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.

Hedera network approves $408 million of HBAR for ecosystem growth

The Hedera Global Governing Council, which oversees the Hedera network, has approved allocating 4.86 billion of the network’s native token, Hedera ( HBAR ), worth roughly $408 million, for further development and advanced decentralized governance.

In a blog post, the council said the lion’s share of the funds, 4.248 billion HBAR, will be directed toward existing initiatives, including the HBAR Foundation, the Hashgraph Association and the DLT Science Foundation.

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Fed rate cuts could be a boon for DeFi and stablecoins — Fidelity

An anticipated interest rate cut by the United States Federal Reserve could renew major institutional interest in DeFi and stablecoins as long as the infrastructure develops further in 2024, says asset manager Fidelity.

In its 2024 Digital Assets Look Ahead report released Jan. 13, Fidelity said while it expected institutions to dive into DeFi for its yields in 2023, this didn’t end up happening as Fed rate hikes pushed them to move into traditional fixed-income products, which are “perceived to be safer.”

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Avalanche inscriptions draw record user interest amid BRC-20 hype

Following the successful launch of Bitcoin Ordinals and inscription tokens (BRC-20), inscriptions on the Avalanche blockchain, or ASC-20 tokens, have drawn investor interest, too.

On Jan. 15, a Chinese-language Twitter Space hosted by cryptocurrency exchange Bitget on Avalanche inscription token Avascriptions (AVAV) drew more than 585,000 listeners. During the session, Ori, chief operating officer of the AVAV project, said that the project’s roadmap would closely follow a similar footstep as the development of BRC-20 assets, pointing out that the total number of inscriptions on the Avalanche blockchain has surpassed 100 million since its inception in June 2023.

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Wormhole bridge reclaims $1 billion in total value locked

Cross-chain protocol Wormhole’s total value locked (TVL) has recovered to $1 billion, nearly two years after the onset of the cryptocurrency bear market in May 2022.

At the time of publication, the protocol’s TVL shows a balance of $1.02 billion, with Ether ( ETH ), Fantom ( FTM) and Solana’s SOL assets taking the top places at $675 million, $174 million and $96 million, respectively. Its TVL has increased by over 300% after falling to a low of $234 million at the beginning of the year. The protocol reached a peak TVL of $3.8 billion 16 months prior, shortly before the collapse of the Terra ecosystem and the onset of the crypto winter.

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Cosmos-powered dYdX claims top spot in DeFi, beats Uniswap in daily trading

DeFi protocol dYdX’s Cosmos-based market surpassed one of Uniswap’s markets as the largest decentralized exchange by 24-hour trading volume on Jan 18.

Data tracking platform CoinMarketCap showed that dYdX’s v4 version based on the interchain protocol Cosmos recorded a 24-hour trading volume of almost $757 million. The surge in trading volume for dYdX led it to surpass Uniswap v3’s Ethereum market, which recorded a volume of $608 million during the same period.

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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 bearish week, with most trading in red on the weekly charts. However, the total value locked into DeFi protocols remained above $65 billion.

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.