Transit Swap ‘hacker’ returns lion’s share of $23M in stolen funds: Finance Redefined

Published at: Oct. 7, 2022

Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week.

The TranitSwap hacker that got away with $23 million has returned 70% of the stolen funds. The return was possible due to quick actions from on-chain data analytic firms who managed to find the hacker’s IP address and other personal details.

Another research report from Elliptic suggests that DeFi bridges and decentralized exchanges (DEX) have become a new frontier for crypto laundering.

Bitcoin.com CEO Dennis Jarvis believes that Bitcoin can be a bridge that leads users to the decentralized finance space.

As the United States dollar strengthens, even DeFi protocols are looking to invest in the USD as MakerDAO announced it is going ahead with its $500M investment in Treasury bonds.

The top 100 DeFi tokens by market cap had a mixed week in terms of price action, where a majority of the tokens traded in the red thanks to a weekend market correction. However, a few tokens managed to remain in the green on the weekly charts.

Transit Swap ‘hacker’ returns 70% of $23M in stolen funds

A quick response from a number of blockchain security companies has helped facilitate the return of around 70% of the $23 million exploit of the DEX aggregator Transit Swap.

The DEX aggregator lost the funds after a hacker exploited an internal bug on a swap contract on Oct. 1, leading to a quick response from the Transit Finance team along with security companies Peckshield, SlowMist, Bitrace and TokenPocket, who were able to quickly work out the hacker’s IP, email address and associated-on chain addresses.

‘New frontier’ of crypto laundering involves cross-chain bridges and DEXs: Elliptic

New research from blockchain analytics and crypto compliance firm Elliptic has revealed the extent to which cross-chain bridges and DEXs have removed barriers for cybercriminals.

In an Oct. 4 report titled “The state of cross-chain crime,” Elliptic researchers Eray Arda Akartuna and Thibaud Madelin took a deep dive into what they described as “the new frontier of crypto laundering.” The report summarized that the free flow of capital between crypto assets is now more unhindered due to the emergence of new technologies such as bridges and DEXs.

Bitcoin can solve the DeFi onboarding crisis, argues exec

As the decentralized finance space remains plagued with hacks, people have become less interested in jumping in and engaging with DeFi. But, according to Dennis Jarvis, the CEO of Bitcoin.com, there is a way for DeFi adoption to move forward through Bitcoin.

In a keynote speech at the Blockchain Economy Dubai Summit 2022, Jarvis pointed out that massive losses of investor funds, like the collapse of Terra and the Axie Infinity Ronin hack, have made DeFi unappealing to potential users. However, the executive believes that by using Bitcoin as a hook, DeFi can overcome the onboarding crisis brought about by its declining reputation.

MakerDAO goes ahead with $500M investment in treasuries and bonds

MakerDAO, the governing body of the Maker Protocol, has taken the first step of its plan to reallocate $500 million of its stablecoin Daicollateral reserves into the short-term United States Treasury and corporate bonds.

The decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) voted on Oct. 6 to approve a pilot transaction of $1 million following an executive vote from Maker tokenholders, with the rest of the funds soon to be reallocated following confirmation from the community.

DeFi market overview

Analytical data reveals that DeFi’s total value locked registered a minor decrease from the past week. The TVL value was about $52.63 billion at the time of writing. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView show that DeFi’s top 100 tokens by market capitalization had a mixed week, with many tokens seeing a decline toward the end of the week while a few others managed to trade in green.

Maker (MKR) continued its bullish momentum into October, registering a 9.78% gain over the past seven days, followed by Uniswap (UNI) with an 8.8% gain. Curve Finance (CRV) registered an 8% gain on the weekly charts as well.

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