Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly essential insight into decentralized finance (DeFi) - a curated newsletter designed to bring you the big developments of the last week.
The past week in DeFi has been full of anticipation, leading to the Shapella upgrade on the Ethereum mainnet. The hard fork was successfully completed on April 12, allowing validators to withdraw their staked Ether, Three years later. However, only 253 validators have signed off on fully exiting their staked ETH positions, with analytics firm Glassnode predicting that less than 1% of staked ETH will be withdrawn.
In the midst of all the welcome post-Shapella upgrades, an ethereum researcher revealed that staking Ether could become a privacy issue as he discovered "internally" that staking ETH reveals users' IP address information. A hacker minted 1 quadrillion Yearn Tether (yUSDT) after exploiting an old Yearn.finance contract, then exchanged yUSDT for other stablecoins, resulting in $11.6 million worth of stablecoins.
Through Fonbnk's partnership with Tanda, DeFi-based financial inclusion helps increase liquidity and profitability opportunities for African micro-entrepreneurs. The top 100 DeFi tokens had another bullish week, thanks to a late-stage surge in the cryptocurrency market following Ethereum’s long-awaited upgrade. Most DeFi tokens are trading in the green like the rest of the market.
Shanghai upgrade estimated to sell less than 1% of collateralized ETH: Glassnode
Glassnode predicts that only 170,000 of the 18.1 million ether staked on the beacon chain will be unlocked within the first week of the Shanghai hard fork being implemented on ethereum.
The on-chain intelligence platform predicted in its April 11 report that this figure includes 100,000 ETH ($190 million) worth of staking rewards and 70,000 ETH worth of staked ether ($133 million).
Ethereum Researcher Says Staking Leaks IP Addresses, Raises Privacy Concerns
A researcher at the Ethereum Foundation (EF) has shown that the IP addresses of ETH stakeholders are monitored as part of a wider metadata set, leading the cryptocurrency community to flag ethereum as a privacy concern.
In an April 12 interview with crypto podcast Bankless, EF researcher Justin Drake revealed that he learned the information "from the inside." The metadata that Drake mentioned tracks a wide range of information.
Web3 economy gains traction in Africa with DeFi-based financial inclusion
Web3 in Africa started with cryptocurrencies, and blockchain technology has brought about a lot of transformations in terms of transparency and people's control over their finances. Africa’s Web3 economy continues to gain traction through financial inclusion based on decentralized finance.
Fonbnk, the Web3 portal that allows Africans to acquire crypto assets by exchanging airtime credits, has partnered with Tanda, a business networking platform in East Africa, to launch an airtime trading marketplace within Tanda’s agent network.
Hackers minted 1 quadrillion yUSDT after exploiting old Yearn.finance contract
Blockchain security firm PeckShield recently detected a hack that allowed attackers to mint over $10,000 trillion in yUSDT from $10,000 in the latest DeFi exploit.
According to the security firm, the hackers then exchanged yUSDT for other stablecoins, resulting in $11.6 million worth of tokens. These include 61,000 Pax Dollar (USDP), 1.5 million TrueUSD (TUSD), 1.79 million Binance USD, 1.2 million Tether, $2.58 million USDC and 3 million Dai.
