Category: Investment

  • MRHB DeFi: Successful US$5.5M Fundraise to Fuel Vision of Bringing Ethical DeFi to Excluded Communities Everywhere | by Bit Media Buzz | Jan, 2022

    MRHB DeFi: Successful US$5.5M Fundraise to Fuel Vision of Bringing Ethical DeFi to Excluded Communities Everywhere | by Bit Media Buzz | Jan, 2022

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    Bit Media Buzz

    Dubai, UAE, Jan 31st, 2022MRHB DeFi, the world’s first decentralized finance ecosystem platform focused on ethical, sustainable and halal crypto opportunities, has successfully raised a total of USD 5.5 million through a series of private and public funding rounds which culminated in an initial DEX offering (IDO) that was oversubscribed on the DODO and ZeeDO launchpads.

    Prior to its IDO, the startup gave the community direct access through two public sales on its official website, which saw tremendous support from its community of over 50,000 members.

    Our funding rounds have surpassed our expectations and prove beyond doubt the huge demand for ethics in the cryptoverse,” said MRHB DeFi CEO Naquib Mohammed. “We want to take the opportunity to express our heartfelt appreciation for our valued partners and loyal supporters, without whom we would not have made it this far. These are just the first steps of our ambitious multi-year journey that we have begun, together with our community, to ensure that everyone can participate in building an ecosystem where trust and values matter — hence giving access to the growing opportunities of the crypto-economy.

    The ethical startup is also backed by investors and partners which include Polygon Technology, Sheesha Finance, Australian Gulf Capital, Mozaic, NewTribe Capital, Blockchain Australia, Contango Digital Assets, Masary Capital, ZKSync, Acreditus Partners, EMGS Group, Sinofy Group, Sukhavati Protocol and MKD Capital amongst others.

    “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” — Nelson Mandela

    MRHB began as an idea 15 months ago, when Naquib, who was at that time working on Enterprise Blockchain use cases, was interviewed by a crypto news agency about the general trends of DLT.

    The questions came around to the acceptance of crypto within the muslim communities in the Middle East, an interesting angle which led Naquib to delve further into the DeFi world, where he noticed the absence of halal projects. Understanding that there was a gap, he started putting down ideas and developing conversations with tech friends and like-minded connections, all of whom saw the immense possibilities with crypto but were disheartened by the absence of projects and protocols that were halal and consistent with their financial and ethical principles. The immense complexity of the cryptoverse as a whole also stood out as a further deterrent.

    Resident in Saudi Arabia, he soon realised through various community discussions — both in the middle east and farther afield — that many fellow Millennials and Gen Z’ers were facing the same challenges and were hence avoiding the entire cryptoverse. This meant that many communities — especially Muslims — were excluded from the opportunities in this new tech frontier. Thus began his journey of taking on the challenge and goal of building a landmark halal project in the DeFi ecosystem.

    Over the course of six months, Naquib assembled a team that included not just developers but reputable industry professionals and Shariah experts, all of whom shared his vision of creating an ethical DeFi ecosystem that reflects community values and beliefs. It would be the first to fill a major gap in the crypto space and address the needs of communities that number more than a billion, who have all thus far been excluded due to ethics, faith, fear and complexity.

    While the DeFi offerings were aimed at adhering to ethical investment and financing principles rooted in Islamic Finance (primarily the prohibition on interest-based lending and income, and sectors deemed unethical or exploitative like gambling, pornography etc), MRHB would also be focused on removing technological complexity. Thus the overall objective was to build a more empowering and ethical community-focused platform that would also cater to those new to crypto while addressing the negative perception created by extensive instances of fraud, risk and opacity in the crypto space.

    The Islamic Finance sector is the first target and is the largest and most active faith-based market. It is currently sized at around USD 3 trillion — attracting even a small portion of Islamic liquidity into DeFi will represent a major boost to the total value of the DeFi sector worldwide.

    Community Focused and Community Supported

    Approximately 85% of the funds raised came from the MRHB global community which spans from Canada to Australia — all of whom are looking for an ethical and halal entry into the cryptoverse. The inclusive startup is aptly named, with MRHB being short for “Marhaba”, which means “welcome” in Arabic, as the project ushers in entire crypto newbie communities.

    The platform’s $MRHB token is now available for trades on PancakeSwap, one of the leading decentralized exchanges on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) network and remains above the launch price in spite of overall bearish markets.

    To reward the community and encourage more market liquidity, a 5 million pool of MRHB token rewards has been set aside for token holders who provide liquidity to the MRHB/BNB pool on PancakeSwap. These rewards are for the next two months and apply on top of their share of trading fees earned. Token lockups for early project supporters will begin soon, allowing liquidity providers to invest their $MRHB tokens and receive additional rewards.

