Decentralized exchanges, also referred to as DEXs, are peer-to-peer marketplaces that allow crypto traders to transact with each other without boundaries. Like almost every idea behind the Blockchain, DEXs are decentralized and foster financial transactions that aren’t conducted by banks, intermediaries, or any third-party affiliation. One of the basic differences between Central Exchanges and DEXs is that, while central exchanges allow users to exchange between cryptocurrencies and fiat money, DEXs only allow trade between two cryptocurrency tokens.

Another important difference to note between these two important Blockchain service providers is that, while CEXs transactions records are stored in their internal database, DEXs transaction records are visible and recorded on the Blockchain. Examples of DEXs include Swapzone, PancakeSwap, dYdX, and Raydium, and the Ethereum Blockchain hosts a majority of them. Like central exchanges, the growth of DEXs has been astronomical in the last year, as the Defi tools have continued to prove their importance to the growing Cryptocurrency space.

Without further ado, let's ump int the top 5 DEX that work specifically on the Polygon Network!

Anyswap launched back in July 2020. It is a DEX that allows users to swap tokens from various platforms across different mainnets. It is one of those few DeFi projects that facilitates cross-tokens swap and trade. Many big names already implemented Anyswao in their internal protocols such as XRP, Litecoin, Tether.

The code of the platform is fully open-source, which makes it a truly decentralized platform. The Fusion Network powers Anyswap, and helps in private key sharding to guarantee the safety of the crypto assets on the platform. ANY is the native token of the platform. It is a governance token, which allows holders to determine which tokens to be listed on the Anyswap DEX.

Firebird Finance is a 3-in-1 Defi platform currently thriving on Polygon and offering immense bespoke services to many users. It is a yield aggregator, a vault, and also poses as an exchange. The DeFi platform not only guarantees rewards for its users but also optimizes their experience. Its swap page with yield farming features also ensures that traders and yield farmers earn rewards. The native token of the platform is HOPE, and its holder also receives a reward for staking it. Firebird Finance is also popular for incorporating technology into its protocol, a unique feature of the AMM. At the time of writing, the TVL as multi-chain volume in the DEX is $6.3 Billion.

Polycat is basically a yield farming project, where users can earn more cryptos by simply lending their cryptos. The project is currently known for its easy-to-use platform for token swapping and yield farming protocol. It is a top contender for Dapps using the Polygon network, with a total value locked of USD 12.6 Million to-date.

SushiSwap - a declared fork of Uniswap provides decentralized exchange AMM functionality. It utilizes orderbook-less swaps between different assets, using liquidity pools and having no direct sellers. The users earn liquidity fees by providing assets to pools. It has an automatic price determination mechanism through smart contracts. This eliminates custody/insolvency risk, and is now available on Polygon MATIC, to take advantage of low fees and fast processing.

Uniswap is a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange. Moreover, UNI is the native cryptocurrency of the Uniswap exchange. Decentralized crypto exchange gives users the ability to make trades and transactions without any third-party intermediaries regulating them. 

Decentralized exchanges have the advantage of being entirely transparent and peer-to-peer. This means that the Uniswap exchange is completely collectively managed and community-run. 

Moreover, like other decentralized exchanges, Uniswap is anonymous. You don’t have to provide the site with any kind of personal data to be able to trade. All you have to do is connect your crypto wallet and you’re ready to go. 

Polygon (formerly Matic) is a Layer 2 solution powering Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development. The great thing about Polygon is that it's already used by many projects like Sushiswap, Aavegotchi, Chain Games, Quickswap etc.

It offers scalable and instantaneous transactions. Each Polygon sidechain can theoretically achieve 2^16 transactions per block. The protocol has achieved up to 7,000 TPS on a single sidechain on an internal testnet.

This is significantly higher than the 14 transactions per second Ethereum mainnet itself can achieve. Polygon's token MATIC token is now listed on Coinbase. Therefore, it's the first entry in our top 5 Ethereum layer 2 projects list.

-----> Click here to Buy MATIC <-----

This Layer 2 scaling solution for the Ethereum network features a payment/transfer facility and decentralized exchange (DEX). LRC is the native token. The team has developed zkRollups, which is used to power the Loopring exchange.

Using the Loopring Pay facility, users can send and receive Ethereum (ETH) or Ethereum based assets, instantly and for free. The zkRollup scales Ethereum 1000x over its nominal capacity by transferring most processing on another chain.

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OMG Network is a Plasma-based Layer 2 scaling solution, which scales the Ethereum blockchain to thousands of TPS. It reduces the fees by an estimated 1/3rd, compared to before, all while maintaining Ethereum’s security.

OMG Network does so by transferring the processing of the transaction outside the Ethereum mainnet, using it only for the final settlement. Further, it batches the transactions, making the process more efficient and less resource-intensive.

The native token is OMG. This scaling solution is fast, trustless, oriented for borderless financial services, instantly settled, low fees, and enterprise-grade.

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SKALE network is an open-source security and execution Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution, which relies on elastic side chains to divert processing off the mainnet.

It consists of high-performance side chains executing sub-second block times, running up to 2,000 TPS per chain. Skale can support full-state smart contracts, decentralized storage, execute Rollups, and machine learning in EVM.

They offer speed/functionality without compromising security or decentralization. It can support thousand of thousands of independent blockchains of all subtypes.

It has full compatibility with Solidity and thus the Ethereum ecosystem. It is a collusion-resistant leaderless network with mathematically provable secure ABBA-based consensus.

