Author: coins520

DIAdata (DIA) describes itself as a project that provides “transparent oracles for a decentralized finance economy”. But what does this mean? To understand that we must first understand what an oracle actually is.

One drawback of current blockchain technology is its inability to access off chain data in a trustless manner. If you rely on ‘non-trustless’ data from some centralized data provider it creates a centralized point of failure in your contract. If the data provider acts maliciously and provides bad data the consequences can be catastrophic.

This is where oracles step in. They allow us to get access to off-chain data in a trustless and decentralized. Without oracles it is hard to see a future where decentralized finance is in actuality decentralized. They put the ‘De’ in ‘DeFi’.

But the competition among oracle projects is heating up. There is already some big players in the oracle realm such as Chainlink, Band Protocol, Tellor, among others. So can DIAdata compete?

In this review we will dive into the team behind DIAdata, how DIAdata works, the tech behind DIAdata, the value of the DIA token and more.

The DIAdata Team and Investors

The Team

There are 4 founders of DIAdata who come from a variety of backgrounds. Micheal Weber, Samuel Brack, Paul Claudius, and Carl Bruns.

Micheal Weber is President of DIAdata. Beginning his career as a data analyst he went on to work at various investment banks. In 2014 he also founded Bonsum & Goodcoin a blockchain powered loyalty solution. He is also the Co-Founder of bitEasy.

Sameul Brack is Technical Lead. Samuel is an expert in cryptocurrency and cybersecurity. He is currently pursuing his PhD in computer science along side working on DIAdata.

Paul Claudius is Lead Advocate. Paul started out his career with BNP Paribas and then AXA private equity. Paul has previously advised start ups in a variety of sectors such as health, tech, IOT, and e-commerce.

Carl Bruns is Communication Lead for DIAdata. Previosly working and advising several ventures in multiple industries. Before DIA he ran his own online marketing and PR agency.

The full team can be seen below.

DIA Investors

DIAdata is also backed by some noteworthy investors. TRG Capital being one who also backed cryptocurrency projects such as Polkadot, KAVA, and Zilliqa, among others.

How DIAdata Works

Now that we have a basic understanding of why we need oracles and how they allow us to get access to offchain data in a trustless we can into more depth on how DIAdata works.

The process behind DIAdata is explained concisely in their medium post.

Step 1 – Data Request: The first step in the process begins when a stakeholder publicly submits a data request that has not already been published on the DIA platform. For example if I want the price of Bitcoin for my smart contract I submit a data request to the DIAdata network. Along side my request I include my DIA tokens as a bounty to incentivize network users to fulfill my data request.

Step 2 – Data Submission: Incentivised by the data request and DIA tokens data providers create data scrapers, connect to API’s, or access blockchain data to fulfill the request.

Step 3 – Validation: Once the data has been submitted data analysts then verify the submitted code through a staking mechanism. If the data submitted appears to be wrong network users can challenge the submitted code through staking DIA tokens. Then the DIA community determines through a stake voting process who supplied the right solution and thus who will be rewarded with the stake in question.

Bounties for finding errors, manipulation attempts, and security flaws are paid out by the DIAdata association

Step 4 – Data Storage: Data that has been validated by the network is then stored in an open-source data base stored on the DIA platform.

Step 5 – Usage: Once the data has gone through all the steps listed data through oracles and APIs can be accessed free of charge. DIA tokens however are charged for accessing live prices or specific APIs

The Value of the DIA Token

Value is derived from the DIA token in a variety of ways. One of the major ways we have already discussed is that the token is used to make data requests. Developers who need data need first to hold DIA. However there are multiple other ways in which the DIA token gets its value.

Governance Issues – Holders of DIA tokens can vote on big issues that relate to the DIA association.

Validating Data – DIA tokens are staked to incentivize validating oracles, scrapers, and other data sources

Accessing live data streams and certain APIs – As we have already mentioned data that has been already validated and stored can be accessed free of charge. However, access to live data streams and APIs is purchased through DIA tokens.

The Use Case for DIAdata

The use case for DIAdata is similar to that of any other oracle project. Most of these use cases are built around products and technologies adjacent to decentralized finance. Everything from exchanges, lending, trading, insurance, derivatives, prediction markets, the list goes on and on.

The past few months have seen a huge increase in demand and interest in DeFi. Among many variables the one that may have the greatest impact on the success of DIAdata is the continued uptake of DeFi products.

Although DeFi is one major aspect of DIAdata it is not the only one. DIAdata could be used in traditional financial sectors. Dependency on reliable data is not exclusive to the cryptocurrency space. DIAdata has the potential to be used in data for traders and traditional financial institutions.

