The first large coinage of MakerDAO's "dai" stablecoin that uses a synthetic bitcoin occurred, underlining user demand for inter-blockchain assets on Ethereum's largest decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol.
The beginning of a trend for DeFi
The Crypto Nexo loan platform coined $ 4 million in data last week, using WBTC as collateral. WBTC, an ERC-20 token created from bitcoin deposits stored on BitGo's crypto-custody server, was approved as a support currency on the MakerDAO platform on May 3.
Launched in January 2019, WBTC's market capitalization is currently $ 21,7 million, according to DeFi Pulse. "This really demonstrates the latent demand for non-ETH resources," said MakerDAO founder Rune Christensen in a tweet, "and is the beginning of a broader DeFi trend that acts as an economic vacuum that will ultimately attract almost everything. the value of the ethereum blockchain. "
The addition of a bitcoin-related product is an important step in DeFi's leading protocol, which offers Maker lenders access to the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization with the further issue of data-based loans.
Attempts to add bitcoin to the protocol had already been made in the Maker community but had stopped following the collapse of the quotation by ether (ETH) of March 12. The community eventually added support for USD Coin (USDC), which largely alleviated dollar-related data issues in April.
A plan to pave the way for Bitcoin on Ethereum
Some DeFi developers also believed that moving bitcoins to Ethereum would be beneficial for everyone: DeFi users could gain exposure to bitcoin liquidity - like the dYdX derivatives platform - by taking advantage of Ethereum's transaction speeds.
And, as an older and larger DeFi protocol, adding bitcoin to Maker would pave the way for bitcoin on Ethereum in general. The data generated by the WBTC could be used for a variety of purposes, researcher Alex Svanevik said in a post on Medium last week, including lending interest data.
The initial coining of the WBTC took place on the CoinList token sales platform, with Nexo producing 999,6 WBTC on 11 May. These funds were then transferred to Maker-compatible Oasis in two 1 WBTC transactions - possibly as tests - and 997 WBTC, on May 13 and 20 respectively.
The $ 4 million stablecoin mint represents approximately 3% of the amount currently minted, but about 50% of the WBTC market capitalization, according to DeFi Pulse. WBTC isn't the only tokenized bitcoin competing for Maker space.
Keep tBTC was working on a list on the DeFi protocol before pausing operations after an error was detected in the protocol less than a week after its launch.
