Daily Archives: April 13, 2022

Starting immediately and as part of an effort to increase transparency by providing as much information symmetry as possible, Coinbase will be using this blog post as a pilot to communicate assets under consideration for listing in Q2 2022 (April 1st, 2022 to June 30th, 2022).

April 1 — June 30 2022 Roadmap

The following assets are under consideration for listing on Coinbase in the 2nd quarter of 2022. Transfers and trading are not supported for these or any other assets until a listing is officially announced. Depositing these assets into your Coinbase account before an official announcement may lead to permanent loss of funds.

ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum network

1. Aleph.im (ALEPH) — Contract Address: 0x27702a26126e0b3702af63ee09ac4d1a084ef628
2. Arcblock (ABT) — Contract Address: 0xb98d4c97425d9908e66e53a6fdf673acca0be986
3. BiFi (BIFI) — Contract Address: 0x2791bfd60d232150bff86b39b7146c0eaaa2ba81
4. Big Data Protocol (BDP) — Contract Address: 0xf3dcbc6D72a4E1892f7917b7C43b74131Df8480e
5. Binance USD (BUSD) — Contract Address: 0x4Fabb145d64652a948d72533023f6E7A623C7C53
6. BitDAO (BIT) — Contract Address: 0x1A4b46696b2bB4794Eb3D4c26f1c55F9170fa4C5
7. Botto (BOTTO) — Contract Address: 0x9dfad1b7102d46b1b197b90095b5c4e9f5845bba
8. Chrono.tech (TIME) — Contract Address: 0x485d17A6f1B8780392d53D64751824253011A260
9. Coin98 (C98) — Contract Address: 0xae12c5930881c53715b369cec7606b70d8eb229f
10. DappRadar (RADAR) — Contract Address: 0x44709a920fccf795fbc57baa433cc3dd53c44dbe
11. DEXTools (DEXT) — Contract Address: 0xfb7b4564402e5500db5bb6d63ae671302777c75a
12. DFX Finance (DFX) — Contract Address: 0x888888435fde8e7d4c54cab67f206e4199454c60
13. Dope Wars Paper (PAPER) — Contract Address: 0x7ae1d57b58fa6411f32948314badd83583ee0e8c
14. Drep [new] (DREP) — Contract Address: 0x3Ab6Ed69Ef663bd986Ee59205CCaD8A20F98b4c2
15. Elastos (ELA) — Contract Address: 0xe6fd75ff38adca4b97fbcd938c86b98772431867
16. Gemini USD (GUSD) — Contract Address: 0x056Fd409E1d7A124BD7017459dFEa2F387b6d5Cd
17. Honey (HNY) — Contract Address: 0xc3589f56b6869824804a5ea29f2c9886af1b0fce
18. Hopr Token (HOPR) — Contract Address: 0xf5581dfefd8fb0e4aec526be659cfab1f8c781da
19. Index Cooperative (INDEX) — Contract Address: 0x0954906da0Bf32d5479e25f46056d22f08464cab
20. Indexed Finance (NDX) — Contract Address: 0x86772b1409b61c639eaac9ba0acfbb6e238e5f83
21. Jupiter (JUP) — Contract Address: 0x4b1e80cac91e2216eeb63e29b957eb91ae9c2be8
22. Kromatika (KROM) — Contract Address: 0x3af33bef05c2dcb3c7288b77fe1c8d2aeba4d789
23. LockTrip (LOC) — Contract Address: 0x5e3346444010135322268a4630d2ed5f8d09446c
24. MATH (MATH) — Contract Address: 0x08d967bb0134f2d07f7cfb6e246680c53927dd30
25. Monavale (MONA) — Contract Address: 0x275f5Ad03be0Fa221B4C6649B8AeE09a42D9412A
26. Morpheus Labs (MITX) — Contract Address: 0x4a527d8fc13c5203ab24ba0944f4cb14658d1db6
27. mStable Governance Token: Meta (MTA) — Contract Address: 0xa3bed4e1c75d00fa6f4e5e6922db7261b5e9acd2
28. Muse (MUSE) — Contract Address: 0xb6ca7399b4f9ca56fc27cbff44f4d2e4eef1fc81
29. Nest Protocol (NEST) — Contract Address: 0x04abeda201850ac0124161f037efd70c74ddc74c
30. Opacity (OPCT) — Contract Address: 0xdb05ea0877a2622883941b939f0bb11d1ac7c400
31. OpenDAO (SOS) — Contract Address: 0x3b484b82567a09e2588a13d54d032153f0c0aee0
32. PARSIQ (PRQ) — Contract Address: 0x362bc847A3a9637d3af6624EeC853618a43ed7D2
33. PolkaFoundry (PKF) — Contract Address: 0x8b39b70e39aa811b69365398e0aace9bee238aeb
34. Polychain Monsters (PMON)— Contract Address: 0x1796ae0b0fa4862485106a0de9b654eFE301D0b2
35. RAC (RAC) — Contract Address: 0xc22b30e4cce6b78aaaadae91e44e73593929a3e9
36. SelfKey (KEY) — Contract Address: 0x4cc19356f2d37338b9802aa8e8fc58b0373296e7
37. StackOS (STACK) — Contract Address: 0x56a86d648c435dc707c8405b78e2ae8eb4e60ba4
38. StaFi (FIS) — Contract Address: 0xef3a930e1ffffacd2fc13434ac81bd278b0ecc8d
39. Strike (STRK) — Contract Address: 0x74232704659ef37c08995e386a2e26cc27a8d7b1
40. Student Coin (STC) — Contract Address: 0x15b543e986b8c34074dfc9901136d9355a537e7e
41. SwftCoin (SWFTC) — Contract Address: 0x0bb217E40F8a5Cb79Adf04E1aAb60E5abd0dfC1e
42. Sylo (SYLO) — Contract Address: 0xf293d23bf2cdc05411ca0eddd588eb1977e8dcd4
43. TE-Food (TONE) — Contract Address: 0x2Ab6Bb8408ca3199B8Fa6C92d5b455F820Af03c4
44. UnMarshal (MARSH) — Contract Address: 0x5a666c7d92E5fA7Edcb6390E4efD6d0CDd69cF37
45. Wrapped Ampleforth (WAMPL) — Contract Address: 0xedb171c18ce90b633db442f2a6f72874093b49ef

