CeFi Chases DeFi as Huobi Launches Liquidity Mining

Centralized exchanges are facing the harsh reality of losing out to DeFi protocols that don’t have as many costs involved with transacting. The only way to get back in the game is to launch their own DeFi products to lure customers back, and liquidity farming is the most popular activity in the industry at the moment.

Huobi Hunting DeFi

The Singapore-based crypto exchange, Huobi Global, has just announced a DeFi liquidity mining campaign beginning today, September 7. The incentive is the first phase of the campaign which allows users to stake its native Huobi Token, HT.

🚀#Huobi Liquidity Mining Launched!

Yield HT / HPT – Earn DeFi Tokens!

⛽️ZERO Gas Fees

$10,000,000 USDT worth of #crypto available

One-Click and DONE!

Details 👇

— Huobi (@HuobiGlobal) September 7, 2020

The announcement added that there will be an allocation of 5 million USDT worth of ‘blockchain assets’ for DeFi liquidity mining. More rounds will be held after, with a total of 10 million USDT worth of blockchain assets projected, it added.

Rewards will be allocated to those that stake in the HP/HPT pool, with HPT being the Huobi Pool Token. The staking cycle will run for 14 days with rewards being generated from the Curve Finance pool it appears;

“The reward will be [a] certain amount of CRV that the token gained from mining. However, the actual reward may be affected by the market volatility.”

Depending on the popularity of this first venture into DeFi, Huobi plans to expand its offerings and may follow in the footsteps of rival exchange, and market leader, Binance.

Binance Gets There First

The move is hot on the tails of Binance which launched its own DeFi products last week. As reported by CryptoPotato, Binance launched its own Bswap, an automated market maker (AMM) to provide users with instant liquidity and lower fees.

Exchange customers can now deposit Binance USD (BUSD), Dai, and Tether to start earning interest in return for providing liquidity. The product appears to be aimed at Uniswap users who can do the same thing on the DEX, but at the mercy of high gas fees.

Binance also targeted Ethereum with the launch of its own ‘Smart Chain’ which runs alongside Binance Chain in order to reduce transaction fees for users. Unveiled on September 1, Binance Smart Chain will enable smart contract creation and a staking mechanism for its own token, BNB.

As DeFi continues to grow, the centralized exchanges need to keep up or face becoming obsolete so it is highly likely that more DeFi incentives will follow from the big names in CeFi.