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GMX DEX loses $565K in a recent exploit

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GMX, a decentralized exchange, fell victim to a recent exploit. According to reports, a price manipulation attack on the decentralized exchange (DEX) GMX allowed an exploiter to steal $565,000 from the Avalanche (AVAX)/USD market.

The attack, which affected GLP token holders who contributed liquidity to GMX in the form of AVAX (the Avalanche token), is believed to have been carried out by an anonymous exploiter who profited from GMX’s “minimum spread” and “zero price effect” characteristics.

GMX confirmed the exploit on Sunday

In a Sunday post on Twitter, the DEX acknowledged the price manipulation exploit but said that despite setting a $2 million cap on long holdings and a $1 million cap on short positions, the AVAX/USD market will continue to be active.

Joshua Lim, the head of derivatives at Genesis Trading, was one of the first to examine the exploit. He claimed that the perpetrator “successfully extracted profits from the DEX’s AVAX/USD market by starting large positions at 0 slippages” before transporting the AVAX/USD to centralized exchanges at a marginally higher price.

The first cycle of this exploit method, according to Lim, began at 1:15 AM UTC on Sunday and was repeated five times. Approximately $4 to $5 million worth of AVAX were moved during each cycle, and the exploiter profited by about $565,000 after paying spreads to market participants on other exchanges.

While GMX quickly limited short and long open interest for AVAX/USD to safeguard the DEX from further manipulation, Lim stated that GMX may have to do away with its “zero price effect” feature despite having signed up a lot of users thus far.

A trader with the correct approach might wipe out GLP token holders, according to Taureau, the founder of layer-2 DEX ZigZag, who expressed worry about the long-term viability of GMX’s exchange platform in a video chat on September 2.

In other events, a hacker was able to steal 200 WETH from the Ethereum PoW chain thanks to a replay attack on Omni bridge. Security company BlockSec discovered a replay attack on the Ethereum PoW chain on September 18.

Through the Omni bridge, the attacker sent 200 WETH from the Ethereum PoS chain. According to reports, the transaction was duplicated on the Ethereum PoW chain.

Uniswap Brings NFT Marketplace Genie Into Its Fold

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Leading DEX Uniswap has announced buying NFT marketplace aggregator Genie for an unspecified amount. The platform has now expanded its products to include both ERC-20s and NFTs. Further, the exchange published a blog and stated,

NFTs will be integrated into our products, starting with the Uniswap web app, where soon you’ll be able to buy and sell NFTs across all major marketplaces. We’ll also integrate NFTs into our developer APIs and widgets, making Uniswap a comprehensive platform for users and builders in web3.

The trading platform’s foray into NFTs began in 2019, as it launched Unisocks, the first instance of NFT liquidity pools, and of NFTs backed by real-world assets. Per the blog, the DEX revealed a USDC airdrop for historical Genie users.

“The airdrop will launch in August and be claimable for up to 12 months, based on a snapshot that has already been taken. Stay tuned for more details,” the blog read.

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Uniswap Brings NFT Marketplace Genie Into Its Fold 2

The blog post ended with a disclaimer that the acquisition would not affect the Uniswap Protocol, Governance, or the UNI token. And that Genie users will continue to have uninterrupted service to its website until the new Uniswap NFT experience is available.

Following the integration, UNI’s price surged by 16% in just 6 hours. At the time of publication, the value stood at $4.84, up by 7% in the past 24 hours.

Uniswap Surpassed Ethereum in Terms of Daily Fees

Two days back, Uniswap overtook its home network, Ethereum. With $4.3 million in fees generated as of June 20, the world’s largest decentralized exchange [DEX] has jumped to the top of CryptoFees’ leaderboard.

Even though its holders don’t get a piece of the cash flows, which come from users paying a fee when swapping between digital assets.

Still, as one of the most recognizable DeFi players and other smart contract-enabled activities, it’s noteworthy that a protocol topped Ethereum, in terms of fee generation. 