SPL tokens on the Solana network

1. Apricot Finance (APT) — Contract Address: APTtJyaRX5yGTsJU522N4VYWg3vCvSb65eam5GrPT5Rt
2. Bitspawn (SPWN) — Contract Address: 5U9QqCPhqXAJcEv9uyzFJd5zhN93vuPk1aNNkXnUfPnt
3. Green Satoshi Token (GST) — Contract Address: AFbX8oGjGpmVFywbVouvhQSRmiW2aR1mohfahi4Y2AdB
4. Media Network (MEDIA) — Contract Address: ETAtLmCmsoiEEKfNrHKJ2kYy3MoABhU6NQvpSfij5tDs
5. Realy (REAL) — Contract Address: AD27ov5fVU2XzwsbvnFvb1JpCBaCB5dRXrczV9CqSVGb

*This is not an exhaustive list of all assets under consideration. Any asset not referenced in the list does not preclude any such asset from potential listing.

As a reminder, Coinbase recently introduced an Experimental label that may be applied to newly listed assets. Some of the assets mentioned above may be listed with this Experimental label.

Disclaimer & Risks: There will be times when an asset is delayed or removed from consideration for listing for any number of factors. While we will try to make every reasonable effort to minimize this risk of occurrence, it should be understood that all information in this blog is in no way intended to be relied upon as a promise or guarantee of listing. Coinbase reserves the right to discontinue this blog post.

