Welcome to Finance Redefined, a weekly newsletter that provides you with essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights and aims to bring you the most important developments of the past week.
Over the past week, popular decentralized trading platform Uniswap announced that it will charge a 0.15% swap fee starting October 17. Development of Uniswap has dominated DeFi development, and open source pegs on Uniswap due to know-your-customer (KYC) checks And caused controversy.
In other major DeFi developments, Platypus Finance successfully recovered 90% of the funds lost due to an October 12 vulnerability exploit, while the layer 2 zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) “Scroll” launched its mainnet.
The top 100 DeFi tokens by market cap have had a bullish week thanks to Friday’s market momentum, with the majority of the tokens trading in the green and recording double-digit gains on the weekly chart. However, the price action did not reflect the total value locked (TVL), which fell by nearly $2 billion.
The Ethereum LSDFi industry has grown nearly 60 times since the surge following the Shapella incident in January: CoinGecko
The Ethereum Liquid Collateralized Derivatives Finance (LSDFi) ecosystem has seen a surge this year as Ethereum (ETH) holders choose to stake rather than liquidate.
Although the Ethereum Shapella upgrade enabled ETH withdrawals in April 2023, an LSDFi report released by crypto data aggregator CoinGecko on October 16 stated that the industry has grown 58.7 times since January. As of August 2023, the LSD protocol accounts for 43.7% of the total pledged amount of 26.4 million ETH, with Lido accounting for the largest share, accounting for almost one-third of the total pledged market.
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Ethereum layer 2 zkEVM “Scroll” confirms mainnet launch
Scroll, a new contender in the zkEVM space dedicated to scaling the blockchain, has confirmed the launch of its mainnet.
The team behind Scroll announced the product in an October 17 post, adding that existing applications and developer toolkits on Ethereum can now be migrated to the new scaling solution. “Everything works right out of the box,” says the Scroll team.
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Platypus Finance recovers 90% of assets lost due to vulnerability
DeFi protocol Platypus Finance said it has recovered 90% of the assets stolen in last week’s security breach.
According to an announcement on October 17, the protocol’s net losses at that time were limited to 18,000 Avalanche (AVAX), worth $167,400. Since the hackers voluntarily returned the funds, Platypus Finance said it “will ensure that no legal action will be taken.” It also hinted that withdrawal information about user assets will be released soon.
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Uniswap charges 0.15% swap fee starting October 17
Decentralized exchange Uniswap began charging a 0.15% swap fee on certain tokens on its web app and wallet on October 17.
According to a post by Uniswap founder Hayden Adams, the affected tokens include ETH, USD Coin (USDC), Wrapped Ether (wETH), Tether (USDT), Dai (DAI), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Angle Protocol’s agEUR, Gemini Dollar (GUSD), Liquid USD (LUSD), Euro Coin (EUROC) and StraitsX Singapore Dollar (XSGD). Shortly after publication, a spokesperson for Uniswap contacted Cointelegraph and stated that “both input and output tokens need to be included in the list of application fees.”
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Uniswap v4’s KYC hook triggers community controversy
A new hook available in the open source catalog of Uniswap v4 hooks has sparked controversy within the crypto community. The peg allows users to undergo KYC checks before trading on the token pool.
One user on X (formerly Twitter) criticized the peg, noting that it opens up the possibility of decentralized finance protocols being whitelisted by regulators.
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DeFi Market Overview
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the top 100 DeFi tokens by market capitalization are bullish this week, with most tokens trading in the green on the weekly charts. However, the total value locked in DeFi protocols dropped to $43.81 billion.
Thanks for reading our roundup of the week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education on this dynamic and growing field.
Svlook
