Hello fellow Kyberians,
Another month gone by can only mean one thing, we are getting closer to Katalyst’s launch! We hope you’re all as excited about it as we are, soon we’ll all be putting our staking caps on and showing the world how decentralized governance can work. While most of us are focused on Katalyst, Kyber world never stops growing of course and April was the month we hit our highest number of new users and total number of unique users, added half a dozen new DApp integrations, and continued to spread the Kyber word across crypto and beyond.
Kyber Network Stats
In our March ecosystem update we had highlighted the wild volatility observed at both a crypto and global macro level and commented on how this had led to record high volumes across decentralized exchanges. Although this volatility has now given its way to a calmer April trading period and our volumes aren’t as sky-high (but still an impressive $93M!) we continue to see good on-chain growth for Kyber.
While volumes were down over the previous month, Kyber reached its highest number of new addresses, with 8,927 new addresses , and highest number of unique addresses with just under 15k addresses using Kyber in the last month (and note these numbers exclude DeFi dapp’s users who interact with Kyber so the actual usage numbers are certainly higher).
April also proved to be the third best month in DApp volumes since mainnet launch and as DApps continue to build great products and services, we expect the number of users to continue to rise in tandem even if volumes fluctuate from month to month.
We are always happy to see Kyber attract a diverse range of DApps from wallets to DeFi DApps to traders and this reflects in the distribution of volume consumed by DApps as they now make up 66% of Kyber’s volumes. Of course KyberSwap continues to be an important driver of growth within the ecosystem.
Kyber Katalyst Updates
One of our missions for Katalyst is to make staking as accessible to everyone as possible. This means that whether you hold your KNC on your favourite Ethereum wallet or your favourite exchange, or are an institutional investor and prefer to use staking platforms, participating in the KyberDAO will be a few clicks away at most.
For KNC stakers who do not wish to vote on governance votes every epoch (roughly every two weeks) but want to receive the staking rewards, we are providing the option to delegate their voting power to pool masters. We just published a blog post on the various types of pool master options that will be available and recommend reading it here.
As part of this increased accessibility effort, in the run-up to our launch we’ll also be announcing partners that will be providing staking and pool master delegation services through their products from day one. This month we welcome StakeWith.Us and RockX , both professional staking companies that provide services to both small and large crypto investors and who will provide support for Katalyst. You can catch a 2 minutes Kyber interview with RockX co-founder Xinshu here.
And of course a big thank you to Signum Capital and Hashed for their strong support of Kyber Network since day one. We look forward to their participation in the KyberDAO as valuable Kyber stakeholders.
You can watch interviews with John and Simon from Signum Capital and Hashed respectively here and here.
Kyber DeFi Updates
DeFi volumes dipped in April but the overall trend continues to be one of growth and as DeFi products continue to mature, they continue to attract new users. 1inch.exchange continues to lead the charge for the DeFi category within Kyber with an impressive $8M volume in April.
Note: The bZx team have taken Fulcrum down to work on a v2 relaunch coming soon and the trades seen in April are the closing of leftover positions and do not reflect user trading volume.
ERC777 and Re-entrancy attacks
You may have read about the recent imBTC re-entrancy vulnerability that led to the draining of $300k worth of imBTC from Uniswap followed by the draining of another $25M imBTC from DForce (subsequently returned).
The good news for Kyber’s ecosystem is that due to our addition of re-entrancy protection to our smart contracts back in 2018, if imBTC had been available on Kyber, the attackers would not have been able to drain it as they did from other liquidity providers.
New Kyber DApp Integrations
Furucombo
Our first integration is Furucombo, a cool new DeFi lego DApp that allows multiple protocols to be arranged in sequence to create single transaction trading strategies. Inputs and functions can be rearranged simply by dragging the cubes.
Do bear in mind that as the Furucombo devs have noted, the software is in beta and should be used at your own risk.
SimpleDeFi
Our next integration is Simple DEFI, a DApp that bills itself as the most secure DeFi lending service on Ethereum. The DApp uses Compound, Kyber and Zerion to provide high interest lending rates that can be withdrawn at any time.
You can currently sign up to the waiting list here to access the Android and iOS apps.
SNX Link
SNX Link is a non-custodial Synthetix portfolio management platform that simplifies many of the Synth workflows. The Guaranteed AutoClaim will be released soon with Kyber used to fix C-Ratios.
You can access the portfolio manager here.
New Release available at https://t.co/msXScZQVyw ⚔️ Now if you need to fix your C-Ratio you can BUY SNX You can also BURN🔥 sUSD (and buy if necessary) And if that’s still not enough, the Guaranteed AutoClaim will be live very soon !! Stay tuned 😉 Liquidity by @KyberNetwork
— @SnxLink
2key Zoom
Last summer we had introduced you to 2key, a 2nd layer protocol built on Ethereum that combines smart contracts with HTTP links and much more. 2key has just released Zoom SmartSessions, a monetization option using Kyber that allows Zoom sessions to generate income through any ERC20 token.