Changelog

Changes to our roadmap will be updated and communicated here regularly.

• 4/12 Change name from Polkamon (PMON) to Polychain Monsters (PMON)

Why are you considering listing these assets?

As mentioned during our launch of Asset Hub, our goal is to list every asset possible that meets our standards for legal, compliance and technical security. These standards do not take into account the market cap or popularity of a project. This means there are assets that we have concluded do not meet our standards and thus will not be listed on Coinbase at this time.

If we haven’t yet listed a popular asset, it is likely due to various reasons including:

1. We have concluded that the asset does not meet our minimum listing standards across legal, compliance and technical security
2. We do not have enough information about the asset
3. Technical integration work is required

Our review process is outlined in greater detail here.

How do you choose which “types” of assets to support?

We are working to add support for additional networks and ecosystems as we aim to provide the greatest inventory of assets to our users.

Today we support 3 “types” of assets for trading on Coinbase:

1. Native assets on their own network (recent examples include MINA and STX)
2. ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum network (recent examples include APE and GALA)
3. SPL tokens on the Solana network (recent examples include ORCA and FIDA)

Resources on listing criteria

NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE

The content is for informational purposes only, is general in nature and should not be relied upon or construed as legal, tax, investment, financial, a promise, guarantee, or other advice. Nothing contained herein constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by Coinbase or its affiliates to buy or sell any cryptocurrency or other instruments in any jurisdiction in which such solicitation or offer would be unlawful under the laws of such jurisdiction. Additionally, Coinbase Ventures may be an investor in the crypto projects mentioned here, and additionally, Coinbase may hold such tokens on its balance sheet for operational purposes. A list of Coinbase Ventures investments is available at https://ventures.coinbase.com/. Finally, Coinbase has a conflict of interest policy that prevents board members or Coinbase employees from being involved in a listing decision where they have a financial interest.

First Light Games has successfully completed a $5 million private token sale round led by Animoca Brands and Mechanism Capital to develop its play-to-earn mobile-based game, Blast Royale.

In an announcement today, London-based game development firm, First Light Games successfully closed a $5 million private token sale in an effort to boost the development and adoption of its blockchain-based mobile game, Blast Royale. The private token sale was led by top investors in the space including Mechanism Capital and Animoca Brands, a blockchain firm that has already invested in over 150 NFT-related companies over the past year.

The funds raised will be used to continue to develop the game, attract top talent, and grow the game community. Furthermore, the funds will be used to create new features in the game including tournaments and high-stakes Blast Royales, planned to be launched later in the year as First Light Games plans a push into esports.

The private sale also welcomed participation from other top crypto investment companies and angel investors including Dragonfly Capital, DeFiance Capital, Play Ventures Future Fund, Double Peak, Polygon, C² Ventures, Morningstar Ventures, DWeb3, Merit Circle, Ancient 8, and AvocadoDAO. Nick Chong and Santiago R Santos were the notable angel investors in the round.

The presence of top and influential crypto investors in the company sets the foundation for a successful GameFi ecosystem on Blast Royale,  Neil McFarland, CEO of First Light Games shared. With a shared vision, the investors aim to make “Blast Royale one of the best gaming titles (in the blockchain space)” and provide gamers with a “compelling and fun gameplay that makes Battle Royale game suitable for the Web3 generation,” Neil added.

Developed in 2021, during the NFT and GameFi boom, Blast Royale offers users a platform to battle in a royale survival match. The gameplay involves 30 players entering the fighting grounds in a ‘last one standing’ competition to win various rewards. Players battle and use their rewards to build up their characters using NFT items won or collected within the game. The players’ meta inventory influences the quality of items carried into a match and the utility of their character.

Blast Royale uses two native tokens, Blast ($BLST), the primary token, and Craft Spice ($CS), the in-game play-and-earn token of the Blast Royale metaverse. The $CS token gives players a wide range of utility within the game including buying enhancing equipment for your character or repairing damaged equipment. Players earn $CS tokens when playing the battle royal matches based on their performance, invested time, and overall effort. The $BLST token is the main token on the Blast Royale marketplace where users can purchase NFTs.

