Barely halfway and October already the biggest month in crypto hacks: Finance Redefined

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.

October is historically associated with the bulls, but in 2022, the month has also become the leader in crypto hacks as barely halfway through, and the DeFi ecosystem has already seen nearly a dozen hacks resulting in losses of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The largest hack occurred on Solana’s DeFi platform Mango Markets on Oct. 11, resulting in a loss of over $100 million worth of crypto. The hacker has now come out to demand $70 million in USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin as a bounty to return the stolen crypto.

In another hack, TempleDAO was exploited for $2 million on the same day as Mango Market’s exploit.

Moving on from the hacker exploits, DappRadar, a DeFi analytic firm, came out with its side of the explanation on why its calculation about daily active users in the $1.6 billion metaverse ecosystem Decentraland came to less than 40.

The top 100 DeFi tokens faced bearish pressure throughout the week, with some relief coming late on Thursday. The majority of the tokens traded in red on the weekly charts, barring a few and the total value locked (TVL) dipped below $50 billion.

Barely halfway and October is the ‘biggest month’ in crypto hacks: Chainalysis

Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis has labeled October 2022 as “the biggest month in the biggest year ever for hacking activity,” with the total hacked value for the month nearly reaching $718 million.

Despite not being more than halfway through the month, Chainalysis said 11 different hacks on DeFi protocols had seen hundreds of millions exploited.

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Mango Markets hacker proposes steep settlement

On Oct. 12, one day after $117 million was drained from Solana DeFi platform Mango Markets via a price feed exploit, the hacker responsible for the attack demanded a settlement. The proposal was filed on the Mango Markets decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) governance forum.

If passed, the procedure would involve the hacker sending stolen MNGO, SOL (SOL) and Marinade Staked SOL tokens to an address provided by the Mango DAO team. Users without bad debt will be remade whole. However, the hacker demands that any bad debt be viewed as a bug bounty and insurance to be paid out via the community treasury worth 70 million USDC, or $70 million.

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DappRadar explains why it counted less than 40 active users on Decentraland

Crypto Twitter was shocked by reports claiming Decentraland, a $1.2 billion metaverse ecosystem, has had less than 40 daily active users recently. The data, courtesy of DeFi analytic firm DappRadar, created quite a buzz among the crypto community, with questions being raised over the future of Web3.

Decentraland was quick to refute those metrics and claimed that to get a better insight into the platform’s user activity, one should refer to the dashboard on the website. The metaverse platform noted that it accounted for 1,074 users interacting with smart contracts in September and a total of 56,697 monthly logged-in users.

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MakerDAO revenue tumbles 86% on Ether and Wrapped BTC woes

MakerDAO, the governing body of the Maker Protocol, has seen its revenue plummet in the third quarter of 2022, caused by a fall in loan demand and few liquidations, while expenses have remained high.

According to an Oct. 13 tweet by Johnny_TVL, a Messari analyst and co-author of “The State of Maker Q3 2022,” the decentralized autonomous organization saw its revenue plunge to just over $4 million in Q3, down 86% from the previous quarter.

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DeFi market overview

Analytical data reveals that DeFi’s total value registered another dip, with the TVL value falling to $50 billion at the time of writing. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView show that DeFi’s top 100 tokens by market capitalization had a mixed week, with the majority of the tokens trading in red on the 7-day chart, barring a few.

Maker (MKR) continued its bullish momentum into the second week of October, registering a 10. 78% gain over the past seven days. No other DeFi token in top-100 was trading in the green on the weekly chart.

Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education in this dynamically advancing space.