Step Finance is the front page of Solana. Visualise, Analyse, Execute and Aggregate transactions across all Solana contracts in one place. Step is a portfolio management dashboard and transaction aggregator where users can monitor their tokens associated with their wallets, LP positions, Staked Yield farms, Margin positions and more. 

Users of Step Finance can also execute Swaps and enter various yield farms and automated vaults from within Step with any fees on such value accrual services going back to STEP stakers.

Step Finance

SolFlare

Backpack

Phantom

Solana

dogwifhat

Bonk

Jupiter

Pyth Network

Sonic The Goat

Koala AI

Decimated

TARS Protocol

Nyan Heroes

Silly Dragon

Lido Staked SOL

DeFi Land

Helium IOT

Bobaoppa

TRUMP’S HAT

PESHI

Chinu

PAPA Trump

Serum is a decentralized exchange (DEX) and ecosystem that brings unprecedented speed and low transaction costs to decentralized finance (DeFi). (DeFi).

Serum is the only high-performant DEX designed around a fully on-chain central limit order book and matching engine. Ecosystem partners can compose with Serum’s on-chain orderbook to share liquidity and power their trading features for institutional and retail users.

In light of the popularity of DeFi and the growth of DEXes on Ethereum, users and developers are limited by high gas costs and slow transactions. Serum aims to resolve these traditional problems of DeFi, as well as issues of centralization, low capital efficiency, and liquidity segmentation.

The SRM utility and governance token enables users to receive discounts on protocol fees and voting rights; 100% of exchange fees flow back to SRM via buy-and-burn, staking rewards, and ecosystem grants.

Serum

Bonfida

Raydium is an automated market maker (AMM) and liquidity provider built on the Solana blockchain for the Serum decentralized exchange (DEX). Unlike any other AMMs, Raydium provides on-chain liquidity to a central limit orderbook meaning that funds deposited into Raydium are converted into limit orders which sit on Serum’s orderbooks. This gives Raydium LPs access to all of Serum’s order flow as well as their existing liquidity.
RAY is the native utility token used for:

Staking to earn protocol fees

Staking to receive IDO allocations

Governance votes on protocol decisions

Raydium

Kin is a decentralized cryptocurrency that was created in 2017 by Kik Inc.

Kin was initially launched on the Ethereum blockchain. In 2020, Kin migrated to the Solana blockchain in order to achieve lower transaction fees and greater scalability.

Notably, Kin has zero inflation. The Kin supply is fully distributed and no additional Kin tokens will enter circulation.

In 2020, Kik Inc agreed to a mutual settlement with the United States SEC in which Kin was not required to be registered as a security, making it one of the few cryptocurrencies with such regulatory clarity.

Aurory is a next-generation studio building a universe of interoperable web3 games. Two original IP’s were born from this universe, which are actively shaping the future of the Aurory player experience.

The first of these two IP’s are Aurorians. A collection of 10,000 anime style NFT characters that double as both a PFP, as well as a playable avatar with various in-game perks.

The second are Nefties. These magical creatures have been designed as non-fungible tokens NFTs with a unique set of stats that influence their performance in-game. They serve as companions on each player’s journey, and can be hatched, traded, collected, and used in battles.

Aurory currently hosts two playable games (both in alpha) which continue to evolve in a live-ops development format:

Seekers of Tokane: A JRPG, where players embark on a dangerous rogue-like adventure through the world of Tokane, collecting and battling fierce Nefties in epic turn-based combat.

Aurory Tactics: A PvP timeline-based battling game where players must learn how to best use their Neftie creature's abilities, competing against opponents to rise to the top of the leaderboard for rewards and glory.

The project proudly boasts one of the most experienced executive and development suites in blockchain gaming, with dozens of talents from established gaming studios, such as Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Rovio, Warner Bros, and more.

Aurory

MIR is the governance token of Mirror Protocol, a synthetic assets protocol built by Terraform Labs (TFL) on the Terra blockchain.

Mirror Protocol is decentralized from day 1, with the on-chain treasury and code changes governed by holders of the MIR token. TFL has no intention of keeping or selling MIR tokens, and there are no admin keys or special access privileges granted. The intent for this is to be a completely decentralized, community-driven project.

Mirrored assets are blockchain tokens that behave like "mirror" versions of real-world assets by reflecting the exchange prices on-chain. They give traders the price exposure to real assets while enabling fractional ownership, open access and censorship resistance as any other cryptocurrency. Unlike traditional tokens which serve to represent a real, underlying asset, mAssets are purely synthetic and only capture the price movement of the corresponding asset.

