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Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols Yearn.Finance and Pickle Finance are set to merge in what appears to be the first M&A agreement of the DeFi space.

Announcing the merger on Tuesday, both teams behind the protocols said they would work together to leverage shared expertise and increase specialization. The actual merger would occur when the second version of Yearn launches, which is currently under development. The development comes days after Pickle.Finance was exploited for nearly $20 million worth of DAI.

After the Yearn’s V2 release, Pickle jars and Yearn’s v2 vaults would merge. Technically, Pickle jars are a fork of Yearn’s yVaults. “Pickle Jars will be deployed as Yearn vaults, using the forthcoming v2 design. A more detailed migration plan to follow,” per the announcement.

When the merger activates, two new tokens would also be launched — DILL and CORNICHON. Pickle tokens would need to be locked to earn DILL.

“Locking Pickle yields DILL (Pickle tokens that are placed in time locked escrow). The longer time period the Pickle is locked for, the more DILLs are received,” according to the announcement. “The minimum locking period is 1 week and the maximum period is 4 years.”

As for CORNICHON, the token would be distributed to victims of the Pickle’s recent attack who lost $19.7 million in DAI. “Tokens will be minted against a snapshot of balances at the time of the attack, and distributed to victims proportionally,” per the announcement.

Post-merger, the total value locked (TVL) of the two protocols would also merge. The current TVL of Yearn is $433 million, according to DeFi Pulse, and Pickle’s TVL is around $31 million, according to DeFi Llama.

As part of the deal, Yearn would also onboard Pickle’s developers to work on its product and share fees. Both protocols are yield optimizers and launched in 2020.

The merger news has sent the price of the Pickle token up 35% to trade at around $20, according to CoinGecko. The YFI token, on the other hand, is trading 1.5% down at about $24,675.

Developer Andre Cronje did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Coinbase has broken into the list of the Apple App Store’s top 100 free apps — a development that comes as the price of bitcoin moves closer to potentially eclipsing its previous all-time high. 

As of the time of writing, Coinbase’s app is number 73 on the App Store’s free app list. According to data from App Annie, Coinbase was in the 114th position just yesterday.

The graph below shows the Coinbase app’s trajectory in recent weeks.

On the App Store’s finance-focused free app list, Coinbase ranks number five behind Cash App, PayPal, Venmo and Robinhood.

Bitcoin is currently trading hands on Coinbase at about $19,379 per coin — a more than 5 percent increase on the day. Coinbase’s listed all-time high for the price of bitcoin is $19,891.99.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.