In a sign of volatility in the blockchain-derivatives market, liquidations on the Synthetix platform skyrocketed to $19.4M, on June 11, a 30-fold jump from the next highest level on May 13, according to data from The Graph. . As worrisome as that spike might be, the liquidations were right in line with how the system…

Last weekend, Alchemix, which offers automatic repaying loans, shipped a vault that accepts ETH. Alchemix users will now be able to borrow alETH, Alchemix’s token that’s soft-pegged to ETH, using ETH as collateral. The collateralization ratio: 400%. The launch came with a debt cap of 2,000 alETH and it was reached within a day of launch,…

Twenty days after upgrading its “Polygon Bridge” smart contract, Zapper found a vulnerability in its own deprecated version.  According to a tweet, the Zapper project “exploited the vulnerability ourselves and all of the funds have been rescued.” The problem would have affected those with an infinite approval for the bridge contract. Infinite approval is part…

Have you noticed the last few months just how rapidly the AMM and DEX space has been evolving? There has been an explosion of new products and innovations which are helping to move these products into a new era of capital efficiency. Uniswap’s v3 launch was the most eye-catching with the provision of concentrated liquidity…

The World Economic Forum, a bastion of the global establishment and ultra-exclusive club for heads of state, billionaires, and policymakers, is embracing DeFi. Well, sort of. In another sign that decentralized finance has spurred serious study in influential think tanks, the Geneva-based WEF issued a “Policy-Maker Toolkit.” The 38-page white paper explores DeFi’s benefits and…

Curve Finance, long distinguished by its homogenous-asset pools, has taken a walk on the wild side.  The automated market maker (AMM) rocked DeFi yesterday by releasing a pool containing USDT, WBTC, and ETH on Ethereum and another including USDC and DAI as well on Polygon. This was a first for Curve, which had up until…

Lots of laser eyes….but little actual legislation, at least for now.  El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender this week has captured the imagination of lawmakers across Latin America. That’s no surprise considering the region, long plagued by underdevelopment and volatile politics, has struggled to enfranchise its citizens in the global financial system, with…

If a long bear market is truly beginning in cryptocurrencies, then be thankful for stablecoins. With the Defi Pulse Index (DPI) down 40% on the month and the overall crypto market losing a third of its market value, the stablecoin supply has continued to march upward. Stablecoin supply grew 21% in the last 30 days…

Upshot: Uniswap and PancakeSwap have become household names in decentralized exchanges but a new crop of platforms are coming online with the promise of lower fees and more pricing transparency. With gas prices making headlines throughout the first half of 2021, it’s worth taking a deeper dive into what your options are when trading across…

Ever since El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele activated his laser eyes and made Bitcoin the nation’s legal tender this week, crypto communities have been gushing about this latest milestone. But in his bid to provide his citizens with more financial freedom, did Bukele pick the wrong token?   Stablecoins — cryptocurrencies that peg their value to…