-----> Click here to Buy SKALE <-----

The ZKSwap is a Layer 2 scaling solution, specifically an automated market maker (AMM) type decentralized exchange (DEX) powered by zkRollup technology. Developed by L2Lab, it has already launched on Ethereum mainnet.

It transfers all tokens to Layer 2 and guarantees consistency by continuously generating zero-knowledge proofs. It allows exchanges to execute swaps with zero gas fees and unlimited scalability.

-----> Click here to Buy ZKS <-----

It's a hugely lucrative market. Considering that the Ethereum block space is the most expensive and the scaling demand is at all-time high. It means that L2 projects are going to have a field day ahead with the increasing integrations and maturity of infrastructure around them.

The Layer 2 scaling solutions are decentralized protocols that increase the processing capacity of a blockchain (hence scaling) and as a result, relieve congestion on the network.

They work by delegating the network processing “off-chain” to their own chain, processing it there, before settling the final balances on the base layer mainnet.

We are certain that you heard about the SOS airdrop by now. It's a token to OpenSea users, which aims to bring together and bootstrap the NFT community by allowing wallets to claim tokens proportional to their activity on the largest NFT marketplace. Besides airdropping tokens to OS users, it has also reserved parts of the total supply for staking/LP incentives and for the OpenDAO, tasked with supporting NFT art and the artists, compensating victims, and providing developer grants. It's a wide-scale experiment in NFT community coordination and looks like it just might succeed. So, how can you claim it?

You can begin by visiting the official website here and connecting the wallet.

Once the wallet has been connected, the interface will display the SOS airdrop balance and the calculation, based on the amount spent, the number of transactions on OpenSea, and the multiplier used to assess the final balance. After reviewing, click Claim Airdrop and approve the transaction in the wallet.

Contract: 0x3b484b82567a09e2588a13d54d032153f0c0aee0

Circulating Supply: 39.89 trillion (39,895,439,517,782)

Maximum Supply: 100 trillion (100,000,000,000,000)

CoinGecko: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/opendao

Twitter: https://twitter.com/The_OpenDAO

Official Discord: https://discord.com/invite/zzzKhejARz

Within hours of its launch, the OpenDAO SOS token was listed on major exchanges such as KuCoin, FTX, Huobi Global, OKEx, Gate.io, etc, apart from the decentralized staples such as SushiSwap and Uniswap. This indicates the exchanges sensing community interest and realizing what OpenDAO would eventually become. The initial working of the DAO has revolved around the same structure formation, moving funds to a multi-sig wallet, trying to launch the initial staking program, and looking for partnerships with other community-based NFT projects, looking to tap into the huge OpenDAO user base. Would we see an OpenSea competitor sooner than later? Only time will tell.

CME has announced the launch of the Ethereum Futures micro variant in a significant development for the second largest crypto-asset by market capitalization on Dec 06. It's denominated at 1/10 of 1 ETH and will allow users to speculate with precision. This is especially useful because it offers an inclusive product for market participants of all sizes and different risk appetites. The micro product by CME for Ethereum Futures is financially settled, meaning that the final settlement will be made in cash or any other financial instrument, instead of delivering the actual underlying product ETH.

Ethereum Futures micro product was announced on Nov 02, subject to regulatory approval. It appears that CME was able to pass the regulatory hurdles, paving the way for other futures products also, in the process. CME listed the following benefits for launching a micro variant of Ethereum Futures:

1. Traders would be able to attain precision in their strategies
2. Ability to scale up and down incrementally, rather than having to bid 1 ETH as a while
3. Efficient trading and savings on potential margin offsets
4. Institional demand for Ethereum will rise further
5. Increasing accessbility to the world's second largest cryptoasset by market capitalization
6. Access to market wide liquidity and transparency on the financial product

CME pitched the Ethereum Futures micro variant earlier in the following words “The ETH notional value has increased from $1.7K on the date that it launched to nearly $3.6K on October 11, 2021. The amount of capital needed to access the futures market has significantly increased. To make our market more accessible to risk managers and other traders, CME Group will launch the Micro Ether futures contract, which is 1/500 the size of the Ether futures contract (i.e. 1/10 of one ether versus fifty ether for Ether futures (ETH)“

Bancor pioneered the order book-less automated market maker (AMM) concept back in 2017 and has since launched a second iteration of the decentralized exchange (DEX) platform in July 2020 featuring Chainlink oracles integration, single asset liquidity, reduced slippage, impermanent loss (IL) protection, support for lending pools, etc. Now, Bancor v3 will be revealed on Nov 30 at the Dcentralcon conference in Miami, FL and it will be launching soon by early 2022 with even more powerful features, in three distinct phases of Dawn, Sunrise, and Daylight.

Bancor v3 will focus on profit maximization, fees minimization, dual-sided rewards, automated yield generation, and protection against impermanent loss. The new iteration of the platform aims to abstract the complexity, so even average users can participate in DeFi and become profitable liquidity providers, even without much technical knowledge and former experience.

It's been planned to be introduced by next year first quarter. Bancor v3 will attempt to optimize for low gas consumption resulting in cheaper transactions, finally launch on multiple chains (likely Ethereum L2s), easy migration from earlier versions of the Bancor protocols, ability to use liquidity pool (LP) for other purposes (especially additional yield generation), sourcing impermanent loss (IL) protection from third parties, a new user interface and integration with Chainlink Keepers to automate "housekeeping" tasks efficiently.

