OKEx bets on DeFi
Yield.finance's YFI token is leading DeFi Summer's boom (Photo: CoinMarketCap)
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As yearn.finance skyrockets, OKEx bets on DeFi

The cryptocurrency exchange listed eight tokens from the decentralized finance space in one day, including Yearn’s YFI

By  / August 31, 2020 /

A day after the skyrocketing Yearn.finance token hit a market cap of $1 billion, cryptocurrency exchange OKEx bet big on DeFi, announcing the listing of eight decentralized finance tokens, including YFI.

“OKEx has been keenly observing the DeFi market dynamics and trying our best to collaborate with high-quality innovative DeFi projects that show the most potential,” said OKEx CEO Jai Hao in a release. “The decision to list eight new DeFi tokens today is far from the end of OKEx’s support for DeFi projects.”

While many DeFi tokens have been spiking over what is being called DeFi summer, none has matched YFI. It is the governance token of the yearn.finance ecosystem, which began as an automation tool for finding and moving funds to the DeFi lending platform offering the best interest rate, or yield aggregation. It grew from there to encompass other products including aggregated liquidity provision, leveraged trading and automated marketing making.

As Modern Consensus reported on Aug. 20, YFI is the first token ever that eclipsed the price of Bitcoin. It reached another high today, breaking $39,000 before retreating to $38,078 at press time, according to CoinMarketCap.

Noting that “the DeFi space is developing rapidly, Hao added, “[w]e are committed to continuously helping the development of DeFi and further promoting the blockchain industry.”

Eight isn’t enough

According to the Aug. 31 announcement, the Malta-based exchange listed Band Protocol (BAND), Just (JST), Ren (REN), Reserve Rights (RSR), Yearn.finance (YFI), Nexus Mutual (NXM), YFII.finance (YFII) and Tellor (TRB), in addition to Yearn.finance. 

The spot trading against Tether’s stablecoin USDT of those newly listed crypto assets silently started at 3:00 a.m. ET on Aug. 28. Trading against Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) rolled-out one hour later. Lastly, withdrawals of those assets became available just today at 3:00 a.m.

With the addition of those eight tokens, the number of DeFi crypto assets listed on OKEx reaches 27. This list includes the tokens of Mantra DAO (OM), the first DeFi project built on Polkadot’s Parity Substrate, and Decentralized Information Asset (DIA) — a service that brings real-time asset pricing data on-chain for use in DeFi smart contracts. The crypto assets of both those projects were listed this month as well. 

DeFi’s growing variety

The Band Protocol is a decentralized oracle service that feeds external data for use in smart contracts on public blockchains by acting as a second layer solution. Just is a decentralized stablecoin platform running on the Tron (TRX) blockchain. Ren is an ecosystem meant to facilitate trustless value transfer between multiple blockchains and dark pool trading thanks to Zero Knowledge Proof cryptography.

Reserve Rights is the utility token of a dual-token Ethereum-based stablecoin platform. Those tokens are minted to buy more collateral for the stablecoin of the platform when the platform’s stablecoins become undercollateralized. The system also buys those tokens back and burns them when there is overcollateralization.

Nexus Mutual aims to be an Ethereum-based alternative to traditional insurance and—lastly—Tellor is a system aiming to allow smart contracts to access data that is off-chain by leveraging a network of staked miners.

Take note that there is also a  YFII.finance—a fork of this protocol that adds some features but is also criticised as being “China’s DeFi knockoff.”

Updated at 10:48 a.m. on Nov. 17, 2020 to correct the author.

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Adrian is a newswriter based out of Pisa, Italy. He's passionate about cryptocurrency, digital rights, IT, tech and futurology and likes to think about the future in a positive way.