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This Week In DeFi – October 27

This Week In DeFi – October 27

dYdX has officially launched the alpha mainnet phase of its standalone Cosmos blockchain, marking a significant milestone for the project’s transition to the new network.

Alex Miguel
October 27, 2023

Happy Friday, DeFi readers!

This week…

dYdX officially launches appchain on Cosmos
Polygon launches POL token contracts on mainnet
Arbitrum announces “Orbit” program for mainnet L3’s
Infinex DEX holds governance token farming campaign

dYdX officially launches appchain on Cosmos

dYdX has officially launched the alpha mainnet phase of its standalone Cosmos blockchain, marking a significant milestone for the project’s transition to the new network.

Validators have created the genesis block for the dYdX chain, following an extensive testing process across multiple testnets. The alpha stage will focus on stress-testing the network and onboarding validators, with a beta launch and trading planned to open after a community vote.

The chain is built on the Cosmos SDK, tailored specifically to the project’s specific needs as dYdX attempts to create a user experience comparable to centralized derivatives platforms, but with maximum decentralization.

The dYdX Chain has officially launched 🎉
At 17:00 UTC today, dYdX Chain Validators created the Genesis block of the dYdX Chain
📢The dYdX Operations subDAO public front-end for bridging is set to go live on October 30, 2023 (subject to confirmation)
dydxopsdao.com/blog/dydx-chai…
— dYdX Ops subDAO (@dydx_ops_subdao)
5:05 PM • Oct 26, 2023

Polygon launches POL token contracts on mainnet

The smart contracts for Polygon’s POL token have been deployed on the Ethereum mainnet in preparation for Polygon's "2.0" plan, which involves replacing the MATIC token with POL.

The POL token is designed to serve as a universal token for all Polygon-based networks, including the main Polygon blockchain, the Polygon zkEVM network, and various supernets.

This upgrade from MATIC to POL can be executed by sending MATIC to an upgrade smart contract, which will automatically exchange it for the equivalent amount of POL.

The POL token upgrade is now live on Ethereum mainnet.
Polygon 2.0, released this summer, is a roadmap for scaling Ethereum to build the Value Layer of the Internet. POL unlocks that future.
POL is a next-generation token that can power a vast ecosystem of ZK-based L2 chains.… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
— Polygon (Labs) (@0xPolygonLabs)
11:01 AM • Oct 25, 2023

Arbitrum announces “Orbit” program for mainnet L3’s

The Arbitrum Foundation has announced that its "Orbit" program, which allows developers to create their own Layer-3 blockchains on top of Arbitrum, is now ready for mainnet.

Previously, these networks settled on an Arbitrum test network, but this move follows months of development, enabling them to settle on the main Arbitrum network.

Orbit is part of the foundation's efforts to decentralize Arbitrum, and it allows developers to create dedicated chains that settle on various Arbitrum Layer-2 chains.

After months of development, Arbitrum Orbit is mainnet-ready! 🪐
Permissionlessly build a customized chain using the most advanced scaling technology in the world.
Why Orbit? 🧵
— Arbitrum (💙,🧡) (@arbitrum)
4:00 PM • Oct 26, 2023

Infinex DEX holds governance token farming campaign

Synthetix-based decentralized derivatives exchange, Infinex, held a brief farming campaign for its governance token. Users of various existing exchanges were able to earn governance points during a short three-day window, based on their trading history.

The program aimed to engage the wider crypto trading community in the upcoming Infinex DAO, allowing users to influence the platform’s user experience.

Past users of Uniswap, Curve, Sushi, Binance, Bybit, MEXC and several other platforms were eligible to participate.

Governance Farming is CLOSED...
Thank you all for participating. To the final 40,000+ farmers, now stakeholders, welcome to the Infinex DAO⚔️
Council elections will commence Tuesday 24th of October at 3:00AM UTC and run for a week.
Join us on Discord👇
twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
— Infinex (@infinex_app)
3:00 AM • Oct 23, 2023

The rise of decentralized derivatives exchanges – is it over for centralized perp platforms?

Decentralized derivatives exchanges are making leaps in development and competition, as they look ready to outpace their popular centralized counterparts in terms of popularity and freedom in the next several years.

Although centralized perpetuals exchanges such as Binance Futures still trade significantly more volume than even their largest decentralized competitors, they are increasingly being forced to close their doors on customers from several geographical regions due to a stronger enforcement of regulations.

Whereas centralized platforms previously has a natural advantage due to their platform efficiency (and therefore user experience), decentralized platforms are catching up in their ability to provide a seamless trading experience that is rapidly approaching centralized exchange quality.

As dYdX solidifies its market share, and other large players such as Synthetix enter the space with its new Infinex platform, we may see a growing shift of users from centralized derivatives exchanges to decentralized ones.

The trading experience is not just limited to crypto derivatives, either, as Gains Network sees a surge in forex trading volume this week on the JPY/USD pair.

Throw in the possibility of taking a share in governance power and a piece of platform revenue, and the allure of decentralized perpetuals exchanges is beginning to look like a no-brainer.

The only major limitation is beginning to look like fiat currency gateways – but with such a large crypto-native population, will this begin to look irrelevant?