Overview

• In a Sept. 21 blog post, Vitalik Buterin compared stable, low-risk DeFi to Google Search as a dependable backbone and said he hopes Ethereum can do much better than Google.
• He pointed to stablecoin lending and other conservative protocols, citing roughly 5% returns on USDT and USDC and examples like Aave as candidates for predictable fee generation.
• CoinCentral reported that DeFi total value locked has surpassed $100 billion for the first time since early 2022.
• CoinCentral also reported that Ethereum’s on-chain revenue fell 44% month over month, dropping from $25.6 million in July to $14.1 million in August.
• Responding to complaints about exits, Buterin defended the validator unstaking wait of more than 45 days as a necessary security tradeoff, likening it to a soldier leaving military service.