Mirrored assets provide the following advantages:

Global Accessibility: In most markets outside of Europe & North America, access to foreign equities and forex markets is highly limited. Crypto allows global accessibility without entry barriers.

Fractional Orders: In traditional finance, to execute a fractional order, multiple fractional orders are bundled together to execute a unitary transaction. The process of gathering all the orders into one requires additional waiting time. By utilizing the blockchain, orders volume is simply represented as a number on the blockchain, so there is no need for the intermediary bundling process.

Nearly-Instantaneous Order Execution: Oftentimes due to the lack of liquidity (price-time-priority order book algorithm), orders can take up to a day to fully execute. Given the fact that Mirror relies on liquidity provided by each individual asset pool, orders can be executed as fast as the blocktime of the network (~ 6 seconds).

Mirror Protocol

Moonriver is an Ethereum-compatible, smart-contract parachain on Kusama. It is intended to be a companion network to Moonbeam, where it will provide a permanently incentivized canary network. New code will ship to Moonriver first, where it can be tested and verified under real economic conditions. Once proven, the same code will ship to Moonbeam on Polkadot.

It does this by providing a full EVM implementation, a Web3-compatible API, and bridges that connect Moonriver to existing Ethereum networks.

This allows developers to deploy existing Solidity smart contracts and DApp frontends to Moonriver with minimal changes.

Moonriver

Aleph.im is an open-source crosschain network featuring decentralized database including file storage, computing, and a decentralized identity (DID) framework. Aleph.im’s core mission is to help decentralized apps and protocols strip off the centralized parts of their stack, achieving a fully decentralized architecture. You can think of aleph.im as a decentralized AWS or firebase. Aleph.im is focused on supercharging the DeFi ecosystem.

Aleph.im

Karura is an all-in-one decentralized finance (DeFi) hub and stablecoin platform built on Kusama (KSM) and integrated into Polkadot (DOT). Karura was created by the Acala Network, which has won four Web3 Foundation grants and founded the Substrate Developer Academy.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Karura.

Both Karura and Acala are backed by multiple funds, including Coinbase Ventures, Pantera Capital, Polychain Capital and Hypersphere. Karura and Acala operate in parallel. Specifically, Karura is implementing DeFi on Kusama in the same way that Acala is offering DeFi on Polkadot. The network is built with almost the same codebase as Acala: the two platforms provide scalable, convenient and fast DeFi cross-chain ecosystems for Kusama and Polkadot.

Parachain Karura is a platform that allows users to create effective, low-cost and complex financial applications, saving time and increasing trading efficiency.

The platform itself provides a multi-collateralized stablecoin backed by cross-chain assets (kUSD), a trustless staking derivative (liquid KSM), and an automated market maker (AMM) decentralized exchange (DEX) for unlocking liquidity and supporting financial innovation.

Karura is the decentralized financial hub of Kusama, a scalable multi-chain network for radical innovation and early-stage Polkadot deployments. Karura is the sister network to Acala. It hosts multichain liquid staking token (LST) protocols (such as liquid KSM - LKSM), an AMM decentralized exchange, and an app platform that is EVM-compatible and highly customizable (based on Substrate). Karura is secured by Kusama, and is the liquidity gateway of Kusama parachains, Acala and L1/L2 blockchains

Karura

Acala Token

BENQI is a decentralized non-custodial liquidity market as well as a liquid staking protocol built on the high-speed Avalanche smart contract network. The lending protocol allows users to lend, borrow, or earn interest using their digital assets.  The Liquid Staking protocol provides a solution for capital efficiency, offering users the opportunity to unlock their “staked” AVAX to be used on Decentralized Financial protocols

The founding team chose Avalanche because of its decentralized network’s claimed high scalability, low fees and compatibility with popular plugin wallets.

BENQI was founded in 2021 with $6 million in backing. Among its strategic investors are Ascensive Assets, Dragonfly Capital, Mechanism Capital, Arrington XRP Capital, Spartan Group, TRGC, Woodstock Fund, Ava Labs, Morningstar Ventures, GBV Capital, Skynet Trading Ltd, Rarestone Capital, Genblock Capital, Moon Inc.

Who Are the Founders of BENQI?

Rome Blockchain Labs Inc. is responsible for the development of BENQI. It is an incubator and a software development firm specializing in decentralized finance (DeFi). JD Gagnon is one of the co-founders and CEO of Rome Blockchain Labs. The two other co-founders are Hannu Kuusi and Alexander Shul.