Trading DIAdata

Currently DIAdata is being traded on a variety of exchanges both centralized and decentralized. However the two most liquid and reputable exchanges are OKex, and BitMAX. If you buy 100$ of DIA on your first OKex purchase you will earn 10$ of Bitcoin for free.

Polkadot Network (DOT) is breaking into the blockchain world by looking at the current flaws and problems with blockchain and simply trying to fix them.

These problems are apparent to anyone who has ever used Bitcoin or Ethereum. The lack of blockchain interoperability, scalability and network speed, difficult to upgrade, and very poor governance systems to name a few.

Polkadot aims to fix these by bulidng a network that enables blockchains to communicate with each other, revolutionizing scalability enabling over 160,000 transactions a second, improving upgradeability, having a robust governance protocol, among many others.

But will Polkadot be able to achieve what it has set out to do? Or will it just be another small fish in a sea of chains?

In this review we will discuss the Polkadot Team, how Polkadot works, the technology behind Polkadot, the value of the Polkadot Token (DOT), and much more.

The Polkadot Team and Partnerships

The Founders

The three founding members of the Polkadot Network are very big names within the cryptocurrency space.

Robert Habermeier is a Thiel fellow with background in blockchain, distributed systems, and cryptography.

Dr. Gavin Wood was co-founder and CTO of Ethereum. Inventing crucial aspects of current blockchain technology such as Proof-of-Authority and Solidity. He is the current president of the Web3 Foundation.

Peter Czaban is current technology director of the Web3 Foundation previously working in defense, finance, and data analytics industries specialising in a variety of blockchain technology.

The Developers

The Polkadot Network is being developed by 5 seperate development teams in every corner of the world.

4 of these teams are Parity technologies based out of London and Berlin. Chainsafe based out of Toronto, Soramitsu based out of Tokyo, and community driven PolkadotJS.

The Web3 foundation commissions these teams as well as over 100 individual developers to work on building the Polkadot Network.

Whos Building on Polkadot

Some of the biggest projects in crypto are already developing on the Polkadot Network. These include Chainlink, District0x, ChainX, iExec, Acala, Ocean Protocol, among many others.

Trading Polkadot

The 2 most reputable and liquid exchange Polkadot is currently being traded on are Huobi, OKex, and FTX. If you buy 100$ of DOT on your first OKex purchase you will recieve 10$ of BTC free.

How the Polkadot Network Works

Network Architecture

The Polkadot network has a variety of key components that ensure that it runs securely, effeciently, and does what it sets out to do.

At the base of the Polkadot network is what is known as the Relay Chain. This is foundation of the Network from which all else is built. It is responsible for network security, consensus, and cross-chain interoperability.

Built off of the Relay Chains are Parachains. These Parachains are their own sovereign blockchains which can have their own token and can optimize themselves for specific use cases. These Parachains pay to connect to the Relay Chain.

The relationship between the Relay Chain and Parachains is similar to that of the relationship between Ethereum and an ERC-20 token. Except on Polkadot parachains are much more powerful, and have autonomy over their own chain.

Within the Network Architecture there is also Bridges. Bridges allow parachains to connect with external networks such as Ethereum.

See the diagram below for a visual breakdown of how the whole of the Polkadot Network works

Consensus Roles

There is also 4 roles within the Polkadot Network that ensure security and consensus. Validators, Collators, Nominators, and Fishermen.

Validators secure the relay chain by staking DOT, validating proofs from Collators, and participating in consensus with other validators.

Collators maintain parachains by collections parachain transactions from users and then producing proofs for validators.

Nominators secure the Relay Chain by selecting trustworthy validators and staking DOTs

Finally Fishermen monitor the network and report bad behavior to to validators.

See the diagram below for a visual breakdown of the process.

The Tech Behind Polkadot Network

Scalability

Polkadot is much more scalable than previous blockchains. Polkadot bridges multiple specialized chains together enabling multiple transactions to be processed in parrallel. Current estimates suggest that Polkadot can process over 160,000 transactions per second (TPS) this compares with Ethereum’s 23 TPS and Bitcoin’s 7 TPS

Substrate

One of the major reasons for Ethereum’s success was how easy it made it to deploy your own project or ICO. You can create your own ERC-20 token in a matter of minutes.

Substrate is again an improvement on this. Substrate allows you to build your own blockchain from scratch using already good to go pallets.

If you’re a developer who wants to build a DeFi theres pallets for that, if you want a DAO theres a pallet for that, if you want a pallet for a game theres probably something for that too.

