Morpho (MORPHO) is an efficient Ethereum-based protocol revolutionizing decentralized lending with customizable peer-to-peer and pool-based solutions.

Liquidity pools have revolutionized decentralized lending and borrowing by offering a wide choice of product options and significant liquidity levels. For several years, protocols like 

 (COMP) have been lauded as true innovators that introduced a real game-changer: pool-based lending and borrowing. However, a closer look reveals that things aren’t as efficient and smooth as they may seem within the world of crypto lending. The problem is that lending pools on decentralized protocols often have mismatches between lenders and borrowers, with the former substantially outnumbering the latter. As a result, lenders earn only meager 

s, while borrowers pay exorbitant fees to access funds via these pools. Another critical problem is the lack of customizability in lending and borrowing products, with many protocols adopting a one-size-fits-all approach.

Morpho (MORPHO) is a decentralized protocol on 

 (ETH) that aims to improve the efficiency and flexibility of crypto lending and borrowing by offering a unique model that combines the elements of 

 (P2P) and pool-based matching of lenders and borrowers. To be precise, one of Morpho's essential products, Morpho Optimizers, specifically focuses on P2P matching, with pool-based lending and borrowing used as a fallback option. Morpho also offers users an excellent level of customization for creating new lending markets through its core protocol.

With its innovative lender-borrower matching mechanism and highly customizable and flexible markets, Morpho greatly improves capital allocation and transaction efficiency in the 

 (MORPHO) is an Ethereum-based decentralized lending protocol that offers a unique P2P order matching mechanism to improve the efficiency and affordability of 

 The platform also enables users to create efficient lending markets with highly customizable lending and borrowing parameters. Additionally, it offers a product, Morpho Vaults, for curated lending at varying risk levels.

, a France-based software development company founded in 2021 by Merlin Egalité and Paul Frambot. It's also supported by the nonprofit 

As its first major product, the project launched Morpho Optimizers on the Ethereum blockchain in 2022. Morpho Optimizers is designed as an add-on solution for lending pools on Aave and Compound to help match individual lenders and borrowers. The transacting parties can benefit from a more efficient lending process than with the default pool-based mode.

In January 2024, the project launched Morpho Blue, later rebranded to Morpho, a solution to help users create highly flexible lending markets with custom parameters and options. Morpho acts as the backbone of the Morpho ecosystem, and the project team has turned its focus to promoting and further developing this product. At the same time, Morpho Optimizers remains an integral part of the platform's core offering, albeit in a less prioritized state than Morpho.

The Morpho protocol consists of three main products — Morpho, Morpho Vaults (based on the underlying protocol) and the legacy Morpho Optimizers. Morpho allows users to create individual lending markets by specifying their preferred options for the following key attributes:

All these parameters are highly customizable, with minimal interference from the Morpho governance mechanism. Some parameters do have to conform to certain requirements; e.g., the IRM and LLTV must be from the list approved by the protocol's governance.

Morpho's high level of customizability is a significant departure from the typical model used on decentralized lending and borrowing platforms. On most other protocols, there are fixed parameters governing the lending and borrowing process; e.g., only certain collateral assets, lending assets or LLTV rates are allowed. In contrast, Morpho lets you customize all of these options, giving lending market creators an unmatched degree of freedom. The protocol offers the following key benefits to users, developers and market operators:

While Morpho is currently the platform's flagship product, the legacy Morpho Optimizers continues as a key offering in the platform's product line. Morpho Optimizers are add-on layers to the Aave and Compound lending pools. They can be used to facilitate a peer-to-peer match between lenders and borrowers. Since typical lending pools — including on platforms like Aave and Compound — are often heavily skewed with more lenders than borrowers, both parties end up paying excessive fees. Borrowers have to confront high costs due to the need to service the many lenders in the pool. In turn, lenders fight for the meager scraps left over from insufficient numbers of borrowers.

By using a P2P matching mechanism, Morpho Optimizers effectively takes the lender and borrower away from pool-based interaction and establishes a direct relationship between them. This allows users to borrow assets at cheaper rates, while also delivering better APYs for lenders. If either party withdraws from the direct lending relationship, both parties have the option to use the standard lending pools on Aave and Compound as a fallback.

The platform's third core product, Morpho Vaults (covered in more detail below) utilizes the underlying protocol and provides a way to lend through carefully curated market options at different risk profiles. This can suit lenders who are less proficient in using fully customized markets, but still prefer to take advantage of the lending opportunities offered by Morpho.

