FLX will have two different core functions:

- Lender of last resort: similar to other models such as the Maker protocol, the RAI system will have surplus and debt auctions. Debt auctions will autonomously mint and auction new FLX in case the system is underwater.

- Ungoverning the RAI system: once the vast majority of governance capabilities are completely removed from the system, the community will be able to decide on how, when and if to securely governance minimize any remaining components. FLX will facilitate further ungovernance and allow the community to take decisions on how to remove themselves from discretion over the protocol.

Reflexer Ungovernance Token

Trust Wallet

MetaMask

Ethereum

Shiba Inu

Chainlink

UNUS SED LEO

Uniswap

Safe Haven

VNX Gold

Woonkly Power

Monetha

Props Token

Rook

LOCGame

TrustVerse

Grape

Palette

4-CHAN

X2Y2

Pullix

Shib2.0

ARCS

Alchemix

Keep3rV1 is a decentralized platform designed to facilitate the coordination between projects that need to source outside development operations and those who can provide those required services. Essentially, the project serves as a job board that facilitates the interaction between job posters, such as decentralized finance protocols, and job executors, known as Keepers. The tasks performed by Keepers range from submitting and calling transactions on-chain to completing complex operations off-chain. Keep3rV1 uses an ERC-20 token, KP3R, for governance and to provide rewards to Keepers.

The project was first announced on Oct. 22, 2020. It launched on the Ethereum mainnet in beta mode on Oct. 28, 2020.

Keep3rV1

dHedge DAO

saffron.finance

Gnosis (GNO) builds decentralized infrastructure on Ethereum. Its mission has always been centered on experimentation and building decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem. When Gnosis was founded in 2015, it focused on building prediction markets to enable worldwide access to accurate information. While creating the prediction market platform, it became clear that Gnosis needed to build the infrastructure required to support it. Gnosis Safe, for example, was born of necessity.

Gnosis operates as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) which provides infrastructure for various types of decentralized applications (dApps), and builds products to transparently guide decisions on the development, support and governance of its ecosystem.

In November 2021, both the xDAI and GnosisDAO community voted to combine their vibrant ecosystems to create the Gnosis Chain: An Ethereum forerunner-companion that addresses scaling issues through solid engineering.

Gnosis

Convex Finance is a DeFi protocol that allows Curve liquidity providersto earn a share of trading fees on Curve without staking liquidity there. Instead, LPs can stake with Convex and receive boosted CRV and liquidity mining rewards. This provides CRV stakers with better capital efficiency and positions Convex Finance as an important player in the Curve wars.

Convex has entered a competitive race to obtain as much control as possible of the Curve Finance stablecoin exchange. The more CRV tokens a protocol has, the more influence it has over interest rates on Curve, which is the largest DEX in the world by TVL. Consequently, the “Curve wars” are an ongoing race for influence over what is probably the most important protocol in DeFi.

Convex Finance

Balancer is an automated market maker (AMM) that was developed on the Ethereum blockchain and launched in March 2020. It was able to raise a $3M seed round by Placeholder and Accomplice. Balancer protocol functions as a self-balancing weighted portfolio, price sensor and liquidity provider. It allows users to earn profits through its recently introduced token ($BAL) by contributing to customizable liquidity pools.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Balancer(https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-balancer.

The protocol operates a few types of pools:

Private pools give the owner governance over the pool, and make the person the sole contributor of liquidity to the pool. Also, all the parameters are mutable by the owner.

Shared pools are for those who want to become liquidity providers (LPs). The LPs are rewarded with the Balancer Pool Tokens (BPTs).

Smart pools are similar to private pools but are controlled by a smart contract. They also reward using BPTs and allow anyone to contribute liquidity to the pool.

Balancer

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

C.R.E.A.M Finance is a decentralized  DeFi lending protocol for individuals, institutions and protocols to access financial services. Part of the yearn.finance ecosystem, C.R.E.A.M. Finance is a permissionless, open source and blockchain agnostic protocol serving users on Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain Polygon and Fantom.

Users who are passively holding Ether or wBTC can deposit their assets on C.R.E.A.M. to earn yield, similar to a traditional savings account. For more information visit https://app.cream.finance/.

The C.R.E.A.M. Finance protocol was created as a Compound Finance fork.

C.R.E.A.M Finance is open-source, permissionless, blockchain-agnostic and offers yield farming rewards to its users in order to inclusively develop its network.

The project (which stands for Crypto Runs Everything Around Me) was launched unexpectedly on the Ethereum network on Aug. 3, 2020 through the YOLO liquidity pool. In September 2020 it went live on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC).

The CREAM token allows users to lend, borrow, stake assets and help govern the network, allowing them to vote on assets to support or delist.

Cream Finance

Ribbon uses financial engineering to create structured products that deliver sustainable yield. Ribbon's first product focuses on yield through automated options strategies. The protocol also allows developers to create arbitrary structured products through combining various DeFi derivatives.

