The CEO of Shopify, the e-commerce giant, discussed Decentralized Finance (DeFi) over Twitter while highlighting the company’s commitment to openness when it comes to decentralization, and allowing free participation on the market.
Shopify is one of the biggest e-commerce platforms in the world, accounting for over 20% of the market and showing revenue of over $2.9 billion in 2020. The platform is used by more than 400k online businesses and has processed over 1 billion orders since its launch in 2018.
Tobi Lutke, Shopify CEO, Tweeted on April 2 asking DeFi and crypto enthusiasts for their opinions on the role they wanted Shopify to play when it came to commerce-related opportunities in the DeFi industry, starting a discussion around the topic and the benefits of decentralization.
Hey #DeFi Twitter👋. What are the commerce related opportunities that you are most excited about? What role do you want Shopify to play?
— Tobi Lutke 🌳🌲🛒🕹 (@tobi) April 2, 2021
While Shopify has not integrated cryptocurrency and blockchain solutions into its infrastructure, the Tweet was seen by many as a possible indication of such a decision in the future.
Despite this, many DeFi enthusiasts were quick to point out that Shopify has been far from “Decentralized” up to this point, which prompted Lutke to reply:
“Shopify is a product of pre-crypto times and spiritually aligned with decentralizing opportunity. Over a million businesses use us around the world.”
Earlier that day, Lutke also Tweeted letting his followers know that he had spent the morning playing around with Ethereum smart contracts in an attempt to understand how they work, finding the ERC20 standard “fascinating”
Compound’s Total Market Supply Surpassed $15 Billion
Compound, one of the biggest DeFi protocols, reached a major milestone on April 3rd after reaching over $15 billion in total supply. It had reached $10 billion earlier this year on February 20th, with the latest number showing an accelerated rate of growth during the last months.
The top 3 cryptocurrencies supplying liquidity to the protocol are ETH (32.65%), DAI (20.28%), and USDC (18.96) still showing the dominance of ETH over other cryptocurrencies in the DeFi market despite not being a stablecoin as DAI or USDC.
According to Coingecko data, COMP, the governance token of the protocol, has gained 40.5% over the last 7 days, reaching a value of around $552 on Sunday morning which was $14 short of breaking the token’s all-time high.
Whale Alert stated that an unknown wallet moved 629k ETH, the equivalent of $1.3 billion, to the Compound contract early on April 3rd. The move matched a spike in ETH’s price that saw it reach a new all-time high on April 2nd, further increasing the impact of the transfer to the DeFi protocol.
🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 629,000 #ETH (1,321,384,522 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallethttps://t.co/wTJWQb5aWU
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) April 3, 2021
DeFi Continues Driving the Crypto Market Forward
Ever since the DeFi summer of 2020, the DeFi market has continued to grow as institutional and private interest increases, driving the entirety of the cryptocurrency industry forward in an unprecedented way.
The total value locked in the DeFi market at this time is $50.1 Billion, more than three times the $16 billion in value locked at the start of the year.
While the increasing congestion on the Ethereum network caused the development of DeFi to stall for a while, the increasing popularity and availability of Layer-2 solutions were able to allow the industry to continue moving forward.
Now, as alternative blockchain networks like Polkadot, Binance Smart Chain, Algorand, and Cardano continue to move forward in development and adoption, the DeFi industry is expected to continue growing as interoperability and high scalability become the norm.
The real question is – why does the world need multiple platforms that do the same thing?
In the coming years, there will have to be some level of consolidation, or these platforms will need to set themselves apart from one another. Another factor to consider is government regulations.
As the ongoing lawsuit against Ripple Labs shows, major governments aren’t happy to let the crypto and DeFi space develop on its own.