Above all, the lucrative fees have come during an extremely turbulent period for crypto and world markets at large. It is quite apparent by now, despite being a dismal year for digital asset prices, that the DeFi sector keeps on working.

Cardano-backed decentralized exchange ADAX debuts on the mainnet

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A new Cardano-powered decentralized exchange ADAX went live on the mainnet and announced that it is now set to roll out the ADAX DEX v1.0. As per the announcement, the launch is a huge milestone for the whole team behind it as it took six months of work and manpower to deliver what it claims as one of the first decentralized exchange solutions to Cardano that will work in favor of the ecosystem in the long term.’

“Based on the philosophy of decentralization, ADAX DEX is going to utilize the order-book model that brings noncustodial and censorship-resistant trading. Users will be able to execute smart contract-based trades on the platform instantly by paying significantly less compared to Ethereum network fees.”

But what are its features?

The exchange is featuring on-chain swap execution and concentrated liquidity orders that it claims allow it to surpass its closest competitors in terms of efficiency and performance.

Developers of the exchange have also created a custom PAB solution with the help of Plutus smart contracts that ensure full decentralization. In order to avoid congestion and concurrency-related issues, ADAX is splitting each order into smaller UTXOs.

According to the press release, ADAX is launched in a partnership with Stockgeist.AI market sentiment monitoring platform that allows the DEX to offer a trading tool that tracks early signs of trader sentiment changes.

The tool collected data from various social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Discord. Each token will have its own metric that will allow traders to determine the “hottest” assets on the market. Having said that, it needs to be seen how the new DEX fares amongst its popular peers like SundaeSwap.

Cardano SundaeSwap rocky launch

As per data from pool.pm, the Cardano network has maintained record capacity for nearly two weeks after the launch of DEX, SundaeSwap, the first of its kind to go live on Cardano. However, not all went smoothly during SundaeSwap’s launch.

Soon, there were reports of failed transactions that began circulating widely on social media. Users then allege that their DEX orders couldn’t be processed, despite submitting them a few days ago. In the midst of these, the platform was also locked in a bitter commercial dispute regarding allegations of failed investor promises with the Cardano accelerator program CardStarter.

TBD Bitcoin DEX: Jack Dorsey talks about the new division

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Twitter chief Jack Dorsey’s love for Bitcoin isn’t a new story. Time and again, the tattooed entrepreneur has made the world’s largest cryptocurrency his topmost priority and is doing everything to make Bitcoin the global currency of the internet. Dorsey had first mentioned Square’s brainchild “TBD,” BTC-centric DEX.

While sharing a Twitter thread written by Mike Brock, who happens to be the TBD lead at the payment firm, Dorsey revealed details about the direction of the initiative.

Brock’s tweet regarding the same read,

“There’s been a lot of speculation about what TBD is and isn’t. Over the last few weeks our team has been determining what needs to be determined. We wanted to finally share our direction, and we have some questions. We believe Bitcoin will be the native currency of the internet. While there are many projects to help make the internet more decentralized, our focus is solely on a sound global monetary system for all. But including all requires a few pieces we think are missing.”

TBD Bitcoin DEX’s Objective

The exec revealed that the main objective behind the creation of the decentralized exchange is to address a critical issue in purchasing Bitcoin which typically involves exchanging fiat at a centralized and custodial service such as the CashApp of Coinbase. He mentioned that these on- and off-ramps to Bitcoin are plagued with a number of problems and argued that they aren’t distributed evenly across the world.

This is the problem that TBD aims to solve by making it seamless to fund a non-custodial wallet anywhere in the world with a platform to build on- and off-ramps into Bitcoin. This can be thought of as a decentralized exchange for fiat, Brock asserted.

He further stressed that the platform will be entirely developed in the public, open-source, open protocol, and any wallet will be able to use. There will be no foundation or governance model that TBD controls – In short, “Permissionless or bust.” He further went on to add,

“And here’s the question and challenge: what projects exist today to help us solve these problems in a Bitcoin native way? Now that we’ve determined our direction, you’ll hear a lot more from us as we progress. But for now, Thanks Bitcoin Denizens!”