In order to create a custom lending market on Morpho, you need to have some technical proficiency and, preferably, knowledge of Solidity, the programming language that the protocol uses for its smart contracts. As noted earlier, developers can create a custom market by supplying five base parameters — a collateral asset, an asset offered for lending, an oracle, a preferred IRM and an LLTV. The first four of these normally require an Ethereum smart contract address to be specified. For the collateral and lending assets, these are the addresses for the tokens' contracts. The selected oracle is also usually established via a pointer to its smart contract address, although oracle-less hard-coded prices for the collateral and lent assets are acceptable. Morpho also maintains Ethereum addresses for each IRM whitelisted by the protocol's governance; developers can use these when choosing a preferred IRM.

The last value, LLTV, is a hard-coded figure that defines the threshold beyond which a loan becomes unhealthy due to its poor 

. Liquidators on Morpho are protocol actors who are incentivized to cover bad debts in return for collateral, similar to the method used on many other lending platforms. They’re allowed to liquidate up to 100% of the debt. In return, liquidators receive the debt's collateral, as well as an additional incentive for their work.

Since Morpho is an oracle-agnostic protocol without a built-in oracle, each market can have its own oracle that sources prices for the collateral and lending assets from external sources. Developers are completely free in that regard, and can even hard-code asset prices for the market if they don't wish to use a price oracle at all. Naturally, an oracle is preferred for maintaining the most up-to-date and dynamic pricing information.

The IRM used is the only base parameter with which developers are somewhat restricted in their choice, as only whitelisted IRMs are allowed for a market. As of mid-November 2024, there’s just one whitelisted IRM that market creators can specify — the 

. This model dynamically adjusts interest rates to maintain the proportion of borrowed funds to supplied funds at close to 90%.

Morpho Vaults are a tokenized vault product that offers curated lending opportunities with varying pre-programmed risk parameters. Each vault is associated with a single loan asset, and can allocate deposits across multiple Morpho markets, thereby leveraging the overall liquidity available on the Morpho protocol. Morpho Vaults suit lenders who prefer predictable risk management over the uncertainty of completely custom markets. Each lender can earn APY rates commensurate with their chosen 

There is no limit on the number of vaults you can open on Morpho. Thus, you might even allocate funds to different vaults with significantly different risk levels to diversify your exposure.

Morpho Vaults' curated nature eliminates the need for users to spend time researching and evaluating individual markets' risk levels and return opportunities, as risk exposure is actively managed by the vault.

Since the vaults are connected to the underlying protocol, and source liquidity from it, they’re dynamically rebalanced, which helps optimize yields. Thanks to their permissionless and immutable nature, the vaults are also completely transparent. Moreover, they’re noncustodial, granting users full control over their deposited assets, which can be withdrawn at any time.

A lender deposits an asset into a Morpho Vault and receives shares of the vault as confirmation of their investment. The vaults themselves are tokenized products utilizing Ethereum's 

 standard, designed to represent tokenized vaults for yield-bearing assets. Each vault may be owned by a 

 (DAO), an individual DeFi expert or some algorithm maintained by a DeFi platform. A vault can be owned by only one entity. The owner may specify additional roles/entities for managing the vault. These roles can include one curator, one guardian and multiple allocators.

The curator is a party who sets certain limits, rules and boundaries for the vault, such as specifying asset supply limitations and enabling/disabling specific markets. Curators are instrumental in maintaining appropriate risk levels for their vaults. Assets that lenders lock in a vault are supplied to the protocol's underlying markets, based on curators' whitelists. There can only be one curator for each vault.

The role of guardian is a key vault position. A guardian protects the integrity and security of the vault. Guardians can revoke any action by the vault owner (or other entities) if they consider it to be against the interests of vault lenders. Each vault can only have one guardian, typically a DAO consisting of vault depositors.

Allocators are protocol actors whose job is to rebalance the liquidity utilized by Morpho Vaults to optimize interest rates and accessible liquidity. An allocator’s job is to rebalance and optimize the total liquidity, either manually or using bots, to best meet the needs of Morpho borrowers.

Morpho Vaults' operations aren't regulated by the protocol's governance mechanism. Each vault owner is responsible for their vault's governance model. Specific roles, such as the curator and the guardian, are designed to help in establishing transparent and secure governance procedures for a vault.

What Is the Morpho Crypto Token (MORPHO)?