Not only do they make building a blockchain a lot easier but it is also natively supported with Polkadot.

Upgradeability

Upgrading an app on your phone is a very simple process which is often done automatically. A developer pushes an app update to the app store and then it is downloaded to your phone automatically or manually. You barely even notice what has happened.

With blockchains it is unfortunately not as easy. Upgrading a chain on older technologies typically require a network fork which can be a headache for a lot of parties. These upgrades can also cause contention and arguments within communities ultimately leading to splits. We seen this with most notably with Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash

Polkadot changes this by enabling chains to upgrade themselves without needing to fork chains. Removing the headache of hard forking and reduces the risk of hard forks over network disagreements.

Interoperability

With the use of Bridges which we discussed earliers Polkadot will enable cross-blockchain transfers of any type of data or asset.

The Value of the Polkadot (DOT) Token

The Value of the DOT Token comes in three ways. Governance, Staking, and Bonding.

Governance is a common value derived from newer tokens in the blockchain space. DOT coins will enable users to have complete control over the protocol. These include protocol upgrades, fixes, among many others.

Staking will enable users to stake their DOT coins. Staking creates a mechanism wherein behavior which is beneficial to the chain is rewarded while detrimental behavior is punished.

Bonding, this is the process by which new Parachains are added to the network. In order to add a Parachain for your company, dapp, or token you must first bond your DOT.

The Use Case for Polkadot

The potential use case for Polkadot is seemingly infinite. If we imagine the current use case of Ethereum and multiply it by a factor of 10 or 20 we may not even be close to its full potential.

If Polkadot is sucessful in what they are doing Polkadot may be used in thousands of applications, companies, and governments. With the abilty to handle up to 160,000 TPS the potential for mainstream business use is there.

And that is without considering the potential for Polkadot to interact and cooperate with other chains and networks.

Cryptocurrency DIA is an open-source oracle platform based around providing for DeFi applications, and protocols. Launching on the 3rd of August this month it has worked its way up to a price of $2.82 at the time of writing.

Previously being traded on Uniswap, a handful of smaller decentralized and centralized exchanges and recently Poloniex. After being teased via the official DIA Twitter account Today it was announced that DIA would be listed on both KuCoin and BitMAX.

Trading will begin for DIA on KuCoin on August 18th at 5AM CET. DIA will be tradeable against both BTC and USDT.

While on BitMAX trading will begin at 5AM CET and will be tradeable against USDT

BitMAX and KuCoin are so far the largest exchange to launch DIA with the announcements for both listings being only 5 hours apart.

After the KuCoin announcement price rallied from $2.67 to just shy of $3 with price now retracing slightly to $2.82

July was another big month for cryptocurrency trading. Bitcoin rose from its previous months slumber breaking sharply above 10000$ and DeFi had another month of craziness.

It was also a big month for cryptocurrency exchanges as revealed by CryptoCompare’s monthly exchange review. One of the most noteworthy events highlighted is the continued trend of increase in derivatives trading as a percentage of overall cryptocurrency trading.

In June of 2020 derivatives trading represented 38% of overall trading. In July that was 41%. This percentage increase came as overall spot volumes fell 0.5% to just shy of $640 billion while overall derivatives volumes rose 13.2% to $445 billion.

On the 27th of July derivatives also made a new all time high for trading in a day with $46.91 billion being traded in 24 hours. The top 4 exchanges Huobi, Binance, OKEx, and BitMEX represented 90% of this days trading volume.

Some other noteworthy points made in CryptoCompare’s report are the new all time high in options trading on Deribit which recorded new highs in terms of Bitcoin options trading within a single day and over the month.

The new daily trading record tripled the previous one coming in at a new high of $585 million while the new monthly high was set at $4.07 billion surpassing the previous high of $3.06 billion.

What was also interestingly outlined in the report is that in the same time period options trading on the CME dropped 70.3%.

Founded in 2015, Deribit is a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange which offers perpetual swaps, futures contracts, and most notably cryptocurrency options. Today it has announced a record day in terms of options trading volume.

On the 27th of July Deribit announced that it had traded over 50000 Bitcoin options contracts with a dollar value exceeding $527 million. What is also noteworthy is that open interest (the amount of outstanding contracts) also reached a new all time high with a notational value of $1.5 billion.

Deribit – BTC Options Volume

Not only did Bitcoin options trading break records but so did Ethereum trading. With a new open interest record of 885,000 contracts equivalent to $281 million.

These new records in trading volume come off the back of an increase in market volatility as it appears that the stagnant market volatility that characterized the market in previous month has dissipated as both Ethereum and Bitcoin push towards new local highs.

