What is Penguin Finance (PEFI)?

Penguin Finance is a DeFi protocol that launched on April 1st, 2021. It was created as a solution to both the high-technicality requirements and exclusion due to high gas fees. 

Building an innovative set of decentralized applications, financial products, and documentation, the team aims to provide a smooth DeFi experience to its users. Currently, Penguin Finance offers yield-farming, staking, and the Emperor Penguin game to provide plenty of earning opportunities and utility to its native token, PEFI.

PEFI is the native utility token of the Penguin Finance ecosystem that is used for:

* Liquidity mining in the Igloos (yield-farming)
* Staking in the Penguin Nests (staking)
* Fee collection from the Penguin auto-compounder and Penguin Emperor dApps.
* Future governance in the Penguin DAO.

Native to the Avalanche Network, this DeFi protocol utilizes Avalanche's sub-second confirmation times, low fees and decentralization to reduce the barrier of entry for new and inexperienced users. 

What Makes Penguin Finance Unique?

Penguin Finance is one of the biggest DeFi protocols on the Avalanche Network. Due to its low gas fees, fast transaction speeds, and high levels of decentralization, it is increasingly attractive for DeFi users that are tired of paying thousands of dollars in fees for interacting with a dApp. 

The project has taken pride in ensuring that contracts are secure, audited, and rug-pull resistant. Code forked from existing popular protocols, and is also audited. The first audit for Penguin Finance was conducted on June 16, 2021 by CertiK. The user-interface of PeFi was forked from the PancakeSwap protocol, and the farming & staking dApps are forked from SushiSwap and Goose Finance. Penguin Finance is also building unique dApps such as the Emperor Penguin, which was made from scratch by the team.

Penguin Finance

Avalanche C-Chain

Avalanche

Coq Inu

Pangolin

MetaMUI

AVALOX

Islander

PLAYA3ULL GAMES

Bitcoin Avalanche Bridged

Kimbo

Wrapped AVAX

XANA

BENQI Liquid Staked AVAX

Nuklai

BENQI

Crabada

OpenBlox

Tether Avalanche Bridged

USD Coin Bridged

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.

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.

Established in July 2020, TrustSwap is a diverse Web3 ecosystem creating secure infrastructure for blockchain builders and communities. The TrustSwap Launchpad is a leading Launchpad and IDO service, achieving the #1 spot on Cryptorank in 2023 for All-time High Returns and Average Returns. TrustSwap has launched over 55 projects with a collective fundraising of over $70 million.

TrustSwap is also the parent company of The Crypto App and Team Finance, which offer a suite of multi-chain services including crypto portfolio tracking, token and liquidity locks, minting, staking, and vesting-as-a-service.

SWAP token is the key to accessing guaranteed allocations in top-tier IDOs via the TrustSwap Launchpad. Staking more SWAP tokens longer increases your SWAP Score and unlocks higher allocations as well as other perks for top stakers.

TrustSwap

Magic Internet Money

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRAKT Token

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

saffron.finance

RARI

Symmetric

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

My Neighbor Alice is a farming-themed play-to-earn builder game built on Chromia. The game bills itself as a place where “players can buy and own virtual islands, collect and build exciting items while also making new friends.” Each player has their own avatar representing them in the game, which they can modify as they please. Players can buy virtual real estate from Alice, the game’s eponymous central figure, or the internal marketplace. All purchased land is represented as an NFT.

My Neighbor Alice aims to introduce blockchain to millions of players and targets a diverse gaming community within the traditional gaming market. Although the game is blockchain-based and integrates DeFi features, it does not require prior knowledge of cryptocurrency and blockchain. My Neighbor Alice takes inspiration from several popular sources. For instance, daily in-game tasks and social aspects are inspired by Animal Crossing, whereas Minecraft serves as a role model for building mechanics. The artwork was inspired by the Swedish children’s book Pettson and Findus.

MyNeighborAlice

QuickSwap [Old]

Bifrost is a multichain middleware platform that enables developers to create Decentralized Applications (DApps) on top of multiple protocols. Not restrained to a single blockchain, Bifrost creates a new environment where developers can combine the best protocols to develop substantially more scalable and flexible DApps.

With Bifrost, developers can write smart contracts for multiple blockchain protocols in an unified environment. They simply select the target blockchain for each part of the code, then Bifrost will transpile, compile, and deploy the code into the target blockchains at once. Developers can also easily operate their DApps and even switch the target blockchain as new and better protocols become available.

Bifrost has multiple components that allow for a seamless connection among all blockchains:

Recipe: A language application that defines the programming language of Bifrost and generates smart contract codes with guaranteed code-level flexibility.

Linker: A system that connects the user and Bifrost components, ensuring the seamless operation on top of multiple blockchains.

Builder: An Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that offers a customized environment to use the comprehensive suite of features of Bifrost.

Gourmet: An automated testing environment for Bifrost service and smart contract development, updating with the latest technologies for blockchain.

Scan: A dashboard that provides you with a full view of the internal process of Bifrost and shows your blockchain interconnectivity in diagram.