About a month or so ago you could count the deployed DeFi dapps getting traction on Polygon on one hand. Just a month later and the number of dapps and their activity levels are both breathtaking. In this article I show the results of a brief survey of what DeFi dapps are available today as well as a few on the very near horizon. Certainly I will probably miss some altogether or else get the thumbnail description wrong. Still I will give it my best. If you think that your favorite project needs a better description or was unfairly ignored, please fire away in the comments.
Behind the Scenes
Before we jump into the key DeFi projects on Polygon it is only right to mention some of the key technology suppliers that are contributing to their success behind the scenes. Chainlink and The Graph are both key players right now but more and more are chipping in as well such as DataHub by Figment Networks and liquidity provider and trading tech supplier Wootrade. Down the road we can expect to see tech projects such as git3 and Blockpass join their ranks. I will be doing a complete article about infrastructure companies like these in the near future.
The Big Guns
I have already touched on some of the biggest and most important DeFi projects on Polygon in my previous blog posts. They are:
- Quickswap - the largest decentralized exchange (DEX)
- Aave - the best known lending platform
- Metamask - the most heavily used wallet for DeFi users
- mStable - a respected stable coin investing platform
- APY.Vision - a monitoring platform for those providing liquidity
Other big guns on my short list to cover soon:
- Curve Finance - stablecoin trading and investing platform
- Sushiswap - another well known and popular DEX
- transak - a fiat on ramp that works in selected countries
The Up and Comers
Here are some growing and/or interesting projects that have caught my attention:
- Adamant - yield optimizing platform
- Paraswap - DEX claiming an approach that delivers better trades
- Optyn - options trading platform (in Beta Test)
- PlotX - prediction market
- ComethSwap - DEX focused on gaming tokens
Coming Soon
A good number of projects with existing reputations in the DeFi space will be launching on Polygon soon. This includes:
- Oddz Finance - options trading platform
- Unilend Finance - Lending platform with trading and other investing options
- Dafi Protocol - synthetic rewards platform
- Ozys - a family of DeFI dapps covering many Defi domains
- EpiCash - multichain stablecoin (EUSD) and a DEX named EDEX
Up and Running
There are a bunch of other interesting projects that are striving for a promotion to the Up and Comers category and beyond. While I did some basic checking on most of these there is always the chance of a rug pull, security hole or bugs in of which could cause loss of assets. At least one (EasyFi) has already taken a hit due to a hack. It's a jungle out there but I hope to traverse all of these in good time.
- Elk Finance - multi-chain liquidity platform
- smartdex - DEX
- SwapMatic - DEX - uniswap V1 clone, related to Invader Finance and 0xBitcoin projects
- Kiwi Wallet - specialized token
- Indexed Finance - balancer clone on Ethereum with selected index tokens also trading on Polygon
- Paylock - incremental payment system for international freelancers
- QiDao - collateralized lending and investing
- EasyFi Network - lending platform
- moonwolf.io - deflationary token
The Wild Side
Finally we look at the true wild side of DeFi: Yield Farming
These projects are a combination of DeFi, network marketing, gambling and smoke and mirrors. PolyWhale Finance is the first and still the biggest yield farm on Polygon. Others in no particular order are Polycat Finance, Polycake Finance, Polyshark Finance, Blackswap, PolyGaj Finance, PolyFox Finance, PolyFi, Game Swap Finance and DarkBuild. PolySaturn was also on this list until it performed a rug pull that stole about 10,000 MATIC. There are probably other rug pulls lurking in this list so please do your own research.
If treated as games these projects can be a nice diversion. However keep in mind that most participants in these projects will be losers even though some may do quite well. The best way to win is to get in as early as possible and time your exit wisely but this strategy limits your upside and fully exposes you to rug pulls. The returns also aren't great if you put tokens into a project where the viral marketing fails to attract new game players over time. With so many new yield farming projects coming online now, that seems to be a general concern.
The projects vary in their details and I intend to do a full article comparing and contrasting them within a week or so, however it is safe to say that most of these projects are borderline DeFi at best. I apologize if any of the above projects provide legitimate value and are not merely crypto versions of multi-level marketing schemes. If that is the case then I will strive to make that clear in my forthcoming review article.
If you insist on playing with these yield farms, try to protect yourself. The telegram group named MATIC.NEWS seems to be building a community of players who are trying to look out for each other.
Final Thoughts
For every DeFi project named above there are at least 2 that have announced an intention to participate on the Polygon Network. In addition there are a ton of interesting dapps in other categories including games, gambling, NFTs and collectibles that are beyond the cope of this blog (although a few overlap enough with DeFi to warrant some coverage some day.)
Right now DappRadar.com and dapp.com are doing the best job of tracking deployed dapps although they aren't perfect as some important dapps that are fairly heavily used do not show up on either list. Still this article is largely due to their sites and I thank them for their efforts. (That is why their logos appear on my cover photo.) Also I must mention CoinGecko who now has a category specifically for coins that trade on Polygon which is quite helpful in figuring out which projects might be gaining traction in the ecosystem.
Coming next: While I still intend to get into the general topic of liquidity providing for fun and profit quite soon, I think that I need to cover Curve Finance and SushiSwap first and so look for those articles in the very near future.
Image Credit: Photo by Igor from Pexels plus logos from DappRadar.com and Dapp.com
