🥷 Bridges Ransacked By Hackers: DeFi Week of July 2

This week, Cami Russo was joined by Neal Gorevic, the chief marketing officer of ConsenSys, a company driving software development in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Neal discusses ConsenSys’ decision to rebrand and provides insights into the company’s strategic vision moving forward. He also shares the story behind his transition into crypto from working in marketing at Spotify

Vitalik Buterin’s admission that he only stakes a small portion of his ETH has ruffled feathers across the web3 community. Why would Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder and chief scientist, be wary of staking on the Ethereum blockchain, and what does he recommend instead?

💀 NFTs are dead, but why?

For most of 2022, A-list celebrities like Snoop Dogg and Paris Hilton were jumping on the NFT bandwagon, and many thought the sky was the limit. Fast forward to today, and with all the gloomy headlines about celebrity ‘investments’ into NFTs and how much money they’ve lost, you’d be forgiven for wondering if NFTs are dead forever. So, what changed?

In this week’s guest article, CoinLedger discussed the recent measures taken by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to eliminate gaps in digital asset guidelines, and what you can do to ensure your crypto tax obligations are met.

• BarnBridge Winds Down Activity Amid SEC Investigation Web3 activity increased in June despite regulatory actions targeting top centralized exchanges, according to a new report from DappRadar. The report found that nearly 2M wallets interacted with dApps daily in June, a 1.4% increase compared to May.
• Web3 Apps Gained Users In June Despite Regulatory Challenges: DappRadar Web3 activity increased in June despite regulatory actions targeting top centralized exchanges, according to a new report from DappRadar. The report found that nearly 2M wallets interacted with dApps daily in June, a 1.4% increase compared to May.

• Over $120M Drained From Multichain Bridge Multichain, a cross-chain bridging protocol that operates on dozens of blockchains, has been hit by an exploit. The team behind the protocol confirmed that over $120M of digital assets were transferred to unknown wallets and that it is investigating the incident.
• Ethereum Users Have Been Burning ETH To Mint VMPX Tokens Users racing to mint XEN’s new VMPX token pushed Ethereum gas prices to their highest level since May. Jack Levin, founder of XEN protocol, estimates users have burned $90M worth of Ether so far.
• Compound Token Surges After CEO Steps Down And Unveils New Venture COMP, the governance token of the $2B lending protocol, Compound Finance, rallied over 100% in the past week. The bullish price action follows the resignation of Compound founder and CEO, Robert Leshner.
• Pendle Attracts Over $125M In TVL With ‘Discounted Assets’ The TVL in Pendle, a DeFi protocol that splits yield-bearing tokens into their principal and yield components, hit an all-time high of $127M on July 4. More than $40M worth of stETH has been tokenized using the protocol since staked Ether went live in April.

• Ethereum Developers Propose ‘Circuit Breaker’ To Deter Hackers Ethereum developers have proposed a circuit breaker mechanism that would halt token outflows exceeding a predetermined limit as a security measure. The feature could prevent hackers from immediately draining the assets of exploited DeFi protocols and protect users against losses.

• BRC-69 Token Standard Promises To Reduce Ordinals Fees By 90% Luminex, a launchpad for Bitcoin Ordinals, has released a modified version of the BRC-20 token standard, claiming a 90% reduction in minting costs. With transaction fees on the rise, Luminex hopes reducing minting fees will help to sustain the growth of Ordinals on the network.

• Poly Network Hacker Mints Billions Of Tokens From Thin Air Poly Network, a cross-chain bridging protocol notorious for suffering the second-largest DeFi exploit on record, was hacked again on Sunday. A hacker identified a flaw in Poly Network’s contract allowing them to issue a seemingly unlimited number of tokens into existence.
• Crypto Gains More Than Double Traditional Assets’ in First Half of 2023 Bitcoin and Ethereum posted year-to-date gains of 85% and 63% respectively, compared with gains of 32% for the Nasdaq, 16% for the S&P 500, and a loss of 4% for the Hang Seng Index. Commodities also underperformed digital assets.

• Crypto Markets End Q2 On A High Note Crypto markets posted a strong finish to the quarter despite the news that the Securities and Exchange Commission may prompt several financial powerhouses to revisit their Bitcoin ETF filings..