This new options record can give us insight into two things: Deribits dominance of the options market, and the continuing demand for more advanced cryptocurrency derivatives like those found on Deribit.

When we look at the share of total options trading volume we can see that Deribit is miles ahead of the competition.

Bitcoin Options Volume Among top Exchanges

As you can see from the chart above Deribit made up more than 88% of the trading volume. Beating out every other exchange significantly. Including traditional financial giants such as CME.

This new trading record also shows the increase in demand for more complex trading instruments. Your trading product does not do over $527 million in volume by accident it shows true demand. And it seems at the moment that Deribit is the platform to meet said demand.

One of the major pitfalls of blockchain technology is the inability for blockchains to access off chain data in a trustless manner. This is called the ‘Oracle Problem’ and is what Tellor (TRB) and a handful of other blockchain projects are attempting to solve.

Solving the Oracle Problem is essential to creating true trustless and decentralized DeFi platforms. Currently many DeFi platforms rely on 3rd party data providers creating a centralized point of failure. If the data provided is inaccurate with malicious intent or not the consequences can be huge for these platforms.

Alongside Tellor in trying to solve the Oracle Problem are a number of well known projects. Such as Chainlink, Band Protocol, and others. But can Tellor compete?

In this article we will dive into the Tellor team, how Tellor works, the tech behind Tellor, the value of the Tellor token and more.

The Tellor Team

Tellors executive team hails primarily from an economics and business based background.

CEO of Tellor Brenda Loya, studied economics and was previously a supervisor with the U.S government.

CTO of Tellor Nicholas Fett, also studied economics and formerly worked for the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) a regulatory body over looking U.S derivatives market. He now spends most of his time writing the code that shapes the Tellor project.

CSO Micheal Zemrose, comes from a business development background and worked as a small business consultant.

All 3 of them founded Tellor while making a previous project called Daxia. Daxia focused on creating open source software for Ethereum based derivatives contracts. They needed an oracle for Daxia and so Tellor was founded.

Tellor since October 2019 has been been invested and incubated by Maker, Binance Labs, and Consensys Grants.

How Tellor Works

To understand how Tellor works we must first understand what an oracle actually is. Blockchains by design are exist in their own silo living independently from other networks and blockchains. This is perhaps good for security but makes it incredibly different for blockchain applications to use real world data. This is what oracles aim to solve by allowing real world data be brought on to blockchains in a trustless manner.

Lets imagine a scenario where I am creating a trading platform on the Ethereum network. I want to let users bet on the price of Bitcoin, so for example if Bitcoin reaches 20000$ by the end of 2021 I will pay out 100 ETH. But how do I code the price of Bitcoin into an Ethereum contract?

Well you can’t there is no command you can use to pull the price of Bitcoin. You could use a 3rd party data provider but this completely removes the trustless and decentralized nature of your application. By using an offchain data provider you’re creating a single point of failure within your smart contract. If the data they provide you with is faulty your smart contract could be drained losing you thousands of dollars.

This is where Oracle comes in. The dictionary definition of an oracle is a “person who gives wise or authoritative decisions or opinions” and in the realm of smart contracts this is the same. Instead of going to the 3rd party data provider I can go to the Oracle and get data in a trustless and decentralized manner.

How the Oracle Works

Now that we have established the theory of what an oracle actually is how is it implemented in practice? The process is explained succinctly in the Tellor Whitepaper.

1. A user submits a query (data request) to the Oracle using TRB. This incentivizes miners to choose this query over others.
2. If other users want the same data they can tip the query to further incentivize selection by miners.
3. Every 10 minutes the oracle selects the best funded query and provides a new challenge for miners to solve.
4. Miners submit their PoW solution and off-chain data point to the oracle contract. The oracle contract sorts the values as they come in and as soon as 5 values are recieved the median value is selected and saved on-chain. Miners are then allocated their payout of TRB
5. Anyone holding TRB can dispute the validity of a mined value within 24 hours of it being mined. To do so the disputer has to pay a dispute fee. Tellor token holders then vote on the validity of the data. If the data is deemed to be false, the miner will lose their stake. If the values are correct the dispute fee is given to the miner.

The Tech Behind Tellor

The tech that secures Tellor is a hybrid Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) model. To begin mining on Tellor miners must first stake 1000 TRB. This acts as an incentive against malicious miners feeding bad data points. If after a network vote a miner has been found to have provided bad data their 1000 TRB is taken and their miner status is revoked. This process is carried out through the dispute process.