Having invested in over 150 gaming and NFT-related startups, Animoca Brands executive chairman and co-founder, Yat Siu believes Blast Royale will transform the GameFi industry with its “high quality of gameplay”.

“Given the progress so far and the First Light Games team’s strong pedigree of several iconic hit games, we believe that Blast Royale will be an appealing and compelling metaverse entry for a new generation of gamers,” Siu commented.

In a similar breath, the Principal at Mechanism Capital, Eva Wu reaffirmed the company’s goals of investing in the growing crypto gaming industry.

“When a space like crypto gaming is in its infancy, it’s incredibly important to back strong thinkers who shape how the space evolves,” Eva Wu said in an interview. “We’re very excited to work with the team [Blast Royale] to tackle what a play-to-earn world might look like.”

At the end of Q2 2022, the Blast Royale development team is planning on launching a testnet for the game, which, if successful, will usher in the global launch of the game in Q3. Finally, the team has also added a competitive metagame layer to the gaming equipment, giving players strategic agency over the optimal loadout to bring into battle.

PRESS RELEASE. Global crypto exchange, LBank, joined Bitcoin Miami 2022 as a first-time sponsor and exhibitor, attracting more than 500 attendees to their satellite event, and announcing their many ambitions in the United States.

As one of the biggest crypto events in the US, Bitcoin Miami 2022 gathered over 35,000 attendees, making it the biggest Bitcoin gathering to date. LBank exhibited at the conference for the first time promoting its products and services in person and sharing with the world some of its future plans for the US.

LBank COO, Shantnoo Saxsena, shared in an interview his opinion on what an event like bitcoin Miami represents, “The crypto industry is all about difference. As you can see this is the same old bull that we’ve seen always, but this bull is 2.0 which makes it so graceful and wonderful” Saxsena says. The 2.0 version bull signals the advent of a new era of crypto dominance and a new way of global growth. LBank wishes to support this trend by spreading crypto to more corners of the world, with its newest stop in Miami.

On April 6th, LBank hosted a successful satellite event for further talk and socializing after the main conference. The event, named “Chill and Chat with LBank”, was delighted to host more than 500 attendees from all across the industry. LBank CMO, Kaia Wang, said, “we we’re so glad to have so many people join us and we’ve certainly made a lot of new friends.”

Miami seems to be only the first stop for LBank in the US. LBank is shown to be a sponsor for Coindesk Consensus 2022, which will be hosted in mid-June. When asked if LBank will be an exhibitor at consensus, staff told us that LBank has a lot planned for consensus, planning not only to be an exhibitor but also to host a speaking session.

You may be thinking: what’s in store for LBank in America? LBank has traditionally been a strong player in the UAE, with a major office in the crypto-friendly city of Dubai, but 2022 will see a lot of new activity in the US. “We see great potential in the US. Miami really welcomed us with open arms and we are more than excited about Austin (where Coindesk Consensus will be hosted).” A representative said, “we hope to further establish our presence in the US and Europe. Many think LBank is a new company because we are not very well known in the US. In fact, we are one of the older players in the game with 7 years under our belt. We hope to expand in the US within the next few years and you will certainly be seeing a lot more from us.”

About LBank Exchange

LBank Exchange, founded in 2015, is an innovative global trading platform for various crypto assets. LBank Exchange provides its users with safe crypto trading, specialized financial derivatives, and professional asset management services. It has become one of the most popular and trusted crypto trading platforms with over 6.4 million users from more than 210 regions around the world.

Start Trading Now: lbank.info

Community & Social Media:

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Contact Details:

LBK Blockchain Co. Limited

LBank Exchange

media@lbank.info

This is a press release. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the promoted company or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in the press release.

