Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly source of essential insights into decentralized finance (DeFi) — a newsletter designed to bring you the most important developments from the previous week.
This week, Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, is gearing up to launch his own DeFi platform that is expected to offer crypto lending and borrowing capabilities. Trump is embracing the future by venturing into the world of crypto.
In the wider crypto industry, Hayden Adams, the CEO of Uniswap, has denied allegations that he demanded money for deploying DeFi protocols through a decentralized governance vote on Uniswap.
Trump to unveil World Liberty Financial crypto platform on September 16
Donald Trump, the former president and Republican presidential nominee, has announced that his World Liberty Financial crypto project will launch on September 16.
In a video posted on X on September 12, Trump stated that he will go live on the platform to introduce the project, which will be controlled by his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.
“We’re embracing the future with crypto and leaving behind the slow and outdated big banks,” he said.
World Liberty Financial announcement. Source: Donald Trump
Trump has previously made cryptic posts about World Liberty Financial, hinting at its role as a DeFi platform for borrowing and lending.
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Uniswap CEO denies allegations of charging for protocol deployments
Hayden Adams, the CEO of Uniswap, has refuted allegations on X that Uniswap has been demanding money from decentralized finance protocols for protocol deployments. In a statement on September 12, Adams clarified that neither Uniswap Labs nor Uniswap Foundation charge for protocol deployments.
Source: Hayden Adams
Adams explained that protocol deployments occur through governance votes. He further elaborated that the requirements for deploying on a new chain in the Uniswap interface are determined based on the level of activity and effort required.
The response from the Uniswap CEO came after Alexander, a user on X, claimed that Uniswap asked developers to pay $20 million for an ineffective Uniswap deployment.
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Sonic blockchain achieves record 720ms finality in testnet phase
During its testnet phase, the Sonic blockchain has achieved a transaction finality of 720 milliseconds (ms).
In the blockchain world, finality refers to the assurance that a transaction is irreversible, which occurs after it is included in a block on the ledger.
According to Andre Cronje, the creator of the Fantom Network and the chief technology officer of Sonic Labs, Sonic claims to be the fastest Ethereum Virtual Machine chain globally, with a true finality of 720ms.
Most blockchains require several additional blocks to ensure a transaction is irreversible, but Sonic achieves this in just over 700ms.
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Crypto platform Friend.tech sees token drop 26% following admin transfer
The native token of the crypto social media platform Friend.tech has experienced a significant drop after the team transferred the administration and ownership of its smart contracts to Ethereum’s null address, permanently relinquishing control over them.
The transfer, which took place on September 8, was executed to “prevent any changes to their fees or functionality in the future,” as stated by Friend.tech on X.
Within 24 hours after the transfer, the platform’s FRIEND token plummeted by nearly 26% to $0.067, according to CoinGecko.
Coinbase launches “cbBTC” wrapped Bitcoin digital asset
Crypto exchange Coinbase has introduced its cbBTC token, a wrapped version of Bitcoin (BTC), on the Ethereum network and its layer-2 scaling network, Base.
As announced on September 12, cbBTC is backed 1:1 with Bitcoin held by Coinbase and does not have a separate order book or trading pairs on the exchange’s platform.
Coinbase’s wrapped Bitcoin operates by automatically minting cbBTC at a 1:1 ratio when a user sends Bitcoin to a Base or Ethereum address. The reverse is also true — when a user sends cbBTC to a Coinbase address, the tokenized Bitcoin will automatically convert back to standard Bitcoin.
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DeFi market overview
According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, the majority of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap ended the week with gains.
The BinaryX (BNX) token saw the largest increase, rising over 31% and claiming the title of the week’s biggest gainer. It was followed by Popcat Sol (POPCAT), a Solana-based memecoin, which rose by 28% during the week.
Total value locked in DeFi. Source: DefiLlama
Thank you for reading our summary of the most significant DeFi developments from this week. Join us again next Friday for more stories, insights, and education on this ever-evolving space.