The decentralized finance (DeFi) space has been buzzing with excitement and concerns over the past week. One of the highlights was the anticipation for the approval of a United States-based spot Ether exchange-traded fund (ETF). On the regulatory front, decentralized exchange Uniswap made a bold statement by vowing to fight the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after receiving a Wells notice. Uniswap claimed that the SEC’s case is weak.
In other news, Bitcoin Runes, which was highly popular in April, has experienced a significant decline in transactions, dropping by 84%. Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, called for the use of zero-knowledge (ZK) likes on the newly launched decentralized social media platform Farcaster to combat preference falsification.
Marketwise, the total value locked in DeFi protocols saw a significant increase of $10 billion, surpassing the $100 billion mark once again.
Uniswap, the developer behind the Uniswap decentralized exchange, responded to the SEC’s Wells notice with a strong statement. In a blog post, Uniswap criticized the SEC’s legal arguments and expressed readiness to fight the matter in court if necessary. The company’s chief legal officer, Marvin Ammori, stated that the SEC’s case is weak and wrong, as it treats all tokens as securities.
Bitcoin Runes, a protocol that gained popularity during its launch in April, is now struggling to maintain its share of Bitcoin transactions. Since its launch, Runes transactions have dominated Bitcoin blockchain traffic on eight different days, mostly during the weekends.
Vitalik Buterin showed support for a privacy shift on the decentralized social media platform Farcaster. He suggested implementing ZK likes to combat preference falsification, which occurs when individuals misrepresent their true preferences due to social pressure or fear.
StarkWare has introduced ZKThreads, a scaling framework that aims to prevent fund lockups and improve the scalability of decentralized applications. According to Louis Guthmann, head of product/market strategy at StarkWare, this layer-scaling technology could prevent incidents similar to the fund lockup experienced by FTX.
Overall, the DeFi market has shown bullish momentum, with most tokens in the top 100 by market capitalization trading in the green on the weekly charts. The total value locked in DeFi protocols has once again crossed the $100 billion mark.
That concludes our summary of the latest developments in the DeFi space. Stay tuned for more stories, insights, and education on this rapidly advancing field.