Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly source of essential insights on decentralized finance (DeFi) – a newsletter designed to bring you the most important updates from the past week.
Just like Ethereum experienced during its peak era in 2017, Solana is currently facing a similar challenge of network congestion that has persisted for nearly a week, resulting in a high rate of transaction failures.
To address this issue, Solana developers have set April 15 as their target date to resolve the problem, classifying it as a bug rather than a flaw in design.
Binance Labs has redirected its focus in the DeFi sector towards Bitcoin by investing in BounceBit, a Bitcoin-native restaking protocol.
In other news, the Solana-based DeFi protocol MarginFi has witnessed withdrawals exceeding $190 million amidst a situation of apparent management chaos and allegations from competitors that it has failed to fulfill its promises.
Solana developers aim to fix failed transactions by April 15 – Not a design flaw
Solana developers have set their sights on April 15 to implement a solution for an “implementation bug” that recently caused the transaction failure rate on the Solana network to skyrocket.
Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius Labs, a blockchain infrastructure firm exclusively supporting the Solana network, emphasized that the current issue with Solana is not a design flaw, but rather an implementation bug.
Arkham accuses competitors of spreading “false rumors” amid token sell-off
Blockchain analytics firm Arkham has accused its competitors of intentionally spreading false rumors to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) after questions arose regarding the firm’s transfer of its native ARKM tokens.
While Arkham did not disclose the names of the dissenting competitors, a recent post by fellow blockchain analytics firm Nansen claimed that Arkham had transferred over 25.2 million ARKM tokens ($56 million) to unlabeled wallets and the cryptocurrency exchange Binance in the past two days.
Binance Labs shifts investment focus to Bitcoin DeFi
Binance Labs, the venture capital arm of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has invested in BounceBit, a restaking protocol that focuses on Bitcoin.
BounceBit combines features of centralized finance and DeFi to enhance the utility of Bitcoin (BTC), as stated by the co-founder of Binance and head of Binance Labs.
MarginFi witnesses $190 million outflows as CEO resigns amidst token controversy
Over the past two days, approximately $200 million of user funds have been withdrawn from MarginFi, a lending protocol based on Solana, following the sudden resignation of the platform’s CEO and subsequent allegations of misconduct by competitors.
On April 10, Edgar Pavlovsky, the former CEO of MarginFi, announced his resignation, citing internal and external disputes as the reason behind his decision.
DeFi market overview
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView indicates that the top 100 DeFi tokens by market capitalization had a bullish week, with most showing gains on the weekly charts. The total value locked in DeFi protocols has surpassed $100 billion.
Thank you for reading our summary of the most significant DeFi developments this week. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights, and education on this rapidly evolving space.