Multichain inside job? And SOL surges 80% in a month: Finance Redefined
Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you the most significant developments from the past week.
A trader managed to exploit the brief opening of the Multichain cross-chain bridge, which was frozen since its exploit in July 2023, allowing the trader to turn $280,000 worth of Fantom’s (FTM) tokens into $1.9 million worth of different assets.
In other news, Solana’s (SOL) token has surged 80% in a month, and Avalanche is set to shut down its Etherscan-powered blockchain explorer tool amid a fee controversy. A new bridged token from LayerZero has drawn criticism from nine protocols throughout the Ethereum ecosystem, claiming that it limits the freedom of token issuers.
The top 100 DeFi tokens continue their bullish momentum from the last week, with most of the tokens posting positive returns on the weekly charts.
Trader exploits Multichain opening to turn $280,000 to $1.9 million; community suspects insider job
A wallet address turned nearly 1.9 million FTM worth $280,000 to $1.9 million within hours of exploiting the long-frozen Multichain bridge opening momentarily, leading to insider job speculations among the crypto community.
The Multichain bridge, frozen since its exploit in July 2023, opened briefly and closed again on Nov. 1. The trader seized the opportunity to make millions of dollars in profits.
Solana gains 80% in a month as Firedancer goes live on testnet
SOL has posted 30-day gains of nearly 81% and has rallied over 30% in the past week amid the testnet launch of the blockchain’s long-awaited scaling solution, Firedancer.
SOL reached over $41 on Nov. 2, touching highs it hasn’t seen since August 2022, Cointelegraph Markets Pro data shows. Long touted as an “Ethereum killer,” SOL has vastly outperformed its rival, Ether (ETH), which posted under 11% gains in the past month.
Avalanche blockchain explorer to shut down as Etherscan fees draw controversy
SnowTrace, a popular blockchain explorer tool for Avalanche, will shut down its website — powered by Etherscan’s explorer-as-a-service (EaaS) toolkit — on Nov. 30. The SnowTrace team clarified that only its Etherscan-powered explorer will be shut down.
According to the Oct. 30 announcement, Snowtrace users are required to save their backup information, such as private name tags and contact verification details, before Nov. 30. While the team did not explicitly state the reason for shutting down the explorer, some have pointed to Etherscan’s service fees for its EaaS toolkit. Mikko Ohtama, co-founder of Trading Strategy, claims that an annual subscription to EaaS can cost between $1 million and $2 million per year.
Nine protocols criticize LayerZero’s wstETH token, claiming it’s “proprietary”
A new bridged token from the cross-chain protocol LayerZero is drawing criticism from nine protocols throughout the Ethereum ecosystem. A joint statement from Connext, Chainsafe, Sygma, LiFi, Socket, Hashi, Across, Celer and Router on Oct. 27 called the token’s standard “a vendor-locked proprietary standard,” claiming that it limits the freedom of token issuers.
The protocols claimed in their joint statement that LayerZero’s new token is “a proprietary representation of wstETH to Avalanche, BNB Chain, and Scroll without support from the Lido DAO [decentralized autonomous organization],” which is created by “provider-specific systems […] fundamentally owned by the bridges that implement them.” As a result, it creates “systemic risks for projects that can be tough to quantify,” they stated. The protocols advocated for the use of the xERC-20 token standard for bridging stETH instead of using LayerZero’s new token.
DeFi market overview
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that DeFi’s top 100 tokens by market capitalization had a bullish week, with most tokens trading in green on the weekly charts. The total value locked into DeFi protocols jumped to $49.46 billion.
Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education regarding this dynamically advancing space.
Current laws in the United States do not explicitly protect open source software developers and create the risk of retroactive prosecution.
Jeremy Kranz, founder of Sentinel Global, a venture capital firm, said investors should be “discerning” and read the fine print on any stablecoin.
Politics
Labour deputy leadership candidate accuses opponent’s team of ‘throwing mud’ and briefing against her
Lucy Powell has accused Bridget Phillipson’s team of “throwing mud” and briefing against her in the Labour deputy leadership race in a special episode of Sky’s Electoral Dysfunction podcast.
With just days to go until the race is decided, Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby spoke to the two leadership rivals about allegations of leaks, questions of party unity and their political vision.
Ms Powell told Electoral Dysfunction that through the course of the contest, she had “never leaked or briefed”.
But she said of negative stories about her in the media: “I think some of these things have also come from my opponent’s team as well. And I think they need calling out.
“We are two strong women standing in this contest. We’ve both got different things to bring to the job. I’m not going to get into the business of smearing and briefing against Bridget.
“Having us airing our dirty washing, throwing mud – both in this campaign or indeed after this if I get elected as deputy leader – that is not the game that I’m in.”
Ms Powell was responding to a “Labour source” who told the New Statesman last week: “Lucy was sacked from cabinet because she couldn’t be trusted not to brief or leak.”
Ms Powell said she had spoken directly to Ms Phillipson about allegations of briefings “a little bit”.
Bridget Phillipson (l) and Lucy Powell (r) spoke to Sky News’ Beth Rigby in a special Electoral Dysfunction double-header. Pics: Reuters
Phillipson denies leaks
But asked separately if her team had briefed against Ms Powell, Ms Phillipson told Rigby: “Not to my knowledge.”
And Ms Phillipson said she had not spoken “directly” to her opponent about the claims of negative briefings, despite Ms Powell saying the pair had talked about it.
“I don’t know if there’s been any discussion between the teams,” she added.
On the race itself, the education secretary said it would be “destabilising” if Ms Powell is elected, as she is no longer in the cabinet.
“I think there is a risk that comes of airing too much disagreement in public at a time when we need to focus on taking the fight to our opponents.
“I know Lucy would reject that, but I think that is for me a key choice that members are facing.”
She added: “It’s about the principle of having that rule outside of government that risks being the problem. I think I’ll be able to get more done in government.”
👉 Click here to listen to Electoral Dysfunction on your podcast app 👈
Insider vs outsider
But Ms Powell, who was recently sacked by Sir Keir Starmer as leader of the Commons, said she could “provide a stronger, more independent voice”.
“The party is withering on the vine at the same time, and people have got big jobs in government to do.
“Politics is moving really, really fast. Government is very, very slow. And I think having a full-time political deputy leader right now is the political injection we need.”
The result of the contest will be announced on Saturday 25 October.
The deputy leader has the potential to be a powerful and influential figure as the link between members and the parliamentary Labour Party, and will have a key role in election campaigns. They can’t be sacked by Sir Keir as they have their own mandate.
The contest was triggered by the resignation of Angela Rayner following a row over her tax affairs. She was also the deputy prime minister but this position was filled by David Lammy in a wider cabinet reshuffle.
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