The platform's native cryptocurrency, MORPHO, is envisioned as a 

. Holders of MORPHO have the right to participate in decision-making on the platform's future direction, general rules, deployment of smart contracts and allocation of funds from the treasury. Although Morpho promotes lending and borrowing markets that operate with minimal interference from the protocol's governance community, there are some general guidelines and rules through which the community needs to establish certain standards, minimum requirements or whitelists. MORPHO token holders are instrumental in this process.

The original MORHPO token was launched on Ethereum in June 2022 with a supply cap of 1 billion. However, there were limitations to the original token contract that negatively affected its functionality. Specifically, the token wasn't designed to facilitate efficient on-chain voting. As a result of these limitations, the project decided to relaunch the token, now on an upgraded contract. The new reincarnation of MORPHO will offer better functional capabilities, including more efficient on-chain governance processes. 

As of the time of writing on Nov 17, 2024, the project team has yet to deploy the new token. The new MORPHO will also be a supply-capped crypto, with a maximum and total supply of 1 billion. The token's supply distribution shares are shown in the chart below.

 token before its market launch. Bybit Pre-Market Trading is an over-the-counter (OTC) trading platform that provides access to promising new cryptocurrencies before their listings on the Spot market. The key advantage of the platform is the ability to access cryptocurrencies at desirable rates before the broader crypto market affects their prices.

Bybit's carefully designed curation process ensures that only crypto assets with solid potential and fundamentals are whitelisted for Pre-Market Trading. This saves you the time required to investigate each cryptocurrency, and reduces the risk of investing in scam projects. Naturally, you’re also encouraged to 

 on crypto assets you might consider purchasing through Bybit Pre-Market Trading.

Morpho represents a unique and potentially highly effective approach to DeFi lending and borrowing. The platform's facilitation of isolated and highly customizable lending markets gives DeFi users unmatched freedom in terms of choice and variety. In addition, users who prefer the stability of curated and well-defined risk profiles can take advantage of Morpho Vaults for more predictable yields. The use of the overall underlying protocol liquidity along with entities such as allocators makes Morpho Vaults particularly effective at optimizing lending and borrowing costs.

While custom lending markets launched via the protocol are now Morpho's key focus, the legacy Morpho Optimizers also continue to offer value. P2P matching of lenders and borrowers as an add-on to the standard pool-based mechanism is a functionality many DeFi users will find helpful. Morpho Optimizers can offer lenders and borrowers active on Aave and Compound an alternative and highly effective way of conducting their operations.

With this arsenal of innovative and unique products, the Morpho protocol is quickly shaping up as a leading platform in the lending niche of the DeFi industry.

Advanced

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Morpho (MORPHO): Leading Efficient, Permissionless Crypto Lending

Ethervista (VISTA) is a sustainable DEX with unique ETH-based LP rewards that foster long-term engagement over short-term gains for liquidity providers.

 (DEX) back in 2018 changed the entire landscape of the 

 (DeFi) industry. Thanks to the AMM-based setup, liquidity levels on DEXs have risen sharply, and the efficiency of coin swaps has skyrocketed. Nevertheless, crypto trading using AMM pools has its drawbacks, along with the numerous benefits this model has ushered in.

Among the main cons of AMM DEXs is the short-term approach adopted by many 

 (LPs) and token issuers. Since AMM DEXs pay out LP rewards denominated in the tokens of the pool, many LPs are eager to quickly withdraw their liquidity and sell the tokens at the first sign of volatility. This is understandable, as many of these tokens are highly volatile and may crash and burn quickly, falling victim to the powerful forces driving the crypto market. The same risk of pool assets becoming worthless often drives token issuers to withdraw liquidity and support for their tokens as well. In addition, another drawback of AMMs is the lack of meaningful long-term incentives provided to LPs and token creators.

Ethervista (VISTA) is a new DEX platform that aims to resolve the inherent deficiencies of the AMM trading model. The platform pays out LP rewards in ETH, and distributes the rewards after accumulating them in a dedicated pool so that LPs and token issuers are incentivized by genuine, long-term trading activity in swap pools, rather than by the short-term price movements of tokens in these pools.

 (VISTA) is a new-generation DEX platform on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain that uses a unique LP rewards distribution model in which LPs and token creators are paid in ETH, based on a mathematical model that ensures fair value for their contributions.