Uniswap’s users can still bypass censorship of the main UI, trade restricted assets

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The largest decentralized exchange [DEX] Uniswap’s software development studio had earlier revealed restricting access to some tokens, including synthetic stocks and derivatives from the platform interface.

Over the past couple of weeks, several cryptocurrency firms such as Binance have removed their tokenized stock products. But Uniswap’s move is different than most centralized exchanges since it is only restricting access through its own interface.

Dodging Uniswap’s censorship

Uniswap Labs did not clearly mention the actual reason behind the restriction but in the official blog post, the studio had said that the tokens in question represented a very small portion of the overall volume on the Uniswap Protocol. However, it is important to note that there are several ways in which censorship can be bypassed. In fact, the users can still access these tokens through other portals on the DeFi platform that supports them. Parafi Capital’s Nick Chong also revealed that there are “a ton of alternative interfaces.”

Chong observed that the restricted assets accounted for a total of $5.9 million worth of volume over the past seven days which is around 0.076% of the decentralized exchange’s 7-day volume. He called it a “rounding error.” Chong also emphasized the need for bookmarking decentralized interfaces and mirror applications and asserted,

“The world needs decentralized interfaces. Wouldn’t it have been bad if all non-power user DeFi traders woke up one day and the Uniswap Labs interface was gone w/ no alternatives? This is a wake-up call! Bookmark the decentralized interfaces.”

A bad precedent

The latest move has opened a can of worms about the never-ending decentralization and the impact of regulatory oversight on decentralized finance [DeFi]. Interestingly, the development comes days after the United States regulatory watchdog announced that that they would increasingly monitor these types of products. Needless to say, the platform has been at the receiving end of severe backlash from the community.

Joey Krug, the co-CIO of Pantera Capital and co-founder of Augur said that even though he loves Uniswap, he said that the decision sets a bad example. Krug reiterated General Douglas MacArthur’s famous quote and claimed that this would not be the first case of defi censorship.

“History teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement begets new and bloodier wars. It points to no single instance where this end has justified that means, where appeasement has led to more than a sham peace.”

DEX volumes see explosive growth in Q2; increases by 117x YoY

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DEX landscape is growing irrespective of losses in the wider market.

It has been a trying time for the entire cryptocurrency market as the incessant rangebound price action continues to exhaust the bulls in lower rallies. Well, maybe not for the entire market. Decentralized exchange [DEX] volumes have been roaring despite market-wide rout, thanks to DeFi which continues to astonish with billions of dollars entering this new economy.

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DEX volumes see explosive growth in Q2; increases by 117x YoY 5

According to the latest report by Messari, DEX volume has not just increased a great deal in the second quarter of the year but has also outperformed the first quarter despite Bitcoin slashing half of its gains. As a matter of fact, DEX volumes in Q2 jumped to $405 billion, an increase of 117x year-over-year and an 83% increase since Q1 2021. To put things into perspective, May alone witnessed more than half the volume in the quarter.

Since then, the figures have halved. DEX volume in the month of June plummeted all the way to $95 billion. Despite the fall, June was still the third-highest all-time.

Race for the biggest DEX

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DEX volumes see explosive growth in Q2; increases by 117x YoY 6

Over the past several months, many decentralized exchanges have emerged. But Uniswap still takes the cake away. Its dominance over the rest of the market has reached a record-breaking 54% share of weekly volume, the platform’s highest level since November 2020. While its Binance Smart Chain-based PancakeSwap witnessed a dramatic spin as well with many speculating that it could soon flip Uniswap, the hype fizzled out with the launch of the latter’s V3.

Polygon plays its part

Polygon had humble beginnings. But today, it is a leading second-layer solution based on Ethereum. This rise to prominence has been crucial in devouring Binance Smart Chain’s [BSC] share of decentralized exchange volumes. Messari’s report also stated,

“As the party shifted towards Polygon, with its new set of tokens to speculate on and farms to harvest, BSC was squeezed out of the picture. The activity provided a great glimpse into the developing liquidity wars between blockchains, showing that when token incentives are the primary reason why capital enters a blockchain ecosystem, it will also be the primary reason capital leaves when incentives fall or incentives are more attractive elsewhere.”

