Welcome to the latest edition of the decentralized finance newsletter from Cointelegraph.
A week filled with positive advances in the DeFi space, including nine-figure fundraisers, successful product launches and soaring token prices, has been marred somewhat by news of two serious security exploits. Read on for all of the developments during the week.
What you are about to read is the reduced version of this newsletter designed to be concise. For the full version of DeFi’s developments over the past week, drop your email below.
Borderless Capital Launches $ 500 Million Fund to Support Algorand Ecosystem
Venture capital firm Borderless Capital announced this week the launch of ALGO Fund II, a $ 500 million initiative assembled to support the creation of digital asset projects on the Algorand blockchain.
Announcement Via an Algorand Foundation blog post, the capital will focus specifically on decentralized applications, niche liquidity extraction, lending, borrowing and agricultural production services, as well as non-fungible tokens.
We are thrilled to announce the launch of our $ 500 million Borderless ALGO II fund!https://t.co/EP0U6Ib8HV pic.twitter.com/okXf6GBFo8
– Capital without borders (@borderless_cap) November 30, 2021
Algorand is a decentralized open source blockchain most appreciated for its speed of efficiency, its security and its status as a potential competitor to the dominance of Ethereum.
Established in November 2018, Borderless Capital has already invested in over 100 blockchain-related projects through its $ 400 million ALGO Fund I, including Tinyman, Yieldly, Opulous and Flare Network, among others, as well as acceleration programs successful in three major industrial sectors. continents.
Iota Prepares to Launch Decentralized Smart Contract Platform
The distributed ledger platform Iota announced the launch of the decentralized assembly of the Layer 1 smart contract network and the accompanying ASMB token this week.
Assembly will seek to drive adoption of smart contract services and foster an environment for creators, developers, and community advocates that facilitate the expansion of the Iota ecosystem into Web 3.0 sectors, including the metaverse. .
Scheduled to launch in 2022, Assembly will operate in parallel with Iota and use the existing network infrastructure, including the directed acyclic graph structure, to function as an interoperable, self-sovereign bridge that reaps the benefits of scalability and security, among others.
Decentralized application developers will be able to create their own smart contract chains and set individual parameters for low-cost execution fees, a feature that will also allow service providers to issue stable on-chain assets to incentivize validators. .
In a recent post on Twitter, Iota revealed that stakes can earn rewards in both Shimmer (SMR) and ASMB tokens when launching networks, stating that “for every 1 MIOTA staked, users receive $ 1 SMR and 4 microASMBs every 10 seconds, for 90 seconds. days after staking has started. “
Players get not just 1 token, but 2! And after the @shimmernet and @assembly_net network launch, you can receive even more rewards when you secure both networks by staking $ SMR and $ ASMB.
Visit: https://t.co/gx9ucphSR2#IOTA pic.twitter.com/VjV77gPK5Q– IOTA (@iota) December 2, 2021
DeFi MonoX and BadgerDAO projects operated for $ 150 million
This week, the decentralized MonoX and BadgerDAO projects fell victim to individual hacks of sophisticated protocols that resulted in asset losses of more than $ 150 million.
The MonoX platform suffered a single cyber attack on Tuesda when a bug in the smart contract swap allowed manual manipulation of the prices of MONO tokens, an asset that had just been listed on the Huobi exchange the previous days.
After taking the MONO token to what the team described as “extensive” levels, the hackers traded the funds for other assets on the platform and reaped lucrative profits.
In the days following the breach, the MonoX team confirmed that the losses stood at around $ 31 million, alongside the release of a statement of remorse, the essence of which read:
“Days like yesterday are horrible, there is no sugar coating the harsh reality of an exploited contract and people losing money. Our supporters trusted a new project like us, and yesterday we let them down.
Likewise, but without affiliation to the other, BadgerDAO was also the victim of financial abuse this week. Although community members on Discord had raised concerns about suspicious increases in allowance over the past few days, admins did not see this as a threat because Underline in this tweet from 0xMoves.
According to blockchain analytics service PeckShield, BadgerDAO losses have amassed $ 120 million at the time of writing, including 2,078.76 Bitcoin (BTC), 30.27 Interest-bearing Bitcoin and 151.32 Ether (ETH).
The Badger team has now responded by opening a full investigation into the events in addition to suspending smart contract activity until the security of the protocol is again stabilized.
Related: Telling the biggest DeFi hacking incidents of 2021
Symbolic performances
Analytical data reveals that DeFi’s locked-in total value rose 8.01% in the week to $ 159.5 billion.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView Reveals Top 100 DeFi Tokens By Market Cap Has Performed Relatively Well the last seven days.
Terra (LUNA) reached record highs this week thanks to gains by 66.85%. Uniswap (UNI) hit a good 14.3%, while Tezos (XTZ) posted an increase of 12.70%. Fourth and fifth places this week were won by Chainlink (LINK) and Oasis Network (ROSE) with gains of 8.1% and 8%, respectively.
Analysis and hot topics from last week:
Thanks for reading our roundup of this week’s most significant DeFi developments. Join us again next Friday for more stories, ideas and education in this dynamic evolving space.