‘Common Cryptocurrency’ Surges to $70M Market Capitalization
An obscure sensible contract has been guzzling gasoline on Ethereum.
XEN Torrent is liable for over 11% of the transaction charges paid on Ethereum over the previous 24 hours, making it the second-largest gasoline shopper after Uniswap’s router contract.
And but, not many individuals have heard of XEN regardless of its look among the many family names driving Ethereum utilization. The token is up practically 500% previously month, nonetheless.
“Our method is to unravel the adoption downside initially,” ZEN TZU, a pseudonymous core crew member at Honest Crypto Basis, the corporate behind XEN, instructed The Defiant. “XEN is designed to be extra of peer-to-peer money than store-of-value,” they mentioned.
The venture’s whitepaper positions the token as “a common cryptocurrency to realize the unique mission of blockchain.” The paper lists blockchain buzzwords like self-custody, transparency, and decentralization, as facets of that mission.
One key function of XEN is customers can simply pay the transaction charges on a supported blockchain to amass the token without cost. Nevertheless, the minting course of will yield progressively much less XEN over time.
Jack Levin, the venture’s founder and former Google engineer, instructed The Defiant that an software referred to as DBXen, which makes customers burn XEN to be able to use the protocol, was liable for the elevated demand for the token on Ethereum.
Mint and Stake
At its core, customers mint XEN by means of its web site. After ready for a user-determined interval, they’ll stake XEN to be able to purchase extra tokens, in keeping with the whitepaper. The specifics of what number of XEN a consumer will get relies on a method offered within the paper.
There’s additionally an increasing ecosystem of purposes round XEN. One referred to as XEN Knights, launched earlier this month and entails burning the token for an NFT-like asset referred to as an Ordinal, which lives on the Bitcoin blockchain. One other, referred to as XENFT, permits customers to batch-mint XEN with an NFT, in keeping with a publish on the discharge.
XEN’s design is gas-guzzling by nature. One other of the venture’s sensible contracts was liable for 40% of Ethereum gasoline utilization in October, making the blockchain’s native asset deflationary for the primary time after EIP-1559 and the Merge.
‘Fringe’ Mission
Contemplating the nagging consideration that crypto solves an issue that doesn’t exist, it’s arduous for individuals to get excited a couple of new venture like XEN. The venture isn’t nicely built-in with the dominant DeFi initiatives like Lido and Aave, established NFTs like CryptoPunks and Bored Apes, or many influencers in both of these Ethereum-dominated ecosystems.
For instance, initiatives like Voltz, the rate of interest swap protocol, have the blessing of an early license granted by Uniswap, arguably probably the most profitable DeFi venture. Voltz permits traders to take a position on the rates of interest of main lending protocols like Aave and Compound.
XEN, alternatively, seems to be popping out of left discipline, which can make it arduous to belief by contributors in ‘mainstream’ crypto tradition, which facilities round Twitter and the Ethereum blockchain.
Nonetheless, there’s a rising view that crypto wants to maneuver past its self-referential tradition and on to greener pastures the place individuals might not know or care in regards to the lore behind DeFi protocols.
Joe Blau, the co-founder of a venture within the XEN ecosystem referred to as Fenix Protocol which is ready to launch within the coming weeks, is conscious of the token’s place within the bigger crypto neighborhood. “We’re on the perimeter,” he instructed The Defiant. “We’re not within the core.”
Blau is accustomed to the large names in DeFi, reeling off among the high initiatives’ names with out lacking a beat. He thinks there’s one other set of customers outdoors the Ethereum-centric membership.
“They don’t actually care if it’s Compound on Ethereum or a Compound fork on another chain or if it’s Uniswap or if it’s PancakeSwap or if it’s Spookyswap,” he mentioned.
Multichain Method
XEN’s creators have deployed the token on 10 completely different blockchains. That’s a dramatically completely different method to the deliberate manner that a lot of the largest protocols by way of complete worth locked (TVL) slowly broaden to different chains.
A former engineer at Uber, Blau mentioned XEN took the “land and broaden” method that the ride-sharing firm took when it launched in lots of cities in a brief time period and tried to develop enterprise from there. Blau conceded that many chains, like BNB Chain, are successfully centralized. This admission does, in some methods, appear counter to XEN’s acknowledged mission of working from blockchains’ “first ideas” like decentralization.
Blau argues that there are upsides to the broad method XEN is taking. “We’re discovering wonderful builders in numerous pockets,” he mentioned.
It’s unclear whether or not XEN will work in the long term. If it does, it definitely gained’t have been by means of the standard route in DeFi, and it’ll have burned quite a lot of ETH alongside the best way.