Notional is the first decentralized, Ethereum-based protocol for borrowing and lending at fixed rates and fixed terms. With variable rate lending, DeFi can only serve a small segment of the crypto lending market because variable interest rates don’t provide the certainty that lenders and borrowers require. Notional fixes this by creating a true market for lenders and borrowers that democratizes and empowers individual investors, business owners and institutional investors.

Right now, users can borrow or lend USDC & DAI for up to one year, and ETH & WBTC for up to six months from Notional's on-chain liquidity pools. With Notional's V2 upgrade, liquidity providers enjoy a low-touch experience, and no longer need to roll their debts to new maturities as it is done automatically through the use of nTokens, ERC20 tokens that represent a user's share of the liquidity pool. 

After raising a $10 million Series A in May 2021 from some of the top VC firms, including Coinbase Ventures, Notional’s protocol relaunched on 11/1 with a host of new features as well as the NOTE governance token.

Notional Finance

Trust Wallet

MetaMask

Notional is the leading fixed rate, fixed term borrowing and lending protocol on Ethereum with more than $650M in total fixed rate lending volume.

Ethereum

Shiba Inu

Chainlink

UNUS SED LEO

Uniswap

Maker

Quant

FLOKI

Wormhole

Ethena

The Graph

Pendle

Immutable

Pepe

Lido DAO

ether.fi Staked ETH

Olympus v2

Spectra Chain

Osaka Protocol

dHedge DAO

saffron.finance

GuildFi

Opium is a new platform for launching and trading cryptocurrency derivatives.

Having begun operations in May 2020, Opium uses Ethereum to run a decentralized derivatives marketplace in which any cryptocurrency owner can participate.

The aim of the platform is to democratize access to financial derivatives while using the benefits that decentralization affords traders over legacy alternatives.

Opium’s in-house token, OPIUM, launched in January 2021 and will fulfil various roles mostly centered around platform governance. Active users will be able to vote on some of the most important decisions involved in the platform’s operations.

Opium

Vega Protocol provides the derivatives scaling layer for Web3. It is a custom-built proof-of-stake blockchain, which makes it possible to trade derivatives on a decentralised network with comparable experience to using a centralised exchange.

VEGA is the network governance and staking token. It is used for:

Voting on the creation of new markets on the network

Running validator nodes on the network via staking VEGA tokens

Earning fees from traders through staking and delegation

Governing important network parameters which ensure markets are secure and fair

Vega Protocol

ThunderCore

Persistence One

Ampleforth is an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency with an algorithmically adjusted circulating supply. It is designed to be the base money of the new decentralized economy, by providing an asset that cannot be diluted by supply inflation and remains decoupled to the price action of other cryptocurrencies—and Bitcoin (BTC) in particular.

With Ampleforth, token holders own a fixed fraction of the total AMPL circulating supply, rather than a fixed number of tokens. When the protocol detects that the price of AMPL is too high, it increases the circulating supply, whereas the supply is decreased if the price is too low.

This change is propagated to all Ampleforth wallets, which have their wallet balance adjusted proportionally. Irrespective of this change, AMPL holders will still retain the same percentage of the token supply.

This automatic supply adjustment process is known as a “rebase” and occurs once each day, with a positive rebase if the price goes above $1.06, and a negative rebase if it is below $0.96. The overall goal of the system is to create incentives that drive the market price of AMPL back to ~$1.

Ampleforth

Radworks

MobileCoin (MOB) is a decentralized payment platform established in 2017 by MobileCoin Inc. However, the network went live only in December 2020. A privacy-focused cryptocurrency, MOB, was created to be used as digital cash on mobile. Secure and easy payments, along with fast and encrypted transactions, are claimed to protect personal data. The developers aspire to revolutionize the P2P payment system where transactions are stored on a blockchain ledger.

The project was designed to be integrated into messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, and Signal. How does it work: a user enters a PIN code to send or receive funds. No one but a sender/a receiver can check the details of transactions. Users can always recover their keys with a recovery PIN. Confidentiality is a priority, and the platform applies ring signatures to authenticate the ownership and use of digital assets. The benefits of the ecosystem also include security and speed of transactions, environmental friendliness, and intuitive optimization for mobile devices.

MobileCoin is open-source. Users have the option to verify the programming techniques.

In addition, MobileCoin is not only user-friendly but also planet-friendly, claiming to be one of the first negative carbon cryptocurrencies in its niche.

