[Gelato Network](https://gelato.network) is an all-in-one Ethereum Rollup as a Service Platform built without limits. Designed to be super-fast, incredibly secure, and infinitely scalable, Gelato rollups allow anyone to build and deploy their fully serviced Layer 2 chains on Arbitrum, Optimism and Polygon at a pace natively integrated with Web3's favorite tools and services like Etherscan, The Graph, Pyth, Layer Zero and many more launching a production-ready web3 development environment from the Genesis block.

Gelato

Trust Wallet

MetaMask

Gelato is web3’s decentralized backend empowering builders to create augmented smart contracts that are automated, gasless & off-chain aware.

Ethereum

Shiba Inu

Chainlink

Uniswap

UNUS SED LEO

Moon Tropica

MON Protocol

Sentinel Protocol

Cratos

SingularityDAO

Stronghold Token

Moss Coin

Polytrade

xMoney

tomi

Brainers

Digital Financial Exchange

Chainflip

EscoinToken

CAW(A Hunters Dream)

Maple

Alchemix

Centrifuge is a decentralized asset financing protocol. It connects decentralized finance (DeFi) with real-world assets (RWA) while trying to lower the cost of capital for small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) and provide investors with a stable source of income. The main goal of the project is to generate profits that are not tied to volatile crypto assets; the developers are pursuing the task of transferring real monetary value from fiat to cryptocurrencies.

Companies are using Centrifuge to access the liquidity that DeFi has to offer. They can tokenize real assets and use these tokens as collateral to access financing through Tinlake, a decentralized application (DApp) lending protocol. The Centrifuge blockchain is built on Polkadot (DOT) for speed and low fees, while its financial DApp Tinlake is built to access Ethereum (ETH) liquidity.

Centrifuge provides liquidity to everyone and investors receive income and rewards in the form of CFG tokens. Centrifuge links assets such as invoices, real estate and royalties with decentralized finance (DeFi). Additionally, borrowers benefit from the fact that they can finance their real assets without banks or other intermediaries.

Centrifuge

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

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

Axelar claims to deliver “secure cross-chain communication for Web3.” The project provides a decentralized network and tools to help builders of decentralized applications (dApps) with seamless cross-chain communication through its protocol suite, tools and APIs.

Axelar features three core components – a decentralized network, a software development kit of protocols and APIs, and a set of gateway smart contracts for cross-chain connectivity.

Powered by a decentralized network of validators, anyone can join the network, build on it, or use it. Apps builders can interact with a simple API atop a permissionless network that routes messages and ensures network security via proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism.

AXL is the native token of the Axelar network. The protocol also supports the cross-chain transfer of several native tokens via their wrapped ERC-20 versions, including AVAX (Avalanche), ETH (Ethereum), FTM (Fantom), GLMR (Moonbeam), and MATIC (Polygon).

Meanwhile, Axelar has raised capital from top-tier investors, including Binance, Coinbase Ventures, Dragonfly Capital, Polychain Capital and others.

Axelar

Router Protocol

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

Boba Network

Akash Network

Ultra is a publishing platform and ecosystem for video games and video game content. Ultra’s mission is to do away with the current monopoly held by publishing platforms like Steam and provide new opportunities to game developers, players, and influencers. Ultra promises a solution that is more equitable to players and developers alike. Players can benefit from immediately playable games, earn UOS by using the platform, and access platform-exclusive games. At the same time, developers benefit from access to more effective marketing tools and the potential for 20% higher sales revenue.

Besides content and game publishing, Ultra offers a demand-side and service-side platform for advertisers, the opportunity for players to resell their used games, and a platform-exclusive app.

Ultra

Metis is an Ethereum Layer-2 scaling solution aiming to solve the blockchain trilemma: that blockchains cannot be decentralized, secure, and scalable simultaneously. It also strives to solve Ethereum's biggest challenges: speed, cost and scalability.

Metis wants to help developers create and manage existing decentralized applications (dApps), while also supporting developers and entrepreneurs who want to build and launch new dApps. It also integrates the Decentralized Autonomous Company (DAC) framework into its Layer 2 infrastructure to help developers and businesses move from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0.

Metis

Smart contracts often struggle to access dependable data, but application programming interfaces (APIs) have been touted as a solution to this problem.

API3’s stated goal is to allow decentralized versions of APIs to be built, managed and monetized at scales. As blockchain technology plays an ever bigger role in the economy — from decentralized finance to supply chain management — the team behind this project says it has never been more important for smart contracts to provide “timely, reliable real-world data.”

The whitepaper for API3 was unveiled in September 2020 and set out the main problem that’s associated with APIs at present: connectivity. At present, there’s no way for smart contracts to establish a direct connection with APIs for the latest data — and this has led to an explosion in the popularity of oracles.

Although this has helped solve the problem to some extent, the industry has since been grappling with the “Blockchain Oracle Problem.” Oracles are a form of middleware that sit in between APIs and smart contracts — increasing costs and centralization. API3 intends to get around this problem by enabling API providers to operate their very own nodes.

API3’s token went live at the start of December following on from a token sale that generated tens of millions of dollars.

