Who are the DeFi outsiders?

In this series of articles we take a look and review protocols looking to expand into Decentralised Finance or DeFi.

DeFi was born within Ethereum and is the favorite field of application for dApps on the Ethereum Network. Over the years we have witnessed some of the brightest crypto projects building their protocol on top of Ethereum.

We are thinking about:

• Synthetix and their synthetic assets.

• Maker and the Dai stablecoin.

• Ren and their system to use Bitcoin as collateral for DeFi.

• Aave and their decentralised lending and borrowing platform.

• Gnosis and the Mesa dApp & Prediction market platform.

Outside Ethereum, DeFi is almost non existant at the moment but we have witnessed more and more initiatives to bring it to life. DeFi becomes a hot topic and everybody wants to be involved. But are there any other protocols hosting DeFi dApps and tokens worth mentioning or are they just garbage?

In this series of articles, we take a look at different protocols which have DeFi ambitions.

Today is about Waves.

What is Waves?

Waves is an open blockchain protocol for Web3 applications and decentralised solutions.

It is a smart contract chain with its own programming language, RIDE.

Waves has already delivered several products such as:

• Waves Keeper: it is a browser extension that allows users to manage their assets and private keys (for those familiar with Ethereum, it is a Metamask like).

• Waves DEX: the decentralised exchange of Waves (processing xxx in the last 24 hours in trading volume).

• The USD Neutrino: it is Waves’ stablecoin.

• Token issuance Platform: they are supporting tokens issuance on the Waves blockchain.

• The Gravity Protocol: they have started to work on an innovative oracle solution which shall be chain agnostic and does not rely on any token to work.

Waves DEX

Waves DEX is a non custodial exchange, you benefit from a trading experience on par with traditional centralised exchanges but you keep your funds under your responsibility with your private keys.

Native BTC, ETH, ZEC, XMR, etc. are all available for trading. USDT is also supported.

Trading interface is intuitive and user friendly.

Fees are low and paid in WAVES, at a rate of (0.003 WAVES per transaction, ~$0.0035 USD).

They also have a very good liquidity. You can see it in the below screenshot of the top trading pair (volume is in WAVES equivalent) for the last 24 hours. For example, BTC/USDT trading pair has generated a trading volume of 711K WAVES (or $592K USD equivalent) and has a spread of 0.88%.

Neutrino USD: Waves’ stablecoin

The Neutrino USD is Waves’ stablecoin: a decentralised price stable currency. It is a collateralised token pegged to the USD and backed by the Waves ecosystem via smart contracts.

The USDN is maintained algorithmically to its peg at 1 USD. As for other algorithmically maintained stablecoins such as the Maker’s DAI, incentives are in place to maintain the peg. More information can be found in this article, here.

The Neutrino can be used to pay for services in the Waves ecosystem or be staked to generate yield. Currently, the APY is 10.10%.

The Neutrino USD has seen a nice success so far with a market cap of $14M USD and a price less and less volatile over time, closer to $1.

The Gravity Protocol

Waves’ latest DeFi initiative is the Gravity Protocol: a blockchain agnostic oracle system for cross chain and real world communication.

Gravity relies on the participating chains and use their native token to provide data to the protocol, there is no gravity token involved. To become part of the Gravity network, you will have to lock some native token of the network you are providing data for and you will get pay for it.

The network effectively resembles a PoW (proof-of-work) network where miners provide their computing power in return for block mining bonuses. The only difference here is that the Gravity nodes provide data, and get paid for that, in “established” currencies of the chains they work with.

Waves ecosystem is the first chain connected to Gravity.

Conclusion

Waves is an interesting smart chain protocol with its own smart contract code and has some serious DeFi ambitions.

Sasha Ivanov, Waves’ founder, is building the protocol, one step at a time with a long term vision to establish Waves as one of the top smart contracts protocol.

As for DeFi, Waves DEX and the Neutrino USD are already used a lot and successful dApps. Next step is to build the Gravity protocol.

Thanks for reading

Secret Salsa

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