Tag: Binance Smart Chain

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Crypto Daily Topic Cryptocurrencies

Introducing Certik (CTK): Bringing Safety to DeFi

The blockchain is a new and welcome idea: decentralizing transactions, securing funds with high-level cryptography, and more. The only problem is that today’s blockchains exist in separate environments, hindering interoperability. There’s also the issue of security concerns. While cryptography goes a long way, blockchain transactions are still vulnerable to security threats, such as the hypothetical 51% attack and malicious actions by network participants. 

The blockchain is a new and welcome idea: decentralizing transactions, securing funds with high-level cryptography, and more. The only problem is that today’s blockchains exist in separate environments, hindering interoperability. There’s also the issue of security concerns. While cryptography goes a long way, blockchain transactions are still vulnerable to security threats, such as the hypothetical 51% attack and malicious actions by network participants. 

The blockchain is a new and welcome idea: decentralizing transactions, securing funds with high-level cryptography, and more. The only problem is that today’s blockchains exist in separate environments, hindering interoperability. There’s also the issue of security concerns. While cryptography goes a long way, blockchain transactions are still vulnerable to security threats, such as the hypothetical 51% attack and malicious actions by network participants. 

The Certik Protocol is a blockchain-based interoperability and security solution for blockchain networks. On the network, users can access various security solutions to protect their crypto assets. Certik launched its testnet in March 2020 and its mainnet on October 24, 2020. 

This article is a closer examination of the Certik Protocol. 

Breaking Down Certik

Certik is a blockchain effort that wants to build a safer blockchain infrastructure and decentralized applications’ environment. Based on a Delegated Proof of Stake, Certik wants to offer a more trusted and safer environment for executing decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and even IoT applications. 

The project will offer cross-chain compatibility so that blockchain projects are better off with the Security Oracle, which provides a real-time and thorough check on all transactions by flagging down any potential security threats. Below, we’ll look more closely at the Security Oracle and other key features of the Certik ecosystem. 

Certik: Key Components

#1. Security Oracle

The Security Oracle is a combination of decentralized network operators who rely on cutting-edge security technologies to identify any security threats on the protocol. These operators receive CTK tokens as a reward for this contribution. The Security Oracle can work with various blockchains, allowing users to make informed decisions before interacting with on-chain smart contracts. Smart contracts incorporated into the Security Oracle can flag and prevent malicious transactions from taking place, preventing funds’ potential loss. 

#2. CertikShield

This is a tool that enables flexible and decentralized reimbursements of crypto losses. These losses could have arisen from theft or pure inaccessibility due to security breaches. The CertikShield is made of a decentralized network of members who combine the Security Oracle’s scores with the governance system to provide collateral and vote on claims to protect blockchain networks. 

The CertikShield system is made of two types of members: collateral providers and shield purchasers. 

Collateral providers are members that deposit crypto funds into the CertikShield pool. These funds can be used to reimburse valid claims, meaning the providers can exit with less crypto than they deposited – in case of major security breaches. However, they get to earn staking rewards and a portion of the fees paid by shield purchasers. 

Shield purchasers are members who pay for the protection of their funds. Shield purchasers need to decide how much protection they want for their assets and pay a fee that directly corresponds with the level of protection. This fee goes directly to collateral providers. 

The CertikShield utilizes several safeguards to prevent manipulation. These safeguards include the following: 

  • A voting threshold that meets a majority
  • Claim requests must pay a fee to be processed
  • Approved claim requests are processed over 56 days
  • Claim requests can be stopped through a veto voting proposal of at least a 75% majority
  • Only projects with a security score of more than 80% can become CertikShield members
#3. DeepSEA

This is a secure programming language and compiling tool compatible with the Certik virtual machine, Ethereum’s WebAssembly, and Ant Financial’s Antchain. DeepSEA is the recipient of funding from Ethereum, IBM-Columbia, and Qtum so that it can accelerate its extremely secure programming language. 

#4. Certik Virtual Machine (CVM): 

The Certik Virtual Machine, which is also compatible with Ethereum’s Virtual Machine, allows users to access, check, and utilize security info to gauge smart contracts’ safety. This enables smart contracts to adjust their behavior to the security record of other smart contracts. For example, a lending contract can only approve a loan to a DAO contract if the latter provides a provable security record. Also, CVM supports a smart contracts sandbox system, whereby smart contracts whose security is yet to be verified operate in a separate environment from the rest of the network. 

