Hello fellow Kyberians,
How are you doing during these crazy and uncertain times? We hope you are all safe and sound as we go through this challenging pandemic period. We at the Kyber team are all hunkered down working remotely from our homes and can’t wait for life to get back to normal again.
In the meantime, we’ve been making good progress on Katalyst. First round of smart contract audits are complete, we’re on-boarding staking partners, and making progress on UI/UX as launch date gets closer and closer. In on-chain news, we’ve had another record breaking month in terms of volumes, trades, and user numbers. And as always, we’ve had new integrations, tokens, and reserves join the Kyber ecosystem over the last month.
Kyber Network Stats
Just when we were thinking how are we ever going to top February’s record high volumes and trades, March blew right past by setting new all time highs across all metrics. First time Kyber users have doubled since the beginning of the year while USD and ETH volumes have more than tripled.
Some of this growth is partially due to the eye-watering volatility seen across crypto markets recently, and on March 13th, as hodlers experienced a painful 40% drop, Kyber recorded its highest daily activity with $33.7M traded over a single 24 hour period.
The extreme volatile market just gave all defi protocols an once-in-a-crypto-lifetime test. Really proud of what @KyberNetwork has achieved during this hard time; all the new trade volume records are solid proofs of the resiliency of our design/ tech!
— @loi_luu
Quarterly results have also been very good with Q1 2020 our best quarter across all metrics to date:
March Data
In monthly volume data, the high market volatility has lead to higher volumes especially across exchange UIs like KyberSwap, 1inch.exchange and Paraswap. We suspect this is mostly due to traders using these exchanges as an escape valve from risky ERC20s and ETH, into less volatile stablecoins (as we show in our Token Metrics section further down):
Most non-KyberSwap volume continues to come from unknown sources (we can’t know the source of volume unless the owner of a fee-receiving address notifies us) but amongst the known volume, 1inch.exchange is now the largest dapp integration on Kyber with 14.7% of all non-KyberSwap dapp volumes:
Kyber Katalyst Updates
We’ve been making good progress on multiple fronts for Katalyst and our first round of audits are complete and the dev team are incorporating changes. We also continue to on-board both small and large staking partners so wherever you hold your KNC, you will have an easy option to stake and participate in Katalyst.
We’ve released an important blog post that covers key considerations that went into designing the KyberDAO, how staking, voting, reward distribution and delegation works, and what the next steps towards Katalyst are. If you haven’t already done so, please join our new Discord group as not only do we have discussions on all things Katalyst here, it’s also where the Pre-vote Poll will be conducted to determine the initial set of variables to start the new network with.
As a bonus, here’s an introductory video our graphics team have created to give you an overview of how the KyberDAO and KNC Staking works:
Kyber DeFi Updates
With crypto markets all over the place and prices swinging up to 60% within days (with one day in particular now unfortunately going down into history as Black Thursday😬) many DeFi dapps and especially dex aggregators saw impressive increases in their volumes:
New Kyber Dapp Integrations
Rarible
This month we have the pleasure of welcoming Rarible to the Kyber ecosystem. Rarible is a cool new platform for creating and selling digital collectibles. Users can create these collectibles, in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), by specifying various parameters, and buyers can purchase them with any ERC20 in their hot wallets using the integrated Kyber Widget.
We are excited to announce that users are now able to purchase NFT’s on https://t.co/5FVOlJhtka with any token like $WETH, $DAI, $KNC, $OMG, $MTL, $USDT, $SNT, you name it! Thanks @KyberNetwork and @KyberSwap technology for that! ✨ https://t.co/c0YBMLoTMB
— @i
Bullionix
Bullionix is another NFT related dapp that’s integrated Kyber in March allowing ERC20 tokens to be converted into DGX tokens which are then used to mint gold-backed NFT collectibles. Minters can choose from different design molds and interact with the digital gold display cases.
Unstoppable domains
And lastly, this month saw KyberWidget deployed on IPFS and linked to the Unstoppable Domains record kyber.crypto. This alternative to the conventionally hosted KyberWidget allows both the widget UI and the name that resolves to the KyberWidget to be hosted in a decentralized and distributed manner making it much harder to censor or stop.
