Osmosis, the Interchain DEX: H1 2024 Highlights
We’re halfway through 2024, and it’s been an exciting journey for the interchain ecosystem and Osmosis, the DeFi Hub. Here’s a bird’s-eye view of the key highlights and developments so far.
Table of Contents:
Osmosis: By the Numbers
🧪 Trading Volume
The Osmosis DEX has facilitated over $7B in trading volume so far this year, with a cumulative total of $34B in trading volume since genesis.
🧪 The Osmosis DEX surpassed $7M+ in Taker Fees generated and distributed to stakers.
A default 0.1% Taker fee is applied to all trades on the Osmosis DEX. These Taker fees are collected in the quote asset involved in the trade — and all OSMO collected is distributed to stakers. Non-OSMO collected is divided, with 33% going to the Community Pool and 67% being converted to OSMO before being distributed to stakers. To date, over $7M in Taker fees have been generated and distributed to OSMO stakers.
🧪 IBC Volume
Osmosis consistently leads the Cosmos ecosystem in IBC transaction volume, routinely facilitating over 20% of all IBC transactions.
🧪 Stablecoins
The market cap of stablecoins on Osmosis has grown nearly 400% Year-over-year.
Stablecoins play an important role in DeFi. Much of this increase in stablecoins on Osmosis can be attributed to Circle issuing a Cosmos-native form of USDC via Noble, which can be seamlessly bridged between IBC-enabled chains. Over $220 million of Cosmos-native USDC has been issued through Noble to date.
🧪 User Retention
Osmosis has the highest user retention rates among popular L1s and L2s.
🧪 Osmosis is one of the most actively developed DeFi projects.
Osmosis is one of the most actively developed DeFi projects, with over 43,000 code commits to date according to TokenTerminal.
Foundational Developments in Progress
Among other exciting upgrades coming to Osmosis that will improve the platform for users, two noteworthy developments have taken shape during the first half of 2024:
🧪 1. Smart Accounts
Osmosis Smart Accounts aim to revolutionize crypto account UX by:
- streamlining user onboarding and account recovery
- simplifying account management; and
- providing a seamless and intuitive trading experience for newcomers and experienced users alike.
🧪 2. Alloyed Assets and Alloyed BTC
Liquidity fragmentation and UX issues are significant challenges, particularly within cross-chain platforms like Osmosis. While users can deposit assets from an ever-growing list of bridges and source chains, this fragments liquidity and creates a UX nightmare.
Osmosis addresses this with ‘Alloyed Assets’, consolidating different versions of the same asset into a single token.
The introduction of Alloyed Assets, namely Alloyed BTC (allBTC), paves the way for developments like BTC staking and eventually re-staking, positioning Osmosis as the liquidity and DeFi Hub for Bitcoin and beyond in the Cosmos.
Product + User-Facing Improvements
🧪 New ‘Transactions’ page
You can now view your entire trade history directly in the Osmosis DEX app.
🧪 The New and Improved Osmosis.Zone
More user-friendly and accessible than ever.
🧪 New ‘Assets’ page
It’s easier than ever to discover new and tending assets on the Osmosis DEX.
Development + Engineering
🧪 Sidecar Query Server (SQS) Router
The router is a critical component of the Osmosis DEX, locating cost-effective routes for efficient trades. The new SQS router, an off-chain server tailored to performing expensive query tasks, enhances monitoring and caching for optimal routing performance.
🧪 Top-of-Block Auction Mechanism
The recently implemented Top-of-Block Auction mechanism taps into the potential of Skip’s Block SDK to refine how transactions are processed and to add new bidding functionalities. The Top-of-Block mechanism speeds up interchain arbitrage resolution, leading to more efficient pricing in the ecosystem.
Community Governance
🧪 The Burn Mechanism 🔥
Activated during the v25 upgrade, the Burn mechanism uses ProtoRev by Skip Protocol to accumulate OSMO, ATOM, and USDC through arbitrage on the Osmosis chain. All OSMO collected via ProtoRev is burned (and sent to the ‘Null address’), totaling ~1.8 million OSMO tokens burned to date.
🧪 BitGo’s Native Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) became the ‘canonical’ representation of WBTC on Osmosis.
In Q1 2024, BitGo officially launched its fully backed native WBTC on Osmosis, bridging Bitcoin’s $1+ trillion market cap to 90+ IBC-enabled Cosmos appchains through the Osmosis DEX, unlocking new liquidity for the Cosmos ecosystem.
🧪 Community governance passed a revenue-sharing agreement between Nomic and Osmosis to eliminate fees and bring BTC liquidity into the Cosmos.
This agreement means that users will pay less in fees to bring their BTC into the Cosmos. Simultaneously, Nomic will benefit from — and therefore be incentivized to help support — increased adoption of nBTC across applications (like Alloyed assets) on Osmosis.
🧪 Astroport brought Passive Concentrated Liquidity (PCL) pools to the Osmosis DEX.
After overwhelmingly successful votes on both Astroport governance and Osmosis governance, Astroport deployed an outpost on Osmosis and activated a new pool type on the DEX: passive concentrated liquidity (PCL) — giving users and LPs more optionality and flexibility.
Events
🧪 EthDenver
Sunny Aggarwal, Co-Founder of Osmosis, joined the “Endless Summer: DeFi Across Chains” panel, with Jelena Djuric, Co-Founder & CEO
of Noble.
🧪 Appchain Day 2024 (presented by DoraHacks)
Sunny introduced Smart Accounts (coming soon to Osmosis), highlighting their potential to revolutionize account management and UX for users.
🧪 DEVMOS (presented by Osmosis)
Osmosis contributors organized and hosted DEVMOS in New York City, a series of technical talks from the best and brightest builders in the Cosmos.
🧪 Consensus 2024
Sunny Aggarwal and Ethan Buchman, discussed the “Bitcoinization of Cosmos”, and its role as the application layer for Bitcoin, emphasizing Cosmos’s potential in the Bitcoin renaissance.
Media Highlights
🧪 Picasso Network Integrated IBC with both the Ethereum and Solana networks, and selected Osmosis as the liquidity hub for assets from these networks.
🧪 Sunny Aggarwal discusses the future of Osmosis in a feature interview with CryptoSlate 🎤
🧪 Unchained shares the scoop on Alloyed Assets, Alloyed BTC (allBTC), and the potential for BTC staking on Osmosis ⛓
🧪 Sunny discusses Cosmos as Bitcoin’s application layer, the first NFT collection on Osmosis, and more on Slatecast — with CryptoSlate’s Nate Whitehill and Liam ‘Akiba’ Wright.
🧪 Saurabh Deshpande of Decentralised.co enters the Cosmos with Sunny, covering topics like:
- Why will there be many appchains, and how are we solving for interoperability?
- Tokens and governance
- Restaking vs. Mesh Security
Looking Ahead
Osmosis’s journey continues from its humble beginnings as the first major DEX in the Cosmos to a vibrant, expanding DeFi ecosystem. The spirit of experimentation and constant iteration drives every new feature and governance proposal. The Osmosis ecosystem is stronger than ever and prepared to welcome the second half of 2024 with many exciting new features slated to launch this year.
About Osmosis
Osmosis is the premier interchain DEX and a DeFi hub for the Cosmos ecosystem and beyond. To date, the Osmosis DEX has facilitated over $34 Billion in trading volume, and more than 100 separate blockchains have connected to the Osmosis appchain via IBC. Osmosis is home to an ever-expanding suite of DeFi applications, merging native tooling with powerful third-party integrations to provide a one-stop experience that materially raises the bar over centralized exchange offerings. Visit https://osmosis.zone to get started.
