DeFi Herald: JPMorgan CEO Recognizes DeFi Value, Hacker Didn’t Take $1M After Zeed Hack

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.

Main indicators of the DeFi segment

The amount of blocked funds (TVL) in DeFi protocols has decreased to $211 billion. The Curve Finance protocol still holds the lead with $19.86 billion. Lido ($18.63 billion) remained in second place in the rating, while Anchor ($16.14 billion) broke into third.

Data: DeFi Llama.

TVL in Ethereum applications decreased to $114.8 billion. Over the past 30 days, the indicator has decreased by 2.5% (on March 23, the value was $117.69 billion).

Data: DeFi Llama.

Trading volume on decentralized exchanges (DEX) over the past 30 days amounted to $69.3 billion 

Uniswap continues to dominate the non-custodial exchange market, accounting for 75.3% of total turnover. The second DEX in terms of trading volume is Sushiswap (5.1%), the third is Curve (5%).

The head of JPMorgan recognized the value of blockchain and DeFi technologies

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon admitted that blockchain technology and decentralized finance applications have value.

“Decentralized finance and blockchain are real. These are new technologies that can be used both privately and publicly, with the need to obtain permission or not,” he wrote in a letter to shareholders.

According to him, there are many scenarios in which distributed ledger technology can replace or improve various aspects of work, such as contract execution or data ownership.

However, for some tasks, the new technology is all also “too expensive or slow,” the financier is sure.

Hacker hacked Zeed’s DeFi protocol, but did not take $1 million

An unknown person exploited a vulnerability in the Zeed DeFi protocol based on BNB Chain, but did not take $1 million in funds.

The hacker issued additional tokens of the YEED project and sold them on the market. The price of the coin collapsed to zero.

The attacker destroyed the smart contract that was used in the exploit. As a result, the assets were blocked.

Andre Cronje was criticized for calling for DeFi regulation

The founder of the DeFi project yEarn Finance, Andre Cronje, announced the need for regulation of the crypto industry and ran into to community criticism.

He suggested that the current generation of project developers in the industry are repeating the mistakes of the creators of the existing monetary system in an attempt to “do something better.”

Cronje contrasted the concepts of cryptoethos and cryptoculture. In the first he included the ideas of sovereign rights, self-sacrifice and self-perfection. With the second, he linked property rights, enrichment, and ego.

According to him, the cryptoculture “smothered the idea of ​​​​cryptocurrency.”

“Now more than ever, I see the need or even the urgency of regulation not as a prevention mechanism but as a remedy,” Cronje said.

He expressed confidence that in the future “we will see a take-off new blockchain economy driven not by greed, but by trust, not gullibility.” At the same time, Cronje made it clear that he was not going to return to the industry.

The article caused a strong reaction in the community.

“We can only hope that some regulators put legal mega pressure on the guy, and this is just a psychological operation. I’m not sure though,” commented Larry Cermak, VP of Research at The Block.

DeFi YouTube host Chris Black wrote:

“Now that he has your money, Andre says DeFi needs government intervention. Because you are a child and don’t know how to keep your fingers away from the toaster. What he misses is that he is the guy who intentionally made and sold faulty toasters.”

Investing in DeFi

Team bloXroute Labs closes a $70 million Series B funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 with Dragonfly Capital, ParaFi Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, GSR, Jane Street, Flow Traders, RBF Capital and others.

The funds raised will be used to improve high-frequency trading in the DeFi area and expand the staff from 30 to 100 employees.

The bloXroute Labs estimate has not been disclosed. Total funds raised reached $95M

The Bastion Lending Protocol closed a $9M Series A funding round led by Three Arrows Capital with FTX, Jane Street, The Spartan Group, Crypto.com and other investors.

The Bastion team announced the launch of leveraged farming, new listings, and plans to gamify DeFi with NFT over the next few weeks.

Hacks and scams

The Ethereum-based stablecoin protocol Beanstalk Farms lost more than $181 million in cryptocurrencies as a result of a hack. The hacker received about $76 million.

The attacker created a BIP-18 management proposal involving a donation of $250,000 to Ukraine, which he falsified before execution.

Through instant loans, he received:

• 350M DAI, 500M USDC and 150M USDT on Aave;
• 32M BEAN on Uniswap;
• 11.6M LUSD on SushiSwap.

The funds were used by the hacker to add liquidity to the Curve pools in BEAN to obtain governance votes – Stalk tokens. He then deployed and approved the malicious BIP-18, which transferred all assets from the protocol to a third-party wallet. 

After removing the liquidity and repaying the loans, the attacker converted the remaining funds into 24,800 WETH (~$76 million). He laundered the cryptocurrency through the Tornado Cash mixing service. 250,000 USDC went to a donation address in favor of Ukraine.

Landing project Inverse Financereported a hacker attack that resulted in the theft of assets worth $15.6 million. The protocol team promised to reimburse loss of users.

According to PeckShield, an attacker exploited a vulnerability in the Keep3r price oracle, which Inverse Finance uses to track token prices. The exploit allowed the hacker to “cheat” the protocol – he inflated INV quotes and used the asset as collateral on the Anchor Protocol market.

The company noted that the hacker needed to deposit 901 ETH (over $3.15 million) to implement attacks. The funds came from the Tornado Cash Mixer. The attacker also transferred most of the stolen assets to the address of the service.

The Inverse Finance team has suspended all borrowing operations on the Anchor Protocol marketplace. The developers turned to the hacker with a request to return the stolen assets for a reward. 

How the Alchemix landing protocol became a growth driver for DeFi 2.0

Also on ForkLog:

• 1inch Network has integrated the Fantom blockchain.
• Convex Finance has fixed a bug that could potentially cost $15 billion.
• DeFi platform WonderFi to buy regulated crypto exchange Coinberry.
• Cosmos ecosystem’s Gravity DEX protocol will be transferred to its own blockchain.

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