<strong>Binance Invests in DeFi, QuickSwap Flash Loan Attack, Robinhood Lists AAVE</strong>

Binance Invests in DeFi 

Binance CEO, Changpeng CZ Zhao, announced that the largest cryptocurrency exchange is now heavily investing in DeFi. Currently, the cryptocurrency exchange has over 120 million users, and more than 350 cryptocurrencies available for trading. 

Binance has a $76 billion trading volume each day and is one of the few exchanges that maintains its strength and keeps hiring even in the face of severe market conditions.

Earlier, the Binance executive said the company plans to spend more than $1 billion on potential investments and acquisitions this year. The company also invested in Aptos and spent $200 million to invest in Forbes’ media company. Binance also plans to contribute $500 million to Elona Musk’s plan to buy Twitter.

QuickSwap Flash Loan Attack 

QuickSwap, a decentralized exchange, was attacked by hackers who made away with $220,000 in a flash loan exploit. The exchange closed down QuickSwap Lend as a result of the attack. It confirmed that only the Market XYZ lending market was affected and that users did not lose their funds. 

“QuickSwap Lend is closing. $220k was exploited in a flash loans attack due to a vulnerability with the Curve Oracle, which @marketxyz was using. Only the Market XYZ lending market was compromised. QuickSwap's contracts are unaffected,” posted QuickSwapDEX on Twitter. 

Flash loan exploits, which are frequent in DeFi, occur when a well-capitalized bad actor manipulates the price of an asset by taking out a big loan, then promptly sells the borrowed capital back to profit. PeckShield, a blockchain security firm, posted details of the exploit. 

Robinhood Lists AAVE

Robinhood, the investment and trading app, is adding Aave and Tezos to their list of cryptocurrencies. Users can now buy, sell and trade the tokens on the exchange platform.   

Aave is a decentralized lending protocol, while Tezos is a proof-of-stake blockchain network. 

They are the latest crypto assets to get listed on the trading app. Market capitalizations for each of their native tokens exceed $1 billion. The price of AAVE was up about 5% at the time of writing, but XTZ was unchanged.

Earlier this year, Robinhood announced it is launching a DeFi non-custodial wallet, which will operate as a standalone app with a user-friendly design. Robinhood will not charge fees. Robinhood plans to have the wallet available to all users across the globe by the end of 2022.