Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Ethereum and BNB chain bridge Router Protocol just closed an oversubscribed funding round to extend the bridge to more networks.

Router Protocol, a modular cross-chain framework for building interoperable applications. By connecting different blockchain ecosystems, bridges play a crucial role in creating a more cohesive and streamlined network.

It was launched in 2022 on the Polygon and BSC chains with the objective of making life easier for future Web3 users.

Router Protocol said in a press release that it has recently raised more than expected funds for further development—but didn't disclose exactly how much. The investment realized from this raise will be used to fuel its own fully operational layer 1 blockchain, thus breaking away from the Binance and Polygon ecosystem.

“Router Chain embodies the evolution of our unwavering vision to build the universal interconnectivity layer between fragmented L1/L2 networks,” Ramani Ramachandran, CEO of Router Protocol, said in a press release.

The goal, he added, is to do away with complexity.

The team is “laser-focused on delivering seamless and intuitive user and developer experience for multi-chain applications,” he added.

According to Shubham Singh, the CTO of Router Protocol, the ecosystem has experienced tremendous growth with cross-chain projects like FolioX and StakeEase, which have decided to take advantage of the Protocol’s unique characteristics to make a name for themselves.

In another development, Router Protocol has achieved a significant milestone with the successful launch of Router Nitro. This cross-chain bridge leverages an innovative reverse-verification method to deliver speed and gas efficiency.

Since its launch, the Nitro bridge has facilitated over $350 million in volume, processed more than 650,000 transactions, and attracted nearly 300,000 unique users within four months.

This underscores the growing demand for seamless cross-chain interactions.

The Protocol will soon launch an Ecosystem Grant for projects with future prospects that build on the Router Chain.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.

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Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin is now available in the Cardano ecosystem through an integration by the cross-chain bridge Wanchain. This development comes amid the Cardano ecosystem’s plans to integrate more stablecoins on the network, while Ripple is also eyeing expansion of its stablecoin beyond the XRP Ledger (XRPL) and Ethereum.

Ripple’s RLUSD Now Available On The Cardano Network In an X post, Wanchain revealed that its cross-chain bridge now supports the RLUSD stablecoin. With the integration, users will be able to bridge the stablecoin directly from the XRPL network to the Cardano network. Furthermore, they can bridge the stablecoin from Ethereum to Cardano.

Additionally, users can bridge Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin on XRPL or Ethereum to Wanchain and then route it from the bridge to the Cardano network. The bridge also enables bridging from the XRPL to the top Layer-1 network, Ethereum.

It is worth noting that RLUSD is currently issued natively only on the XRPL and Ethereum networks. However, Ripple announced plans last year to expand the stablecoin to Ethereum layer-2 networks, including Base, Optimism, Unichain, and Ink. The firm also noted that testing on these chains will begin in partnership with Wormhole.

RLUSD currently ranks as the 8th largest stablecoin, with a market cap of $1.5 billion. Most of the stablecoin’s supply currently sits on the Ethereum network, while 382 million tokens are in circulation on the XRP Ledger.

Boost For Cardano’s Ecosystem Ripple’s RLUSD becomes the second tier-1 stablecoin available to Cardano users, following USDC’s launch on the network earlier this year. It is worth noting that Cardano’s stablecoin market cap has climbed to $50 million following the launch of USDC.

The network’s DeFi TVL had also climbed when USDC launched on the network and could rise again, with network users now able to access RLUSD through the cross-chain bridge. Interestingly, Cardano’s founder, Charles Hoskinson, has long teased plans to integrate RLUSD natively into the network, though that has yet to happen.

Meanwhile, amid RLUSD gaining access to the Cardano ecosystem, Cardano stakeholder Input Output has put nine proposals forward in a bid to scale the network. Notably, none of them focuses on stablecoin integrations, with the highlight being the Leios upgrade, which developers aim to use to scale the network to 27 million monthly transactions by 2030.

Zcash has completed a two-phase emergency network upgrade to fix a critical vulnerability in its Orchard shielded pool — a flaw that sat undetected for four years, could theoretically have allowed unlimited undetectable counterfeit ZEC creation, and triggered a 50% price collapse before the network’s swift response began restoring confidence and driving a recovery in ZEC’s price.

