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As Multichain Wobbles, Some Fantom-Based DeFi Projects Flee Bridged Tokens

The actions showcase how Multichain’s faltering infrastructure and AWOL CEO are sending shockwaves through Fantom, the blockchain most heavily dependent on Multichain’s bridges.

Takeaways

A handful of decentralized finance (DeFi) projects on the Fantom blockchain (FTM) began moving crypto to other networks this week out of fear that Multichain’s (MULTI) mounting bridging crisis could imperil their tokens’ value.

On Wednesday, the decentralized exchange (DEX) Beethoven X sent $300,000 in treasury stablecoins from Fantom to Ethereum; protocol builder Byte Masons did the same with ether (ETH) and USD coin (USDC) it used in trading pools. Earlier this week, DeFi yield farm Beefy sent $200,000 in tokens owned by Binance from Fantom to BSC at the request of the world’s largest exchange.

Disclosed on Discord servers, the actions showcase how Multichain’s faltering infrastructure and AWOL CEO are sending shockwaves through Fantom, the blockchain most heavily dependent on Multichain’s bridges for moving popular cryptocurrencies into and out of its on-chain economy.

For now, the moves appear precautionary: Multichain’s Fantom infrastructure worked fine at press time even as its routes to other, minor chains were failing. Michael Kong, the CEO of the Fantom Foundation, told CoinDesk the “Multichain bridge is fully operational and safe.”

But fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) is spreading fast. “The current FUD surrounding Multichain has severely impacted the entire Fantom ecosystem,” a contributor to the Mummy (MMY) exchange told their Discord community early Thursday, “and Mummy is not exempt from this wave.”

Multichain’s vital role at Fantom

The fears stem from Multichain’s importance to Fantom. Nearly 40% of cryptocurrencies on the Fantom network (excluding FTM itself) got there by way of Multichain’s Fantom bridges, according to quant trading firm Thanefield. If anything were to happen to that connection, those wrapped assets could de-peg and in the worst case get stranded.

A CoinDesk review of nine Discord servers for Fantom-based DeFi projects found community members and project leaders are growing increasingly concerned with the state of Multichain – the bridge-builder who can’t maintain its servers because its CEO has disappeared – and how its crisis could batter Fantom.

No one is talking about abandoning Fantom outright. On the contrary, the messages reviewed by CoinDesk showed that even those teams taking the most aggressive measures remain publicly committed to the ecosystem, a major outpost for DeFi traders. They’re looking to Fantom Foundation to broker new partnerships that would solve the current dependency on Multichain.

One surefire way to solve the crisis would be to bring a native form of the USDC stablecoin to Fantom, thereby eliminating the need for wrapped versions whose fates are dependent on the bridges who issue them. But that hasn’t happened yet, leaving Multichain’s bridged stablecoins (80% of stablecoins on Fantom are bridged in via Multichain, according to Thanefield) as the predominant trading pairs in the ecosystem.

Leaving Multichain-linked assets

Some protocols are moving away from Multichain-linked assets even now. The DEX Equalizer (EQUAL) has begun incentivizing traders toward USDC issued by bridge-builder Axelar over that of Multichain, the ecosystem’s predominant stablecoin.

The team building Hector (HEC) has told its community that stablecoin airlifts to other chains are on the table. At decentralized lending protocol Tarot (TAROT), the team said Thursday it is “reevaluating” its risk framework for integrating bridged stablecoins.

A depegging of USDC could spell trouble for derivatives protocols reliant on tokens meant to trade for $1 staying at that level, said GrapeHayz, a pseudonymous member of Equalizer’s Discord.

“I hope you can think about the domino effect if the bridged USDC token is not worth 1 dollar but maybe 60-70 cents,” he said in a Discord message invoking the fallout from Terra Luna’s collapse. “I don’t think we will get there but this is the elephant in the room.”

Beethoven X (BEETS), the decentralized exchange that’s already moved $300,000 in Fantom-based stablecoins to Ethereum, is now scrambling to further insulate itself from a potential breakdown of Multichain’s Fantom bridges. This morning its key contributors submitted an emergency governance proposal that would move $1 million in treasury-owned liquidity to other blockchains.

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MakerDAO Votes to Ditch $500M in Paxos Dollar Stablecoin From Reserve Assets

The result is a significant blow for Paxos as MakerDAO currently holds roughly half of USDP’s total supply.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol MakerDAO’s community has voted to ditch $500 million Paxos Dollar (USDP) stablecoin from its reserves, impacting half of the token’s supply.

