This Week in DeFi – October 22

To the DeFi community,

This week, Polygon paid it’s maximum bug bounty, $2 million, to white hat hacker Gerhard Wagner after his revelation that up to $850 million was at risk using an exploit in the Polygon Plasma Bridge. The vulnerability has been patched, and the $2 million bounty appears to be the largest amount ever paid for such a service.

Congrats @g3rh4rdw4gn3r on earning a $2,000,000 bug bounty from @0xPolygon & saving close to a billion of Polygon users’ funds. Here is his detailed writeup https://t.co/iK7spsYx3L

— Bernhard Mueller (@muellerberndt) October 21, 2021

Jupiter Exchange launched on Solana, the first AMM liquidity aggregator exchange in the Solana DeFi ecosystem. Jupiter will route swaps through the pools with the greatest liquidity across all major AMMs on Solana, reducing slippage for token exchanges and improving the UX for Solana users.

1/ Excited to share that @JupiterExchange, @solana‘s first on-chain swap aggregator, is now live at https://t.co/9cinFsrwxf!

Jupiter is also the first sister protocol our team will be launching as part of our efforts to grow a family of world class DeFi liquidity systems. 🔥 https://t.co/FoWq9wA2ni

— Mercurial Fi (@MercurialFi) October 13, 2021

Also in the Solana realm, Synchrony raised $4.2 million to develop its copy-trading protocol, led by Sanctor Capital, Wintermute Trading, and GBV Capital. Synchrony will allow users to follow investment strategies from throughout the Solana ecosystem. Synchrony will also collect and organize data on successful trading strategies, bringing improved market intelligence to the growing Solana DeFi scene.

Don’t sleep on @SynchronyFi

The Solana-Based DeFi protocol just raised $4.2M

The on-chain asset management protocol allows users to access a suite of tools that leverage analytics and indices to define unique parameters for trade execution 🔥🔥🔥https://t.co/Tu3V3cVhaJ

— LilMoonLambo (@LilMoonLambo) October 21, 2021

And SF-based asset manager Murdex launched a new slate of Coin Sets, allowing traditional retail investors to invest in baskets of DeFi tokens and even some NFT collections. The retail focus of the Coin Sets could help bring significant additional exposure to DeFi tokens and the ecosystem overall, and are another step on the road to deeper integration between traditional finance and the DeFi economy.

#technology #crypto #cryptocurrency #bitcoin #tech Mudrex Is Releasing A DeFi Based Mutual Fund https://t.co/SwidjFn4zr

— Umair (@akbarth3great) October 20, 2021

A big week for DeFi on Solana, and proof that bug bounties really do work, while top coins like BTC and ETH are marking new all-time highs. Not bad! There’s no sign of the appetite for DeFi investments slowing down, from the VC stage right through to retail investors that want to buy indexed DeFi assets in a more familiar stock-like format.

The competition is really heating up for Ethereum-based DeFi, but the magnitude and reasonably straightforward nature of the now-patched Polygon exploit show that there are still a huge number of kinks to work out within DeFi and L2 protocols, particularly when it comes to bridging from one to another. Many solutions use locked tokens that represent tantalizing targets for hackers, and time delays are only so effective at preventing exploits if they remain undiscovered for long enough.

The progress of the entire crypto landscape over the past year has been nothing short of astounding, but in some ways it’s starting to feel like we’ve moved backwards, too – the crush to release before the competition and win innovation races has taken a toll on both UI and UX in many instances, and while smart contract audits are becoming table stakes, they’re far from a catch-all when dealing with such new infrastructure.

The best opportunities for high-conviction ‘set-and-forget’ investments are always early-stage and at the periphery, and are always a wild ride. But don’t forget to tread carefully, as the value you capture early on in such projects is closely related to being ahead of the ‘unknown unknowns’ that can tank otherwise promising ideas on short notice. The most important rule still remains “Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose.” If done well, and with patience, the opportunities in crypto are as limitless as the stars.

Thanks to our partner:

Total Value Locked: $83.41B (down -13.4% since last week)

DeFi Market Cap: $135.76B (up 5.44%)

DEX Weekly Volume: $14.36B (down -8.0%)

DAI Supply: 7.37B (up 4.99%)

Total DeFi Users: 3,604,700 (up 1.72%)

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Alex is a Content Writer at Circle, with previous experience at tech startups, Fortune 500 corporations, and as a freelance writer and analyst. Interests include cutting-edge technologies in blockchain, energy, supply chains, transportation, urban living, and more and he has been in the crypto community since 2014.