Structured products are packaged financial instruments that use a combination of derivatives to achieve some specific risk-return objective, such as betting on volatility, enhancing yields or principal protection.

Theta Vault is a new product that automates a covered call strategy to earn high yield on ETH. The vault runs a covered call strategy and sells out of the money call options on a weekly basis for yield.

The primary risk for running this strategy is that depositors could potentially give up upside in exchange for guaranteed yield. By selling a call option, users are basically promising to sell the asset at the strike price, even if it goes above it (a.k.a selling early). Because of this, if the price of the asset moves up significantly in a short period of time, it is possible for depositors to have "negative yield" on their ETH.

However, this only happens if ETH/USD appreciates significantly, so depositors will still be up in USD terms. The vault also sells call options that are very out of the money, which means there is a relatively low chance of the options getting exercised.

Ribbon Finance

Founded in 2018, SuperRare is the leading curated marketplace for onchain art with more than US$300M in total sales and US$180M earned by artists. As one of the earliest champions of perpetual artist royalties, SuperRare is working to improve discovery while decentralising the art market. Core to SuperRare is $RARE, a token offering utility as a currency on the marketplace, a staking based reputation system, and DAO governance rights.

SuperRare is governed by $RARE token holders through RareDAO and sits atop Rare Protocol, an ecosystem focused on unifying the currently fragmented NFT landscape to supercharge the industry’s ability to revolutionise the economics of human creativity through onchain innovation.

SuperRare

Chrono.tech provides blockchain-based solutions for recruitment, HR and payment processes, reducing the barriers to accessing work and transferring funds securely in the global labor marketplace. The project’s suite of services - and native governance token TIME - are hosted on multiple blockchains and include LaborX.com, a peer-to-peer freelancer marketplace, TimeX.io, a Plasma-based cryptocurrency exchange; AUDT, an Australian dollar-backed stablecoin; and PaymentX, a crypto invoicing and payroll solution.

Chrono.tech

EOSDT

The Frax Protocol is the first fractional-algorithmic stablecoin system. Frax is open-source, permissionless, and entirely on-chain – currently implemented on Ethereum (with possible cross chain implementations in the future). The end goal of the Frax protocol is to provide a highly scalable, decentralized, algorithmic money in place of fixed-supply digital assets like BTC. The protocol incorporates the following concepts:

Fractional-Algorithmic – Frax is a unique stablecoin with parts of its supply backed by collateral and parts of the supply algorithmic. The ratio of collateralized and algorithmic depends on the market's pricing of the FRAX stablecoin. If FRAX is trading at above $1, the protocol decreases the collateral ratio. If FRAX is trading at under $1, the protocol increases the collateral ratio.

Decentralized & Governance-minimized – Community governed and emphasizing a highly autonomous, algorithmic approach with no active management.

Fully on-chain oracles – Frax v1 uses Uniswap (ETH, USDT, USDC time-weighted average prices) and Chainlink (USD price) oracles.

Two Tokens – FRAX is the stablecoin targeting a tight band around $1/coin. Frax Shares (FXS) is the governance token which accrues fees, seigniorage revenue, and excess collateral value.

Before Frax, stablecoins were divided into three different categories: fiat collateralized, overcollateralized with cryptocurrency, and algorithmic with no collateral. Frax is the first kind of decentralized stablecoin to classify itself as fractional-algorithmic ushering in the 4th and most unique category.

Frax Share

BarnBridge, founded in 2019, is a protocol for tokenizing risks. It was launched in September 2020. BarnBridge is a sort of decentralized finance (DeFi) lego for creating tradeable tokens that expose a consumer to market volatility. As of March 2021, the platform is still in an early stage of launch.

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

BarnBridge is a project that expands the functionality of DeFi to make it more flexible and efficient. By tokenizing market fluctuations and exposure to risks, it can reduce volatility for conservative investors or increase it for daytraders. BarnBridge enables traditional risk management tools and fixed income instruments on the DeFi market. The main focus is dividing cryptocurrency risks into tranches so market participants, depending on their risk profile, can invest in different products or assets.

BarnBridge

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

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

Gods Unchained is a free-to-play tactical card game that gives players true ownership of their in-game items. Led by the former game director of Magic The Gathering: Arena, the game focuses on competitive play, which means players must strategically outsmart their opponents by building decks that are able to combat a wide variety of tactics. In Gods Unchained players completely own their digital items, giving them the freedom to trade, sell and use their cards any way they like – just like owning real, tangible cards.

GODS is an ERC-20 token used as premium currency within the GU ecosystem. The tokens will be used to:

Create an NFT.

Used within the marketplace and for in-game purchases.

Distributed as a reward to players.

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

Gods Unchained

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.

Fei USD

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.