Unifi Protocol: A Bridge Between ICON and the DeFi Economy
Welcome to this week’s edition of RHIZOME Wire!
The integration of Unifi Protocol
A few weeks ago, the ICON community was met with an announcement that the project team behind Sesameseed would be applying for a grant to implement ICON into something called the “Unifi Protocol.” (The grant has been approved)
At the time, most ICONists had never heard of Sesameseed or Unifi — myself included — and most of the community is still relatively unaware of what they are or what they do.
So for the latest article to be published as part of “ICON Spotlight”, I did a deep dive into Unifi, this latest addition to the ICON project.
First and foremost, for those who aren’t as familiar with DeFi as you would like to be but want to grow your understanding, I would highly encourage you to take this brief “course” on the topic, put together by Finematics. It provides an overview of DeFi in easy-to-understand articles and videos and should help anyone become reasonably fluent pretty quickly.
Next, if you haven’t read my writeup on Sesameseed from a few weeks ago, be sure to do so now, as it’s hard to fully understand Unifi without having a bit of background on Sesameseed.
So let’s take a quick look at Unifi. The following is from the analysis I wrote for ICON Spotlight:
The best way to think of the Unifi Protocol is that it is a collection of smart contracts that serve as a platform for various DeFi projects to be built upon. Just like ICON is a network that allows DApps to operate on top of the underlying blockchain, Unifi can be viewed in a similar manner, although built with various reward and incentive mechanisms that are geared toward DeFi tools and products. The added bonus is that it not only allows these DeFi tools to be built, but it allows them to interoperate among numerous other chains that have been integrated into the Unifi Protocol.
In other words, the ICON network will be onboarding a DeFi Swiss-Army knife of sorts, which not only brings a number of DeFi platforms to ICON (in addition to the other DeFi platforms currently slated for ICON, including OMM and Balanced), but also creates a bridge between ICON and DeFi on other blockchains.
The article goes into a deep dive on the benefits of Unifi, so I encourage you to read the entire thing, but here’s the cliff notes version of Unifi’s benefits:
A new trading platform for ICONists to trade not only different IRC-2 tokens built on the ICON blockchain, but also comes with the ability to trade for tokens on other blockchains.
The opportunity for ICONists to serve as liquidity providers on Unifi’s trading platform, uTrade. Doing so will allow ICONists to earn “UP”, Unifi’s native token, which can be redeemed at any time for ICX.
Access to the uLend lending platform, which will launch in the future.
The other intriguing part of this development is the fact that both Sesameseed and Unifi are relatively new projects, but with an ambitious and achievable roadmap ahead of them. The fact that ICON is being onboarded fairly early in the roadmap is certainly bullish, as the the tokenomics models for both UP and SEED guarantee they can only go up in value over time.
Ultimately, with the launch of Balanced, OMM, and Unifi over the coming months, the ICON ecosystem is going to gain a number of DeFi tools that will only add value to the network over the long-term. DApps will have access to a new wide-array of tools, and prospective developers will have those same tools at their disposal, opening up a number of new and exciting possibilities for the ICON community.
News from ICON World
Min Kim had an interview with Tech Talk Daily
ICON P-Rep team Sharpn rebrands to ‘Staky’
Sesameseed launches a test node on the ICON network
Ricky Dodds ranked one of the best marketers in the blockchain space
Fintech Danal joins the ICON network as a P-Rep
An update from INSIGHT
Blockchain Industry News
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PayPal says it's opening up crypto services to all eligible U.S. users - The Block
PayPal said Thursday that it is opening up its nascent cryptocurrency services to all eligible U.S. users.
Chainalysis Wants to Help the Feds Sell Millions in Forfeited Bitcoin - CoinDesk
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