Bancor v3 will introduce the "Omnipool concept", which will allow for bypassing BNT related transfers, as seen in earlier versions resulting in additional cost. This will allow Bancor to be competitive against other AMM protocols and save users fees incurred on transactions, increasing capital efficiency. The platform will also offer impermanent protection from the time of liquidity deposit, unlike 100 days staking requirement in earlier iterations.

There are no deposit limits also on Bancor v3 anymore, which means that any user can deposit as much as they want at any time, without waiting for spaces to open up like earlier Bancor v2.1 pools. This will result in liquidity growth in the protocol at an accelerated unbound rate. The team calls it the "infinity pool" concept and this superfluid / easy moving liquidity would be able to be simultaneously used for marketing making and fee earning strategies.

Since it's unnecessary to have to manually restake your fees+rewards again, Bancor v3 will introduce an auto compounding feature, which will allow the smart contract to automate this task for the users, if they elect to go for it. This will allow deep automation to come into play, saving users gas and time.

Bancor v3 will also enable the native DAO to choose the liquidity direction, allowing it to invest in the protocol-owned BNT tokens to generate fees for the protocol. The DAO would also be able to monitor and redirect BNT liquidity to more optimized and better-performing pools, thereby allowing the protocol to grow further and serve its users better.

adidas has joined the Metaverse on Ethereum after virtual real estate platform The Sandbox invited the world's leading sportswear manufacturer on Nov 22. So now, one of the world's most important companies has a Metaverse HQ, yes adoption finally is coming. But that's not all. adidas has also announced a partnership with the premier FIAT-to-crypto on/off ramp Coinbase on Nov 24, probably for the upcoming Coinbase NFT marketplace, though more details haven't been revealed.

In the Sandbox virtual estate, adidas occupies the -84, 96 positions and has 12x12 size (144 parcels of land). adidas might be planning to verify authenticity and ownership of their sportswear via NFTs, maybe selling limited-edition sportswear through the Metaverse, or just establishing a presence in the space to be explored and expanded further.

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is also teasing an adidas donning ape, so it's likely that they have acquired one. There are also talks of adidas planning to acquire the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain adidas.eth. It has been a great year for NFTs anyways and it just keeps getting better and better. The Metaverse concept is just getting started and we are amazed to see mainstream companies take notice and try to establish an HQ here in the digital world!

adidas has finally crossed the chasm and the Overton window, there's little doubt that others won't follow suit. We are finally seeing an upsurge in Metaverse projects, the next trend would be an internet of alternate realities. There are a plethora of projects that are upcoming and a new culture is emerging.

While the debate rages on around increasing block sizes and reducing block times to provide a band-aid level urgent fix for L1 scaling, Ethereum developers are considering more medium to long-term solutions. Ethereum rollups are the standard when it comes to L2 scaling solutions. Now it appears that they are about to 5 times cheaper, thanks to a new Ethereum Improvement Proposal EIP-4488 penned by the cofounder Vitalik Buterin himself along with Ansgar Dietrichs - research and development engineer at ConsenSys on Nov 23.

Ethereum rollups enhancing EIP-4488 title is "Transaction calldata gas cost reduction with total calldata limit" and it's described in the official proposal as "Greatly decreases the gas cost of transaction calldata and simultaneously caps total transaction calldata in a block". It's still a draft under consideration and the final EIP might look a little different, once it's thoroughly discussed and reviewed by Ethereum core devs and the community.

EIP-4488 notes that even though Ethereum rollups would eventually benefit from the sharding technology which will add ~1-2 MB dedicated for rollups to the blockchain, however, that is still years away. In the meanwhile, considering the high fees of the Ethereum base layer, EIP-4488 can be employed for immediate relief by reducing calldata gas cost and limiting total calldata in a block, thereby resulting in cheaper transactions on the Ethereum rollups L2s.

The Ethereum rollups enhancing EIP-4488 might be implemented in Q1 2022 before the Merge and will be a hard fork, meaning that it's backward incompatible. It's understood that EIP4488 will increase chain bloat, raising the storage requirements of chain history. However, EIP-4444 is being discussed to restrict the availability of historical data beyond one year as it doesn't have much use on the peer-to-peer layer, though some sources will still store this data for record-keeping purposes.

In another instance of Ethereum rising, Galaxy Digital and TIME have confirmed a "metaverse partnership" on Nov 18, paid out in Ether and one which we will see the native token of the world's largest smart contracts blockchain platform become a treasury asset for the worldwide and industry-leading media group. This partnership will also result in the launch of the TIME100 Companies Metaverse category, which will feature and report on companies building in the metaverse.

But, that's not it. TIME will also launch a new weekly "Into the Metaverse" newsletter by Andrew Chow, which will narrate the story of the intermingling of the physical and digital world, the related communities, culture, business opportunities, work to enhance in-field communication, and report on the general direction, which the industry is taking. The media group will also host Ethereum metaverse and educational resources via TIME learning page, coming next month.

Galaxy will play a major role in helping TIME magazine figure out the metaverse and its potential by providing insightful research on the virtual worlds and the investment opportunities. The most interesting part is that the partnership was financed not with FIAT - but the metaverse native Ether (ETH) currency. TIME has also announced to hold Ethereum on its balance sheets and as a corporate treasury asset. They already accept ETH for digital subscriptions payment and have launched exclusive three iconic TIME cover NFTs back in Mar 2021.

