Perpetual Protocol co-founder shares outlook on TrustToken and Perp’s DEX liquidity deal

Yenwen Feng says Perpetual Protocol and True plan to increase the asset cap in the protocol-to-protocol lending portfolio from $5 million to $20 million if the initial trial succeeds.

Perpetual Protocol (PERP), an Ethereum-based decentralised derivatives exchange and TrustToken, the company behind  digital asset lending platform TrueFi and popular stablecoin TrueUSD (TUSD) recently signed a deal that saw the latter launch a $100 million liquidity pool for market makers.

As part of the partnership, TrueFi unveiled a protocol-to-protocol lending portfolio on Perpetual Protocol, with a $5 million initial plough from the $100 million targeted by end of the year. With the funds, market makers on the PERP platform can now offer more liquidity, allowing the platform to scale its services to more professional and institutional investors.

Commenting on the critical role played by liquidity providers, Perpetual Protocol co-founder Yenwen Feng said:

Committed market makers are crucial for any user-driven decentralized exchange, as they are the engine that keeps it going. By teaming up with TrustToken, we bring our market makers more liquidity to tap into as they support our own trading pairs. This grants liquidity providers more confidence through greater market stability and reduced slippage which ultimately results in a better trading experience for all of our users.”

Yenwen Feng on TrueFi partnership and 2022 outlook

After Perpetual and TrustToken announced their partnership, we wanted to know more about the $100 million liquidity pool and what the PERP team is looking forward to in 2022.

Feng elaborated on several points, including plans to increase the LP funds’ pool from $5 million to $20 million following an initial trial period. He explained the importance of providing support to market makers via a dedicated lending portfolio, with a note on why this could be crucial to the derivatives market.

Feng is also convinced layer 2 solutions will play a key role in the future of on-chain derivatives starting in the second half of 2022.

There’s more the Perpetual Protocol co-founder said.

CJ: When do the Perpetual Protocol (PERP) ecosystem market makers begin to tap into the huge liquidity?

Feng: After this initial trial we should be able to fine-tune the parameters of the program before opening it up to other market makers

CJ: Briefly tells us about the $5 million lending ceiling and why start with only 5% of what could rise to $100 million by end of the year?

Feng: We wanted to start with a small enough amount to initially test the waters to see what kind of an impact it would have on the market-making activities on Perp. This approach is another route for us to bring more liquidity to the platform and if it goes well, we’ll increase it to $20 million for the next round and more in the future.

CJ: What’s your outlook on the crypto derivative markets, especially if we see a crypto winter in 2022? Any advice to investors?

Feng: New L1/L2 development: Rollup technologies and new L1 chains are launching this year. It should further increase the bandwidth and lower the gas fees. The landscape for L2s will become really competitive in the second half of 2022. 

For example, zkSync recently launched their public testnet and the Optimism team are working on reducing the fees by 10x, so we’ll likely see a boost to trading volumes as on-chain derivatives become cheaper and more widely accessible. 

Awareness of institutions: More and more institutional traders are testing out crypto trading and bringing in more markets.

CJ: What do you say about the 2022 crypto market outlook?

Feng: I feel that the bearish market will only be short-lived. In the 2018 bear market, people were leaving crypto and never came back. At that time, we were in the Binance Accelerator program and I think around half of the projects there at the time quit the crypto market completely. 

However, the difference this time is that even if crypto market valuation drops, most people will remain in the space and there are many builders and new innovations. 

There’s still a lot of appetite for cryptocurrency, such as in Silicon Valley, so I think by the second half of the year, the market will be in a much better position. 

CJ: Any new projects and protocols that have looked at your partnership with TrustToken and as a result expressed intention to build on top of the Perpetual Protocol?

Feng: Market makers and online strategy providers are very interested in this partnership.

CJ: What compliance issues, if any, has the platform faced or had to address as a result of sealing a partnership with TrustToken?

