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.
This week, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is preparing to launch his DeFi platform, which will likely include crypto lending and borrowing capabilities. The candidate is “embracing the future with crypto.”
In the broader crypto space, Uniswap CEO Hayden Adams denied allegations that he demanded money for DeFi protocol deployment through a decentralized governance vote on Uniswap.
Trump to launch World Liberty Financial crypto platform on Sept. 16
Trump’s World Liberty Financial crypto project will launch on Sept. 16, the former president and Republican presidential nominee announced.
In a Sept. 12 video posted on X, Trump said he would go live on the platform to launch the project controlled by his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.
“We’re embracing the future with crypto and leaving the slow and outdated big banks behind,” he said.
World Liberty Financial announcement. Source: Donald Trump
Trump has previously made several cryptic posts concerning World Liberty Financial, vaguely positioning it as a DeFi platform for borrowing and lending.
Uniswap CEO denies allegations of charging for protocol deployments
Uniswap CEO Hayden Adams has refuted allegations on X that Uniswap has demanded money from decentralized finance protocols for deployments.
The CEO took to X on Sept. 12 and said that neither Uniswap Labs nor Uniswap Foundation charge for protocol deployments.
Source: Hayden Adams
Adams said protocol deployments happen through governance votes. He explained that for the Uniswap interface, the requirements for deployment on a new chain are based on the activity and effort required.
The reaction from the Uniswap CEO comes after X user Alexander alleged that Uniswap asked developers “to pony up $20M for an ineffective Uniswap deployment.”
Sonic blockchain reaches record 720ms finality in testnet phase
The Sonic blockchain has achieved a transaction finality of 720 milliseconds (ms) during its testnet.
In blockchain, finality is the assurance that a transaction is irreversible, which happens after it is added to a block on the ledger.
Sonic claims to be the world’s fastest Ethereum Virtual Machine chain, with a “true” 720ms finality, according to Andre Cronje, the creator of the Fantom Network and the chief technology officer of Sonic Labs.
After a transaction is executed, most blockchains require several additional blocks to make the transaction non-reversible. However, Sonic brings this transaction finality to just over 700ms.
Crypto platform Friend.tech sees token drop 26% following admin transfer
The native token of crypto social media platform Friend.tech has plummeted after its team transferred the admin and ownership of its smart contracts to Ethereum’s null address — permanently relinquishing any control over them.
The Sept. 8 transfer was made to “prevent any changes to their fees or functionality in the future,” Friend.tech said on X.
The platform’s FRIEND token dropped nearly 26% to $0.067 in the 24 hours after the transfer, according to CoinGecko.
Coinbase launches “cbBTC” wrapped Bitcoin digital asset
Crypto exchange Coinbase has launched its cbBTC token — a wrapped version of Bitcoin (BTC) — on the Ethereum network and its layer-2 scaling network, Base.
According to the Sept. 12 launch announcement, cbBTC is backed 1:1 with Bitcoin held by Coinbase and has no separate order book or trading pairs on the exchange’s platform.
Coinbase’s wrapped Bitcoin works by automatically minting cbBTC at a 1:1 ratio when a user sends Bitcoin to a Base or Ethereum address. The opposite is also true — when a user sends cbBTC to a Coinbase address, the tokenized Bitcoin will automatically convert to standard Bitcoin.
DeFi market overview
According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, the majority of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market cap ended the week in the green.
Of the top 100, the BinaryX (BNX) token rose over 31% as the week’s biggest gainer, followed by Solana-based memecoin Popcat Sol (POPCAT), which rose 28% during the past week.
Total value locked in DeFi. Source: DefiLlama
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.