# Welcome to Finance Redefined
Your weekly source for vital insights into decentralized finance (DeFi) is here! This newsletter is designed to provide you with the most noteworthy updates from the past week.
This week, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump is set to unveil his DeFi platform, which is expected to feature functionalities for crypto lending and borrowing. The candidate is “embracing the future with crypto.”
In broader cryptocurrency news, Uniswap CEO Hayden Adams has dismissed accusations that he requested payment for the deployment of DeFi protocols via a governance vote on Uniswap.
## Trump to Launch World Liberty Financial Crypto Platform on September 16
Donald Trump has announced the launch date for his World Liberty Financial crypto initiative, which is scheduled for September 16. The former president and Republican nominee shared this news in a video posted on X on September 12, stating that the project will be managed by his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.
“We’re embracing the future with crypto and leaving behind the sluggish and outdated big banks,” he remarked.
*World Liberty Financial announcement. Source: Donald Trump*
Trump has previously made several ambiguous posts about World Liberty Financial, hinting at its role as a DeFi platform for lending and borrowing.
## Uniswap CEO Refutes Claims of Charging for Protocol Deployments
Uniswap’s CEO, Hayden Adams, has countered allegations circulating on X that the platform requested money from DeFi projects for protocol deployments. On September 12, he clarified that neither Uniswap Labs nor Uniswap Foundation imposes fees for deploying protocols.
*Source: Hayden Adams*
Adams explained that protocol deployments occur through governance votes. He added that the requirements for deploying on a new chain are determined by the level of activity and effort involved. This response comes in light of claims made by X user Alexander, who alleged that Uniswap had asked developers for “$20M for an ineffective Uniswap deployment.”
## Sonic Blockchain Achieves 720ms Finality in Testnet Phase
The Sonic blockchain has recorded an impressive transaction finality of 720 milliseconds (ms) during its testnet phase. In the context of blockchain, finality refers to the certainty that a transaction cannot be reversed once it has been added to a block on the ledger.
Sonic claims to be the fastest Ethereum Virtual Machine chain globally, boasting a “true” 720ms finality, according to Andre Cronje, the founder of the Fantom Network and the CTO of Sonic Labs. While most blockchains require multiple additional blocks to confirm a transaction’s irreversibility, Sonic has managed to limit this process to just over 700ms.
## Friend.tech Sees 26% Drop in Token Value Following Admin Transfer
The native token of the crypto social media platform Friend.tech has experienced a sharp decline after its team transferred the administration and ownership of its smart contracts to Ethereum’s null address, effectively relinquishing all control over them.
The transfer, executed on September 8, was intended “to prevent any changes to their fees or functionality in the future,” as stated by Friend.tech on X. Following the transfer, the platform’s FRIEND token plunged nearly 26%, settling at $0.067 within 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.
## Coinbase Introduces “cbBTC” Wrapped Bitcoin Digital Asset
Crypto exchange Coinbase has launched its cbBTC token, a wrapped version of Bitcoin (BTC), on both the Ethereum network and its layer-2 scaling solution, Base.
According to a launch announcement made on September 12, cbBTC is backed on a 1:1 basis with Bitcoin held by Coinbase and does not have a separate order book or trading pairs on the exchange.
The wrapped Bitcoin operates by automatically minting cbBTC at a 1:1 ratio when users send Bitcoin to an address on Base or Ethereum. Conversely, sending cbBTC to a Coinbase address will convert the tokenized Bitcoin back into standard Bitcoin.
## DeFi Market Overview
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView indicates that the majority of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week on a positive note.
Among these, the BinaryX (BNX) token led the charge with a notable increase of over 31%, while the Solana-based memecoin Popcat Sol (POPCAT) surged by 28% over the past week.
*Total value locked in DeFi. Source: DefiLlama*
Thank you for reading our recap of this week’s significant developments in DeFi. Be sure to join us next Friday for more stories, insights, and educational content on this rapidly evolving landscape.