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

In a week where Rari Capital achieved the $1billion TVL milestone, read on to find why OlympusDAO is yielding four-figure sums on its most popular protocol.

What you lot're about to read is a shorter, more succinct version of the newsletter. For a comprehensive summary of DeFi'south developments over the last week, subscribe below.

Celsius Network raises $400M to aggrandize institutional service

Cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius Network announced a $400 million equity fundraise this week led past Canadian pension fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) and disinterestedness firm WestCap, taking the company's valuation in excess of $three billion.

The firm has expressed intentions to utilize the funds in a two-fold strategy: enhance its institutional production and service offer, too every bit doubling the workforce to virtually 1,000 employees across the globe.

Celsius Network CEO Alex Mashinsky revealed to Cointelegraph the financial bear upon the platform is having on the lending sector:

"With more than $25 billion in assets and over $850 million in yield paid to over 1.ane million users, Celsius has distributed 10x more than yield for the crypto customs than any other lender."

This funding news coincides with enhanced political scrutiny for crypto lending platforms in the The states. In September this yr, Celsius encountered legislative resistance from the Texas State Securities Board and New Bailiwick of jersey Bureau of Securities, which threatened to end activeness due to the alleged selling of unregistered securities.

Despite this, Celsius has consistently maintained its innocence of wrongdoing and has been willing to communicate and cooperate with regulatory agencies.

Rari Capital smashes $1B in TVL

DeFi protocol Rari Capital surpassed $1 billion in total value locked (TVL) this week to reach an all-time high of $1.225 billion according to belittling data from ranking platform DeFi Pulse.

The eight-figure total marks a monumental rise from $500 one thousand thousand two weeks agone and just $100 one thousand thousand 3 months ago. Launched in July 2022, Rari provides an automatic yield optimizing strategy to participants in the DeFi space seeking to secure the highest possible return from their investment.

A number of its liquidity pools take garnered noticeable attention for their lucrative returns, such as the USDC deposits, which offer a 21.67% almanac per centum yield (APY), and the Dai pool, which offers 26.43% APY.

Despite these higher-than-average returns in comparing to the manufacture standard, it has been the OlympusDAO inside the Fuse Protocol'south Tetranode's Locker that has truly stolen the headlines over the past few months.

OlympusDAO is an algorithm-centric rebase model whereby token balances fluctuate over time depending on changes in the token price and the supply in apportionment. As of writing, the OlympusDAO sOHM token is yielding a seismic 7,594% APY.

Northward America's surging DeFi volume

Monthly cryptocurrency transaction volume in the North American region expanded 1,000% over a one-year period from July 2022 to June 2022 by virtue of the flourishing DeFi sector according to information released this calendar week past analytics platform Chainalysis.

The annual Geography of Cryptocurrency Report revealed that monthly book peaked at $164 billion during May 2022 before descending to $100 billion in June. In addition, DeFi transactions equated to 37% of the region's total book at $276 billion.

David Gogel, growth lead at decentralized derivatives exchange dYdX, commented on the findings that the biggest volume recorded was driven by retail consumers:

"Correct now, DeFi is targeted towards crypto insiders. Information technology's people who take been in the industry for a while and have enough funds to experiment with new assets."

Token performances

Analytical information reveals that DeFi'south total value locked has increased 8.xi% across the week to a figure of $146.89 billion.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that DeFi'south summit 100 tokens by marketplace capitalization performed varied across the last 7 days.

Perpetual Protocol (PERP) secured the podium's summit spot with a respectable 29.7%. RenBTC (renBTC) came in second with 6.03%, while Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) came a close 3rd with 6.00%.

Analysis and deep dives from the last week:

  • DeFi picks up the pace as alternating blockchains and NFTs boom
  • Do yous still compare Bitcoin to the tulip bubble? Stop!
  • Survivorship bias has led to an imbalance in the crypto ecosystem

Thanks for reading our summary of this calendar week's virtually impactful DeFi developments. Join us once again next Friday for more stories, insights and educational activity in this dynamically advancing space.