Leah Callon-Butler, a CoinDesk columnist, is the director of Emfarsis, a consulting firm focused on the role of technology in advancing economic development in Asia. There are 1.7 billion unbanked people around the world, and if you had the chance to ask each and every one of them what they […]
DeFi
26 posts
Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), the business end of the second-largest blockchain, has appointed a new executive director, Daniel C. Burnett. Burnett, who previously worked as a standards architect within Ethereum-focused ConsenSys, wants to widen the EEA’s scope beyond banks and blue chips, to include exchanges. Burnett even aims to embrace […]
Chainlink’s link token jumped to record highs on Monday, far surpassing bitcoin’s returns since the start of 2020. The ever-increasing use of Chainlink’s price oracles in decentralized finance (DeFi) is driving the cryptocurrency higher, according to analysts. The 12th largest cryptocurrency by market value clocked a lifetime high of $5.72 […]
A new decentralized finance (DeFi) “money Lego” will allow app developers to make it possible for users to automate their transactions. Called Gelato, the protocol moved from alpha to a live and audited v1 on Ethereum’s mainnet on July 3. And, according to a blog post shared early with CoinDesk, […]
It’s effectively July 2017 in the world of decentralized finance (DeFi), and as in the heady days of the initial coin offering (ICO) boom, the numbers are only trending up. According to DeFi Pulse, there is $1.9 billion in crypto assets locked in DeFi right now. According to the CoinDesk […]
Tensions between the Bitcoin and Ethereum tribes have been stirred by a trend that outsiders might see as a sign of harmony. Throughout June, the amount of tokenized bitcoin on Ethereum, the bulk of it in WBTC, a special ERC2 token known as “wrapped bitcoin,” soared from 5,200 BTC to […]
Nexus Mutual is maxed out covering the risks associated with decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms. “Our product has honestly seen massive interest since yield farming kicked off,” Nexus Mutual founder Hugh Karp told CoinDesk in an email. “With potential yields being so lucrative many users are looking to protect themselves against […]
“We were not aware this specific type of attack was possible.” Decentralized finance (DeFi) liquidity provider Balancer Pool admitted early Monday morning that it had fallen victim to a sophisticated hack that exploited a loophole, tricking the protocol into releasing $500,000-worth of tokens. In a blog post, Balancer CTO Mike […]
Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Compound saw its governance token, COMP, skyrocket in price when it launched last week. Now, decentralized options marketplace Opyn has launched put options on COMP that will provide a safety net of sorts by helping holders mitigate some of the risk should COMP’s fortunes take a […]
The number three decentralized finance (DeFi) application, Synthetix, is also enjoying the current boom times in bankless banking. (Warning: This post is going to go a lot of places so buckle in.) To recap, Synthetix is a platform for minting and exchanging synthetic tokens that mirror the price of other […]
The liquidity mining boom may be upon us. Balancer Labs, the maker of an automated portfolio management tool, has confirmed with CoinDesk it has begun distribution of its BAL token. Following the persistent mania around last week’s debut of Compound’s COMP token, BAL will be the second governance token earned […]
Lex Sokolin, a CoinDesk columnist, is Global Fintech co-head at ConsenSys, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based blockchain software company. The following is adapted from his Fintech Blueprint newsletter. This week, I grapple with the concepts of financial centralization and decentralization, anchoring around custody, staking, and DeFi. On the centralized side, we look […]
A hedging instrument for decentralized finance (DeFi) has closed a $2.16 million funding round, led by Dragonfly Capital, with participation from 1kx, Version One Ventures, DTC Capital, Uncorrelated Ventures and A.Capital. The funding is for Opyn, which offers crypto-based derivatives, beginning with the oToken, which is a permissionless hedging instrument. […]
Compound overtook MakerDAO Saturday as the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol with the most value locked. As of June 20, Compound has $484 million in cryptocurrency locked, while MakerDAO has $481 million, according to DeFi Pulse. The COMP token is trading at $220.25 as of this writing, according to CoinGecko. It’s […]
The speculative fervor surrounding the autonomous lender Compound’s new digital token rose another notch Thursday as its already relatively lofty price more than doubled in 24 hours. The rapid ascent of the COMP “governance” token comes as something a surprise given it was released just Monday and is still only trading on […]
A “high severity vulnerability” was found and patched in Ethereum wallet Argent, according to leading white-hat hackers OpenZeppelin. Disclosed Friday, OpenZeppelin security researcher Alice Henshaw discovered a vulnerability within Argent that would have allowed user funds to be drained from wallets that did not have Argent’s “guardian” feature. According to […]
Bitcoin spot volume may have been low this week, but the real action in crypto has been in the options market and decentralized finance. Bitcoin (BTC) was trading around $9,274 as of 20:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET), slipping 1% over the previous 24 hours. At 00:00 UTC on Friday (8:00 […]
The token for the decentralized finance (DeFi) app Compound, COMP, hit an all-time high of $231 on Friday. Now startups built on top of the lending protocol are considering what to do about this sudden windfall. Compound was built from the beginning as a simple marketplace for placing collateral and […]
ParaFi Capital, a San Francisco-based investment firm focused on blockchain and decentralized finance, has invested in Kyber Network ahead of its planned Katalyst upgrade. Announced Friday, the two entities have also formed a new partnership that will see them work to prepare for the launch of KyberDAO with the intention […]
Derivatives market and crypto exchange FTX is moving into the storm created by Compound’s new governance token, COMP. Traders will soon be able to place their bets on which way decentralized finance (DeFi) will go, CoinDesk has learned. Later Thursday, FTX and FTX US will both list COMP as well […]
It’s a lethargic Thursday across most markets, including bitcoin. Yet, on a longer-term view, the big growth story remains the Ethereum network’s DeFi movement, which continues to help drive ether’s performance in 2020. Bitcoin (BTC) was trading around $9,395 as of 20:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET), gaining 0.97% over the […]
Nexus Mutual, an alternative insurance provider for a variety of Ethereum-based DeFi protocols, has seen its risk pool double over the past 90 days to more than $4 million. Indeed, Nexus can barely keep up with the demand for smart-contract cover in the exploding decentralized finance (DeFi) arena. “We are […]
Bitcoin and ether are soundly beating nearly all major global equities indices on the year. Of the two, ether is handily beating bitcoin’s price performance when the market is moving higher. The second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, ether (ETH) is trading around $243 and climbed less than a percent in […]
If Christopher Giancarlo was “Crypto Dad” and Hester Peirce is “Crypto Mom,” will the U.S.’s new top bank regulator become “Crypto Uncle”? Brian Brooks, the former Coinbase legal chief, took office as Acting Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) at the end of May, barely two and a half months after […]