This is a guest post from Voyager, a crypto brokerage firm with a commission-free trading app.
Most of the crypto market has slipped into a summer slumber, with Bitcoin (BTC) trading steadily between $9,000 and $9,700. The lack of volatility has led to a steep decrease in trading volume across the crypto market. According to Cumberland, crypto trading volume has been cut by half, falling from over $120 bn/day to $50- $70 bn/day.
Despite Bitcoin’s lackluster performance, Ethereum (ETH) is booming. This week, Ethereum’s daily transactions surpassed one million for the first time since 2018, when its price was at $1,033. The spike is due primarily to recent hype around decentralized finance (DeFi) projects built on the Ethereum network.
One growing trend in the DeFi space is “yield farming,” a process that lets users of decentralized applications be rewarded with tokens and yield on top of liquidity supplied to dapps, resulting in high return rates. Compound, a DeFi lending protocol, has become the most popular and lucrative example of yield farming with its new COMP token launch. Since its release in early June, COMP has increased by more than 170%.
Compound’s fully diluted market capitalization has grown to $2.3 billion, making it the 24th most valuable cryptocurrency, according to CoinMarketCap data. Only about 25% of the total supply currently in circulation.
Braintree Taps Compound
Braintrust, a newly launched hiring company, wants to put the entire recruiting process on the blockchain. The Galaxy Digital-backed tech startup plans to replace the Zip Recruiters and Indeeds of the world by utilizing a fork of the hot new DeFi protocol, Compound.
According to the Braintrust team, third parties in hiring often fail at sourcing the top tech talent and charge a hefty fee for placing candidates. Utilizing blockchain technology, the company can match candidates directly with a pool of employers by creating a structure for interaction based on their native Braintrust Token. The Braintrust token allows users to set a series of parameters for hiring on the platform and then rewards them when they complete specific actions, like placing a successful referral with an employer.
“Compound created a basic governance token and voting framework which we hope other teams adopt to accelerate their own development,” Compound CEO Robert Leshner told CoinDesk in an interview. “Braintrust is a great example of a team leveraging open source code intelligently.”
Chainlink in China
ChainLink (LINK) continued its winning streak this week as news emerged that China’s state-backed Blockchain-Based Service Network (BSN) will utilize Chainlink oracle functionality. The integration will enable governments and enterprises to incorporate validated real-world data into their applications using Chainlink oracles via the IRITA interchain service hub.
According to BSN, Chainlink will provide its users with “additional security, reliability, and interconnectivity to help fuel even greater growth and adoption of blockchain applications in China and around the world.”
On the news, LINK matched its all-time high of $4.96 on Voyager and is currently up 15% in the last 7-days. For a deep dive into LINK and its recent partnerships, read Voyager’s Inside Crypto feature on Chainlink.
Read This…
Coindesk: How Chainlink and Cosmos Fit Into China’s Grand Blockchain Initiative
Forbes: DeFi Yield Farmers And Crypto Investors Are Raking In 100%+ Annualized Yields
Coindesk: PayPal, Venmo to Roll Out Crypto Buying and Selling: Sources
The original Voyager post can be read here. You can earn $25 in BTC by signing up for the Voyager app and trading $100 (or use code SLUDGE25).
