DeFi Update — a weekly snapshot of the decentralized finance market.
TL;DR
- Ethereum’s bull run may only be starting.
- Polkadot’s DOT is also on a bullish trajectory.
- The price of Stacks’ STX has doubled in a day.
- The DeFi market also reached a new ATH.
DeFi metrics of the week
Ethereum’s bull run may only be starting
As the DeFi market surges above $52 billion in USD value locked on DeFi protocols, Ethereum — the platform that most of DeFi is built on — is growing too. ETH, the native asset of the Ethereum blockchain, has had a pretty wild week. Here is a quick breakdown of where the market is and where it may be heading:
- Today, ETH’s price has reached an all-time-high at $2,151, per OKCoin market data. After breaking the $2,000 resistance levels on Friday, it stayed above that level for the rest of the week.
- This move may follow the announcement from last week that Visa will allow USDC — a major stablecoin based on Ethereum — to be settled directly on its network.
- A look to the futures and options market shows the bull run may be only getting started. A lot of traders are indeed betting ETH’s price will break $3,000 by June.
- This bullish outlook could be linked to the anticipated EIP-1559 technical update, due to be implemented in July, which many anticipate will improve Ethereum’s fee system.
Polkadot is on a bullish trajectory
DOT is the native crypto asset of Polkadot, aka “the blockchain of blockchains” — a platform allowing transfers of data and assets between different blockchains, as well as the creation of new blockchains called parachains. Like ETH, DOT has been through a bullish week. Here are the top three things to know to help you understand what may come next:
- From $34 last week, DOT surged all the way to an all-time-high of $46 on Saturday and has remained above $42 since.
- On Wednesday, gaming-oriented blockchain platform Enjin announced that it had raised almost $19 million to move its blockchain to Polkadot, pushing the price from $34 to $37 in one day.
- Polkadot launched its mainnet in July 2020. Already, DOT has grown to oscillate between being the 4th and 6th largest cryptocurrency in the world by market capitalization. The Polkadot ecosystem is set to be fully live by the end of the year — with the launch of the parachains functionality — which could trigger the price to climb even higher than current levels.
Stacks doubled in a day
STX is the token of the Stacks 2.0 blockchain, which allows smart contracts to be built on top of Bitcoin.
On Monday, April 5, the price of STX went from $1.13 to as high as $2.70, marking yet another all-time-high for the asset. Since the launch of the new Stacks blockchain in January, the coin’s price has increased 575%.
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