JD Gagnon graduated with a bachelor’s degree in commerce in finance and accounting from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Before Rome Blockchain Labs, Gagnon has created the Velox algorithmic trading platform. Gagnon is also the founder and CEO of Scotch & Ramen Media, Inc. and CSO of Etheralabs, Inc.

Hannu Kuusi has experience building institutional-grade infrastructure for financial technology (fintech) and military applications.

Alexander Szul is in charge of managing the development of the BENQI liquidity market platform.

What Makes BENQI (QI) Unique?

BENQI (QI) claims to be the first DeFi Lending project on the Avalanche platform. It offers DeFi users from congested and centralized networks the option to move and place their unused assets on BENQI with no hurdles and low network fees. Avalanche allows BENQI users to seamlessly and affordably access decentralized financial services and increase control over their strategies.

Developers have the option to use BENQI to create financial products using the protocol and governance tokens.

BENQI also aims to ease the overloading of the Ethereum network by providing Ethereum users with a less expensive and faster alternative. BENQI members can withdraw liquidity from the shared liquidity market, borrow from the liquidity market and get a clear view of interest rates.

BENQI

Aavegotchi (GHST) is the governance token of the Aavegotchi NFT Gaming protocol. GHST token holders receive voting power in the AavegotchiDAO, which oversees all aspects of the protocol, Aavegotchi’s flagship game the Gotchiverse, and Aavegotchi NFTs.

Aavegotchis themselves are pixelated ghosts backed by the ERC-721 token standard. The Aavegotchi NFTs have dynamic metadata that changes over time through user interaction.

An Aavegotchi’s value and rarity is determined by its collateral stake, traits and wearables.

Collateral stake is based on the innovative ERC721 Aavegotchi NFT that manages an escrow contract holding Aave-backed ERC20 collateral or "aToken," which generates yield via Aave's LendingPool. Traits are based on random traits upon birth, kinship and experience (XP).

The protocol is called Aavegotchi as a nod to Aave, which translates to “ghost” in Finnish, and is powered by the Aave protocol, one of the leading lending protocol in DeFi. The token ticker also cleverly spells out “ghost,” minus the vowel.

Aavegotchi

Efinity is a cross-chain NFT platform developed by Enjin and built on Polkadot. Efinity was created as the next generation blockchain for digital assets with the aim of adapting to the challenges of the world of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), according to the project.

The main specialization of the Efinity project is the NFT space. With the protocol, traders and gamers can create, distribute, transfer, sell and buy NFTs. Efinity aims to remove barriers to entry into the NFT space/decentralized gaming, and to simplify user experience and digital asset governance.

Efinity Token powers the entire Efinity ecosystem, EFI aims to prioritize the generation, transfer and purchase of tokens using an inter-chain infrastructure of protocols resulting in lower transaction fees. As for incentives, rewards on PoW blockchains with NFT functionality go to miners who create/trade tokens, thereby forming a community.

One of the long-term goals of Efinity is to become a hub for both fungible and non-fungible tokens, accepting tokens from any other chain, facilitating the pricing and exchange of NFTs, increasing transaction volume, and creating network effects.

In December 2021, the project won the Polkadot parachain auction, and in March 2022, Enjin launched their flagship parachain Efinity on the Polkadot Relay Chain — a blockchain platform that provides a decentralized parachain network where people havecontrol over their data and identity.

Efinity Token

Audius is a decentralized music streaming protocol initially built on POA network, but now living on Solana. Audius was launched to remedy the inefficiencies of the music industry, which is plagued by intransparent music rights ownership and intermediaries standing between artists and their audience.

Audius aims to align the interests of artists, fans, and node operators through its platform powered by its native AUDIO token. Artists can upload music, stored and distributed by content and discovery nodes, that fans can listen to for free. Currently, Audius rewards content creators through rewards like featuring in the weekly trending lists. In the future, it plans to integrate stablecoins for artists to offer paid content, as well as artist tokens that give fans the ability to access exclusive content, potentially cooperating with platforms like Rally.

Audius

JOE (JOE) is the native token of Trader Joe, a decentralized exchange (DEX) on the Avalanche (AVAX) blockchain that offers DeFi services, including swapping, staking and yield farming. The exchange has been growing rapidly, attracting over $4 billion in total value locked (TVL) since it was launched in June 2021. Trader Joe claims to take a community-first approach, and to prioritize innovation, speed and safety. It aims to provide a one-stop-shop DeFi experience and to integrate new products without compromising on security. To achieve this, Trader Joe has outlined an ambitious roadmap that focuses on token-holder growth. It plans to have improved staking, non-fungible-token (NFT) exchange listings, the collateralization of the JOE token, and leveraged trading –– all during 2021.