 Ethervista aims to address the key inefficiencies of the standard AMM trading model, particularly the issue of rewards paid out in 

In a standard AMM like Uniswap, LPs earn fees denominated in the pool's token. These fees are generated from trading activity in the pool to which the LP contributes its funds. The key problem with this model is that the asset used for the fee payments — typically an ERC-20 token — is often a highly volatile or obscure cryptocurrency whose origins or future value may be questionable. This drives many LPs away from contributing to pools made up of low-cap, volatile tokens.

Ethervista collects and distributes LP rewards exclusively in ETH, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain. The market's second-highest-capped crypto, ETH is a widely trusted asset that provides greater stability and security than the many tokens used for LP rewards on AMM DEXs.

Ethervista also offers staking rewards denominated in ETH via its 

 services to users locking ERC-20 and LP tokens. Its platform’s operations launched on Ethereum in September 2024.

Ethervista allows any user to configure and launch a 

, specifying a custom fee structure for token buy-and-sell operations. Users can also launch tokens using the app's interface. Partial revenues collected from a pool go to LPs contributing liquidity, while the protocol also collects an additional fee for its treasury and reward distribution model. 

The custom nature of each pool is a drastically different concept from the one used on popular AMM DEXs. In a typical AMM, a fixed fee rate for LP rewards is preset by the platform. At best, you can choose from a few fee tiers, but there isn’t complete flexibility in this regard. On Ethervista, pool creators have much more freedom in terms of setting their preferred fee levels.

Ethervista accumulates revenue collected from the trading activity in a pool and distributes it in ETH to LPs and token creators, based on a mathematical formula — the 

The Euler model employed by Ethervista recalculates the pooled ETH funds for a swap pair following each transaction. It's designed to reward each beneficiary fairly, based on their contributions to the pool over time. Beneficiaries include LPs, token creators and 

The Euler model is designed to incentivize long-term, fair contributions to a pool, reducing the likelihood of short-term focused behavior that many LPs exhibit in traditional AMMs. Another goal of the Euler model is to minimize 

Pool creators need to specify four custom fees when launching a new pool: 

The fees are specified in USD and are recalculated by the protocol in ETH using an on-chain 

There's also an additional fee of $1 per swap transaction that goes to the project's treasury to fund ecosystem development.

 is a component of Ethervista that’s dedicated to 

. It allows users to launch and trade meme coins, similar to the manner in which platforms like 

 operate. Etherfun offers a highly affordable way of creating meme coin assets, as token launches cost only about $1–$2.

If the token creator prefers not to cover the initial deployment costs, the first buyer for the asset can step in and cover the costs. As a reward for covering deployment costs, the first buyer is then entitled to 2% of the meme coin's pool fees.

Etherfun uses a bonding curve model — somewhat similar to the one employed by Pump.fun — whereby the price of an asset follows a specific trajectory, based on the token's buy and sell activity. Etherfun's bonding curve target for a token is set at $4,000, or just one-third of Pump.fun's $12,000. This helps accelerate development for new token projects, providing more realistic success targets for meme coin creators.

VISTA, Ethervista’s native cryptocurrency, is an 

 token launched on Ethereum in early September 2024. Unlike ETH, VISTA isn't used for LP provider rewards or other protocol and liquidity providers' incentives derived directly from Ethervista's trading operations. 

 some VISTA after each transaction using the ETH funds generated from trading activity. The continual decrease in VISTA's supply should lead to its price appreciation, making it a value-compounding deflationary currency.

Upon its launch, VISTA had a total supply of 1 million. The burn mechanism has gradually reduced its supply to 962,287 as of Nov 10, 2024. The supply is expected to slowly trend lower over time, as the Ethervista platform buys and burns the token in line with transaction activity.

 — a decentralized trading platform that supports nine popular blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana (SOL), Arbitrum (ARB) and Avalanche (AVAX). To buy the token, first navigate to the 

: Please ensure that you have a wallet connected to the platform.) Bybit Web3 DEX Pro supports several wallet apps, including Bybit’s Cloud Wallet and Keyless Wallet, in addition to third-party wallets.

In the left pane of the DEX Pro interface, type the name of the token into the search box and select it in the search results just underneath it.

When you land on VISTA's page, simply click on the green 

 button in the top right corner. You'll then be able to select a cryptocurrency that you would like to use to buy VISTA.

As of Nov 14, 2024, the VISTA token is trading at $24.05, which is 67.9% lower than its ATH of $74.91 on Nov 1, 2024 and 457.2% higher than its ATL of $4.32 on Oct 9, 2024.