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By George Liu and Matthew Turk

In part one of this quant research piece, we introduce the decentralized finance (DeFi) collateralized lending platform known as Compound Finance and discuss its use case for stablecoins, in comparison to the notion of a “risk-free” interest rate from traditional finance (TradFi). Our goal is to tie these concepts together to educate on how different types of low-risk investment work within the TradFi and crypto markets.

This introduction examines stablecoin lending yield and shares insights on yield performance, volatility, and the factors driving lending yield. Part two of this piece will examine the factors that drive lending yield in more detail.

Stablecoins are a niche part of the ever-growing crypto ecosystem, primarily used by crypto investors as a practical and cost-efficient way to transact in cryptocurrency. The invention of stablecoins in the crypto ecosystem is brilliant because of the following properties:

• Similar to the fiat currencies used in model economies, stablecoins provide stability in price for people transacting across digital currencies or between fiat and digital currencies.
• Stablecoins are native crypto tokens that can be transacted on-chain in a decentralized manner without involvement of any central agency.

With the growing adoption of cryptocurrencies by investors from the TradFi world, stablecoins have become a natural exchange medium between the traditional and crypto financial worlds.

Two of the shared core concepts in the traditional and crypto financial worlds are the concepts of risk and return. Expectedly, investors are likely to demand higher return for higher risk. During the current Russia-Ukraine war, the Russian interest rate increased from an average of approximately 9% to 20% in 2 weeks, which is a clear indication of how the financial market reacts to risk.

Central to the framework of risk and return is the notion of a “risk-free” rate. In TradFi, this rate serves as a baseline in judging all investment opportunities, as it gives the rate of return of a zero-risk investment over a period of time. In other words, an investor generally considers this baseline rate as a minimum rate of return he or she expects for any investment, because rational investors would not take on additional risk for a return lower than the “risk-free” rate.

One example of a “risk-free” asset is the U.S. Treasury debt asset (treasury bonds, bills, and notes), which is a financial instrument issued by the U.S. government. When you buy one of these instruments, you are lending the U.S. government your money to fund its debt and pay the ongoing expenses. These investments are considered “risk-free” because their payments are guaranteed by the U.S. government, and the chance of default is extremely low.

A “risk-free” rate is always associated with a corresponding period/maturity. In the example above, treasury debt assets could have different maturities, and the corresponding risk-free rate (also called treasury yield) are different as well.

The duration could be as short as one day, in which case we call it overnight risk-free rate or general collateral rate. This rate is associated with the overnight loan in the money market and its value is decided by the supply and demand in this market. The loans are typically collateralized by highly rated assets like treasury debt, and are thus deemed risk-free as well.

Source: WallStreetMojo

With the growth in acceptance of crypto assets and the corresponding market globally, crypto based investing has become a popular topic for people who have been previously exposed only to the traditional financial market. When entering into a new financial market like this, the first thing these investors generally observe is the risk-free rate, as it will be used as the anchor point for evaluating all other investment opportunities.

There is no concept of treasury debt in the crypto world, and as such, the “low-risk” (rather than risk-free) interest rate is achieved in DeFi collateralized lending platforms such as Compound Finance. We use the term “low-risk” here, because Compound Finance, along with many other DeFi collateralized lending platforms, are not risk-free, but rather subject to certain risks such as smart contract risk and liquidation risk. In the case of liquidity risk, a user who has negative account liquidity is subject to liquidation by other users of the protocol to return his/her account liquidity back to positive (i.e. above the collateral requirement). When a liquidation occurs, a liquidator may repay some or all of an outstanding loan on behalf of a borrower and in return receive a discounted amount of collateral held by the borrower; this discount is defined as the liquidation incentive. To summarize risk in DeFi, the closest we can get to risk-free is low-risk.

