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Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi)<\/a> insights \u2014 a newsletter crafted to bring you the most significant developments from the past week.<\/p>\n A new analysis by investment management fund VanEck revealed that economic activity in the DeFi sector dropped 15.5% in August. Blockchain Capital, on the other hand, announced two new crypto-focused funds totaling $580 million.<\/p>\n Balancer protocol blamed its recent exploit on its DNS service provider, claiming that a vulnerability in the code allowed the exploiters to hijack the front end, and Chainlink and Arbitrum have teamed up on decentralized application (DApp) development on Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Arbitrum.<\/p>\n The top 100 DeFi tokens had a bearish week due to the market decline after the United States Federal Reserve\u2019s interest rate pause, with most tokens trading in the red. <\/p>\n The DeFi ecosystem suffered more setbacks in August as on-chain economic activity dwindled. According to an analysis from investment manager firm VanEck, exchange volume declined to $52.8 billion in August, 15.5% lower than in July. <\/p>\n The findings are based on VanEck\u2019s MarketVector Decentralized Finance Leaders Index, which tracks the performance of the largest and most liquid tokens on DeFi protocols.<\/p>\n Continue reading<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Venture capital group Blockchain Capital announced two new funds, totalling $580 million, for investment in infrastructure, gaming, DeFi, and consumer and social technologies.<\/p>\n The funds will operate as Blockchain Capital\u2019s sixth early-stage fund and its first \u201copportunity fund,\u201d with the latter serving as an inroad to companies that have already secured major funding elsewhere.<\/p>\n Continue reading<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Blockchain oracle network Chainlink has tapped into Ethereum layer-2 scaling protocol Arbitrum to drive cross-chain DApp development.<\/p>\n The two protocols announced the mainnet launch of the Chainlink Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) on Arbitrum One on Sept. 21, giving developers access to Chainlink\u2019s solution, which taps into Arbitrum\u2019s high-throughput, low-cost scaling.<\/p>\n Continue reading<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n The team behind Balancer, an Ethereum-based automated market maker, believes a social engineering attack on its DNS service provider led to its website\u2019s front end being compromised on Sept. 19, leading to an estimated $238,000 in crypto stolen<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter investigation, it is clear that this was a social engineering attack on EuroDNS, the domain registrar used for .fi TLDs,\u201d the firm explained in a Sept. 20 X (formerly Twitter) post. Approximately eight hours after the first warning of the attack, Balancer said its decentralized autonomous organization was actively addressing the DNS attack and was working to recover the Balancer UI.<\/p>\n Continue reading<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n None Trading, a trading tool for cryptocurrencies and nonfungible tokens built on Discord, has shut down due to a \u201ccritical exploit\u201d within its infrastructure.<\/p>\n In a Sept. 20 announcement, None Trading said it had \u201clost a significant amount of funding\u201d as well as \u201cteam tokens\u201d crucial for its operations. \u201cAlongside this, we have lost three core team members who are required to keep the project running healthily. This unfortunate incident has put us in a financial and infrastructural position that makes it simply impossible to continue running the company effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n Continue reading<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\nDeFi economic activity drops 15% in August \u2014VanEck<\/h2>\n
Blockchain Capital closes funds totaling $580 million for investments in crypto gaming, DeFi<\/h2>\n
Chainlink hits Ethereum layer-2 Arbitrum for cross-chain DApp development<\/h2>\n
Balancer blames \u201csocial engineering attack\u201d on DNS provider for website hijack<\/h2>\n
Discord crypto trading bot shuts down after \u201ccritical exploit\u201d<\/h2>\n
DeFi market overview<\/h2>\n