewarded in $LORDS, the token of the Realmverse.

Briq: Briq is an NFT building protocol and it is live on Starknet mainnet. Briqs are basically building blocks and you can assemble them to create an NFT and disassemble them to get your briqs back. The created NFTs are called sets. You can transfer, lend or break them to have fun. Sets are interoperable NFTs, so they can be integrated with any metaverse. Briq 2.0.5 has been launched recently and you can import any image and turn it into briq set.

Influence: Influence is a grand space strategy MMO with a player-owned open economy. You can acquire and colonize your own asteroid in this Starknet-powered game. It serves as your home base. The mining resources give you access to build manufacturing plants, ships, launch systems and many more. If you do not want to buy an asteroid, you can lease land from an owner and play. Your owned land and the resources are NFTs here and easily transferable. You can also discover new technologies and engage in combat.

Age of Eykar: Age of Eyker is a decentralized strategy game and it is live on Starknet mainnet. Eykar is a fantasy universe. An open-source smart contract dictates the rules of this world - how fast time passes, how you can move, how you can form an army, and so on. To register your address in the game, you need to buy your first land and choose your fraction. After that, you can start recruiting people and conquering territories. Other kingdoms either become your allies or enemies.

Dope Wars: Dope Wars is a fully decentralized, community-driven, gaming metaverse project inspired by hip-hop culture. The team is bootstrapping a modern-day GTA-inspired metaverse and series of games built by their decentralized game studio. The game is inspired by the Drugwars game which is considered a classic. It is based on the DOPE NFT and $PAPER, the ecosystem currency. The open environment of Dope Wars allows developers and contributors to produce their own limitless games for the Dope Wars NFT holders. To get in the game, you need a Hustler. Hustlers are configurable NFT characters that can equip and unequip NFT Gear. All NFTs are tradeable in the market.

The web3 gaming landscape on Starknet is worth exploring. The network has made significant strides to attract game developers and gamers. The growth of the gaming ecosystem is a positive sign for Starknet but the next challenge will be to match up the web2 experience. Keep track of the mentioned games and look out for more exciting gaming projects on Starknet.

Follow Starknet Twitter. If you are a developer and want to develop gaming DAPP on Starknet, join their Discord. Our preferred Starknet wallet is Braavos.  

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In the traditional AMM model, liquidity is distributed uniformly along the price curve between 0 and ∞. An LP in a traditional AMM can make huge impermanent loss due to asset price volatility and it may exceed the fees collected. AMMs do not have order books. The price of the assets in the pool is the ratio between them in the pool and the ratio continues to change. As the change becomes bigger, liquidity providers become more exposed to impermanent loss. Suppose, you have provided liquidity in the USDC/ETH pool in a 50:50 ratio. If ETH goes up in value, the pool will have to rely on arbitrageurs continually to ensure that the pool price reflects the market price for maintaining the same value of both tokens in the pool. In such a situation, profit from the token, that appreciated in value, is taken away from the liquidity provider. If you decide to withdraw your liquidity at that point, your impermanent loss becomes permanent. Often, we can see that an LP could have earned more just by HODLing rather than LPing.

Uniswap V3 tried to change the game with its concentrated liquidity. It was the first protocol that allowed liquidity to be allocated within a custom price range. In a concentrated liquidity, liquidity providers may concentrate their capital to smaller price intervals than (0, ∞). For example, in DAI/USDC pair, an LP may choose to allocate capital solely to the 0.99 - 1.01 range. In a concentrated liquidity pool, LPs may have many different positions that create individualized price curves to reflect the preferences of each LP. While this is an effective way to decrease impermanent loss but you can earn trading fees only if the market price is within your selected range. The problem with concentrated liquidity is that it needs a more active presence from LP. In a volatile market, you need to reset the price ranges frequently to optimize returns. If the price moves outside the range, the capital efficiency effectively becomes zero. Again, continuous monitoring of such LP position is a big problem and moving the liquidity to a new range costs gas fees.

Maverick AMM solves that problem by natively automating the movement of concentrated liquidity. It maximizes capital efficiency by automating the reconcentration of liquidity as price moves. If you are an LP provider on Maverick, you can select from a variety of liquidity-shifting modes that do the work of monitoring prices and reconcentrating liquidity for them. Let us simplify this. Suppose, you want to provide your liquidity in the USDC-ETH pair and you are very bullish about ETH. You have a directional belief that ETH is going to move up in the long run and that is why you want to collect trading fees while increasing your ETH amount. There is no AMM in the market that can support your directional belief. In Maverick AMM, you can make a bet on the price movement of a particular token.

Liquidity providers on Maverick can choose to follow the price of an asset in a single direction and can effectively bet on the price trajectory of a specific token. This looks a bit like the single-sided liquidity strategy on a concentrated liquidity pool. To understand it better, let us explore the three scenarios when you provide liquidity with a concentrated liquidity pool:

1.  Current price is within your target price range

2.  Current price < your target price range

3.  Current price > your target price range

For the second and third cases, only one of the two tokens is required to provide LP. It allows single-side deposits. Here, your position does not earn fees or be used in trades until the market price moves into your range. Maverick brings innovation here. Let us remember your USDC-ETH pair and your bullishness about ETH. When ETH price moves up, your selected AMM mode of Maverick will automatically reconcentrate liquidity to follow it, in order to capture more fees. If you make a correct bet on price direction, you can use this mode to enjoy re-concentrated liquidity around the price as it moves in your desired direction without experiencing any impermanent loss.

Maverick AMM’s core philosophy is centered around Automated Liquidity Placement (ALP). This is a proprietary feature of Maverick. The goal of ALP is to provide better capital control for LPs and improve capital efficiency. It fills the gap between price belief and the tools available to bet for the price belief in an AMM model. The beauty of Maverick AMM is that you can select a range and specify how that liquidity should move as the price moves. The smart contract of Maverick AMM will natively shift your liquidity (maybe with each swap) so that your LP can remain capital efficient on a continuous basis.

Like any other AMM DEX, LPs supply liquidity to a pool on Maverick so that the traders can trade. LPs earn trading fees from the swaps made by traders. Each pool is defined by three parameters: Pair of assets, Bin width, and Fee rate. LPs can freely choose the pools. Generally, an LP supplies quantities of both tokens but a ‘single-sided liquidity’ provision is also there. When LPs supply liquidity, they need to select how the liquidity will be distributed across a price range. The smallest unit of the price range is called ‘bin’ and LPs can choose to stake liquidity in one or more bins. Maverick is a permissionless AMM and anybody can deploy a pool. The widths of the bins are variable and pool deployers set it when they deploy pools. During pool deployment, fee tier is also selected. There are 4 liquidity modes in Maverick AMM:

Mode Right: Liquidity moves with price as the price increases but there is no movement when the price decreases. Consider the USDC-ETH pool. If you are bullish about ETH, you will select Mode Right and add liquidity to the left of the current active bin.

Mode Left: Liquidity moves with price as the price decreases but there is no movement when the price increases. Consider the USDC-ETH pool. If you are bearish about ETH, you will select Mode Left and add liquidity to the right of the current active bin.

