Security has been a critical challenge for decentralized finance (DeFi) and its evolution. Between 2020 and 2022, hackers stole over $2.5 billion through vulnerabilities on cross-chain bridges, Token Terminal data shows. Compared to other security breaches, this is a substantial amount. Issues with bridges have a root cause: All of them have an "inherent vulnerability," Theo Gauthier, founder and CEO of Toposware, told Cointelegraph. According to Gauthier, no matter how secure a bridge is on its own, it is "entirely reliant on the security of the chains it connects," meaning that any breach or bug within one of the two …

Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. Uniswap, one of the leading decentralized exchange platforms, is integrating debit and credit card support for its users. It will allow Uniswap users to buy cryptocurrency directly with their cards. An ex-employee caused Ankr protocol’s recent $5 million hack. The DeFi protocol alerted relevant authorities and is seeking to prosecute the attacker while shoring up its security practices. A Web3 developer has claimed that many crypto ecosystem projects would rather get hacked than pay …

The team behind the Raydium decentralized exchange (DEX) has announced details as to how the hack of Dec. 16 occurred and offered a proposal to compensate victims. According to an official forum post from the team, the hacker was able to make off with over $2 million in crypto loot by exploiting a vulnerability in the DEX’s smart contracts that allowed entire liquidity pools to be withdrawn by admins, despite existing protections being to prevent such behavior. The team will use its own unlocked tokens to compensate victims who lost Raydium tokens, also known as RAY. However, the developer does …

A $5 million hack of Ankr protocol on Dec. 1 was caused by a former team member, according to a Dec. 20 announcement from the Ankr team. The ex-employee conducted a “supply chain attack” by putting malicious code into a package of future updates to the team’s internal software. Once this software was updated, the malicious code created a security vulnerability that allowed the attacker to steal the team’s deployer key from the company’s server. After Action Report: Our Findings From the aBNBc Token Exploit We just released a new blog post that goes in-depth about this: https://t.co/fyagjhODNG A pic.twitter.com/d6psUbpxNY …

With the FTX exchange being highlighted all over the world of finance, trust in the crypto space seems to dwindle. However, Pantera Capital CEO Dan Morehead believes that there are two areas in crypto that truly work. According to the executive, narratives that question blockchain and call it a failure because of the FTX collapse are wrong. The Pantera CEO argued that there are several things in crypto that work, such as regulated exchanges and decentralized exchanges. “If you can’t trust FTX who can you trust?!” The two-pronged answer is: Regulated exchanges work great e.g. @coinbase, @Bitstamp DeFi works great, …

2022 will go down as a challenging year for the cryptocurrency and blockchain space, but the adversity faced has been strewn with plenty of positives for the decentralized application (Dapp) ecosystem. DappRadar has released its yearly report on the industry, focusing on challenges faced alongside notable technological achievements and an increasing number of active daily users. Cointelegraph highlights the main takeaways from the DApp industry in 2022, which are pertinent, considering macro factors like inflationary concerns in major economies, the collapse of industry-specific projects like Terra/Luna and FTX as well as market woes across the board. Perhaps most telling is …

Decentralized exchange Uniswap has partnered with fintech company Moonpay to allow users to buy cryptocurrency on its web app using debit cards, credit cards, and bank transfers. The bank transfer option is being rolled out for users within most U.S. states, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Single European Payments Arena, also known as SEPA. In the announcement made on Dec. 20, Uniswap shared that its users will now be able to convert fiat to cryptocurrency on the Ethereum mainnet, Polygon, Optimism, and Artibrum in a matter of minutes. 1/ Go direct to DeFi Starting today, you can now purchase crypto …

As hacks and exploits continue to go rampant within the crypto industry, the importance of finding vulnerabilities to prevent potential losses becomes of utmost importance. However, a Web3 developer highlighted that it’s not rewarding to do so. In a tweet, a Web3 developer claimed that he found a vulnerability in a Solana smart contract that would have affected several projects and around $30 million in funds. According to the dev, he reported and helped patch the vulnerabilities. However, when it was time to ask for a reward, the projects just started to ignore him. The developer noted that this sends …

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has shared three “huge" opportunities yet to be realized in crypto, including mass crypto wallet adoption, inflation-resistant stablecoins, and Ethereum-powered website logins. During an interview with Bankless co-owner David Hoffman, Buterin shared his outlook for the crypto industry in 2023, responding to Hoffman’s raised concern that the “adoption wave” for decentralized applications is now over and that there’s “less opportunity” for developers to come in and build new decentralized applications. Buterin instead shrugged off the “limbo period” that Hoffman eluded to, firstly suggesting that more developments need to be made on cryptocurrency wallet infrastructure in order …

More than 350 fraudulent cryptocurrency tokens were created per day this year, defrauding millions of investors, according to blockchain risk monitoring firm Solidus Labs. From the start of the year to Dec. 1, 117,629 “scam tokens” were deployed according to Solidus’ 2022 “Rug Pull Report.” That’s a 41% increase from the nearly 83,400 scam tokens Solidus detected in 2021. It marks the largest year on record for fraudulent tokens since the firm began monitoring in Sep. 2020. The report cited the BNB Chain as harboring the greatest number of scam tokens, claiming 12% of all BEP-20 tokens are scams. The …

Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. Industry experts are confident in DeFi and believe the sector would continue to see adoption despite its security flaws, primarily due to the mammoth failure of centralized exchanges. Despite the continued growth, however, the decentralized exchanges have lost $30 million on liquidity provider incentives. Popular hardware crypto wallet Ledger introduced a new DeFi tracking feature that pairs with its hardware wallets to monitor performance analytics of over 1,000 protocols. The Lodestar Finance protocol that …

Solana DeFi protocol Raydium has suffered an exploit, according to a statement from the developer. An initial investigation by the team has revealed that the attacker has taken over the exchange’s owner account. The team says that “authority” over the automated market maker and farm programs have been paused, “for now.” A twitter user who goes by the handle ZachXBT has reported that the attacker has bridged $2 million “so far” to Ethereum. An exploit on Raydium is being investigated that affected liquidity pools. Details to follow as more is known ⁰Initial understanding is owner authority was overtaken by attacker, …