Uniswap becomes the first DEX to surpass $0.3 Trillion in trading

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Uniswap has raked in some eye-popping numbers over the years. This week, it went on to become the first decentralized exchange [DEX] to blast past $0.3 billion in cumulative volume as per the latest chart on Dune Analytics.

As the appeal of DEXs gained traction, the platform was not only observed to be gobbling up the market share of the entire decentralized finance [DeFi] space but has also given stiff competition to its centralized peers.

Exactly, a year before, the Ethereum-based DEX recorded a volume of $1 billion. Meaning, over the past year, as the DeFi sector exploded, Uniswap’s volume grew by almost 100%.

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Uniswap becomes the first DEX to surpass $0.3 Trillion in trading 8

Uniswap V3

Despite several clones, Uniswap has maintained its dominance in the DeFi sector. The release of its third iteration in May this year has only strengthened its position. V3 is touted as a critical milestone for the ecosystem since it merges the concept of limit order books from traditional exchanges into the automated market maker [AMM], this bringing in higher levels of efficiency, flexibility, and liquidity into space.

Following the v3 launch, Uniswap went on to become the second most popular DEX on the Ethereum network and was found to be right behind the previous version v2 by trading volume. Meanwhile, it has dwarfed its rivals such as SushiSwap and Ox while facilitating significantly lower gas fees while offering greater capital efficiency for its users.

Lauding the growth and the latest version, Hayden Adams, the founder of platform, stated,

“Capital efficiency in action: The Uniswap v3 USDC/ETH 0.05% fee tier pool is doing $258m volume on just $48m TVL. On its own this pool would be the #2 DEX, with higher volume than other AMMs with billions in TVL.”

While v3 has not been able to replace its previous iteration, many analysts in the DeFi space believes that the latest one could potentially witness an increased usage by liquidity providers and retail users considering its enhanced functionality.

DeFi’s TVL Surpasses $60 Billion As Institutional Interest Surges

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DeFi mania might have subsided, but the influx of capital into the ecosystem has not. Along with their centralized counterparts, these decentralized platforms are slowly becoming essential in attracting attention to many promising projects. It is needless to say that the market has grown by leaps. In fact, DeFi saw an astonishing increase in terms of the value locked by more than 50x in the past 12 months alone.

In yet another development, the TVL [USD] across various decentralized finance projects has surpassed $60 billion on the 16th of April. This was according to the latest chart published by DeFi Pulse.

The figure took a plunge a few times in between, especially in the first week of this month, but has made a strong recovery this week and was now found to be hovering quite close to its peak. Amidst the chaos of the ongoing bull run, institutional entries, the DeFi ecosystem has been quietly flourishing to levels never seen before.

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DeFi's TVL Surpasses $60 Billion As Institutional Interest Surges 11

Diving Deep Into DeFi

To put things into perspective, USD denominated volumes for decentralized exchanges [DEX] have increased by 65 times what they were this time last year. It was also found that the trade volume on these DEXs, denominated in USD, has risen more than 50 times what it was last year.

With this, the global crypto market cap has also appreciated over 10x since then. Decentralized finance’s adjusted growth rate was, however, down from 10x between the years 2019 and 2020. This was revealed by Bison Trail’s Protocol Specialist, Elias Simos who tweed that “DeFi is roaring back”.

Talking about the rise of the sector, Simos went on to add,

“If you told me in April 2020 that DeFi would be posting these kinds of numbers in a year, I would have told you maybe 2023. Yes, reflexivity plays a huge part in it all. But the growth rates are persistently high when you look at pockets that are somewhat insulated from it.”

