Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week.
Decentralized applications, or DApps, finally showed a glimmer of recovery in August as the daily average of unique active wallets rose by 3.7% compared to May.
With just under a week left for the Merge, SEBA Bank has opened Ethereum staking services for institutions. On the other side, layer-2 scalability solutions are hopeful of seeing a significant cut in their carbon emissions post Merge.
This past week, two DeFi protocols became victims of coordinated flash loan attacks. On Wednesday, Avalanche-based lending protocol Nereus Finance became the victim of a crafty hack that saw a user net $371,000 worth of USD Coin (USDC) using a smart contract exploit. The very next day, on Thursday, New Free DAO, a nonfungible token- (NFT)-focused project, lost nearly $1.25 million in another similar flash loan attack.
Top-100 DeFi tokens by market cap finally saw a week of green after nearly two weeks of dominant bearish price action. Most of the tokens recorded double-digit gains, with Luna Classic (LUNC) — formerly Terra (LUNA) — making an entry into the top 30 with over 100% gains in the past seven days.
DApp activity rises 3.7% in August for the first time since May: Report
DApps showed a slight recovery for the first time since May, with the daily average of unique active wallets (UAWs) increasing 3.7% on a month-over-month basis, according to a report from DappRadar.
The rise was partially driven by the Flow protocol, which rose 577% UAW due to Instagram’s support of its NFTs and the game Solitaire Blitz. On the other hand, Solana UAW shrank by 53% in August from the previous month, while transactions dropped by 68%, the findings showed.
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SEBA Bank to provide Ethereum staking services to institutions
As the Ethereum network moves from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus, a digital asset platform initiated a service for institutions to dive into Ether (ETH) staking.
In an announcement sent to Cointelegraph, Swiss digital asset banking platform SEBA Bank said that it has launched an Ethereum staking service for institutions that want to earn yields from staking on the Ethereum network. According to the firm, the move is a response to the growing institutional demand. for DeFi services.
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Degens borrowing ETH to get fork tokens create headaches for DeFi platforms
The growing number of speculators taking out Ether loans to maximize their potential to earn forked Ether proof-of-work tokens (ETHPoW) has been causing headaches for DeFi protocols.
The issue has been gaining traction over the past month or so as a significant number of Ether miners are expected to continue working on a forked PoW chain or possibly even multiple chains post the long-awaited Merge.
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Avalanche flash loan exploit sees $371K in USDC stolen
Avalanche-based lending protocol Nereus Finance has been the victim of a crafty hack that saw a user net $371,000 worth of USD Coin using a smart contract exploit.
Blockchain cybersecurity firm CertiK was one of the first to detect the exploit on Tuesday, indicating that the attack impacted liquidity pools on Nereus relating to decentralized exchange (DEX) Trader Joe and automated market maker Curve Finance.
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DeFi protocol token NFD crashes by 99% after a flash loan attack
New Free DAO, a DeFi protocol, faced a series of flash loan attacks on Thursday, resulting in a reported loss of $1.25 million. The price of the native token has dropped by 99% in the wake of the attack.
Unlike normal loans, several DeFi protocols offer flash loans that allow users to borrow large amounts of assets without upfront collateral deposits. The only condition is that the loan must be returned in a single transaction within a set period. However, this feature is often exploited by malicious adversaries to gather large amounts of assets to launch costly exploits that target tarDeFi protocols.
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DeFi market overview
Analytical data reveals that DeFi’s total value locked registered a minor change from the past week. The TVL value was about $61.02 billion at the time of writing. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView show that DeFi’s top 100 tokens by market capitalization had a bullish week with the majority of the tokens seeing double-digit gains, while a few others continue to trade in the red.
LUNC was the biggest gainer on the weekly basis, registering a 101% gain over the past 7 days, followed by Chainlink (LINK) with 14.8% gains. Compound (COMP) rose by 7.71% and PancakeSwap (CAKE) registered a 6.24% gain on the weekly charts.
Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education in this dynamically advancing space.
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