Mode Both: Liquidity moves with price in both directions. This mode allows you to add liquidity to the current active bin and to either of the bins immediately to the left or right of the active bin. It is designed to generate maximum trading fees by keeping all your provided liquidity concentrated close to the price.

Mode Static: It allows adding liquidity without engaging any of Maverick AMM’s liquidity-shifting mechanisms. It is very much like established Range AMM and less capital efficient.

The flexible market-making of Maverick is an innovation that allows users to select different positions in a single pool. The best thing is that these positions can be parameterized as per the need of the user. Customizability is a popular feature of TradFi and DeFi needs it for better user adoption. Maverick has the potential to take LPing to a new level by bringing a new class of market participants. In maximum AMM models, the fee is held separately from the liquidity in the pool. Maverick excels here too. The fee income is auto-reinvested to the bin where it is collected, which increases capital efficiency even more. So far, so good! But what about decentralization? A protocol like Maverick needs to be truly decentralized in order to be sustainable over the long term. This is why the team wants Maverick to be community-owned down the line. The decentralization roadmap is already in progress, and MAV, the governance token of Maverick, is supposed to be launched soon. Be sure to keep an eye out for Maverick's upcoming surprises!

Follow Maverick on Twitter and Medium. Join their vibrant Discord if you have queries. The audit reports of Maverick are available here. DYOR before investing your money.

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DeFi is disruptive and it will continue to be a vulnerable industry with anonymous teams, open-source codes, and a ton of money. This situation is ideal for hackers but there are white hat hackers in the industry also. Crypto bridge Wormhole paid $10 million to a white hat hacker for spotting a critical bug last year. The hacker spotted a bug that helped prevent a potential lockup of user funds. Aurora, an Ethereum Virtual machine built on the NEAR Protocol, paid a $6 million reward to a white hat hacker who reported a major bug. That bug in the Aurora engine could have allowed a malicious actor to mint new ETH and drain more than 70,000 ETH when the bug was reported in April 2022. But the problem is that bug bounty programs are often not incentivising good actors to discover and disclose vulnerabilities in the smart contracts of DeFi projects and the hackers can get manifold benefits by not wearing the white hats. What if we can incentivise a good actor on a similar scale to being a bad actor? It can suddenly encourage the incentives toward white hat hacking!

Hats Finance allows a project to create a scalable vault using the project’s own token or stablecoins like USDT or USDC. The platform envisions itself as a decentralized smart bug bounty marketplace and presently it supports Ethereum, EVM chains like Polygon and BSC, and Ethereum Layer 2 chains like Arbitrum and Optimism. Creating a bug bounty vault involves minimal effort and just needs a few steps. The open bug bounty protocol allows anyone to provide liquidity to bug bounties. It provides ongoing security to a DeFi project and encourages community involvement. It is a fact that exploits affect the success of a project, so the bounty incentives safeguard the project and discourage the forces who may try to hack it. Suppose, a hacker can hack a protocol where $20 million TVL is locked and $10 million in a smart contract is at risk. If he/she succeeds, it can destroy the protocol’s future. Hats can offer the hacker an alternative path where he/she can earn $1 million as a bug bounty for detecting the vulnerabilities within the protocol. The open hacking environment offered by Hats is lucrative to the hackers as they can find recognition and proper remuneration for their work. Unlike conventional bug bounty platforms, the claim process is straightforward here. There is no KYC. Bug submission takes place on-chain and each vault has its own committee appointed by the project that judges the bug submissions. The committee approves or rejects the vulnerability detection and subsequent release of the fund to the hacker based on severity level.

Liquity and Kleros were the first few projects that opened a decentralized bug bounty on Hats Finance. After that renowned DeFi projects like Paladin and Paraswap joined the platform. Community members of a listed project can freely provide liquidity to their favourite DAO bug bounty vault, reduce the risks of hacks and become chain protectors. Every vault has a minimum deposit threshold and after deposit confirmation, you will be eligible to redeem a Chain Protector NFT. This NFT will grant access to the Vault's Embassy. Providing liquidity to a bug bounty can be judged as a selfless activity but the ecosystem can thrive when there are logical incentives for the participants. This is why the liquidity providers will be rewarded with $HAT, the governance token of Hats Finance. The total supply of $HAT is 10 million and 50% of the supply will be allocated to the community and liquidity mining. There will be other NFT rewards for the participants also down the line.

Hats Finance offers a decentralized bug bounty platform that is unheard of. The need for improved security in web3 is the most critical area but we can not compromise with the ethos of decentralization and trustlessness. This is challenging but white hats can play a great role in protecting us from the bad guys and securing the protocols. Hats Finance can change the dynamics of web3 and contribute towards its success by facilitating decentralized vulnerability resolution between white hats and protocols. Community-owned bounties on Hats are extremely scalable as liquidity can grow along with the growth of a protocol. The team behind Hats Finance seems to be dedicated to improving the platform and user experience. The use of the Ethereum Push Notifications protocol to securely message its users without affecting privacy is an excellent feature. Imagine receiving vulnerability detection notifications on-chain through the platform. If you are a key member of a DeFi project and want to protect investors from future smart contract vulnerabilities, explore the bug bounty marketplace of Hats Finance. Apply here to open a Smart Bug Bounty Vault.  If you are a white hat hacker, look at the juicy rewards of existing bounty vaults and start hunting. Also, don’t forget to check out the challenges section, which offers gamified challenges and tests your mettle. White hats, it’s time to have real fun!

Follow Hats Finance on Twitter to get regular updates and join their vibrant Discord.

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Velocore is a low-slippage DEX on zkSync Era. It is built on the foundation established by Velodrome Finance, a fork of Solidly, on the zkSync era chain. Velocore is dedicated to providing an attractive and sustainable solution for liquidity needs as the team recognizes liquidity as one of the most critical components of DeFi projects. The project has made a lot of changes to the Solidly codebase to make it better and enable fair compensation for liquidity providers, considering impermanent loss. The UI is simple and minimalistic. The swap feature allows you to swap between Velocore-supported stable and volatile assets. You can also provide liquidity to the protocol to earn lucrative rewards. The USDC-WETH pool which is quite safe has 28.98% APR now. A bit riskier WETH-VC pool has an APR of 241.36%.

$VC is the utility token of Velocore. The protocol liquidity providers get rewarded $VC through emissions. The initial supply of $VC is 60 million. Weekly emissions start at 1.4M $VC (2.33% of the initial supply) and decay at 1% per epoch. Velocore has another token in the ecosystem. $veVC is used for governance. Any $VC holder can vote-escrow their tokens and receive $veVC which is also known as veNFT in exchange. Additional tokens can be added to the $veVC NFT at any time. The lock period of $veVC can be up to 4 years. There is a linear relation between $VC and $veVC. For example - 100 $VC locked for 4 years will become 100 $veVC; 100 $VC locked for 1 year will become 25 $veVC. These veNFTs and tokens allocated to partner projects or communities will be used to support and reward contributors in the ecosystem. The initial circulating supply includes 24 million for the presale (4.35 million for the private presale and 19.65 million for the public presale) and 4.5 million for ecosystem funds for partner protocols/communities.

