This Week in Blockfolio Signal — Tezos, ICON, Ren, Elastos, iExec, Syscoin, Quantstamp
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:
- U.S. Banks Can Now Offer Crypto Custody Services 🏦
- Greatest Chess Player of All Time, Kasparov, Supports Bitcoin ♚
- $180 Million in Bitcoin Locked on Ethereum Blockchain ♦
- Avalanche Raises $42 Million in Less Than 4.5 Hours 💰
- South Korea Finalizes Plan to Charge 20% Tax on Crypto Gains 🇰🇷
- Russia Drops Plans to Criminalize Bitcoin Transactions 🇷🇺
Top Blockfolio Signals of the past week:
- Tezos Integrated into China’s Blockchain-Based Service Network (BSN)
- ICON to Integrate Band Protocol Data Oracles
- Ren Announces They are Bringing BTC to Polkadot
- Elastos is Integrating Chainlink Oracles
- iExec Releases V5 to Improve DeFi Capabilities
- Syscoin Network to be Used for Binance USD Stablecoin
- Quantstamp Audit Greenlights Ethereum 2.0 Client Prysm for Launch
Tezos Integrated into China’s Blockchain-Based Service Network (BSN)
“China’s state-backed Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN) has integrated with six public chains including Tezos.
Developers willll be able to build dapps and run nodes using data storage and bandwidth from BSN’s overseas data centers starting Aug 10.
We’re thrilled for Tezos to join a cohort of public blockchains that will provide the base layer for companies and software developers building blockchain-based applications in China and globally,” Hubertus Thonhauser, chairman of the Tezos Foundation Council, said. “Participating in the BSN is a momentous step forward on the path to wide-scale institutional adoption for the Tezos project.”
— Amer Justice, Community Director
Summary
- China’s state-backed Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN) has integrated with six public chains including Tezos, NEO, Nervos, EOS, IRISnet, and Ethereum.
- Developers on these six blockchains will be able to build dapps and run nodes using data storage and bandwidth from BSN’s overseas data centers.
- This is part of China’s plan to be the infrastructure provider for blockchain firms around the world.
- Global users will have access to China’s enterprise chains and financial data via the cross-chain structure and partnership with China UnionPay.
Significance
BSN can serve as a way for non-Chinese blockchain firms to tap into the Chinese blockchain community and participating in the BSN will help to push forward wide-scale institutional adoption for the Tezos project.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $3.03. View XTZ on Blockfolio.
ICON Integrates Band Protocol
“We are excited to announce our strategic partnership and successful integration with @BandProtocol $BAND! Learn more about the integration and what it means for the #ICONProject in this short blog post!”
— Min Kim, Foundation Council Member
Summary
- ICON Network has strategically partnered and chosen Band Protocol to provide secure and verified data oracles for its rapidly growing decentralized application ecosystem.
- Both teams have been working together to integrate Band Protocol’s decentralized oracles that have been fine-tuned for DeFi, prediction market, sports/esports betting, and RNG/VRF applications.
- This collaboration is extendable into using Band Protocol to support ICON’s multi-faceted network of established enterprises and government agencies ranging from banks, telecommunications companies, and South Korean government agencies — expanding the use-cases for BAND.
- This comes as BAND also recently announced an integration with Gravity, a blockchain-agnostic protocol.
Significance
This partnership will bring increased security and scalability to all the decentralized applications built on South Korea’s largest blockchain project. Band Protocol’s oracle will simultaneously strengthen the existing network and allow expansion to new real-world uses.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $0.42. View ICX on Blockfolio.
Ren is Working with Acala Network to Bring BTC to Polkadot
“We are excited to be building with Acala Network and Polkadot. It speaks to the power of RenVM and is a key step in Ren’s larger vision of enabling permissionless transfer of value between any blockchain.”
— Taiyang Zhang, CEO
Summary
- Ren and Acala Network are bringing Bitcoin — and in the future other currently isolated asset classes — onto the Acala Network and into the wider Polkadot multi-chain universe.
- This is a key step in the cross-chain DeFi journey as it enables permissionless transfers of value between blockchains.
- Acala is a Polkadot finance hub offering DeFi primitives — multi-collateralized stablecoin, staking derivative and decentralized exchange to enable cross-chain DeFi — making the collaboration with Ren a natural fit.
- Providing a high performance, highly liquid, and easily accessible DeFi experience for the broader web3 community is a goal both teams share.
Significance
This collaboration will showcase the power of RenVM and demonstrate its ability to enable the permissionless transfer of value between any blockchain. It will also boost the asset classes available on Acala and bring brand new use cases for Bitcoin.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $0.167. View REN on Blockfolio.
Elastos is Integrating Chainlink Oracles
“BOOM! Elastos is integrating Chainlink oracles to support ELA CDPs. By utilizing Chainlink with our ETH Sidechain, developers will be able to build any kind of DeFi platform on top of the Elastos SmartWeb’s unique architecture.”
— Talha Idris, Cyber Republic Community Member
Summary
- Elastos Ethereum sidechain will offer a cross-chain stablecoin powered by Chainlink oracles.