Long-term price forecasts for VISTA are generally bullish.DigitalCoinPrice 

 rate of $58.37 in 2025 and $173.19 in 2030, whileCoinCodex 

 to hit $113.38 in 2025 and $110.43 in 2030.

Ethervista is an innovative departure from the standard AMM concept, offering LP providers rewards boosted through long-term genuine participation, rather than short-term maneuvering. The distribution of rewards in ETH — rather than volatile ERC-20 tokens — is a rare feature that will certainly be appreciated by DeFi traders, and may also attract significant numbers of new liquidity providers to the platform. 

While Uniswap started the AMM revolution back in 2018, Ethervista may have just initiated a completely new chapter in AMM history by offering LPs and token issuers greater stability and long-term value than ever before.

Intermediate

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Ethervista (VISTA): A Game Changer for DEX Sustainability

bitSmiley (SMILE) is a BTCFi platform that offers multichain stablecoin minting and lending functions, backed by BTC collateral.

The Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain started as a network devoid of smart contract functionality, but has managed to develop some form of 

 (DApp) ecosystem over the past few years — thanks to 

 (STX), Merlin Chain and Rootstock (RSK). Native Bitcoin protocols and new token standards — 

 upgrade have also contributed to the development of (modest) smart contract–like functions on the chain. Thanks to these innovations, an entirely new field, 

Unfortunately, the BTCFi niche remains underdeveloped compared to the thriving DeFi ecosystem of 

 chains. One key reason for this deficit is the lack of sophisticated DeFi functionality within the Bitcoin ecosystem, with few protocols capable of offering full-fledged lending, borrowing and yield management services. 

Another problem is the limited liquidity due to traders' inertia — having invested their time and funds in Ethereum and other smart blockchains, many DeFi users are unwilling to explore Bitcoin-based opportunities.

bitSmiley (SMILE) is a BTCFi project that aims to expand BTC-backed stablecoin and lending functions to various platforms beyond Bitcoin. Users of the platform can take advantage of BTC-collateralized stablecoin minting and lending services, with the issued assets usable on a wide variety of DeFi apps across many chains, including Ethereum. By offering these services, bitSmiley hopes to expand the usability of BTC funds well beyond Bitcoin's still immature DeFi environment.

 (SMILE) is a DeFi platform specializing in multichain 

 minting and lending services backed by Bitcoin. 

Its users can provide BTC funds as collateral to mint the bitUSD stablecoin, an asset soft-pegged to the U.S. dollar. bitUSD can be further used across a variety of DeFi protocols (on Ethereum and other smart contract chains) to earn yields, similar to the way that native Ethereum stablecoins are leveraged within DeFi. The protocol also offers cross-chain lending services, whereby users can lend funds in bitUSD and other stablecoin assets, based on the bitRC-20 standard, in exchange for collateral in BTC.

The bitRC-20 standard was developed by the bitSmiley project team to enable the issuance of native Bitcoin stablecoins, which can be further utilized within other platforms' DeFi ecosystems. bitRC-20 leverages Bitcoin's 

 technology to power the issuance and management of stablecoins.

Additionally, the bitSmiley protocol has added the function to mint and lend bitUSD — and possibly other bitRC-20 stablecoins in the future — using a variety of Bitcoin-based 

 tokens (LstBTCs). This lets users earn yields from staking platforms while using the underlying funds to mint and lend bitUSD.

In addition to stablecoin minting and lending services, bitSmiley has also developed a crypto derivatives trading protocol, although this service still appears to be in development as of early November 2024.

bitSmiley launched its operations in May 2024 on two popular 

. Then, in September, the project announced a key partnership with the 

 (ZETA) omnichain protocol, which may help optimize the cross-chain accessibility of assets originally issued on bitSmiley. ZetaChain’s protocol maintains smart contracts for cross-chain communications on multiple blockchain platforms within the Bitcoin, Ethereum and 

The bitSmiley project was founded in 2023, and is backed by two main venture capital investors — OKX Ventures and ABCDE — as well as a number of other prominent investors and backers, including KuCoin Ventures, MH Ventures, Skyland Ventures, Cypher Capital and CMS Holdings.

How Does bitSmiley Unlock Native Bitcoin Liquidity?

While users can keep their bitUSD funds working for them within the BTCFi ecosystem, there's one key problem: the native BTC DeFi world lacks the levels of liquidity, trading activity and product sophistication that Ethereum and other smart contract blockchains can offer. This makes the use of bitUSD beyond the Bitcoin ecosystem particularly relevant for traders.

