Vyper Vulnerability Exposes DeFi Protocols to Hacks, Coinbase Witnesses Memecoin Mania

Market Update Traditional markets are flat on July's final trading day, ahead of a busy week of earnings. While $SPX and $QQQ are flat since open, they are poised for a fifth consecutive month of rises - the longest winning streak for each index since 2021. The jobs report due Friday is also expected to show ongoing strength in the labor market (200k July consensus vs 209k in June). $BTC and $ETH have declined by 0.5% and 1.1% in the past 24H, maintaining their ~$29k and ~$1.9k levels since bitcoin broke down from its $30k range a week ago. Of the Top 100, $MKR and $UNI have appreciated by 22% and 13%, respectively. Despite the exploits across DeFi protocols expanded on below, $MKR and $UNI's resurgence have spurred some life in DeFi 1.0 tokens, especially given the former's incorporation of real-world assets in its treasury.DeFi protocols experienced significant stress after a critical vulnerability was identified in their compilers. The vulnerability was traced back to Vyper, a programming language for Ethereum smart contracts. Numerous liquidity pools on Curve Finance protocol that used Vyper were exploited due to reentrancy attacks. Other DeFi projects impacted by this event include Alchemix ($13.6m), JPEGd ($11.4m), Metronome ($1.6m), and Curve DAO ($47m). The value of Cu