Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance, or DeFi, newsletter.

Blogging platform Mirror expanded to the public market this week. Read on to discover the impact of this move for Ethereum wallet holders. 

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

Mirror expands blockchain blogging to the public

This week, Mirror, a decentralized publishing protocol focused on fostering data ownership and free expression, expanded its platform to the public market for the first time.

In the previous version, a weekly voting competition using the platform’s native token, WRITE, determined an exclusive list of 10 content creators who could contribute to the platform.

With this announcement, anyone with an Ethereum wallet address can upload content to the site, as well as export blog posts from external sites such as Medium or Substack. These blogs can then be minted as “Entry Editions,” a nonfungible token feature allowing users to monetize their content.

“Mirror has evolved from a tool for writers to a full-stack web3 creative suite for communities and DAOs.”

Bank of America bullish on DeFi

A Bank of America subsidiary firm, BofA Securities, released an official report this week concluding its bullish prospects of digital assets, including the DeFi sector, for which it noted there is “significant value in the intermediate-term for DeFi DApps.” The report stated:

“Our view is that it’s unlikely DeFi will replace the traditional financial infrastructure soon, but its application technologies are likely to provide near-term efficiencies and increased transparency to existing firms especially in the areas of tokenization.”

In July 2021, Bank of America launched a crypto research team led by crypto and digital asset strategist Alkesh Shah, devoted to analyzing and assessing the cryptocurrency landscape, this report being but one of many the group has published since inception.

Assessing the markets from an analytical perspective, the report concluded that an excess of $17 billion was invested into the markets during the first half of 2021, a seismic growth from the $5.5 billion recorded during the same period last year.

MakerDAO plans to support climate change

MakerDAO founder Rune Christensen published a candid letter on Tuesday proposing alterations to the protocol’s activity, which will support climate change initiatives.

Changes could include the assurance that all collateral comprises “sustainable and climate-aligned assets that consider the long-term impacts of financial activity on the environment.”

Furthermore, Christensen stated that the project’s collateral should support investments in sustainable real-world assets including “solar farms, wind turbines, batteries, recharging stations and other cost-efficient renewable energy solutions, as well as their supply chains, sustainable resource extraction and recycling.”

In addition to this, Christensen expressed high expectations for Ethereum’s transition to a proof-of-stake consensus, suggesting a return to deposit capabilities for collateral services solely in Ethereum.

Token performances 

Analytical data reveals that DeFi’s total value locked has increased 12.97% across the week to a figure of $136.04 billion.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that DeFi’s top 100 tokens by market capitalization performed positively across the last seven days.

Fantom (FTM) secured the podium’s top spot with an impressive 71.95%. Yearn.finance (YFI) came in a respectable second with 24.94%, while Terra (LUNA) bagged third with 22.51%. Fourth and fifth place were claimed by Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) and Mdex (MDX) with 22.23% and 21.65%, respectively.

Extra DeFi stories from the week:

Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us again next Friday for more stories, insights and education in this dynamically advancing space.