Rocket Pool, a decentralized Ethereum 2.0 staking platform has surpassed $350 million worth of total value locked (TVL) within five weeks of its official launch. The project aims to remove the barriers to entry for Eth2 stakers and node operators. It allows any user to run a node for 16 ETH ($59,000), which is half of the 32 ETH ($119,000) required in the Eth2 deposit contract. Users with as little as 0.01 ETH can also stake their funds and receive yield. According to data from DefiLlama, Rocket Pool has surged up the decentralized finance (DeFi) staking platform rankings to sit …

Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance newsletter. As the calendar year comes to an end, Cardano’s personable leader Charles Hoskinson shares a message of optimism, unity and collaboration for the future of crypto. As a gesture of goodwill for the holiday season, this week our long-form DeFi newsletter will be published in full here as an article alongside the regular email. Subscribe below for full access to next week's edition! Polygon fixes potential billion-dollar protocol vulnerability Layer-two protocol Polygon announced this week the rectification of a potentially multi-billion-dollar vulnerability in its proof-of-stake Genesis contract through implementing an …

The total combined value of treasuries, or assets under management (AUM) for the use of decentralized autonomous organizations, increased by around 40 times between January and September of 2021. According to data from DAO stats platform DeepDAO, the total AUM for DAO treasuries listed on the platform increased from around $380 million in January to a peak of roughly $16 billion in mid-September. Looking ahead at 2022: ✍️How far and how deep will DAOs go into the mainstream, and into which use cases? ✍️(When) will DAO treasuries exceed $100B? Lots of interesting questions, but together we can BUIDL this! pic.twitter.com/JDEC9JBuHC …

NFT marketplace OpenSea has frozen 16 Bored Ape and Mutant Ape nonfungible tokens (NFT) after they were reportedly stolen yesterday from a New York art gallery operator. In total, one Clonex, seven Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and eight Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs currently valued at about 615 ETH ($2.28 million) were stolen and are now not able to be traded on OpenSea. The toddkramer.eth account, which links to the Ross+Kramer Art Gallery in New York, fired off a series of tweets detailing the 16 NFTs that were stolen from his hot wallet and pleading with OpenSea and the NFT …

Ahmed Al-Balaghi of Biconomy Ahmed is a co-founder of Biconomy, a developer platform that empowers blockchain developers to enable a simplified transaction and onboarding experience for their Web 3.0 project. “The progress made by Ethereum was one of the most outstanding things to come out of 2021, and if all goes as planned, Eth2 will continue to help scale the ecosystem. The milestones reached by Ethereum also paved the way for other protocols to adopt market share, which has created even more innovation industry-wide. The rise of NFTs has also been a great outcome for the industry. It has brought …

Times Square NYE party in Decentraland Decentralized Metaverse project Decentraland will unveil the virtual reality version of the iconic Times Square via a New Years Eve party that coincides with the timing of the real life celebration in New York city. The event is called the “MetaFest 2022 NYE Party” and will run until 8:00 am UTC on Jan. 1 in Decentraland’s Estate 4 district. It will feature live music, rooftop VIP lounges, a new tokenized collectibles and wearables drop, live feeds of real world NYE events across the globe, CryptoArt galleries and games. The virtual reality equivalent of the …

The total value locked, or TVL, in decentralized finance (DeFi) has soared to over $250 billion as 2021 closes out, according to DeFi Llama, with most activity on Ethereum. The budding DeFi industry only became mainstream during summer 2021. While TVL valuations underscore the rapid growth of the industry, Cardano (ADA) founder Charles Hoskinson has warned about the challenges facing DeFi. In a YouTube video entitled "DApps and Cardano DeFi Alliance," Hoskinson talked about DeFi's potential as well as Cardano's small role within the industry. According to Hoskinson, who has been on a decade-long quest to transform traditional finance, there …

André Neves of Zebedee: André is the chief technology officer of Zebedee, which enables programmable payments and small transactions to power economies for virtual worlds. “2021 has been the year of the Bitcoin Lightning Network, which even still might be the best-kept secret in crypto. El Salvador adopting Bitcoin as legal tender by leveraging LN was certainly the biggest news, but it has been an incredible year of innovation, launches, funding rounds and growth all around for the Lightning Network. NFTs have captured the spotlight this year, but I believe Lightning, connected to use cases like gaming, made the biggest …

Tim Draper of Draper Associates and Draper Fisher Jurvetson Tim is a pioneer of business ventures in the United States and a co-founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a leading investment firm in early-stage tech startups. “I think anyone with a young brain already has a wallet. The rest will follow. The same thing happened with internet adoption.” These quotes have been edited and condensed. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph. Sebastian Markowsky of Coinsource Sebastian is the chief strategy officer at Coinsource, …

Tristan Frizza of Zeta Markets: Tristan is the core contributor to Zeta Markets, an under-collateralized DeFi derivatives platform, providing liquid derivatives trading to individuals and institutions alike. “We’ve seen a Cambrian explosion in the DeFi ecosystem in 2021, with peak TVL approaching $300 billion vs the 2020 peak of $21 billion. This sounds like the growth surely has to slow. Yet, DeFi still represents just a fraction of CeFi trading volumes. At Zeta, we see a clear opportunity for more and more CeFi infrastructure to be built on-chain in a permissionless manner. This will unlock innovative products that have previously …

Polygon (MATIC), a layer-two network designed for scaling and application infrastructure development on Ethereum (ETH), has been making rounds among blockchain enthusiasts as of late. From its $1 billion investment into zero-knowledge technology to co-launching a $200 million Web 3.0 social media initiative and up to integrating with Opera's web browser to make its decentralized apps accessible to 80 million Android mobile users, the network's momentum is going strong. But partnerships and business aside, the technological capacities of the network, especially when compared to Ethereum, are also attracting the attention of many blockchain developers. In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, …

In his monthly crypto tech column, Israeli serial entrepreneur Ariel Shapira covers emerging technologies within the crypto, decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain space, as well as their roles in shaping the economy of the 21st century. When trying to examine the nonfungible token (NFT) economy as it has been shaping in recent months, two main trends can be discerned. On the one hand, a completely new market that allows various artists to join a new creator economy — the creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club, various types of pixel art creators and creative flickers such as the creator of long-necked …