Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly source of vital insights into decentralized finance (DeFi) — a newsletter designed to bring you the most important updates from the past week.
Although the DeFi sector is often associated with hacks and exploits, the losses from these incidents have significantly decreased by 67% in April, amounting to $60 million compared to the $187 million stolen in March. Notably, hackers of Hundred Finance have recently moved the stolen funds for the first time in almost a year after the initial exploit.
In other news, Stacks, the layer-2 platform for Bitcoin, has recorded its highest number of active users, signaling a growing interest in Bitcoin DeFi, also known as BTCFi.
The top 100 DeFi tokens had a bearish week initially, but saw a surge in bullish momentum towards the end of the week. However, despite this, the total value locked in DeFi protocols remained below $90 billion.
Losses from crypto hacks drop by 67% in April, totaling $60 million
The total value of cryptocurrency compromised by hacking experienced a significant decline of 67% in April, amounting to $60.2 million. This reduction marks a noteworthy decrease in crypto attacks, representing the first substantial decline in 2024.
The 67% decrease is a sharp contrast to the $187.6 million stolen in March, which pales in comparison to the $360.8 million worth of digital assets hacked in February. These figures were reported by on-chain security firm PeckShield in a post on May 1.
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Stacks achieves record number of active accounts amidst growing interest in Bitcoin DeFi
Stacks, a leading Bitcoin layer-2 network, has reached an all-time high in active users due to a growing interest in Bitcoin-native DeFi.
During April, Stacks recorded a new all-time high of 122,497 active accounts. Active accounts refer to addresses that have conducted at least one transaction. This data was reported in a post on May 2 by Signal 21, a Bitcoin data provider.
The record number of accounts indicates a rising interest in BTCFi, which comes after the 2024 Bitcoin halving and the launch of Runes, a new protocol for issuing fungible tokens on the Bitcoin network.
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Hundred Finance hacker moves stolen assets a year after $7 million exploit
The hacker responsible for stealing $7.4 million from the DeFi protocol Hundred Finance has finally started moving the cryptocurrency assets after a year of inactivity.
On May 1, the hacker withdrew Ether (ETH) and Tether (USDT) worth approximately $800,000 from Curve’s decentralized exchange. Interestingly, this hacker had provided liquidity on the platform over a year ago.
After withdrawing the funds, the hacker converted USDT and other cryptocurrencies into ETH, resulting in an increase of over $1 million in the exploiter’s ETH holdings.
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Curve Finance rewards developer $250,000 for discovering reentrancy vulnerability
A security researcher has been awarded $250,000 for finding a vulnerability that has historically allowed hackers to withdraw millions of dollars from cryptocurrency protocols.
Marco Croc, a pseudonymous cybersecurity researcher from Kupia Security, identified a reentrancy vulnerability in the DeFi protocol Curve Finance. In a thread, he explained how this bug could be exploited to manipulate balances and withdraw funds from liquidity pools.
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DeFi market overview
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView reveals that DeFi’s top 100 tokens, based on market capitalization, had a bearish week, with most of them trading in the red on the weekly charts. As a result, the total value locked in DeFi protocols fell below $90 billion.
Thank you for reading our summary of the most impactful DeFi developments this week. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights, and education about this dynamically evolving space.