MobileCoin

OCP introduces an innovative relayer mechanism that seamlessly connects applications to a modular permissionless custody protocol. OCP operates a protocol that acts akin to a mesh network, enabling an end-user to leverage a diverse set of key management protocols. We call this “Keychain Aggregation”. Building a protocol that solves for Keychain Aggregation not only simplifies the way developers can build, abstracting risk and complexity, but it also harmonizes and aggregates the economics associated with having multiple bilateral commercial relationships.

With OCP, we have a new custody primitive that embraces (1) modularity, in connecting key management solutions, and (2) decentralisation, in the way users can access key generation and transaction signing services. We are particularly excited to pioneer this, witnessing existing security and custody solutions struggle to adapt to the ongoing proliferation of chains. Additionally, with the impending tokenization of Real World Assets (RWAs) - potentially mobilizing over trillions of dollars into the blockchain ecosystem - the demand for versatile and modular solutions is clear and present.

Open Custody Protocol

Rally

QuadrantProtocol

GSENetwork

Multichain (MULTI), previously known as Anyswap, claims to be the ultimate router for web3 and has positioned itself as an infrastructure developed for arbitrary cross-chain interactions.

As claimed in their official documentation, Multichain offers solutions that enable nearly all blockchains to interconnect – regardless if it is EVM chains (e.g., Avalanche), Layer 2 chains tied to Ethereum (like Polygon), Parachains networks like Moonbeam on Polkadot, and so on.

Multichain is a prominent name in the cross-chain space, with a rapidly growing network of 26 chains, with Total Value Locked (TVL) reaching highs of over $10.45 billion, and a sustained daily volume of over $100 million. However, the onset of the bear market and recent news of Multichain CEO being uncontactable saw TVL dropping to $1.38B.

Multichain

ShapeShift is a borderless, self-sovereign, cross-chain crypto trading platform and portfolio manager. The platform enables users to buy, sell, track, trade, and earn with 10,000+  assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Doge, THORCHain, and Cosmos across 15+ chains via mobile or web. Users can connect with over 150+ software or hardware wallets, including ShapeShift, MetaMask, WalletConnect, KeepKey, and Ledger. MetaMask users can install the ShapeShift Multichain Snap to add support for Bitcoin, Doge, THORChain, Cosmos, and more.

ShapeShift is a 100% self-custody platform, meaning users always control their keys. ShapeShift does not collect personally information and stands on the pillars of decentralization, privacy, and self-custody. The project’s governance and utility token, FOX, makes trading more competitively priced than going directly to DEXs through ShapeShift's bespoke aggregation.

ShapeShift was founded in 2014 as a privately held company based in Switzerland. However, in June 2021, the organization announced that it was becoming a fully decentralized project, open-sourcing all of its source code and turning ownership and governance over to the community of FOX Token holders. It’s founder, Bitcoin pioneer Erik Voorhees, stated this decentralized model “is the only way to maintain user sovereignty.”

Shapeshift FOX Token

Handshake is a decentralized permissionless system that is intended to incentivize a distributed network of computers to operate a system for domain name ownership.

Under Handshake, every peer is tasked with validating and managing the root DNS naming zone, with the objective of providing an alternative to current certificate authorities and naming systems.

Different participants across the internet such as social networking handles and domains rely on a centralized approach. This means the systems depend on a system of honesty — and are still prone to cyber attacks and fraud.

Handshake aims to eradicate this problem by creating a decentralized internet that relies on a peer-to-peer system.

Handshake

Fei protocol is a DeFi native algorithmic stablecoin. The aim of Fei is to propose a technological solution in a sweet spot between rigid overcollateralized decentralized stablecoin and centralised custodial stablecoins.

Fei Protocol runs on two crypto assets: FEI stablecoin and TRIBE governance token.

FEI is aimed to be a more capital efficient and fully decentralized stablecoin. The protocol uses the value it controls to maintain liquid secondary markets and earn yield for the protocol.

The project was founded in December 2020 and immediately attracted significant interest in the crypto community. It resulted in $19 million VC investment in early March 2021. Among the names that have entered this project are Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Coinbase Ventures, Nascent and Framework Ventures.

There were some issues with the peg in the original mechanism, but through a series of governance upgrades the protocol recovered in the months following launch.

Fei v2 intends to be a major upgrade for the system and will launch in late 2021. It features 1:1 redeemability for FEI against protocol reserves, TRIBE buybacks and backstop, and algorithmic protocol controlled value management.