Wrapped Bitcoin price

The KAT is out of the bag. @katana

Atomic Swaps: How Bridge-Killer Technology Will Change Crypto? 🚀 Recently, while researching the Portal project, I discovered how they solve the cross-chain transaction problem without the need for traditional bridges. This is truly an amazing breakthrough! The Huge Risks of Traditional Bridges 2022 and 2023 have seen over $2 billion stolen from bridges by hackers. Names like Wormhole, Ronin, and Harmony are all valuable lessons. Every bridge is a potential weak point, a target for attacks. And Portal's Atomic Swaps could change all that. What Are Atomic Swaps? This is a peer-to-peer (P2P) transaction method that directly transfers between blockchains without any intermediaries. It works on the principle of "all or nothing": The transaction is 100% complete. Or 100% undone. This means that your money CANNOT get stuck in the middle. To put it simply, imagine you exchange car keys with someone without a third party holding the deposit. Portal uses Hashed Time-Lock Contracts (HTLCs) to do this. How it works: 1. Alice wants to exchange her BTC for Bob's ETH. 2. Alice creates a "secret" and uses its hash to lock up her BTC. 3. Bob uses the SAME hash to lock up his ETH. 4. Alice receives ETH by revealing the "secret". 5. Bob uses the same secret key to unlock and receive BTC. If either party backs out, the transaction is automatically undone after a predetermined period of time. Atomic Swaps' Advantages • Non-custodial: No one has custody of your funds. • No trusted third party required: Eliminates the risk of fraud or theft. • No single point of failure: Much safer than vulnerable bridges. • Fully decentralized: True to the core spirit of DeFi. • Lower costs: Often significantly cheaper than bridge fees. Here are the reasons why I'm so bullish on Portal! Current Challenges • User Experience (UX): Still quite complex, but Portal is working on improving. • Speed: Requires on-chain confirmations so can be slower. • Liquidity: Can be low in the early stages. • Compatibility: Not all chains support this technology. However, these issues are being addressed very quickly. What Difference Is Portal Making? • Layer 2 for Atomic Swaps: Helps speed up transactions. • Dedicated Liquidity Pools: Offer more swap options. • User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies for new users. • Multi-Chain Support: Not limited to BTC and ETH. • The Result: A truly decentralized cross-chain DeFi ecosystem. Real-World Example • Before: To move BTC to Ethereum, you had to “wrap” it into WBTC or renBTC. This meant you had to trust a custodian to hold your actual BTC. • Now: With Portal, BTC stays in your wallet. You can swap directly to ETH without having to trust anyone. Prices may have dropped 90% in the bear market, but the technology is constantly evolving. The Future of Atomic Swaps • Becoming the standard: Will be the default method for cross-chain transactions. • Increasing liquidity: As more users adopt. • Seamless UX: Will be as easy as swapping on a regular DEX. • The disappearance of traditional bridges: Will be replaced by a more secure solution. • Ushering in the era of true DeFi: Decentralized and secure. This is a real game changer! I'm watching Portal very closely. If you prioritize safety when transferring assets between chains, atomic swaps are the answer. No trust, no hacks, no custodian. This is the future of cross-chain DeFi! What do you think of this technology? Have you ever used atomic swaps? @PortaltoBitcoin #DEFI #AtomicSwap

Katana has entered the Kaito arena to win ⚔️ Since @katana entered the Kaito arena they have been playing to win defi. Incubated by Polygon and GSR they are entering the market with speed and force.

Project Spotlight: @katana – The DeFi Layer 2 reviving “dead bags” with deep liquidity, real yield and chain-owned capital DeFi today is a rented economy. With fragmented liquidity, ponzi tokenomics and an endless cycle of mercenary farming have left protocols fragile & users disillusioned. Enter Katana. A DeFi-optimized L2 incubated by @0xPolygon and GSR, built to deliver deep liquidity, durable yields and economic alignment between protocols, users and the chain itself. Here’s how Katana is turning DeFi into a self-reinforcing yield machine ↓ ▫️ Bringing Liquidity That Works Onchain Most DeFi incentives are extractive. Projects offer inflated rewards to attract capital. LPs rotate to the next farm and stability is an illusion. Katana breaks the cycle with Chain-Owned Liquidity (CoL) — a permanent liquidity reserve that grows with the network: → Liquidity deepens over time, not drains with incentives → 100% of net sequencer fees are recycled into the CoL reserve → Core apps stream protocol revenue directly back into the pool This changes everything. Where others rent liquidity, Katana owns and compounds it. ▫️ Generating Yield From First Principles At the core is Vaultbridge, a yield engine that redeploys bridged assets ETH, USDC, WBTC, and USDT into offchain yield-bearing strategies on Ethereum. Users mint vbTokens, 1:1 wrappers of bridged assets and plug them into apps like: • @MorphoLabs for lending • @SushiSwap for spot trading • @vertex_protocol for perps • @yearnfi for yield aggregation On Katana, idle capital doesn’t exist. If your funds are on Katana, they’re working. ▫️ AUSD: TradFi Capital Brought Onchain Stablecoins are the lifeblood of DeFi, but most sit idle. Katana’s AUSD, by contrast, is an offchain-yield-backed stablecoin, collateralized by US Treasuries custodied by Van Eck and architected by Agora. → Brings real-world interest rates onchain → Powers DEX pairs, lending markets, and LP incentives → Pegged by design, productive by default Where USDC stagnates, AUSD compounds. Where DAI tries to balance decentralization with yield, AUSD chooses capital efficiency and clarity. ▫️ Built on the First Multistack AggLayer Chain Katana isn’t a generic L2. It’s the first AggLayer CDK chain to combine Polygon’s AggLayer with the OP Stack, creating a multistack foundation with: • Unified liquidity across L2s • Native Ethereum alignment • Low-latency, modular execution • Composable interop with other AggLayer chains Katana's not just scaling Ethereum. It’s curating the liquidity layer of a modular future. ▫️ The Proof Before Launch Katana is set to launch its public mainnet on June 30, 2025. Here’s the early traction: • $186M+ already in pre-deposits • 70M KAT tokens committed to early depositors • 15% of KAT airdropped to POL stakers, incentivizing Ethereum-native liquidity to migrate It’s seeding an ecosystem with capital, partners and aligned participants before genesis. ▫️ The Conclusion The future of DeFi won’t be won by the chain offering the highest APY this week. It will be defined by systems that recycle yield into long-term liquidity, protocols that own their capital and chains that align their survival with real user activity. Katana is that chain. A financial architecture where incentives, liquidity, and yield flow in one direction: Back to the network. On June 30, the Samurai rise. And they rise with purpose.