Over the next decade, the metaverse will become an increasingly important part of the world economy; our physical and digital realities are already becoming hard to distinguish. We look forward to partnering with TIME, an iconic brand driving innovation, as we seek to bring readers, creators, and the curious into the metaverse and demystify the tremendous amount of transformation happening within.

Mike Novogratz, CEO and Founder of Galaxy Digital

We are almost certain that you likely received thousands of dollars recently with the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) airdrop, just by being an early user of the highly important protocol and receiving a hefty reward plus Web3 ownership share. However, the gravy train ain't stopping anytime. The multichain liquidity aggregator and decentralized exchange (DEX) ParaSwap airdrop have been hinted at, as early as last year. But the DeFi Airdrops credible source has now indicated that ParaSwap airdrop is now imminent, by next week! Here's what we know so far.

How did DeFi Airdrops establish this? Well, probably from the survey taken this week by the ParaSwap official Twitter, which asked users to vote on the ticker of the ParaSwap airdrop and basically confirmed the airdrop. It wasn't a close contest, by any chance and participants finally decided on the $PSP ticker symbol.

The official Twitter handle has been real savvy with teasing people about this upcoming ParaSwap airdrop. It has used $WEN jokingly several times in the recent past, hinting at a potential token and signaling that it is going to drop with the only question being when?

Currently, they are running a poll asking users when they should do the ParaSwap airdrop. Including a joke that the protocol wasn't planning any airdrop. Welcome the fun social media handlers of the Web3 protocols!

It was all very ominous and in the shadows until Igor Igamberdiev of the Block found a test ParaSwap airdrop contract on Nov 06! It features a retroactive airdrop mechanism and some functionality for pool staking. The initial supply is around 2 billion PSPs and shows 150 thousand for the airdrop.

Such a tiny float is surprising and would mean that the airdrop won't be worth much, after all, FDV isn't a meme. But this might be a test contract and the actual one would show better distribution (or so we hope). The contract has the right source paths and also shows the presence of a Gnosis multisig, so let's keep our fingers crossed for the next week!

Ethereum Name Service (ENS) airdrop will be released in a couple of hours at around 7 PM (US Eastern Time) on Nov 08. The token ticker will be ENS (no surprises there) and the contract has been announced as 0xC18360217D8F7Ab5e7c516566761Ea12Ce7F9D72 (don't attempt to trade anything else!). Continue reading more to learn how to check eligibility and how to claim the token, once it launches in a short few hours.

Announced on Nov 02, it's a significant event because a critical part of Web3 infrastructure, the domain system of the decentralized web, Ethereum built "Sign in with Ethereum" alternate login pioneer is releasing a token and transitioning into a DAO, allowing the users who held the .eth names at Oct 30 (date of the snapshot) to receive ENS tokens and decide on the future of the protocol!

There's another reason to celebrate, Ethereum Name Service (ENS) team has been very careful and taken extensive measures to ensure that the airdrop system isn't gamed. This coupled with a VC-free atmosphere and no unfair low-cost selling to any party guarantees that the protocol will continue to truly remain a pillar of the decentralized Web. Plus, the team allocations have a large vesting period, the community is receiving 25% of all tokens being airdropped and 50% is being reserved for community treasury. ENS value is likely to hit the ground running, upon its release.

You will have 6 months to claim the tokens before they are resent to the treasury, so there's no need to hurry. Every account will receive it (regardless of the number of .eth domains contained) so squatters won't have much luck out there. You will receive the same allocations for one Ethereum wallet address if it contains one of the multiple .eth domains. The calculation for the airdrop will be based upon the following formula:

Now, that we have established that Ethereum Name Service (ENS) airdrop is a big deal. What can you do to check, if you qualified for it? How many tokens would you receive? Fortunately, there's a simple tool. Click here. Simply put your Ethereum address and it will display the number of tokens that you are eligible to receive or not.

What follows in this section has been taken from this Youtube video from ENS's official channel. Special thanks to alisha.eth for making this very informative video. For reasons of brevity, only the important steps are displayed in our picture-based claim tutorial. For an in-depth look, you can always watch the complete video.

Once the token has been airdropped, you would be able to claim it from here. It's not live, at the time of this publication. Once you access the page, you have to connect the wallet, which is eligible for the claim. Click "Connect to Wallet" and choose from MetaMask, Portis, Coinbase, Torus, WalletConnect, and MEW wallet. Then, click Get Started, once the wallet has been loaded on the interface.

The interface will now display the tokens available for the claim, as well as the calculation as mentioned in the earlier formula. Click "Start your claim process" to proceed further.

Ethereum Name Service (ENS) has designed the website meticulously, it will now start displaying the token information, purpose, use, and distribution criteria. Click Next after reading.

But that's not it. Since ENS wants to instill a sense of responsibility and pride in holding these tokens. The interface will now start displaying information pertinent to ENS draft constitutions including do's and don'ts. Click Start after reading and continue clicking Approve at each constitution article being displayed in detail. Once you read and approve all, you will be presented with a Sign button.

The interface will now ask you to gaslessly sign the constitution that you just read, authorize the free tx through the MetaMask interface (or other wallet equivalents).

Now, you must delegate your token-based votes to a member, who will exercise voting power on your behalf. You can choose from the list or enter their ENS or Ethereum wallet direct address.

