Synthetix users will soon be able to trade proxies of the most popular US tech stocks. Synthetix, the synthetic derivatives protocol, will launch its Alnilam update tomorrow which includes three Synthetix Improvement Proposals (SIPs) and adds support for eight new assets, including tokens tracking prices for FAANG stocks –– Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google…

Slowly then all at once. DeFi projects’ moves to Ethereum Layer 2s are coming weekly now with Curve Finance joining Polymarket and Aave in the quest for scalability. Curve has launched a pool on Polygon, the Layer 2 network which supports multiple interoperable solutions like a Proof-of-Stake chain and a Plasma chain. The pool hosts…

Balancer Protocol’s updated smart contracts, which allow for users to further customize token pools, are now public and open source. The project is offering a 1k ETH bug bounty to spot vulnerabilities in the code. Balancer’s new architecture is based on a single vault that holds and manages tokens, giving Balancer V2 flexibility to support…

An all-time high of 11.2M Ether is locked in DeFi protocols, despite a weekend sell-off. Liquidations spiked, while tokens continue sliding. Locked Ether’s resilience may show that DeFi participants do not consider the recent drop in price to signal a long-term trend and thus are not unlocking their ETH in order to sell. Borrowers may also…

ShapeShift’s mobile platform has integrated with multi-chain liquidity protocol THORChain to offer native Bitcoin trading without KYC. THORChain’s recently launched multichain “chaosnet” enables cross-chain swaps amongst the Ethereum, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Binance Chain networks. THORChain’s native token, RUNE, exploded 111% over the past two weeks building up to the launch.Through THORChain, Shapeshift users…

Step Finance, a Solana app which aggregates users’ DeFi activities across the blockchain’s open finance ecosystem has raised $2M in a round led by Alameda Research, Three Comma Capital and others. “The biggest problem in the Solana ecosystem is how most projects are siloed from one another,” Step co-founder Georga Harrap wrote in a press…

zCloak Network, a Polkadot-based and privacy-focused computing platform, announced it closed a $1.3M seed round led by IOSG Ventures and Hypersphere Ventures. Other notable participants include KR1, DFG, Advanced Blockchain AG, PAKA Fund and Digital Renaissance Foundation. zCloak Network enables computation and analysis of personal data without sending them to 3rd party servers with the…