July 1, 2021: The xDai is Cast 🎲⛓️
Curve Launches an official branch on the xDai blockchain
Completely out of the blue, the Curve team launched on xDai.
In fact, they teased it just a few hours earlier when dropping a vote on CRV rewards.
What a pleasant surprise!
The xDai blockchain is an EVM compatible blockchain, and the first such chain denominated in USD. If you want to be among the early users, you’ll want to be aware of the two core tokens on the chain: $xDai and $STAKE.
As the name may suggest, $xDai is converted directly from its Ethereum counterpart $Dai. The ratio of $xDai:$Dai is always 1:1, so therefore it will maintain a dollar basis for as long as $Dai holds peg.
On the $xDai chain, all transactions and gas are paid for using $xDai, meaning all transactions can be denominated on a dollar basis. Users can get $xDai using the following methods:
The $STAKE token serves as a utility/governance token. It launched as an ERC677 token and targets a 15% APR for rewards. Their documentation provides instructions on how you could acquire and bridge $STAKE. The $STAKE token is also useful to their twist on a Proof of Stake consensus mechanism called POSDAO, detailed in their White Paper
The xDai chain features 5 second block times, along with such useful features as a robust block explorer, several bridges, easy MetaMask integration, and a robust developer environment.
The chain has been growing in popularity over the last few months, with nearly 7MM transactions last month.
Active accounts also ticked up massively in just the last few weeks.
Most of the sudden influx of usage is tied to the Swarm app.
Swarm is a community of cyber hornets serving the goddess of wisdom… wait, wrong note card… Swarm is a decentralized storage and communication system. Their decentralized internet was too expensive for Ethereum, so they ported over to xDai recently and the rest is history.
The xDai homepage highlights several DeFi apps, with Curve presumably next to be added.
When officially launched, xDai will become the fourth officially maintained Curve fork, along with Ethereum, Fantom, and Polygon. These sidechains total half a billion worth of deposits. Cross chain action still accounts for a relatively small piece of Curve’s empire, with Ethereum deposits frequently pushing $10B. Yet several of these chains are relatively underserved by DeFi, so they tend to see a disproportionate amount of activity. For example, all Polygon pools are generating healthy base APY’s plus competitive $CRV rewards, all accessible with very low fees.
For more info, check our live market data at https://curvemarketcap.com/ or our subscribe to our daily newsletter at https://curve.substack.com/. Nothing in our newsletter can be construed as financial advice. Author is a $CRV maximalist and has no positions on $xDAI