Voters unanimously favored to decrease the debt ceiling for USDP to zero from $500 million, according to a vote concluded Thursday.

The decision has a significant impact on embattled stablecoin issuer Paxos, as Maker’s treasury holds roughly half of USDP’s $1 billion supply. This comes after New York state regulators forced the company in February to halt minting Binance USD (BUSD), another Paxos-helmed stablecoin. The market capitalization of BUSD has cratered to $5 billion from $16 billion since then, according to CoinGecko data.

MakerDAO, issuer of the $5 billion DAI stablecoin and one of the largest lending protocols in DeFi, is aiming to boost its revenues by investing its vast reserves in yield-generating strategies.

Gemini, issuer of the GUSD stablecoin, pays an incentive to MakerDAO for holding its stablecoin, while MakerDAO will soon earn a 2.6% yield on as much as $500 million of USDC from Coinbase Prime. The protocol also increasingly invests in real-world assets (RWA) such as tokenized short-term U.S. Treasury bonds via investment management firms.

The proposal for booting USDP argued that holding the stablecoin does not accrue revenues for MakerDAO, hurting its capital efficiency as the protocol prepares to hike rewards rate for its own stablecoin, DAI.

“While Paxos has raised the possibility of a marketing fee scheme, to date there has not been concrete progress towards implementing this,” per the proposal. “If marketing payments are eventually implemented, Maker would be able to increase USDP debt ceilings in response.”

Bitcoin Miners Gain Support From Texas With Two Bills Passed, One Halted

Two bills that seem to embrace mining have been sent to the governor, whereas one that would adversely affect miners was stopped at the committee stage.

Texas legislators are throwing their weight behind bitcoin mining with two bills passed in the latest legislative session that are signaling support for the industry — and one thwarted for the time being.

In the past few weeks, two bills — SB 1929 and HB 591 — that show support for miners have made it through the legislative stage and are awaiting Gov. Greg Abbott’s signature. If signed, they take effect on Sept. 1.

The bill SB 1929 requires miners whose energy capacity is larger than 75 megawatts (MW) to register with the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) of Texas as large loads operators, which then shares their data with the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the grid operator. The bill is in line with the March 2022 interim interconnection process formed by ERCOT’s Large Flexible Loads Taskforce, which is responsible for drafting policy to manage big electric loads such as bitcoin miners.

Meanwhile, HB 591 was sent to the governor on April 18, and will introduce tax exemptions from companies that put to use otherwise wasted gas, including data centers.

“These bills signal that Texas remains the jurisdiction of choice for bitcoin, blockchain, and digital assets,” said Lee Bratcher, president of local industry group Texas Blockchain Council (TBC).

The third bill, SB 1751 — dubbed by some the “anti bitcoin mining bill” and which would have capped the industry’s participation in cost-saving demand-response programs — was stopped at the committee stage. Demand-response programs are various schemes in which miners get power credits for curtailing their operations at times of peak energy demand.

State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, the bill’s lead sponsor did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment on this story.

“More miners in the [demand-response] program means more load can be reliably called on to help balance the grid,” said Dennis Porter, who leads another industry advocacy group, Satoshi Action Fund. “We are increasing communication with the PUC and ERCOT which will improve transparency and publicly available data on mining which ultimately is good for the industry,” he noted.

However, the opposition of SB 1751 isn’t what defeated it, said Jackie Sawicky, who has brought together hundreds of Texas residents in an activist group called Concerned Citizens of Navarro County. “The house just didn’t prioritize it and the session ended/ran out of time,” so the bill can be reintroduced in the next session, she said. The next session will start in January 2025.

Bill SB 1751 would have taken the threshold for registering with state grid authorities to 10 MW.

“Texas is setting a standard for how to adopt this new and innovative technology,” said Porter.

Texas innovation

Texas is one of the largest bitcoin mining hubs in the world due to cheap energy and friendly regulators. As policy on bitcoin mining at the federal level has lagged, the state, the largest by energy production in the U.S., is marching on with its own rules.

However, it’s not the only state that’s pro-mining. Legislation protecting mining was passed in Arkansas and Montana. Similar bills in Missouri and Mississippi have died.