Velocore adopts a structure known as ve(3,3) mechanics. It has a Vote-Escrow like Curve that incentivizes long-term token holding. It also has Staking/Rebasing/Bonding or (3,3) game theory that was designed by Olympus DAO. While the Liquidity providers receive $VC emissions, $veVC holders receive protocol fees, bribes, rebases, and governance power. In Solidly, voting rewards or bribes were claimable before the emissions from that vote were committed and it created a lot of problems. Velocore allows voters to make only one ‘active’ voting decision every epoch to solve the issue. $veVC holders decide which liquidity pools will receive emissions in a particular epoch by voting on their preferred liquidity pool gauges. $VC emissions get distributed proportionally to the total votes a liquidity pool receives. In return, voters receive 100% of the trading fees and bribes collected through the liquidity pool they vote for.

Velocore has a launchpad where new projects can launch their IDOs. Many projects have shown interest in launching their IDOs on Velocore and presently, the team is selecting the best ones. Velocore has a strong due diligence and selection mechanism. The selection mechanism includes parameters like the synergy with Velocore for long-term sustenance, utilization of Velocore LP and activating trading, project design and tokenomics etc. A lending protocol is also in the roadmap of Velocore. The permissionless and decentralized lending protocol is being designed to support various types of assets - cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and tokenized real-world assets. It will allow users to deposit their assets to earn interest or borrow assets by providing collateral.

Velocore has accumulated a good amount of $ETH through its recent sales. This project has the first ve token on zkSync Era and the investors have responded positively. Community is the key factor for building any DeFi protocol and Velocore decided to value its early users. The project has already given up to 4 POAPs to the early bird Velcrew members who achieved various trading milestones before the upcoming presale. Airdropped $VC tokens will be distributed through linear vesting over a period of 2 months to the POAP holders. The project also wants to give back the future potential zkSync airdrop to the community. Velocore vows to innovate continuously. Just two days ago they launched a trade mining event. This time, they have teamed up with ReactorFusion, their upcoming launchpad project, to reward traders and liquidity providers with both 250,000 $RF tokens and a special ReactorFusion POAP. The event period is Apr 13th 2 PM UTC ~ Till the end of the $RF launchpad. You just need to trade on Velocore in the included pairs to participate in this event. If you have funds on zkSync Era, jump into Velocore and check it out. You need $ETH to cover all transaction fees. Use the official zkSync Era bridge to bridge assets to zkSync.

Follow Velocore on Twitter and Medium. Join their vibrant Discord if you have queries.

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The advertisers took notice of AR technology long ago. The first commercial AR application created waves in 2008. Walt Disney showed cartoon characters on a large screen in Times Square interacting with people on the street in 2011. Coca-Cola’s Arctic Home campaign simulated ice melting right beside the visitors in a shopping mall in 2013. Numerous brands adopted AR in pursuit of higher customer engagement after that. AR as a technology is a trend but the integration of the technology with the e-commerce sector is still not explored heavily. Yes, some businesses are using AR to sell their products. Adidas added AR functionality to its iOS app in 2019 to help shoppers to decide on a purchase without ever entering a store. L’Oréal’s Modiface is also a great example of AR within retail. These AR applications allow consumers to try on products through an electronic device. It is all about allowing consumers to engage in pre-buying behaviour. Think about putting makeup on your face or trying a pair of sports shoes virtually using your smartphone. Augmented reality augments your existing world and helps you to perceive the digital components realistically through the integration of immersive sensations. This is valuable as the digital world blends into a person’s real-world perception. It is not a simple display of data but comes as a mixed reality experience.

With artlabs studio, 2D product images can be converted into 3D models that are AR and virtual try-on ready. Any business can use it to convert its existing 2D image library and product catalogues. The process works smoothly as it just requires uploading the 2D image. The corresponding 3D image gets auto-generated. Text-to-3D is another feature of artlabs studio. You can use texts or prompts to generate your desired 3D model. The unique generative AI of artlabs handles everything with ease. No coding or technical knowledge is required in any step. The generated 3D model can be modified if you are unsatisfied with the quality. Once you are happy with your 3D model, you can integrate it with your website or mobile app by adding the generated QR code. Interoperability is a very important parameter in 3D modelling software. Different virtual worlds have different file sizes, formats, and polygon counts. artlabs works perfectly here as it offers different presets to fine-tune digital assets.

Integration of AR technology can enhance the consumer experience manifold in a brand's value chain. Virtual testing is the most widely used application of AR in retail. Product return is a big problem of e-commerce and wearables generally face very high return rates as the customers can't judge them properly. The virtual try-on (VTO) feature of artlabs turns customers' smartphones or tablets literally into a virtual fitting room. Here the device camera is used to capture the user’s body part photo and displays the virtual item on it. The user can see how the item looks from different angles. artlabs can provide the optimum real-time 3D experience as it can perfectly balance the realism of the image provided to the user and the smoothness of the VTO system. There is no wonder that artlabs clients experienced up to a 71% increase in conversion rates and a 66% decrease in product returns with their virtual try-on solution. The strength of the technology speaks. You can experience the VTO of artlabs here.

Product visualization is another AR application and artlabs has that service. This AR feature allows the personalised product to be viewed in your space. Businesses like retail, interior design, automobile, furniture, and consumer durables can reap tremendous benefits from product visualization. It also takes the shopping experience to the next level and allows the consumer to obtain the perfect product fit. You can experience product visualisation of artlabs here. While we talk about 3D and AR, we can’t avoid Metaverse which is projected to be the next evolution of social connection. As artlab’s 3D models are platform agnostic, those can fit decentralized platforms also. Any NFT project can leverage artlabs to create a 3D collection of NFTs. Normally it is a cumbersome and time-consuming process but the innovative state-of-the-art AI technology of artlabs takes the NFT attributes using the metadata in the files and creates models automatically. The NFTs can get a new lease of life with help of AR and can be integrated with any metaverse.

The use of 3D models and AR can translate into the acquisition of new consumers and retention of the existing consumer base by providing a unique value-adding experience. Every brand needs a differentiating factor to stand out against the competition in the market and artlabs can help businesses to create sales processes with more personalization. The tested hyper-real applications of artlabs can place the consumers in the proximity of the brands to build unmatched loyalty. The company has already partnered with leading XR, Metaverse and Web3 companies like Nvidia and Polygon. There is a fundamental disconnect between the three-dimensional physical world and the rich data, trapped in two-dimensional informants, that helps us in decision-making. artlab promises to close this gap by bridging the physical and digital worlds with its path-breaking technology. Keep a close watch on artlabs for pleasant surprises in the coming months.

Follow artlabs on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Medium. Enterprises can ask for a demo here.

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About Therapoid

Therapoid.net is a free open science platform that caters to the scientific community and gains recognition and visibility for its members. It helps researchers to collaborate and achieve success. Interdisciplinary communication starts on its message boards, which can award Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for important thoughts. This is a key aspect of modern science, and the free Therapoid discussion forum enables everyone to participate in conversations. 

In addition,   the founding members of Therapoid realized that intellectual property (IP), like many other forms of property, often remains unused and becomes worthless to the rights holder. Nobody gains any benefit from this inactivity. For this reason members of Therapoid need to agree and ensure that all content and innovations will remain free and open via a Copyleft and Creative Commons 4.0 ShareAlike licensing model. The strong ethos of open-access publishing is well embodied in Therapoid. The project was launched recently and it received grants from PolygonDAO. 