Thanks to bitSmiley's cross-chain capabilities, bitUSD can be transferred to Ethereum and other major smart contract chain ecosystems to be used in DeFi protocols in those environments. This dramatically expands product alternatives, as well as the number of protocols on which bitUSD may be utilized.

bitSmiley uses Bitcoin's native inscription technology, multisig wallets and a group of listener components to enable the transfer of bitUSD to other blockchains. bitUSD is natively issued on Bitcoin as an inscription, and sent to a multisig wallet. A group of listeners configured by the platform detects the transfer to the wallet, checks the transaction and sends the information to the General Message Bridge, which is then responsible for minting bitUSD on the respective external chains.

bitSmiley's flagship service is bitUSD stablecoin minting. Users can mint the asset, which is native to Bitcoin and uses the bitRC-20 standard developed by the project, by providing collateral in BTC into the bitSmiley Treasury. bitSmiley implements overcollateralization to ensure the platform's financial security and stability. If the value of the collateral falls below a certain threshold, it becomes a target for a 

 process. The liquidated party also incurs a charge as a liquidation penalty.

The liquidated collateral is put up for an auction. bitSmiley uses the Dutch auction model, whereby the price starts at a higher level and then gradually decreases until a willing party decides to buy the collateral funds.

The money earned by the auction is stored in a surplus account, of which 10% goes to operational expenses and 90% is set aside as a liquidation buffer (used as compensation during times when the auction revenue is insufficient to pay for the expenses of the treasury). Additionally, if the money in the surplus account is insufficient to cover bad debts, the platform will then conduct a debt auction using future income as collateral. The debt auction will follow the English auction model (featuring a set opening price, which is raised until only a single bidder remains), and participants are required to bid using BTC.

When bitUSD is issued to a user, they have the option to transfer the asset to other blockchain environments using the bridging procedure described above. With a soft peg to the U.S. dollar, bitUSD can provide utility to DeFi traders across various smart contract chains in a way similar to popular stablecoin, such as 

bitSmiley's lending component, bitLending, is designed to enable 

 (P2P) lending of bitUSD — and, in the future, other assets based on the bitRC-20 standard — in exchange for collateral in BTC and LstBTC liquid staking tokens. bitLending relies on the standard Bitcoin opcodes (pieces of code attached to every Bitcoin transaction with instructions for processing it) to enable the P2P lending exchanges.

Users willing to lend their bitUSD post on bitLending, announcing the amount offered and interest rate sought. If there's a willing borrower for the offer, the parties initiate a transaction, with the borrower providing an overcollateralized security in BTC or LstBTC. The collateral needs to be approved by bitLending. When the borrower has successfully repaid the loan, their collateral will be released. If the borrower fails to repay by the deadline, the collateral is transferred to the lender.

, launched on the Ethereum blockchain on Nov 6, 2024. The token uses Ethereum's 

 standard. The decision to launch the token on Ethereum rather than Bitcoin was mainly driven by the former chain's much more sophisticated smart contract functionality, as well as popularity among DeFi users.

SMILE entitles its holders to participate in the decision-making process on key aspects of the bitSmiley protocol, such as minimum collateral rates, liquidation thresholds and rules, collateral types and more. The token also provides additional benefits and perks for its holders, including fee discounts and exclusive access to discounted auctions. The project team has also announced that SMILE may be used for staking on 

 — a platform that will host a series of DeFi apps focused on bitUSD.

SMILE has a total and maximum supply of 210 million. Of these, one percent (2.1 million SMILE) is reserved for eligible users who earned points during the Pre-season airdrop campaign in May 2024.

The SMILE token is available on Bybit's Spot market as a 

 (dedicated to the token) for the chance to earn a share of the 800,000 SMILE prize pool. Under the terms of the campaign, new users need to deposit at least 200 SMILE — or deposit at least 100 USDT and trade 100 USDT worth of SMILE on their first Spot trade — to qualify for a share of 400,000 free SMILE tokens. Any user can also trade at least 500 USDT worth of SMILE on the Spot market to earn their share of the 400,000 SMILE prize pool. The campaign is valid through Nov 19, 2024, 8:59PM UTC.

Bitcoin's DeFi niche has been growing strongly over the last few years, but many projects dedicated to this area stay within the confines of the still young BTCFi ecosystem. The bitSmiley platform has taken a different approach — instead of trying to rely on the still limited liquidity of Bitcoin, the project's bitUSD crypto serves as a bridge to larger DeFi ecosystems such as Ethereum. 

