Vestnik DeFi: the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation saw the risks of DeFi, and the founder of Wonderland allowed it to be closed
The decentralized finance (DeFi) sector continues to attract increased attention of cryptocurrency investors. ForkLog has collected the most important events and news of recent weeks in a digest.
The main indicators of the DeFi segment
Against the background of the market correction, the volume Locked Funds (TVL) in DeFi protocols fell to $197.42 billion. The Curve Finance protocol still holds the lead with $19.17 billion. MakerDAO ($16.23 billion) took second place in the ranking, Convex Finance ($13.22 billion ) — third.
Data: DeFi Llama.
Defi Llama includes a group of tokenized bitcoins in the final value. WBTC ranked fifth with $10.46 billion. hBTC is in 19th place with $1.59 billion. The total value of “bitcoins on ether” was $13.19 billion.
TVL in Ethereum applications fell to $115.75 billion. Over the past 30 days, the indicator has fallen by 15% (on January 19, the value was $135.94 billion).
Data: DeFi Llama.
Decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volume totaled $88.8 billion over the past 30 days
Uniswap continues to dominate the non-custodial exchange market, accounting for over 79% of total turnover. The second DEX in terms of trading volume is Curve (7.2%).
The Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation saw the risks in the development of DeFi
Deputy Minister of Finance of Russia Alexei Moiseev said that the department is watching the development of the DeFi sector with concern, as it is associated with significant risks due to the lack of proper regulatory control.
He noted the possibility of violating the requirements for combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism, as well as the need to protect consumers of financial services.
“Thirdly, the Central Bank now regulates the financial sector in terms of controlling the possible emergence of bubbles and everything else, and the emergence of DeFi completely deprives it of these levers,” Moiseev said.
The official noted that the DeFi sector requires a separate study due to the risks associated with it, while in general, the Ministry of Finance takes a relatively liberal position regarding crypto assets:
« All that we proposed in our concept was to buy cryptocurrency within the existing decentralized system, but this does not move us in any way towards the legalization of DeFi.
While the ministry does not understand how to regulate the sector, Moiseev emphasized.
The founder of the DeFi project Wonderland allowed its closure
The co-founder of the DeFi project Wonderland Daniele Sestagalli announced his readiness to close it against the backdrop of a serious split in the community.
In late January, it became known that Sestagalli’s partner and treasury manager is Michael Patrin. Hiding under the pseudonym 0xSifu, the man is known as the co-founder of the bankrupt exchange QuadrigaCX. Previously, he was also convicted of financial crimes.
Due to outrage in the community, Sestagalli suggested that Patrin step down before the confirmation vote. 87.56% were against keeping 0xSifu in charge of the protocol’s assets.
After that, a vote was held on the proposal to dissolve the project and return funds to investors. He was supported by over 34%, at the moment the figure was higher.
“The Wonderland experiment is coming to an end. According to the voting results, it is clear that the community is split. It is the core and heart of the project. If we can’t agree on whether to continue or not, then we have failed,” Sestagalli wrote.
As the result of the vote was close to 50/50, he said, there is “only one way forward, and that is to make amends and wind it all up.” He added that he is working with the team on a new proposal.
1inch Network launches spot price aggregator
DeFi project 1inch Network introduced a spot price aggregator. The solution allows “immediate” display of token quotes in the interfaces of websites and applications, representatives of the team told ForkLog.
The tool provides a liquidity-weighted average of the price of a token across several DEXs.
According to the team, the need for a solution arose due to a specific problem: not all aggregated 1inch tokens are supported by existing price reporting systems.
The Spot Liquidity Aggregator interacts with various DEXs via smart contracts to “immediately” retrieve information from the blockchain. If there is no direct pair between two tokens, the tool calculates data using an intermediary asset.
According to the project team, the main advantages of their solution are:
- no delay in displaying prices ;
- Large DEX support on Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, Optimistic Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Gnosis Chain.
Potential use cases for 1inch’s new aggregator include crypto wallets, price trackers, and portfolio managers.
Investing in DeFi
Startup Qredo raised an $80 million Series A funding round led by Dan Tapiero’s 10T Holdings.
Coinbase Ventures, Avalanche and Terra, Kingsway Capital, HOF Capital, Raptor Group and GoldenTree Asset Management also participated in the round .
Startup valuation reaches $460M
According to the team, they have raised $120 million over the past 12 months, including from strategic investors.
Qredo provides digital asset management infrastructure and products designed “to unlock new opportunities for institutional investors in cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance ”.
Hacks and scams
The Dego Finance project team, specializing in cross-chain compatibility and NFT, reported a hacker attack .
As a result of the hack, the attackers took liquidity out of pairs with DEGO. The project team turned to bitcoin exchanges to close deposits in the token.
According to PeckShield analysts, over $10 million in digital assets were stolen during the attack.
The QiDAO protocol for issuing a stablecoin on the Polygon network reported a hack in a delegation of authority smart contract using code from the Superfluid cash flow management platform.
According to blockchain security firm SlowMist, the hacker withdrew about $13 million in various coins, including USDC, WETH, and the QI protocol DAO governance token.
According to the QiDAO team, user funds were not affected. The incident affected the assets of early investors and some “other tokens”.
The project temporarily suspended the operation of cross-chain bridges and began investigating the incident.
DeFi infrastructure company Meter lost about $4.3 million in bitcoin and Ethereum as a result of a hack.
According to PeckShield, the damage was 1391 ETH and 2.74 BTC.
Meter confirmed the hack. The attacker took advantage of a vulnerability in the automatic “unpacking” of gas tokens in the protocol, such as ETH and BNB, the company explained.
PeckShield specialists recorded an unauthorized withdrawal of 4828 BNB (~$1.9 million) from the DeFi protocol Titano Finance powered by Binance Smart Chain.
Representatives of the project confirmed the breach of the PLAY contract and called the incident “disconcerting”, as the protocol code passed “all security checks.”
The team has suspended the PLAY service indefinitely until all vulnerabilities are fixed. The project promised full compensation for the lost funds to affected users.
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Also on ForkLog:
- The world’s first DeFi-focused ETFs have been launched in Brazil.