On the crest of Waves / Monthly digest / April 2021
Hi Waves community,
We are releasing the April issue of our monthly digest at a time when Waves Tech is moving confidently towards achieving its goals outlined in last month’s roadmap.
The WAVES token has recently seen an all-time high, while all Waves products and projects have good news to report.
In this issue, you’ll read about new major milestones achieved by projects in the Waves ecosystem, as well as about our recent efforts aimed at informing and incentivizing the awesome Waves community. You’ll also learn about new utility options in Waves-based products that pave the way for mass adoption.
Finally, you’ll be introduced to Duck Hunters, a recently launched game for the Waves ecosystem’s members, which bridges the concepts of non-fungible token (NFT) and yield farming.
Reaching new milestones
In late March, Waves Tech published its ambitious roadmap for 2021–2022, which stipulated, among other goals, reaching $10 billion in the total value locked (TVL) by October 2021. Now, just a few weeks later, we are thrilled to share with you our first successes on the way towards implementing the roadmap.
In April, the WAVES token reached an all-time high twice. The upward movement continued in early May, with the most recent achievement of $41.33, according to CoinMarketCap (May). Throughout the month of April, the token saw a 175% gain.
Meanwhile, as TVL is going to be a key metric for Waves over the next few months, we have launched a bot that will help you to track the value locked in Waves-based DeFi products on a daily basis on Telegram. Check out the Waves TVL bot!
All Waves-based projects are expected to contribute to achieving the $10 billion TVL goal, and many of them have been reporting good progress. In late April, AMM service Swop.fi reached a major milestone of $50 million in TVL.
Acknowledging the progress of Waves-based projects, CryptoDiffer recently included the Neutrino stablecoin protocol on the list of top-15 blockchain dApps. Neutrino’s TVL reached $1 billion on April 29.
Major crypto media have also been highlighting Waves’ recent successes. In a recent story, CoinTelegraph pointed to “strong future growth prospects” backing the recent rally in WAVES.
And if you want to hear first-hand takeaways on Waves Tech’s plans and prospects, you may want to check out Sasha Ivanov’s recent interview on Mundo Crypto.
Stronger community ties
As always, Waves Tech pays special attention to its growing global community, making sure that Waves products are convenient to use across the world and highlighting the most interesting projects initiated by the community. Here’s a rundown of community-related news.
The recent update of Waves.Exchange to version 1.8.1 made its interface user-friendlier, while the Turkish language was added.
In a similar move aimed at making the service user-friendlier, the Chinese language has been added to Swop.fi.
As part of its effort to spread word about cutting-edge blockchain technology, Waves Tech ran a livestream under the title “Blockchain interoperability: the next big thing or an unachievable dream,” featuring Waves’ experts, as well as Jay Kurahashi-Sofue, VP of Marketing at Ava Labs.
The livestream centered on such issues, as a need for interchain communication and its implementation, existing workable models and prospects of sophisticated solutions, such as dApp-to-dApp interaction.
A recording of the livestream is available here.
One of Waves Tech’s goals is the incentivizing of developer teams building on Waves’ protocols. Among the recent recipients of Waves grants is Digilira, which collected 4,450 WAVES towards completing its first milestone. You can learn more about this exciting project here.
Meanwhile, Lennart Milatz, the founder of WavesCap, another promising project on Waves, discussed receiving a grant from the Waves Association and shared his views on DeFi prospects in this video interview.
Expanding utility options
Waves Tech’s work aimed at improving utility and introducing potential mass adoption options never stops. Over the last few weeks, quite a bit has been done in that area.
In April, Waves.Exchange launched a new investment product called “Lambo Investments.”
Lambo is an algorithmic investment strategy that works similarly to other Waves.Exchange algo-trading investments. A user provides liquidity to a smart contract in the Waves network in exchange for LAMBO tokens, which are backed by assets in the smart contract. The amount of a user’s LAMBO tokens corresponds to their share in the algorithmic trading pool.
Users’ assets are proxied to algorithmic trading strategies across multiple decentralized exchanges, including BitMEX, Binance, OKEx and others. Part of this liquidity is also used by trading bots on Waves.Exchange.
As an extra lure for investors, Waves.Exchange will give away a Lamborghini Huracan to a random investor — hence the product’s name, Lambo Investments.
Meanwhile, Waves.Exchange’s other algo-trading product, launched in late March, has already shown good returns. For instance, those who invested their USDT on April 10, saw a 10% increase in the value of their investment in just four days.
Swop.fi users are getting more control over setting key protocol parameters. Recently, changes to pool weight voting were introduced, and the first vote under the new rules was launched on April 26.
Finally, the Gravity interchain communication protocol has announced new integrations. SuSy, a cross-chain token gateway service based on Gravity, now enables swapping of Neutrino’s USDN for Heco’s HECO, Avalanche’s AVAX and Fantom’s FTM.
In focus: Duck Hunters
In early April, Waves Tech added NFT functionality to its ecosystem in a move that contributed to lifting the WAVES token to a new all-time high.
The sale of the first Waves Duck called “Perfection” by Sasha Ivanov for 1,000,000 USDN on Waves-based SIGN Art, a web gallery for blockchain-certified digital art, became the highest sale of an NFT outside of Ethereum.
Meanwhile, all profits from this sale will be used towards future Duck NFTs buybacks as part of the Duck Hunters game, a major incentive tool for the Waves ecosystem’s active participants.
In Duck Hunters, elements of NFT collectables and yield farming are combined, offering players an opportunity to collect lucrative awards in a thrilling game.
Several times a week, assignments for participants are announced, the completion of which is rewarded with EGG tokens. A total of 1 million EGG tokens will be distributed to Waves ecosystem members and Waves-based product users.
A user who has collected 10 EGG tokens will be able to exchange them for a digital duck image in the form of NFT. Users can also “breed” duck NFTs, creating unique, new-generation ducks.
Waves Tech will hold weekly buybacks of duck packs, with priority given to the most unique NFTs.
Assignments range from social media activities to various actions involving Waves projects and products. A roadmap for Duck Hunters can be viewed here.
As of late April, 4,800 players joined the game, while over 50,000 EGG tokens were distributed.
A possible game scenario based on fictional characters, with a detailed explanation of all stages and players’ possible actions is available here.
All aspects of the Duck Hunters game are described in detail in the “Duck Paper.”
By late April, Duck Hunters implemented assignments for five rounds. In one of the most popular rounds, participants were asked to come up with memes related to Waves Ducks. These are some of the coolest and funniest memes we received:
Duck Hunters is a game for the entire Waves ecosystem whose users are spread across many countries. Therefore, to introduce the game to Waves’ local communities worldwide, we ran a series of AMAs in late April. Participants were able to learn all they wanted about Duck Hunters, while 100 EGG tokens were distributed among the most active participants.
That’s all for now. We’ll be back next month with more news and updates. Stay tuned!
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