The DeFi world moves at such a breakneck speed, it’s hard keeping up with the next big thing – not to mention learning to swap it before it becomes last month’s coin. Thankfully, not all of the ERC-20s swilling around on Uniswap are the product of degen projects with the half-life of milk: Ethereum’s dominant AMM is also home to some truly great tokens from projects that are here for the long haul.
By and large, the deeper the liquidity, the more legit the project, but that doesn’t mean you should be FOMO-ing into a coin just because it’s being swapped on DEXs with merry abandon. If you’re the sort of investor who believes that fundamentals matter, and that it pays to perform due diligence as opposed to YOLO-ing in, the following tokens should be on your radar. With solid fundamentals, all-star teams, and sizable communities behind them, these ERC-20s are going places.
RFUEL
The native token of Polkadot-based blockchain RioDeFi, RFUEL, is used for staking, transacting and paying for network fees within the startup’s nascent DeFi ecosystem. After listing on Uniswap last week, RFUEL has seen a robust trading volume of over $8 million across all exchanges; around 10% of that is on Uniswap. With highly regarded projects such as MANTRA DAO building on RioChain, and an array of staking, lending and savings products in the work, RioDeFi is going places – and so is RFUEL.
Traders who are bullish on RFUEL see it as a bet on the Polkadot ecosystem at large. If DeFi does find a new home outside of Ethereum, Polkadot’s scalable network of parachains is the likeliest place it will take root. Should that occur, expect a lot of that value to be flowing through RioChain and by extension through its RFUEL token.
KIRO
An unusual project with a compelling use case, Kirobo, aims to protect users from slip-ups when sending digital assets. There’s no 'back' button on Bitcoin... or at least there wasn’t until Kirobo came along and added one. The Israeli startup has added a protection layer to Bitcoin, which requires the recipient to enter a transaction code to receive the funds. This prevents the sender from screwing up in any one of a myriad of ways, including entering the wrong address or wrong amount.
The KIRO token is used for staking and for paying the modest fees required to utilize Kirobo’s retrievable transfer service. Get it on Uniswap and put Kirobo’s tech to the test, to see how a reversible BTC transaction works for the benefit of sender and recipient alike.
PLOT
The native token of the PlotX prediction platform, PLOT, isn’t yet tradable on Uniswap, but should be very much on your radar as it will be dropping soon. A DeFi prediction market, PlotX provides traders with an alternative way of gaining exposure to crypto assets other than market buying them; instead they can enter prediction markets, where they can earn yield for correctly determining which way a particular asset will move.
If the level of interest in the PlotX community sale is anything to go on (it was oversubscribed by 15x), expect to see strong demand for PLOT when it makes its Uniswap debut. A growing community of more than 10,000 members, coupled with yield farming incentives for liquidity providers on day one, mean anticipation is high for the PLOT token’s DEX release.
YAX
Of all the Y’s to have sprung up since YFI, YAX is perhaps the most original. A meta token for yield aggregation, yAxis promises to lock staked assets into other farming platforms, including Pickle and Harvest Finance, generating holders a ROI while saving them on gas fees and portfolio adjustment. If the team can pull this ambitious goal off, expect demand for the YAX governance token to skyrocket. It will provide holders with the ability to vote on strategies and select yield-generating projects whose fundamentals are appealing. Like all DAO-based farming projects, yAxis is highly experimental, but it’s an enticing proposition for traders chasing high risk-reward plays.
Somewhere between the DeFi market leaders and "blue chips" and the bottom of a barrel meme coins, there are some genuinely innovative and useful tokens on Uniswap. Do your research and assess the potential upside before unlocking your MetaMask and hitting the big pink button marked 'Swap.'