DeFi Digest: TVL Flat, Binance CEO Says DeFi Could Surpass CeFi

The decentralized finance (DeFi) sector continues to attract heightened attention from cryptocurrency investors. ForkLog has compiled the most important events and news from recent weeks in this digest.

Key metrics of the DeFi segment

TVL in DeFi protocols was little changed at $37.9 billion. Lido led with $14.1 billion, while the second and third places are held by MakerDAO ($5 billion) and AAVE ($4.5 billion), respectively.

TVL in Ethereum applications fell to $21.4 billion. Trading volume on decentralized exchanges (DEX) over the last 30 days stood at $41.3 billion.

Uniswap continues to dominate the non-custodial exchange market — accounting for 56.2% of total turnover. The second DEX by trading volume is PancakeSwap (19.7%), the third Curve (6.7%).

Binance CEO: DeFi could surpass CeFi in the next bull market

The head of the Bitcoin exchange Binance Changpeng Zhao stated that the DeFi sector has the potential to surpass centralized finance (CeFi) in the next crypto rally.

\n“DeFi is the future, its volume is around 5-10% of CeFi’s, which is not insignificant. […] The next bull market could well make DeFi bigger than CeFi,” Zhao said.

He is confident that the more decentralised the crypto industry becomes, the better. The Binance CEO also welcomed rejection by the court of a class-action suit against Uniswap. The DEX was accused of selling unregistered securities.

\n“Developers write code; that code is free speech. So the development is indeed good,” Zhao said.

He believes every country needs cryptocurrency, but some need it more acutely than others. Those who want to keep their leadership in financial innovation will have to embrace the digital assets industry, he added.

CFTC files lawsuits against three DeFi projects

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed lawsuits against three DeFi companies — Opyn, ZeroEx and Deridex — for illegal trading of derivatives and operating without a license.

According to the agency, all firms are charged with “using blockchain-based protocols and smart contracts to operate as trading platforms.”

They are also accused of illegally offering retail commodity trades and margin trading using borrowed funds in digital assets, the CFTC emphasised.

Opyn, ZeroEx and Deridex will pay penalties of $250,000, $200,000 and $100,000 respectively. The companies agreed to these terms to settle the claims.

Balancer hack losses estimated at $900,000

The hacker withdrew about $900,000 from the protocol.

On-chain data show that after the attack two transactions worth $636,812 and $257,527 in DAI were sent to the attacker’s address.

The Balancer team said on August 22 about a bug in the second version of the protocol and urged users to withdraw funds from liquidity pools. Assets deployed on Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Avalanche, Gnosis, Fantom and zkEVM were at risk.

Also on ForkLog:

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• PancakeSwap integrated Base, an L2 solution.

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• DEX Velodrome deployed a fork on the Base L2 network.

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• Pantera Capital led an investment round in DEX Brine Finance worth $16.5 million.

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