To be honest, in this DeFi world where even "stablecoins" are starting to roll out yields, I rarely feel that a protocol is "not simple." But this time, @levelusd's lvlUSD really made me stop in my tracks, and I couldn't help but take a closer look and dive deeper into it. Web3 DeFi players often say "stablecoins are the lifeblood of the chain," but in reality, most stablecoins are just passing liquidity around, and few really pay attention to "is it working for you, making you money?" Level is rewriting that narrative. Level @levelusd is a protocol backed by Dragonfly and Polychain, but its ambitions go far beyond "who's behind it." The core stablecoin it issues, lvlUSD, is an asset fully backed by USDC and USDT, with each one continuously working and generating yields in blue-chip lending protocols (like Aave, Morpho). It sounds very DeFi 101, but what truly impressed me is that it achieves low risk, high yield, and on-chain transparency all at once—very rare, very valuable. Even better, Level hasn't locked the yields "in a closed system." It further launched slvlUSD, a yield vault (based on the ERC-4626 standard), where you can stake lvlUSD and directly participate in yield distribution—what's even more amazing is that currently only about 30-45% of lvlUSD is staked, meaning fewer people are sharing all the yields, so the annual yield of slvlUSD naturally "rolls up." I don't like to talk about yields without substance because many projects behind them carry uncontrollable high risks. But I agree with Level's strategy—all yields come solely from blue-chip lending protocols like Aave and Morpho, without the anxiety of "if something goes wrong, everything collapses" that comes from excessive DeFi Lego stacking. As an old Web3 user who has struggled through a bear market, this sense of security is, to be honest, more important than the yield. Not to mention, Level's integration capabilities are also exceptional. lvlUSD and slvlUSD have deeply integrated into core ecosystems like Morpho, Pendle, Spectra, and Curve, making this "stablecoin + yield" system truly possess DeFi-native liquidity and application capabilities. For example, you can use lvlUSD as collateral on Morpho to borrow USDC, then go back and mint more lvlUSD, forming a stable cycle of compounding strategies. Or on Pendle, you can use slvlUSD and PT/YT product combinations to achieve yield locking + secondary trading, and in some pools, Level's liquidity depth has already surpassed aUSDC. I haven't seen a project with such a system, planning, and yet not flashy or relying on airdrops to cut leeks in a long time. It doesn't attract attention through emotional hype but rather impresses you through product mechanisms and actual integration. Ultimately, Level gives me the impression of not being a short-term spike but rather a stable yield infrastructure with depth and future potential. In this new cycle of "wanting stability but not being able to lie flat," Level's value may still be far from being truly discovered. 🌟🌟🌟 The next wave of truly "tech-driven" stable yield narratives may just start from lvlUSD. If you're ready, don't just "watch from the sidelines"; getting positioned on-chain is always better the earlier you do it. After reading Lao Cha's introduction, you probably want to start understanding Level and get involved. Below, Lao Cha has put together a simple tutorial for reference: Minting and Staking Tutorial: 1: You only need to prepare an EVM-compatible wallet (like MetaMask), deposit a small amount of ETH as gas fees, and prepare USDC, USDT, ETH, WBTC, or any other asset, then visit the official website to start. 2: First, click "Sign In" in the upper right corner to connect your wallet, then select "Buy" from the left menu to exchange your assets for lvlUSD. After the transaction is completed, the system will pop up three options: you can choose to stake lvlUSD to earn yield (Earn Yield), participate in XP farming (Farm), or provide LP on Curve to get more incentive points (20x XP). 3: If you choose to stake for yield, just click "Earn Yield," enter the amount of lvlUSD you want to stake, first click "Approve" to authorize, then click "Stake" to confirm the transaction, and you will receive slvlUSD, with compounded yields automatically received every Thursday (⚠️⚠️ Note: Unstaking requires a 3-day cooling period). 4: If you prefer the points gameplay, click "Farm" on the left, find the row for lvlUSD, click the "+" sign, enter the amount, authorize, and deposit to start earning XP at a 10x multiplier (if you provide LP, you can also enjoy a 20x reward). Finally, if you want to see the rankings, just go to the "Leaderboard" page to check your farming results and current ranking. Staking for yield, farming for points, providing LP rewards maximized, so easy? Now visit Lastly, I saw they announced a collaboration between Level and Morpho @MorphoLabs, where users can use lvlUSD as collateral to borrow USDC on Morpho, with a maximum borrowing ratio of 91.5%, but it's recommended to keep it lower to avoid liquidation. The borrowing rate is about 1.2% annualized, so be mindful of costs and risks. The borrowed USDC can also be used to mint more lvlUSD, achieving circular utilization. Through staking, liquidity mining, and other methods, you can also earn high multiples of Level XP, greatly enhancing asset utilization efficiency. This cross-protocol integration not only enhances the utility of lvlUSD but also brings users more opportunities to earn yields, which is worth trying!