Recap of DeFi Space, March 2024

🔗 Noteworthy Links

• OrdiZK suffers $1.4M rug pull

• Prisma Finance attacked for $12M

• Slerf, a Solana memecoin, accidentally burnt $10M worth of funds

• Attacker mints 1B $CGT governance tokens in an exploit within Curio ecosystem

• ParaSwap discovered and patched a security vulnerability that led to the loss of $24K in funds for 4 users

• Crypto losses due to hacks hit $336M in Q1

• Munchables recovers $62M taken in a security breach

• Ethereum Foundation: Sepolia Incident

• WOOFi postmortem

• SEC in “Enforcement-only mode” for crypto

• SEC delays BlackRock’s spot Ethereum ETF, seeking public feedback

• ShapeShift to pay $275K to settle SEC charges

• BlackRock confident about an ETF, even if Ethereum is deemed a security

• ConsenSys urges the SEC to consider Ethereum’s better qualities over Bitcoin for its ETF application

• Grayscale, Coinbase meet with SEC about spot ether ETFs; Coinbase asks appeals court to begin directing the SEC to write rules for crypto

• Democrats to SEC: Don’t approve any spot Ethereum ETFs or other crypto ETPs

• Opinion: SEC is chasing the difficulties of an Ethereum Spot ETF

• State AGs: SEC overstepped boundaries in Kraken lawsuit

• CoinDesk: SEC also committed a “gross abuse of power” in its lawsuit against DEBT Box

• DeFi Education Fund + Beba take the SEC to court over its “regulation through enforcement” stance

• CFTC reiterates ether is a commodity

• US authorities: Existing laws sufficient to handle NFT copyright concerns

• Stablecoin Bill’s 2024 passage looks bleak

• The EU is not banning self-custodial crypto

• Robinhood rolls out crypto wallet to Android globally

• Alexey Pertsev accused of laundering $1.2B at Tornado Cash

• Renzo expands to Arbitrum

• Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade could mean near-zero fees for L2s; Dencun goes live, fees experience the predicted drop

• Ethereum Research: How to hard-fork to save most users’ funds in a quantum emergency

• Arbitrum Atlas Upgrade

• Delta upgrade for Optimism

• Avalanche Durango Upgrade

• Gnosis 3.0

• Blobs go live on Gnosis ahead of Dencun

• Wormhole airdropped 617M $W tokens

• Decentralized lending TVL surges to $30B

• Paradigm: How to raise the gas limit, Pt. 1

• Paradigm: Everything is a perp

• Superchain Savings Estimator

• State of Wallets Part 2: Smart Accounts

• Revolut launches direct crypto purchases into Meta mask wallets

• Injective inEVM L2 live on the mainnet

• ERC-7647: Fungible NFTs

• Base to support EIP-4844 from “day one” following Dencun

• Aevo offers pre-market trading for its own token

• a16z: The DUNA - An Oasis for DAOs

• MakerDAO implements temporary fee hikes

• MakerDAO announces two new tokens for “Endgame” launch

• How a Bitcoin trading frenzy almost depleted a vault in MakerDAO

• Prom’s introductory announcement

• Assessing the Permissionless Lending Landscape

• Ether.Fi releases $ETHFI token on Binance’s Launchpool

• Rekt: Unizen

• Rekt: Munchables

• BNB Chain introduces rollup-as-a-service solution

• Blockworks: Blockchain really is better than middlemen

• EigenLayer mainnet launch preparations

• Monad hits 10K TPS in testing on devnet

• Zerion is building an L2 that aims to offer zero fees

• The History of Bitcoin Halvings

• Aavegotchi to launch L3 rollup using Base in Q2 2024

• GitHub: davidfurlong/awesome-frames: Farcaster Frame Resources

• Pump The Gas

• Dragonfly: DCCR 2023

• EEA DeFi Risk Assessment Guidelines

• Solving Source Code Verification in Ethereum

• StaFi deploys its liquid staking as a service testnet

• On-Chain Data Product Insights: The Data Analysis Revolution in the Web3 Era

• Proposal: Arbitrum Memecoin Fund

• CoinDesk: The Future Is Open Finance

• Angle unveils stablecoin passing yield from RWA and DeFi

• Supporting decentralized staking through more anti-correlation incentives

• Near Protocol to let users sign transactions on third-party chains

• RWA Report 2024

• The Airdrop Trilemma

• Hopes for Another DeFi Summer Soar

• ENA Token Launch

• Pendle deposits top $3B

• Ethereum blobs are now being used to make inscriptions like on Bitcoin

• Optimism DAO delegates now get an accountability score

• Syndicate: Introducing Degen Chain

• Vitalik on Ethereum blobs

• A Brief History of Memecoins

• Cobie launches beta version of Echo

• You can farm potions on Elixir using our link

• Check out our takeaways from ETHDenver

💸 Venture Financing

• Taiko, an “Ethereum-Equivalent ZK Rollup,” raised $15M.

• Stack, an on-chain points startup, secured $3M in seed funding.

• Utila, an institutional crypto platform, closed a $11.5M seed funding round.

• Hedgehog Protocol announced its $1.5M funding round.

• Scallop Protocol raised $3M in funding, with the round co-lead by CMS and 6MV.

• 1kx announced its $75M funding round, with the round led by investors like a16z and Galaxy Digital.

• Toncoin received $8M in funding from Mirana.

• Firewall, a security infrastructure firm, closed a $3.7M pre-seed funding round.

• SX Network closed a strategic funding round led by Draper Dragon.

• Ethena Labs raised $4M for its $USDe treasury.

• Elixir secured $8M in Series B funding, holding an $800M valuation.

• Fjord Foundry, a token-sale platform, raised $4.3M in funding.

• Pallet secured $2.5M in funding for its NFT marketplace.

• Syntropy bolstered its cap table with new strategic investors.

• TEN, an Ethereum L2 focused on encryption, raised $9M in funding.

• MANTRA Chain closed an $11M funding round, aiming to use the funds for RWA tokenization with Middle East tint.

• GRVT, a CEX, announced its $2.2M strategic fundraise.

• Figure announced the launch of Figure Markets after securing $60M in funding.

• Espresso raised $28M in Series B funding, with the round led by a16z.

• Morph, an Ethereum L2, closed a $20M funding round.

• BlackRock entered the asset tokenization race with its new fund on Ethereum.

• StakeStone received an undisclosed quantity of funding from Binance Labs.

• ALEX, a Bitcoin DeFi developer, secured $10M in strategic funding.

• peaq, a DePIN L1, raised $15M in pre-launch funding.

• BitLayer, a Bitcoin L2 network, announced its $5M seed funding round.

• BOB, a hybrid L2 mixing Bitcoin and Ethereum, closed a $10M funding round.

🗓️ Upcoming DeFi Events

• DappCon 2024 - 21 May 2024 - Berlin, Germany

• EthCC 2024 - 08 Jul 2024 - Brussels, Belgium

• Devcon 7 - 12 Nov 2024 - Bangkok, Thailand