Wait, DeFi Exists Outside of Ethereum?
I know you feel it too. The catalyst. The spark.
The Cambrian explosion of blockchains and obscure cryptographically secure assets ever evolving into the intricate, symbiotic digital ecosystem of a new reality.
It’s a financial titan in its infancy. It’s an escape hatch out of the tyrannical, parasitic monetary dystopia of the current reality. Ferrum Network and Thorchain are two projects pushing the boundaries of what interoperability protocols can do.
Ferrum Network is a vertically integrated financial suite whose origin reveals itself in Africa, providing the power of decentralization to the historically unbanked continent. Emerging markets worldwide can reap the astounding benefit of early crypto adoption here. It’s a peer to peer bridge between multiple blockchains, providing users with high speed transfer of funds without a third party intermediary.
A bit about Ferrum Network: FRM is used as gas to power the network. It’s DAG based (Directed Acyclic Graph) code will allow for scaling by an order of magnitude greater than what most crypto users experience today. FRM is burned as the transactions are processed to regulate supply of the currency. There are approximately 131 million currently in circulation. Max supply is listed at 331 million. Ferrum's market cap is approximately $3.4 million. The network is capable of supporting virtually every type of cryptocurrency through proxy token generation.
The arms of the Ferrum Network are as follows:
-FIRST KUDI is a fiat debit card on-ramp and exchange working in tandem with a local crypto-friendly bank in Nigeria.
-INFINITY DEX will be a decentralized exchange capable of high frequency margin trading, live streaming via Twitch, giving AI based market driven predictions, and short selling.
-SUBZERO will be a "military-grade" cold storage wallet that works on any offline Android device.
- UniFyre is a non-custodial hot wallet. Its innovative link drop technology makes it possible to send crypto to both nocoiners and coiners alike with just a link. Link drop has the ability to facilitate mass adoption in this regard. The user will eventually be able to send BTC, ETH, GUSD, VRA, LINK, BNB and other crypto assets on social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, Whatsapp, SMS, email) in an instant.
Ferrum has partnered with US cryptocurrency giant Gemini Exchange to provide US stablecoin support on the platform.
"Africa doesn't need crypto, but crypto needs Africa." - Ian Friend, COO of Ferrum Network
Thorchain is a similar multi-layered cross-chain suite. It’s market cap is far larger than Ferrum at approximately $25 million. The available supply of RUNE is approximately 158 million coins. The max supply is 500,000,000. Thorchain is proof-of-stake based. This decentralized liquidity network will implement its bond node technology.
A bit about Thorchain: RUNE is used as fuel to power the protocol. Every node connected to the Thorchain protocol has addresses designated for every cryptocurrency it supports. Decisions on which currencies to support are made by liquidity providers. Upon value entering the network, all nodes will store records of the transaction. Upon value exiting, a select number of nodes are needed to approve the transaction. To secure the protocol, Thorchain will "kick out" nodes every 3 days thereby increasing efficiency and preventing hostile takeovers.
Where Ferrum maximizes the possibility of multiple non-finance based centralized entities knowing what you're holding in the UniFyre wallet via social media posts, Thorchain maximizes anonymity with what the team calls, "plausible deniability." Both have great staking incentive structures.
Ferrum users - and the rest of crypto enthusiasts for that matter - need to be okay with the notion of "formal disclosure of funds" if they mention it on social media. If not, they should probably have solid cybersecurity measures in place to avoid ending up in the cross hairs of possible future geopolitical and government-centric predicaments. Remember what you post on the internet is forever.
Critics within the crypto community may argue that the utilization of DAG protocols is more indicative of centralization than their blockchain counterparts. Further, DAG protocols tend to be less immutable. As we know, immutability is the foundation of the hardest of cryptocurrencies.
I see a bright future for both regardless.