Alien Worlds (TLM) is a decentralized, non-fungible token (NFT) metaverse, where players compete for scarce resources, Trilium (TLM), in a stimulated economy centered around planetary worlds. Due to this, Alien Worlds also has a decentralized finance (DeFi) element to the game, as players advance by staking TLM and using TLM to vote in Planet Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs).

Play-to-earn (P2E) NFT games have seen an exponential rise in popularity and value this year. Alien Worlds allow the players, called “explorers” to earn monetary rewards through gameplay or participation in Planet DAOs. By mining in Alien Worlds, a user is rewarded with the native, in-game currency — Trilium (TLM) or NFT packs. Players can stake TLM to boost their rewards or battle with other users for NFTs.

To date, Alien Worlds has established a fair amount of its roadmap, having TLM on Binance launchpad and farming period of TLM on Binance Launchpool. A large portion of game developments have been forged as well. Moving forward, Alien Worlds aims to automate the claiming process of daily allocation to landowners in the game. Artifacts NFTs are soon to be released, and future plans include NFT interoperability.

Alien Worlds

Polkastarter is a decentralized fundraising platform empowering Web3 projects to launch and raise funds through multi-chain token pools whilst significantly growing their communities.

The platform supports initial dex offerings (IDOs) across major blockchains, including Ethereum, BNB Chain, Solana, Polkadot, Polygon, Avalanche and Celo.

The platform enables investors to secure early access to IDOs, NFTs and Gaming Web3 innovation. It is most commonly used by early-stage blockchain projects that want to raise capital and easily distribute their tokens at the same time.

Through Polkastarter, blockchain projects can easily create their own fixed-chain swap pools, which allow them to securely raise funds, while users can invest without risks, since swaps are automatically executed by smart contracts.

POLS is the native utility token of the Polkastarter platform. Its main utility is gaining access to pools and giving projects the option to give priority access to POLS holders. Users are incentivised to stake POLS, rewarding the most loyal members.

In Q4 2022, Polkastarter will release new community utility features, such as governance and POLS Power Boosters (increasing your allowlisting success). The platform first went live in December 2020, and has quickly grown to become one of the most commonly used platforms for initial DEX offerings (IDOs) operating on the Ethereum blockchain.

Polkastarter

Ren (REN) is an open protocol built to provide interoperability and liquidity between different blockchain platforms.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Ren.

Formerly known as Republic Protocol, Ren launched RenVM, its virtual machine mainnet, in May 2020, having completed a $34 million initial coin offering (ICO) in 2018.

The protocol’s native token, REN, functions as a bond for those running nodes which power RenVM, known as Darknodes.

Ren aims to expand the interoperability, and hence accessibility, of decentralized finance (DeFi) by removing hurdles involved in liquidity between blockchains.

Covalent leverages big-data technologies to create meaning from hundreds of billions of data points, delivering actionable insights to investors and allowing developers to allocate resources to higher-utility goals within their organization.

Instead of painstakingly sourcing data from a small handful of chains, Covalent aggregates information from across dozens of sources including nodes, chains and data feeds. The Covalent API then sources end-users with individualized data by wallet, including current and historical investment performance across all types of digital assets. Most importantly, Covalent returns this data in a rapid and consistent manner, incorporating all relevant data within one API interface.

Having achieved product-market fit, we are now planning to execute the next phase of Covalent, which is a progressive decentralization that will enable the Covalent Network to be owned and operated by its users. Of course, a critical piece to this is CQT.

CQT is the native token of the Covalent Network. It has three primary purposes:

CQT is a governance token, whereby token holders vote on proposals to change the system parameters.

CQT is a staking asset. Validators will earn fees for answering queries.

CQT is a network access token that fulfills data queries for users of the API.

Developer resources include:

Covalent Knowledge Base for extensive guides on how to use the Covalent API. 

Covalent API Documentation.

Covalent

Secret (SCRT) is a privacy-oriented blockchain built on Cosmos. Its smart contracts are called Secret Contracts and allow DApps to use private data on Secret, similar to how smart contracts operate on other blockchains. However, Secret Contracts transfer encrypted inputs into encrypted outputs without exposing data. This is made possible thanks to the encrypted contract states during the execution.

Data privacy is guaranteed by combining encryption protocols and key management within a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). This allows Secret Contracts to compete for several privacy-related use cases that traditional blockchains have found difficult to accommodate. For instance, private voting mechanisms or credit scoring applications become possible since they do not expose sensitive user data on-chain with Secret.