This brings us to the last step, you can now review your claim, see your delegate, and click Claim. This will open up a new window to authorize transactions via MetaMask by paying gas and claiming your tokens! Congratulations on receiving your valuable ENS tokens!

Ethereum wallet addresses are complex and human unreadable. This makes it difficult for users to work with them. For instance, if you send funds to an Ethereum wallet, the long random address needs to be typed incorrectly and checked multiple times to establish that it’s the right one. It’s easier to make mistakes there. Enter Ethereum Name Service.

Ethereum Name Service or ENS fixes that problem by using smart contracts, linking the complex human unreadable Ethereum addresses to a simple .eth (amongst other variants) domain. For instance, you can bind the address 0xb4b3351918a9bedc7d386c6a685c42e69920b34d to something.eth. Now, it’s easy to interact and work with.

You don’t have to copy/paste long addresses and hope that everything goes right. Just purchase a simple domain with low fees to start receiving cryptocurrency, assets, and NFTs. The ENS domains themselves are ERC-721 compliant NFTs, which can be traded too. You can read how to acquire an ENS name here.

ENS domains already are integrated with a large part of the crypto-ecosystem and growing day by day. Currently, it has compatibility with Coinbase, Rainbow, Trust Wallet, MyCrypto, MetaMask, Huobi, etc. The DApps supporting the domains are Uniswap, Etherscan, Tornado Cash, The Graph, Aavegotchi.

The Football Club of Barcelona, Barcelona FC, or Barca is launching NFTs via Ethereum based Ownix service, according to an announcement made on Nov 05. This event would also mark the launch of the Ownix platform, which will offer a "premium digital auction house for sports, art, and entertainment" A Christie's of crypto, we will see. The event happening on Nov 24m, as indicated by the reverse clock on the main website, will feature a week-long auction. Barcelona FC will be presenting its NFTs, based on iconic moments of "more than a club" history.

As NFTs surge, we think it is important to give those collectors who are Barcelona FC fans an opportunity to own a piece of the club’s history. This new and exciting asset class allows collectors to own things that weren’t possible to own before, and we’re thrilled to offer sports fans an opportunity to spearhead the movement. Our mission is to bring customers to purchase NFTs not simply for marketing them further onwards, but for the pleasure and pride of owning a piece of club history.

Guy Elhanani, CEO of Ownix

Barcelona FC has a very large fanbase around the world and leads the way in the digital domain with over 400 million followers in social networks. Given this scenario, the Club is constantly looking for new ways to connect with its fans, and we believe that creating these NFTs is a unique opportunity to continue growing and consolidating the Barça brand by bringing unique moments that have made Barça fans dream and FC Barcelona a well-known club on every level.

Joan Laporta, President of FC Barcelona

Futbol Club Barcelona commonly referred to as Barcelona FC and colloquially known as Barça is a Spanish professional football club based in Barcelona, Spain, that competes in La Liga, the top flight of Spanish football. It is the fourth-most valuable sports team in the world, worth $4.06 billion, and the world's richest football club in terms of revenue, with an annual turnover of €840.8 million.

The official Barcelona anthem is the "Cant del Barça", written by Jaume Picas and Josep Maria Espinàs. Barcelona traditionally play in dark shades of blue and red stripes, leading to the nickname Blaugrana. Barcelona is one of the most widely supported teams in the world, and the club has one of the largest social media following in the world among sports teams [WIKIPEDIA]

Reddit - the world’s renowned social media, news posting, and discussion site has been involved with Web3 and blockchain tech for a while now. In May 2020, Reddit announced a limited rollout of community points initiative to tokenize the platform activity and incentivize user participation.

Then, realizing that they need an L2 solution to entertain their heavy traffic in an economical manner, Reddit launched "The Great Reddit Scaling Bake-Off" after inviting multiple Ethereum teams to develop an L2 solution, specifically for their needs.

Offchain Lab's Arbitrum was declared the ultimate winner on July 22, utilizing the roll-ups technology. This paved the way for Reddit's ambitious plan - onboard 500 million Reddit users to Web3 via Ethereum's Arbitrum L2! Let's see some more details shared by their crypto engineer Rahul Kothari.

Reddit has something called karma - which is basically an interactive reputation-based points system. Every time somebody thinks that your post is helpful, he can give you a thumbs up, rewarding you with karma. It's the same case otherwise. According to Rahul, the karma points will soon become Ethereum based tokens, in an attempt to decentralize social media.

The users will be able to take community-based decisions and fork subreddits in disagreements (think two parallel threads existing with new/modified histories). This new development can have interesting implications as users would finally be able to "moderate" the content to a significant extent.

Reddit will now focus on allowing users to take ownership - a share of the platform they constantly contribute to. This is also a clever monetization strategy as the platform is likely to consolidate its dominance further by climbing on the blockchain trend and getting a head start on its competitors when it comes to Web3.

There's good news on the Ethereum Layer 2 protocols front as the ecosystem is seeing tremendous growth in a short period of time, since its initial deployment. According to L2 tracking and analytics site L2 Beat, the total value locked is nearing the $5 billion mark - it's currently at $4.91 billion or 1,086,197 in ETH terms. It has risen 14.96% over the past week. For reference, the TVL for these protocols was only $1 billion in the mid of Sep - it's almost a 5X growth since then.

However, there is little surprise about the reason for Ethereum Layer 2 protocols' massive popularity. The Ethereum base layer is more congested than ever and is unsuitable for average users. For instance, the measure of how much you would pay for a transaction gwei has routinely hovered around 120-180 for the most time, in the past month and hasn't been under 100 gwei for a while. The rising fees and waiting times appear to be accelerating users' migration to the L2.