Josh Swihart, CEO of Electric Coin Company — the primary developer of Zcash — posted on X on June 7 confirming the fix was complete and the network secure, as ZEC began its recovery from the lows reached after the vulnerability’s disclosure.

The post arrived at a critical moment for the asset: ZEC had crashed approximately 50% from a June 4 peak of $624 to $309 on June 5, wiping more than $3 billion from its market capitalization, per the BitMEX Blog’s documented timeline of the incident.

ZEC's price trends to the upside over the past 48 hours, as seen on the daily chart. Source: ZECUSD on Tradingview How The Zcash Bug Was Found — And What It Was The vulnerability was discovered on May 29, 2026 by security researcher Taylor Hornby during a protocol audit commissioned by Shielded Labs. Hornby identified a “soundness” flaw in Zcash’s Orchard zero-knowledge proof circuit — specifically an under-constrained element in the Orchard Action circuit that could allow invalid state transitions, creating a theoretical double-spending risk within the shielded pool.

The discovery was made using Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 AI model alongside a custom analysis suite, per Shielded Labs’ official disclosure. Hornby and the AI developed a working proof-of-concept that successfully generated unlimited, completely undetectable counterfeit ZEC in a local test environment — described by one independent analyst as “about the worst kind of bug a cryptocurrency can have,” per Yahoo Finance’s reporting of the disclosure.

Critically, the flaw did not permit inflation of the total ZEC supply on the live network. Zcash’s internal turnstile accounting mechanism — which tracks the total value moving into and out of the shielded pool — confirmed no unauthorized value creation occurred while the flaw was active, per Shielded Labs’ official statement.

However, the organization acknowledged directly that due to the privacy properties of Orchard and the nature of the bug, there is no definitive cryptographic way to determine whether exploitation occurred — a limitation inherent to the shielded pool’s design that became its own source of market concern. The vulnerability had been present since Orchard’s activation in May 2022 — four years — without detection.

The Emergency Response Zcash’s development ecosystem responded with unusual speed. The first phase was an emergency soft fork deployed through Zebra 4.5.3, activated at block 3,363,426 on June 2, which temporarily disabled all Orchard transactions to remove the attack path while developers prepared the permanent fix.

Transparent and Sapling transactions continued operating normally throughout, per the Zcash Foundation’s official announcement on X. The second phase arrived on June 3 through the NU6.2 hard fork — activated at block 3,364,600 via Zebra 5.0.0 — which introduced a corrected circuit and a new verifying key, patching the flaw and re-enabling Orchard transactions, per the Foundation.

The market’s initial reaction to the hard fork was positive. ZEC rose from $544 on June 2 to $603 on June 3, continuing to $624 on June 4 — its highest level since the rally began. Then Arthur Hayes publicly disclosed he had exited his entire ZEC position intraday on June 4 — the same day as the peak — citing five macro factors including higher energy prices and upcoming AI IPOs, per his X post covered in prior reporting. The combination of Hayes’ exit and lingering uncertainty about whether exploitation had occurred before the patch sent ZEC to $309 on June 5.

The Recovery And What It Means Swihart’s June 7 X post — reassuring the community that total ZEC supply remained intact throughout and that the network had passed through the emergency without confirmed exploitation — appears to have been the catalyst for the recovery now underway. The swift two-phase response, combined with the Foundation’s transparent disclosure and Swihart’s direct communication, provided the confidence signal the market needed.

This development marks a pivotal and genuinely uncomfortable moment for Zcash’s long-term positioning in the nascent sector. A four-year-old vulnerability in the Orchard pool — the very component that defines ZEC’s core privacy value proposition — has been fixed cleanly and without confirmed exploitation.

But the structural irony that the privacy properties that make Zcash valuable also make it impossible to confirm the vulnerability was never used will remain a question mark the community will need to address as the recovery continues.

As of this writing, ZEC trades at around $430, recovering from its June 5 lows as confidence in the network’s security response gradually rebuilds.