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bitSmiley (SMILE): Bringing Liquidity to Bitcoin DeFi

Grass is a platform that provides internet bandwidth. It aims to democratize and decentralize internet resources through fair compensation. Learn more here.

The convergence of artificial intelligence and 

 has sparked a wave of innovative solutions in the crypto space. Among these emerging projects, 

 stands out by transforming idle internet bandwidth into a valuable resource for AI development while compensating users with rewards.

In this article, we'll dive into how Grass works, from its advanced data processing infrastructure to its user-friendly node operation system. We'll explore its tokenomics and key features, analyze its market potential and examine the project's road map as it bridges the gap between everyday internet users and AI development.

Grass is a platform that aims to democratize and decentralize internet resources through fair compensation. Its network converts unused internet bandwidth into valuable AI training data, rewarding contributors with GRASS tokens while building an open-source, accessible knowledge base.

Grass was co-founded by Andrej Radonjic, who serves as its CEO. With a background in software engineering, and experience from his previous venture, 1on1proxy, Radonjic leads the development at Wynd Labs alongside CTO Chris Nguyen. The project emerged from the growing need for accessible, high-quality data to train AI models. With the 

 and AI development costs continuing to rise, Grass was conceived to democratize data collection while creating value for everyday internet users.

Since its launch, Grass has experienced remarkable growth, expanding to 190 countries and collecting over 1 TB of data daily through its network of more than 2 million users. Such rapid adoption demonstrates strong market demand for decentralized AI data collection solutions that benefit all participants, not just large corporations.

Grass's mission to create a more accessible and equitable AI ecosystem centers on the following key objectives:

Through these objectives, Grass is building an ecosystem where AI developers gain access to quality training data, everyday internet users earn rewards for their contributions and the broader AI industry benefits from more accessible and ethical data collection practices.

Grass operates as a decentralized network that allows users, known as node operators, to contribute their unused internet bandwidth for web scraping and AI data processing. The operation relies on several key components:

This entire process operates seamlessly utilizing a sovereign rollup mechanism for efficient data processing, collection and verification, while maintaining high security and scalability standards.

Grass offers several features designed to enhance the user experience and reward participation in its network.

The Grass dashboard provides users a comprehensive view of their activity, including bandwidth contributions, earned Grass Points, referral statistics and 

 eligibility. The intuitive interface allows node operators to easily connect and disconnect their bandwidth contribution while maintaining complete visibility of their network participation.

Grass incentivizes network growth with a multi-tiered referral program. Users can earn commissions based on their referrals’ activity, structured as follows:

Grass’s platform implements a comprehensive rewards system centered on network participation. Users earn Grass Points by contributing their unused internet bandwidth and operating nodes, with earnings based on uptime and data processing.

These points can be converted into GRASS tokens during the token generation event. Future opportunities for token 

 and governance participation in the ecosystem are rumored.

Grass has made significant strides since its inception, with a clear road map outlining future milestones, as follows:

The GRASS token will play a central role in the Grass ecosystem, serving various purposes that drive network participation and growth:

While the GRASS token hasn’t officially launched, current trading data from Bybit Pre-Market Perpetuals provides insight into its market valuation. GRASS has demonstrated price movement between $0.88 and $1.20, with a current price of $1.09 as of the time of this publication (October 2024).

The community itself draws comparisons to 

 (WLD), which has a current fully diluted value (FDV) of $16 billion. With Grass's total supply of 1 billion tokens, matching WorldCoin's FDV would put GRASS at $16 per token. However, such comparisons should be viewed cautiously, as each project has unique characteristics and market conditions.

Looking to trade GRASS tokens? Bybit now offers the GRASS/USDT Spot trading pair and GRASSUSDT Perpetual contract. To get started, you’ll first need to create a Bybit account, then fund it with cryptocurrency and navigate to the 

When evaluating GRASS as a potential investment, several key factors deserve consideration:

While GRASS shows promising fundamentals and meets a significant market need, potential investors should 

 when evaluating GRASS as an investment opportunity.

Grass stands out as an innovative solution that democratizes AI development by transforming unused internet bandwidth into valuable training data. With over 2 million users during its beta, strong backing from prominent investors and a clear vision for making AI development more accessible, Grass demonstrates significant potential for reshaping the multibillion-dollar AI data market.

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Grass (GRASS): Putting Idle Bandwidth to Work for AI Development

Unichain, launched by Uniswap Labs, is a highly scalable and low-cost Layer 2 optimistic rollup for Ethereum.