When it comes to the scaling solutions, rolls ups take the lead seeing the number of roll-ups based solutions in the top ten. Arbitrum is still at the top with around $2.88 billion locked and with a market share of 58.71%. dYdX follows with around $1 billion in TVL and commanding a 20.48% market share. Optimism holds the number three spot with $485 million TVL and a market share of 9.88%.

The Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solutions are decentralized protocols that increase the processing capacity of the Ethereum blockchain (scaling) and as a result, relieve congestion on the network. They work by delegating the network processing “off-chain” to their own chain, processing it there, before settling the final balances on the base layer.

These L2 allow users to execute low-cost transactions rapidly. It’s necessary that big exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, etc. integrate them, so average users can benefit from increased throughput and more capacity on blockchains and avoid even the first withdrawal and bridging transactions on-chain.

After the SEC approved two futures-based Bitcoin ETFs recently, Bloomberg Intelligence has indicated in a report on Nov 02 that an Ethereum ETF might be the next offering on the stock exchange, even before a highly desired spot-based another Bitcoin ETF is approved. Bloomberg's analyst James Seyffart believes that an Ethereum ETF is likely to be approved by the first quarter of the next year 2022, while spot-based Bitcoin ETFs are likely to be pushed until late 2022 or beyond. Ether (ETH) is likely to see a significant boost from the ETF approval.

The general mood in crypto has been bullish after the recent launch of two Bitcoin ETFs and analysts have been hopeful that this will pave the way for exchange-traded funds for other cryptocurrencies also, especially the next logical Ethereum ETF product. While Bitcoin is currently the top crypto by market capitalization, Ethereum itself is the world's most used and adopted smart contracts blockchain network. It generates the highest fees, settles the most value across, has the highest number of users and developers, and powers an overwhelmingly large part of the crypto verse.

The Ethereum ETF refers to an exchange-traded investment channel that tracks the Ether (ETH) crypto underlying price. ETFs enable investors to increase their investments without buying the underlying asset. For those people looking to concentrate only on profits and losses, ETFs give a more manageable option to purchasing and exchanging personal assets conveniently.

Ethereum ETF can enable fresh money to enter from the traditional finance space since it reduces the entry barriers by allowing people to invest in this space through platforms and products, they are already familiar with and without any minimum investment capital. It exists on stock exchanges, allowing investors to access liquidity. Investors can also be certain about the tax implications and regulatory protection.

The leading CME group announced on Nov 02 that it's launching Ethereum Futures by Dec 06 (still subject to regulatory approval), marking it the first time a cryptocurrency is about to get "micro futures" in a lesser denomination than its typical base unit. In this case, Ether itself. The micro Ethereum Futures would be sized at 1/10 of one Ether, according to the official release. This would allow market participants of various sizes and risk appetites to benefit from the leading smart contracts platform in the world.

CME pitches the benefits for the micro Ethereum Futures product as follows: traders would be able to attain precision in their strategies and will be able to scale their trading positions up or down incrementally. This would also allow futures traders to be more efficient and save on "potential margin offsets". The upcoming launch shows that the institutional appetite for Etheruem is breaching new all-time highs.

The reason for launching Ethereum Futures was described by CME as "The ETH notional value has increased from $1.7K on the date that it launched to nearly $3.6K on October 11, 2021. The amount of capital needed to access the futures market has significantly increased. To make our market more accessible to risk managers and other traders, CME Group will launch the Micro Ether futures contract, which is 1/500 the size of the Ether futures contract (i.e. 1/10 of one ether versus fifty ether for Ether futures (ETH)"

Ether price has responded favorably to the news with the world's second-largest cryptocurrency now changing hands at $4545 and establishing a new all-time high. It's now up around 5.1% in the past 24 hours and appears to be in the price discovery mode after a long consolidation. The stars are finally aligning up for Ethereum as fundamentals get better over time and the infrastructure is developed further.

Leading domain service Ethereum Name Service (ENS) announced on Nov 02 that it's now transitioning into a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), facilitated by the launch of an ENS token and now seeking DAO delegates. The launch tweet notes that despite most of the things running automatically and nobody being able to tamper with anyone's registration, there are still things requiring human intervention.

Ethereum Name Service (ENS) current administration wants "ENS root multisig pass over control of the existing ENS treasury, its future funds, and control of the .ETH registrar contract that is in charge of the pricing and registration mechanism for .ETH names. The first order of business for the ENS DAO will be to formally request these from the ENS root multisig key holders" The current multi signature trusted model is being retired in favor of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) governing via community voted delegates.

The protocol has already proposed a constitution and requested community members to apply for the DAO delegate positions here. They have also announced that the snapshot for the ENS token airdrop was taken yesterday and they are all set to launch it by next week, by which time, the rest of the work will begin also. So, don't forget to check your wallets next week, if you have registered an Ethereum Name Service (ENS) in the recent past!

Ethereum wallet addresses are complex and human unreadable. This makes it difficult for users to work with them. For instance, if you send funds to an Ethereum wallet, the long random address needs to be typed incorrectly and checked multiple times to establish that it’s the right one. It’s easier to make mistakes there.

Ethereum Name Service or ENS fixes that problem by using smart contracts, linking the complex human unreadable Ethereum addresses to a simple .eth (amongst other variants) domain. For instance, you can bind the address 0xb4b3351918a9bedc7d386c6a685c42e69920b34d to something.eth. Now, it’s easy to interact and work with.

