Hello dear Kyberians!
We hope you all made it out ok from such a bruising and volatile November. We feel your pain as fellow crypto investors but fret not, the future is bright. November was the month that showed liquidity providers at their finest. DEXs hit all time high daily volumes, a complex multi-collateral stablecoin was successfully introduced to the system, and the decentralized finance space kept chugging along at an unstoppable pace.
November was the month we hit and surpassed $400 million total volume on Kyber, carried out the 500,000th trade on the network, and hit a daily all time high volume of $7.33 million. Growth is not only measured in numbers of course and we carried on building on our ecosystem with new integrations, new reserves, new tokens, and new tools to on-board new users.
Kyber Network Stats
As is customary though, we start with a look at the on-chain numbers. November’s theme has been one of growth across the board with new monthly all time highs in various metrics including unique daily addresses and total number of daily trades.
Stats for November 2019:
6,387 unique addresses in November (up 12% over October) have swapped with Kyber. Note: integrations like Nuo and Fulcrum count as single addresses and therefore their users are not included in this unique address figure.
44,711 total trades for November for an average of 1,490 trades per day (8% increase over October)
3,440 first time addresses that had previously never interacted with Kyber (up 5% over October)
3,166 addresses trading multiple times throughout November (up 21%)
$1,140 (or 7.0. ETH) average size per trade (up 36%)
Volumes continued their strong growth into November in both USD and ETH terms with a 47% increase in USD and 62% in ETH terms:
Most integrations saw substantial increases in volumes with some showing triple digit growth since October, and it seems like the market volatility of the second half of November has helped with on-chain activity.
The fastest growing dapps are split between DeFi dapps and Kyber’s own offerings:
A note on Total Value Locked
As the DeFi space has exploded in activity over the last year, there’s been different attempts to quantify this growth. Within Kyber, we look at metrics like volume, unique addresses, new addresses and a wide range of other metrics which we share with you here on a monthly basis.
One metric the DeFi space especially likes to look at when comparing DeFi dapps is Total Value Locked (TVL). TVL measures the total value of the tokens locked within these dapps with the argument going that the higher the value locked up in a DeFi dapp, the better.
We’d like to counter that this can be a skewed metric to compare liquidity providers because it does not take into account how much each unit of locked up token is utilized. For example; each token pair on Uniswap requires its own individual ETH pool. Kyber reserve managers on the other hand, can provide liquidity to multiple tokens from the same ETH pool, ie. 1 ETH might serve 10 different ERC20 tokens’ liquidity needs on Kyber, while Uniswap would require 10 ETH to serve those same 10 tokens. As a result, Kyber Network requires far less assets locked up to provide the same level of liquidity (as validated by the tight spreads and low slippage on Kyber) and therefore $1M locked up in Kyber is not the same as $1M locked up on Uniswap or $1M locked up on Bancor.
tl/dr: TVL not a good measure to compare liquidity providers
Over the coming ecosystem blogs, we’ll be diving into the different nuances of measuring such metrics (ie. understanding ‘dead volume’ that comes from arbitrage and what this means for on-chain price oracles) and we hope it gives our community a better understanding of data in the DeFi space.
KyberStatsBot
Speaking of metrics, for those of you who want your Kyber stats in the form of a quick morning espresso shot, we’ve got a stats bot that will serve you 4 tweets every morning summarizing Kyber activity from the last 24-hours. Metrics include volumes, new addresses, top tokens, top integrations, and top reserve manager volumes over the past 24 hours.
You can follow the bot here and reach out to me with suggestions on what other metrics you’d like to see here .
KyberSwap
Metamask, Ledger, Trezor, Keystore, Private Key, and now… WalletLink and WalletConnect! We know when it comes to wallets, different crypto users have different requirements in terms of security, ease of use, and functionality, and therefore, KyberSwap provides a wide range of on-boarding options.
We have now added WalletLink and WalletConnect, and with these two options users are able to connect their mobile wallets directly to web apps like KyberSwap by simply scanning a QR code. All signing and interaction is encrypted and no browser extension is required. You can try them out here and here.
UpBit Hack
Just a friendly reminder: not your keys, not your coins. As the $50M UpBit exchange hack once again unfortunately proved, giving up custody of your precious crypto assets to a centralized exchange is a recipe for disaster. This is why teams like us at Kyber Network have dedicated our time and effort to building exchanges and infrastructure that *do not* take over users assets, that are transparent and audited, and have proven themselves to be secure.
Please always be mindful of your crypto security procedures, periodically read up on crypto storage best practices, and always use KyberSwap when you need to exchange tokens!
Kyber DeFi Updates
Turning our attention to DeFi dapps, we can see volumes through Kyber have increased 17% month-on-month to $11.4M with many dapps seeing double-digit growth. We also welcome a newcomer to the list as we’ve started tracking 1inch.exchange’s Kyber volume and we’re impressed with its $2M monthly volume and 175% increase over October:
Welcoming the Hackathon DeFi Dapps to Kyber World!
After two months of hard work from all participants, we have a new cohort of DeFi projects from our Kyber Virtual DeFi Hackathon! As they are now part of the Ethereum DeFi space, we thought it would be fitting to briefly introduce them in our ecosystem blog’s DeFi section.
We’d like to welcome:
DeFiZap — DeFiZap allows users to gain instant exposure across multiple DeFi protocols based on their investment goals and risk profiles.
Structured — Structured is a platform that automates the packaging of DeFi products in portfolios based on risk tolerance.
Margin Swap — MarginSwap lets users borrow funds to trade on Kyber before depositing as collateral in Compound and returning the input to the trades back in the MarginSwap contract, all within one transaction.
DATA Gateway — DATA is an API gateway that enables plain language algorithms to be built into DeFi dapps with CryptoTalk being one such dapp.
