The hype surrounding decentralized finance is sometimes credited with triggering a wider market rally in July, as new protocols began releasing tokens that were immediately posting gains of many times their initial value. Despite undeniable price growth, however, it is not immediately clear if the sector as a whole has grown, as reliable metrics to measure the fundamental performance of DeFi protocols are incredibly hard to come by. The projects lend themselves to fairly rigorous analysis methods, as they will often have well-defined revenues and expenses. But the rise of liquidity mining, or yield farming, is throwing the metrics off …

Santiment research has revealed that the top DeFi platforms in July in terms of development activity include Maker, Synthetix, Band Protocol, and Augur. But it also revealed that some of the platforms that saw the biggest gains in price or locked collateral recently did not have much developer activity comparatively including Compound, Aave, Balancer, and Yearn Finance. The report delved into the top ERC-20 projects (not exclusively DeFi projects) with the highest-recorded developer action using its own ranking system called Sanbase. It defines development activity as a demonstration of “month-to-month commitment in creating a working product, continuously polishing and upgrading …

The MakerDAO community approved and executed a vote on Thursday to almost double the total debt ceiling, which indicates how much Dai (DAI) can be minted by its users. An announcement by the Maker Foundation posted on July 29 details the specific proposal to raise the debt ceilings for Ether (ETH), USD Coin (USDC), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) and others. The vote passed at 8 a.m. UTC on July 30 and was executed at 10 p.m. UTC on the same day. Specifically, the proposal raised the debt ceiling for ETH by 80 million to 340 million total, which follows two similar …

MakerDAO (MKR), the foundational protocol of decentralized finance on Ethereum, hit a new all-time high in the total value locked in its vaults. According to data from Defipulse, the value of the collateral locked in MakerDAO vaults is now slightly above $1 billion following a steep ascent that began on July 22. Source: Defipulse.com Most of that growth is due to the powerful price rally of Ether (ETH), which is still the most used collateral asset for minting Dai (DAI). Since July 22, the amount of ETH locked in Maker rose by about 13%, while the U.S.-dollar value gained almost …

The price of the Compound Governance Token (COMP) has jumped by one-quarter on news of a surprise listing on leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance. COMP tokens began trading approximately one week ago, quickly making triple-figure gains and attracting millions in trade volume. Binance stated that it did not charge a listing fee for introducing the pairings. Binance now supports pairings between COMP and Bitcoin (BTC), Tether (USDT), Binance Coin (BNB), and BinanceUSD (BUSD). COMP spikes 25% in five minutes on Poloniex On June 25, Binance announced that it would list pairings for COMP one hour before they went live, spiking the …

The price of MakerDAO (MKR) has rallied by roughly 30% over the past 24 hours, posting a new year-to-date high above $720 on some exchanges. The rally follows a late May spike of up to roughly 45% on the heels of MKR’s second Coinbase Pro listing. The past day’s high saw the price top 100% gains in two weeks. MKR/USD on Bitfinex: TradingView When measured against Bitcoin (BTC), the rally saw Maker break above its upper-range for 2020 and spike to a local top of 0.076 BTC, before quickly retracing to 0.060 BTC. MKR is currently trying to establish support …