You don’t have to copy/paste long addresses and hope that everything goes right. Just purchase a simple domain with low fees to start receiving cryptocurrency, assets, and NFTs. The ENS domains themselves are ERC-721 compliant NFTs, which can be traded too. You can read how to acquire an ENS name here.

ENS domains already are integrated with a large part of the crypto-ecosystem and growing day by day. Currently, it has compatibility with Coinbase, Rainbow, Trust Wallet, MyCrypto, MetaMask, Huobi, etc. The DApps supporting the domains are Uniswap, Etherscan, Tornado Cash, The Graph, Aavegotchi.

Metaverse, Metaverse! We are certain that you have been hearing about this alternate reality for a while now - a shared augmented / virtual internet of realities that will keep us all connected and allow for new experiences. You probably heard about Facebook rebranding to Meta recently to focus on the Metaverse, don't feel so good about the walled garden / restricted opportunity and are thinking of investing in more crypto-ish open metaverse components for lucrative returns. Well, let's take a look at the top 5 Metaverse tokens by market capitalization.

At a marketcap of $593 million, the fifth in our list of top 5 Metaverse tokens is multi-chain UFO Gaming. UFO Gaming describes itself as "The Dark Metaverse is a closed loop ever-expanding ecosystem that will consist of P2E games with breedable in-game NFTs and Virtual Land that will entitle collectors to in-game revenue. All games will funnel through UFO's Mothership Gaming Launchpad. UFO Unlocks Everything"

Basically, it's a dark themed Metaverse with space, planets and UFO theme. It aims to offer a series of play to earn NFT based games and virtual real estate, whose value will be enhanced with more participants entering the game based economies. The first game in this Metaverse is the RPG style Super Galactic with character minting and quest based game play.

So, we have the Metaverse, but what about an organized group looking to invest their time and effort in them for lucrative rewards for the entire communities? Enter Yield Guild Games, which describes itself as "YGG is a play-to-earn gaming guild, bringing players together to earn via blockchain-based economies. We are the settlers of new worlds in the metaverse". At $653, it's number four in our top 5 Metaverse token list.

Yield Guild Games is sort of the Yearn Finance of the Metaverse, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) seeking yield aggregation in different Metaverse projects. The projects sits at the intersection of NFTs and DeFi. Its mission is given as creation of the "biggest virtual world economy" by optimizing the DAO owned gaming assets / NFTs in different Metaverses for enhancing utility and generating profits.

Now, we are talking billions with the number third entry in our top 5 Metaverse tokens list. The Ethereum-native Sandbox is a blockchain based virtual world, where users can buy, sell or even create their own digital assets. It creates the perfect experience, encompassing online experience, decentralization and gaming. It aims to bring blockchain technology to the masses by attracting gamers and creators alike, combining play to earn and NFT based economy. The utility token is called SAND, used for transactions on the platform and running decentralized governance.

The second oldest virtual real estate project (after ancient Etheria) - Decentraland was deployed on 15 August 2017. It is a digital sims-like Metaverse platform that allows users to create and experience virtual reality. The users can purchase plots of land (non-fungible unique digital assets) that they can build. It includes the record of the location, owner, content description, and access controls. Also, they can develop and monetize assets.

Decentraland was developed on the Ethereum blockchain. MANA is the native ERC-20 utility token, however the ERC-71 Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) standard token LAND is used to represent land ownership and transfers. The Decentraland DAO holds important smart contracts and assets that make up Decentraland – the lands, estates, wearable, servers and the marketplace. It also controls high amount of MANA tokens which allows autonomous function, provision of subsidy, normal operation etc.

The users are in full control of the policies and determining the functioning of their digital assets, on the platform. The community can vote on policy update, future LAND auctions, determining the NFT contracts allowed, builder and marketplace etc. In short, they can vote on, whatever they want to vote on. The governance mechanism is built in and powered by Aragon. At $3.31 billion marketcap, it's the second in our top 5 Metaverse tokens list.

The apex predator at the top of the current Metaverse lineup needs no introduction. Axie Infinity is a well known and popular play to earn game, which has a current marketcap of modest-by-TAM $8.95 billion. Hence, it's the number one in our list of top 5 Metaverse tokens. Axie Infinity runs on the Ethereum side chain Ronin. The players can earn by competing PVP battles, breeding Axies and selling them to the marketplace, or collecting rare Axies.

Axie Infinity uses a dual token structure like most Metaverse projects Smooth Love Potion (SLPs) which are needed to breed Axies or the more commonly known AXS - needed for governance and earn a share of the platform fees. In Axie Infinity, players use action cards to command what action their Axies will be doing for that turn. It can be considered close to the Pokemon game. The game is growing massively, offers a lifeline to many people in developing countries to make their living and is likely to retain the top position in top 5 Metaverse tokens, for quite a while.

Ethereum is fast becoming the epitome of culture. TikTok, Twitter, Playboy magazine and now the nostalgic teen favorite Counter Strike! They are all rushing to capitalize on the latest NFT trend. ESL Labs - the world's largest esports organization announced on Oct 28 that it plans to launch a "next generation NFT collectibles platform" on Ethereum's Layer 2 solution Immutable X for Counter Strike Global Offensive (GO) fans.

