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This Week In DeFi – January 20

This week, Shiba Inu announces its Layer-2 scaling platform Shibarium, SushiSwap will build a DEX aggregator, 1inch introduces a hardware wallet, and Swing rolls out a handy cross-chain developer kit.

January 20, 2023

To the DeFi community,

This week, the Shiba Inu team has announced the beta release of Shibarium, an Ethereum Layer-2 scaling network. 

Shibarium aims to minimize costs and increase transaction speeds through a Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) Layer-2 blockchain. Validators and delegators will stake their tokens to receive rewards in the form of BONE, a governance token for decentralized exchange ShibaSwap. A soon-to-be-launched TREAT token will also play a role in the ecosystem, yet to be revealed.

A new SHIB burning mechanism will also be implemented on the network, which will put deflationary pressure on the total SHIB supply.

 SushiSwap CEO Jared Grey has announced several planned updates to the platform in a new Medium post – including a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator, set to launch in Q1 of this year.

The updates are aimed at increasing the platform's market share by 10x in 2023, and follow after a Dec. 6 governance proposal that revealed that Sushi’s treasury only had one and a half years of runway left. Grey confirmed that measures have been taken to secure the platform's runway for multi-year operations. 

Additionally, Sushi is building a governance dashboard and focusing on user experience.

 DEX aggregator 1inch Network has introduced the 1inch Hardware Wallet, a proprietary hardware wallet that. 

The device is designed to be small, roughly the size of a bank card and comes with a 2.7-inch E-Ink grayscale touch display. The device is waterproof and has a damage-resistant Gorilla Glass 6 surface and a stainless-steel frame. 

The wallet also supports wireless charging and is designed to last for roughly two weeks of use. Additionally, the wallet replicates the design of the Apple product line and comes in five colors, with two limited editions.

 Decentralized cross-chain liquidity protocol Swing has rolls out a new widget and software developer kit (SDK) to simplify cross-chain crypto deployments.

The new widget and SDK support 21 Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible chains including Ethereum, BNB Chain, Arbitrum and Optimism – with plans to expand to cover four non-EVM networks like Solana and Cosmos. 

The technology is aimed at eliminating liquidity fragmentation, where liquidity is siloed across different blockchains and cannot easily flow between chains. The goal is to make it easier for developers to complete bridge integrations for their decentralized applications and make the process of cross-chain deployment easier.

Centralized news has finally taken a backseat to real DeFi development this week, as several projects announce new and exciting moves.

Competition is heating up again in the Ethereum Layer-2 scaling space, as Shiba Inu’s “Shibarium” enters the race, while Optimism takes the lead ahead of Arbitrum in transaction volume – possibly a symptom of users sick of waiting for an Arbitrum governance token.

SushiSwap is also adding a competitor to the decentralized exchange aggregator space, as it looks to renew its relevance in the DEX ecosystem. Although Sushi has lost some of its allure over the last year or so, sticking to its principles of sovereignty and autonomy may be a valuable feature as competitors such as Uniswap become more “compliant” and controlled.

The integration of blockchain into traditional finance also continues to develop, as Australian “Big 4” bank NAB launches its own stablecoin backed by the Australian dollar. This represents yet another solid confirmation that public blockchains can provide benefits to the existing financial system.

It's refreshing to see DeFi back in a building mindset, with less impact of market prices and centralized drama – let’s see what leaps the technology can make this time around.

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