The interesting part of Tellor is that anyone who holds TRB can file a dispute with a data point. This encourages users to get involved but also ensures that data points are accurate. The lower the barrier to making a dispute the better it is for the network as a whole.

If however the miner works well and provides good data they will earn rewards, again in the form of TRB.

While many chains move away from the PoW model in favour of a PoS model Tellor is using a hybrid system. The reason Tellor outlines for using this system is to both prevent large miners from over running the network and to better align the incentives of data providers with the success of Tellor.

The Value of the Tellor Token

The Incentivisation structure for holding Tellor is multi-faceted. First and foremost is requesting or querying the network for off-chain data. This is the backbone of the network. In order to request data from Tellor you must first hold Tellor. This encourages developers of DeFi applications to buy Tellor in order to get the off-chain data they need in a trustless manner.

The second major incentive is miners. In order to be a miner on Tellor you must hold 1000 TRB. This encourages miners to buy TRB so they can earn future rewards down the line. If the price of TRB is to increase the number miners wanting to get involved will increase. Again driving up demand for TRB.

Demand for Tellor is also stimulated by the tipping system. If multiple users need the same data they can tip an existing query with TRB. This incentivises miners to select that query.

Finally to use the dispute system users must also hold TRB.

One of the major pitfalls of blockchain technology is the inability for blockchains to access off chain data in a trustless manner. This is called the ‘Oracle Problem’ and is what Tellor (TRB) and a handful of other blockchain projects are attempting to solve.

Solving the Oracle Problem is essential to creating true trustless and decentralized DeFi platforms. Currently many DeFi platforms rely on 3rd party data providers creating a centralized point of failure. If the data provided is inaccurate with malicious intent or not the consequences can be huge for these platforms.

Alongside Tellor in trying to solve the Oracle Problem are a number of well known projects. Such as Chainlink, Band Protocol, DIAdata and others. But can Tellor compete?

In this article we will dive into the Tellor team, how Tellor works, the tech behind Tellor, the value of the Tellor token and more.

The Tellor Team

Tellors executive team hails primarily from an economics and business based background.

CEO of Tellor Brenda Loya, studied economics and was previously a supervisor with the U.S government.

CTO of Tellor Nicholas Fett, also studied economics and formerly worked for the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) a regulatory body over looking U.S derivatives market. He now spends most of his time writing the code that shapes the Tellor project.

CSO Micheal Zemrose, comes from a business development background and worked as a small business consultant.

All 3 of them founded Tellor while making a previous project called Daxia. Daxia focused on creating open source software for Ethereum based derivatives contracts. They needed an oracle for Daxia and so Tellor was founded.

Tellor since October 2019 has been been invested and incubated by Maker, Binance Labs, and Consensys Grants.

Trading Tellor

Tellor is currently listed on a number of exchanges. Many of these however lack liquidity and are not very well established. And so we currently recommend trading Tellor on Huobi. If you purchase 100$ of Tellor on OKex you will earn 10$ in free Bitcoin.

How Tellor Works

To understand how Tellor works we must first understand what an oracle actually is. Blockchains by design are exist in their own silo living independently from other networks and blockchains. This is perhaps good for security but makes it incredibly different for blockchain applications to use real world data. This is what oracles aim to solve by allowing real world data be brought on to blockchains in a trustless manner.

Lets imagine a scenario where I am creating a trading platform on the Ethereum network. I want to let users bet on the price of Bitcoin, so for example if Bitcoin reaches 20000$ by the end of 2021 I will pay out 100 ETH. But how do I code the price of Bitcoin into an Ethereum contract?

Well you can’t there is no command you can use to pull the price of Bitcoin. You could use a 3rd party data provider but this completely removes the trustless and decentralized nature of your application. By using an offchain data provider you’re creating a single point of failure within your smart contract. If the data they provide you with is faulty your smart contract could be drained losing you thousands of dollars.

This is where Oracle comes in. The dictionary definition of an oracle is a “person who gives wise or authoritative decisions or opinions” and in the realm of smart contracts this is the same. Instead of going to the 3rd party data provider I can go to the Oracle and get data in a trustless and decentralized manner.

How the Oracle Works

Now that we have established the theory of what an oracle actually is how is it implemented in practice? The process is explained succinctly in the Tellor Whitepaper.

