Living on the edge, that is what crypto is all about….just holding bitcoin can make
hodl your breath for longer than you like.
But this means developers who build on the edge of what's possible with cryptocurrency,
that is where the future is.
What’s the edge for developers in crypto!?
Sidechains, Layer 2 & channeling all the power.
Good thing you tuned into this channel.
Because it’s time for Chico Crypto!
Today, we aren’t talking about side-chains like xdai or matic, or rollups, or any of
the tech that scales.
We have already done that...Today, we are diving into the actual companies and dapps
building on the edge, the ones that are working processing real transactions to these 2nd
crypto layers.
Sooo let us begin and I’m going to be completely up front about what I see going on…..
Two sidechains are ready to host complex dapps on their layers that is xdai and matic.
And each, xdai and matic have two flagship financial protocols using them.
On matic, it’s the #1 dapp listed on their website, as we can see it’s PolyMarket.
This is prediction markets, for real world events & it went live on Matic’s Layer 2
nearly 4 months ago, October last year.
Now, of all the open market on polymarket, it equals up to about 32 million in trading
volume, and of the resolved since it’s october launch, about 22 million.
So about 54 million since launch 4 months ago.
Not bad whatsoever…
But Polymarket is still running into issues, as we can see they put out a blog post regarding
the relayer from the matic layer to the ethereum main layer & there has been regular delays,
even though they are on layer 2, and they are working to find a solution to it, which
we will get into in a second.
But first lets, look at xdai’s flagship financial product as of now.
It is listed on xdai’s website, in infrastructure and DeFi...and that is Perp protocol.
And as we can see, they are decentralized perpetual contracts….
Now the mainnet for Perp, it launched only 3 weeks ago, as we can see from the twitter
announcement December 16th.
Just in 2 days, January 4th and 3rd, it did 29 million alone in volume, and the rest of
the days since launch, about 80 million.
That is nearly 110 million as of January 4th, I didn’t have data from the past couple
of days, so it's likely near 150 million in just 3 weeks.
So, how has Perp been running??
Any issues??
No not on the Perp dapp side of things, Just on January 5th, they tweeted about how flawless
it was working, not a blog about how it wasn’t.
Over 76 thousand trades done, and 0 gas fees paid by the traders.
It’s working & pushing a significant amount of pressure to the xdai chain alone.
Now, there is an insurance fund, where the fees of the protocol 100% are going to protect
traders in case of black swan events...and up to January 4th, the data I have, its built
up over 100k USDC.
Well guess what, Perp twitter tweeted about this, and they said just right now at the
beginning stages “On average, the protocol generates 4,800 USDC in transaction fees each
day.
Right now 100% of the transaction fees go to the Insurance Fund.
In the future, 50% of the transaction fees will be distributed to stakers on the protocol
But it’s not all roses and peaches with xdai, middle of the week, there was almost
some issues, but the infrastructure was scaled to handle the incoming traffic, and it’s
from another big dapp on xdai, those who tweeted it dark forest, the Hotter than hot zksnark
galaxy and planet conquering game…
Now, a picture within my video, is making itself across the airwaves, Jordan Spence
CMO of mycrypto, tweeted that xdai is the 3rd most used blockchain, a clip from my video
a couple days ago...with I assume this is because of dark forest….well dark forest
retweeted spence, and said “dark forest v0.5, deployed on xdai has been quietly but
single-handedly exceeding all total eth mainnet gas usage in the last week”
That is massive, as dark forest has consumed over 500 billion in gas on xdai, if they were
on the ethereum mainnet, this would have put a hole of over 50 million dollars in theirs
and the players pockets...guess how much it cost because of xdai?
About 500 bucks
Now matic also has games, as seen from their dapps page and website, but nothing that has
reached the popularity and hype of dark forest.
As most the games just use matic for assets, and not the actual game built on the transactions
itself, like darkforest using zksnarks, which I’m sure is why it’s on xdai, i don’t
think the zks couldn’t be performed on matic’s layer.
