(Bloomberg) -- Decentralized finance is feeling the pain of Binance’s proposed takeover of FTX.com, with investors yanking cash from projects as uncertainty lingers about the future of one of the largest crypto exchanges.  

The total value of cash locked in DeFi dropped by more than 12% in the past day, after hovering around $50 billion to $60 billion since June, according to data tracker DeFi Llama. That number stood at more than $180 billion last December. 

The drop comes merely months after algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD fell apart in early May, wiping out billions of dollars from DeFi projects. At the center of latest plunge in DeFi is the Solana blockchain, which has become a casualty of Binance’s potential takeover of its rival FTX. The total value of all cryptocurrencies on Solana blockchain and projects built on Solana plummeted by more than 47% in the past 24 hours. And its native token, SOL, tumbled nearly 40% on Wednesday. 

While the proposed deal doesn’t involve Solana’s investor Alameda Research, a trading house owned by Sam Bankman-Fried, investors are unsure about the fate of the firm. Both Alameda and FTX’s venture arm have also invested in several projects built on top of Solana. 

But some investors and project founders are still optimistic about DeFi over the long-term, as the opaqueness of FTX’s business and its relationship with Alameda urges more transparency in the digital-asset industry.  

“I think we’ve re-learned a few valuable lessons...this is the result of opaque financial relationships and hidden leverage in the system,” said Marc Weinstein, partner at venture fund Mechanism Capital. “They’ll say crypto is dead, but these types of collapses highlight the need for transparent financial infrastructure where users custody their own assets.” 

In the past, DeFi had also suffered billions of dollars worth of hacks, as the scammers have been quick to take advantage of the open-source code of some prominent projects.

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