BTC, ETH and BNB Trade At A Premium On Binance.US After Court Orders Asset Freeze

Binance Outflows Slow After SEC Crackdown 

Well Defiers, we’ve reached the end of the road in what is surely the most trying year in the history of decentralized finance.

To chronicle this savage journey The Defiant’s crack writers fanned out across the crypto landscape to chronicle the most urgent, and valuable, stories and developments of the last 12 months.

There are heroes — read Aleks Gilbert’s profile of 

and the other miscreants who poleaxed crypto with their legerdemain. There was the 

There were also breakthroughs — Sam Haig unpacked 

and Owen Fernau walked us through the strange world of 

. And we looked at what’s coming down the road in 2023. Sam explored the timing of 

Crypto Sleuth ZachXBT Exposed Chicanery For a Grateful DeFi Community

Deeply Researched Probes of Questionable Projects Proved ‘Invaluable’ in Mad Year

“The obvious,” one commenter wrote, “needs to be stated again and again.”

“The space is not only safer and smarter because of you, but unequivocally better,” they 

 the man who moonlights as crypto sleuth ZachXBT on Twitter. The Defiant community agrees.

Adams Defies a Rough Year to Make Uniswap a True Unicorn

With Deals in the Payments and NFT Sectors Uniswap Flexed as Other Crypto Projects Ducked

By his own admission, Hayden Adams didn’t really know what he was doing.

In 2017, Adams, then a 23-year-old native of the suburbs of New York, had been laid off from his job as an engineer at Siemens. He wanted to learn how to code. But he barely understood the intricacies of blockchain technology. So Adams decided the best way to do this would be the hard way — writing an application from scratch.

UkraineDAO Showed Power of Web3 in War Zone

Founder Alona Tapped DeFi to Aid Embattled Ukrainians

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February crypto culture may have been the last thing on the minds of a horrified population. Lines of communication and supply routes were broken. Families rushed to get news of loved ones left behind in Kyiv and eastern Ukraine.

SBF and Fellow Miscreants Left Customers Reeling and Crypto Damaged

Mismanagement and Alleged Crimes Stained Crypto With a Litany of Scandals in 2022

Talk about swagger. On March 9, a pseudonymous crypto trader called Algod dismissed the LUNA token a “big ass Ponzi” and threatened to “short it with size.”

LUNA was the native token of the Terra blockchain, and on that day, it had a market capitalization of $36B. Algod’s threat to open a sizeable short position prompted an equally macho response from Terra co-founder Do Kwon, a South Korean software developer.

CeFi Rekt Was the Main Event in Crypto’s Annus Horribilis

FTX, Celsius, 3AC Left a Trail of Wreckage in Centralized Finance

Crypto has been a bloodbath this year: total market cap down more than 66%, blue-chip assets hitting multi-year lows, companies going bankrupt and freezing customer deposits.

To many, this shows the skeptics are right: crypto is inherently volatile and a “garden of snakes,” as U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA.) put it during a recent congressional hearing. Traditional finance may have its flaws, but at least it’s got rules and watchdogs, the argument goes.

Bridging Protocols Hardest Hit in Year That Exposed Key Vulnerability

If losing two-thirds of its value wasn’t enough, the cryptocurrency market’s vulnerability to hacks and exploits certainly delivered an annus horribilis for users and investors.

Chicken Bonds Pecked Their Way Into a Reward-Hungry Market

Novel Liquidity Mechanism Attracted More Than $70M

In a year whipsawed by falling asset prices and 

, it’s easy to forget that there was a whole lot of labor and innovation going on, too.

If the Merge Changed Everything Why Does Ethereum Feel the Same?

Ethereum’s Shift to Proof of Stake Ended Mining and Ushered in Staking, But What Comes Next?

For months, Ethereum’s devs conducted tests and teased results as the network made its way toward a historic upgrade.

Bear Attack: Investors Lick Their Wounds After Grim 2022

Global Markets Had A Volatile Year As Inflation Took Centre Stage

That was the incontrovertible truth of a 12-month period that erased 65% of the market value of cryptocurrencies.

These Five NFT Collections Thrived In A Tough Year For Tokenized Art

The NFT space was riding high as 2022 rolled in. Floor prices were up, GameFi and metaverse plays were booming, and January 2022 saw record trading volumes of over $5B a week.

Taking Aim at Code Itself Feds Sent Crypto a Clear Message

DAOs, Mixers, and Exchanges Felt the Sting of Officialdom in a Watershed Year

For years, the threat of a legal crackdown hung over crypto like the Sword of Damocles. But as time ticked by with no real action, many dared to believe that the decentralized nature of blockchain technology made the industry impervious to regulatory oversight.

Crypto’s Lobbyist Kept Cool in a Mad, Mad Year

Kristin Smith and the Blockchain Association Are Facing Busy Agenda on Capitol Hill in 2023

Well Defiers, we’ve reached the end of the road in what is surely the most trying year in the history of decentralized finance.

To chronicle this savage journey The Defiant’s crack writers fanned out across the crypto landscape to chronicle the most urgen...

DeFi 2022: Heroes, Rogues, and Breakthroughs