Balancer and Compound, among other projects, announced native currencies that use the SAFG protocol. More than 50% of the DeFi market belongs to MakerDAO.

Until now, this year, the value of the tokens locked on Ethereum’s DeFi platforms has reached twice the USD 1 billion figure. However, some factors could indicate that the capital ventured on the different smart contracts corresponds to a competition to lead the market among different projects.

According to DeFi Pulse, the Total Value Locked (TVL) has progressively increased, following the general crash on March 12^th. At that time, cryptocurrency markets fell sharply. Different analysts have criticized this index because it does not seem to distinguish the veracity of the sources. Total Value Locked measures how much capital has been bet on the different markets and platforms of the DeFi ecosystem.

Tokens for Governance

The bullish trend in DeFi governance tokens is one of the main explanations for the total value of DeFi to have returned to USD 1 billion. Compound, Balancer, UMA, Curve, and pTokens announced native currencies that use the SAFG protocol, which allows setting parameters for the distribution of tokens on a stake-based platform.

On June 1^st, Balancer began distributing BAL with the Liquidity Mining program, which allows tokens proportional to the invested capital. Compound announced that it will have its COMP distribution model ready in July, which seems to be influencing the TVL of the lending platform.

With USD 536 million in locked capital, Maker remains at the top of the list. This would explain the state of the metric, given that the commission on the stability of the network requires payments of 7.5% of the value and is calculated according to the capital invested in smart contracts designed for this purpose.

Concerning governance tokens, there have been controversies on other networks like Ripple, EOS, and Tezos. In the case of these three networks, a transaction volume metric may be based on sources that do not express the truth of what they indicate. For instance, 98% of XRP transactions do not exchange value, but serve for network governance or consensus, transactions between the same person, and other non-market cases.

Bitcoin in DeFi

Bitcoin as collateral for networks like MakerDAO also seems to have driven the Total Value Locked of DeFi platforms. This allows Bitcoin users to convert funds into WBTC, which they can use as a backup to generate DAI. Bitcoin is the second asset, after Ether, used for this purpose.

Other ERC-20 tokens like BTCSHORT offer an asset that allows investors to obtain Bitcoin returns in periods of less than a day. Likewise, tokens that serve as a gateway between Bitcoin and Ethereum have gained prominence.

For example, recently launched RenVM adds RenBTC and has until now received around 50 BTC of capital, equivalent to USD 500 thousand. Ethereum’s pBTC already mobilizes USD 200,000 worth of its tokens. Lastly, dXdY recently launched perpetual Bitcoin futures, which could gain ground in a possible bullish market.

According to data from DeFi Pulse, these leverage, short-term investment, or loan projects have up to 70% more Bitcoin units than Lightning Network and Liquid Network. However, the objectives of these projects do not point in the same direction.

By Willmen Blanco

MoneyGram currently uses Ripple’s product xRapid to purchasing foreign currencies. Western Union has reportedly made a purchase offer to acquire MoneyGram.

The giant payment service Western Union seems to be interested in buying money transfer company MoneyGram. The payment technology-focused blockchain firm Ripple is its co-owner.

By acquiring MoneyGram, Western Union seeks to join two of the largest providers of money transfer services in the USA. According to an anonymous person familiar with the matter, it has already made a purchase offer. However, the said person states that there is not yet a decision in this regard.

As a growing number of people turn to online payments, the coronavirus quarantine has led payment service companies to fight to keep their branches open around the world. However, some have closed their doors to their customers. Even so, the fact that people are staying at home has caused an increase in the number of digital transactions. These accounted for 18% of the company’s money transfers in the first quarter of 2020.

After the rumors in early June 2019, MoneyGram partnered with Ripple later that month. At that time, the blockchain startup made an initial investment of USD 30 million, maintaining a right to make another investment of USD 20 million within a period of 2 years. Ripple made a second investment in November. They said that they will be the owners of 9.95% of MoneyGram’s circulating shares and about 15% of a fully diluted basis including Ripple securities.

On the other hand, MoneyGram said that they use Ripple’s xRapid product, focused on minimizing liquidity costs and powered by the Ripple-pegged XRP token, to buy a portion of its coins in the main markets. The platform is moving 10% of its transaction volume through the on-demand liquidity (ODL) service, between the borders of the USA and Mexico. Furthermore, they had moved more than USD 100 million through the said platform in December, as well as established cross-border routes in Europe, Australia, and the Philippines.

Developing Market

Last May 1^st, during a report on profits in the first quarter of 2020, MoneyGram President and CEO Alexander Holmes described it as a relatively quiet quarter.

Holmes added that Ripple’s expansion of its service will lead to changes in the results every month and every quarter. As things move, it will be possible to understand what they want, what they want the product to look and feel like, and how they want to take it to the different markets. They say that a variety of new services and routes are underway and will be expanding this year.

Meanwhile, MoneyGram’s cash remittance business fell by 19% in April, according to PaymentsSource. Its COO Kamila Chytil reportedly said that, despite the pandemic, MoneyGram is now in a better position to respond to quarantined migrants who need digital alternatives for cash remittances.

