Welcome to the latest edition of the Cointelegraph or DeFi Decentralized Financial Newsletter.

In a week that the bears returned to the crypto market, DeFi recruited an army of Lobsters to fight their feud.

As we ponder a potential battleground for the mammal and invertebrate war, feel free to scroll down and read our top tips for the most influential stories of the week.

What you are about to read is a shorter, more condensed version of the newsletter. For a full rundown of DeFi’s developments over the past week – faster than a blocked grocery order delivered to your inbox – sign up below.

Fishing for finance

Lobby Lobsters joined the growing list of animal-themed non-fungible token (NFT) projects this week, demonstrating the real power of community-oriented NFT campaigns that focus on promoting social welfare.

Each of the 10,000 Lobby Lobster NFTs was minted for 0.1 ether (then $ 390) and sold out within an hour, bringing in $ 4 million in sales.

The community-led NFT platform Universe, which launched the project, assures donors that all funds raised through the primary and secondary markets will be donated directly to an organization that represents DeFi’s interests on the political stage.

The company will advocate a regulatory environment that encourages growth and innovation in the industry, similar to the dot-com era of the 1990s for tech companies.

Lobby Lobsters’ concept arose from discussions surrounding the SEC investigation of the world’s largest decentralized exchange, Uniswap. and its impact on the broader market.

SOL survivor

A Solana-based farming simulation game called DeFi Land, which is designed to help players in the DeFi Marketplace, has successfully raised over $ 4 million this week.

The game encourages development through a play-for-money model where players can earn cryptographic income by completing in-game objectives and missions.

Brian Lee, Senior Executive at Alameda Research – one of the teams that invested in the platform – believes that gaming “connects two of the most exciting things that happen in cryptocurrency: Gaming: Gaming and DeFi”.

Bank short, DeFi long

Caitlin Long, CEO of regulated crypto bank Wyoming Avanti, defended DeFi this week by sharing her views on a New York Times publication that allegedly contains several accounting errors.

The article, titled “The Rapid Movement of Cryptocurrencies into the Alarming Banking System in Washington,” suggests that crypto derivative platforms offer highly leveraged products that threaten investor welfare and regulatory nuisance for supervisory authorities.

A proponent of regulation, Long, said, “Bad actors deserve to be challenged, but the article ignores the fact that there are legal compliance companies.”

Token price

Analytics data shows that DeFi’s Total Value Locked (TVL) is down 10.2% from last week to $ 118.21 billion – a decrease in line with the retreat of the entire market.

Technical data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView show that large DeFi tokens have underperformed in the past seven days, devouring the bullish momentum of the past few weeks and a few more.

SushiSwaps SUSHI was down 24% while Aave was down 22%. Meanwhile, Yearn.finance’s YFI is down 20% from the previous week, while Synthetix (SNX) is down 13%.

Despite these short-term declines, a recent report by Chainalysis called the Global DeFi Acceptance Index indicated that large institutional deals accounted for 60% of DeFi transaction volume for the entire quarter.2 2021 – a good sign of global adoption.

Thank you for reading our breakdown of this week’s biggest DeFi developments. Visit us on Friday next week to stay up to date on the latest topics and important developments in this fast growing area.