DAI Daddy II — DAI Daddy II is an autonomous platform for unwinding Maker CDPs as well as providing a CDP debt marketplace with discount rate functionality.
Crypto Structured Fund — Crypto Structured Fund provides investors with ‘Preferred Share’ or ‘Excess Return’ positions depending on their risk appetite and time preference.
Well Time — Well Time allows users to split orders into smaller pieces to be executed at predefined intervals, thus allowing for token buybacks, slow accumulation or slow divestment strategies.
Multi-KyberSwap — Multi-KyberSwap allows the bundling, unbundling, and transfer of loan positions across different lending and borrowing platforms.
KyberQuick — KyberQuick is literally the quickest way to convert ETH to DAI as fast as possible? Just send your ETH to dai.kyberquick.eth and you automatically receive DAI, that simple!
Limit to Win It — Limit to Win It uses Kyber’s limit order to fill orders based on interest rate targets rather than time.
This is just a selection of the submissions and you can read our full blog post on the hackathon here. Again, we’d like to thank everyone (all 300 of you!) for participating and making it such a great success, and we look forward to working with you to grow your dapps.
New Wallet Integrations
HB Wallet
This month we had the pleasure of welcoming Japan’s most popular crypto wallet, HB Wallet, to the Kyber ecosystem. Their latest update not only adds direct token swapping functionality through Kyber, but introduces CDP management, lending and borrowing functionality. Our recent trip to Japan showed us first hand how much crypto is loved there and we’re especially happy to be able to serve this community.
Ps. for our Japanese followers, you can join our Japanese telegram channel on Discord here.
Ambo
Ambo is another wallet tapping into Kyber’s liquidity this month. Owned by MyCrypto, their latest redesign includes an improvement of the trading interface, faster deposit times, and access to over 150+ different tokens through Kyber, Uniswap, and Radar Relay.
Reserve and Token Metrics
With a monthly ETH all time high volume in November, it is not surprising that almost all reserve managers have seen increases in their volumes. Kyber’s own reserve saw an increase of $8M while Uniswap saw a large relative growth with a 117% increase over October.
The most actively traded tokens continued to be stablecoins used heavily in DeFi, and tokens of popular projects. Out of 70+ tokens available on Kyber Network, stablecoins like USDC, USDT and DAI, and project tokens like SNX, BAT, KNC and MKR are all in the top 15.
Bridge Reserve Optimization
Bridge Reserves on Kyber are special reserves that connect existing liquidity from DEXs like Uniswap and Oasis, to Kyber. Access to these liquidity pools leads to increased price competition, and therefore narrower spreads.
November onwards, market maker fees on these bridge reserves have been reduced from 0.25% to 0.01% so that users and DApps can access some of the best priced token rates directly from Kyber instead of having to go to Uniswap or Oasis . More details on the changes can be found here.
SAI to DAI Update
The moment the Ethereum space had been waiting for since late 2016 finally happened on the 18th of November and Multi Collateral DAI was deployed to much funfair. The release went relatively smoothly and we now have a new stablecoin backed by ETH and BAT, with more ERC20 tokens to be added as collateral in the future. The DAI backed only by ETH is now called SAI.
Both DAI and SAI are available on Kyber Network with the Kyber Reserve, Oasis Bridge Reserve, the Uniswap Bridge Reserve, and an anonymous Fed Price Reserve providing liquidity for these tokens. We’ve also released a blog post detailing what this migration from SAI to DAI means for end users, developers, integrations and reserves.
New Tokens
November saw the addition of a diverse range of new tokens to Kyber Network:
sUSD — Synthetic USD pegged to the price of 1 US Dollar
EDO — Utility token at the center of the Eidoo ecosystem
LEND — Used within Aave ecosystem to boost utility of token
RAE — Financial vehicle to transfer value to content providers
WABI — Used as a payment method across the Tael ecosystem
DAI — Stablecoin backed by multiple collateral types
KNC in sDEFI/iDEFI Synths
Synthetix’s latest release, Arcturus, introduced new Synths including two Synths relevant to both KNC and the DeFi space as a whole: sDEFI and iDEFI. The sDEFI token includes a basket of DeFi related tokens (KNC, ZRX, MKR, SNX +5) allowing token holders to expose themselves to the DeFi space through the purchase of a single token, while iDEFI gives the inverse exposure to the DeFi space.
Kyber World
In November, Kyber was featured in multiple media channels from youtube, to publish0x, to medium to various projects’ blog posts. We’ve selected a handful that caught our eye:
- Video Tutorial from Proof Suite on building arbitrage bots between Kyber and Uniswap.
- Publish0x article on three crypto projects with token mechanisms you should be aware off.
- DAOStack wiki Mapping the DAO Landscape: a look at Kyber’s DAO experiment (follow link in page for full article) .
- Tenderly blog using Kyber to showcase how to use Tenderly to boost blockchain development.
Kyber on the Road
One of the best parts of building Kyber Network is meeting you, our amazing community, in person and November was no exception. We saw you at GenesisDevCon in India, at EthWaterloo in Canada, and in events across Singapore and Vietnam. Thank you so much for your unending support and passion!
Conclusion
As we enter the festive holiday season, here at Kyber Network we’ll be hunkering down to work on one of our most ambitious protocol updates to date. We’ll be announcing details very shortly but suffice to say, we believe 2020 is going to be a major year for Kyber Network, for the Kyber community, and the Kyber ecosystem as a whole. We look forward to taking this next big step in our decentralized adventure together with you. Stay tuned!
Kyber’s November Photo Album
Discord | Website | Blog | Twitter | Reddit | Facebook | Developer Portal | Kyber Tracker | KyberWidget Generator
Kyber Ecosystem Report #9 was originally published in Kyber Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