Cover image from Grok, ZECUSD Chart from Tradingview

Ethereum Glamsterdam Upgrade Moves Toward 200M Gas Limit Roadmap

TL;DR Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade work is moving through devnet planning ahead of a projected H2 2026 mainnet window. EIP-7732, or enshrined proposer-builder separation, is one of the key pieces being tracked by developers. EIP-7928, covering block-level access lists, is another major component tied to parallel execution and higher throughput. The headline target is a path toward a much higher gas limit, but the exact mainnet package remains subject to Ethereum’s normal testing and governance process. Glamsterdam Moves Into Focus Ethereum’s next major upgrade cycle is now turning toward Glamsterdam, a protocol package expected to define the network’s post-Pectra scaling and block-production roadmap. The upgrade is being watched closely because it touches two of Ethereum’s biggest long-running constraints: who builds blocks, and how much execution capacity the base layer can safely support.

Developer materials and EIP discussions point to enshrined proposer-builder separation and block-level access lists as two of the most important items in the Glamsterdam conversation. Together, they help frame a longer-term path toward higher throughput without simply asking every node operator to absorb more load without structural changes.

What ePBS Tries To Fix EIP-7732, commonly described as enshrined proposer-builder separation, would move part of the current external block-building market into Ethereum’s protocol design. Today, block construction often depends on external relay infrastructure and specialized actors. That system has helped the network manage maximum extractable value, but it has also raised concerns about centralization and censorship pressure.

By bringing proposer-builder separation closer to the protocol layer, Ethereum developers are trying to reduce reliance on off-protocol arrangements and create a cleaner separation between validators proposing blocks and builders assembling them. It is a technical change, but it also speaks directly to Ethereum’s decentralization goals.

Why Block-Level Access Lists Matter EIP-7928, covering block-level access lists, is aimed at making execution more predictable by identifying state access patterns at the block level. In plain English, validators and clients could get better information about what a block needs to touch before processing it. That matters because parallel execution is difficult when the system does not know which transactions are likely to conflict.

If block-level access lists work as intended, they could help Ethereum process more activity without turning every block into a heavier, less predictable burden for nodes. That is why the proposal is often discussed alongside higher gas-limit targets and broader L1 scaling.

A 200M Gas Limit Is The Big Headline The most attention-grabbing part of the Glamsterdam narrative is the potential path toward a 200 million gas limit. That would be a major increase from today’s base-layer capacity and would represent a very different Ethereum L1 if it can be achieved safely. But the wording matters: this is a roadmap and testing target, not a guarantee that every detail is locked for mainnet exactly as discussed in current devnet materials.

Ethereum upgrades usually move through a long process of specification, client implementation, devnets, testnets and final coordination. That process is slow by design. Glamsterdam is important because it shows the network is still trying to scale the base layer itself, not only pushing activity to rollups. The risk is that aggressive capacity increases without careful client and node work could weaken the decentralization properties Ethereum is trying to protect.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

Manifold Finance's FOLD token crashes to 64 cents from a $87 peak amid product disappointment.Founder Sam Bacha goes quiet, responds to concerns with memes and jokes.Once-promising startup raised $2.5 million from VCs before downward spiral.Manifold Finance, a onetime buzzy crypto project, has plunged into turmoil.

Its erratic founder is unreachable, the price of its token is plummeting, and frustrated supporters are pleading for updates.

Manifold’s token, FOLD, hit an all-time low of 64 cents on November 8 — 98% off its 2022 peak of $87 — even as crypto markets surged on the election of Donald Trump as the US president.

Fold’s worth peaked at more than $87, and it was trading above $30 as recently as April. In 2022, the venture’s market value topped $128 million. Now it’s only $2 million.

Disappointing responseThe token has crashed amid a disappointing response to Manifold’s year-old liquid staking product, which was meant to compete with the likes of crypto giants Lido and Rocket Pool.

It has also suffered as a prominent backer stopped providing liquidity for the token on decentralised exchange SushiSwap earlier this year.

Meanwhile, founder Sam Bacha has not provided regular updates on a forthcoming product meant to reverse Manifold’s declining fortunes. Self-imposed deadlines have come and gone.

