Ren Project (REN) Monthly Report October 2020
The past 30 days have been exciting for Ren and the whole DeFi ecosystem in general.
The Total Value Locked (TVL) has consistently been rising to new all-time highs being at ~$298M as of today (October 12, 2020), a 1.58x from our latest report ($189M).
Bears have taken over DeFi for the time-being and the protocol token REN halved in value between September 3 and 6, traded around $0.25, and even went as low as $0.17 before doubling on Filecoin news and stabilizing around $0.40 as of today.
Let’s take a deeper look into the Filecoin news and at what else has been happening around the project in the past month.
Recent News
The Ren Ecosystem had many impressive updates. We are going to list some of the highlights here.
Read the full official Ecosystem Update here (for September).
Filecoin DeFi Bridge
Consensys announced its application Codefi will build a Filecoin DeFi Bridge to connect decentralized storage network Filecoin (launch date October 15) to the Ethereum Mainnet.
It will be using a token bridge powered by Ren to enable the conversion of the Filecoin FIL cryptocurrency to ERC-20 tokenized FIL.
Proof of Reserve Mechanism
In collaboration with oracle solution Chainlink, the Ren team worked on a mechanism to improve the transparency and auditability of its cross-chain assets.
The Proof of Reserve Mechanism is now live on testnet for renBTC, renBCH, and renZEC with a launch on mainnet to follow shortly.
Read about the very details here.
Yield Dollar (uUSD)
In collaboration with synthetic token builder and oracle solution UMA, the Ren team introduced BTC-backed Yield Dollar (uUSD), along with a joint liquidity mining reward program.
The concept of the BTC-backed uUSD is almost identical to UMA’s ETH-backed yUSD, simply locking renBTC instead of ETH as collateral.
UMA and Ren are partnering on liquidity incentives for those who contribute to the corresponding Balancer pool.
Ren Forum
Ren has launched its web forum for their community to join discussions and proposals for RenVM.
REN Token Available for US Citizens
The REN token asset among other DeFi tokens is now listed on Gemini and Coinbase Pro enabling US customers to trade REN.
Network Highlights
RenVM
Total Volume Transaction (TVT) via RenVM is about $970M as of today.
The total value of all digital assets currently minted on Ethereum by RenVM (Total Value Locked, TVL) is about $297M, its ATH.
Darknodes
The number of darknodes contributing to the Ren Network has increased from 1197 to 1325 for this epoch, and 40 darknodes will be added when the next epoch starts in 7 days.
As of today, 13.25% percent of REN’s circulating supply is bonded to run darknodes. An increase of 10.6% since our last report on September 7th.
In the former epoch, rewards of $328,449.22 were distributed among 1197 contributing darknodes.
That equates to $274.39 per node on average in the fourth epoch since the mainnet launch. Essentially, a 12x to epoch 1 ($21.32), 6x to epoch 2 ($41.87), 2x to epoch 3 ($120.17).
In the current epoch, rewards of $228,951.55 have been minted to be distributed among darknodes thus far. Extrapolating this to the end of the epoch, this value will reach about $310k among 1325 contributing darknodes. That equates to $235 per node in the current epoch.
These numbers show stagnation in growth for the first time since mainnet launch with epoch 4 and 5 essentially yielding the same amount of rewards for darknode operators.
Integrators
Mainly, there are two integrators responsible for a majority of the volume (~74%) on the Ren Network.
Curve Finance, a decentralized exchange for stablecoins, has processed $360.8M (~37.2%) of transaction volume since mainnet launch.
RenBridge, a dApp developed by the Ren team to mint and burn native asset tokens onto the Ren Protocol, has processed $355.1M (~36.6%) of transaction volume since mainnet launch.
Therefore, Curve has now overtaken RenBridge in all-time volume on the Ren Network.
Find live data on all network stats in Ren’s mainnet portal here.
Token Metrics
Token Holders
There are currently 22,867 REN token holders.
Token Price
In the last 30 days, bears have taken over DeFi with some protocols evaporating to almost zero. REN’s token price only slightly went down from $0.28 to seeing lows of $0.17 just to fully recover and is being traded at around $0.40 again as of today!
Ren Multisig Wallet
100k REN has been transferred out of the team’s multisig wallet in the last 30 days. The funds were sent to the Disperse.app that is frequently used to distribute rewards for liquidity mining campaigns.
Release Schedule
Currently, around 91% of REN protocol tokens have been unlocked, including all private & public sale tokens (in Feb 2018) as well as team tokens (the last vesting ended in Feb 2020).
The remaining 9% is the company’s reserve tokens, to be released at “yet-to-be-determined” future date.
In / Out Of The Money
72.56% of REN token holders are in the money.
This indicates that a majority of wallets last moved their REN tokens when the price was lower, therefore are in profit since acquiring the token.
In comparison, in our last article, this number was still 66.3%.
Bull vs Bear
Bull
Ren’s September Development Update includes major progress in the “Multichain” API which makes it easier to add new blockchains.
The new blockchains to be added in the next upgrade are Luna, Acala, Filecoin, Fantom, Dogecoin, and Binance Smart Chain.
These new bridged coins will bring additional revenue sources to the RenVM nodes and further exposure to the REN token to these large communities.
The focused roadmap on expanding the Ren Protocols reach across the crypto ecosystem will make Ren one of the most “connected” projects, and this flow of partnerships may bring new buyers to the REN token; further pushing the price up.
Bear
Ren has had an explosive Q3 with the liquidity mining adoption that created a “gold rush” situation, bringing Bitcoin to Ethereum to mine yields.
The liquidity mining hype has now been declared dead by the larger crypto community after many of these types of projects suffered over 80% losses in the last 30 days.
These events negatively impact the RenVM’s volume and total locked assets, which can cause REN holders to start feeling less optimistic about Ren’s tokenomics.
Therefore if Ren darknodes start generating less revenue this may deter new REN token buyers that were looking to launch their own node, and this may have a negative impact on the price.
The opinions expressed during the Bull vs Bear series are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Multi.io and its employees. The goal is to present a view from both sides of the market.
Upcoming News & Events
Multichain
Multichain, Ren’s blockchain API standard, has been deployed to a staging testnet environment. In the upcoming weeks, Ren will deploy staging mainnet environments and production testnet environments to give RenVM and third-party developers access to an array of different blockchain bridges.
RenVM
The Ren team will be working on interoperability with Acala and Solana in the coming month. The next release is aimed to be the last major release before hitting “phase zero”.
Information & Data Sources
Ren Mainnet Portal — Dashboard providing network statistics and metrics.
Ren Open-Source Roadmap — The Ren open-source roadmap is available on their GitHub.
Ren Medium Publication — Follow Ren Project on Medium for roadmap and ecosystem updates.
Ren Roadmap — Roadmap and technical milestones for Ren Protocol.
Interview at REIMAGINE 2020 v3.0 — Interview with Ren CTO Loong Wang and Multi.io COO Artur Luhaäär.