To clarify, for the sake of this post (and part two), we are looking into Compound V2. On Compound, users interact with smart contracts to borrow and lend assets on the platform. As shown in the example diagram above:

• Lenders first supply stablecoins (or other supported assets) such as DAI to liquidity pools on Compound. Contributions of the same coin form a large pool of liquidity (a “market”) that is available for other users to borrow.
• The borrower can borrow stablecoins (take a loan) from the pool by providing other valuable coins like ETH as collateral in the above diagram. The loans are over-collateralized to protect the lenders such that for each $1 of the ETH used as the collateral, only a portion of it (say 75 cents) can be borrowed in stablecoins.
• Lenders are issued cTokens to represent their corresponding contributions in the liquidity pool.
• Borrowers are also issued cTokens for their collateral deposits, because these deposits will form their own liquidity pools for other users to borrow as well.

How much interest a borrower needs to pay on their loans, and how much interest a lender can receive in return, is determined by the protocol formulas (based on supply/demand). It is not the intention of this blog to give a comprehensive introduction to the Compound protocol and the many formulas involved (interested parties please refer to the whitepaper for an in-depth education). Rather, we would like to focus on the yield that an investor can generate by providing liquidity to the pool, which will facilitate our yield comparison between the two financial worlds.

A Compound user receives cTokens in exchange for providing liquidity to the lending pool. While the amount of cTokens he holds stays the same through the process, the exchange rate that each unit of cToken can be redeemed with to get the fund back keeps going up. The more loans are taken out of the pool, the more interest rate will be paid by the borrowers, and the quicker the exchange rate will go up. So in this sense, the exchange rate is an indication of the value of the asset that a lender has invested over time, and the return from time T1 to T2 can be simply obtained as

R(T1,T2)=exchangeRate(T2)/exchangeRate(T1)-1.

Additionally, annualized yield for this investment (assuming continuous compounding) can be calculated as

Y(T1,T2)=log(exchangeRate(T2)) — log(exchangeRate(T1))/(T2-T1)

While the Compound pools support many stablecoin assets such USDT, USDC, DAI, FEI etc, we are only going to analyze the yields on collateralized lending for the top 2 stablecoins by market cap, i.e. USDT and USDC, with market capitalizations of $80B and $53B respectively. Together, they make up over 70% of the total market for stablecoins.

Here below are the plots of the annualized daily, weekly, monthly, and biannual yields generated according to the formulas in the previous section. As one can see, the daily yield is pretty volatile, while the weekly, monthly, and biannual yields are respectively the smoothed version of the prior granular plot. USDT and USDC have pretty similar patterns in the plot, as lending of both of these assets experienced high yield and high volatility for the start of 2021. This indicates there are some systematic factors there that are affecting the DeFi lending market as a whole.

Source: The Graph

One hypothesis of the systemic factors that could affect the lending yield involves crypto market data such as BTC/ETH prices and their corresponding volatilities. To illustrate an example (higher risk in this case), when BTC and ETH are in an ascending trend, it is believed that many bull-chasing investors will borrow from the stablecoin pools to buy BTC/ETH and then use the purchased BTC/ETH as collateral to borrow more stablecoins, and then repeat this cycle until the leverage is at a satisfying high level. This leverage effect helps the investors to magnify their returns as BTC/ETH keeps going up. We will explore this analysis more in part two of this blog post.

Future Directions

This blog has given a broadly applicable introduction to DeFi collateralized lending through the lens of Compound Finance and how it compares to “risk-free” rates from TradFi. As mentioned above, in part two of this blog post, we will further examine collateralized lending yields and share our insights on yield performance, volatility, and driving factors.

We, as part of the Data Science Quantitative Research team, aim to get a good holistic understanding of this space from a quantitative perspective that can be used to drive new Coinbase products. We are looking for people that are passionate in this effort, so if you are interested in Data Science and in particular Quantitative Research in crypto, come join us.

The analysis makes use of the Compound v2 subgraph made available through the Graph Protocol. Special thanks to Institutional Research Specialist, David Duong, for his contribution and feedback.