Bacha has occasionally commented in a 2,500-person Telegram chat without offering any explanation as to his whereabouts or Manifold’s progress, instead cracking jokes and sharing irrelevant memes, infuriating some supporters.

Lost supportEven one of Manifold’s most prominent investors, crypto influencer Jordan Fish, better known as Cobie, said in the group Telegram chat that he has lost faith in the company.

“I invested in it in 2021, and at the top, it was worth like $5m and now it’s worth 0,” Fish told DL News. “I don’t know what to tell you, yeah, seems like it failed, crypto investments are risky, maybe I should’ve sold the top, it is what it is.”

‘When did you last talk to Sam? He still alive?’

—  Supporter on TelegramPhilipp Zahn, a co-founder of Manifold partner 20squares, declined to comment to DL News, but called the company a “former client.”

Bacha and Alexander Bradley, Manifold employee, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Manifold isn’t Bacha’s first project to go sideways.

His last crypto startup, Block Array, appears to be defunct, and has been dogged by allegations of fraud. What’s more, this isn’t the first time he’s gone weeks without providing the status updates that are de rigueur in the crypto industry.

But with the collapse of Manifold’s token and supporters’ anger boiling over, Bacha’s behaviour has taken a more ominous tone.

It’s the latest example of the pitfalls that come with crypto’s freewheeling culture.

Past troubleBacha graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2013, according to his LinkedIn account, which noted he had stints at AT&T and Amazon before founding his first blockchain-based startup in 2017.

Block Array’s website and white paper were inaccessible on Friday. The X account for its Freight Trust product has been suspended. Freight Trust’s token, EDI, is seldom traded and, despite a total supply of 600 million, had no market value Friday, according to Etherscan. Block Array’s token, ARY, is also worthless, according to Etherscan.

Malicious botsManifold was founded in 2021 to help crypto traders avoid front-running from malicious bots. It raised $2.5 million from P2P.org, Marshland Capital, and several other venture investors.

A version of that anti-front running software was developed for SushiSwap, a decentralised crypto exchange.

But it was quickly shelved due to software bugs. SushiSwap declined to integrate a retooled version of the software, opting to pursue development of an in-house version instead.

After forays into other crypto middleware, Manifold eventually pivoted to liquid staking, a multibillion-dollar business long dominated by DeFi giant Lido.

But Manifold’s liquid staking token, mevETH, saw little uptake after its launch a year ago; the market value peaked at $36 million in March.

Certain transactionsSince then, it has been working in collaboration with German research firm 20squares on a new product, XGA.

XGA is meant to ensure prompt confirmation of certain transactions, which sometimes wallow on Ethereum when a user doesn’t pay a sufficient fee.

Manifold investors held out hope XGA would lift the company from its doldrums. Without warning, however, Bacha stopped providing regular updates on his company’s work.

‘Where were you for the last 30 days? Why not a single reply here in the channel?’

—  Supporter in Telegram channelCrypto security firm KebabSec had started an audit of XGA’s code, Bacha said in a September 2 update shared in the Telegram group chat. It is unclear whether that audit has been completed.

Bacha also said Manifold would begin testing XGA on an Ethereum-based test network September 17. A revamp of FOLD’s so-called tokenomics would be detailed by the end of that month, he added.

None of that appears to have happened.

“When did you last talk to Sam? He still alive?” one supporter asked in the Telegram chat on October 28.

Later that day, Bacha broke his silence to ask for feedback on Manifold’s revamped website. And he promised he would promptly share more information.

“I will post the long awaited update today comrades,” he wrote.

That update never came.

Dim moodOn October 30, Bacha took to Manifold’s seldom-used governance forum to propose the Manifold community move its conversation to social media app Discord.

The proposal was panned by supporters, who said that was the least of their concerns.

“Where were you for the last 30 days? Why not a single reply here in the channel? The mood is pretty dim,” one wrote.

“I was being vetted to become Trump’s new Crypto Czar,” Bacha replied in an apparent joke.

Missed deadlinesIn a subsequent message, he took aim at supporters who had accused him of blowing past self-imposed deadlines.

