Balancer protocol exploited for $900K as DeFi hacks mount: Finance Redefined

cointelegraph.com:

Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you the most significant developments from the past week.

In this week’s newsletter, Ethereum staking services have agreed upon a 22% limit on all validators to ensure fair markets. August proved to be another costly month for DeFi as several protocols were collectively exploited for $16 million. In separate exploit news, Balancer protocol lost nearly $900,000 due to a vulnerability flagged months ago.

Shibarium’s second launch proved more stable as the layer-2 protocol already has over 100,000 new wallets, and USD Coin (USDC) is set to debut on Coinbase’s layer-2 platform later this week.

The DeFi market had another late-week bearish decline due to an overall market fall after news dropped of a delay in the decision on approval of a spot Bitcoin’s spot exchange-traded fund (ETF). Most DeFi tokens traded in the red, and the total value locked in DeFi tokens remained below $50 billion.

At least five Ethereum liquid staking providers have either imposed or are working to impose a self-limit rule in which they promise not to own more than 22% of the Ethereum staking market — in a move seen as ensuring the Ethereum network remains decentralized.

Among the Ethereum staking providers either already committed or working to commit to the self-limit rule are Rocket Pool, StakeWise, Stader Labs and Diva Staking, according to Ethereum core developer Superphiz.

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In August, $15.8 million in cryptocurrencies was lost in DeFi hacks and exploits, specifically. According to an Aug. 31 report by blockchain security firm Immunfi, a combined $23.4 million in crypto was lost to a combination of hacks,