    MRHB DeFi is already moving forward with their production roadmap, having recently launched its Souq NFT Marketplace, the first NFT marketplace guaranteed to contain halal-only content. The launch of Sahal Wallet, a non-custodial mobile wallet featuring filtering technology that will allow for frictionless access to halal tokens, is slated for the middle of next month. The pioneering Liquidity Harvester, MRHB’s passive and stable crypto income product, will be launching in Q2 and the project is currently in advanced discussions with pioneering regulated institutional partners to offer halal crypto-wealth products. More decentralized and centralized exchange listings are also coming up in the near future, welcome news for the MRHB community.

    About MRHB DeFi

    MRHB DeFi is a halal, decentralised finance platform built to embody the true spirit of an “Ethical and Inclusive DeFi” by following faith-based financial and business principles, where all excluded communities can benefit from the full empowerment potential of DeFi.

    The diverse team is comprised of researchers, technocrats, influencers, Islamic fintech experts & business entrepreneurs, who came together to ensure that MRHB DeFi prevails in a manner that will impact society as a whole, essentially bridging the gap between the faith-conscious communities and the blockchain world.

    MRHB DeFi Official Channels

    Website: https://mrhb.network

    NFT Marketplace: https://souq.mrhb.network

    Twitter:

    Telegram: https://t.me/mdf_official

    Telegram Announcements: https://t.me/marhabadefi_ANN

    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MarhabaDeFi

    Medium: https://medium.com/@mrhbdefi

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marhabadefi

    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MRHB-DeFi-105893235209147

    Telegram (Arabic): https://t.me/mdf_arabic

    Telegram (Russian): https://t.me/marhabadefi_russia

    Telegram (Turkish): https://t.me/MarhabaDefiTR

    Telegram (Persian): https://t.me/mrhbdefi_persian

    Telegram (Urdu/Hindi): https://t.me/MRHBDeFi_Urdu_Hindi



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  • Five GameFi Crypto Tokens that You Should Be Playing

    Five GameFi Crypto Tokens that You Should Be Playing

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    The crypto market seems to have lost its luster for a while now, with the overall market valuation falling below $2-trillion. Despite Bitcoin’s 13th birthday celebrations, the crypto carnage has persisted. The blue-chip cryptos are now battling for action with a dramatic drop in volumes. However, the current drop has not affected some tokens and has not deterred investors, who are now looking for tokens to fill their bags. Here are a few expert-picked crypto tokens that are showing great potential.

    Axie Infinity ($AXS)

    Axie Infinity is a play-to-earn game that allows users to buy, breed, and sell Axies (pets) against one another in order to win in-game crypto called the smooth love potions, which you can convert into real money.

    Players can cash out their tokens regularly. Smooth Love Potion ($SLP) and Axie Infinity Shard ($AXS) are the two types of tokens in the game, and both are tradable on crypto exchanges. $SLP is used for in-game transactions and rewards whereas $AXS is the governance token that powers the entire ecosystem. Axie Infinity, which runs on its own sidechain Ronin, has gained enormous popularity in 2021.

    Decentraland ($MANA)

    $MANA is the native token of Decentraland, a growing blockchain-powered virtual world based on the Ethereum blockchain. This project began in 2017 as a foundation for developing multiplayer games, but it quickly gained traction due to the metaverse buzz in 2021. The Decentraland Builder contains hundreds of 3D objects that players can use to build or manufacture nearly anything in this virtual environment as game tokens.

    Players can use free and open marketplaces to buy and sell virtual parcels built inside Decentraland. It comes as no surprise that $MANA is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies of 2021. Players can also use $MANA to buy in-game items like avatar costumes, as well as vote on future Decentraland developments where a single $MANA token represents a single vote.

    Gala ($GALA)

    Gala is a P2E game based on the Ethereum network with its own native token called $GALA. It was founded in 2019 by Eric Schiermeyer, one of the co-founders of the leading mobile game company Zynga, that created popular games like Mafia Wars and Farmville. The game already has 1.3 million registered users and its goal with blockchain is to give users more power over their gaming experiences.

    The game aims to change the reality in which players spend thousands of dollars on in-game items and spend countless hours playing the game, only to have it all taken away with the click of a button. Gala leverages NFTs that allow users to vote on new games and influence how they operate. $GALA token is the heart of the system that can be used to purchase NFTs as well as in-game items. Gala One has already released their flagship game Town Star, and there are many more games in the works that are expected to launch in 2022.

    The Sandbox ($SAND)

    The Sandbox is an Ethereum-based project that allows users to construct and explore galaxies in a virtual cosmos. Initially, it launched as a normal mobile and PC game but Animoca Brands then turned into a blockchain gaming ecosystem powered by crypto and NFTs.

    Players in the system create and design their own characters in order to access the Sandbox metaverse’s many landscapes, games, and centers. The produced digital objects may then be monetized with NFTs and sold for $SAND tokens on the Sandbox Marketplace. Unlike other popular play-to-earn games, the Sandbox does not have a preset gameplay universe. Instead, it takes a dynamic approach, allowing users to personalize anything using free and easy design tools.

    FireZard ($ZARD)

    FireZard is a new P2E game based on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) network. It is the first Trading Card Game that passively and instantly rewards investors in an attractive and collectible way through NFTs. The game revolves around the major five dragons that are employed to compete with other players. Each FireZard NFT Card represents a dragon and has its own set of features.