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DeFi's TVL Surpasses $60 Billion As Institutional Interest Surges 12

The DeFi marketplaces are constantly shifting and evolving. On further gauging the space, it was that the space is anticipating yet another bull season with major asset management funds and high-street financial institutions are now getting involved. The launch of DeFi ETFs demonstrated the increasing interest among high-value clients, corporates and institutions.

Uniswap Calls Massive Trade Volumes ‘Not Real’; Delta Hits Back

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Uniswap’s phenomenal growth over the short span of time has been lauded by market players and DeFi experts alike. It has emerged as one of the world’s largest decentralized exchange [DEX] sweeping significant volume in the market. However, the trading volume recorded on the 30th March on Uniswap was much higher than normal.

So what exactly happened on Uniswap?

It was DeFi protocol, Delta Financial’s native token, DELTA that was responsible for the brief and fake volumes on Uniswap. The token recorded a trading volume of more than $6.13 billion, meaning, it contributed to roughly 85% of the total volume on the DEX even as the liquidity stood at a little more than $16 million.

Delta is a newbie in the world of DeFi and identifies itself as on-chain options layer which uses a combination of liquidity standards to minimize premiums and provide competitive options price. In short, it essentially aims to solve the problem of expensive and volatile options trading especially due to lack of liquidity.

The large trading volume figures were due to Delta’s liquidity rebasing system. This is essentially an algorithmic mechanism of increasing the price to mint tokens over time. While this seemed similar to that of wash trading, since it requires swapping tokens back and forth in order to trigger high volume and price of a token, the inventor of Uniswap Protocol, Hayden Adams, clarified that while it is not wash trading, it also does not represent “real” volume either.

He also went on to say that the figures will soon be considered untracked volume on Uniswap.

Adams also stated that the current Delta stats will not influence Uniswap’s global trading volume and added that Delta’s strange protocols are the reasons behind the exploding figures.

Delta Financial has hit back with the following tweet:

“All DELTA data is completely frozen, as if trading is not happening at all. To top it off an engineer wrote ‘Scammy Token’ in the PR. Meanwhile, the volume is still misreported on all other tokens.”

Uniswap Reigns As Collective DEX Liquidity Soars To $10 Billion

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Decentralized exchange or DEXs are growing like never before. While Uniswap remained the undisputed leader.

The world of decentralized finance [DeFi] has consistently proliferated in prominence over the past year owing to a large part to the strong foundations established by decentralized exchanges [DEX]. These platforms have achieved a critical milestone. In the month of February, the collective DEX liquidity raked in a fresh high of a whopping $10 billion.

This was revealed by Researcher Rahul Rai on Messari’s latest edition. The Co-founder and Partner of Gamma Capital revealed that DEXs have surged to $72 billion in volume this February. Despite the rising numbers, automated market makers or AMMs have their own fair share of problems such as impermanent loss [IL], capital efficiency, slippage, gas costs, speed, and multi-token exposure that have caused impediments.

Nevertheless, over the last 24-hours alone, DEX volume was found to be at $1.56 billion. In addition, the figure was up by 18%.

DEX Market Share

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Uniswap Reigns As Collective DEX Liquidity Soars To $10 Billion 14

Uniswap remains unbeaten as it accrued more than half of the total liquidity locked up in decentralized exchanges with a total value locked [TVL] of $5.4 billion. Despite its humble beginnings, Uniswap comprises an astonishing 63% of the total DEX volume. It currently accommodated approximately $6.5 billion worth of weekly trade.

TWJ had previously reported that Uniswap held a market share of 48% in January. According to the charts compiled by Dune Analytics, the dominance over the Ethereum-powered decentralized exchange realm was found to have been growing at a rapid pace

Following its trail was its controversial clone platform, SushiSwap whose market share was found to be a little over 14% with a volume of $1.55 billion.

Number of traders on Uniswap stood at 190,873 while that of SushiSwap stood at 10,698, at the time of writing.

In terms of market share, Curve, in the third spot, and 0x Native, in the fourth, were the next in line with a market share of 6.6%, and 5.3%, and weekly trade volume of $686 million and $552 million respectively.