DeFi adoption on the Binance Smart Chain reaches new highs

Decentralized finance protocols on the Binance Smart Chain saw their token prices and total value locked rise toward new highs after a series of protocol upgrades and cross-chain integrations. Decentralized finance (DeFi) has taken a well-deserved break from the spotlight over the past couple of months after being one of the hottest sectors at the start of 2021, but recent growth on several top platforms may hint at another DeFi run in the near future. 

While projects that operate on the Ethereum (ETH) network continue to deal with wild fluctuations in gas fees and transaction times, several that operate on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) have seen an uptick in protocol activity and token value over the past week.

Three projects on the BSC that have seen increases in trading volume, price and activity within their DeFi protocols are Venus (XVS), PancakeSwap (CAKE) and Linear Finance (LINA).

XVS/USDT

The Venus protocol is an algorithmic money market and synthetic stablecoin protocol that provides a lending and borrowing solution for DeFi on the BSC. Recent bullishness for the project began to increase around April 20 when it was revealed that a proposal was submitted to add Dogecoin (DOGE) to the Venus money market.

Following an initial price surge and pullback, momentum and price activity for the project saw another surge on April 29 following the announcement of the Venus Reward Token (VRT) and Venus nonfungible token (NFT) airdrops.

The announcement of the airdrops combined with the listing of XVS on the Crypto.com exchange helped spark a 70% rally in the price of Venus from a low of $72 on April 29 to a new all-time high at $124 on April 30. At the time of writing, the total value locked (TVL) in Venus is nearing $10 billion.

CAKE/USDT

PancakeSwap is a BSC-based automated market maker (AMM) similar to Uniswap (UNI) that allows users to exchange tokens and earn a portion of fees through yield farming. Data from TradingView shows that the price of CAKE rallied 102% over the past week, going from a low of $21.90 on April 23 to a new record high at $44.28 on April 30 as token holders engage with the low fee, high yield protocol.

Price action for CAKE has seen a steady rise over the past week following the launch of V2 farms on April 23 and the successful completion of token migration on April 24. Since the migration and launch of the new liquidity pools, the TVL on PancakeSwap has spiked to $9.873 billion making the protocol the second-ranked DeFi protocol by TVL. According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro, market conditions for CAKE have been favorable for some time. 

The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historic and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity. As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for CAKE began to pick up on April 24 and reached a high of 7 around 14 hours before the price increased 62% over the next five days.

LINA/USDT

Linear Finance (LINA) is a decentralized delta-one asset protocol that enables the creation of synthetic asset tokens to represent traditional assets like commodities, forex, market indices and other thematic sectors which can then be traded on the Linear exchange.

Data from TradingView shows that the price of LINA has climbed 70% over the past week, rising from a low of $0.069 on April 23 to an intraday high of $0.1164 on April 30 with $196 million in 24-hour trading volume.

The recent momentum for the project began to build ahead of the April 27 ask-me-anything session with the Moonbeam Network, which calls itself the “easiest on-ramp to Polkadot” thanks to Ethereum-compatible smart contracts on a Polkadot parachain.

Cross-chain interoperability has been one of the major themes of the 2021 bull market, so the prospect of being able to operate LINA on the Polkadot network as well as the BSC and the Ethereum network may have helped to spark a new round of interest in the protocol. As the pool of retail and institutional investors participating in the cryptocurrency ecosystem continues to grow, DeFi protocols on BSC are well-positioned to see significant gains thanks to low fees and high yield opportunities.