Previously, Therapoid was known as Open Therapeutics, as its founding core was to improve human, animal, plant, and global health. The team comprises notable interdisciplinary scientists and students from various backgrounds. The global software firm, V2Soft Inc. is helping with product development. The project has raised nearly $5 million to date, and its innovative approach has generated a nice buzz.

ScienceCoins Cryptocurrency

Therapoid awards collaborating researchers with a cryptocurrency called ScienceCoins (SCI). A major impediment in collaborative open science is that the participants lack incentives. The institutional embrace of open science also has not happened as quickly as had been hoped. Scientists in economically developing nations face hurdles in completing their research. Often, they can’t afford to subscribe to international journals or travel to seminars and conferences. Exorbitant article processing charges required by some publishers kill many innovations before they can gain traction. ScienceCoins were created to address these issues. All registered users of Therapoid gain the token after a successful registration. Active participation in various activities helps them to earn more awards. 

Scientists often spend a lot of time writing a complex grant proposal, only to discover that the proposal was rejected. On Therapoid, a highly-rated, but unfunded grant application can be submitted to the community for ScienceCoins funding.  

ScienceCoins will eventually be traded on exchanges. All economic value transfers on the platform are rewarded through the delivery of ScienceCoins. Imagine getting paid for article translation or subscribing to a scientific journal using it. What backs the ScienceCoins value?  The “scientific proof of work” is the key. For example, instead of the computer doing the work to generate Bitcoins, the member does the work to generate the award of ScienceCoins.  The community recognizes the work, and the award of DOIs is an excellent artifact of the proof of work. You can think of DOIs backing ScienceCoins through a “scientific-proof-of-work” similarly as gold backs fiat. The maximum supply of ScienceCoins is 500,000,000, and it is an ERC20 token. The Therapoid ScienceCoins possibilities are enormous and their use cases can be dynamic. 

Reddit-like Forums & DOI

Therapoid can be considered primarily like an advanced Reddit message board platform. Unlike Reddit, the  Forums are very advanced, as they enable the issuance of DOIs for message postings. Let’s understand how it works! A DOI is a persistent identifier used to uniquely identify various objects, standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). They are widely used to identify academic information such as journal articles, research papers, data sets, and publications. A DOI is bound to the information object to which it refers. This is achieved by inserting the DOI into the information object’s metadata. On Therapoid, DOIs can be issued to the message posts that have intellectual value by the community for researchers and students around the world. These DOIs can be instrumental for career advancement, IP filings, grant funding, free equipment, inclusion in the knowledge center, preprint server etc., and they are propagated in the Forums through continuous communication. The users must opt-in within their Profiles to see and access various other features.

Therapoid wants to create a safe and inquisitive place for the scientific community. With the advancement of blockchain technology, the idea of a revolutionary open science platform with its own economy looks very appealing. Therapoid’s free IP structure gives broadscale opportunities for use. Once it successfully connects the global science community, multiple revenue streams may be possible. 

Imagine the scope for advertising and selling recruiters access to users who have opted in. An active and collaborative member on the platform can also get noticed by the inventors and other organizations, as well as get opportunities to receive free equipment, co-authorship opportunities, peer review participation, funding lines, speaking engagements, employment, consulting etc. Earning ScieneCoins is the cherry on top. SCI can be thought of as the “Bitcoin of Science” that acts as the currency of knowledge. It will not be easy to earn it, as it requires “scientific proof of work”. Keep a close eye on  Therapoid. Through it, we may come to see a new perspective on open science.

Therapoid is live on Polygon. Sign up here. Follow Therapoid on Twitter.

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DeFi or decentralised finance has made it possible to trade various assets over blockchain without the intervention of a third party. The smart contracts act as financial robots and automate all processes like trading, lending, borrowing etc. The permissionless nature of DeFi has attracted a lot of investors into it and the TVL (Total Value Locked) has skyrocketed since its inception. DeFi comes with high rewards, but it also exposes investors to high risks. Anybody can write smart contracts and launch a DAPP (decentralized application). The majority of popular DeFi protocols are open source, so forks keep on coming into the market. But flaws are common in the codes and unscrupulous actors can exploit the flaws. So, billions of dollars locked in the DeFi Protocols draw great attention from malicious parties. The hackers really get enough time to analyze vulnerabilities in a particular protocol and plan an attack. Several applications or protocols have been targets of significant hacks in the past, resulting in the loss of a terrible amount of digital assets.

Approximately $3.2 billion worth of cryptocurrency was stolen by digital thieves in 2021 and 72% ($2.2 billion) of that was drained from DeFi protocols as per Chainalysis. The stealing from DeFi applications rose a mammoth 1330% in 2021 with respect to 2020. The hackers are having a dream run in 2022 also. In the first quarter of 2022 only, almost $1.3 billion-dollar worth of assets was stolen from all crypto-related platforms and DeFi contribution was astoundingly high. Almost 97% of the value stolen in the first quarter of 2022 was from DeFi platforms. In October alone, more than $718 million was stolen from DeFi platforms. At this rate, 2022 is going to be the biggest year for hacking. The most common method to attack the DeFi protocol is flash loans. A flash loan attack abuses smart contract security by borrowing uncollateralized funds from lending protocol and manipulating the price of a given asset, driving up its value. Recently, cross-chain bridges have become popular as they allow users to transfer cryptocurrency between different chains. But such bridges are vulnerable due to code errors or operational flaws. Ronin bridge hack this year resulted in over $600 million loss and it happened as the hackers could obtain several validator keys.

2022 has been a tumultuous year in cryptocurrency and the market is quite bearish. But a bear market can’t wipe out the bull market adoption. Global adoption is growing significantly and there is an inflow of capital from fresh investors. This is also allowing the ecosystem to grow continuously without the absence of upside price movement. Europe and the United States remain steady in the DeFi adoption due to regulatory clarity but people from emerging economies are displaying a high turnaround in the adoption curve and it is most probably due to the fact that they can derive better extractable value from cryptocurrency due to the unstable economic situation. Ethereum paved the way for DeFi but the high cost of transactions created an entry barrier for retail investors. Many EVM-enabled competitor blockchains have arrived in the market now and the Layer 2 ecosystem of Ethereum has also expanded. Retail investors can access DeFi protocols on several chains with a nominal transaction fee. Numerous new protocols are being launched every day to capture this opportunity, but the security issue still remains unsolved. Even the old popular protocols keep on getting hacked. A DeFi lending protocol like bZx, launched in 2019, has been hacked 4 times since its launch and the last hack happened in November 2021. There is no doubt that all DeFi applications should be properly audited, and all API connections also should be assessed for vulnerabilities. Astonishingly, hackers are breaching the security of numerous audited protocols also. This raises a lot of questions regarding the quality and method of the audit.

