This Week in Blockfolio Signal — Bitcoin, Chainlink, Serum, Aave, Band, Binance, and Theta

Every week we comb through hundreds of Blockfolio Signals to bring you the most significant team updates with brief analyses to help you understand the latest developments in blockchain.

But first, in macro crypto news this week:

• Bitcoin Price Corrects to Test Psychological Support at $10,000
• Bank of England Slams Bitcoin, saying it has “no connection to money”
• Bithumb Crypto Exchange Raided Police in South Korea
• China is Ditching the Dollar Amid Fears of Massive Inflation
• Zug Will Accept Bitcoin and Ethereum for Taxes
• Total Value Locked in DeFi Hits Surpasses $9 Billion
• Analysts Predict Yearn Finance’s ETH Vault Could Spark Ether Bull Run

Top Blockfolio Signals of the past week:

• Bitcoin Added as Payment Method for Pornhub’s 3 Billion Monthly Users
• Chainlink Acquires Cornell University’s Privacy Oracle Solution
• The Serum Decentralized Exchange (DEX) Has Launched
• Aave Partners with RealT Market to Bring Mortgages to Ethereum
• Band Protocol Integrated with Tron and Loopring
• Binance Launches BSwap — Instant Liquidy and Low Fees
• Theta Network Integrated into Gaming Platform Ultra for Streaming

Bitcoin Added as a Payment Method for Pornhub’s 3 Billion Monthly Users

“Pornhub has announced that it now accepts Bitcoin as payment for its premium services. The company has been accepting Verge since 2018, later adding several other cryptocurrencies, but this is its first foray into the major leagues. Pornhub is the world’s ninth most popular website with 3 billion monthly visitors.”

Read More

— Jason Hamlin, Blockfolio Ecosystem Insights

Summary

• Pornhub now accepts Bitcoin as payment for its premium services after several years of offering other cryptocurrency payment options.
• Pornhub is a year older than Bitcoin, having been founded in 2007 in Montreal, Canada. Currently, it stands as the world’s ninth most popular website with 3 billion monthly visitors.
• Satoshi Nakamoto would likely approve, as he once said: Bitcoin would be convenient for people who don’t have a credit card or don’t want to use the cards they have, either don’t want the spouse to see it on the bill or don’t trust giving their number to “porn guys”, or afraid of recurring billing.

Significance

Probably not the type of adoption that will create goodwill with Main Street investors, but this news is significant given the number of visitors to the site. 3 billion monthly visitors can now see Bitcoin as a payment option, introducing one of the key benefits of cryptocurrencies, privacy, to the masses.

Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $11,918. View BTC on Blockfolio.

Chainlink Acquires Cornell University’s Privacy Oracle Solution

“Chainlink has acquired Cornell University’s privacy oracle solution DECO for an undisclosed amount.”

Read More

— Jason Hamlin, Blockfolio Ecosystem Insights

Summary

• This is Chainlink’s second acquisition to date. DECO was co-created by Ari Juels, former chief scientist at digital security firm RSA. He will also join Chainlink Labs under the same title.
• DECO claims to leverage how HTTPS/TLS information is transmitted for more secure web practices. It is a verification protocol for oracles to prove the authenticity of sensitive data.
• DECO can be used as a foundation for a few crypto wish list items, such as permissionless credit or decentralized identification.
• Permissionless credit systems have been a goal for those building DeFi solutions. Nazarov said an oracle like DECO could one day allow a smart contract to query off-chain credit information such as banking records without overreaching into personal data.

Significance

This acquisition further strengthens Chainlink’s position in the DeFi oracle market and improves upon its existing technology. It will open the door to new possibilities for DeFi apps within protocols that integrate Chainlink.

Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $15.81. View LINK on Blockfolio.

The Serum Decentralized Exchange (DEX) Has Launched

“We’re incredibly excited to release this project into the wild! To learn more about Serum, how to set up a SOL wallet and how to trade, this blog post has you covered with all the relevant links.”

Read More

— Sam Bankman-Fried, Founder

Summary

• Serum is the world’s first completely decentralized derivatives exchange with trustless cross-chain trading. It is fast, cheap, powerful, and fully cross-chain compatible. And it’s truly, fully trustless.
• Serum is built on the Solana blockchain, which can process 10,000 times as much as Ethereum while being 1,000,000 times cheaper. And unlike many side chains, Solana is a fully-fledged, decentralized blockchain with over 100 validators.
• This allows Serum to have full central order limit books, with the familiar market, limit, and IOC orders; processing multiple times per second; all while being fully on-chain.
• The Serum token is a SPL (Solana based) token that powers Serum. 100% of net fees go to a burn of SRM, holders get discounts on fees, and SRM can be staked on nodes to help optimize the network’s performance.
• The team also announced that veteran market maker Jump Trading has invested in Serum and will provide liquidity for the DEX.

Significance

In a time when Ethereum-based DEXs are plagued by high trading fees and network congestion, Serum is demonstrating the potential to solve current DEX shortcomings by building on Solana. Serum is also designed to be completely interoperable with Ethereum and Bitcoin, providing a trustless exchange experience that other DEXs do not offer. With the price, speed, and usability of a centralized exchange, but the benefits of decentralized exchanges, Serum is truly a game-changer.

Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $3.13. View SRM on Blockfolio.

Aave Protocol Partners with RealT Market to Bring Mortgages to Ethereum

“We’re excited to announce that we’ll support a proposal to add a RealT Market to the Aave Protocol, where RealT assets can be used as collateral.”

