The DeFi sector continues to draw heightened attention from cryptocurrency investors. ForkLog has compiled the most important events and news of the past weeks in this digest.
Key DeFi metrics
The total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols fell to $67.97 billion. MakerDAO led with $9.17 billion, with Lido ($8.75 billion) and AAVE ($7.6 billion) in second and third place respectively.
TVL in Ethereum applications fell to $39.92 billion. Over the last 30 days the metric rose 31% (the value on 13 July was $30.37 billion).
Trading volume on decentralized exchanges (DEX) over the last 30 days was $58.6 billion.
Uniswap continues to dominate the non-custodial exchange market — it accounts for about 70% of total turnover. The second DEX by trading volume is Curve (10.1%), the third is Balancer (5.1%).
Chainalysis: losses from cross-chain protocol hacks since the start of the year $2 billion. Analysts at Chainalysis say so.
The amount of stolen funds from 13 attacks on cross-chain protocols since the start of the year $2 billion. Analysts at Chainalysis say so.
“As the value transferred through cross-chain protocols increases, their attractiveness to hackers grows. This poses a serious threat to strengthening trust in blockchain technology,” the experts noted.
In their view, addressing the design issue of cross-chain protocol engineering may require only rigorous code auditing, which would allow for a library of reliable smart-contract templates for other developers.
DeFi platform Oasis will block sanctioned addresses
As a result of changes to Oasis’s Terms of Service, sanctioned wallets will not be able to access the project’s frontend application.
Users will be prevented from using Oasis.app to manage positions and withdraw funds.
The platform did not disclose which tools it uses to identify high-risk wallets. A developer under the pseudonym banteg suggested that Oasis following Uniswap turned to TRM Labs for services.
According to the site, the protocol manages deposits worth $3.42 billion, with transaction volume over the last 30 days amounting to $4.6 billion.
Aave community approves launch of decentralized stablecoin GHO
The DeFi protocol Aave has approved the launch of the US-dollar-linked decentralized stablecoin GHO within the project’s ecosystem.
During a three-day vote, participants on Snapshot cast over 500,000 AAVE tokens. The proposal received near-unanimous support.
GHO is an over-collateralized stablecoin; a similar model is used by MakerDAO’s DAI.
The collateral will be a diversified basket of crypto assets supported by Aave. Users will continue to earn interest on the tokens locked as collateral.
Interest payments on loans in GHO will be paid into the Aave DAO treasury. The latter will take on the token’s governance functions.
Aave’s head of integrations, Mark Zeller, said that the stablecoin launch timelines would depend on audit results. He stressed that the development team “puts security above deployment speed”.
Investments in DeFi
The DeFi protocol injective Protocol raised $40 million in a funding round with participation from Brevan Howard Digital, billionaire Alan Howard and Jump Crypto.
The raised funds will be directed toward developing the project’s ecosystem and Web3 technologies.
The INJ token reacted to the news by rising to $2.40. At the time of writing, the asset had retraced to around $1.95.
Venture firm Lightspeed Venture Partners led the Series A round for the startup Unstoppable Finance for €12.5 million ($12.8 million).
Participants also included Speedinvest, Rockaway Blockchain Fund, Backed VC, Inflection, Discovery Ventures, Fabric Ventures and Anagram.
The project is preparing to launch non-custodial crypto wallet DeFi Ultimate with direct connectivity to yield protocols and decentralized exchanges.
The raised funds will also be directed toward expansion in the US market. According to the Unstoppable Finance team, there are more than 300,000 pre-registrations on the waiting list.
Hacks and scams
On August 2 the cross-chain protocol Nomad was subjected to a hacker attack, resulting in attackers siphoning around $200 million in crypto assets.
I`ts nature allowed anyone to copy the hacker’s transaction and redirect funds to their own address. Thus, both ordinary users and “white-hat” hackers could drain funds from the protocol.
By August 5, users returned $22 million (11% of the stolen assets) to the Nomad storage address published after the attack.
More than 50% of the funds remain stationary in the hackers’ wallets — they were offered rewards for returning the stolen assets.
On August 9, unknown actors compromised the frontend of the Curve Finance DeFi protocol. As a result, users lost assets worth $573,000. read more.
Analyses showed that server and provider infrastructure were not compromised. The root cause remains under investigation.
On August 12, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said the attacker directed funds to the platform, after which the team froze and returned $450,000.
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