Avalanche launches $200 million wXRP fund to debut on Ethereum Oct 29-November. 5
Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s Decentralized Financial Newsletter.
For many years, Ethereum and XRP occupied the second and third positions in the crypto market. Read on to discover how wXRP is integrated into Ethereum to extend its usefulness to smart contracts.
What you are about to read is the smaller version of this newsletter. For full details of DeFi developments over the past week, sign up for our newsletter below.
Avalanche launches $200 million fund to incentivize developers
The Avalanche Foundation unveiled a new $200 million fund this week that aims to expand the liquidity potential of startup projects through its ecosystem of building decentralized finance, non-perishable tokens, and institutional and cultural applications.
According to the official blog post, the smart contract platform will spread funds across a range of sectors, including “equity investments, token purchases, various forms of technology, business development and ecosystem integration support,” all of which will be overseen by an expert pool of fund managers.
Contributing to the fund, known as “Blizzard,” an impressive list of participants from the DeFi space, including Ava Labs, Polychain Capital, Three Arrows Capital, Dragonfly Capital, and CMS Holdings, among others.
Emin Gün Sirer, Director of the Avalanche Foundation, shared his view on the project’s recent growth, as well as the potential effects of Blizzard:
“The past two months have shown incredible growth via Avalanche, with users, assets, and applications joining the community at record levels. Blizzard will play a key role in further accelerating this growth, cementing Avalanche’s position as the home of the next era pioneering projects and people in our space.”
wXRP to run on the Ethereum blockchain
Wrapped XRP (wXRP) is expected to launch on the Ethereum blockchain in December, with the help of the multi-chain platform Wrapped.com. The integration will enable XRP holders to deploy smart contract functions to lend, borrow and swap for the first time in its history.
Encapsulated tokens are digital assets stored in a vault on a separate blockchain and equally tied to the value of another asset. For example, Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) runs on the Ethereum blockchain. Therefore, wXRP will have a one-to-one exchange ratio for XRP, with custody provided by the insured Hex Trust provider.
In a tweet on Monday, David Schwartz, chief technology officer of Ripple, called for a multi-chain and interoperable approach to the crypto space:
XRP Encapsulated Coming to Ethereum! Great news for those who want to access XRP within Ethereum wallets, DeFi and smart contracts.
It’s multi-chain after all. https://t.co/36shyqF0Nj
– (JoelKatz) November 1, 2021
AllianceBlock Partners with Flare to Strengthen DeFi
Blockchain firm AllianceBlock announced a partnership with Flare Network this week to advance the capabilities and interoperability of the two platforms within the DeFi space.
The long-awaited launch of the Flare Network, and the drop of its corresponding FXRP token, is expected to bring Turing-tested smart contract functionality to the Ripple network by integrating the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
Starting with XRP – due to its connection in partnership with Ripple – the platform will also offer Dogecoin (DOGE), Bitcoin (BTC), Algorand (ALGO) and Stellar Lumens (XLM) before branching out to all the original Layer 1 blockchains.
Rashid Ajaja, co-founder and CEO of AllianceBlock, spoke to Cointelegraph about the platform’s regulatory potential:
“With increasing interest from traditional DeFi finance, the regulatory and compliance layer of AllianceBlock will allow traditional institutions to access opportunities in DeFi in a number of ways, such as creating compliant and tradable certificates from liquidity-mining tokens, yield farming, or NFTs.”
Code performance
Analytical data reveals that the total value of locked DeFi has increased 4.62% over the week to $167.42 one billion.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView Show Top 100 DeFi Tokens by Market Cap so far er the past seven days.
Phoenix Global (PHB) took the podium lead with a whopping 3,230%. Loop ring (LRC) He came in second place 118.5%, while the Basic Attention Token (BAT) came in third with 30.94. Avalanche (AVAX) and Maker (MKR) took fourth and fifth positions with 20.74% and 18.5%, respectively.
Analysis and hot topics from the past week:
Thank you for reading our summary of the latest impactful DeFi developments this week. Join us again next Friday for more stories, ideas, and education in this dynamically evolving space.