The CTK Token 

CTK is the native utility cryptocurrency of the Certik platform, and it fulfills the following roles: 

  • As gas fee for executing smart contracts
  • As governance mechanism to participate in the network’s governance 
  • As a rewards mechanism for participating in the Security Oracle
  • As collateral and reimbursement for the CertikShield system
  • As a staking mechanism to participate in network consensus

The CTK token was distributed in the following manner: 

  • Binance launchpool tokens: 1.50%
  • Private sale 1 tokens: 29%
  • Private sale 2 tokens: 9%
  • Team tokens: 10%
  • Foundation tokens: 25%
  • Community pool tokens: 25%
  • CertikShield pool tokens: 8%

Community Growth Strategies of Certik

The Certik team will carry out various activities in a bid to expand the growth and reach of Certik: 

  • Collaborating with various blockchain protocols to provide security scores for users in those protocols
  • Partner and integrate with various Binance Smart Chain projects 
  • Conduct tutorials, digital and physical meetups
  • Regularly update the public through social media

Future strategies include the following: 

  • Partner with crypto aggregator sites to integrate security scores
  • Conduct both local and global hackathons

Tokenomics of CTK

As of October 28, 2020, CTK traded at $0.945717, with a market cap of $20,900,338 and a market rank of #318. The token has a 24-hour volume of $7,979,974, a circulating supply of 22,100,000, and a total supply of 100 million. CTK’s highest price ever was $1.94 (Oct 27, 2020), while its lowest ever was $0 (October 23, 2020), according to Coinmarketcap. 

Where to Buy and Store CTK

Currently, CTK is listed on the Binance exchange as a market pair of USDT, BTC, BNB, and BUSD. 

Certik provides its official wallet, the Deepwallet. 

Closing Thoughts 

Certik is a welcome idea in what’s a fragmented blockchain space, where every network operates as a lone island. This lack of interoperability holds back the mainstream success of blockchain. Certik’s solution, along with its industry-leading security offerings, puts it in an interesting position. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this project. 

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Cryptocurrencies

What Venus (XVS) can do for DeFi? 

Project after project is now rushing to cash in on the DeFi wave as the new blockchain-powered industry takes over the space. One of the latest DeFi projects to enter the scene is Venus Protocol, a liquidity pool and money market based on the Binance Smart Chain. 

Project after project is now rushing to cash in on the DeFi wave as the new blockchain-powered industry takes over the space. One of the latest DeFi projects to enter the scene is Venus Protocol, a liquidity pool and money market based on the Binance Smart Chain. 

Project after project is now rushing to cash in on the DeFi wave as the new blockchain-powered industry takes over the space. One of the latest DeFi projects to enter the scene is Venus Protocol, a liquidity pool and money market based on the Binance Smart Chain. 

What’s Venus all about, and what innovations does it bring to DeFi? Let’s dive in. 

Understanding Venus 

Venus is a DeFi protocol on the Binance Chain that supports digital asset lending, borrowing, and generation of synthetic assets. Venus wants to provide a much better financial ecosystem than both centralized and current decentralized platforms.

The Problem with Today’s Finance Protocols

In the traditional finance system, users have to go through a multitude of steps just to get a loan from KYC processes to a credit history check to days or weeks of awaiting confirmation. Also, the centralized lender can decide to deny you a loan arbitrarily. And let’s not forget about centralized platforms’ security concerns, thanks to their single point of attack. 

For its part, DeFi has revolutionized the crypto space by introducing blockchain-based products and services that are transparent, cryptographically secure, and not controlled by third-party authorities/decision-makers. But there’s a problem with DeFi: most of these platforms are built on Ethereum, which has faced scalability challenges since the beginning. Lack of scalability means slow, costly transactions and a poor user experience.

Again, these protocols lack the high market cap that could attract more users or put them at the top of the chain. There’s also the less-than-obvious issue of some of these platforms being not fully decentralized – mostly at the beginning. Such a platform will have equity investors controlling the platform, not users, and the community. 

Venus’s Solution

Venus seeks to address these problems by providing an environment where a traditional approach is woven into a synthetic stablecoin generation process. Users will be able to enjoy high-speed transactions with low minimal transaction costs on the Binance Smart Chain. The possibilities are many: deposit collateral, earn interest on the collateral, borrow against the collateral, and mint stablecoins in seconds. 

