The past year was a turbulent one and the ongoing downturn in the crypto market has been evident. However, this did not stop venture capital (VC) firms from investing in the rapidly growing sector of Decentralized Finance (DeFi). A new report by RockawayX reveals that European-based DeFi startups saw a 120% increase in VC funding in 2022. This was a significant increase from 2021 when $534 million was invested altogether.

In other news, the saga of the hacker behind the exploit of the Euler Finance protocol continued in the headlines as the theft of $190 million worth of Ether (ETH) was one of the biggest news stories from the year. Fortunately, the hacker has returned a significant chunk of the stolen funds, with one of the single transfer totaling $88 million worth of ETH.

In a bid to take over the traditional financial industry, Citibank has proposed that tokenization of assets will be the next major development of the crypto space. In its “Money, Tokens and Games” March report Citibank has stated that the market could reach between $4 trillion and $5 trillion by 2030.

MakerDAO, the decentralized autonomous organization that governs the DAI stablecoin, has released a new constitution. The constitution is intended to formalize the already existing governance processes and is said to help prevent potential hostile actors from taking over the protocol. Recently, DeFi's total market value rose above $50 billion and the top most 100 tokens traded positively within the week.

Ultimately, these developments of this past year have shown that an uncertain market is not deterring investors from engaging in the DeFi market and leaving room for even more developments to be implemented within the space. Going forward, it will certainly be interesting to see the high number of innovative projects and the growth that DeFi will experience in the coming years.



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