MoneyGram’s market capitalization is USD 164.3 million, with its shares currently rising by at least 6.15%. Western Union has also seen a 3.45% rise in share value, and its current market value is USD 8.5 billion. On the other hand, XRP is trading at USD 0.212 and has risen by 4% in recent days and 9% in recent weeks. The price dropped by 5.5% in just one month and by 52% in the past year.

By Willmen Blanco

Users’ anonymity can decrease by up to 60%, according to the researchers. Linking addresses to the Ethereum Name Service can reduce anonymity.

Cryptocurrency and blockchain expert Seres András recently published on his Twitter account a report that reveals how the privacy of users during Ethereum transactions could be violated.

András notes that people’s financial activity is detectable by linking wallet addresses to the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) or Twitter accounts. In this way, András and a team of collaborators used data from Etherscan and ENS domains to gather information on the activity of some addresses, including temporary activity, the price of the gas used, and the descriptors of transaction graphs.

Various collaborators, including the Hungarian Institute for Computer, Science, and Control, prepared the report. Two universities from Hungary and the Canadian company HashCloack Inc. also participated in the study.

The analysis starts with the idea that privacy is lower in account-based cryptocurrencies than in UTXO-based currencies. A UTXO is an unspent or unused transaction output. In that sense, Bitcoin is one of the platforms that UTXO uses for its transactions.

Therefore, by analyzing the temporary activity of the user @Kinchasa5000, the team was able to identify his time zone with relative ease. According to András, they managed to get the profile of thousands of Ethereum addresses based on their transactions.

Likewise, by using new node integration algorithms, and time of day representations, they were able to link multiple addresses of the same user. They also managed to link addresses with ENS names to verify the information as true.

Privacy Destruction on Ethereum

The report adds that the creation of profiles is highly efficient when seeking to partially remove anonymity from a person on the Ethereum network. Besides, it explained that a node embedding process makes it possible to reduce the anonymity of a user on the network by between 50% and 60%.

On his Twitter account, András said that this was probably just a lower limit. He said that their results would be improved by future research that considers additional identifiers and wallet fingerprints (or PIN).

He added that Ether wallets show the price of gas in Gwei, so a transaction hardly changes the last 9 digits of an account balance. Such knowledge allows a person to acquire the fingerprints of the balances of possible victims, by sending transactions with a strange ending in the last 9 digits. This attack can be detrimental to privacy, once transactions reach the Ethereum network.

The work done was only applied to chain data. In this respect, András states that those entities that have more resources can use data from the network for such a task, thus destroying privacy on the Ethereum network layer.

Zcash alliance said that they plan to offer private transactions for Bitcoin, Cosmos, and Ethereum. The number of armored transactions conducted through the platform of Zcash increased by 258% from January to May 4^th. These types of transactions offer users a high level of privacy.

By Willmen Blanco

Graduated will be able to share their blockchain diplomas on professional social networks like LinkedIn

Students of Prepatec, a preparatory school in Mexico, will receive their diplomas based on blockchain technology through a new modality that certifies degrees. The news was public through the official website of the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, last May 28^th.

The report details that Prepatec becomes one of the first schools in the country to base its diplomas and documents on blockchain technology. For this reason, students will receive their degrees electronically.

Rebeca Ruiz, a member of the Monterrey Institute of Technology was in charge of writing the news for the website. In this article, the institute highlights the innovation of the new process. “Prepatec is distinguished for being innovative and positions itself as the only high school in Mexico to deliver its graduates electronic degrees with blockchain technology.”

The article points out that, the Monterrey Institute of Technology carried out the same process of electronic certification for graduates of professional degrees, just a few months ago. This time, the institute manages to bring the same process to high school graduates.

According to what Ruiz has published, one of the main advantages of the new blockchain certification process is that it is impossible to falsify and that it also certifies the student as a graduate. The electronic document certifies the academic degree and also remains in the records of the institution, which turn out to be much more secure and difficult to copy than the traditional way.

In this sense, Eugenio Aguilar, Director of Prepatec in Mexico, explained that any public or private institution of the country can verify this document. “It is electronically verifiable by the body that requires it and is recoverable immediately.”

Besides, Aguilar indicated that this initiative is part of an internal process of the institution to modernize its management and administrative activities. “We are always looking for the latest advances at Tec. Monterrey and this is one of them. We are the first high school in Mexico and one of the first ones in the world.”

In another sense, the report added that, with this electronic certificate, it will not be necessary to request original copies of the degrees. It is enough to access it on the network to have the copy in any case and when the user requires it.

The Monterrey Institute of Technology also published a list of characteristics that this new form of instruction degree certification has. Among these characteristics, the institute detailed Portability, Verifiability, Immutability, and Interoperability.

This attached document specifies that the graduate can share his blockchain certificate on websites and social networks like LinkedIn to look for a job. Besides, anybody can verify if the document is real without having to go to the educational institute.

It is the first time that a high school institute uses blockchain technology in the process of diplomas certification. How this document can be managed include a technological level that is not very used in educational institutions such as universities.

