The total cryptocurrency market capitalization has climbed from $1.48 trillion to $1.66 trillion over the course of last week, but the cryptocurrency market is still in limbo. With no clear sentiment, markets could move in either direction or even continue trading sideways. However, several projects are seeking to benefit from the increased attention, granted to them by token airdrops and important announcements. In addition, many projects are pushing their upgrades to their respective mainnets as summer and the end of Q2 2021 is rapidly approaching.
1. Centrifuge (CFG) and Altair (AIR)
Centrifuge is a decentralized asset financing protocol that aims to bridge the world of DeFi (“Decentralized Finance”) and real-world assets and provide a stable source of yield uncorrelated to volatile crypto assets to DeFi investors. Businesses, on the other hand, can tokenize real-world assets and use them as collateral to access financing through Tinlake, Centrifuge’s lending dApp. The CFG token is the protocol’s native asset that provides incentive for blockchain validators and grants governance rights to its holder. Centrifuge chain operates on Polkadot, while its lending application Tinlake is built on Ethereum due to the ecosystem’s massive liquidity.
AIR Token Airdrop to CFG Holders is Around the Corner
The Centrifuge team recently announced the launch of Altair, their own Kusama parachain. The Altair Kusama parachain is going to have the industry-leading tech from Centrifuge chain and more, as the newest experimental features will be deployed on Altair before they go live on Centrifuge Chain. Altair plans to be one of the first parachains live on Kusama, so the Centrifuge team encourages supporters to delegate their KSM to the parachain crowdloan. If the parachain auction is successful, Altair will reward participants with 50+ AIR for each 1 KSM locked. The team notes that exact reward will per 1 KSM will depend on the price of the parachain slot and participation in the crowdloan. Another 61% of the total supply of 425,000,000 AIR tokens will be airdropped to CFG holders (1 AIR per 1 CFG) based on a snapshot taken at the Altair parachain genesis. Currently the total value locked in Centrifuge’s Tinlake dApp is $18,729,969 and the CFG token is valued at around $13.
2. VeChain Thor (VET)
VeChain is a project that utilizes the combination of the IoT (Internet of Things) infrastructure and blockchain technology to improve the efficiency and transparency of the existing real-world asset supply chains. The main feature VeChain offers is labeling products with RFID or QR codes, which are scanned at every step of the transportation process, granting the supply chain manager higher levels of control and more insight into the whole process. The project development and maintenance is overseen by the Singapore-based company carrying the same name, which was founded by Sunny Lu in 2015. Their enterprise-focused platform relies on two tokens: the VET token is used as a carrier of value on the network, while the VeThor Token (VTHO) is used to pay for transaction fees and the execution of smart contracts.
VeChain Thor Mainnet Upgrade to take place on June 7
About 3 weeks ago, VeChain announced the release of the latest version of VeChain Thor, which includes code that will activate the ETH_IST VeChain hardfork. The hard fork, which already took place on the VeChain testnet, is neccessary for the VeChain network to maintain its compatibility with the latest Ethereum virtual machine (EVM). The GitHub release message of the VeChain 1.5 from May 14 raed:
“VeChain Thor 1.5 has been released this weekend. This includes a hard fork to support ethereum Berlin compatibility. This fork will be active on testnet starting 2021-05-20! So go update your nodes if necessary!”
As the release message also noted, the hardfork will be triggered at block #9254300 on the mainnet as well. The hardfork is now just behind the corner, as said block is estimated to be mined on Monday, 07 Jun 2021 at around 08:20:00 GMT. Node runners should upgrade their software to continue participating in the protocol’s block confirmation process.
3. Filecoin (FIL)
Filecoin is a decentralized file storage network based on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), a peer-to-peer file storage and sharing protocol released by Protocol Labs in 2015. The project raised $205 million worth of crypto in a 2017 ICO and finally launched its highly anticipated mainnet on October 15, 2020. FIL token, the native asset of the Filecoin blockchain, provides economic incentive to storage provides and acts as a medium of exchange among Filecoin network users.
FIL surges by 25% as news that some BTC miners are transitioning to mining FIL started to spread like fire
Filecoin, a decentralized equivalent of Dropbox and other cloud storage services is again attracting attention of cryptocurrency investors, and it appears that the project has harnessed the attention of Bitcoin miners as well. Following Elon Musk’s criticism of Bitcoin energy use, Filecoin has emerged as a greener and more useful alternative. Its mining is less energy-intensive compared to Bitcoin, but the miners need spare hard drive storage as FIL mining actually means providing storage space to the network. Nevertheless, Filecoin offers a promising alternative to BTC miners coming from areas with cheap hard drives and not-so-cheap electricity. Most of the FIL is currently being mined in China and countries where Bitcoin mining is forbidden. While nearly all other coins were in the red on June 3, FIL managed to surge by 25% from just above $70 to over $95 on that day. The FIL price, which is still very far from its ATH of $237 achieved on April 1, has since stabilized just below $90. The energy efficiency of the Filecoin network seems to have deemed this crypto immune to the energy consumption and environmental concern-related FUD recently spread by Musk. Could this push FIL’s valuation even higher?
