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.

Trader bribes way to $7 million profit on SatoshiVM token launch

A crypto trader used a Banana Gun sniping tool to make a $6.77 million profit within three hours of the launch of the SatoshiVM (SAVM) token. The tool helped the trader acquire the token before the launch, which they later sold at an inflated price after the official launch. The trading bot has remained controversial since its release, with several cases of funds mysteriously vanishing post-sniping.

While a Banana Gun spokesperson told Cointelegraph that it is not an issue with the bot, some token contracts have functions where the contract deployer can move funds out of wallets. In one case, the tokens never moved to the buyer’s wallets due to a malicious contract.

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Solana stablecoin transfer volume hits record monthly high of $300 billion

The transfer volume of stablecoins on the layer-1 Solana blockchain hit a new record in January, exceeding $300 billion. Solana’s stablecoin market share is currently almost 32%, a massive increase from the 1.2% share it had a year ago.

Stablecoin activity on Solana started picking up in October 2023 and has steadily increased by 650%. Crypto data analytic platform Artemis attributed the growth to USD Coin ( USDC ) transfer volumes on the blockchain.

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Dogecoin hits seven-day high as “XPayments” account gains 100,000 followers in a day

Arguably the most popular memecoin, Dogecoin ( DOGE ), hit a weekly high following the creation of the new “XPayments” account on social media platform X, which clocked over 100,000 followers in a short period of time.

While an official announcement about payment functions is yet to be made, many crypto traders on X strongly believe that DOGE could make part of the offering due to its occasional mention by the site’s owner, Elon Musk . Musk previously allowed DOGE payments on Tesla’s merchandise store and changed Twitter’s logo to Dogecoin’s shortly after he took over the platform in April 2023, which caused a 22% spike in DOGE’s price.

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Radiant Capital begins debt repayment after $4.5 million flash loan exploit

Cross-chain lending blockchain Radiant Capital commenced the process of repaying the $4.5 million “bad” debt caused by a flash loan exploit in early January 2024. The repayment was conducted in accordance with the RFP-27 proposal, which passed on Jan. 8. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of users voted to repay the bad debt using existing funds from the Radiant DAO treasury and operating expenditures. Radiant lost 1.3% of its total value locked due to the exploit.

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MailerLite confirms hack that led to $3.3 million crypto-phishing email attacks

A coordinated crypto hack and phishing campaign was a direct result of hackers gaining access to MailerLite’s services. The hacker made into the accounts of large Web3 companies to carry out phishing email scams that drained an estimated $3.3 million from subscribers. MailerLite confirmed that the hackers accessed 117 accounts but only exploited a small number to launch phishing campaigns.

The service provider warned that its clients’ and subscribers’ data — including full names, email addresses and personal information uploaded to MailerLite — were affected.

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DeFi market overview

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that DeFi’s top 100 tokens by market capitalization witnessed a bullish comeback this week. The total value locked into DeFi protocols remained above $71.6 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.