 (UNI) is one of the blockchain industry's earliest and largest 

 (DeFi) platforms. Having pioneered the concepts of the 

, Uniswap has long held the pole position among 

Despite these pioneering achievements, Uniswap, just as every other Ethereum (ETH)–based DeFi app, has faced its fair share of issues. Most of these are attributable to Ethereum's network congestion, limited scalability, high transaction costs and less-than-optimal block validation schedule.

Through the years of supporting Uniswap, the Uniswap Labs team has gained vast experience in Ethereum-based DeFi. They’ve put all the insight and lessons learned into Unichain, a solution aimed at replicating Uniswap's success.

In late 2024, Uniswap Labs made a pivotal move by introducing Unichain, a DeFi-focused 

 network that aims to address the drawbacks of transacting directly on 

 mode as of early November 2024, Unichain offers a plethora of advantages over Ethereum, including low transaction costs, cross-chain interoperability, one-second block times and a trusted execution environment that improves the transparency of transaction ordering.

 is a highly scalable and low-cost Layer 2 blockchain network designed for DeFi use cases. 

Launched by Uniswap's developer, Uniswap Labs, the Unichain platform features low transaction costs, great scalability, cross-chain interoperability, secure and transparent block validation procedures and one-second block confirmation times.

Built using the popular Layer 2 development framework OP Stack, Unichain is an 

 (EVM) compatibility. Unichain also features underlying OP Stack technology, making it a member of the 

 Superchain, a network of optimistic rollup platforms based on this technology. As part of the Superchain, Unichain boasts smooth interoperability with the other networks in this ecosystem.

Unichain's testnet was launched in early October 2024, with the mainnet promised to be "coming soon" as of the time of this writing (Nov 4, 2024).

The primary motivation behind launching Unichain can be found in Ethereum's never-ending scalability and cost issues. In September 2022, the Ethereum blockchain 

 proof of work (PoW) block validation model to the much more efficient proof of stake (PoS) via 

, which was widely publicized until its eventual implementation. Some hoped this move would reduce costs and the speed of transacting on the chain, both of which had been major drawbacks of Ethereum's Layer 1 blockchain. However, The Merge has not resulted in meaningful reductions in either costs or speed.

As of late 2024, Ethereum users continue to encounter high fees and limited scalability, mainly due to high network demand. These limitations are particularly detrimental to DeFi apps, including the Uniswap DEX. Ethereum’s block production interval of 12 seconds may not seem slow. However, 

 is increased due to the delay between swap order placement and transaction finalization on its chain, and 

 make coin swaps and other DeFi operations expensive, leading to significant losses for traders. In addition, slow transaction times increase the risk of position and vault liquidations. 

Some DeFi protocols liquidate user vaults and collateral when their value drops below a certain threshold. Slow transaction confirmations on Ethereum make vault and collateral value adjustments/recalculations less timely, increasing the risk of unnecessary liquidations.

In addition to speed and cost inefficiencies, Ethereum is also subject to manipulative behavior from some block validators who try to rearrange pending transactions in a way that increases 

 (MEV). In such scenarios, a validator picks and chooses transactions to include in the next block (and their particular order) for their own benefit. This can sometimes lead to 

, in which a validator might move a specific impactful transaction that’s likely to raise the price of an asset to the front of the queue, while buying the asset before the transaction's finalization — a move that some might call "insider trading blockchain-style."

The cost, scalability and transparency issues above have all motivated the Uniswap Labs team to launch its own DeFi-focused Layer 2 platform: Unichain.

By moving transaction processing to Layer 2, Unichain hopes to reduce gas fees by as much as 95% compared to directly transacting on Ethereum.

Unichain features block production times of just one second, or twelve times as fast as Ethereum's block times. This should greatly improve the efficiency of DeFi operations through reduced slippage rates, more stable gas fees and decreased occurrence of failed transactions, all of which will contribute to an enhanced overall user experience.

Unichain will maintain its own set of validator nodes in order to enhance its network's efficiency, decentralization and transparency. Node operators have to stake UNI on the Ethereum network to be a validator on Unichain.

Transparent block validation and sequencing

Unichain’s platform separates the role of block building (the process of constructing blocks and organizing transactions within a block) from sequencing (ensures the correct ordering of blocks on-chain) with the use of

 (TEE). This allows all block validation and sequencing procedures to be independently verified, mitigating potential manipulation risks from the sequencer alone.

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