Read More

— Isabel Kivlighan, Digital Marketing Manager

Summary

• Aave V2 made its debut and introduced many new features that will push the boundaries of decentralized finance, including private markets to better suit the needs of institutions.
• The Aave x RealT collab in the making is one of these new features that will take DeFi to the next level and bring mortgages onto Ethereum.
• RealT launched in 2019 as one of the first projects tokenizing real estate on Ethereum and to be integrated into the DeFi ecosystem. RealT Allows investors to directly buy shares of LLC managing properties and each RealT Token holder regularly earns their share of the property revenues directly into their wallet with stablecoins.
• Aave will support a proposal to add a RealT Market to the protocol. This is a market where RealT tokens can be used as collateral to borrow stablecoins.
• The ability to use RealT assets as collateral makes “mortgage” loans on Ethereum available to a wider audience for the first time, allowing users to use their Real Estate exposition to finance their liquidity needs, spending or diversified investment strategies.

Significance

This partnership has the potential to expand the use cases for DeFi (permissioned in this case) by bringing mortgages to Ethereum via the Aave protocol. Tokenized real estate provides a new diversification tool for cryptocurrency investors and allows mortgage holders to access liquidity.

Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $0.75. View LEND on Blockfolio.

Band Protocol Integrated with Tron and Loopring

“TRON Foundation has strategically partnered and successfully integrated Band Protocol into TRON, one of the largest blockchain-based operating systems, to provide scalable and secure decentralized $BAND oracles for an ecosystem with almost 1000 decentralized applications.” Read More

“Loopring, a leading Ethereum decentralized exchange and payments protocol, has chosen and completed integration with Band Protocol to reliably update all supported asset prices on Loopring Exchange.” Read More

— Kevin Lu, Head of Business Development & Growth

Summary

• TRON Network has strategically partnered and completed integration with Band Protocol to bring secure and verified decentralized oracles to power its rapidly growing DeFi and decentralized application space.
• A TRC20 BAND token is being explored to be utilized in TRON DeFi DApps as a collateral asset, store of value, medium of exchange.
• Loopring, a leading Ethereum decentralized exchange and payments protocol, has chosen and completed integration with Band Protocol to provide fiat price feeds for all supported assets.
• Both teams have been working on testing and implementing custom decentralized oracles for all assets on Loopring zkRollup DEX. The price feeds have been migrated and are live on the BandChain Mainnet.

Significance

These are two major partnerships/integrations that will increase Band Protocol’s exposure and provide additional opportunities to demonstrate the power and reliability of their price oracles. It also helps to bring new DeFi platforms and products to the market, benefiting the entire ecosystem.

Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $13.37. View BAND on Blockfolio.

Binance Launches BSwap — Instant Liquidy via Automated Market Maker (AMM)

“Introducing Binance Liquid Swap! Instant liquidity via Automated Market Maker with 0.04% transaction fees for the first month.

Binance Liquid Swap advantages:

-High returns

-Low slippage

-Competitive fees

BUSD, DAI, and USDT pairs are available in the Swap Pool now!”

Read More

— James Jager, Head of Binance Info

Summary

• Binance has launched a new BSwap product to provide users with instant liquidity & lower fees through an automated market maker (AMM) system.
• Users can quickly complete an exchange between two tokens in the Swap Pool, or become a liquidity provider by adding funds into the Liquidity Pool to earn fees from trades and also savings interest income.
• BUSD, DAI, USDT will be the initial assets available to be traded in the Swap Pool, with BUSD/USDT, BUSD/DAI and USDT/DAI as the pairs.

Significance

This new trading platform allows users to reap the benefits of DeFi services, all from their existing Binance account. Anyone can pool tokens for easy earning and instant liquidity. This is an automated market maker (AMM) pool product, the first of its kind in a centralized exchange

Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $21.21. View BNB on Blockfolio.

Theta Network Integrated into Gaming Platform Ultra for Live Streaming

“Gaming platform Ultra integrates Theta Network for live streaming.”

Read More

— Wes Levitt, Head of Strategy

Summary

• Blockchain-powered gaming platform Ultra announced Sep. 3 that it will integrate Theta Network’s live-streaming technology as part of its user experience.
• The service will allow users to see games in action before making a purchase, and earn rewards that can be spent within the ecosystem.
• When a user hits a particular game’s landing page they will see the game being played live via Theta streaming technology directly within the Ultra platform. Users can then earn rewards of both Theta (TFUEL) and Ultra (UOS) tokens for relaying the streams that they watch.
• Streamers can also use the system to airdrop non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to fans and viewers, and earn rewards for promoting games on Ultra.

Significance

This is great exposure and ane excellent platform for Theta to demonstrate the power of the P2P decentralized video platform. Ultra has its big-name backers, including mainstream gaming giant, Ubisoft, and chip-maker AMD, so this could lead to additional opportunities for Theta integration in gaming.

Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $0.43. View THETA on Blockfolio.

Quote of the Week:

“Crypto is the only place to make venture returns with public liquidity. So it’s beyond me why people would even bother looking at other asset classes.”

— Qiao Wang

Thanks for joining us and we look forward to bringing you our top Blockfolio Signals again next week.

CLICK HERE to receive this report directly in your inbox next time.

Jason Hamlin

Ecosystem Insights & Development @ Blockfolio

Blockfolio Signal is a first-of-its-kind communications platform built exclusively for token teams to connect and engage with their communities. Over 400 token team CEOs and team leaders actively use the platform to provide relevant project updates directly to Blockfolio’s 5 million+ users. Learn more at www.blockfolio.com/signal.

Stay in touch with us on Twitter, Instagram, Telegram, and Facebook or email us at support@blockfolio.com for troubleshooting, feedback, and suggestions.

Disclaimer: No information included herein constitutes an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any investment product, or legal, tax, accounting, or investment advice.