1. A user submits a query (data request) to the Oracle using TRB. This incentivizes miners to choose this query over others.
2. If other users want the same data they can tip the query to further incentivize selection by miners.
3. Every 10 minutes the oracle selects the best funded query and provides a new challenge for miners to solve.
4. Miners submit their PoW solution and off-chain data point to the oracle contract. The oracle contract sorts the values as they come in and as soon as 5 values are recieved the median value is selected and saved on-chain. Miners are then allocated their payout of TRB
5. Anyone holding TRB can dispute the validity of a mined value within 24 hours of it being mined. To do so the disputer has to pay a dispute fee. Tellor token holders then vote on the validity of the data. If the data is deemed to be false, the miner will lose their stake. If the values are correct the dispute fee is given to the miner.

The Tech Behind Tellor

The tech that secures Tellor is a hybrid Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) model. To begin mining on Tellor miners must first stake 1000 TRB. This acts as an incentive against malicious miners feeding bad data points. If after a network vote a miner has been found to have provided bad data their 1000 TRB is taken and their miner status is revoked. This process is carried out through the dispute process.

The interesting part of Tellor is that anyone who holds TRB can file a dispute with a data point. This encourages users to get involved but also ensures that data points are accurate. The lower the barrier to making a dispute the better it is for the network as a whole.

If however the miner works well and provides good data they will earn rewards, again in the form of TRB.

While many chains move away from the PoW model in favour of a PoS model Tellor is using a hybrid system. The reason Tellor outlines for using this system is to both prevent large miners from over running the network and to better align the incentives of data providers with the success of Tellor.

The Value of the Tellor Token

The Incentivisation structure for holding Tellor is multi-faceted. First and foremost is requesting or querying the network for off-chain data. This is the backbone of the network. In order to request data from Tellor you must first hold Tellor. This encourages developers of DeFi applications to buy Tellor in order to get the off-chain data they need in a trustless manner.

The second major incentive is miners. In order to be a miner on Tellor you must hold 1000 TRB. This encourages miners to buy TRB so they can earn future rewards down the line. If the price of TRB is to increase the number miners wanting to get involved will increase. Again driving up demand for TRB.

Demand for Tellor is also stimulated by the tipping system. If multiple users need the same data they can tip an existing query with TRB. This incentivises miners to select that query.

Finally to use the dispute system users must also hold TRB.

The Use Case for Tellor

The primary use case for Tellor comes in the form of DeFi and smart contract based products. What springs to mind to most people is financial information for exchanges. For example currency values. As we have already mentioned if I need the price of Bitcoin on Ethereum I can use Tellor.

Tellor also cites some other use cases. Crosschain data which can count the number of blocks on a non-ETH chain. Damage verification for insurance contracts, and lottery based applications.

Tellor in Comparison to the Competition

Tellor faces some steep competition in trying to tackle the oracle problem. This includes competitors such as giant Chainlink and Band Protocol among others. But what is differentiating these projects?

Tellor cites that each of these projects have different views when it comes to decentralization and trustlessness. Tellors primary proposition is complete decentralization and censorship resistance. While others sacrifice these for speed Tellor aims to build a network that anyone can participate in while still being a top quality oracle project.

Conclusion

The Oracle Problem is an incredibly complex problem to solve but an important one. Tellor has created a network that makes an excellent attempt at solving it.

Two things will determine the future of Tellor. Firstly is the continued need for Oracle solutions. If nobody needs to use Oracles why would anyone use Tellor? Secondly is competition. Tellor has taken a different philosophical point of view to its competitors by focusing on trustlessness and censorship resistance. What will determine whether Tellor will succeed is whether developers who need Oracle solutions will choose this over the speed and size of another network.

Founded and Launched in 2013, CoinMarketCap for many is their central hub for cryptocurrency data, price updates, altcoins, news, and more. Since its launch it has attracted hundreds of thousands of users with its homepage becoming strangely synonymous with the cryptocurrency space.

This year in May it was acquired by Binance Capital Mgmt for a sum that was estimated to be in the ballpark of $400 million. At that time CoinMarketCap was ranking at close to rank 550 on Alexa’s Traffic Statistics. Today that rank is 873.

What is also interesting about the decline is that at almost the same time that CoinMarketCap’s traffic began to fall another popular cryptocurrency hub CoinGecko began to rise.

If we look at the Alexa ranking graphs for both sites we can see the correlation between the two.

First up is CoinMarketCap. You can see in the past 90 days the decline in rank. Reaching a peak of 550 just under 90 days ago with todays rank being 873.

Next we have CoinGecko. Beginning the 90 day period at close to 8000 and now being ranked at 5132.

You could say that Alexa’s data is off however, similar trends can be found using Google Trends.

Search trends for ‘CoinMarketCap’ over 90 days have declined but with some short term spikes in interest

Search trends for ‘CoinGecko’ have steadily grown over the past 90 days.

