Starknet’s airdrop dilemma, ETH gas fees hit 8-month high: Finance Redefined

ETH gas fees hit an eight-month-high amid the ERC-404 token craze, while the Starknet network deals with an ongoing airdrop frenzy.

Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you the most significant developments from the past week.

Last week in DeFi witnessed the Starknet airdrop frenzy, with many users claiming to have received a bare minimum of the expected airdrop or none. Meanwhile, Uniswap’s founder warned against a new Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain scam.

Ethereum gas fees hit a new 8-month high amid the ERC-404 craze, while EigenLayer became the fourth-largest restaking protocol with $7 billion in total value locked (TVL).

The top 100 DeFi tokens had another bullish week, with most of the tokens trading in the green, and TVL jumped to a new yearly high above $72 billion.

Starknet populated by airdrop hunters ahead of token launch — Report

Airdrop farmers may dominate a much-anticipated airdrop from Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Starknet.

According to a Feb. 15 report by Yearn.finance developer Banteg, 1,854 individuals allegedly renamed or deleted their accounts after a blockchain snapshot was taken for the basis of the Starknet airdrop on Feb. 19. The Starknet Foundation will allocate 700 million STRK tokens out of 1.8 billion to 1.3 million eligible wallet addresses on Feb. 20, with 50% of the tokens going to protocol users.

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EigenLayer becomes fourth-largest restaking protocol, nears $7 billion TVL

Ethereum restaking protocol EigenLayer has become the fourth-largest protocol by TVL, surpassing cryptocurrency lending protocol JustLend.

EigenLayer’s TVL rose 5.73% to $6.99 billion on Feb. 15. The restaking protocol’s TVL is up 47.95% in the past seven days and 307% over the past month, according to data from DefiLlama.

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Uniswap founder warns community about ENS wallet impersonation scam

Hayden Adams, the founder of the decentralized exchange Uniswap, has warned the crypto community about a scam using wallet addresses as Ethereum Name Service domains.

On Feb. 14, Adams shared a warning on X about scammers impersonating his Ether (ETH) wallet. The executive explained that the scammers copied and registered his wallet address as an ENS wallet with .eth. Furthermore, the Uniswap founder said pasting his wallet address in some user interfaces would show an ENS match unrelated to his address as the top search result.

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Ethereum gas fees hit eight-month high amid ERC-404 craze

Ethereum network gas fees reached an eight-month high amid a frenzy of interest for a new, unofficial experimental token standard dubbed ERC-404.

Ethereum network gas prices reached an average peak of 70 gwei ($60 for a standard transaction) on Feb. 9, with peak gas costs surging as high as 377 gwei — a level not since May 12, 2023.

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DeFi market overview

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that DeFi’s top 100 tokens by market capitalization had a bullish week, with most trading in the green on the weekly charts. The TVL in DeFi protocols breached $70 billion for the first time in over a year.

Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education regarding this dynamically advancing space.