A DAPP must be zero-day vulnerable to protect the consumers. Existing audit infrastructure has simply failed to provide that. Here comes the role of DeTaSECURE. Their team comprises esteemed cyber security experts with experience in top global enterprises. It is a young organization and started operations during the pandemic with a small team. Now they have 40+ B2B customers that include both startups and Fortune 500 companies across 15+ countries. DeTaSECURE’s most popular product is GETSecured. This is a proprietary comprehensive security scanning tool that identifies breached data instances and web application vulnerabilities. DeTaSECURE wants to focus heavily on Web 3 nowadays. They won the ‘ETHNYC’, ‘Polygon BUIDL’ and Solana Hackathon’ by developing a fully automated smart contract scanner. This scanner can be used on or off-chain and uses AI (Artificial Intelligence) to find erroneous codes or flaws. It can protect a DAPP to be deployed on the testnet or mainnet if a vulnerability is detected. The scanner also generates a detailed report that helps to identify exact bugs in the codes. DeTaSECURE is already getting good attention from Web 3 companies for its services like contract audit, threat modelling, security architecture review, breach monitoring and VA/PT program to prepare for any attacks. The firm also offers security training and education programs for its clients.

The Internet has continuously evolved since its inception. Web 2, the internet we know, is dominated by centralized corporations. Now, we are at the beginning of Web 3, which has a vision of distributed ownership and control, but the path is challenging. Current Web 3 applications are being run using legacy infrastructures only. To fulfil the true vision of Web 3, all components of online services should be decentralized or distributed. Obviously, it is not going to happen very soon. Web 3 in its present form inherits a lot of security vulnerabilities of the second generation of the web. Here, DeTaSecure’s service becomes instrumental. As they have rich experience in handling Web 2 companies, they are very equipped to handle the issues in the Web 2 to Web 3 transition. A DAPP’s security is not only related to the smart contract codes but also to the front end and other parameters. Curve Finance faced a massive attack on 9th August 2022. No, it was not a smart contract exploit. The attackers conducted a DNS Poisoning attack.  During the attack period, users were redirected to a fake website whenever they tried to access the original website. The attackers became able to steal $575K worth of crypto assets from the users of Curve this way. Transition to Web 3 really has serious implications for the digital transformation of fintech, commerce and many other processes. The emphasis on security will be the primary ingredient for the long-term success and adoption of Web 3. DeTaSECURE is getting ready to play a key role in this with its comprehensive security solution and services that take care of everything to improve the overall security posture of Web 3. 

Follow DeTaSECURE on Twitter and LinkedIn for more updates and recent facts. It will help you to learn more about good security practices and how to maintain cyber hygiene in your organization. Here is the link to book a free consultation.   

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You need Cobalt wallet to play the game. Cobalt is a web extension wallet that supports the TokenMint Horizen sidechain. The wallet can be downloaded from the Chrome store and it is compatible with Chrome & Brave browsers. It works just like Metamask, so crypto natives won’t find any difficulty to use that. After installation and creation of your wallet, just head over to PipeFlare to experience the game. Brave users may need to keep the browser shield down to play the game. Don’t forget to save your wallet mnemonics in a safe place. 

https://www.youtube.com/

PUNKZ-HERO, World 1-4 speedrun 40 sec

Join PipeFlare and play now to earn Punkz token https://pipeflare.io/r/1x30 Join Punkz discord server for airdrop and speedrun competition https://discord.gg/QSKMpzYDrJ https://punkztoken.com/

Punkz Token (PKZ) is a meme token for all cypherpunk rockstars in the galaxy. It is also the first meme token of the Horizen ecosystem. You can earn PKZ by playing Punkz Hero. You can also earn various NFTs while playing. More surprises and features are expected down the line. Within a very short time, the Punkz Hero has become a popular game on PipeFlare and currently, it is trending over there. The Punkz enthusiasts meet and greet each other on the Discord channel and party hard regularly. Last month there was a great tournament and Discord party on Valentine’s Day. The Punkz Love Poem Contest was an instant hit and the winners shared a 5000 PKZ prize pool! A lot of PKZ tokens were distributed to the winners of the Quiz and Gaming Competition also. 

Another party is coming up on Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17th. Save the date in your calendar and join Punkz Discord to get more updates. There is going to be a quiz, fun activities and tons of PKZ rewards for the participants. Yes, you party while playing the game! PKZ is not tradable now but wise guys accumulate gems for the future. The last tournament attendees got some nice POAPs. So, you can expect POAPs too. If you are an avid gamer and want to give a shot to make good points in half an hour by playing and enjoying an exciting and funny game, give it a try! The previous time, the top 5 players bagged big prizes.

Punkz Hero is a fresh game that is evolving fast. New game stages are going to be added soon. The early adopters and players may get nice surprises. If you are a cypherpunk rockstar, come and join Punkz. Drop your best Punkz Hero speedrun video shots on the punkz-parkour channel to win a share of 3500 PKZ every two weeks. The quickest becomes the winner and you can see the leaderboard. This is a community-driven project and a total of 384,000,000 PKZ will be shared in 2023 with active community members through various activities. It is time to practice Punkz Hero until your skill set glows.

Follow Punkz on Twitter to get regular updates and join their vibrant Discord. Play hard, party and get lucky!

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Decentralized internet on the horizon

The internet is almost three decades old now and its growth has been nothing short of remarkable. Yet, as with any other technological sector, imbalance and concentration of power have occurred on the Internet. This is why many people believe blockchain technology offers the potential to achieve a distributed state of the network by allowing ‘trust’ to be shared across connecting networks. Decentralizing the Internet to give power back to consumers is possible, however, it is not going to be an easy task. The current state of technology means that there is still a long road ahead before the Internet is completely decentralized. Nevertheless, it is encouraging to know that web tools have already started to become catalysts for this change, offering people the chance to begin enjoying the benefits of a more distributed system.

Web3 – making it work

Web3 is the third major evolution of the internet. It comes with belongingness to anybody and everybody. Blockchain is a key technology to building Web3 and it has decentralization at its core. We must say that it is still a ‘work in progress’ but new opportunities and advancements are being made every day.

The foundation of Web3 consists of openness, inclusiveness and fairness. Decentralized applications (DApps) either run on blockchains or decentralized networks of many peer-to-peer nodes. Hackathons and build-together movements generate path-breaking innovations. The community-managed products and services are far more consumer friendly. For example – DeFi (decentralized finance) allows users to trade digital assets or earn passive income without the intervention of a third party in a trustless manner.

Cryptocurrency is an essential component of Web3. Crypto tokens are utilized to secure, manage, govern, and incentivize community-managed projects, as well as offer a native, borderless payment layer. Transactions are stored on blockchains such as Ethereum, while distributed storage networks like IPFS or Filecoin store the data. Technology is developing rapidly to create new methodologies for constructing applications and services for the future. This is done by using new protocols and architectures such as decentralized financial services, data marketplaces, digital identity solutions, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). With these solutions, the internet is becoming a more secure, transparent, and open ecosystem, allowing users to make more informed decisions and giving them greater control over their own digital assets.

The problem with the query layer

The Web3 stack is completely different from the Web2 stack. It has different components such as the infrastructure, protocols, utilities, services and applications. Blockchains and storage networks are important parts of the stack but accessing and interacting with such data is not easy. In a public blockchain like Ethereum, data is immutable and anybody can view or verify it. The biggest problem can be found in retrieving structured data from the blockchains as it involves a lot of filtering and grouping. Current Web3 applications need to call many different APIs serially to aggregate relevant data, which often results in unpredictable and unreliable performances. The process is also very slow as a lot of extra work is needed to be done. For example - getting a user’s transaction history seems to be a simple query but here also many different APIs must be called serially. This is definitely a Web3-specific problem.

