Starknet’s Airdrop Dilemma and High ETH Gas Fees

Welcome to the latest edition of Finance Redefined, a newsletter that brings you the most important updates in the world of decentralized finance (DeFi) every week. In the last week, we saw the excitement around the Starknet airdrop, but some users were disappointed with the amount they received. Uniswap’s founder also warned about a scam involving Ethereum Name Service domains. Ethereum gas fees reached their highest level in 8 months due to the ERC-404 craze, and EigenLayer emerged as the fourth-largest restaking protocol with $7 billion in total value locked (TVL). Let’s dive into these developments further.

Airdrop hunters seemed to dominate the Starknet airdrop. According to a report by Yearn.finance developer Banteg, nearly 1,854 individuals changed their account details after a blockchain snapshot was taken for the airdrop. The Starknet Foundation plans to distribute 700 million STRK tokens to eligible wallet addresses, with 50% going to protocol users.

EigenLayer, a popular restaking protocol, has seen significant growth recently. It has overtaken JustLend to become the fourth-largest protocol by TVL, reaching $6.99 billion. In the past week, EigenLayer’s TVL has increased by 5.73% and over the past month, it has grown by an impressive 307%.

Uniswap founder Hayden Adams raised awareness about a scam involving Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domains. Scammers have been impersonating Adams’ wallet address by registering it as an ENS wallet with a .eth extension. This has caused confusion as users searching for his address would see an unrelated ENS match as the top result.

Gas fees on the Ethereum network hit an eight-month high due to the ERC-404 craze. The surge in interest for this unofficial experimental token standard led to average peak gas prices of 70 gwei ($60 for a standard transaction) on February 9. Some transaction costs even reached as high as 377 gwei, a level not seen since May 2023.

In the world of DeFi tokens, the top 100 tokens had a bullish week, with many trading in the green on the weekly charts. Total value locked in DeFi protocols surpassed $70 billion for the first time in over a year, indicating strong growth and interest in the DeFi space.

That wraps up our summary of the most significant DeFi developments from the past week. Join us again next Friday for more insights and updates on this rapidly evolving industry.