DeFi Weekly: Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty, Polymarket Raises $70M, and New EU Regulations Challenge DeFi Future
Summary:
This week's key developments in decentralized finance (DeFi) include a guilty verdict for Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev for money laundering, leading to a sentence of over five years. Binance developed a method to curb the increasing address poisoning scam. Meanwhile, Polymarket received a significant investment boost of $70 million, with notable contributors like Vitalik Buterin and Peter Thiel. Lastly, the future of DeFi in the European Union could be on shaky grounds because of new regulations.
Introducing Finance Redefined, your weekly round-up of vital developments within the realm of decentralized finance (DeFi) - a collation of noteworthy events from the last week. In this week's DeFi chronicles, a Tornado Cash creator was found guilty of money laundering, leading to a prison sentence of over five years. In another story, Binance discovered a solution to anticipating the rising address poisoning scam. Additionally, Polymarket boosted its financials with a $70 million investment, notably from figures such as Vitalik Buterin and Peter Thiel, and the future of DeFi in the European Union stands on shaky grounds.
Tornado Cash's creator, Alexey Pertsev, is implicated in a money laundering scandal. The developer of the crypto mixing protocol, Tornado Cash, Alexey Pertsev, has been proven guilty of money laundering - an event that bodes poorly for open-source code developers. On May 14, the s-Hertogenbosch Court of Appeal's Dutch adjudicators declared Pertsev guilty, sentencing him to five years and four months behind bars for allegedly overseeing the laundering of $1.2 billion in illegal assets through the platform.
DeFi and its decentralization could face setbacks under new EU laws. Upcoming regulations within the European Union might push DeFi protocols towards hard choices. A primary concern lies in the inclination of many DeFi protocols towards centralizing intermediaries and front-ends. These rules, known as the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), set to roll out fully by late 2024, will enforce the same licensing and KYC requirements for DeFi protocols as would apply to conventional financial service firms — an obligation that many DeFi protocols may balk at or be unable to meet.
Binance creates a remedy for increasing address poisoning scams after suffering a $68 million exploitation. Binance's team of security experts formulates a solution against rising occurrences of address poisoning scams, which lure investors into transferring funds to a dishonest address. The security personnel of the leading global cryptocurrency exchange crafted an algorithm that revealed millions of these corrupted crypto addresses, as disclosed in a report to Cointelegraph.
Polymarket ascends financial ladder with a $70 million investment from the likes of Vitalik Buterin and Founders Fund. Founders Fund, a venture capital firm managed by Peter Thiel, and Ethereum's co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, lead a $70 million funding endeavour for Polymarket, a platform that facilitates wagering on political events. As reported by Bloomberg, Polymarket gathered $70 million across two funding phases as betting on the 2024 US presidential elections grows popular. The latest Series B funding round for Polymarket netted $45 million, led by Founders Fund.
DeFi market landscape in brief. As per data amassed from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, the top 100 DeFi tokens by market capitalization experienced a somewhat volatile week, with the majority ending up in the green on the weekly graphs. The total value locked in DeFi protocols remains comfortably over the $90 billion mark. The next edition of this weekly DeFi rundown will return next Friday to cover more engaging stories, insights, and knowledge about this rapidly growing sector.
Published At
5/17/2024 10:25:00 PM
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