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 past week in DeFi was filled with anticipation leading up to the Shapella upgrade on the Ethereum mainnet. The hard fork was successfully completed on April 12, allowing validators to withdraw their staked Ether (ETH) after three years. However, only 253 validators have signed up to fully exit their staked Ether position, with analytics firm Glassnode predicting that less than 1% of the staked ETH will be withdrawn.
Amid all the rejoicing post-Shapella upgrade, an Ethereum researcher has revealed that staking Ether could become a privacy concern, as he had “internally” discovered that staking Ether shows a user’s IP address information.
A hacker minted 1 quadrillion Yearn Tether (yUSDT) after exploiting an old Yearn.finance contract, and then swapped the yUSDT to other stablecoins, allowing them to take hold of $11.6 million worth of stablecoins.
DeFi-based financial inclusion serves to increase liquidity and earning opportunities for African micro-entrepreneurs through Fonbnk’s partnership with Tanda.
The top 100 DeFi tokens had another bullish week, thanks to a late surge in the crypto market after Ethereum’s much-awaited upgrade. Most DeFi tokens traded in green along with the rest of the market.
Less than 1% of staked ETH estimated to be sold after Shanghai upgrade: Glassnode
Just 170,000 Ether of the 18.1 million ETH staked on the Beacon Chain will be unlocked within the first week of the Shanghai hard fork being executed on Ethereum, Glassnode has predicted.
The figure comprises 100,000 Ether ($190 million) worth of staking rewards and 70,000 ETH worth of staked Ether ($133 million), the on-chain intelligence platform predicted in its April 11 report.
Ethereum researcher says staking reveals IP address, sparking privacy concerns
A researcher at the Ethereum Foundation (EF) showed that the IP addresses of ETH stakers are monitored as part of a broader set of metadata, causing the cryptocurrency community to flag Ethereum for privacy concerns.
In an April 12 interview on the crypto podcast Bankless, EF researcher Justin Drake revealed that he learned this information “internally.” The metadata Drake referred to tracks a wide range of information.
Web3 economy to gain more traction in Africa through DeFi-based financial inclusion
Web3 in Africa began with cryptocurrency, with blockchain technology bringing a lot of transformation regarding transparency and people’s control over their finances. The Web3 economy in Africa continues gaining traction with decentralized finance-based financial inclusion.
Fonbnk, the Web3 on-ramp that allows Africans to obtain cryptocurrency assets by exchanging their airtime credits, has partnered with Tanda, a merchant network platform in East Africa, to launch an airtime trading marketplace across Tanda’s network of agents.
Hacker mints 1 quadrillion yUSDT after exploiting old Yearn.finance contract
Blockchain security firm PeckShield recently detected a hack that allowed the attacker to mint over 1 quadrillion yUSDT from $10,000 in the latest DeFi exploit.
According to the security firm, the hacker then swapped the yUSDT to other stablecoins, allowing them to take hold of $11.6 million worth of the tokens. This includes 61,000 Pax Dollar (USDP), 1.5 million TrueUSD (TUSD), 1.79 million Binance USD (BUSD), 1.2 million Tether (USDT), 2.58 million USD Coin (USDC) and 3 million Dai (DAI).
DeFi market overview
Analytical data reveals DeFi’s total market value crossed $54 billion this past week. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that DeFi’s top 100 tokens by market capitalization had a bullish week, with most of the tokens trading in green, barring a few.
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.