According to the official source "The ESL NFT platform, in partnership with Immutable X, will enable esports and Counter-Strike enthusiasts around the world to be able to buy, sell, and exchange NFT assets within the ESL Pro Tour". However, this won't be Counter Strike parent ESL first foray into the NFT world. It previously launched the IEM Cologne POG Collection on OpenSea in this year's August!

This is encouraging news as it shows that NFTs are here to stay and are fast gaining cultural approval. It's understandable that other major game developers are going to follow in ESL's path and likely to incorporate some form of NFTs / shared game items in the future, to stay relevant in the fast changing landscape. This is the way.

Counter-Strike (CS) is a series of multiplayer first-person shooter video games in which teams of terrorists battle to perpetrate an act of terror (bombing, hostage-taking, assassination) while counter-terrorists try to prevent it (bomb defusal, hostage rescue). The series began on Windows in 1999 with the release of the first game, Counter-Strike.

At the end of each round, players are rewarded based on their individual performance with in-game currency to spend on more powerful weapons in subsequent rounds. Winning rounds results in more money than losing, and completing objectives such as killing enemy players gives cash bonuses. Uncooperative actions, such as killing teammates, results in a penalty - Wikipedia

SHIB mania continues as the meme-coin has seen an almost 10X appreciation in the last 30 days. It's anyone's guess as to why it has pumped to an extreme level like that, but it seems that it has something to do with the popularity of the former king of the meme coins - the DOGE itself! The token now has a $40B market cap and is currently ranked 9 on the list - ahead of Dogecoin. And it might have caused a holder to unknowingly execute perhaps the greatest trade of all time?

A wallet 0x1406899696aDb2fA7a95eA68E80D4f9C82FCDeDd appears to have bought a huge supply of the SHIB token, starting from (surprisingly) the date the token likely started trading. The pseudo anonymous investor appears to have turned $8,000 of his money into a whopping $5,700,000,000 or $5.7 billion! That's a return of proportions likely unimaginable, unless of course you were involved in some pretty shady activities.

But, these are paper gains and we can say with high confidence that the investor can't possibly cash out all these gains, because of the illiquid market and price bleeding like a hemophiliac on blood thinners, should the investor attempt to route the trade through any of the AMMs or the centralized exchanges. So far, he or she appears to be dispersing little little amounts to multiple random wallets. But, how much can be likely cashed out? Still an excellent $43 million in one click of a button and tx approval! A very strong contender for the greatest trade of all time.

Self-declared DOGE killer, Shiba is another meme and community based dog themed token. According to the official description “SHIB is an experiment in decentralized spontaneous community building”. SHIB has a total supply of 1,000,000,000,000,000 (or 1 quadrillion) tokens. The project is named after the breed of hunting dogs in Japan.

You can acquire SHIB tokens from Uniswap, Coinbase, Hotbit, Gate.io, Poloniex, 1inch etc. 50% of the tokens are in a locked liquidity state and remaining 50% was burned to Vitalik Buterin, ensuring no possible team dump. SHIB has seen astronomical appreciation since its launch in Aug 2020.

The premier lifestyle and entertainment magazine Playboy is no stranger to experimentation and launching NFTs. It launched the iconic "PLAYBOY x Slimesunday Liquid Summer" collection last year, made its presence known in Decentraland, announced a NFT artist grant program and now it's back to offer us a lot more! This time, Playboy is going full metaverse and launching a collection of 11,953 odd Rabbitars NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain on Oct 26, with each one being offered for 0.1953 ETH. Want to get one? Try your luck here.

According to the official description "The Playboy Rabbitars are a lagomorphic-themed civilization of 11,953 unique, non-fungible rabbits inspired by Playboy iconography, heritage and lore. In the context of the metaverse, the Rabbitars are NFTs that live on the Ethereum Blockchain as ERC-721 tokens. Each Rabbitar is generated from 175+ traits including fur, ears, facial expressions, apparel, accessories, occupation-related characteristics, and more. Some of the rarest Rabbitar traits are inspired by culturally significant aspects of Playboy’s art and editorial history. (And yes, you can tell your friends you officially belong to a Playboy Club!)"

The Rabbitars cap at 11,953 is a special mention and homage to the founding year of the magazine, which was 1953. These cute rabbits wouldn't be just authenticated profile pictures, but allow their holders entry into the "Playboy Club" for exclusive access to the events, merchandise and more. From what we have seen so far, the PLBY Group - owner of the magazine is willing to expand further in the realms of Web3 and the Metaverse!

It was announced in the press release that the Rabbitars NFT collection by the group's dedicated Web3 innovation team (impressive!) and they were helped by Possible Studios and WENEW blockchain art studio! Playboy reiterated that the aim is to create the "fun and valuable world for both new and experienced members of the NFT community". The NFTs will exist as ERC-721 standard tokens on the Ethereum blockchain and will be hosted on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), which according to the team is "the metaverse’s decentralized file storage system".

As the mythology goes, the Rabbitars are a rare species of rabbit known for their extraordinary speed, cultural sophistication, razor-sharp wit, inimitable intellect, fantastic fashion sense, and in some cases, sexual prowess. Each Rabbitar is generated from 175+ possible traits, including fur, facial features, ears and headwear, apparel, accessories, occupation-related characteristics, and more. Playboy iconography is woven throughout the collection, and some of the rarest Rabbitars and Rabbitar traits are inspired by significant aspects of Playboy’s art and editorial history.

Playboy's Description of Rabbitars Mythology