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

Despite claims by Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson that the DeFi room was now “ready,” it was rival Vitalik Buterin who stole the headlines with a Time Magazine feature this week.

What you’re about to read is a smaller version of this newsletter, designed for brevity. For a full version of last week’s DeFi developments – which were released much faster than Cardano’s smart contracts – submit your email below.

Buterin’s time to shine

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin was recognized this week for his outstanding contribution to growing the Ethereum network to a capital market of over 420 billion.

Nominated by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Buterin joins the venerable innovator category alongside vaccine pioneer Barney Graham, AI entrepreneur Sara Menker, and Tesla and SpaceX giant Elon Musk – who is also a notorious coin seller .

Praising Buterin’s ingenuity on his profile, Ohanian said:

“Nobody can imagine all the possible uses of Ethereum, but it takes a person’s idea to get started. Since then, a new world has opened up and created new ways to use blockchain technology. “

Back in April, the magazine’s 2.3 million subscribers began accepting crypto payments for digital subscriptions in their 18-month partnership with Crypto.com after demand for the account feature skyrocketed.

crossing

After years of careful consideration about implementing smart contract functions on its platform, Cardano finally announced the success of the Alonzo hard fork this week, stating:

“This is where the real mission begins when we – as a community – begin to realize the vision we have all worked towards for so long. Build a decentralized system that expands the identity and economic opportunities for everyone and everywhere. “

What began as a rival to Ethereum four years ago has received a lot of criticism for its “endless peer-reviewed research, bumpy DApp launch, and perceived lack of innovation in smart contracts.”

It remains to be seen whether Alonzo can revive his ambition to conquer the biggest players in this market or whether it falls short of expectations.

Carbon Conscious NFT

Layer-2 NFT Protocol Immutable raised $ 60 million this week from companies like Sam Bankman-Frieds Alameda Research and Gary Vaynerchuk’s VaynerFund to scale its native NFT game projects.

The protocol offers 9,000 transactions per second for ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens, no gas fees, near-instant transactions, and greater scalability through StarkWare’s use of zk rollup.

In addition, Immutable also expressed its passion for maintaining carbon neutrality of all NFT assets, marketplaces and games introduced on its platform through the implementation of zero-knowledge evidence, knowledge and purchasing carbon credits.

Token demonstration

Analytical data shows that the total value of DeFi banned is up 6% for the week to $ 125.3 billion – and has partially recovered from the steep 10.2% decline seen last week.

The technical analysis performed on Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that the top 20 DeFi tokens by market capitalization are rarely active in the market. in the past seven days, with some challenges requiring key levels to be restored from the previous week.

Synthetix took the top spot in terms of uptrend gains, posting an impressive 25.5%. Curve ranks second at 22.9%, while sushi ranks third at 16.7%. Places 4 and 5 go to Aave and Thorchain with 11.6% and 7.8% respectively.

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Thanks for reading ours schedule to the biggest DeFi stories this week. Please visit us again next Friday for a range of new stories, insights, and hilarious headlines from this dynamically growing ecosystem.