Axie Infinity, VeChain, and Stellar Lumens Expand Their DeFi Ecosystems

Three major altcoins are expanding their DeFi ecosystems. Axie Infinity's sidechain, Ronin, launched its own decentralized exchange (DEX) and token. VeChain's primary DEX, Vexchange, will soon offer yield farming. Stellar Lumens has added support for automated market makers (AMMs) and DEXs to its ecosystem.

Axie Infinity (AXS) - $9.9 billion market cap

Axie Infinity is the most popular blockchain game. Users collect, breed, and fight NFT characters, similar to Pokemon. Axie's governance token, AXS, operates on the Ethereum network. In response to Ethereum network fees and congestion, Axie also operates a sidechain called Ronin.

Last week, Ronin launched its DEX, called Katana. Katana allows players to swap Axie tokens without bridging to Ethereum. Currently, Katana supports Axie's in-game rewards token, Smooth Love Potion (SLP), AXS, Wrapped Ethereum (WETH), and USDC. Investors can also yield farm these assets to earn RON tokens, the new Ronin ecosystem token that "will eventually power all transactions."

VeChain (VET) - $10 billion market cap

VeChain is a fast, low-fee blockchain designed for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and enterprise use cases. Although VeChain has significant real-world supply chain adoption, it's DeFi ecosystem is underdeveloped.

Vexchange, VeChain's main DEX, announced it will form a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and offer a governance token, called VEX. Soon, the new Vexchange DAO will set exchange fees and yield rates. Vexchange is expanding its DeFi offerings and will offer yield farming in the coming weeks.

Stellar Lumens (XLM) - $8.8 billion market cap

Stellar operates a low-fee platform for issuing and exchanging digital currencies worldwide. Stellar operates like a "global Venmo," and it has over 5 million accounts registered.

Stellar has partnered with projects to produce the first generation of AMMs, DEXs developed within the Stellar ecosystem. Stellar explains that DeFi will be integrated into its core functionality as a worldwide transaction network:

"Cross-border payments leveraging AMMs will utilize liquidity pools if the rate is better than what is available through Stellar’s decentralized exchange. Trades executed against a liquidity pool will get the best available rate on Stellar, to the benefit of both those making cross-border payments and the liquidity providers."