In this article, the ZettaBlock team compared Twitter and Web3 ecosystems. Web3 is a natural social graph and there is a similarity between tweets and transactions, replies and logs. Both Web3 and Twitter are open platforms and publicly visible. Twitter is able to deliver scalable and efficient performance when a query is placed as the system can easily find the related data in one place. The existing applications of Web3 are simply not equipped to match such user experience and performance as they can not aggregate the relevant data like this. Blockchain transactions across the top 10 chains have increased by 100 times in the last two years and if Web3 continues on its growth trajectory, the present data infrastructure solutions will face a myriad of new and complicated issues. Furthermore, joining on-chain and off-chain data proves to be even more problematic. 

Why ZettaBlock?

This is the reason ZettaBlock was created. Thanks to ZettaBlock, developers can build real-time, public-facing, reliable GraphQL APIs via SQL in minutes. They just need to specify the related data they want to query and ZettaBlock aggregates all relevant data. They need not worry about data processing in their frontends or backends also. It is extremely beneficial for the developers as they can focus on the core functionality of their DApps while building on top of structured reliable data. We have a multi-chain vision and currently, we support Ethereum, Polygon, Binance, Arbitrum, Aptos, Solana, Ripple XRP and IoTex.

If you are a developer building a DApp, you can use simple, scalable API endpoints provided by ZettaBlock to access and query on-chain data as well as off-chain data. Suppose you want to integrate on-chain data and your own off-chain data or data from any social media seamlessly into your DApp. With the help of ZettaBlock, you can do it within a few minutes via the common APIs and embedded charts. You just need to interact with a few user-friendly APIs that provide efficient access to numerous previously siloed data sources. Integrating your business logic is also easy as the APIs are customisable.

ZettaBock can save months of developmental work and will reduce 90% of the annual development costs. The platform provides a full-stack solution that no other existing project offers. Here you get a platform with streaming, OLTP indexing, OLAP analytics, visualization architecture and so many blockchain datasets ready to use. Complex query patterns like ‘Join’ and ‘Group by’ are supported by the platform. Users often face issues with API response time but ZettaBlock supports low-latency APIs (<50ms). The off-chain and on-chain data unification are completely unique in ZettaBlock. If you are building a data-intensive scalable DApp, try ZettaBlock to ensure near-perfect system uptimes (99.99%) and work with real-time data.

ZettaBlock provides you with a comprehensive development toolkit. Read this 10 min Quick-start Guide that will help you to start building on the next-generation Web3 stack. You can also schedule the Demo here.

Time to build with ZettaBlock!!

Important Links:

• Website: https://www.zettablock.com

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZettaBlockHQ

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Delysium Multiverse Ecosystem & Delysium Multiverse Operator (DMO)

We have seen so many video games in Web2 that offered engaging experiences to the players but the maximum of them failed to meet players’ demands for more gameplay. Players need more content but developers really do not get enough motivation to create content for a long time. The promoter team also does not get sustainable incentives for serving the customer base in a protracted term. In Web3, game publishing is a dynamic process as the ecosystem participants can get various on-chain and off-chain incentives. It provides far better alignment for all stakeholders. Based on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) values, Delysium has created an incentive system that benefits players, developers, and operators to ensure the prosperity of the whole Decentralized Game Publishing structure.

Delysium has been designed to have multiple universes and all amalgamate to generate Delysium Multiverse. Each universe is run by one Delysium Multiverse Operator (DMO), creating a highly diverse game experience and unique On-chain Incentive Layer (OIL) for players. Every universe has customised distribution rules to distribute on-chain incentives. The on-chain incentives can be customised NFTs, fungible tokens, stablecoins etc. This is really exciting from the operator’s point of view as they get the liberty to design their own universes flexibly. DMOs have no need to deploy and maintain game servers. The Delysium team maintains and deploys the unified game server and creates better network effects in collaboration with all DMOs. Is it easy to be DMO? Yes, any independent developer or player can be DMO by holding a free mint Delysium Multiverse License (DML). If you are eager to apply for DMO, you can do it right now by filling up this form.

Delysium Multiverse Accelerator (DMA)

DES is the native token of Delysium Multiverse. The users can stake DES to take part in the governance of Delysium. The stakers can select the universes of their choices and support them to become prosperous. While they stake, they get staking rewards and also operation revenue. So, it is a multi-utility reward-generating token. The total supply of DES is 3 billion and Treasury holds 55% of the tokens. Besides DES, there is another token in the ecosystem - Delysium Multiverse Accelerator (DMA). It is important to note that DMA is a non-transferrable token. 

The holders of DMA will get various rights and benefits in Delysium. These are the benefits to summarise:

• Exclusive Validation Incentives: DMA holders will receive daily DES token incentives. The daily DES token incentive of DMA holders is fixed for the first year and it is reduced by half every two years.

• Higher Voting Weights: DMA will help the stakers to obtain higher voting weights and it will act as enhanced access to support Delysium universes for making them propitious.

• Enhanced Staking Rewards: DES stakers can support a particular universe and if they hold DMAs, they will get higher ecosystem incentives as staking rewards.

• Additional Rewards: DMA holders are going to get random ecosystem airdrops from Delysium. They will also get priority access to different asset offerings in several universes.

DMA Referral

Delysium has designed a referral system for DMA to involve the users in ecosystem development. DMA purchasers will receive a One-time Referral Reward within 24 hours after referring new users to purchase. A user providing multiple referrals will receive a higher ‘One-time Rewards Referral factor’ and more one-time rewards. This one-time referral factor will range from 10% to 15% depending upon the DMA sales. Besides one-time referral rewards, DMA holders are also eligible for ‘Daily Referral Rewards’. This is really amazing as it helps the referrer to earn some tokens daily when the referred new user receives daily rewards. To be precise, owners of DMA are going to get lifetime benefits from the ecosystem and considering the growth potential of Delysium, the value proposition is enormous.

How to purchase DMA?

The total fixed supply of DMA is 50,000. The first 10,000 DMA tokens will be sold for USD 1000 each. For the rest tokens, the selling price will increase for every 100 DMA sales. You can purchase DMA from the Delysium website now. Here is the link to the marketplace where DMA is available. You will have to sign up here with your email first and then you can use any Web3 wallet like Metamask or Coinbase Wallet to connect. While checking out, you need to submit your referral code and you can purchase any amount of DMA with USDT on the Ethereum mainnet. The verification of the transaction may take some time. Once the verification happens, you can click on DMA Rewards to check your DMAs on the dashboard. You will also be able to see your own referral code on the dashboard once you complete the purchase.

Decentralized gaming is rapidly rising in the gaming industry but without a self-sovereign financial system, it can not flourish. Web3 games have started to become better in terms of user experience and gameplay but we need a better framework for distributing the game incentives. Delysium comes with a unique value proposition as it can connect game content with different incentives. The DMO system of Delysium offers the fair distribution of on-chain incentives while the DMA system offers an efficient governance mechanism. The DMO-DMA combo also facilitates having a different set of rules in the same gameplay and reinforces the Decentralized Game Publishing structure. In this fast-moving Web3 gaming space, only the innovators will succeed and this project has the ingredients to make new stories. The ‘Game-as-a-Service’ (GAAS) concept of Delysium can provide a paradigm shift in Web3 gaming that will create a thriving ecosystem of developers, operators and investors. It is no surprise that Crypto Twitter is going crazy with the DMA sale.

