This Week in DeFi – February 11

To the DeFi group,

This week, Ethereum scaling answer Optimism paid a $2 million bug bounty for the invention of a bug that might have allowed customers to double spend and generate a vast quantity of tokens with out backing. The exploit has been patched, and bug bounties but once more show one of the vital worthwhile assets for early-stage protocols the place safety is paramount.

Final week, I found (and reported) a crucial bug (which has been totally patched) in @optimismPBC (a “layer 2 scaling answer” for Ethereum) that might have allowed an attacker to print arbitrary amount of tokens, for which I received a $2,000,042 bounty. https://t.co/J6KOlU8aSW

— Jay Freeman (saurik) (@saurik) February 10, 2022

Competing scaling answer Polygon introduced a non-public sale of $450m MATIC tokens to buyers together with Sequoia Capital India, Softbank, and Galaxy Digital. The funds will go in the direction of serving to Ethereum preserve its standing because the dominant sensible contract execution blockchain, and serving to Polygon construct out a set of companies to develop into the ‘AWS of Web3’.

#Polygon is now backed by the perfect. It is actually reflective of the frequent imaginative and prescient of the numerous in making web3 the selection of the billions.#WAGMI💜https://t.co/LgG1OSRvEz

— Polygon | $MATIC 💜 (@0xPolygon) February 7, 2022

Ssv.community (Secret-shared-validator) introduced a $10 million fundraise led by Digital Forex Group and Coinbase. Ssv goals to offer a decentralized staking answer for nodes to help the Ethereum consensus layer (previously Eth 2.0) and can use the fund for collaborations and to fund grants for builders and community individuals.

.@ssv_network, a decentralized staking protocol for Ethereum’s consensus layer, has raised $10 million to broaden its platform forward of the blockchain’s merge to Proof-of-Stake. https://t.co/slXEFxP6wE

— Crypto Briefing (@Crypto_Briefing) February 8, 2022

And MakerDAO launched a $10 million bug bounty program of their very own by means of main crypto safety agency Immunifi. Bug experiences and funds don’t require KYC, and this system pays out a most of as much as $10 million for a crucial safety bug discovered within the stay sensible contracts of the protocol.

MakerDAO & Immunefi Safety Core Unit launch LARGEST Bug Bounty for DeFi!@ImmunefiSecCU : Safety Core unit for @MakerDAO, who launches their $10M bug bounty program on Immunefi!

Immunefi (@immunefi): main bug bounty platform for blockchain. https://t.co/BQhNze72JN

— Immunefi (@immunefi) February 10, 2022

DeFi hacks are nonetheless a standard incidence, which shouldn’t be a giant shock for a lower than 5 yr outdated trade constructed utilizing solely new underlying know-how. However the headlines do little to validate the notion of DeFi as ‘the way forward for finance’, and people protocols which have been impacted by a significant exploit are more likely to face a considerably more durable battle being adopted by institutional finance organizations the place such losses might imply the tip of the enterprise and doubtlessly even private legal responsibility.

Not each workforce has the assets to supply bug bounty packages on the dimensions supplied by among the main DeFi gamers like Polygon (who paid their very own $2 million bug bounty only a few months in the past) or MakerDAO. However these protocols are additionally much less more likely to be focused, as they provide smaller potential rewards for a profitable assault. 

However the riskiest junctures are more likely to be manifest when a good suggestion’s time has come and purposes go from area of interest with small TVL to the flavour of the day with TVL quickly rising – these groups are already more likely to be overstretched as demand outpaces expertise and different assets past capital and the potential acquire from exploits quickly grows. In these conditions, it’s greatest to observe the blue chip gamers as shortly as attainable in establishing a bug bounty program, even when the rewards don’t scale as much as $10 million. Credibility takes years to generate and seconds to destroy, and there’s no disgrace in incentivising the developer group to examine your work.

Because of our accomplice:

Complete Worth Locked: $87.35B (up 7.39% since final week)

DeFi Market Cap: $110.24B (up 3.93%)

DEX Weekly Quantity: $16.76B (up 1.39%)

DAI Provide: 9.8B (up 6.52%)

Complete DeFi Customers: 4,364,300 (up 0.72%)

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Alex is a Content material Author at Circle, with earlier expertise at tech startups, Fortune 500 firms, and as a contract author and analyst. Pursuits embody cutting-edge applied sciences in blockchain, vitality, provide chains, transportation, city dwelling, and extra and he has been within the crypto group since 2014.