Whenever there is relevant growth in the number of derivatives contracts currently in play (open interest), it usually means that more traders are involved. In futures markets, longs and shorts are balanced at all times, but having a larger number of active contracts allows the participation of institutional investors that require a minimum market size. However, in Polkadot's (DOT) case, price crashes have often been anticipated by this indicator breaking the $1 billion mark. The April 17 crash happened after DOT reached its $48.30 all-time high, which led to a $1.2 billion futures open interest. Over the following week, the …

The concept of the metaverse introduces alternate realities, linking augmented and virtual worlds, similar to the well-known Steven Spielberg movie Ready Player One. Running parallel to the real world, this virtual world will provide users with more scenes for conversion and various economic applications open to the creativity and ability of the developer. With many possibilities, it is no wonder that so many technology giants continue to invest heavily in the possibilities the metaverse development has to offer. The potential impact is so large, many continue to believe that this could be the next large-scale platform after the internet. However, …

Decentralized finance (DeFi) solutions have already proved they are better alternatives to traditional finance, arising from the need for an open, secure and transparent financial system. With DeFi, users can take advantage of lower transaction rates, higher interest rates or an opportunity to diversify investments. Therefore, there are few surprises regarding decentralized finance emerging as an alternative to today's financial system for these reasons. The bottom line is that while blockchain technology ensures the network's security, it is at the cost of users’ inconvenience. Unfortunately, like other promising technologies, the blockchain is prone to challenges that may impact its usage. …

Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance (DeFi) newsletter. The DeFi space was full of fundraising this week. Read on to discover where the venture capital firm led by Reddit’s co-founder is making notable investments. What you’re about to read is the smaller version of this newsletter. For the full breakdown of DeFi’s developments over the last week, subscribe to our newsletter below. Near Protocol offers $800M fund to advance ecosystem Smart contracts platform Near Protocol has announced the allocation of an $800-million global funding initiative aimed at fostering the development of its DeFi ecosystem, as well as …

Moralis, a platform that powers decentralized applications, or dApps, announced Thursday that it has received a $13.4 million investment from EQT ventures. The company said that it expects to use this seed capital for product development and corporate expansion. Moralis seeks to provide the blockchain space with a unique user-friendly interface solely for front-end development, while the company and its developers handle the entire back-end. The software can also provide complex services such as node management, authentication, and transaction indexing — which are needed for cross-chain networks, layer two solutions, and Web 3.0 applications. Moralis, which has been active since …

A new decentralized autonomous organization is determined to become the DAO that serves all other DAOs. Looking at it narrowly, the goal of SubDAO Labs is to provide small to mid-size organizations with the tools they need to move beyond centralized governance models and form feature-rich, effective, and sustainable decentralized autonomous organizations. Arguing that the DAO governance model “has gone from obscurity to the preferred form of governance for most blockchain projects,” SubDAO believes one of the biggest stumbling block to its widespread adoption is that “it is not practical for smaller organizations or those without sufficient fund to develop …

Smart contract ecosystem Near Protocol has earmarked $800 million for new funding initiatives aimed at growing its decentralized finance capabilities, offering the latest evidence that the highly lucrative DeFi market is still in its infancy. The new funding, which includes the $350 million grants program announced by Proximity Labs last week, gives ecosystem developers added incentive to create new product offerings on Near, the company announced Monday. Roughly $250 million will be allocated to existing ecosystem developers and another $100 million is earmarked for startup grants, with Near planning to fund more than 20 startups at a rate of $5 …

Open source blockchain analytics firm Moonstream published a report, which found that around 17% of addresses control more than 80% of all nonfungible tokens (NFTs) on Ethereum. The report was published on Oct. 21 and the analysis was conducted on more than seven million NFT transactions on the Ethereum blockchain between April 1 and Sept. 25, 2021. The report found that whales, NFT platforms and exchanges, which comprise the top 16.71% of all addresses, own 80.98% of NFTs on Ethereum. The remaining 83.29% of NFT owners were only able to snap up “a handful of tokens'' during that time frame. …

Measurable Data Token (MDT) has announced the launch of a blockchain-based oracle service, Measurable Finance (MeFi), which has been designed to connect traditional financial data markets to the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. In its primary showcase of utility, the project constructed a decentralized application (DApp) —accessible on both the Ethereum and testnet blockchains — which enables DeFi participants to access stock trading data from some of the world’s largest financial marketplaces, including the Nasdaq, New York Stock Exchange (NY and Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX). With the introduction of these services, decentralized data sharing network Measurable aims to advance the …

Although decentralized finance (DeFi) is gaining popularity, to reach mainstream adoption, a cohesive user experience must become a focus. As crypto assets are being utilized in different ways, they are also becoming dispersed across more chains and protocols. Furthermore, for DeFi users, the added complexity of the latest industry developments, including new tokens, emerging yield farming opportunities and different projects, make it difficult to understand the lay of the land. The result is that users will require several different apps, software and other tools to track their portfolio. The comparison can be made to Instagram, which began as a simple …

Blockchain technology and its associated cryptocurrencies were designed to make tools of the financial industry available to anyone with an internet connection. Like traditional banks, cryptocurrency assets offer all of the same products, including borrowing and lending, only in a decentralized format to reduce fees and discrimination. Since decentralized finance (DeFi) eliminates intermediaries from the equation, equal opportunities are given to billion-dollar companies and regular humans, and higher interest rates also prevail. In practice, most decentralized loans today are conducted through a lending pool. Traditionally, collateralized loans (also known as securities-based loans) use a valuable asset to help secure the …

The age of digital transformation has arrived, leading traditional industries to adopt new technologies to accommodate a fully digital future. As such, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the trillion dollar oil and gas industry has quietly started to leverage blockchain technology for business success. Douglas Heintzman, chief catalyst at the Blockchain Research Institute, told Cointelegraph that the oil and gas sector is particularly ripe for blockchain development due to its uniquely positioned supply chain: “There are many participants in downstream and upstream operations within the oil and gas industry.” He added further: “The industry must now look at …