Venus: Highlights

  • Ability to borrow cryptocurrencies without intrusive KYC and credit checks
  • Ability to deposit crypto and stablecoins as collateral and earn good annual percentage yield returns 
  • Mint stablecoins from your collateral, with the collateral having the ability to be used more than 60 million places in the globe.
  • Governed by the Venus token for fair and transparent coin launch and distribution 

How Can You Use the Venus Protocol? 

You can take advantage of the Venus platform in several ways. From depositing assets and earning from them to borrowing crypto at competitive rates. 

#1. Depositing Assets

Venus users can deposit any of several supported digital assets in the protocol. Borrowers will take out these funds and use them to speculate in the market. In return, suppliers of the funds – or stakers, will earn interest on their deposit. 

When users supply collateral, they participate as lenders while contributing to the security of the protocol. All deposited assets are put together in a pool so that users can take out part of/the whole of their supply at any time, provided the protocol balance is positive.

Supplying crypto to the protocol will get you a vToken (vETH, vBTC, vUSDC, etc.) Only vTokens can be used to redeem the underlying deposited crypto. Redeeming the crypto will allow you to hedge against other assets in the market or move them to offline wallets that support Binance Smart Chain.

#2. Borrowing Assets

To borrow assets from the platform, you need to stake in collateral. The collateralized assets should be over-collateralized, making for at least 75% of the amount to be borrowed. The community will determine the collateral ratio through a governance process. Once you deposit the collateral, you can proceed to borrow an amount based on the collateral ratio of the particular asset. 

Usually, collateral ratios are anything between 40% to 75%. For instance, if ETH has a collateral ratio of 75%, it means you can borrow up to 75% of the value of your ETH. But if your collateral value drops below 75%, it could cause your assets to be liquidated. To return the collateral, a borrower must pay the borrowed amount together with the compounded interest.

Protocol Architecture

Venus’s code is forked off both the MakerDao and Compound protocols. The architecture is made of these elements: 

#1. Controller Smart Contract

Binance Smart Chain’s controller contract is much like a 

decentralized processor, facilitating the interactions between all other smart contracts on the platform. The Venus protocol does not automatically support tokens. Rather, it will support specific markets that are whitelisted by the Controller contract. The controller contract accesses whitelist markets by deploying the support Market admin function on the protocol. Every interaction and function on the protocol must be verified on the controller contract before it’s executed. 

#2. Collateral value

When a user deposits, borrows, or mints from the protocol, they’re usually using the underlying asset, usually held as collateral. The underlying assets are held as collateral and have dollar values that are also tied to the vTokens. For this to work accurately, these collateral values are taken from prevailing market rates. 

Governance Approach of Venus

The Venus team takes community governance very seriously. There were no pre-mined tokens for the team, foundation, and developers. As such, users who mine the Venus Token will get to control how the network runs. 

Governance features include, but are not limited to: 

  • The introduction of new assets on the protocol
  • Adjustment of market rates
  • Fixing interest rates for synthetic assets
  • Voting on protocol upgrade proposals

Venus Token

Venus is governed by the platform’s native token, the Venus Token (XVS). The token was designed to be “fair launch,” meaning there were no pre-mined tokens for the team, advisors, or the Foundation. You can only earn tokens through the Binance Launchpool project or by injecting liquidity into the protocol.

Initially, 20% (6,000,000) of the total supply will go to the Binance Launchpool project. The remaining amount will be dedicated to the protocol, with 23,700 000 XVS being mined in the next four years at 18,493 per day. 35% of the award will go to borrowers, 35% to suppliers, and 30% to stablecoin minters. XVS will officially become the governance mechanism of the protocol after 10 million tokens have been mined. In the meantime, an interim token, ‘Swipe Token’ (SXP), is being used to fulfill this purpose. 

Community Growth Strategies

The Venus team is going to implement various strategies in a bid to expand the community. 