API3

GMX is a decentralized exchange (DEX) for trading perpetual cryptocurrency futures with up to 50X leverage on popular cryptocurrencies like BTC, ETH and more. The platform launched in September 2021 as Gambit Exchange. To date, GMX has a total trading volume of over $130B and 283K total users, making it the leading derivatives DEX on Arbitrum and Avalanche.

GMX runs on the Arbitrum and the Avalanche blockchain. These ecosystems are connected to the exchange via Synapse — a cross-chain bridge.

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

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

Web3's Decentralised Commerce Layer.
Sell physical things as redeemable NFTs, everywhere, online, in-game and in-verse.
We have solved the hard tech problems of tokenizing and twinning physical items, so you can focus on creating innovative Web3 commerce experiences for your customers.
Our no-code, low-cost tools make it easy to tokenize and sell physical products as NFTs everywhere, including your own Web3 store, the Metaverse, or on NFT marketplaces.
Redemption can be integrated into your own website, giving your brand full control of the customer experience.
With Boson, you can create phygital assets and token-gate purchases, allowing you to effortlessly develop engaging and rewarding digi-physical commerce experiences.
Buyers can redeem the NFT for the physical with the assurance that either they will receive the item or their money back- all without the need to trust intermediaries or sellers, just code and independent dispute resolvers.  Alternatively, Buyers can transfer, gift, trade or hold the NFT - just like any other NFT.
Boson is a groundbreaking technology recognized as a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. As a decentralized protocol, Boson is built for the benefit of and governed by its users. Consequently, Boson only charges a minimal 0.5% per transaction protocol fee.

Boson Protocol

Perpetual Protocol is a decentralized exchange (DEX) for futures on Ethereum and xDai. Traders can go long or short with up to 10X leverage on a growing number of assets like BTC, ETH, DOT, SNX, YFI and others. Trading is non-custodial, meaning traders always retain possession of their assets, and on-chain. Perpetual Protocol utilizes a virtual automated market maker (vAMM), which provides on-chain liquidity with predictable pricing set by constant product curves. Furthermore, Perpetual Protocol designed its vAMMs to be market-neutral and fully collateralized.

The declared vision of Perpetual Protocol is to create the world’s best, most accessible, and most secure decentralized derivatives trading platform. By building on our DeFi projects and allowing projects to build on Perpetual Protocol, the company embraces the “DeFi money lego” ethos. After hitting a number of milestones in its roadmap, such as launching staking pools and implementing limit and stop-orders, Perpetual Protocol plans to expand to other chains, introduce leveraged tokens, and launch dynamic liquidity in its pools.

Perpetual Protocol

Synapse (SYN) is an interoperability protocol designed for safely and securely sending arbitrary data between blockchains.

Its users can transfer and swap their assets across many different chains, including layer 1, layer 2 and sidechain ecosystems.

The project aims to improve inter-blockchain compatibility by helping its users move their assets between different networks more efficiently. In order to securely transfer its users' assets to and from different ecosystems, while maintaining slippage, liquidity pool balances, and transaction prices, Synapse uses a stableswap algorithm.

The Synapse ecosystem is made up of six parts: the Synapse Bridge technology, the cross-chain AMM, aggregative cross-chain communication, the SYN token, the Synapse Chain, and optimistic security approaches.

With Synapse’s generalized messaging system, any arbitrary data can be sent across chains in a secure and seamless way. Applications no longer have to be separately deployed across multiple blockchains; they can be deployed on a single chain and communicate with other chains to create the exact same user experience from one central application layer. Generic message passing also includes smart contract calls, enabling smart contracts on different chains to easily interoperate with one another.

Synapse Bridge allows users to seamlessly swap on-chain assets across 15+ EVM and non-EVM blockchains in a safe and secure manner. The bridge supports two types of bridging: Canonical Token Bridging — bridging of wrapped assets across chains; Liquidity-based Bridging — bridging of native assets across cross-chain stableswap pools.

Synapse Chain is an Ethereum-based optimistic rollup designed to serve as a sovereign execution environment for cross-chain use cases. Synapse Chain will offer developers a generalized smart contract interface for building natively cross-chain use cases by leveraging Synapse’s cross-chain messaging system. Applications built on Synapse Chain will be able to execute their business logic across any blockchain.

Synapse supports multiple EVM-compatible blockchains and is integrated with nearly 18 layer-1 and layer-2 chains, including Ethereum, Optimism, Arbitrum, Harmony, Avalanche, Polygon, Moonbeam, Fantom and BNB Chain.

Synapse

Biconomy is a multichain relayer protocol that aims to improve the user onboarding and transaction experience on decentralized applications (DApps). The project’s declared goal is to make web3 products as intuitive and easy to use as web2 products. Biconomy offers an infrastructure to solve several web3 bottlenecks:

Protocols can onboard users without paying gas fees.

Users can pay gas in an ERC-20 token of their choice.

Users avoid blockchain complexities like a change of network.

Transactions are confirmed much faster.

In short, Biconomy focuses on transaction management and gas optimization and can reduce gas costs by up to 40%. To achieve that, the protocol utilizes meta transactions, allowing users to submit a transaction with zero gas and having a third party pay for the transaction fees for the user. By providing a non-custodial and gas-efficient relayer infrastructure network, Biconomy is able to do this at scale.