With the Ethereum Merge on the way, the risk research and analysis team Block Analitica proposed a temporary pause in Ether (ETH) borrowing to mitigate the risks which may lead to a decentralized finance (DeFi) implosion in the Aave lending protocol during the Merge. The team pointed out the potential issue of high ETH utilization which may result in liquidations being hard or impossible and annual percentage yields (APYs) reaching negative figures. Furthermore, the uncertainties surrounding the Merge and a potential Ethereum proof-of-work (PoW) fork may cause liquidity providers to start a bank run, pushing utilization to even higher levels. …

Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Arbitrum is set to undergo one of its most significant upgrades on Wednesday, set to increase transaction throughput, slash transaction fees and simplify cross-chain communication between Arbitrum and Ethereum. Referred to as the “Nitro” upgrade, Arbitrum reconfirmed the date of the upgrade in a Twitter post on Aug. 29, confirming that the upgrade will take effect on Aug. 31 at 10:30 AM Eastern Time, while noting a two to four hours of network downtime period is to be expected. Reminder — Arbitrum One is upgrading to Nitro on Wednesday 8/31. There will be 2-4 hours of …

The U.S Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued a fresh warning for investors in decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, which have been targeted with $1.6 billion in exploits in 2022. In an Aug. 29 public service announcement on the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, the agency said the exploits have caused investors to lose money — advising investors to conduct diligent research about Defi platforms before using them, while also urging platforms to improve monitoring and conduct m rigorous code testing. The law enforcement agency warned that cybercriminals are out in force to take advantage of "investors' increased interest in …

All for one and one for all We need GameFi, DeFi and SocialFi to create a holistic Metaverse experience. Even with metaverses focusing on one purpose, these elements are essential to ensuring viability and scale. In essence, a metaverse can scale only if DeFi, GameFi and SocialFi can work together seamlessly. DeFi, in essence, would take care of the financial elements, GameFi the experiential elements and SocialFi the credibility elements for the economic actors. Without the DeFi elements, a metaverse would lack commercial scalability. Without the GameFi elements, the community would lack the experience motive for continually returning to it. …

GameFi, the fusion of gaming and decentralized finance (DeFi), attracts a set of investors that tend to choose projects based on their use case rather than money-generating potential. The GameFi ecosystem attracts GenZ investors and gaming enthusiasts. As a result, it stands as an entry point for numerous first-time investors. A ChainPlay survey participated by 2428 GameFi investors revealed that 75% of the respondents joined the crypto space solely because of GameFi. While roughly half of the investors joined the GameFi space initially for profits, 89% of GameFi investors succumbed to Crypto Winter 2022 — with 62% of them losing …

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. This past week, there were some major developments in the run-up to the upcoming Ethereum Merge slated for Sept. 15. Bitfinex became the latest crypto exchange to throw its support behind the chain split token. While DeFi bridge hacks have become a norm this year, developers behind Rainbow Bridge managed to foil an exploit attempt within seconds, leading to the hacker losing their safety deposit. The Tornado Cash developer who was arrested last week …

As the crypto community tries to navigate the bear market and recover from the onslaught brought about by stablecoin incidents like the Terra crash, another algorithmic stablecoin shows signs of struggle as it falls below its dollar peg. Algorithmic stablecoin Neutrino Dollar (USDN) has deviated from the dollar once again, marking the fourth time that USDN struggled to maintain its dollar peg this year. The Waves-backed stablecoin is trading at $0.90 at the time of writing. Correlation =/ Causation here But every time #USDN from #WAVES has depegged There has been a crash in bitcoin. Just an odd coincidence. Lets …

The founder of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Synthetix, Kain Warwick, has submitted a proposal that would turn off very high yield returns for SNX stakers and cap the total SNX token supply at 300 million. The Synthetix protocol allows traders to issue synthetic versions of crypto native assets, traditional financial assets, and commodities on the Ethereum and Optimism networks. In an Aug. 25 Synthetix Improvement Proposal (SIP) Warwick explained that SNX reward inflation was initially intended to “bootstrap the network”, however, he believes it’s no longer necessary as they can generate sustainable fee yields from atomic swaps. monthly trading volume …

As a market crash takes place, assets become oversold and typically there’s an “oversold bounce,” “return to mean,” “mean reversion,” or some price snapback to the bottom of the pre-crash range. Afterward, the asset under study either consolidates, continues the downtrend, or returns to the bullish uptrend if the downside catalyst was not significant enough to break the market structure. That’s all kind of basic trading 101. This week Cosmos (ATOM) price appears to be following this path and the altcoin is showing a bit of strength with a 35% gain since Aug. 22, but why? Depending on how you …

Over a decade after the release genesis block on the Bitcoin network, blockchain technology has changed how people invest their money, with many platforms in the crypto space having much more relaxed requirements for investors when compared to traditional finance. It’s easier for investors to buy into cryptocurrency when compared to traditional assets. Anybody can download a free Bitcoin (BTC) or multi-crypto wallet and sign up for one of the many available cryptocurrency exchanges. Many exchanges still don’t require users to verify their identity, while others only require ID verification once certain limits have been reached. Compare this to buying …

A judge in the Netherlands ruled that Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev has to stay in jail for 90 more days while waiting for charges. Puzzled by the decision, the crypto community rallied to demand the release of the developer. In a Tweet, crypto investo Ryan Adams argued that the developer did something good for the public as he wrote the code for Tornado Cash. The community member then highlighted that "a few bad guys" decided to use Pertsev’s code and now the developer has to suffer the consequences. Apart from Adams, crypto researcher Jill Gunter also noted that there …

The $74 million plan by two former Uniswap Lab executives for a new Uniswap Foundation has just become reality after their proposal received over 99% of the votes from UNI token holders. According to the initial proposal, the foundation aims to streamline Uniswap’s Grant Program (UPG) and reduce friction in the protocol’s governance system. Former Uniswap Labs executive Devin Walsh, now serving as executive director of UF shared the results in a tweet on Aug. 24, noting that the proposal to create the foundation “passed its final vote!” Last night our proposal to create the Uniswap Foundation passed its final …