By María Rodríguez

Telefónica opens application for startups interested in adopting blockchain technology. The congestion on the Bitcoin network has gradually decreased since last May 23^rd.

The price of Bitcoin started to recover in recent days. The main cryptocurrency in the market returned to ranges above USD 9,000 and its weekly average is 5.6%, according to data from Live Coin Watch. At the time of writing this article, BTC is trading at USD 9,642, according to the market price for Latin America and Spain.

Satoshi Tango recently launched the following call on its networks: “Don’t let the MEP dollar and the CCL dollar trap you: Switch to the digital dollar now.” In this way, it requests Argentines to dollarize their savings through anchored cryptocurrencies or stablecoins. In the specific case of this exchange, it refers to the stable currency DAI. In this way, the Argentine exchange challenges exchange rate controls with dollarization through this type of cryptocurrency.

The Central Bank of the Argentine Republic (BCRA) recently issued a resolution for all companies established in the country that have assets acquired abroad. In the statement, it forces companies to dispose of them to honor their international commitments, before going to the institution to request foreign currencies.

The telecommunications company, Telefónica, launched a new acceleration program that will allow Spanish businesses to have access to its blockchain, IoT (Internet of Things), and AI (Artificial Intelligence) proposals. In recent days, the multinational reported that startups from Germany and the United Kingdom will also be able to participate.

There was a decrease in the congestion that the Bitcoin network had experienced since shortly before the halving occurred. Starting on May 13^th, the Bitcoin mempool became increasingly congested. However, in recent weeks, the congestion on the network began to decrease, recording 13,432 transactions to confirm for every 1 sat/vbyte.

In recent days, a person shared a report by JP Morgan, dated May 22^nd, which included an analysis of the post-halving Bitcoin mining scenario. Analysts at the multinational financial institution found through their analysis of Bitcoin’s intrinsic value that the cryptocurrency is currently trading 25% below the intrinsic value that it had after the halving. The intrinsic price that JP Morgan found was derived from the average cost of mining a BTC.

The world’s most widely used streaming service now allows its users to pay subscriptions with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Users can use Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Dash (DASH), and Dogecoin (DOGE) to receive the service. Cryptocurrency gift card provider Bitrefill added a service that allows purchasing more than 750 different gift cards spread across more than 170 countries. They can use them on platforms such as Amazon, eBay, Play Store, App Store, and Netflix, among others.

In recent days, the architecture of Bitcoin as compared to that of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). At that time, it was explained that, in the case of the main cryptocurrency, decentralization is not desirable. As for CDBCs, central banks and their trusted institutions are responsible for the security and verification of transactions.

By Alexander Salazar

The update will allow the service to reflect more accurate trading volumes. The system will use three guidelines to rank trading pairs algorithmically.

In recent days, cryptocurrency market data service CoinMarketCap (CMC) activated a new ranking system that includes a confidence index. Operators use this metric as a guide to determine the accuracy of the figures supplied by cryptocurrency exchanges, often accused of inflating their trading volumes.

According to a statement by the company, the indicator covers more than 22,000 pairs of exchanges such as BTC/USD and ETH/BTC, among others, as well as more than 5,500 types of cryptocurrencies.

The three confidence bands that form the ranking are: high (over 75%), moderate (between 50% and 75%), and low (less than 50%). This ranking is determined through three aspects that include the reported volume, liquidity, and an estimate of the number of users that a cryptocurrency exchange maintains. The latter is calculated according to the web traffic of this type of entity.

CoinMarketCap explained that the indicator, shown in three bands, is based on a machine-learning algorithm. This takes into account all the data that the cryptocurrency data provider has: liquidity, order books, time, sales, and an estimated number of users by web traffic variables. These data allow determining if and to what extent the volume that cryptocurrency exchanges report for that market pair is inflated.

If a user wants to know how trustworthy Bitcoin-related businesses are, he or she must enter the CoinMarketCap website, select that cryptocurrency, and click on the tab identified as “market pairs”. After that, he or she will be able to see a list of cryptocurrency exchanges with different levels of reliability with BTC-related pairs.

To ensure that the information reflected on its website is as close to reality as possible, CoinMarketCap has applied different methods in the past. In 2019, it requested more transparency from cryptocurrency exchanges as a first step in adjusting the numbers of trading volumes.

Last November, the service announced the application of another metric, based on liquidity, to minimize the number of inflated volumes on cryptocurrency exchanges. CoinMarketCap labels this situation as a problem that has been taking place in the cryptocurrency ecosystem since 2018.

The company stated that cryptocurrency exchanges resort to offering higher figures than they have. With this, they seek to give the impression of authenticity and obtain greater visibility in the ranking produced on the Internet.

Members of the community have already questioned CoinMarketCap for spreading information that is not adjusted to market indicators. The cryptocurrency exchange Binance took this aspect into account after it acquired the service for USD 400 million in April of this year.

According to the CoinMarketCap ranking, the said cryptocurrency exchange appears as number one, according to its liquidity, and shows a level of confidence of 100%. Of course, users must complement the information that they receive from this service with other references to make better decisions.

By Alexander Salazar