Kyber Ecosystem Report October 2020
Hello fellow Kyberians and hello KyberPRO!
Since our launch in 2018 we’ve been building Kyber one fundamental piece at a time into one of the best liquidity protocol and trade execution and settlement mechanisms available on a blockchain today. Starting with proving its security and transparency with the initial launch, to building a diverse ecosystem around it the following year, to further decentralizing it through the KyberDAO governance mechanism over the last six months, Kyber has gone through important growth phases to get to where it is today.
After executing more than a million trades for over a hundred thousand addresses Kyber takes one more step forward with KyberPRO, our new end-to-end framework that opens on-chain market making to the broader world. Market makers from the conventional world of market making now have a toolkit with which to easily market make on-chain using KyberPRO’s suit of developer tools, documentation, technical and operational support, and run their algorithms on a battle-tested Fed Price Reserve system with access to a wide range of dapps.
KyberPRO
With years of on-chain data to base our thesis on, we believe on-chain professional (or ‘manual’) market making is superior to automated market making in terms of trading strategy, risk management, capital efficiency, and other technical and financial considerations (you can read our full blog post on this here). But so far, professional market makers have been wary of on-chain mechanisms due to the unique nature of blockchain settlement and lack of technical knowledge around this area. KyberPRO tackles this head-on by providing a complete end-to-end solution for market makers’ needs and we believe this positions Kyber very well for future growth as more and more of the conventional financial world diverts its attention to digital assets in search of profit.
We’ve published a full blog post going over all the details here while the video below gives a quick high level overview. We’d like to invite all interested parties to reach out to us to discuss further details.
We also recommend this Forbes article for a broader context on why we are doing what we are doing and how Kyber is the perfect infrastructure piece to bridge TradFi with DeFi. We hope you are as excited about KyberPRO as we are.
KyberDAO
The KyberDAO continues full steam ahead and took important decisions in October aimed at improving platform competitiveness:
- KIP3 reduces the network fee from 20 bps to 10 bps in order to increase Kyber’s volume share, and subsequently increase collected fees and further support the sustainability of Kyber’s FPRs. Details
- KIP4 enables fees on bridge reserves to balance the network parameters between reserve types and increases DAO rewards. Details
You can join KIP discussions on our Discord.
The network parameters as decided in the latest BRR vote are:
- 6.22% burn (% of ETH rewards converted to KNC and burnt)
- 67.32% reward to KNC stakers who vote in the KybeDAO (rewarded in ETH)
- 26.48% rebate to FPR liquidity providers (rebate in ETH)
The KyberDAO also celebrated its $1M rewards distributed milestone and we look forward to many such milestones🥳
Kyber.org Improvements & Community Call
With feedback collected from the community since the launch of kyber.org, the dev team have been busy making UX improvements and stakers can now claim their rewards for all epochs with the press of a single button, while an advanced gas fee option allows users to adjust fees to suit their time preference (ie. users can set much lower gas fees if they don’t mind their vote being cast and settled on-chain after 24 hours)
The KyberDAO also held its second community call with DeFiDude and topics discussed cover a wide range of KyberDAO developments. Most notably, the Kyber Community Pool is now officially live and you can delegate your KNC to it! You can read more here.
DeFiDude has also created a KyberDAO Reminders Calendar that you can subscribe to to get alerts on Epochs, BRRs, KIPs, calls, and more. You can access the calendar and read a recap of the community call here.
Kyber Network Stats
It’s undeniable that volumes across both centralized and decentralized exchanges have cooled off over the last few months while yield farming activity has also reverted back to more moderate levels. This reflects in Kyber’s on-chain data as we saw our second consecutive month where volumes in USD and ETH decreased, while unique number of addresses and total trades have stabilized at September’s levels.
This shows there is still a lot of room for improvement and growth, but with the launch of initiatives such as KyberPRO, KyberDAO, Katalyst, and other upcoming ones, we believe we are well placed to continue our long term growth trend.
While most dapps saw a drop in volumes over September it was good to see a re-launched Fulcrum (with its underlying bZx protocol) quickly pick up traction again as it increased its USD volume 112% in a month and its user numbers (as measured by unique addresses) by almost 50%. We can also see other new integrations utilizing Kyber’s liquidity.
Reserve & Token Metrics
Reserve volumes are down in line with overall trends although Mooniswap’s large volume growth caught our attention for October.
YFI, Quant, and renBTC saw significant increases in volume in what was otherwise a down trending month for token volumes. Stablecoins saw volumes drop 33% while project tokens dropped 26%
New Tokens on Kyber Network
Fuse Network — Fuse is a blockchain platform that allows community economies to be instantly spun up. The FUSE token is required to make payments. Announcement
Aleph —Aleph is a blockchain for storage and computing of apps and DeFi. The ALEPH token is used to pay for these resources as well as syncing fees. Announcement
Indorse — Indorse is a platform that allows engineering teams to build and improve software. Announcement
Ocean — Ocean Protocol is a platform that connects data providers with consumers using blockchain technology. The OCEAN token is used as a unit of exchange for data and AI services. Announcement
Sand — The Sandbox is a virtual world built on Ethereum where players and creators can create and share 3D voxel models. Announcement
Valor — Valor is a platform for the exchange of alternative investments with its token serving its economy. Announcement
Liquidity for all seven tokens is served through various Automated Market Makers.
Kyber World
With another busy month of virtual conferences behind us, you could have caught us at:
Liquidity 2020 Summit — Sypros, Kyber’s Head of Trading took a deep dive into Passive vs. Active Market Making (must watch content!).
Builder Series — Accelerate DeFi — Imran Khan interviewed Loi on growing Kyber as both a protocol and a team, product innovation, and KyberPRO.
IOSG DeFi Summit 2020 — I hosted a panel on events around the DeFi Summer and the kind of challenges faced by our space.
Decentralized Finance Global Summit 2020 — Shane, our Market Manager, shared details on how we’re building a sustainable liquidity infrastructure for DeFi.
Within the media, you could have caught Kyber mentioned or featured in the following publications:
Forbes, Bitcoinist, Bitcoin.com, DigitalMarketNews, Decrypt, Our Network, DappRadar, Cryptodose, Crowdfind Insider, bit2me (Spanish), LetKnow.News (Russian), Staking Rewards
Conclusion
As you can tell, we are very excited with the launch of KyberPRO. This, together with the continuing improvement of the Kyber Network protocol through KyberDAO improvement proposals, and product and reserve level innovations we are working on, we believe will close off 2020 for Kyber Network on a very strong note and bring in a new year of growth. As always, thank you for your support and see you in next month’s ecosystem blog.
October Photo Gallery
