Finance Redefined: 1Password partners with Phantom, and Stark deploys nine DApps, Feb. 18–25

Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance newsletter.

In the aftermath of concerning political situations this week, the markets reacted strongly to the downside, but some assets attempted a recovery to end the week positively.

1Password collaborates with Phantom Wallet on API service

Digital security platform 1Password announced a joint partnership with Phantom Wallet this week to grant asset holders the ability to consolidate their lists of public key addresses, seed phrases and other corresponding security details into a single “Save in 1Password” system.

Operating primarily in the traditional financial sector at this time, 1Password has over 100,000 corporate clients from a panoply of industries, including well-recognized brands such as IBM, Slack, Shopify and Under Armour.

1Password’s flagship service, an application programming interface, aims to simplify the user experience by enabling asset sovereignty and independent portfolio responsibility to help investors sufficiently manage cryptocurrencies and nonfungible tokens held on the Solana blockchain.

Cointelegraph spoke to Matt O’Leary, VP of partnerships at 1Password, for a detailed assessment on the subject of security, as well as whether the prevalence of hacks and exploits in the decentralized finance space has catalyzed demand necessity and subsequent innovation for security solutions such as 1Password.

“1Password’s partnership with Phantom is a great example of innovation that is conquering this challenge... This human-centric approach to crypto wallet security was designed with the end-user in mind, making it easier than ever to invest in crypto safely and securely.”

StarkNet deploys inaugural nine DApps to advance mainstream adoption

Layer-2 scaling solution StarkNet, well-known for its Ethereum protocol service StarkWare, announced the deployment of its first series of decentralized applications (DApp) this week.

The DApps are focused across a range of sectors, including an ERC-721 nonfungible token project called Mallows, a real-time price chart also from the Mallows team, as well as a Cairo-multisig contract, among others.

StarkNet is a permissionless validity rollup, or zero-knowledge Rollup, that uses basic compression technology to boost the production and security benefits of Ethereum’s layer 1. The company prides itself in its products’ ability to provide “rock-bottom” gas fees and “limitless” scaling potential.

Here are the latest projects we have listed - all building on StarkNet ✨ from @StarkWareLtd https://t.co/y55wb8p8nb ️1/

— zkRollups.xyz (@zkRollupsXYZ) February 22, 2022

The StarkWare team revealed its pursuit for full decentralization within the next year, a strategy that proceeds a Sequoia Capital-led $50-million Series C fundraise on Nov. 16, taking the project’s valuation to $2 billion.

Celsius deploys crypto lending service on Maple Finance

Digital asset lending platform Celsius became the inaugural pool delegate from the centralized finance industry this week to roll out a cryptocurrency lending service on Maple Finance, utilizing the latter’s smart contract and blockchain infrastructure to offer a $30-million pool to institutional-grade investors.

Celsius follows in the footsteps of existing pool delegates BlockTower, Orthogonal Trading, Maven 11 and Alameda Research, which are partnering with Maple for this type of project. The introduction of Wrapped Ether (wETH) is set to complement the existing accessibility to trade Circle’s native stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC), enabling investors to utilize the asset across an array of trading components, including staking, lending and borrowing.

Cointelegraph spoke to Sidney Powell, co-founder and CEO of Maple Finance, to uncover the prerequisites and financial nuances that interested institutional investors must be aware of before engaging with the pool.

Powell shared that “institutions work directly with the Celsius team to borrow from this pool. Borrowers have to pass through Celsius’ established KYC and credit assessments,” adding:

“In this instance, digital asset institutions Wintermute and Amber have already been doing business on Maple, so have an on-chain credit reputation, and signed a Master Loan Agreement, too. This, plus Celsius’ established processes, means onboarding has been streamlined for all parties.”

This is such an exciting day for @maplefinance - @CelsiusNetwork is the first CeFi firm to launch a lending business using Maple's smart contract infrastructure. And on top of that, its our first WETH-demoninated pool!https://t.co/foCHZSIsS7

— Lucas Manuel (@lucasmanuel_eth) February 24, 2022

Token performances 

Analytical data reveals that DeFi’s total value slightly decreased by 8.53% across the week to a figure of $106.82 billion.

Terra (LUNA) was the solitary riser in the DeFi space this week with a 27.7% gain following a positive performance on Friday.

Interviews, features and other cool stuff

DeFi may turn to DAO governance to reduce regulatory risks in 2022: ReportWeb3 might be crypto’s key to the mainstream marketAutomated order books eliminate DeFi costs and match CEX capability

Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us again next Friday for more stories, insights and education in this dynamically advancing space.