Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph's decentralized finance newsletter.

A week packed with positive advancements in the DeFi space including 9-figure fund raises, successful production launches and soaring token prices was somewhat tarnished by the news of 2 astringent security exploits. Read on to go the full scope of developments across the week.

What you're well-nigh to read is the smaller version of this newsletter designed for brevity. For the full version of DeFi's developments over the last week, driblet your email below.

Borderless Majuscule launches $500M fund to back up Algorand ecosystem

Capital venture firm Borderless Majuscule announced the launch of ALGO Fund II this week, a $500-one thousand thousand initiative assembled to support the creation of digital asset projects on the Algorand blockchain.

Appear via a web log mail by the Algorand Foundation, the capital will specifically focus on decentralized applications, niche services of liquidity mining, lending, borrowing and yield farming, equally well every bit nonfungible tokens.

Algorand is an open-source decentralized blockchain virtually regarded for its speed of efficiency, security and status as a potential competitor to Ethereum's dominance.

Incepted in November 2022, Borderless Uppercase has already invested in over 100 blockchain-related projects via its $400-million ALGO Fund I, including Tinyman, Yieldly, Opulous and Flare Network, among others, also as established successful accelerator programs across iii major industrial continents.

Iota prepares to launch decentralized smart contract platform

Distributed ledger platform Iota announced the launch of decentralized layer-i smart contract network Assembly and accompanying ASMB token this calendar week.

Associates will seek to drive adoption of smart contract services and foster an environment for creators, developers and community advocates that facilitates the expansion of the Iota ecosystem into Spider web 3.0 sectors, including the metaverse.

Expected to launch in 2022, Assembly will function in parallel to Iota and employ the network's existing infrastructure, nearly notably the directed acyclic graph structure, to operate as an interoperable, cocky-sovereign bridge that reaps the benefits of scalability and security, amidst others.

Decentralized awarding developers will be able to create their own smart contract chains and set private parameters for low-cost execution fees, a function that will also enable service providers to consequence on-chain stablecoin assets to incentivize validators.

In a recent Twitter mail service, Iota revealed that stakers can earn rewards in both Shimmer (SMR) and ASMB tokens upon launch of the networks, stating that "for every 1 MIOTA staked, users receive 1 $SMR and 4 microASMB every 10 seconds, for 90 days, in one case the staking has started."

DeFi projects MonoX and BadgerDAO exploited for $150M

This calendar week, decentralized projects MonoX and BadgerDAO were the victims of private sophisticated protocol hacks that resulted in over $150 million in asset losses.

The MonoX platform suffered a unmarried cyberattack on Tuesda when a bug in the smart contract's swap contract enabled manual cost manipulation of MONO tokens, an asset that had only just been listed on the Huobi commutation in the days prior.

After boosting the MONO token to what the squad described as "sky-high" levels, the hackers exchanged the funds into other assets on the platform and secured lucrative profits.

In the days following the breach, the MonoX team confirmed that losses totaled effectually $31 million, alongside the publication of a remorseful statement, the essence of which stated:

"Days similar yesterday are horrible, there is no sugar coating the harsh reality of a contract being exploited and people losing coin. Our supporters put their faith in a new projection like us, and yesterday we permit them downward."

Similarly, simply with no affiliation to the other, BadgerDAO was also the victim of a financial exploitation this week. Although concerns were raised by community members on Discord regarding suspicious increases in allowance in the days preceding, admins didn't perceive this to be a threat as highlighted in this tweet from 0xMoves.

According to blockchain analytics service PeckShield, losses from the BadgerDAO accept amassed $120 million at the time of writing, including 2078.76 Bitcoin (BTC), thirty.27 Interest Bearing Bitcoin, and 151.32 Ether (ETH).

The Badger team has now responded by opening a full investigation into the events in addition to pausing smart contract activity until condom on the protocol is once again stabilized.

Related: Recounting 2022's biggest DeFi hacking incidents

Token performances

Analytical data reveals that DeFi'due south total value locked has increased 8.01% across the week to a figure of $159.5 billion.

Information from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView reveals DeFi'due south top 100 tokens past market capitalization performed reasonably well beyond the concluding vii days.

Terra (LUNA) soared to tape heights this calendar week thanks to gains of 66.85%. Uniswap (UNI) achieved a healthy 14.three%, while Tezos (XTZ) posted an increase of 12.70%. The fourth and fifth spots this week were claimed by Chainlink (LINK) and Haven Network (ROSE) with 8.i% and 8% gains, respectively.

Assay and hot topics from the final week:

  • DeFi TVL hits new highs while metaverse tokens show signs of exhaustion
  • SHIB, RGT and AMPL milk shake off Fed taper comments by notching double-digit gains
  • Polygon's expanding ecosystem backs MATIC's rise toward a new all-time high

Thanks for reading our summary of this calendar week's most impactful DeFi developments. Join u.s. again next Friday for more stories, insights and teaching in this dynamically advancing infinite.