What is also interesting that CoinGecko has began to out rank CoinMarketCap in search results for certain altcoin google searches. For example the search term ‘Swissborg’ below.

CoinMarketCap is still a huge site and still significantly outranks CoinGecko in terms of traffic. But may we be witnessing a move away from CoinMarketCap towards its competitiors?

The world of cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges has become incredibly crowded over the past 18 months. This increase in the amount exchanges has inevitably lead to an exponential increase in competition.

This has benefited traders who now have multiple avenues and platforms to trade with thousands of products. This however has made it increasingly difficult for new exchanges to get on the map and make a name for themselves.

Can CoinFLEX standout from the pack? In this review we hope to answer that question.

Review in Summary

In this review of CoinFLEX we will assess the exchange based on 4 key criteria. Safety, Security, and Regulation. Trading Fees. Markets and Standout Features, and finally Ease of Use. We will finish by giving our conclusion and score rating.

About CoinFLEX

Founded by Mark Lamb and Sudhu Arumugam, CoinFLEX launched in 2019. Mark has been in the cryptocurrency space since 2012 previously co-founding Coinfloor a UK based cryptocurrency exchange.

Sudhu has spent 20 years in various roles for banks and hedgefunds. Dealing with a variety of markets and trading products. From options, and stocks, to fixed income products.

Two other significant members of the team are Leslie Tam, Chief Strategy Officer. And James Cunningham, Chief Operating Officer. Leslie Tam previously worked at crypto giant Binance working on account coverage and OTC trading. He also previously worked in the traditional finance at Bank of America and Merill Lynch.

James Cunningham before joining CoinFLEX came from a quantitative and high frequency trading background. Working on UBS’ algorithmic trading desk and was a founding member of IVC Capital’s high frequncy trading hedge fund.

Safety, Security, and Regulation

Account Security

CoinFLEX has industry standard support for Google 2 factor authentication (2FA). 2FA enables users to add an additional barrier of protection. Ensuring that should an attacker have access to both your email and password they still would not be able to access your account funds.

Platform Security

In terms of platform security CoinFLEX discloses very little. This is done on purpose. CoinFLEX explicitly state on their security page that they purposely do not disclose the full extent of their security measures.

All CoinFLEX states is that they use multiple security systems and services to monitor potential exploits. These include hacking attempts, as well as denial of service attacks.

In terms of the teams track record it is strong. The team has over 7 years of experience in being a cryptocurrency custodian without a breach.

The custodian (who holds funds for CoinFLEX) for the exchange is Bitgo one of the major cryptocurrency custodians. Each Bitgo wallet also has $100 million in insurance coverage so there is some claw back should the worst ever happen.

KYC and AML

Because CoinFLEX does not deal with actual US Dollars its KYC and withdrawal restrictions are more lenient than other cryptocurrency trading platforms. Just by signing up to CoinFLEX users can withdraw up to 10000$ a day.

Users can then choose to complete KYC and withdraw over 10000$ a day. This can currently be done by emailing the CoinFLEX on-boarding team.

Regulation

CoinFLEX does not accept users from or residing in the United States of America.

CoinFLEX is registered under Liquidity Technologies Ltd incorporated in the Republic of Seychelles. This may be a red flag to some but is common practice among cryptocurrency exchanges. Cryptocurrency giant BitMEX is also registered in the Republic of Seychelles

In order to be a competitive exchange in the cryptocurrency space it is almost required that you register in jurisdictions where financial regulations are more lenient. Jurisdictions such as the EU and the USA make operating a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange almost impossible.

CoinFLEX Trading Fees

In terms of trading fees CoinFLEX is very competitive and beats out some of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges. CoinFLEX also its own exchange token FLEX. Holders of this token can get cheaper fees based on the amount of FLEX they hold. But even without holding any FLEX CoinFLEX’s fees are very cheap.

Deposit and Withdrawal Fees

CoinFLEX does not charge fees on deposits or withdrawals. Withdrawing or depositing coins will only incur network fees.

CoinFLEX Fees in Comparison to the Competition

We have made the statement that CoinFLEX’s fees are very competitive. Well how competitive you may ask. The tables below shows CoinFLEX’s fees in comparison to 3 top cryptocurrency exchanges. BitMEX, Binance, and FTX. Each exchange has their own fee structures based on trading volume and whether you hold their token or not so we are assuming the lowest fee level and holding 0 exchange tokens.

Out of these major exchanges CoinFLEX comes out significantly better. The only exchange that comes close in terms of fees is BitMEX and CoinFLEX still has a 0.015% cheaper taker fee.