Follow Delysium on Twitter to get regular updates and join their vibrant Discord.

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Cosmos is a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain. Staking ATOM in the Cosmos Hub provides economic security for the blockchain. When you stake ATOM, it gives you the superpower to contribute to the security and governance of the Cosmos Hub. You also get attractive staking rewards. The rewards are generated and distributed to ATOM stakers in two ways - transaction fees collected on the Cosmos Hub and newly generated ATOM from inflation. Like Cosmos, the other blockchains of the Cosmos ecosystem are also PoS blockchains and it provides a great opportunity for the investors to generate a decent return on the investment. While staking is a proven method of earning rewards, it comes with certain limitations and risks. Running a validator node for staking involves technical knowledge and there are actual hardware and electricity costs. Staking nodes should have almost 100% uptime to maximise rewards. For a retail investor, it is not logical to run a validator node. The more logical method of staking is to choose a validator to stake with. In this case, the investor becomes a delegator. Validators on PoS blockchains verify transactions to make sure that they are accurate and valid and then add them to the chain. If the validators misbehave or incur downtime, they are punished by the network. This is called ‘Slashing’. When a validator is slashed, both the delegator and the validator face a penalty. For Cosmos chains, such penalties range from 0.01% for a validator’s liveness slash to 5% for a validator committing a double sign event on the blockchain.

It is very important to select a good validator while delegating your staked tokens. Before choosing a validator, a lot of factors should be considered – for example, validator uptime, activity history, the reputation of the validator, validator commission etc. This again can be a cumbersome task for a retail investor. Staking has another big limitation. The stakers are required to lock their assets within PoS protocols and that makes the assets illiquid (for example ATOM has unbonding time of 21 days). It is really a big disadvantage of staking if we compare it with yield-generating opportunities in DeFi. This is the reason, ‘liquid staking’ evolved as an alternative to traditional crypto staking. This new mechanism allows tokenization of the staking positions and provides liquidity to the staked assets that can then be utilized across all DeFi platforms. StaFiHub, built using Cosmos-SDK, offers liquid staking for the Cosmos ecosystem so that the stakers can now pursue additional yield opportunities while maintaining the core positions of their staked assets. The user-friendly front end of StaFiHub allows any investor to take part in liquid staking of ATOM, IRIS, HUAHUA at present. The tokens can be deposited via IBC in a secured manner for staking.

StaFi is a project that wants to offer next-generational staking for the masses. Here, the rTokens act as a voucher token that represents your staked assets and staking rewards attached. The entire ecosystem of StaFi is built surrounding rTokens enabling liquid staking to function. These rTokens are yield-generating, reward-bearing, tradeable, non-custodial, redeemable, fungible and fractional. StaFiHub is a parallel chain dedicated to the Cosmos ecosystem developed by StaFi. The chain is similar to Osmosis, Sifchain or Terra but the validator system is not yet open. Till now, validators are nominated by the StaFi Foundation. It is basically an application chain serving the Cosmos ecosystem Staking Derivatives. Cosmos is gaining traction in the blockchain developer community fast and there are already 40+ Cosmos SDK projects. StaFiHub wants to onboard all such projects and offer liquid staking to all participants. The team wants to build a cross-chain bridge down the line for the seamless transfer of rTokens between StaFiHub and StaFi Chain. FIS is the multi-chain utility and governance token of the StaFi ecosystem. FIS prevents system abuse and validators on StaFiHub need to stake FIS to join the consensus and obtain rewards.

You can connect to StaFiHub through Keplr wallet. The project has already brought in 3 rTokens – rATOM, rIRIS, rHUAHUA. These tokens can be used to provide liquidity on rDEX and they are tradeable. StaFiHub’s native token FIS and rTokens are transferrable to other Cosmos ecosystem chains via IBC. FIS is used to pay the transaction cost for all transactions. The project is providing the First Staking Derivative SDK to the developers and it will enable any Cosmos-SDK based project to develop its own staking derivative within a short span of time easily. Any Cosmos-SDK project can integrate with StaFiHub to get its own liquid staking derivatives in two ways:

• Integrating with Interchain Accounts (ICA): This is the decentralized way. It enables the chain security to maintain rToken among Cosmos-SDK based projects.

• Integrating with Multisig Accounts: Some projects haven’t enabled ICA yet. For them, the integration can be done with multisig accounts.

Both integration methods are cyclical in nature and all transactions included in a cycle are completed on the pool accounts. A big difference is that the transactions on the Multisig Account pool are completed by the relay whereas the transactions on the ICA Pool are completed by the StaFiHub.

For a liquid staking project, the delegation strategy must be chosen wisely. StaFiHub’s delegation strategy focuses on three principles – maximising staking returns, minimising potential losses, and decentralising the delegations to avoid centralising voting power. These three principles are matched with the delegation algorithm for the rTokens issued on StaFiHub. The rToken solution’s delegation algorithm on StaFiHub will be implemented stage-wise – V1 and V1. V1 is based on a simplified design vision. The method is based on scanning the on-chain performance of all validators and selecting validators based on criteria like – slash record, delegation amount, staking returns, voting power etc. Finally, the method ends up selecting the best validators to delegate from all the validators groups on the target chain keeping in mind the decentralization of voting power. Validator Rotation Mechanism is implemented that includes temporary rotation and regular rotation. The project is still working with V2 and it will include many results and process parameters into the algorithm to achieve smarter evaluations of the target chain’s validator performance. Different weights will be assigned to different parameters to obtain a scoring of all validators to judge the performance on the target chain.

Any Cosmos project can use the liquid staking facility of StaFiHub. If they want to use StaFiHub Liquid Staking SDK to develop their own liquid staking derivatives, they just need to run the relayer nodes for the multi-sign address which receives the funds from the stakers. The process is so easy and hassle-free. StaFiHub is a new project and rTokens may face liquidity issues. This is the reason the StaFi team has launched an Initial Liquidity Grant Program (ILG Program) that will provide excellent rewards to initial rToken liquidity providers on StaFiHub. To provide early liquidity, the project is inviting the Foundation of Target Projects (FOTP) in the Cosmos ecosystem. This is really a win-win solution for both parties as FOTP can increase the staking ratio of their respective networks and utilise their treasury meaningfully while receiving a part of the protocol fee of StaFiHub. On the other hand, StaFiHub gets the desired liquidity for kickstarting the platform. StaFiHub seems to be determined to bring a lot of innovations in liquid staking and the project wants to be community-centric. StaFi Protocol, presently managed by the StaFi Core team is slowly transitioning towards a DAO model. The path to achieving complete decentralization is not going to be very easy considering the multi-appchain nature of StaFi but the project is making noteworthy progress rapidly. Liquid staking has already found product-market fit in the crypto ecosystem. In the recent bear market, only the liquid staking segment of DeFi has registered growth. StaFiHub can do the magic to the Cosmos ecosystem just like Lido did to Ethereum!