Feng: TrueFi creates a great environment to help us navigate through the complexity of regulations. TrueFi is like a fund manager, where Perpetual Protocol is the lender and market makers are the borrowers. Because we are using their platform, we don’t have to be too preoccupied about regulations, as TrueFi handles those issues. 

Also, once we grow more, we can utilize their platform to become the borrower. 

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CoinDCX is the latest exchange to list India’s first social token GARI

The listing is a leap towards financially empowering creators, Chingari CEO said

India’s first social cryptocurrency GARI announced its listing on the country’s leading crypto exchange CoinDCX in a press release earlier today.

With over 35 million users in India, the native token of video sharing platform Chingari previously made headlines after trading tokens worth $100 million within 24 hours of going live.

The token is listed in various leading exchanges in the world including Kucoin, MEXC, Bitmart, Zebpay, Huobi, FTX and the decentralised exchange Raydium.

GARI’s latest listing on CoinDCX will enable another avenue for the exchange’s 10 million users to access one of the largest projects on the Solana blockchain. The listing will also allow GARI to improve its liquidation and pursue its ambitions of penetration into wider global communities.

GARI’s parent project Chingari is India’s fastest growing short-video app, supported by prominent crypto Venture Capitalists including Alameda research and Republic Capital. 

Speaking on the CoinDCX listing, Mr Sumit Ghosh, CEO and Co-founder Chingari said:

“This listing is a huge moment for us as it will allow the creators from every nook and corner of the world to trade the GARI token. This has come as a giant leap towards our goal of financially empowering creators on our short video app, Chingari, who have largely been ignored by the global short app platforms.” 

Chingari rewards creators with GARI tokens whenever they create a video on the application and allows influencers to earn via their content through three options: watch-2-earn, engage-2-earn and play-2-earn.

GARI prides itself on being a disruptive force in the creator economy as the token is focused on enabling creators to monetize their content on the blockchain. The listing on CoinDCX has been facilitated to cater to the ever-growing demands of millions of creators across the globe, the press release stated.  

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Polkadot founder Gavin Wood donates $5.8m worth of DOT to Ukraine

Gavin Wood, the founder of the blockchain platform and cryptocurrency Polkadot (DOT), has just donated $5.8 million worth of DOT to Ukraine.

According to a DOT transaction the Polkadot founder just shared, the total donation is 298,367 DOT tokens.

Given DOT/USD is trading around $19.33, Wood’s donation stands at around $5.8 million.

Wood had this week promised to donate $5 million to the Ukrainian government if they posted a Polkadot address in addition to the Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Tether (USDT) addresses opened after last week’s Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Wood pledged $5 million if Ukraine added a DOT address

Earlier on Tuesday, 1 March 1, 2022, Ukraine announced that it was now accepting crypto donations in Polkadot.

In a tweet posted from the official government account, Ukraine authorities thanked the global community for the donations received so far. They released a DOT address and noted that they could accept donations in other cryptocurrencies too.

The people of Ukraine are grateful for the support and donations from the global crypto community as we protect our freedom. We are now accepting Polkadot donations too: $DOT: 1x8aa2N2Ar9SQweJv9vsuZn3WYDHu7gMQu1RePjZuBe33Hv. More cryptocurrencies to be accepted soon,” the tweet read.

Gavin Wood made his pledge via a reply to the Ukrainian government’s earlier plea for more donations. While he could have simply donated in BTC, ETH, or USDT, Wood’s request for a DOT address appears not to be such a bad move after all for the Ukrainian government.

The addition of the Polkadot cryptocurrency could open up the donation basket to more people, boosting the effort to support the battle against Russia and to offer humanitarian aid to a growing number of people.

The DOT address has just over $6 million at the time of writing, but the amount could grow quickly as witnessed with BTC and ETH over the past week.

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UK-Based NFT Platform KnownOrigin Secures $4.85M Series A Investment

  • Crypto VCs Sanctor Capital and GBV co-led the funding round
  • The Manchester start-up plans to use the funds to innovate and build an NFT platform that allows for a democratised access and usage by artists and collectors.

