With over $300 million in damages, September has emerged as the most lucrative month for cryptocurrency attacks in decentralised finance (DeFi) in 2023. The Mixin Network incident on September 23, when the Hong Kong-based decentralised cross-chain transfer protocol lost $200 million owing to a compromise of its cloud service provider, was the largest contributor to the month’s totals, according to blockchain security firm CertiK.
Other DeFi news includes Yield Protocol’s announcement that it will close before the end of the year due to a lack of commercial demand and external regulatory pressures. After the December 2023 series expires, which is scheduled to mature on December 29, the DeFi lending protocol will no longer be in use.
Jayant Kanani, a co-founder of Polygon, has left his day-to-day responsibilities at the company and said that he will now contribute from the sidelines. In 2017, Kanani co-founded the Matic network, which eventually changed its name to Polygon. He intends to continue contributing to Polygon while concentrating on new activities.
An editorial promoting decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) as a ground-breaking new technique for academics working in underfunded scientific fields to build communities around their work and raise money that might not otherwise be available was recently published in the science magazine Nature. A project’s organisation, funding, feedback, and pipeline from discovery to product/industry can all be managed by the same decentralised governing body in a DAO-based research scheme.
On October 3, the zero-knowledge proof (ZK-proof)-based noncustodial crypto debit card service W-Pay was launched by cryptocurrency payment service provider Wirex. The new decentralised approach from Wirex, which is based on Polygon’s Chain Development Kit and uses zero-knowledge technology, promises to be more scalable and secure.