Defi Financial News

This past week, the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem tried gaining some momentum amid the bear market crash. Uniswap saw a trend reversal and overtook Ethereum regarding network fees paid. However, not all DeFi protocols were as lucky, as Bancor had to pause its “impermanent loss protection” in the wake of a hostile market.

Sky Mavis, the creator of the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity (AXS), announced that it will reimburse victims of the Ronin bridge hack and reopen the bridge next week.

The price of THORChain’s token RUNE is up 16% since the project announced the official launch of its mainnet on June 22.

Airdrops have become the bread and butter of the crypto world — for good reason.

Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten believes that the liquidity crisis involving Celsius Network may be just the beginning of a broader collapse in the crypto lending space. 

The crypto market has entered a bearish phase as prices of major cryptocurrencies have fallen to a four-year low. The current downturn in the crypto market has driven several crypto firms to go out of business, while many have made severe job cuts to remain afloat.

As the conversation around privacy intensified with the recent Litecoin (LTC) upgrade called Mimblewimble and regulators’ reaction to the feature, Adrian Brink, the founder of blockchain protocol Anoma, weighed in on the topic and shared his perspectives to Cointelegraph. 

Crypto lending platform Nexo, says that its strong balance sheet means it can ride to the rescue to provide liquidity during the current market turmoil by acquiring the assets of struggling crypto firms. 

Decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap has overtaken its host blockchain Ethereum in terms of fees paid over a seven-day rolling average.

On Thursday, crypto derivatives platform dYdX, which is currently built on Ethereum Layer 2, announced that it would be moving to a standalone blockchain based on the Cosmos SDK and Tendermint proof-of-stake consensus for its V4 update. The firm cites the Cosmos blockchain's decentralization and performance as reasons for being a "best fit" for building dYdX for V4.

Ask someone what an NFT is, and they'll instinctively think of digital art — the CryptoPunks, Bored Apes and Ether Rocks that have sold for eye-watering sums.

Technology is more than a symbol of status. Rather, with every release comes a solution that makes our lives more convenient and secure. 

After one week of pausing user withdrawals, swaps and transfers, the firm said it was maintaining an open dialogue with regulators and officials and plans to continue working with them regarding this pause. Celsius has yet to comment on when the company is going to stabilize its operations. Celsius has also paused communications on Twitter Spaces and ask-me-anything (AMA) sessions “to focus on navigating these unprecedented challenges.”

The Solana (SOL) whale that was subjected to the potential takeover by a recent Solend governance vote has gotten in touch with the lending protocol and moved $25 million worth of USD Coin (USDC) debt to Mango Markets. 

CDOs, which repackaged risky mortgage bonds to make them look safer than they were. “CDOs are nothing but a massive Ponzi scheme,” said the villain of a fictional account of the 2008 meltdown. How much more carnage will it take this time to know that blockchain-based lending is similarly reckless? The idea that one could ditch regulated intermediaries like banks and make far higher returns by lending digital assets was a key attraction of decentralized finance, or DeFi. But that was before the bloodletting began, triggered by the collapse last month of the cryptocurrency pair Terra-Luna. The appeal of changing money into TerraUSD, a stablecoin that promised 1:1 convertibility into dollars, lay in the near-20% yield on TerraUSD deposits. Withdrawal of funds from Anchor Protocol, the main DeFi lending application on the blockchain, crushed the coin, as well as Luna, its sister asset. Soon after, lenders Celsius Network and Babel froze deposits. BlockFi Inc., a Peter Thiel-backed lending platform, said it “fully liquidated or hedged all the associated collateral” of a large client believed to be Singapore-based Three Arrows Capital, a troubled crypto hedge fund. BlockFi is reducing headcount by 20% just as Coinbase Global Inc., the largest US-based digital asset exchange, lays off 18% of its workforce. There’s no end in sight to the crypto winter. Of the $252 billion of investor funds tied up in DeFi protocols last December, less than $75 billion remain.

Decentralized exchange Uniswap announced the acquisition of the NFT marketplace aggregator Genie on June 21st. Uniswap said this move is part of its mission to unlock universal ownership and exchange on its platform.

The troubled crypto lending and borrowing company Celsius’ CEL token jumped today, as a company shareholder proposed a recovery plan, and Celsius made a USD 10m payment to the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Compound (COMP).

Solana (SOL)-based borrowing and lending service Solend has put forward yet another proposal in a bid to mitigate the threat of the whale wallets at risk of liquidation.

DeFi activity is robbing lenders of their most lucrative returns.

In the history of dangerous naivety, the decentralized finance mania of 2021 will hold its own against the 2007 boom in collateralized debt obligations. It took a financial crisis for the world to wise up to CDOs, which repackaged risky mortgage bonds to make them look safer than they were. “CDOs are nothing but a massive Ponzi scheme,” said the villain of a fictional account of the 2008 meltdown. How much more carnage will it take this time to know that blockchain-based lending is similarly reckless?

A wallet and payment ecosystem that’s simple to use and puts users in full control is a vital component that is lacking in the current Web3 landscape. The user experience has been a pain point when it comes to bridging the worlds of traditional and decentralized finance. Many people express frustration at the complicated nature of crypto wallets and applications. For many applications, the user has been an afterthought. Even basic landing page experiences and design have suffered from a lack of consideration or attention to detail.