By contrast, New York imposed a two-year moratorium on new fossil fuel-based bitcoin mines. Oregon is currently considering legislation that would require data centers, including miners, to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile, a 30% tax on bitcoin mining proposed by the Biden administration appears to have stalled. The tax didn’t make it into a bill on the debt ceiling, which passed on Wednesday. According to Rep. Warren Davidson, the tax will likely not return as part of the U.S. budget.

“With policy stagnation at the federal level, the states are stepping up to be the incubators of innovation,” TBC’s Bratcher said.

On Heels of First Losing Month of 2023, Bitcoin and Ether Flash Differing Signals.

While bitcoin appears positioned to trade flat, ether shows indications of being in an uptrend.

Bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) started June with losses after closing out their first losing months of 2023 in May. Despite similarities in performance, the CoinDesk Indices Trend Indicator for both assets implies differences in their near term direction.

While the Bitcoin Trend Indicator (BTI) is flashing a “neutral” signal, the Ether Trend Indicator (ETI) implies that token is in a “significant uptrend.”

The gauges are designed to convey the direction of price and strength of momentum for the assets. Daily signals are generated with BTC and ETH being associated with one of five distinct categories, ranging from “Significant Downtrend” to “Significant Uptrend”.

The methodology underpinning signal generation involves moving averages of different lengths, and the extent to which shorter duration averages cross above or below longer duration ones.

Ether’s trend is relatively young, having moved from neutral to significant uptrend three days ago. Bitcoin, meanwhile, flipped from downtrend to neutral just four days ago.

A longer look at ETH’s chart shows a general uptrend since November 2022 and a gain of 55% so far in 2023. Bitcoin’s 62% advance this year continues to outperform, but the gap has narrowed over the past month as bitcoin dipped nearly 8% in May while ether was roughly flat. That relative bitcoin weakness led to an 8.2% increase in the ETH/BTC ratio since April 30.

Ether bulls would also likely point to the 274,000 ETH contraction in supply since September, as an indication of value and beginning to show effect..

On-chain data suggests that investors remain bullish on ETH. The funding rate for ether futures has been positive since April 7, with the exception of just two days. Funding rates represent payments made between holders of perpetual futures contracts, and when funding rates are positive, it implies that investor sentiment is bullish; when negative, bearish..

Funding rates for bitcoin remain positive as well, a sign that bullish sentiment remains despite recent weakness in price.

For Financial Advisors, Real World Assets Could Be a Safe(r) Path to Crypto

Tokenized Real World Assets (RWA) are a potential avenue for financial advisors to approach the crypto sector while minimizing risk.

One of the most exciting use cases for blockchain technology is commonly referred to as Real World Assets, or RWA. Based on a report from Boston Consulting Group, the on-chain RWA market is expected to reach between $4 trillion and $16 trillion by 2030.

We spend so much time talking about the value of crypto assets like bitcoin and ETH, especially when it applies to financial advisors, but RWA can drive trillions of dollars in adoption, is touted by some of the biggest names in finance (JP Morgan, Citi, Boston Consulting Group, Blackstone) and will be extremely important for advisors to understand.

You’re reading Crypto for Advisors, CoinDesk’s weekly newsletter that unpacks digital assets for financial advisors. Subscribe here to get it every Thursday.

Are Real World Assets like crypto assets?

Most assets we talk about with regard to blockchain are chain-native assets like bitcoin, ETH, SOL, or UNI. This means they are native to a public blockchain and derive their value from the use or performance of a protocol.

For example, bitcoin is an incentive for miners to continue processing blocks on the Bitcoin blockchain, while ETH is used to pay for transactions on the Ethereum network.

When we talk about Real World Assets, we usually mean the integration of using on-chain databases to track the assets, with performance and valuation coming from outside the blockchain.

For example, I could have a token that represents equity in a real estate investment, or in a pool that lends money to entrepreneurs in the developing world. While the token is on a blockchain, the assets and payments are in the real world.

The Real World Asset tokens are simply representations of assets that are not necessarily blockchain-native, and are NOT volatile assets like we think of in crypto. These RWA tokens, like all cryptographic tokens, are programmable, so we can encode lockup periods, and accredited investor requirements.

Why use a blockchain?

Public blockchains are simply decentralized databases, good for storing information in an immutable manner. We currently store our data – money, private company equity, loans, financial records – in centralized databases with names like Google, Amazon, Chase, Schwab and your local county title database. Therefore, we have to ask permission every time we want to access that data, and the data from one silo doesn’t easily or natively work with data from another.

