TRON, BitTorrent and JUST Ride Crypto’s New Wave of Defi

The emergence of decentralized finance (defi) as a distinct wing of the cryptocurrency space has already seen many long-standing centralized exchanges lose ground to their newly created decentralized counterparts.

Over $10 million passed through TRON’s newly created decentralized exchange (DEX) protocol JustSwap in the 24 hours following its launch on August 18. Created in the mold of recent DEX success Uniswap, JustSwap acts as a TRX-based portal into the world of defi, as evidenced by its immediate listings of JUST (JST), the stablecoin USDJ, BitTorrent Token (BTT), as well as the TRON-based TRX/USDT pair.

Between JUST, the JustSwap DEX and BitTorrent’s distributed file sharing network, TRON-based defi is now gaining momentum – right in time to capitalize on rising Ethereum transaction fees, and rising interest in the defi space in general.

Defi for Business

Director of Blockchain for Business, and current director of IBM financial services and digital assets Nitin Gaur recently told Cointelegraph that financial institutions were obligated to explore decentralized finance, as it was positioned to change the way we do business.

“I think that the financial institutions should understand it because it has the potential to eventually sort of take over and subside the business elements of existing business models. And that’s one reason why a bank should do it,” said Gaur.

The total value locked in defi recently surpassed $6.7B, meaning more has been invested in defi than in most major cryptocurrencies. Indeed, if defi were a cryptocurrency it would be the fifth largest in the world by market cap already.

And given that Ethereum is feeling the tight squeeze of congestion fees owing to the gas-guzzling nature of several of its most popular applications (including Uniswap, which consumes the second most gas on Ethereum), now couldn’t be a better time for the arrival of a major defi competitor.

TRON, Defi and BitTorrent

Within 24 hours of going live, the JustSwap DEX processed over 33,000 transactions across its various trading pairs. Only UniSwap witnessed a greater volume of transactions on the day, with JustSwap exceeding the third-placed Balancer many times over.

JustSwap is now home to the token which will be used to pay users of TRON’s collateralized assets – JUST (JST). Combining in a two-token system with the JUST stablecoin (USDJ), JST tokens will be used to reward users who lock up their funds to secure collateralized debt positions taken out on the platform.

In addition to USDJ, TRON founder and CEO Justin Sun recently announced that BitTorrent Token (BTT) would be eligible for use in JUST yield farming, which is expected to begin in Q3 of this year.

The move comes shortly after the TRON CEO announced that the JUST token would find a home on BitTorrent’s distributed file sharing network, BitTorrent File System (BTFS). Total worldwide downloads of the BitTorrent software client recently exceeded a staggering 2 billion. Combining over 1,000 TRON nodes, and over 1 million active BitTorrent nodes, the JUST defi toolset may now have the single largest potential audience in the cryptocurrency space.