  • Conducting Ask Me Anything (AMAs) to shed more light on the project to the community.
  • Regularly publishing DeFi-related news.
  • Hosting/co-hosting DeFi and blockchain events
  • Putting out weekly updates on Medium
  • Engaging with the community and the public via social media
  • Coming up with governance protocols

Future strategies include the following: 

  • Launching a governance protocol
  • Launching an incentive campaign to attract liquidity investors
  • Increasing the number of supported tokens

Tokenomics of Venus

At the time of writing, the Venus token’s market performance was as follows: its price was $3, and its market cap was $12,696,581, which placed it at #453. XVS had a 24-hour volume of $6,606,914, with a circulating supply of 4,227,273 and a total and maximum supply of 30 million. Finally, the token’s highest price ever was $4.77 (Oct 17, 2020), while its lowest ever was $2.22 (Oct 13, 2020). 

Where to Buy and Store XVS

XVS is currently listed on the Binance exchange. 

As a Binance chain token, the XVS token can be stored in Ledger Nano S, Guarda Wallet, Enjin Wallet, Atomic Wallet, Trust Wallet, Edge Wallet, and Coinomi Wallet.

Closing Thoughts 

On the Venus Protocol, users from everywhere can supply crypto and earn returns, take loans, and mint synthetic assets. Since it runs on the Binance Smart Chain, its transactions are fast, low-cost, and transcend the native blockchain. Active participants will get to contribute to the future direction of the protocol in a truly decentralized fashion. Venus joins multiple protocols offering the same product – will it stay ahead of the curve? We’ll be watching to see how it evolves.

Categories
Crypto Guides

A Brief Guide to PancakeSwap – A Food Themed DeFi Protocol

Introduction

Introduction

Introduction

PancakeSwap is a food-themed new DeFi protocol. It is a cryptocurrency platform for direct exchange under the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). It has introduced many food-based farming associates in the crypto industry. Pancake allows community governance and investors to earn tokens by serving as a liquidity provider under the staking mechanism.

The whole protocol is executed on the Ethereum blockchain because it supports blockchain smart contracts, and it has huge community support who are continuously putting efforts to build decentralized applications. Pancake DeFi exchange allows swapping of BEP20 tokens. If you are familiar with SushiSwap, then you can easily grasp the PancakeSwap concept because both of them have the same incredible design. 

The PancakeSwap Exchange

The exchange platform works on an Automated Market Maker Model(AMM). In this model, the investor can trade with his digital assets and can invest in the liquidity pool. In these pools, users deposit funds and, in return, get Liquidity Provider tokens. With these earned tokens, they can reclaim their share from the trading commission. In PancakeSwap, the LP tokens are known as FLIP tokens. 

Staking Chain

In PancakeSwap, you are allowed to trade with a secondary token known as CAKE. On the farm, if you stake your LP tokens and lock them for the further process, then you will get CAKE in reward. You can deposit these different LP tokens listed below:

  1. CAKE-BNB FLIP
  2. BUSD-BNB FLIP
  3. ADA-BNB FLIP
  4. BAND_BNB FLIP
  5. DOT-BNB FLIP
  6. EOS-BNB FLIP
  7. LINK-BNB FLIP
  8. BAKE-BNB Bakery LP
  9. BURGER-BNB FLIP

There is one more token in this protocol known as SYRUP. If you have deposited funds to get LP tokens and have used these tokens to receive CAKE. Further, you can stake this CAKE token to earn a SYRUP token, which would provide you with governance functionality. 

Adding Liquidity

To access all the features of PancakeSwap, you need to unlock your crypto wallet. With this wallet, you can interact Binance smart chain based on Ethereum web applications. 

The BEP20 tokens movement will require your approval. You simply have to fix the amount you want to keep on stake, and you need to confirm the transaction. Then you can check the CAKE you have earned, and you can withdraw the amount anytime you want with the harvest option. To earn SYRUP, you have to keep your CAKE on the stake with the ‘Approve Cake’ option. Once you have staked your CAKE, you will get back an equal amount of SYRUP and can earn CAKE passively. 

Conclusion 

The Google of crypto – Binance jumped in Defi by introducing a new food protocol – PancakeSwap. PancakeSwap is launched by BSC, which is supported by a centralized exchange. It includes AMM, DEX, farms, and native token-CAKE. There are nine liquidity pools where you can deposit your funds. 25% of CAKE commission share is distributed to the SYRUP token holders. The anonymous developer team behind the PancakeSwap has warned that the smart contract is still unaudited and has high inherent risk. The fund invested in smart contracts always has a risk of bugs so, never deposit the amount if you can’t afford its loss.