When we move that data onto a public blockchain, we can control it using a wallet, a self-custody technology that works hand in hand with blockchains. Once it’s there, we can take advantage of many of the benefits of public blockchains:

Why should advisors learn?

Clients are increasingly interested in alternative assets – private credit, real estate, collectibles. Often RWA tokens will represent some of these alternatives.

We already see private credit from Maple Finance and Goldfinch, as well as collectibles from Rally Road and 4K. For years, we haven’t seen many options for clients to find income in their portfolio. As interest rates have risen, many of the RWA options offer double-digit returns through interest, without the crypto volatility risk. They can make low-risk loans in markets where Traditional Finance can’t or won’t go, and keep the process efficient.

Advisors will need to understand the increased transparency and liquidity. Your clients may have the chance to sell half their real estate tokens after 12 months, and use that money to invest in a pool aimed at providing invoice factoring.

Advisors should also have a good knowledge of self-custody, and the efficiencies and security risks inherent to it, so they can help clients invest in these alternatives.

Additionally, the increase in activity around RWA will drive more use of the networks. For blockchains like Ethereum and Polygon, this may also trigger higher token prices since the native token – ETH or MATIC – is used to pay for the transactions.

The promise of blockchain technology has always been about increasing inclusion and efficiency through public databases. Unlike addressing native crypto assets, which can be volatile and subject to new regulations, Real World Assets on-chain are simply more efficient, transparent ways to denote what people are already comfortable investing in.

MakerDAO Paves Way for Additional $1.28B U.S. Treasury Purchase

The protocol’s community voted for onboarding a new real-world asset vault that would invest up to the additional amount in U.S. Treasury bonds.

The community governing MakerDAO, the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) behind stablecoin DAI, has paved the way to purchase up to an additional $1.28 billion in U.S. government bonds via crypto asset manager BlockTower Capital.

Voters unanimously favored opening a new real-world asset (RWA) vault named BlockTower Andromeda, according to a vote concluded on Thursday. The vault is dedicated to investing a maximum of $1.28 billion in short-dated U.S. Treasury bonds funded by Maker’s overcollateralized DAI stablecoin, according to the proposal.

Maker will pay a 0.15% arranger fee to BlockTower. Celadon Financial Group will act as a broker and Wedbush Securities will custody assets.

Maker has already purchased $1.1 billion of government and corporate bonds via a vault helmed by asset manager Monetalis Clysdale. It also made loans to banks such as Huntingdon Valley Bank and Societe Generale-Forge, the French banking giant’s crypto-focused subsidiary.

The latest decision fits into Maker’s ambitions to diversify reserve assets backing its $5 billion stablecoin DAI and boost protocol revenues by investing in yield-generating strategies. Maker earns a yield on storing $500 million USDC at Coinbase Prime, while Gemini pays rewards to Maker for holding Gemini Dollar (GUSD) among the reserve assets.

The platform’s investment plan also underscores the growing demand for traditional financial instruments among crypto native entities such as DAOs as a means to earn a stable yield on their treasury.

BlockTower already manages multiple Maker vaults, which currently invest some $90 million in structured credit products on blockchain-based credit protocol Centrifuge.

U.S. Commodities Agency May Change Risk Rules to Consider Crypto

The CFTC has proposed an overhaul of risk-management requirements, and one commissioner says it should factor in emerging crypto dangers.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has proposed an overhaul of its rules for risk management, and Commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero said the changes should insist firms prepare themselves for crypto volatility and the risks from holding customers’ digital assets.

The CFTC issued a proposal Thursday to invite comments on possible changes to the agency’s risk management program, and Romero said in a statement that “technologies like digital assets, artificial intelligence, and cloud services, also have emerged as areas that can carry significant risk.”

“These technological advancements, with their accompanying risks, necessitate the commission revisiting our regulatory oversight, including our risk management requirements,” Goldsmith Romero said. “Integration of digital assets with banks and brokers, and the risks that could be posed, could continue to evolve.”

She also flagged the ongoing issues regarding the industry’s custody practices, saying “brokers may explore holding customer property in the form of stablecoins or other digital assets that could result in unknown and unique risks.”

The CFTC will take public comments for 60 days on its “advance notice of proposed rulemaking” – the preliminary stage of a rule process that would have to be followed by a formal, proposed rule and then a vote on a final version.

