Staky spotlight: Kava

Leading by Example

The emergence of decentralized finance has revolutionized the way conventional paradigms of finance are perceived. It has removed intermediaries from the system and handed over power to where it belongs. A financial transaction is essentially about the two parties involved: the one who gives and the one who receives. Yet, banks and similar financial institutions have always dictated the terms of this exchange to earn profits.

In decentralized banking, the users are the owners. It is the banking of the people, by the people, for the people. To understand this shift better, we should look at it through the prism of a decentralized bank. And, what can be a better example than Kava.io!

The decentralized banking platform Kava.io was founded two years back, in 2018, by Kava Labs. We can segment Kava’s functioning into two broad aspects: lending and borrowing, and Kava tokens. Through Kava, users can put up their digital assets on Binance.com and earn rewards. Kava has direct integrations with the defi exchange.

Apps like Cosmostation and Frontier help to manage and interact with Kava. These community-built apps are available both on ios and android. Additionally, to keep the holdings secure, Kava is compatible with industry-leading storage wallets like Ledger, Trust Wallet and Delchain.

CDP by Kava: From Crypto Deposited to Crypto Returned

CDP is the acronym for collateralized debt positions. The CDP platform of Kava is an efficiently designed chain of six steps for users to collateralize their crypto assets and earn USDX in exchange.

In the first step, the user deposits their crypto assets to the Kava platform. Kava locks these deposited assets as collateral in a smart contract. The smart contract, in turn, issues a loan to the user in the form of USDX stablecoins. As and when the user repays the debt, they get their collateralized assets back. While paying back the loan, the user pays a stability fee along with the loan amount. With the collateralized assets returned, CDP destroys the stablecoins automatically.

In cases where debt to collateral falls below a predetermined ratio, the platform liquidates the collateralized assets.

From One Chain to Another

Kava is a cross-chain platform that can provide loans collateralizing any available cryptocurrency. To integrate diverse blockchain networks, Kava leverages Interledger. The unique benefit of Kava cross chain is that any user can send payments to any other chain. It also provides the benefit of asset swiping seamlessly within the wallet. This feature of allowing quick swaps is known as Switch.

KAVA the Coin

Generated on the Binance coin blockchain, KAVA is the native staking and governance token of the platform. Holding KAVA is equal to having part ownership over the platform.

Kava has a circulating supply of 29,442,227 or 29.44 million tokens and a total permitted supply of 105.92 million coins. With a market capitalization of US$71.83 million, Kava occupies 0.02% of the entire cryptocurrency market. US$5.51 is the all-time high price reached by Kava to date.

Kava is backed by the who’s who of the industry including Binance, Huobi, Okex, Ripple, Kraken, and Cosmos. The similarities between Kava and MakerDAO is well recognized. Users can stake Kava tokens to take part in the network as validators providing governance.

The holders of Kava have the authority to vote on proposed changes on the blockchain or in the parameters of the system. The parameters can be anything from the total amount of USDX to the collateral-to-debt ratio to the types of collaterals accepted.

Leveraging the Tendermint consensus mechanism, Kava holders can delegate their voting rights in exchange for transaction fees and stability fees. Depending on the volume of Kava tokens staked, returns can go up from as high as 20% to as low as 3%.

The Road Ahead with Kava harvest

The promoters of Kava recently launched Kava Harvest, it’s first decentralized application, on the Kava blockchain. Using Harvest, the participants on the Kava platform can stake their crypto holdings. The tokens supported on the network at present are BTC, BNB, BUSD, and XRP.

To facilitate cross-chain transfers, Harvest will link up with Chainlink to access price-reference data. The lenders and borrowers who will leverage the app will earn interests and received HARD tokens. HARD tokens are Harvest’s native tokens meant to act as a reward for liquidity and for staking.

In the days to come, Kava has plans to launch AMMs or Automated Market Makers similar to Uniswap. The company also wants to expand its functional reach by introducing automated advisors on the blockchain, similar to Yearn Finance.

To Wrap it Up

Since launch, Kava has been heaped with praises. The platform received Binance Launchpad Project of the Year award in 2020. Entrepreneur praised Kava claiming it to be the ‘Uber for Bitcoin’. Forbes declared Kava ‘the hidden gem of the decade’.

With its focus on collateral, leverage, and stability, Kava offered its users the facility to shift to a stablecoin, backed by some of the best crypto assets in the world.

Kava has proved that its platform is reliable through its bonded proof of stake. At a functional level, the platform works fast owing to the single block finality and high throughput. The platform has a user-friendly interface and is audited for security protocols by credible agencies, such as CertiK, B-Harvest, and Quatstamp.

Having raised US$1.2 million in funding over the past two years, Kava has already returned nearly US$2 million as rewards. As stated by Brian Kerr, CEO of Kava, the company wants to unlock the larger market cap assets and bring them under the purview of the lending and borrowing functionalities.

Kava provides a robust foundation for developers to build applications. While building these applications on Kava’s decentralized blockchain, these developers can utilize the security, cross-chain, and other infrastructural features. These features generally take years to build if built from scratch and cost millions of dollars.

It can be reasonably expected that Kava, in the days to come, will play a significant role in integrating all the stakeholders in the financial market. And, will not be constricted to apps and exchanges alone.

Staky dashboard and contributions plans

Staky.io recently joined the Kava Network as a validator! But who are we? And how we’re planning to benefit the Kava Network?

Staky.io a user-centric staking platform:

First and before anything else, Staky is a staking platform that has been designed to provide our delegators the most advanced staking experience on the market. Here are a few of our features:

💻 Dashboard and rewards tracking: our dashboard services will provide you a detailed history of your balances and rewards in order to track all your PoS coins with ease in the same place!
🗳 Governance: A good validator is meant to represent its delegators. That’s why we’ll deploy Governance Smart contracts (on compatible ecosystems) in order to allow our users to actively take part in our decisions, our platform will therefore be led by our users!
🤖 Telegram bot: It’s often complicated for crypto investors to closely monitor each network proposition or even the rewards, that’s why we’ll deploy a Bot that will keep you personally informed about all your cryptocurrencies network proposal and personal rewards!

Check out the platform: https://staky.io/delegation/kava

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