- The Cyber Republic ETH Task Force will deploy an ELA/USD decentralized price feed using Chainlink’s Price Reference Data framework as the basis for collateralization checks on users’ Collateralized Debt Positions (CDPs), thereby ensuring full stablecoin collateralization.
- An Elastos stablecoin will bring stability to both the Elastos ecosystem and the greater DeFi space, providing users access to a reliable form of cross-chain payment and collateral that is not vulnerable to market volatility.
- The ability of Elastos to scale in throughput, support low-cost transactions, and provide high-level security makes it ideal to power DeFi apps.
Significance
This is a major step for Elastos into the DeFi space and likely the first of many integrations where Elastos developers build next-generation dApps connected to real-world data. The integration with Chainlink significantly increases their use cases and will likely increase adoption of the Elastos platform.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $2.14. View ELA on Blockfolio.
iExec Releases V5 to Improve DeFi Capabilities
“iExec has released the first part of V5, before further enterprise news and announcements this year. These upgrades make iExec a powerful tool for DeFi:
“Let’s imagine using a highly valuable dataset as collateral for loans.”
— Blair Maclennan, International Community Manager
Summary
- iExec has released the first part of its 2020 V5 release. This latest technical version is titled iExec V5: Interoperability and Privacy Tools for DeFi.
- Many of the version 5 upgrades will be for the smart contracts making up the decentralized network that is iExec.
- With V5, all computing resources, be it computing power, datasets or applications can now exist as stand-alone ERC721 NFTs, visible on Opensea and Etherscan. They can exist as tradable DeFi assets.
- iExec envisions a highly valuable dataset that can be used as collateral for loans, for borrowing DAI or USDC. This could integrate with DeFi services such as Rocket loan or Compound in the future.
- With the full implementation of ENS addresses in iExec V5, HEX addresses could essentially disappear from the iExec marketplace and explorer completely, being replaced by human-readable addresses.
- With the upgraded V5 version, it is also now possible to build a privacy-preserving DeFi application, no matter which coding style is used.
Significance
iExec is taking a major step in making its decentralized cloud computer solution more usable for decentralized financial applications. V5 will see the first smart contract upgrade since V3, two years ago, improve user privacy and offer a new way to monetize and tokenize data and computer resources.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $1.37. View RLC on Blockfolio.
Syscoin Network to be Used for Binance USD Stablecoin
“BREAKING! The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, partners with Blockchain Foundry to adopt Syscoin Platform for blazing speed & cost savings for BUSD stablecoin users. You will soon be able to send Binance USD via the Syscoin platform.”
— Michiel, Community Marketing Team
Summary
- Binance, the world’s leading blockchain and cryptocurrency infrastructure provider, has partnered with Blockchain Foundry Inc. to explore the use of the Syscoin Ethereum Bridge targeting blockchain scalability.
- The agreement will enable BUSD, the 1:1 USD-backed stablecoin issued by Binance and Paxos, to be available on the Syscoin network. The bridge provides fast, scalable, and low-cost transactions for BUSD users, while also maintaining regulatory compliance provided by Ethereum.
- Blockchain Foundry recently launched the Syscoin Ethereum bridge, a Decentralized Finance application. The bridge enables ERC-20 tokens to move back and forth between the Syscoin and Ethereum blockchains. Syscoin can provide a burst capacity of 60k TPS and a peak of 140k TPS.
Significance
Syscoin will have the opportunity to demonstrate the benefits and cost savings its technology can bring. By leveraging blockchain interoperability bridges, ERC-20 stablecoin projects can substantially reduce transaction costs and improve speed. This could open more DeFi doors for Syscoin.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $0.108. View SYS on Blockfolio.
Quantstamp Audit Greenlights Ethereum 2.0 Client Prysm for Launch
“The migration of Ether and the DeFi ecosystem to Ethereum 2.0 is a high stakes process.
There’s still work to be done, but we’re pleased to announce the completion of our audit of Prysm and congratulate their team on this major milestone.”
— Richard Ma, CEO
Summary
- Ethereum 2.0 client Prysm is “basically ready” to launch, according to Richard Ma, CEO of Quantstamp.
- This comes after the announced push by network developers to launch the proof-of-stake (PoS) version of Ethereum before 2020 closes out.
- Informal agreements between Ethereum developers that multiple network-ready clients needed to launch in concert have slowed efforts over the years. Nine such implementations are currently underway, including Prysm, in various programming languages.
- However, audits alone don’t greenlight code for launch. Eth 2.0 clients have joined various testnets to run simulations of Phase 0.
- Prysm has joined three other clients (PegaSys’ Teku, Status’ Nimbus, Sigma Prime’s Lighthouse) in the ongoing Altona testnet. It allows users to stake ether and practice validating transactions for Phase 0 of Eth 2.0.
Significance
This pushes the long-awaited launch of ETH2.0 one step closer to becoming a reality. It also highlights the importance of Quantstamp’s services, as the top cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects rely on their auditing to verify smart contracts and code prior to launch.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $0.029. View QSP on Blockfolio.
Quote of the Week:
“Your keys, your bitcoin. Not your keys, not your bitcoin.”
Thanks for joining us and we look forward to bringing you our top Blockfolio Signals again next week.
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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.
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