Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph'southward decentralized finance (DeFi) newsletter.

The DeFi space was total of fundraising this week. Read on to discover where the venture capital firm led by Reddit's co-founder is making notable investments.

What you're about to read is the smaller version of this newsletter. For the full breakdown of DeFi's developments over the last week, subscribe to our newsletter below.

Well-nigh Protocol offers $800M fund to advance ecosystem

Smart contracts platform Near Protocol has announced the allotment of an $800-million global funding initiative aimed at fostering the development of its DeFi ecosystem, as well as incentivizing the network's developers in product creation.

In addition to the $350-1000000 grants program appear by Proximity Labs on Oct. 21, $250 million volition go to existing developers, $100 million was awarded to a collection of 20 startup projects, and the remaining $100 meg was allocated toward regional funds across Asia, Europe and the United States.

According to the project'southward press release, Near has already distributed $45 million of protocol infrastructure grants to more than 120 projects, including Textile, Liquality and CronCat, among others. These projects and others have contributed to the platform'due south ascent full value locked figure, which currently stands at $150 million.

FATF update guidance on DeFi and NFTs for showtime time in two years

Intergovernmental group the Financial Activeness Task Strength (FATF) has this calendar week released an updated guidance newspaper on virtual asset service providers, with an inherent focus on the DeFi and nonfungible token sectors.

Launched in 1989 in the wake of a G7 summit, the FATF was formed with the appetite to introduce policies and procedures around illicit coin laundering activities. The group comprises 37 countries, including the United states, People's republic of china and the Russian Federation, as well as 2 regional organizations, the European Committee and the Gulf Cooperation Quango.

Nether the new guidance, owners and operators who have "control of influence in the DeFi arrangements" could fall under FATF'south definition of a virtual asset service provider, thus subjecting them to the associated requirements.

Related: three reasons why Curve (CRV) price is trending toward a new 1-year high

QuickNode raises $35M in Series A funding round

Blockchain infrastructure platform QuickNode raised $35 one thousand thousand in its Series A funding circular this week, led by American investment business firm Tiger Global and participation from Seven Seven Six, Soma Uppercase, Arrington XRP Capital and Anthony Pompliano, among others.

This is the 2d round of funding for the Miami-based project, post-obit a seed round of $5.three million dorsum in March this yr.

Reddit co-founder Alex Ohanian — who has participated in both fundraises via his VC fund, ​​Seven Vii Six — shared his expectations for the platform'south growth:

"We're excited to exist a firsthand witness to QuickNode's rapid growth, enabling more than individuals and businesses to easily adopt blockchain technology. QuickNode is even so another example of Miami Tech excellence."

Immunefi raises $5.5M to advance DeFi security offering

DeFi security firm Immunefi announced a $five.v-one thousand thousand funding circular this week from xi venture capital firms, including Blueprint Forest, Electric Capital letter, Framework Ventures and Bitscale Capital, forth with a serial of individual individuals.

Immunefi services some of the leading DeFi protocols in the market, such every bit Synthetix, Chainlink, SushiSwap and PancakeSwap, protecting in excess of $50 billion in value assets to date, and it has paid out $vii.v million in bug bounties since inception.

The house will utilise the upper-case letter to accelerate its burgeoning security service, ensure the protection of avails in smart contract protocols, and grant fiscal incentives in the grade of bug bounty programs to philanthropic digital hackers.

Mitchell Amador, founder and CEO of Immunefi, spoke on the importance of offering DeFi protective measures:

"DeFi is unique because vulnerabilities in code represent a possibility of a directly loss of users' money. Issues compensation programs are open invitations to security researchers to find those vulnerabilities in exchange for a reward and take proved i of the most effective means to bargain with disquisitional security holes."

Immunefi has recently offered its support in the discovery of potential vulnerabilities in Belt Finance and Polygon'due south double-spend issues, facilitating the process between white lid hackers and the respective projects.

Token performances

Analytical information reveals that DeFi'south total value locked has increased 5.i% across the calendar week to a figure of $160.59 billion.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows DeFi'southward pinnacle 100 tokens by market capitalization considerably well across the concluding 7 days.

Secret (SCRT) secured the podium'south top spot with an impressive 116.ix%. Curve DAO Token (Bend) came in second with threescore.96%, while Fantom (FTM) came third with 33.19%. Quaternary and fifth identify were claimed by THORChain (THOR) and Basic Attention Token (BAT) with 25.66% and 9.8%, respectively.

Analysis and hot topics from the concluding week:

  • Fright of the unknown: A tale of the SEC'due south crusade against synthetics
  • Play-to-earn games are ushering in the next generation of platforms
  • Putting a cap on decentralization: How regulation impacts DeFi adoption

Thanks for reading our summary of this week's almost impactful DeFi developments. Join us once more next Friday for more stories, insights and education in this dynamically advancing infinite.