Olive-Oil Producer Issues First Euro-Stablecoin-Denominated Bond on Obligate’s DeFi Platform

The debt sale was the first of its kind for the French sustainable agriculture business.

Lamar Olive Oil has issued an on-chain bond using Obligate in a first for the sustainable-agriculture industry, the Switzerland-based decentralized finance (DeFi) platform said Thursday.

The French company’s bond is the first issuance to be denominated in Membrane Finance’s EUROe, which the company says is the only EU-regulated crypto stablecoin.

The underwriting and structuring process, including credit evaluation and ongoing risk monitoring was conducted by Obligate’s credit rating partner Credora, the company said.

Obligate, which is built on the Polygon blockchain, helps small and medium-sized enterprises by providing a safe and transparent way of issuing, tracking and settling debt, and with the thresholds to issue bonds lowered, companies in developing and emerging markets can gain increased access to funding.

Smart contracts replace the role of the issuer and paying agent in the settlement layer of a traditional bond issuance.

Crypto Exchange Kraken’s Canada Customer Deposits Rose 25% After Binance Announced Departure

Kraken also saw a fivefold increase in app downloads within a week of OKX saying it was leaving the country back in March.

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is reaping the benefits of staying in Canada after rivals such as Binance and OKX said they plan to withdraw.

Kraken’s customer deposits in the country grew by 25% in the weeks following Binance’s announced departure in early May, and it saw a fivefold increase in downloads of its two mobile apps for Canadian clients within a week of OKX saying it planned to leave back in March. A Kraken representative shared the data with CoinDesk via email.

Canada tightened its regulatory framework for digital asset trading earlier this year, resulting in an exodus of some of the largest crypto exchanges. As well as Binance, the largest exchange by volume traded, and OKX, crypto firms Paxos, Blockchain.com and Deribit all announced their departures. The most recent leaver was Bybit, earlier this week.

Like Kraken, Nasdaq-listed exchange Coinbase (COIN) said it was happy to commit to Canada’s enhanced Pre-Registration Undertaking (PRU). When compared with the lack of clarity in the U.S., Coinbase went as far as saying it loved working with a regulator the firm could engage with.

Kraken has been in Canada for over 10 years, has more than 250 staff there and has been a money services business in the country since 2019, the firm’s managing director for Canada, Mark Greenberg, pointed out.

“I think the Canadian regulatory approach works for us,” Greenberg said in an interview with CoinDesk. “There are things we really liked about it; things we’ve been doing forever, like the focus on security on customer assets, for example. And then there are things we don’t like as much about it, such as some of the limits on trading and margin.”

One of the demanding new provisions for crypto exchanges set out by the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) earlier this year, is the requirement that firms hold a large proportion of client assets with a third-party custodian.

“We’ve all committed to using a third-party custodian as part of the commitments we’ve made, and I think we will continue to have that discussion with the regulators,” said Greenberg. “It’s one of those things where there are pros and cons, and I think the regulator is aware of the pros and cons and options around this. At the end of the day, what matters most for us is that our clients’ assets are safe and secure and not open for rug pulls or other types of things.”

Synthetix Community Approves Plan to Nudge Positions Off Soon-to-Shut Version One of Its Perpetuals Market

The market, which was replaced by a new version, has been in close-only mode for months, but about $150,000 remains on the original platform.

Community members of Synthetix, a liquidity and derivatives trading protocol built on Ethereum, approved a plan intended to get customer money still on the soon-to-shut version one (v1) of its perpetuals market moved over to version two (v2).

Though v1 has been winding down for the past three months, roughly $150,000 worth of positions remain outstanding. The approved plan will gradually increase the margin requirements on existing positions to eventually liquidate all remaining positions on v1.

The change highlights Synthetix’s focus on its v2 perpetuals markets, which had $22 million in volume over the past day, data from a dashboard created by the Synthetix community shows. Synthetix’s v2 perpetuals markets, which launched in December, increases capital efficiency and improves risk management for market liquidity providers, representing a “significant upgrade” from v1, according to a blog post.

The motivation behind the recent governance proposal was to shut down Synthetix’s v1 perpetuals market “in the least intrusive manner,” allowing users to close their positions with enough time, as stated in a Synthetix’s governance discussion forum.

The price of SNX, the native token for Synthetix, has increased 1.7% in the past 24 hours to $2.36, per CoinGecko, while data from DefiLlama shows that the total value locked for Synthetix stands at $417.7 million, a 2% increase since May 1.