Both matic and xdai, have a uniswap fork, honeyswap for xdai and quickswap for matic.
Xdai’s honeyswap is dominating on that front as well both liquidity and volume...
Now, the only other significant dapp, utilizing layer 2, at this moment, is one I’ve covered
before PowerPool although, full layer 2 integrations are not yet complete, soon though...but their
governance is modular utilizing multiple layer 2s...as we can see from their governance dashboard,
2 layer 2’s matic and xdai.
Now there are pieces of projects utilizing layer 2, aragon connect lets you build daos
with xdai, you have the option to stream money with xdai through sablier, but these are just
pieces not full integrations yet, although gnosis is in the process of porting all of
their applications over to xdai, including one that will be a competitor to poly market...
Although like I said, I wanna get back to Polymarket, as they have some big things coming
which should fix their layer 2 issues.
In the blog post, about their relayer back to layer 1 issues, They lay out the stages,
for the fix and the bottom stage is the important one.
“ One eventual solution we’re optimistic about involves Connext, which would enable
users to deposit and withdraw USDC into their Polymarket wallet near-instantly and inexpensively.
Connext enables users to send USDC on Ethereum to a given address, in similar fashion to
the current user experience, and then receive USDC in their Polymarket wallet on L2/Matic,
circumventing the need to bridge the USDC via smart contract for every deposit and withdrawal,
which is what’s most expensive.
Polymarket is their flagship use case they’re targeting, and our teams are working together
on this integration.
We anticipate that it will be ready by early-February.
And remember, Polymarket is just a dapp no token, connext and their vector is, is just
a routing tech, no token...using both of these in early february could put you in a position,
for possible airdrops if they do go the token route.
Remember though, I said xdai is getting the polymarket competitor, and that is the prediction
market Omen, the gnosis built prediction market governed through the dxdao.
But it’s no polymarket, it has only done just over 6 million in total volume since
it’s launch…
But remember from the video yesterday, these Layer 2 wars are getting ready to heat up.
Not just between matic and xdai...but, from the rollups as well.
Optimistic rollup limited mainnet with syntehtix, in 7 days.
Limited though, and the limitations will be shown January 15th, but we could get some
possible Uniswap v3 news that day too, not guaranteeing anything.
Beside optimism’s rollup with the OVM, their was fuel labs that put out their rollup on
the mainnet, although it only support token transfers and swaps right now...no complex
smart contracts, but like Optimism PBC, they say soon for hosting those..
Another one utulizing optimistic rollups, closer than I think optimism PBC and fuel,
is arbitrum...they tweeted this, January 4th…”Anyone else notice the high gas prices?
We got this and it’s them retweeting bancor announcing they have deployed their contracts
to the rollup testnet.
Now arbitrum get’s their own video soon, as its gonna STANK!
But the final is those ZK rollups.
Loopring has been pushing forward on the mainnet with theirs, but again it’s for token exchanges,
and not the full basket of smart contracts.
Then with zk, there is also starkware, which is going to scale erc20 as well as NFTs, and
erc721s.
They went live with 2.0 on Starkex December 2nd.
But this too isn't the for the full basket of smart contracts, although they are going
to live with big partners, immutable those behind gods unchained and immutable x scaling
NFTs, and dydx, layer 2 margin trading is coming soon….
But the furthest towards the zk rollup goal of smart contracts is matter labs, with zksync...as
they have a tesnent, and curve on top of it, launched back in October of last year..but
since, it has been quiet, with no words regarding mainnet transfer of curve...yet
So, Sidechains, plasma, optimism, layer 2, statechannels, vector...it's a mouthful, but
I hope this video helped you understand what is out there right now on the edge of crypto,
and what is coming very soon.
I’ll be covering all of it, when the soon drops.
Cheers I’ll see you next time!