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. October is historically associated with the bulls, but in 2022, the month has also become the leader in crypto hacks as barely halfway through, and the DeFi ecosystem has already seen nearly a dozen hacks resulting in losses of hundreds of millions of dollars. The largest hack occurred on Solana’s DeFi platform Mango Markets on Oct. 11, resulting in a loss of over $100 million worth of crypto. The hacker has now come out …

MakerDAO, the governing body of the Maker Protocol has seen its revenue plummet in the third quarter of 2022, caused by a fall in loan demand and few liquidations, while expenses have remained high. According to an Oct. 13 tweet by Johnny_TVL, a Messari analyst and co-author of “The State of Maker Q3 2022,” the decentralized autonomous organization saw its revenue plunge to just over $4 million in Q3, down 86% from the previous quarter. One of the results of this has been MakerDAO’s first quarter of net income loss since 2020. The Messari senior research analyst has pointed to …

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 …

MakerDAO, the governing body of the Maker Protocol, has taken the first step of its plan to reallocate $500 million of its stablecoin Dai (DAI) collateral reserves into short-term United States Treasuries 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 (MKR) token holders, with the rest of the funds soon to be reallocated following confirmation from the community. A majority, 80% of the $500 million, will be invested in short-term U.S. Treasuries, with $160 million allocated to the 0-1y US Treasury iShares …

Just a few days after market analysts predicted a 50% drop in NEXO price due to regulatory pressure and investor concerns, a crypto wallet address labeled as NEXO 0x8fd withdrew 7,758.8 Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) — roughly worth $153M — from MakerDAO. On Sept. 26, regulators from eight U.S. states filed a cease-and-desist order against Nexo under the allegations of offering unregistered securities to investors without warning. Moreover, Kentucky regulators accused Nexo of insolvency owing to liabilities exceeding assets when excluding Nexo. Following suit, on Sept. 30, blockchain investigator Peckshield alerted the transfer of 7,758.8 WBTC from MakerDAO. One of the …

Australia’s financial regulator, Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), has pledged to put crypto assets and decentralized finance (DeFi) firmly in its sights over the next four years. The regulator intends to focus on “digitally enabled misconducts” and to protect investors “from harms posed by crypto-assets.” Given the ASIC’s history of anti-crypto sentiments, such an announcement could be perceived as hostile, but at least it contains a promise to implement some regulatory framework that is still absent. And, it is hardly a coincidence that the announcement came only days after Australia’s new ruling government announced plans to move forward with regulation …

In light of the recent discussions around depegging its native token from USD Coin (USDC) amid sanctioning of Tornado Cash, MakerDAO co-founder Rune Christensen reached out to the community explaining why free-floating DAI may be the only choice for the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). In his blog post, “The Path of Compliance and the Path of Decentralization: Why Maker has no choice but to prepare to free float Dai,” Christensen disclosed miscalculating the risks related to risk-weighted assets (RWA). He stated: “Physical crackdown against crypto can occur with no advance notice and with no possibility of recovery even for legitimate, …

What are the disadvantages of CeDeFi? Currently, CeDeFi’s main downside is the high learning curve associated with its protocols because of their complexity. The concept is still young, and more intuitive and user-friendly interfaces are bound to emerge over time. CeDeFi also relies heavily on Ethereum, given that most CeDeFi protocols are still built on the Ethereum blockchain. If Ethereum fails, CeDeFi will likely fail as well. However, this risk is mitigated by the fact that other blockchains are beginning to adopt CeDeFi protocols. Another disadvantage of CeDeFi is that it’s still relatively new and unproven. While the sector has …

MakerDAO founder Rune Chirstensen has urged members of the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to “seriously consider” preparing for the depeg of its DAI stablecoin from the United States dollar (USD). The founder’s comments came in light of the recently announced sanctions on crypto mixer Tornado Cash, noting to MakerDAO’s Discord channel on Aug. 11 that the sanctions are “unfortunately more serious than I first thought,” adding that they should prepare to depeg its native stablecoin DAI from the USD to avoid any risk’s relating to Circle’s recent freezing of sanctioned USD Coin (USDC) addresses. “I think we should seriously consider …

Cred Protocol, a decentralized credit scoring startup has unveiled the results of its first automated credit scoring system for users of decentralized finance (DeFi). Cred Protocol CEO Julian Gay outlined the results in a Twitter thread, which showed how Cred successfully utilized past transaction behavior on the Aave protocol to assess the creditworthiness of future borrowers based on on-chain behavior in the DeFi space. 1/ Over the last few months, we've been working to build one of the first credit scores for DeFi. Today, we're excited to share the results of our first credit score with the world! Read more …

Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of key decentralized finance (DeFi) insights, a newsletter crafted to bring you some of the major developments over the last week. This past week, the DeFi ecosystem got recognition from the United Kingdom government, as they sought public feedback on taxation of the DeFi ecosystem, especially staking and lending. MakerDAO is looking to collaborate with the traditional banks, which would take place after the proposal gets community approval. Aave (AAVE) is planning to launch an overcollateralized stablecoin called GHO, subject to the community decentralized autonomous organization’s (DAO’s) approval. The hacker who exploited Solana-based …

A descending triangle pattern has been pressuring Bitcoin (BTC) for the past three weeks and while some traders cite this as a bullish reversal pattern, the $19,000 support remains a crucial level to determine the bulls' fate. Despite the apparent lack of a clear price bottom, Bitcoin derivatives metrics have significantly improved since June 30 and positive news from global asset manager VanEck may have eased traders' sentiment. On July 5, two retirement funds in the U.S. state of Virginia announced a $35 million commitment to VanEck's cryptocurrency-focused investment fund. On the same day, a Huobi exchange subsidiary received its …