Markets and Standout Features

Trading Pairs on CoinFLEX

CoinFLEX has what you would expect from an exchange in its infancy in terms of trading pairs. Currently there are 14 markets on CoinFLEX. Perpetual swaps, spot markets, futures, spread markets, and repo markets for a combination of BTC, ETH, USDT, and FLEX.

CoinFLEX’s Repo Markets

Repo markets in traditional finance are a form of short term borrowing. They are typically used to increase short term liquidity. Repo markets are often used by central banks to control the supply of money within an economy.

Repo markets work something like as follows: Seller A holds 100,000 government bonds valued at 1$ each. Seller A needs some short term liquidity. So he sells these bonds for 100,000$ to Buyer B. 24 hours later Seller A buys his bonds back for 100,500$. The additional 500$ on top of his 100,000$ payment represents the overnight interest rate. In this scenario both parties win. Seller A got the short term liquidity he needed and Buyer B earned 500$ on his spare cash.

CoinFLEX’s Bitcoin Repo works in a similar fashion. If you buy you are willing to supply your dollars for a Bitcoin. If you sell you are wanting dollars for your Bitcoin.

Buyer A has spare dollars sitting on CoinFLEX so he decides to buy 1BTC (10000$) on the repo market. Here he will lend 10000$ to the seller and receive 1BTC. Seller B now has 10000$ in short term liquidity. After 24 hours pass Seller B will buy back his Bitcoin for 10010$. The additional ten dollars again representing the short term interest rate.

Spread Market

Spread markets like repo markets are popular in traditional finance. CoinFLEX’s spread market is however the first of its kind in the crypto space.

Spread trading is essentially trading the difference between the current price of Bitcoin and the future price. The formula for CoinFLEX’s spread market is as follows: [Quarterly futures price] – [Perp price]

Spread Market Specifications

To understand this we must have a basic grasp of futures trading. Futures contracts are agreements to buy and sell a particular asset at a predetermined date. So when you are trading a futures contract you are trading the future price rather than the current price. This leads to a discrepancy in price and is the basis of spread trading.

Spread trading is often an expression of market sentiment if investors expect Bitcoin to soar then the spread between the futures and spot will too. You can read further about futures trading strategy’s in our article on futures arbitrage, alternatively you can read CoinFLEX’s contract specification page.

Despite only launching recently CoinFLEX’s spread markets has seen huge volume. Doing over 100 million dollars in trade volume which goes to show trader interest in spread markets.

Trading Competitions

One feature that CoinFLEX is hoping that will onboard new users is trading competitions. CoinFLEX has done competitions based on a variety of rulesets. The most previous one involved using CoinFLEX’s new bracket orders. There is currently plans to allow users to run their own trading competitions.

CoinFLEX Trading Competitions

There is also official CoinFLEX competitions based around its spread market planned for the near future.

Liquidity on CoinFLEX

In terms of liquidity CoinFLEX is doing well for a newly revamped exchange. With data provided by Skew we can see how volume on CoinFLEX has progressed.

As you can see the launch of CoinFLEX’s spread market brought a big boost to volume noted by the large uptick after the 20th of July as we have mentioned bringing over $100 million in daily volume.

CoinFLEX’s perpetual contract market also has decent liquidity. Where CoinFLEX falls short is in its spot markets so traders may want to look to other avenues.

Ease of Use

In terms of ease of use CoinFLEX is what you would expect from a derivatives exchange. After you go through the process of creating an account and depositing funds the trading experience is like that of any other exchange.

In the top left hand corner you have a list of available markets. Below that you have all your market information. A price chart, depth chart, orderbook, and a order entry tab.

Down the bottom is where you can view your positions, active orders, and trade records. At the very right then is the contract details for the market you are trading.

Conclusion

Now that we have assessed CoinFLEX on all our key we can finally give our conclusion and final score

Even though CoinFLEX is just after completely revamping the exchange it is still bringing exciting new trading products to the cryptocurrency space. Its Repo and Spread markets are the first of its kind in the cryptocurrency space.

Trading fees are also some of the lowest we have seen. Being more competitive than some of the largest platforms despite not having the same economies of scale.

Creating an account is also clear and straightforward. The daily withdrawal limit of 10000$ a day without KYC is also significantly higher than than that of other derivatives exchanges such as FTX.

Liquidity is good for a newly revamped exchange. But on the more niche markets it is very low. The huge volume the newly launched spread market received is an encouraging sign but this needs to continue. What will determine CoinFLEX’s success going forward like every other exchange is their ability to onboard new users.

So can CoinFLEX standout from the pack? Yes, as long as it continues innovate, and in doing so attract new users.