UK-based non-fungible token (NFT) platform KnownOrigin has raised $4.85 million in its series A funding round the startup said in a press release shared with CoinJournal.

Venture capital firms GBV and Sanctor Capital co-led the financing round, with participation from D1 Ventures, Cultur3 Capital, LD Capital, MetaCartel Ventures DAO, and Pluto Digital. The round also attracted support from Future Arts, Yin Cao and Colborn.

KnownOrigin ‘KO’ is a pioneer NFT platform, co-founded in 2018 by David Moore, Andy Gray and James Morgan. The platform has over the years allowed for a democratised art world where artists showcase and sell their digital artwork via simplified transaction processes.

The Manchester-based startup plans to use the new funds to reinvest in its NFT digital art marketplace, with the aim of ensuring creatives continue to benefit from new technologies in the space like Web 3 and Metaverse.

Partnerships include Netflix and Adidas

According to co-founder James Morgan, the $4.85 million will help the startup to grow, innovate and to build an ecosystem that will benefit the broader NFT space.

To help achieve these goals, the KnowOrigin team has looked for investment and expertise from prominent crypto investors and blockchain innovators in the NFT space. It has also partnered with top brands such as streaming giant Netflix, Europe’s largest sportswear firm Adidas and US-based computer software company Adobe.

Commenting on the investment, co-founder Morgan said the aim is to offer “a permissionless, transparent, fair thriving ecosystem where creators and collectors can engage in culture excellence and experience.”

Bringing NFTs to the community

KnownOrigin has over 5000 creators on its platform, with sales of over $30 million in the past year alone netted from a growing market of NFT collectors from across the world.

As well as providing an ecosystem that favours NFT creators and artists, KO has built a new royalties system that allows artists to receive royalties instantly after every sale.

But their work does not end with the platform participants, the team noted in the press announcement. The startup has sought to bring the NFT world to the Manchester community, including events that feature both local and global NFT talent.

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Nexo partners BlockFills to bring Prime Brokerage services to crypto miners

  • The collaboration allows for a syndicated lending solution, which will help Nexo reach a growing user base of crypto miners utilizing BlockFills’ technology.
  • BlockFills on the other hand will benefit from the strategic access to Nexo Prime, a premium brokerage solution tailored to meet institutional investor needs.

Nexo and financial technology firm BlockFills have announced a strategic partnership that sees the regulated digital assets provider expand its brokerage services to crypto miners.

The announcement comes a few weeks after BlockFills secured $37 million in its Series funding, with Nexo as one of the investors.

Targeting BlockFills‘ miner-rich client base

The partnership will see Nexo leverage the end-to-end digital asset solutions offered by BlockFills to roll out crypto services targeted at cryptocurrency miners. The collaboration allows Nexo to avail syndicated lending services via BlockFills’ software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform Phoenix.

This allows Nexo to tap into a miner-rich client base at BlockFills, using its own advanced financial tools to benefit the crypto mining community. 

In addition to this, the partnership allows for the two firms, via Nexo Prime, to expand their business reach to institutional investors.

Nexo’s collaboration with BlockFills is logical and synergistic,” said Tatiana Metodieva, the head of corporate finance and investments at Nexo.

 “Our service offerings, geographic coverage, and addressable user bases complement each other; thus, our joint work will be conducive to the growth of our respective business operations in the digital assets industry,” she added.

‘Reliable trading opportunities’

Nick Hammer, co-founder and CEO of BlockFills said that the partnership allows both companies to offer their respective clients “reliable trading opportunities.”

Nexo’s partnership with BlockFills is yet another growth opportunity for the company as it seeks to increase its presence in the decentralized finance (DeFi) and the metaverse.

The firm’s Instant Crypto Credit Lines facility allows users to efficiently handle their crypto tax obligations while maximizing the value and utility of their holdings.

Apart from that, Nexo offers a high-yield Earn Crypto Interest suite, instant exchange, and over-the-counter (OTC) trading.

Nexo serves over 3 million users from across 200 jurisdictions.

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