Partnerships in crypto make everything scale ⚖️ 2key & @KyberNetwork integration allows easy, fast & secure swaps allowing 2key to offer @zoom_us SmartSessions with a variety of cryptocurrencies. Read more on @pymnts 👇 https://t.co/Dze4qLdyJV
Lucian Nagy
Kyber integrations are not all about lego moneys of course and this month we’d like to give a shout out to Lucian Nagy, an award winning multi ethnic instrumentalist and composer who’s integrated Kyber into his website luciannagy.com to accept payments in any ERC20 in your wallet. We’ve been enjoying his music recently and you can get a taste of it on his youtube channel.
Reserve Manager and Token Metrics
Reserve Metrics
Unsurprisingly given the overall market conditions, Reserve Managers on Kyber saw a drop in their volumes in April compared to March but nevertheless had their 3rd best month on record.
Fed Price Reserves (FPR), reserves that actively re-balance inventory across multiple sources to provide the best market price, continue to dominate the reserve side ecosystem with 63% of Kyber volumes. Bridge Reserves that hook into other liquidity pools make up almost another quarter of the volume, with Automated Price Reserves (APR) making up the remaining 12.8% of volumes:
Token Volumes
The major stablecoins continue to take up the top three spots on the most traded token list on Kyber while other popular ERC20s such as LINK, KNC, MKR, WBTC and UBT round up the top 10.
New Token Listings
In April we welcomed four new tokens with all four being served by newly deployed Automated Market Makers:
Band Protocol [BAND] — Band Protocol is a cross-chain data oracle platform that aggregates and connects real-world data to smart contracts while the BAND token secures the protocol’s oracle blockchain. Link
Kleros [PNK] — Kleros is an open source online dispute resolution protocol which uses blockchain and crowd sourcing to fairly adjudicate disputes. PNK is used for jury selection, sybil attack protection and governance. Link
Reserve Tokens [RSV][RSR] — Reserve is a flexible pool of stablecoins designed to reduce risk through diversification and decentralized governance. RSV is the stablecoin while RSR is used to stabilize RSV. Link
SelfKey [KEY] — SelfKey is a blockchain startup developing digital identity solutions that allows individuals and corporations to take complete ownership of their data. KEY is used to pay for request attestations, receive identity claims and provides other service level functionality. Link
KNC
Skrill
KNC is now available on Skrill! Skrill is a huge e-commerce platform with over 40 million users and allows payments and money transfer to be made through the internet. KNC’s addition means it can be bought and sold very easily through 40 different fiat currencies with Skrill boasting over 100 deposit methods.
🎉 @KyberNetwork is the latest #cryptocurrency to join Skrill! 🔗 Kyber Network is an on-chain liquidity protocol that aggregates liquidity from a wide range of reserves. Add #Kyber to your portfolio now 👉 https://t.co/ap4KS8VNRb https://t.co/JfaCerTgIj
For Indian crypto enthusiasts, Colodax announced the introduction of the Indian Rupee INR/KNC pair alongside a few other popular tokens.
With recent inclusion of @KyberNetwork & @Tether_to there are total of 12 #cryptocurrencies listed on @colodax with INR pairing. Sign up now on https://t.co/ZObuwW43zs OR dwnld our application https://t.co/xGf5kghEof #BTC #ETH #XRP #TRX #LTC #KNC #BCH #OMG #ZRX #NPXS #XLM #USDT
— @colodax
We were also happy to see KNC performing so well in Messari’s Q1 2020 Open Finance sector returns table. Out of 17 ERC20s in this sector, KNC was the best performing token after Numeraire:
KyberWorld
With most of the world continuing its lock down phase into April, we continue to spend time attending online crypto conferences to share our thoughts and opinions on all thing Kyber, Ethereum, and crypto.
Loi had a chance to discuss various DeFi topics on Coingecko’s ‘DeFi Today & the Plan for the Future’ panel while I participated in a discussion on the future of DEXs at Dystopia Lab’s DeFi Discussions panel. Over in Japan, Taisuke explored themes around Kyber and Uniswap at a HashHub event.
You can also catch our interviews talking about Katalyst on various Youtube channels here and here.
In The Media
Kyber had an especially busy month in written media with dozens of articles covering Katalyst and Kyber’s adoption and volume growth and we’ve listed some noteworthy articles below:
Coindesk — Kyber Network Activity Surges as DEX Plans to Switch to Staking Coindesk — Kyber to Offer Delegated Token Staking After Network Update
Decrypt Media — Ethereum DEX Trading Volumes are Rising Rapidly in 2020
Crypto Briefing — Five Most Popular DeFi Apps by Number of Users
Cryptoverse — KyberDAO Katalyst (in Hindi and Urdu)
DappRadar — DEX Ecosystem Trends Q1 2020 Flash Report
Altcoin Buzz — Kyber’s Katalyst Protocol Upgrade
Other articles and videos: Cryptobriefing, Codefi.Consensys, Coin Bureau, Exodus.io, BaasInfo, Paradigm, Lunar Crush, Markethodl, Our Network 16, Token Tuesdays,
We were pleased to see Kyber Network have the highest brand awareness out of all decentralized liquidity providers as polled by CoinGecko.
Conclusion
And that concludes our 14th ecosystem update. As usual, the month passed by in a flash and May is shaping up to be just as eventful with a lot going on in Kyber world so be sure to join our Discord channel to stay up to date. Again, we thank you all for your support and look forward to having a Katalyst summer with you! 🌞🍸
April Photo Gallery
Kyber Ecosystem Report #14 was originally published in Kyber Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.