DeFi enjoys a prolific start to 2023: Finance Redefined

cointelegraph.com:

Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week.

2023 started on a bullish note for the entire crypto market, including the DeFi ecosystem, with most of the tokens posting double-digit gains in January and recording multi-month highs. Aside from the bull rally, January also saw a 93% year-on-year decline in losses from DeFi exploits and hacks.

The slew of regulatory action against the Mango Markets exploiter is being hailed as a big win for the DeFi sector. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have taken action against the alleged fraudster, which shows that DeFi is becoming a “safer and more welcoming environment,” according to credit rating firm Moody’s.

Amid all the positive developments, Solana DeFi protocol Everlend shut down over liquidity issues stemming from the FTX crisis and told users to withdraw funds. North Korean hackers also tried laundering $27 million in Ether (ETH) from the Harmony bridge attack.

The bullish momentum of the top 100 DeFi tokens continued into February as the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols reached nearly $50 billion, with most tokens registering another weekly price surge.

DeFi protocols experienced a boom in TVL across different staking pools in January. The market hit $74.6 billion worth of staked assets, increasing by 26% from December.

In its latest monthly report, DappRadar outlined the growth of the DeFi sector alongside rejuvenated nonfungible token (NFT) markets, which have also had upticks in trading volume and sales.

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