The bZx Protocol has recently announced on their official website that Torque, and Fulcrum – decentralized margin trading, borrowing, and lending products are now available on Binance Smart Chain. More Dapps are moving from Ethereum blockchain to Binance due to high fees. The protocol had experienced many hacks in the past, but the project continues to grow nevertheless. Let´s have a look at what bZx Protocol is and how to benefit by using it in Analyse No. 11
General Overview
bZx is a fully decentralized peer-to-peer protocol for shorting, leverage, lending, and borrowing. The protocol can be easily integrated into any exchange (centralized or decentralized). The protocol also integrates relayers, DEXs, and Oracles to provide peer-to-peer trading/ lending while retaining user’s access to their funds and private keys.
The background
bZx (initially known as b0x) was launched in August 2017. The project first started publicly marketing themselves during ETHDenver in 2018. Since then, the protocol published their formal whitepaper in February of 2018, The company chose to rebrand from b0x to bZx.
Tom Bean (the co-founder) stated:
“ to make the zero-x aspect of our identity clear and prevent confusion with any companies or protocols named Box.”
Since the rebrand, bZx has been intensively focusing on strengthening industry partnerships with key players (including MakerDAO, Kyber, ChainLink, Augur and Set Protocol). Combined with the release of two separate consumer-facing products, bZx continues to explore new ways to make DeFi as transparent to the average end-user as possible. bZx has built a strong foundation for future growth, thanks to the company’s ability to ship unique products,
Vision
It allows lenders to lend crypto assets in a decentralized approach. There are no fees or registrations needed to lend assets. Users use their Ethereum wallet of choice to connect to the dApp/protocol easily. High levels of liquidity for any exchange as the Protocol bridges centralized and decentralized liquidity pools using tokenized margin loans. All bZx loans are insured with the bZx guarantee fund.
Potential (Market)
Traders and lenders, two core components of the emerging decentralized asset ecosystem, currently must choose between Decentralized exchanges and Centralized exchanges. Both come with their own issues: hacks, regulatory problems, limited functions etc. As the number of lenders, traders, and decentralized exchanges grow, the demand for a solution that can enhance decentralized exchanges with margin trading will continue to increase. bZx is a decentralized protocol that enables lending and borrowing for margin trading. The Protocol can be easily integrated into new and existing exchanges, or accessed through the native bZx portal.
There are already running two products on the protocol:
- Fulcrum – the first and only completely trustless platform for margin trading
- Torque – the first borrowing platform with indefinite-term loans and fixed interest rates.
Tokenomics
Total supply is 1 030 000 000 BZRX and most of them is locked for other purposes. Only 140 Mil is circulating. There are three use cases of BZRX:
- governance,
- fee sharing,
- protocol disbursement program.
Adoption and Strategy
bZx is bringing a huge need to the constantly developing crypto space. With DeFi being all the rage as of late, and decentralized exchanges gaining more notoriety, being able to margin trade on these exchanges is a big need. bZx is one of the first projects to make this need a reality. Decentralized margin trading also has several advantages than that of centralized exchanges. bZx is also providing massive liquidity to DEX’s and has a host of interesting products, including Torque and Fulcrum. Overall there is a lot that bZx is bringing to the table.
Potential (Growth) & Roadmap
Besides the expansion of their ecosystem, seeing bZx’s marketing strategy, what exchanges they get listed on, adopting the platform, etc., will go a long way in showing us whether the project shows any kind of upside potential.
The team has sure plans for but the roadmap on the website is not updated. The ability to margin trade on DEX’s while retaining control over private keys and funds is a massive goal and a need in the DeFi space. The potential of BZRX cannot be overlooked, especially with the speed that the DeFi space has been growing over just the past few years. With the team working on the project over the past few years and the partnerships in place, We believe that BZRX makes an excellent long term investment.
Why Use bZx?
Like other DeFi platforms built on Ethereum, bZx’s smart contracts automate the financial process. The team’s goal is to make sure that
“everything is tokenized”
What makes bZx different from others in their field is the three tokens it uses:
- iTokens
- pTokens
- BZRX token
bZx also varies itself in how it motivates yield farming by awarding active users with half of the fees payable through their BZRX token.
The bZx is dedicated to decentralization. This is apparently firstly in their use of decentralized price feeds for calculating interest and secondly in how they work to keep gas fees low despite the growing number of supported assets on the platform
Price and market capitalization updates
When writing this analysis (21st March 2021), the bZx Protocol (BZRX) price is $0.57571, and the market capitalization is $80,187,051. As a middle cap coin and due to continued progress, it has still much potential to grow..
To sum it up, bZx poses a unique alternative to decentralized margin trading as previously covered with companies. The company is taking several steps to support the adoption in the form of solid partnerships, consumer-friendly UX, and protocol incentives.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