Over 1,700 downloads on the Unstoppable Extension so far! ⚡️ Download – https://t.co/UUSTi94iIK 🌊 Surf the decentralized web directly from Chrome 🔁 Swap currencies with kyber.crypto @KyberNetwork https://t.co/1bYKsOLWZR
Reserve Manager and Token Metrics
Reserve Metrics
Unsurprisingly given the huge increase in the number of trades last month, reserves have been busy providing liquidity to the market and trying to keep their reserves balanced through volatile times.
Strongest growth for the month came from OneBit Quant, a Fed Price Reserve (FPR) that provides liquidity to stablecoins like USDC, USDT, PAX, and DAI, as it saw its volumes grow 363% from $3.2M volume in February, to $15M in March:
Token Volumes
The rise of the stablecoins continues and as crypto markets were pummeled and margins were called, we saw significant demand for stablecoins. Stablecoins now make up a majority of volume not just across Kyber but across almost all liquidity providers.
Worth noting that since listing in March, Unibright (UBT) has also seen strong demand right out of the gate with over $4M in volume in its first four weeks making it the fastest growing token ever launched on Kyber.
New Token Listings
New additions to Kyber’s 81 traded tokens this month include:
Loom [LOOM] — Loom is a layer 2 scaling solution for high-performance dapps while LOOM is the PoS token used to secure mainnet. Announcement
Origin [OGN] — Origin is a platform for building peer-to-peer marketplaces. OGN is used as an incentive mechanism to grow the platform. Announcement
Provable [pBTC] — pBTC is an ERC20 token that is 1:1 backed by BTC with owners able to instantly mint pBTC by locking up BTC. Announcement
Storm [STORM] — Storm is a gamified microtask platform that rewards users with STORM and other crypto for completing new tasks. Announcement
LOOM and OGN are maintained by Automated Price Reserves (APR) while pBTC and STORM are mainted by Fed Price Reserves (FPR)
If you’re interested in providing liquidity on Kyber, or simply want to find out more about how Reserves on Kyber work and learn how the new and improved fee structure coming to Katalyst works, we’ve created a brief explainer for you:
KNC
March saw the addition of KNC to Coinbase UK (hello to all our UK KNC holders👋) as well as inclusion to the Iconomi DeFi Core Strategy. Similar to Synthetix’s sDeFi token, buying into this Iconomi position allows Ethereum bulls increased exposure to Kyber and the general DeFi space.
KyberWorld
Travelling might be severely restricted due to the pandemic but that doesn’t stop us from attending online meetups and conferences, talking on podcasts, and featuring on YouTube channels to talk about all things Kyber and Katalyst. So if you’re sitting on your coach in isolation and wondering what to do and how to pass time, here’s some Kyber-related podcast and videos from the last 30 days:
CryptoBasic Podcast with Loi — link
Fork the Product Podcast with Deniz — link
Crypto Finder video with Anton — link
Blockchain Brad video with Loi — link
Crypto and Things video with Deniz — link
Special mention to the Monolith Digital #DeFi Meetup on March 30th. Panels included a wide range of topics from how DeFi is doing in the time of Covid19 to exploring how sustainable communities can be built using crypto-economic game theory. Our panel on how DeFi can help shape up the new world economy can be viewed below.
If you’re looking for more general reading and viewing on a wide range of Kyber-related topics from last month, here are some featured articles and videos:
CoinTelegraph — Insight on Liquidity from DeFi Protocols
CoinDesk — Crosschain liquidity on Kyber Network and Bancor
DeFi Rate — Kyber, Katalyst, and More, Exclusive Interview
Glassnode — Onchain Distribution Analysis of KNC Holders
CryptoSlate — Investors rush into KNC ahead of Katalyst
Additional articles and videos: Decrypt Media, The Street, Etherscan, UToday, Blockonomi, Cult Today, Cryptonomist, CryptoBriefing, Altcoin Buzz, ChicoCrypto, Coin Bureau, IvanOnTech
Conclusion
We wrap up the blog by once again stressing the need for all of us to follow health and safety advice so we can overcome this pandemic and get back to ordinary life as soon as possible. In the meantime, we’re going to deliver the best Katalyst for Kyber, our community, and ecosystem possible, and we look forward to unveiling more soon. As always, thank you for your support!
March Photo Gallery — Life Working From Home
Kyber Ecosystem Report #13 was originally published in Kyber Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.