Blockchain Project Interlay Wants its New Platform to Become a ‘One-Stop-Shop for Bitcoin DeFi’

“Financial freedom means different things to different people,” Zamyatin explained. “For some, it means that they can hedge against fiat by buying bitcoin and just holding it, but not everybody earns and has enough capital to be able to just put something aside and use it as an investment. There’s a lot of people globally who see bitcoin as access to a financial system,” he added. Original

How blockchain technology and DeFi could help solve the housing crisis

The prices of houses are sky-high all around the world, and homebuyers are feeling the pain. While affording a home has never been more difficult for many people, the ability to raise funds to construct new homes has never been easier, thanks to decentralized finance (DeFi). The newly launched Home Construction Collective is attempting to leverage blockchain’s coordination and fundraising potential in an effort to fund the construction of, and therefore increase the supply of, affordable homes. On Episode 14 of The Agenda podcast, hosts Jonathan DeYoung and Ray Salmond…

Over $204M lost to DeFi hacks and scams in Q2: Finance Redefined

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. The second quarter of 2023 saw over $208 million exploited and hacked from DeFi protocols, and with just $4.5 million of funds recovered, total losses to exploits were over $204 million. The DeFi ecosystem is an ever-growing industry with billions of dollars in daily trading volume. Still, it remains niche to a small population in the crypto industry and out of reach…

BIS, 3 central banks look at DeFi technology for wCBDC FX in interim project report

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub published an interim report on Project Mariana, its collaboration with the central banks of France, Singapore and Switzerland, on the use of wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC) in tokenized foreign exchange trading. The project is a proof-of-concept that considers questions relating to credit and settlement risk and interoperability. Specifically, the project looks at automated market makers (AMMs), token standards and network bridges as it “explores the feasibility of an international FX interbank market using wCBDCs on a blockchain-based network.” An AMM…

Over $204M was lost in Q2 DeFi hacks and scams: Report

Over $204 million was lost in decentralized finance (DeFi) hacks and scams in the second quarter of 2023, according to a June 27 report from Web3 portfolio app De.Fi. The report, titled “Q2 De.Fi Rekt Report,” was partially based on data from De.Fi’s “Rekt Database.” Over $208.5 million was initially lost during the quarter, but $4.5 million was recovered through prosecutions, deals with hackers and other recovery methods. Funds lost and recovered in Q2 2023. Source: De.Fi According to the report, the number of DeFi hacks in Q2 rose by…

13 DeFi leading practices CeFi companies would be wise to emulate

While there are inherent strengths to be found in both centralized finance and decentralized finance companies, there are certain areas in which DeFi shines, including user empowerment, transparency and reach. While customers may be drawn to CeFi’s perceived security and strength advantages, in an increasingly digital, global economy, if CeFi companies can’t keep up with the user expectations being set by DeFi technologies and protocols, their advantages may come to count for less among younger users and markets (or even disappear altogether). To avoid a slow slide into irrelevance —…

Q&A on Weathering the Regulatory Storm, Uniswap v4, What’s Next for DeFi

When we first rolled out Uniswap v3, it was a really powerful protocol. And it sort of ultimately proved itself, and today it has about 90% market share on Ethereum specifically for on-chain trading and AMMs. But, you know, one very valid piece of criticism that it got a little bit was like, “Oh, this thing came out. We’re kind of surprised. I didn’t have time to build my integration, and so I had to wait and build it after it launched.” And so I think part of it is…

How to use DeFi the right way — This latest guide can help

The cryptocurrency market saw an explosion of growth during the 2021 decentralized finance (DeFi) Summer and increased fear of missing out (FOMO), which drove prices of Bitcoin (BTC) and much of the cryptocurrency market to all-time highs. During that time, the total value locked (TVL) across DeFi rose to nearly $180 billion before crashing down to earth.  After the past few weeks of the BTC price crossing the $30,000 threshold, some are speculating if the market is gearing up for another bull run. That could signal interest from both veterans…

Breaking down the ongoing token impersonation scams with DeFi execs

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocol Tres Finance warned the community about a scam that involves fake tokens designed to mimic legitimate transactions. In an interview, Tres Finance co-founder Tal Zackon and the company’s technical lead Idan David shared the details of a scam using fraudulent transactions that imitate legitimate ones. According to the duo, the scammers attempt to lure unsuspecting users to copy the wrong wallet address and send their transactions there. David further explained that scammers often identify and target wallets with large amounts of stablecoins like Tether (USDT) or…