Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you the most significant developments from the past week.
The memecoin frenzy has helped Solana-based decentralized exchanges (DEX) top the charts in trading volume, overtaking their Ethereum counterparts. Some tokens eclipsed Ethereum-based memecoins in trading volume on DEXs just hours after launching.
In more memecoin news, the Milady nonfungible token (NFT) collection joined the memecoin rush by launching its own token, which reached $18.6 million within two hours of its presale announcement.
ParaSwap narrowly evaded a hack by pausing its Augustus v6 contract application programming interface, or API, after discovering a vulnerability. The protocol secured the potential victims’ funds through a white hat intervention.
In other news, the price of Ether (ETH) has fallen 18% in the past week after touching a new all-time high above $4,000. If the price falls to $3,100, $212 million worth of positions are at risk of liquidation.
Solana network activity surpassed Ethereum over the weekend amid a scramble for Solana-based memecoins — causing the network to struggle to keep up.
On March 16, Solana’s total trading volume soared past Ethereum, reaching $3.52 billion, beating out the daily volume on the Ethereum network by more than $1.1 billion, according to DefiLlama.
NFT collection Milady’s novel Solana memecoin has attracted 91,486 SOL ($18.6 million) within two hours of its presale announcement.
On March 18, Milady revealed the Solana-based memecoin, Milady Wif Hat, which is named after the popular Solana memecoin Dogwifhat (WIF). It will have a minimum investment of 1 SOL (SOL), with an 88,888 SOL cap.
Hours later, the presale had been oversubscribed. “Milady Wif Hat presale has soared to its limit of 88,888 SOL and is now closed,” wrote the team, adding: “Any additional Solana raised will have 100% of their funds returned.”
DeFi aggregator ParaSwap discovered a vulnerability in its newly launched Augustus v6 contract and prevented a colossal loss of funds through timely white hat intervention.
On March 18, the ParaSwap Augustus v6 contract went live, which aimed to improve swapping efficiency and reduce gas fees. However, the contract contained a critical vulnerability, allowing hackers to drain funds when approved.
The cryptocurrency market could see over $212 million of leveraged long positions liquidated if the Ether price falls below the $3,100 mark.
Ether dropped 9.3% to $3,254 in the 24 hours leading up to 10:40 am UTC on March 19. Ether is down over 18% on the weekly chart, and falling to $3,100 would wipe over $212 million worth of long leverage, according to Coinglass data.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that DeFi’s top 100 tokens by market capitalization had a bearish week, with most trading in the red on the weekly charts. The total value locked in DeFi protocols dipped below $100 billion.
Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education regarding this dynamically advancing space.