The decentralized finance (DeFi) sector continues to attract heightened attention from cryptocurrency investors. ForkLog has gathered the most important events and news from recent weeks in a digest.
Key metrics of the DeFi segment
Total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols declined to $211 billion. Curve Finance remains the leader with a figure of $19.86 billion. Lido ($18.63 billion) stayed in second place, and Anchor ($16.14 billion) surged to third.
TVL in Ethereum applications declined to $114.8 billion. Over the past 30 days the figure fell by 2.5% (March 23 value was $117.69 billion).
Trading volume on decentralised exchanges (DEX) over the last 30 days amounted to $69.3 billion.
Uniswap continues to dominate the non-custodial exchange market — accounting for 75.3% of total turnover. The second DEX by trading volume is SushiSwap (5.1%), the third is Curve (5%).
JPMorgan chief acknowledges the value of blockchain technology and DeFi
Gendirod JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon acknowledged that blockchain technology and DeFi applications have value.
«Decentralized finance and blockchain are real. These are new technologies that can be used privately or publicly, with or without the need for permission», — wrote him in a letter to shareholders.
In his words, there are numerous scenarios in which distributed-ledger technology could substitute or enhance various aspects of operations, such as contract execution or data ownership.
However for some tasks the new technology remains “too expensive or slow,” the financier believes.
Hacker breaches Zeed DeFi protocol but did not take $1m
An unknown actor exploited a vulnerability in the Zeed DeFi protocol on the BNB Chain, but did not take away $1 million.
The hacker issued additional YEED tokens and sold them on the market. The coin’s price collapsed to zero.
The attacker destroyed the smart contract used in the exploit. As a result, the assets were locked.
André Cronje criticised for urging regulation of DeFi
Founder of the DeFi project yEarn Finance André Cronje stated the need to regulate the crypto industry and drew criticism from the community.
He suggested that the current generation of developers in the industry is repeating the mistakes of the founders of the existing monetary system in an attempt to “do something better.”
Cronje contrasted crypto-ethos and crypto-culture. In the former he included ideas of sovereign rights, self-sacrifice and self-improvement. In the latter he linked property rights, enrichment and ego.
According to him, crypto-culture “stifled the idea of cryptocurrency.”
«Now I see more than ever the need or even the extreme necessity of regulation not as a mechanism of prevention, but as a means of protection», — Cronje said.
He expressed confidence that in the future “we will see the rise of a new blockchain economy, driven not by greed but by trust, but not credulity.” He also made clear that he does not intend to return to the industry.
The article provoked a strong reaction across the community.
«One can only hope that regulators are applying legal megadevelopment on the guy, and this is simply a psychological operation. Although I’m not sure», — commented The Block’s Vice President of Research Larry Chermak.
YouTube DeFi channel host Chris Black wrote:
«Now that he has your money, André says DeFi needs government intervention. Because you are a child and don’t know how to keep your fingers away from the toaster. He misses that he is the guy who intentionally made and sold faulty toasters».
Investments in DeFi
The bloXroute Labs closed a $70 million Series B funding round. It was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 with participation from Dragonfly Capital, ParaFi Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, GSR, Jane Street, Flow Traders, RBF Capital and others.
The raised funds will be directed at advancing high-frequency trading in the DeFi space and expanding the staff from 30 to 100.
The valuation of bloXroute Labs was not disclosed. Total funds raised reached $95 million.
The lending protocol Bastion closed a $9 million Series A round. It was led by Three Arrows Capital with participation from FTX, Jane Street, The Spartan Group, Crypto.com and other investors.
The Bastion team announced that in the coming weeks they would launch a leveraged farming feature, new listings, and plans to gamify DeFi with NFTs.
Hacks and Scams
The Ethereum-based stablecoin protocol Beanstalk Farms lost more than $181 million in crypto as a result of the hack. The hacker took around $76 million.
The attacker created a governance proposal for BIP-18 with a donation to Ukraine of $250,000 that he faked prior to execution.
Through flash loans he obtained:
- 350 million DAI, 500 million USDC and 150 million USDT on Aave;
- 32 million BEAN on Uniswap;
- 11.6 million LUSD on SushiSwap.
The hacker used the funds to add liquidity to Curve BEAN pools to obtain governance votes — Stalk tokens. He then deployed and approved the malicious BIP-18 that moved all assets from the protocol to a third-party wallet.
After removing liquidity and repaying loans the attacker converted the remaining funds into 24 800 WETH (~$76 million). He laundered the cryptocurrency through the Tornado Cash mixer. $250 000 USDC went to the Ukraine donation address.
The lending project Inverse Finance reported a hacking attack resulting in assets worth $15.6 million stolen. The protocol team pledged to reimburse users’ losses.
According to PeckShield, the attacker exploited a vulnerability in the Keep3r price oracle used by Inverse Finance to track token prices. The exploit allowed the hacker to “trick” the protocol — he inflated the INV quotes and used the asset as collateral on the Anchor Protocol market.
The company noted that the hacker needed to deposit 901 ETH (over $3.15 million) to carry out the attack. The funds came from the Tornado Cash mixer. A large portion of the stolen assets was also transferred to the mixer’s address.
The Inverse Finance team paused all borrowing operations on the Anchor Protocol market. The developers appealed to the hacker to return the stolen assets for a reward.
Also on ForkLog:
- 1inch Network integrated the Fantom blockchain.
- Convex Finance patched a bug, potentially threatening a loss of $15 billion.
- DeFi platform WonderFi will acquire the regulated crypto exchange Coinberry.
- Gravity DEX protocol of the Cosmos ecosystem will move to its own blockchain.
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