Yield platform Stablegains sued for promoting UST: 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.

The backlash from the Terra implosion still haunts the crypto world, with the now-shuttered stablecoin yield platform Stablegains being sued for customer losses. The plaintiffs allege that the platform funnelled customer funds into Anchor Protocol without users’ knowledge or consent.

Platypus, the DeFi protocol that was exploited for over $8 million, is working on a compensation plan to recover some of the funds.

Florida’s Cogent Bank is proposing a $100 million participation in loans to MakerDAO’s RWA Master Participation Trust.

Bridge protocols were the primary target of exploits last year, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stolen funds. Trustless bridges can mitigate the issue, enabling cross-chain transfers without needing a centralized custodian, potentially making it a safer option for interoperability.

After nearly four weeks of a bullish run, the DeFi market is fighting a brave battle against the bears. There were minor price drops, and the market’s overall slightly declined as bears had the upper hand toward the end of the week.

Yield platform Stablegains sued for promoting UST as a ‘safe’ investment

DeFi yield platform Stablegains is being sued in a Californian court for allegedly misleading investors and failing to comply with securities laws.

On Feb. 18, the plaintiffs, Alec and Artin Ohanian, filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, alleging that the shuttered DeFi platform diverted all its customer funds to the Anchor Protocol without their knowledge or consent. Anchor Protocol offered up to 20% yields on Terraform Labs’ algorithmic stablecoin, Terra USD (UST).

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Platypus to work on compensation plan after $8.5M attack

The $8.5 million Platypus flash loan attack was made possible because of code that was in the wrong order, according to a post-mortem report from Platypus auditor Omniscia. The DeFi firm is working on a compensation plan for users’ losses after a flash loan attack drained nearly $8.5 million from the protocol, affecting its stablecoin dollar peg.

In a tweet on Feb. 18, Platypus said it was working on a plan to compensate for the damages and asked users not to realize their losses in the protocol, saying this would make it harder for the company to manage the issue. Asset liquidations are also paused, the protocol said.

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MakerDAO voting on $100M loan participation with Florida commercial bank

Crypto lending platform MakerDAO is voting on a new proposal to bring another commercial bank into its ecosystem, strengthening the connection between DeFi and traditional finance.

As per MakerDAO’s governance forum, Cogent Bank — a Florida-based commercial bank — proposes to participate with $100 million in loans to MakerDAO’s RWA Master Participation Trust.

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DeFi security: How trustless bridges can help protect users

Blockchain bridges allow DeFi users to use the same tokens across multiple blockchains. For example, a trader can use USD Coin (USDC) on the Ethereum or Solana blockchains to interact with those networks’ decentralized applications.

While these protocols may be convenient for DeFi users, they are at risk of exploitation by malicious actors. For example, in the past year, the Wormhole bridge — a popular cross-chain crypto bridge between Solana, Ethereum, Avalanche and others — was hacked, with attackers stealing over $321 million worth of wrapped Ethereum (wETH), the largest hack in DeFi history at the time.

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DeFi market overview

Analytical data reveals that DeFi’s total market value dipped below $50 billion this past week. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that DeFi’s top 100 tokens by market capitalization had a mixed week, with most of the tokens trading in green while a few others bled in red.

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.