Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly source of essential insights into decentralized finance (DeFi) – a newsletter designed to bring you the most significant updates from the previous week.
The recent craze around memecoins has propelled Solana-based decentralized exchanges (DEX) to surpass their Ethereum counterparts in terms of trading volume. Some tokens on DEXs even surpassed the trading volume of Ethereum-based memecoins just hours after their launch.
In other memecoin news, the Milady nonfungible token (NFT) collection joined the memecoin frenzy by launching its own token, which reached a staggering $18.6 million within two hours of its presale announcement.
ParaSwap narrowly avoided a hack by temporarily pausing its Augustus v6 contract application programming interface (API) after discovering a vulnerability. Through a white hat intervention, the protocol managed to secure the funds of potential victims.
In additional news, the price of Ether (ETH) has experienced an 18% decline in the past week after reaching a new all-time high above $4,000. If the price falls to $3,100, positions worth $212 million are at risk of being liquidated.
Amidst the memecoin frenzy, Solana has overtaken Ethereum in terms of network activity, causing the Solana network to struggle to keep up.
On March 16, Solana’s total trading volume exceeded that of Ethereum, reaching $3.52 billion, surpassing the daily volume on the Ethereum network by more than $1.1 billion, as reported by DefiLlama.
Milady’s Solana-based memecoin NFT collection attracted 91,486 SOL ($18.6 million) within two hours of its presale announcement.
On March 18, Milady unveiled its memecoin, Milady Wif Hat, which is named after the popular Solana memecoin Dogwifhat (WIF). The minimum investment for Milady Wif Hat is 1 SOL, with a cap of 88,888 SOL.
Within hours, the presale was oversubscribed. The team announced that the presale had reached its limit of 88,888 SOL and was closed. Any additional Solana raised would be fully refunded.
DeFi aggregator ParaSwap discovered a vulnerability in its newly launched Augustus v6 contract but managed to prevent a significant loss of funds through timely intervention by white hat hackers.
On March 18, the ParaSwap Augustus v6 contract went live, aiming to enhance swapping efficiency and reduce gas fees. However, the contract contained a critical vulnerability that could have allowed hackers to drain funds when approved.
If the price of Ether falls below $3,100, the cryptocurrency market could witness over $212 million worth of leveraged long positions being liquidated.
Within the 24 hours leading up to 10:40 am UTC on March 19, Ether saw a 9.3% drop, reaching $3,254. The weekly chart shows an 18% decline in Ether’s price, and a drop to $3,100 would result in over $212 million worth of long leverage being wiped out, according to Coinglass data.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView indicates that DeFi’s top 100 tokens by market capitalization had a bearish week, with most of them trading in the red on the weekly charts. The total value locked in DeFi protocols also dipped below $100 billion.
Thank you for reading our summary of the most impactful DeFi developments this week. Join us again next Friday for more stories, insights, and education on this rapidly advancing space.