defi Archives - The Block

Coinbase wants inflation-pegged flatcoins on layer-2 ‘Base’ network

US crypto exchange Coinbase wants inflation-pegged “flatcoins” to be one of four “critical” innovations it hopes to see on its newly launched layer-2 network, Base.

The company also wants developers to explore an on-chain reputation system, an on-chain limit order book (LOB) exchange, and tools to improve safety in decentralised finance (DeFi).

Coinbase announced the four areas in a ‘Request for Builders’ post, published a month after launching Base – a...

27 March 2023 | Blockchain Applications

Lido Finance adds staking limit after 150k ETH staked in one day

Liquidity staking protocol Lido Finance activated safety features to limit staking after more than 150,000 Ether was staked on the platform in a single day.

The decentralised finance (DeFi) protocol is popular amongst the crypto community as a tool to stake digital assets like Ether (ETH) without having to lock them away.

When Lido users deposit Ether, the tool issues a liquid version of their tokens back to them called staked Ether (stETH), rewarding users for each day...

27 February 2023 | Blockchain Applications

Immunefi: Hacks made up 95% of lost crypto funds in 2022

Web3 bug bounty platform Immunefi has found that hacks accounted for 95 percent of the $3.9 billion (£3.23bn) lost in the crypto industry in 2022.

The figures come from the firm’s new ‘Crypto Losses in 2022 Report’, with fraud, scams, and rug pulls making up the last 5 percent.

According to the report, decentralised finance (DeFi) was the most targeted sector in the crypto industry, suffering 80 percent of the losses, whilst centralised finance firms took the...

9 January 2023 | Cryptocurrency

Uniswap awards DeFi auditor £33k for finding smart contract exploit

Uniswap may have saved itself being exploited for millions of pounds thanks to an auditor that identified a smart contract vulnerability on the decentralised exchange.

Dedaub, a smart contract security and auditing firm, revealed Uniswap has paid it $40,000 (£33,500) for flagging a potential weakness in the exchange’s Universal Router smart contract. The weakness could have enabled hackers to drain users funds in the middle of a transaction.

Uniswap launched its bug...

5 January 2023 | Blockchain Applications

Uniswap lets users buy crypto with card deposits and bank transfers

Users of decentralised exchange Uniswap are now able to buy cryptocurrency on its web platform using credit cards, debit cards, and bank transfers.

The feature upgrade is the result of a partnership with fintech firm Moonpay and is being rolled out worldwide, although the bank transfer option is exclusive to customers in select US states, the UK, Brazil, and the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA).

Uniswap has said that users looking to convert fiat currency to...

22 December 2022 | Cryptocurrency

Visa will ‘actively contribute’ to web3 development

Visa refuses to become a dinosaur and will “actively contribute” to developing the web3 and crypto ecosystem.

Aside from maximalists, few experts believe that crypto poses an existential threat to fiat currencies. Legacy payment processors like Visa and Mastercard have increasingly been joining the web2-era disruptors like PayPal and Square in supporting the web3 and crypto ecosystem.

Greater public adoption of “crypto” will likely come through CBDCs (Central...

20 December 2022 | Altcoins

Half of all DeFi exploits come from cross-chain bridge attacks

A half of all DeFi exploits occur on cross-chain bridges and a staggering £2.2 billion has been stolen from them by hackers in the past two years.

The latest figures come from a new report by crypto data aggregator Token Terminal and stand out as enormous in comparison to other DeFi security breaches.

In the same period, hackers netted only £635 million from DeFi lending hacks and a comparatively meagre £320 million from decentralised exchange...

24 October 2022 | Cyber Security

Jeremy Epstein, RDX Works: On the ‘practically unlimited scalability’ of Radix

Radix claims it will offer “practically unlimited scalability” with its novel consensus algorithm, Cerberus.

In 2019, Radix set a record for decentralised ledgers when it demonstrated the ability to process over one million transactions per second. For the demonstration, Radix replayed 10 years of Bitcoin’s transaction history in under 30 minutes. That demonstration used Cerberus’ predecessor, Tempo.

Despite the record-breaking demonstration, it was...

2 September 2022 | Altcoins

‘Most of crypto is going to go away’ says JPMorgan blockchain lead

JPMorgan head of blockchain and digital assets, Umar Farooq, has stated that the majority of crypto assets on the market today are “junk” and that it will take time for real crypto use cases to emerge.

During a panel at the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Green Shoots Seminar on 30 August, Farooq also said that regulation in the digital asset space was not keeping up with the industry’s advances.

In his view, this is holding bacl many traditional finance...

30 August 2022 | Banking

Aave bans Justin Sun for receiving funds from Tornado Cash

DeFi protocol Aave has banned Tron founder Justin Sun for receiving funds from sanctioned crypto mixer Tornado Cash.

Tornado Cash enables criminals to launder cryptocurrency. Differing reports by crypto analytics platform Elliptic and the US Treasury estimate the mixer has been used to launder anywhere between $1.5 billion and $7 billion worth of digital assets, including by North Korean hacker group Lazarus.

While that’s no small figure, it’s a drop in the ocean...