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.

The past week in DeFi was dominated by developments in the popular decentralized exchange platform Uniswap after it announced a 0.15% swap fee starting on Oct. 17, and an open-source hook on Uniswap generated controversy due to Know Your Customer (KYC) checks.

In other major DeFi developments, Platypus Finance managed to recover 90% of the funds it lost to an Oct. 12 exploit while the layer-2 zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) “Scroll” launched its mainnet.

The top 100 DeFi tokens by market capitalization had a bullish week thanks to Friday momentum in the market, with a majority of the tokens trading in green and recording double-digit gains on the weekly charts. However, the price action didn’t reflect on the total value locked (TVL), which fell by nearly $2 billion.

Ethereum LSDFi sector grew nearly 60x since January in post-Shapella surge: CoinGecko

The Ethereum liquid staking derivatives finance (LSDFi) ecosystem has seen a surge in growth this year as Ether (ETH) holders chose to stake rather than liquidate.

Despite ETH withdrawals being enabled with the Ethereum Shapella upgrade in April 2023, an Oct. 16 LSDFi report from crypto data aggregator CoinGecko said the sector has grown by 58.7x since January. By August 2023, LSD protocols accounted for 43.7% of the total 26.4 million ETH staked, with Lido having the lion’s share at almost a third of the total staked market.

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Ethereum layer-2 zkEVM “Scroll” confirms mainnet launch

Scroll, a new contender in the zkEVM space that works to scale the blockchain, has confirmed the launch of its mainnet.

The team behind Scroll announced the launch in an Oct. 17 post and added that existing applications and developer tool kits on Ethereum can now migrate to the new scaling solution. “Everything functions right out of the box,” the Scroll team said.

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Platypus Finance recovers 90% of assets lost in exploit

DeFi protocol Platypus Finance said it had recovered 90% of assets stolen in a security breach last week.

According to the Oct. 17 announcement, the protocol’s net loss was limited to 18,000 Avalanche (AVAX) worth $167,400 at the time. As the hacker voluntarily returned the funds, Platypus Finance stated it “will guarantee that no legal action will be pursued.” It also hinted that withdrawal information regarding users’ assets will soon be posted.

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Uniswap charges 0.15% swap fees beginning Oct. 17

Decentralized exchange Uniswap began charging a 0.15% swap fee on certain tokens in its web application and wallet on Oct. 17.

According to a post by Uniswap founder Hayden Adams, the affected tokens are ETH, USD Coin (USDC), Wrapped Ether (wETH), Tether (USDT), Dai (DAI), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Angle Protocol’s agEUR, Gemini Dollar (GUSD), Liquidity USD (LUSD), Euro Coin (EUROC) and StraitsX Singapore Dollar (XSGD). Shortly after publication, a spokesperson for Uniswap reached out to Cointelegraph, stating that “both the input and output token need to be on the list for the fee to apply.”

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KYC hook for Uniswap v4 stirs community controversy

A new hook available on an open-source directory for Uniswap v4 hooks is sparking controversy within the crypto community. The hook enables users to be checked for KYC before they can trade in token pools.

Criticizing the hook, a user on X (formerly Twitter) noted that the hook opens up the possibility of decentralized finance protocols being whitelisted by regulators.

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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 the green on weekly charts. However, the total value locked into DeFi protocols dropped to $43.81 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.