Expert Review

Review and Rating

Kyber Network tokens (KNC or ‘Kyber Network Crystal’) together with all other DEXs coins have experienced the 2020 Renaissance during which its prices 10x on sharply rising volumes during January — March period and then (after March 15 tectonic downward eruption) added an another leg up but this time a bit less enthusiastically, while the wave of new byers arriving to the market has been gradually flattening.

You shall not be some kind of a technical analysis genius to notice the massive discrepancies in prices to volumes ratio existing between two periods — those of 2017/18 and the most resent one in 2020.

That picture is the abnormal one and reveals massive speculative fever when the same number of coins are frantically changing hands multiple times. It can’t be sustained without constant inflow of new buyer to the market, which I doubt we have had left too many (unless, of course, some major crypto-fund suddenly opens the gates for its LPs into our DeFi mad kindergarten). Hence, ‘Sustainability’ is ‘c+’.

It doesn’t, of course, mean that KNC could not appreciate further, specially, if the wales school, which had played this market all winter-summer season round will feel itself reinvigorated by the continuing to the fall BTC sleep-rally and pump back part of their profits into DeFi. Meanwhile, I do not see as project fundamentals (such as, f.e. a relatively low number of Kyber users) can substantiate Kyber’s present marketcap over $300 million. Result, ‘Value’ is ‘b-’.

As I said, the level of users engagement (usability) with KNC is very low, but the fact that this coin is designed to be used in KyberDAO for voting makes me waver a bit and I am compelled to keep its ‘Engagement’ rating at ‘b’ level. Consider it as a credit though :)

On the other hand transacting with and holding ERC20 KNC token is not an issue. However, astronomical fees you have now to pay for all EVN based transactions makes Kyber useless fro micro-payments. Result, ‘Transactions’ is ‘b-’.

Result for TRUST (Sustainability — Value — Engagement — Transactions): c+/b-/b/b-