    Moreover, the Cards are not only collectible, but they have an instant win prize attached to them that is worth anything from 0.1 BNB to 5 BNB. Players of this game are massively rewarded with the game’s native tokens, $ZARD, and $FLAME. $FLAME tokens will only be used for in-game activities, whereas $ZARD tokens will play a much larger role in propelling the platform. With the game still in its early stages, $ZARD is expected to explode in the coming months.

    2022 Will be the Year of Gaming Crypto

    Blockchain gaming is a rapidly expanding area within the crypto and blockchain sectors, and it is likely to expand more in the coming months. These are some of the projects that have a lot of potential and should be looked into further for 2022 and beyond.



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  • Cross-chain bridge tokens moon as crypto shifts toward interoperability

    Cross-chain bridge tokens moon as crypto shifts toward interoperability

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    Interoperability is shaping up to be one of the main themes for the cryptocurrency market in 2022 as projects across the ecosystem unveil integrations that make their networks Ethereum (ETH) Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible.

    While this has been one of the long-term goals of the ecosystem as a step on the path to an interconnected network of protocols, it has also created a new decentralized finance (DeFi) market for multi-chain bridges and decentralized finance.

    Here are three of the top volume cross-chain bridges that the cryptocurrency community uses to transfer assets between blockchain networks.

    Multichain

    Multichain (MULTI), formerly known as Anyswap, is a cross-chain router protocol that aims to become the go-to router for the emerging Web3 ecosystem.

    According to data from Defi Llama, Multichain is the top-ranked cross-chain swap protocol by total value locked, with $8.95 billion currently locked on the platform.

    Multichain total value locked. Source: Defi Llama

    One of the main reasons for the high TVL on Multichain is the large number of blockchain networks supported by the protocol. Currently, 30 different chainscan be accessed on the network.

    Blockchain protocols supported by Multichain. Source: Multichain

    According to data provided by Multichain, the protocol has processed a total of $53.15 billion worth of volume since launching, with $19.08 billion of that being transacted in the past 30 days alone. There are currently 485,399 users that have interacted with the Multichain protocol, amounting to nearly 2.256 million transactions.

    Multichain network statistics. Source: Multichain

    Users who deposit tokens into one of the pools supported by Multichain receive a sare of the transaction fees generated by the pool in question.

    The protocol’s native MULTI token is used to vote and participate in the governance of the Multichain ecosystem and has a circulating supply of 18.64 million tokens out of a total 100 million.

    Synapse

    Synapse (SYN) refers to itself as a “cross-chain layer ∞ protocol” that is designed to offer users interoperability between separate blockchain networks.

    According to data from Defi Llama, Synapse recently hit an all-time high in total value locked of $1.16 billion prior to experiencing a wave of outflows that lowered the TVL to 740.43 million.

    Total value locked on Synapse. Source: Defi Llama

    The Synapse protocol currently supports 12 different chains which have a combined total bridged volume of $5.33 billion according to data from the platform’s dashboard.

    Total bridged volume on each network supported by Synapse. Source: Synapse

    A large percentage of the total volume recorded on Synapse has come since the start of 2022 with the protocol seeing an all-time high bridge volume of $157.8 million on Jan. 23.

    Synapse bridge volume. Source: Synapse Analytics

    The protocol’s native SYN token has several uses within the ecosystem. Token holders can use it to conduct community governance votes via the SynapseDAO, liquidity providers (LPs) receive a percentage yield paid out in SYN for their deposits and it is also used as a subsidy to pay for the gas expended by network validators to secure transactions across the network.

    LPs also receive a share of the protocol fees earned by the Synapse platform on each transaction.

    Related: Web3 innovations are replacing middlemen with middleware protocols

    Celer cBridge

    Another popular cross-chain bridge is the Celer cBridge, a multi-chain network that enables instant, low-cost value transfers between 19 different networks.

    The cBridge is a subsector of the larger Celer (CELR) ecosystem and utilizes the CELR token for operations on the protocol and as the reward token for liquidity providers.

    Along with the CELR rewards paid to LPs, a percentage of the transaction fees generated by people who use the liquidity pools to bridge funds across chains are paid out to LPs and added directly to the pools, allowing the rewards to compound.

    According to data from cBridge analytics, the total value of funds locked in the bridge contract (pool-based bridge) and the funds locked in the token vault contract (canonical token bridge) currently stands at $240.92 million.

    cBridge usage statistics. Source: cBridge

    A total of 89,897 unique addresses have interacted with the protocol since inception and have conducted a total of $2.842 billion in transaction volume.

    Similar to the transfer trend seen with Synapse, the transaction volume on cBridge has gotten noticeably higher in 2022 with a record $71.12 million being transacted on Jan. 22.

    Daily transaction volume on cBridge. Source: cBridge analytics

    Some of the protocols currently supported by cBridge include Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, Polygon, Fantom, Metis, Harmony, Gnosis, Arbitrum and Optimism.

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    The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.