Curve, a decentralized exchange (DEX) for trading stablecoins, will become the third decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol to hit $1 billion in total value locked this week. In a month that has already witnessed truly exponential growth in the Ethereum DeFi category, this milestone comes just one day after non-custodial lending and borrowing protocol Aave also hit the $1 billion mark on Saturday 15th August.
Recently, Curve was strong-armed into launching its governance platform and native CRV token early after an anonymous developer deployed their smart contracts without the knowledge of Curve. Since that took place, the platform has witnessed significant inflows of capital as users attempt to collect CRV token rewards in return for their capital contribution.
According to DappRadar data, the total value locked across the top 11 DeFi protocols has passed the $6 billion point. Curve has now become the third-largest DEX by trading volume currently displaying a TVL of $956.4 million.
As mentioned, non-custodial lending and borrowing protocol Aave has been having a stellar 2020. The DeFi protocol surpassed $1 billion TVL this weekend and appears to be going from strength to strength. Aave, however, is a different protocol overall to Curve and has a much deeper set of offerings and functionality meaning that directly comparing the two protocols using the TVL metric is not perhaps giving the most accurate picture.
DeFi outside of Ethereum
Whilst it is vital to keep our eyes on the major players in the DeFi space right now it is important not to forget that competitors to Ethereums DeFi dominance have been lining up all year and are now starting to make their moves.
The most noise has been made by Serum in the last few weeks, a DEX being built on the Solana network. Besides an impressive price chart, for its governance token SRM, the project is interesting because it shows DeFi branching out to smaller younger networks.
IOST has set up a $1M Noah Oracle Fund, to help catalyze the growth of DeFi on the network. Given the sums DeFi projects on Ethereum have been attracting over the past months the amount does not appear dynamic altering. However, it shows intent, which is important.
More on the cooperation front, Waves and Ontology have decided to work together to build “cross-chain communication infrastructure for DeFi”. Both projects are top 50 based on market capitalization on CoinMarketCap, and boast sizable communities. With several older projects significantly lagging behind Ethereum, it would not be surprising to see more partnerships in order to pool resources and user bases.
TRON getting serious
And finally, this week Justin Sun and TRON will launch JUST Swap. DappRadar first covered TRON’s attempts to enter the growing DeFi space back in April 2020. Since then, the DeFi sector has been at the fore of most blockchain and crypto conversations, and Justin Sun, as always, does not want to miss out.
First, Justin Sun has announced an alternative to the Ethereum based protocol Uniswap that will be called JUSTswap. The protocol will be launched on August 17th, 2020, and is set to provide a service to solve the problem of decentralized liquidity on the TRON network.
The Ethereum-based Uniswap protocol is incredibly popular and is characterized by allowing ERC-20 tokens to be exchanged, but without traders having to create buy or sell orders.
The controversial CEO also announced the launch of yield farming options available from August 31st, 2020 between the stablecoin JUST (USDJ) and the JST token.
It is no surprise to see this move from TRON as yield farming has been very successful in Ethereum as it allows users to use their active tokens and crypto assets to generate the highest yield.
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