Follow StaFiHub on Twitter to get regular updates and join their vibrant Discord. 

The article was first published here.

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Understanding Range Orders of Uniswap V3

Concentrated liquidity means LPs can provide liquidity to any price range at their wish and liquidity remain imbalanced in ranges. For example - ETH/USDC liquidity on v1 & v2 is always spread across [0, ∞] but in v3, you can provide liquidity in a particular range like [1100, 1800]. Capital efficiency increases drastically due to this. The behaviour of LPs providing liquidity on v3 is called ‘Range Orders’. There can be three scenarios when you provide concentrated liquidity on Uniswap v3 –

1.  Current price is within your target price range

2.  Current price < your target price range

3.  Current price > your target price range

For the first case, you provide liquidity in both tokens of the same value and start earning fees. For the second and third cases, only one of the two tokens is required to provide LP. Yes, it allows single-side deposits only in this case. Here, your position will not earn fees or be used in trades until the market price moves into your range. This is a reason that providing liquidity on Uniswap v3 requires a more active presence to maximise income with respect to the earlier versions of the platform.

About TheTrade

TheTrade offers an innovative toolkit for decentralized trading and effective capital usage with Uniswap v3 concentrated liquidity. The team comprises a team of dedicated developers with vast experience in blockchain technology and Web 3. The goal of the project is to expand the potential of the trading functionality while saving the user's time by implementing automated solutions and making the user's work with capital more efficient. The beta version is yet to be launched. There are some bots available in the market that automate limit orders on DEXs but such solutions are not truly decentralized and work with help of external resources. TheTrade wants to offer a maximally decentralized solution where every network user can participate. EXECUTOR is the bot of the project that can be launched by anybody and execute spot limit orders while earning its commission. EXECUTOR charges an execution fee for the automatic execution of trades. The smart contract protects the system from any bad behaviours.

Buy Limit & Take Profit orders of TheTrade

Depositing to a narrow range to Uniswap v3 is quite similar to traditional limit orders. For example – Suppose, the current price of ETH is 1200 USDC and you want to buy ETH at 1000 USDC, you can add USDC to the ETH/USDC pair in the range of 1000 - 1010 ETH/USDC. When ETH price falls below 1000 USDC, your liquidity will fully get converted to ETH. In this instance, you need to withdraw your liquidity manually. Otherwise, it can again be converted back to USDC if ETH/USDC starts trading above 1010. It is really not possible for you to monitor the transfer of liquidity from asset to asset continuously and while withdrawing liquidity, you may face slippage and sandwich attacks. You need the help of a third-party service if you want automated withdrawal in this case. TheTrade offers this service. The platform helps you place a ‘Buy Limit’ order used for the pending purchase of an asset at a given price and a ‘Take Profit’ order used in anticipation of selling an asset at a given price. The smart contract withdraws liquidity back from Uniswap and deposits the desired asset to the user’s wallet after obtaining at the desired price.

Margin Trading of TheTrade

TheTrade will also offer ‘Margin Trading’. In Margin Trading on CEXs, users deposit collateral to the exchange to cover the credit risk and obtain leveraged position beyond their existing capital. In this case, users will take leverage from TheTrade’s own liquidity pool. Leverage will be available for blue-chip crypto assets in the beginning. Initially, TheTrade will offer leverage up to 5X for both long and short positions. Higher leverage options will be added later on. Margin limit order will work similarly to the spot limit order with help of EXECUTOR. Another additional role is played by Liquidator. Any TheTrade user can become Liquidator and receive a commission for helping the protocol.

Uniswap v3 liquidity has opened up a blue ocean for DeFi projects. DeFi and the associated technology must be aligned with the interest of traders and investors for coming to mainstream and Algorithmic DeFi Trading needs mass adoption for that. It is a reality that on CEXs, market-making is dominated by traders that rely upon market-making algorithms as well as execution speed. With the advancement of L2 chains like Optimism and Arbitrum, Uniswap V3 already has all ingredients to be the DEX to rule them all. It just needs to be routed properly. TheTrade can bring a paradigm shift in the DEX meta and how it is perceived in the market in terms of execution speed and trade performance. The exciting part is that users will earn fees for limit order usage on the platform while waiting for the execution of trades as they become liquidity providers to Uniswap v3 when they place limit orders. As the protocol does not use external resources, it is not rent-seeking in nature. TheTrade and Uniswap v3 cash flow remain within its community always. Let’s wait for some more days. The game-changing beta platform of TheTrade is getting launched soon!

Follow TheTrade on Twitter to get regular updates and join their vibrant Discord. Here is the link to the Lightpaper.

The article was first published here.

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You can trade ZEN, the native cryptocurrency of the Horizen ecosystem and other tokens on SpookySwap. If you are not accustomed to Horizen EON, add the network first to your Metamask from this Chainlist link. Once you have got your EON wallet, you need to have ZEN, the native token of the Horizen blockchain. The gas fees on EON are paid by ZEN. Presently, no centralized exchange supports withdrawal to the Horizen EON chain.

So, if you have ZEN in any centralized exchange, you need to deposit it into your Sphere by Horizen wallet. Sphere by Horizen is the official Horizen wallet. You can download Sphere from here. It is a desktop wallet and supports Windows, Mac, and Linux. The current version is 1.13.0. Once you have deposited ZEN to your Sphere by Horizen wallet, you can do a forward transfer from the mainchain to EON. Old versions are not recommended to be used and you may not find a forward transfer option there. Check this article to learn about the forward transfer process.

Once you have ZEN in your Metamask, you are ready to explore SpookySwap on Horizen EON. Presently, the top traded tokens are ZEN, USDC, BTC and ETH here. If you have used AMM DEXs earlier, you should be finding things very easy.

Try to swap some ZEN to USDC. lzUSDC or LayerZero USDC contract address can be checked here. This pair also has decent liquidity. The gas fee is nominal and transactions are fast. But why LazerZero? Holding bridged assets on an EVM chain is often risky. We can remember the Fantom multichain bridge hack that occurred on July 7, 2023, and resulted in a loss of $126 million worth of cryptocurrency. After the episode, Fantorm’s TVL fell more than 60%.

Briefly, due to this reason, the Horizen EON ecosystem has integrated with LayerZero Protocol. The Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standard, developed by LayerZero Labs, functions as a comprehensive multichain standard for fungible tokens.

Next, you can provide liquidity. We tried the ZEN-lzUSDC pair. You need to sign two transactions here. The first transaction will approve the usage of lzUSDC and the second transaction will provide liquidity. Once your liquidity has been supplied, you start earning trade fees!

As these are the initial days of the DEX, the trade fee earnings can be very high. After providing liquidity, you can see it in the ‘Liquidity’ tab. Before providing liquidity, you should always be aware of the impermanent loss.

The farms on SpookySwap are not active yet. In the future, you will be able to stake your liquidity tokens here and earn rewards. Check out SpookySwap active trade pairs here. Their team is working hard to add many more features and you should be able to see a lot of new things soon.

Follow SpookySwap on Twitter and join their Discord for any queries. If you are interested in knowing more about Horizen EON, their Discord will be the ideal place for having in-depth conversations. The cover image source is here.

This article is also published here.

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