When you’re new to the exciting world of cryptocurrencies and decentralized Finance, things can quickly become overwhelming. Once you’ve figured out what private and public keys are and how crypto works, you see yourself confronted with different blockchain ecosystems that offer other things.
Sure, Ethereum is the OG smart contract platform, hosting most DeFi activity, but this summer, we’ve seen the rise of “Ethereum-killers” and layer-2s that each on their own created entirely separate DeFi apps. When buying memecoins in May, many relied on the Binance Smart Chain DEX pancakeswap, and a few months later, Solana and Avalanche have become the next hot sh*t.
While competition is healthy and has fuelled innovation, it also leads to fragmentation of DeFi, making it exponentially more challenging for new entrants to navigate. Not even savvy DeFi users find it always intuitive to bridge from Ethereum to Polygon or to wrap their Bitcoin for use in other ecosystems.
Coin98 isn’t the first to focus on increasing interoperability, but the protocol has a lot going for it. Let’s dive in.
What is Coin98?
Early in 2020, the team behind Coin98 realized the immense challenges DeFi users faced when interacting with different ecosystems and decided to do something about it.
Coin98 is an all in one platform and was launched through the Binance Launchpad. It’s designed to develop DeFi and promote inter-network exchange. On Coin98, users can do anything DeFi: swap, stake, borrow, lend, invest and earn money on their crypto holdings.
The team follows a strategy to build an ecosystem of resources across sectors to help the DeFi ecosystem mature and users to have a better experience.
And the numbers speak for themselves.
- Over 500,000 users
- More than $250 million in Volume was generated.
- Facilitated more than 488,000 transactions
- Across over 150 countries
One of the points speaking for Coin98 is their wide-ranging support of different DeFi ecosystems where other projects connect three chains; Coin98 is strategically partnering with companies in the space to connect users to now 26 different chains. Ethereum, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, Huobi Chain, Solana, and Tron are among them.
The Coin98 Ecosystem
Since its launch, Coin98 has continued to ship new products. Here is a (not all-encompassing) overview of some of the most critical components of the ecosystem.
- Coin98 Exchange: The decentralized exchange works to source liquidity across blockchains, aggregating it, enabling users to get the best prices. Whenever using it to place an order, the DEX will also find the best, gas-optimized path.
- Coin98 Wallet: the non-custodial wallet enables users to store all kinds of tokens, receive, and send them. It also serves as a mobile DeFi gateway and is available for iOS and Android.
- Coin98 Media: “Buy the rumor sell the news” requires some knowledge of the news (and rumor). With Coin98 Media, Coin98 is contributing to educating its users, connecting communities and providing trustworthy media sources and resources to help people navigate DeFi.
- Coin98 Terminal: the terminal is the web interface of Coin98 that enables users to send tokens to multiple addresses in one go with the multi send function. And anyone looking to create a token can do so with the Terminal. It supports the creation of tokens on multiple chains including ERC-20, BEP-20, HRC-20, TRC-20 and SPL.
- C98 Token: the native token of the ecosystem exists on 3 different blockchains: Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and Solana, making it very versatile. The main purpose of the token is for holders to earn a share of transaction fees, receive staking rewards, membership discounts, and submit and vote on proposals (governance).
- Spacegate: is the cross-chain bridge that makes all this interoperability possible. While not directly visible to users, it’s working in the backend to enable transfers and swaps across networks. It’s constantly updated and brings cross-chain liquidity providers and services together.
Overall, Coin98 is well on track to fulfil its mission of being a one-stop shop for all things DeFi. The ecosystem supports by far the most blockchain ecosystems, making it particularly attractive for new entrants, but also more advanced traders who want to benefit from cross-chain liquidity.
The native token has also seen some price action this year, catapulting it over $6.20 in late August, up from less than a dollar at the end of July and a prolonged time of sideways trading.
C98 is now trading on FMFW.io with USDT and BTC pairs.
