DeFi Weekly Recap: Holesky Testnet Unveiling, Balancer Security Concerns, and Solana Pay Collaborates with Shopify

Eventful Week for DeFi!

Let’s dive deeper into what went down in DeFi this past week.

Overview: Sentiment Continues to Sink

Total value locked (TVL) across all chains continues the downtrend, shedding another 2.5% as market sentiment prolongs its decline. Noteworthy exceptions to the trend are ConsenSys-backed L2 chain, Linea, which experienced a 40% swell in TVL, and Sui, which saw its TVL rise 20%.

Welcome to Alpha Central

0xBreadguy dives into the tools built around social media applications, friend.tech, including tools to improve trading, charting, and analysis on the platform.

Wajahat Mughal covers 15 primitives he believes will push upcoming narratives in crypto, providing examples in each category.

Redphonecrypto muses on DeFi and how it powers applications only feasible with crypto as the backend infrastructure.

Ethereum: Holesky Testnet Incoming, EigenLayer Hits Caps Again

The Ethereum Foundation will deploy a new testnet, Holesky, to replace Goerli. Holesky will launch on September 15, with two billion Holesky ETH (hETH) available at genesis to address insufficient funds on testnets.

ETH restaking solution EigenLayer raises caps again on staking, this time to 100K tokens. The caps filled in under two hours before deposits were paused. Alongside the cap raise, EigenLayer announced an NFT mint, EigenWorlds, available to EigenLayer stakers.

ETH restaking platform Stader Labs deploys rsETH on their testnet. RsETH represents restaked ETH, obtained by staking LSTs on Stader, allowing users to earn rewards on LSTs.

Balancer Vulnerability and Other Developments

Weighted AMM Balancer uncovers a critical vulnerability in boosted pools across supported chains. Though Balancer mitigated most risk, the protocol still suffered a $400K loss.

Cross-chain settlement layer THORChain launches THORChain Lending, enabling USD loans on native ETH or BTC. The no-interest, no-liquidation loans have a 30-day minimum duration.

Bumper Finance will launch on Ethereum mainnet on August 31, with $250K in incentives for early adopters. Bumper seeks to shield crypto investors from volatility using an innovative DeFi mechanism.

Memecoin PEPE dumps as several ex-members allegedly steal and sell $15 million in PEPE tokens. The team claims to have regained control of the multisig wallet holding the tokens, but many are doubting this claim.

L2 Updates: FRIEND Perpetuals Live for Trading

Options and perpetual trading platform Aevo launches perpetuals trading on FRIEND, representing the market capitalization of all friend.tech accounts, enabling traders to long or short their value.

Positional markets Thales launches Speed Markets on Arbitrum. Speed Markets allow bets on an asset’s direction over short timeframes, where users bet on the asset trading above or below the current price by the timeframe’s end.

BitDAO’s L2 chain Mantle has staked 40,000 ETH tokens from its treasury with Lido Finance after a successful governance vote earlier this month.

Bracket Labs launches Passage, allowing traders to speculate on an asset price. It enables trading volatility and leveraged trading.

Solana: Solana Pay Now on Shopify

Solana Pay is now supported on the e-commerce platform Shopify, enabling merchants to accept USDC payments via Solana’s blockchain. Solana Pay plans to add more tokens including native SOL and memecoin BONK.

Elusiv goes live on Solana this week, bringing privacy to token swaps. It keeps trades private, allowing traders to conceal on-chain activity. Elusiv is powered by DEX aggregator Jupiter.

Credit protocol Maple Finance launches Solana support, enabling Solana projects and DAOs to utilize their cash management solution.

L3 blockchain Nautilus launches on mainnet after a year of development. Nautilus is built on Solana’s VM using Neon EVM and Celestia. Currently an optimistic rollup, it seeks to transition to a ZK rollup.

Cosmos: Dymension’s Incentivized Testnet Is Live

Dymension releases its incentivized testnet, Froopyland with a maturity date of three months and 1% of the total supply distributed as rewards. Dymension is a chain designed to enable rollup deployment compatible with Cosmos’ Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) Protocol.

Another Week, Another Airdrop

Base Velodrome fork Aerodrome will launch on Monday, accompanied by an airdrop of veAERO tokens to veVELO lockers on Velodrome. 40% of the veAERO supply will be distributed in this airdrop.

Crypto betting platform, Shuffle, announces their token and hints at their upcoming airdrop in the near future.