“Deadlines proclaimed by me in Telegram do not constitute any sort of binding agreement,” he wrote.

After the November 5 election, Bacha returned to the chat to share a meme derived from the film “Superman II” in which a supervillain commands, “Kneel before Zod!”

Supporters fear the worst.

“We don’t know if Sam is even coding. We don’t even know if there’s anything happening,” one wrote.

Two possibilitiesThere were two possibilities, the commenter continued: either the company was about to fold and “they don’t know how to tell us,” or “they’re working tirelessly” to release XGA.

On November 11, Matthew Land, a partner at Marshland Capital, an investor Manifold, said in a separate Telegram channel he had spoken with Bacha over the preceding weekend.

Land declined to comment when contacted by DL News Friday.

In his Telegram message, Land said he had told Bacha of “the importance of communication” and of resolving FOLD’s liquidity issue.

“As I said before, ball’s in Sam’s court and on Sam’s timeline,” Land said.

“He understands what’s up imo but we have no impact on his decisions/timeline to address them unfortunately.”

Correction, November 15: A previous version of this story stated that Matthew Land spoke to Sam Bacha about FOLD’s price. It has been corrected to state they spoke about FOLD’s liquidity issues. This story was also updated to note that Land declined to comment.

Aleks Gilbert is a DeFi correspondent based in New York. Have a tip? Contact him at [email protected].

2026.04.20 09:49:47

Saturday, April 20 — The LayerZero cross-chain bridge for rsETH (a liquidity re-staking token from Kelp DAO) was hacked, marking the largest DeFi hack of 2026 to date. The attacker forged LayerZero cross-chain messages to withdraw 116,500 rsETH directly from the bridge contract, then deposited the tokens into Aave and other lending platforms to borrow WETH—creating significant uncollateralized bad debt risk. Below is a roundup of responses from major DeFi protocols to the rsETH hack: Aave has shared an update on the rsETH incident: rsETH on the Ethereum mainnet is fully collateralized. The token remains frozen on Aave V3 and V4, while WETH reserves are frozen in affected markets including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Mantle, and Linea. Aave is actively verifying details and evaluating potential resolutions. Ethena has officially extended the suspension period for its LayerZero OFT cross-chain bridge. Additionally, the protocol released updated reserve proofs confirming its USDe stablecoin maintains a collateralization ratio above 100%. LayerZero stated it has fully grasped the rsETH vulnerability and has been collaborating with the Kelp DAO team on fixes since the hack occurred, while continuously monitoring the situation. All other applications remain secure, and the protocol will publish a comprehensive post-incident analysis report alongside Kelp DAO once all relevant information is compiled. Fluid announced the launch of its aWETH redemption protocol, which enables ETH borrowers to: redeem for wstETH or weETH (restoring liquidity immediately and reducing liquidation risk); redeem in full if they only borrowed ETH; or seamlessly convert ETH collateral to wstETH/weETH while keeping other debts intact. The protocol’s initial capacity is capped at $1 billion worth of ETH. Morpho has temporarily suspended its MORPHO LayerZero OFT cross-chain bridge on Arbitrum until the root cause of the rsETH incident is identified. The protocol noted its smart contracts are secure and operating normally; risk exposure is limited (only ~$1 million worth of ETH was borrowed using rsETH as collateral, spread across two isolated markets out of thousands total). Thanks to Morpho’s fully isolated market design, all other vaults remain unaffected. Curve Finance announced it has suspended its LayerZero infrastructure, impacting: CRV bridging from BNB, Sonic, Avalanche, Fantom, Etherlink, and Kava (bridging from other chains still uses native bridges); and crvUSD quick bridging (L2 slow bridging remains operational). Reserve issued an official update: Its DTF holders are unlikely to be affected. RSR stakers in the Reserve Protocol’s USD3 and eUSD may qualify for "first-loss capital" protection, though the impact is minimal and RSR’s overcollateralization is sufficient to cover any potential losses. ETH+ and bsdETH contain no rsETH collateral, making them zero-risk. As a precaution, Reserve has temporarily paused minting, rebalancing, and RSR unstaking for eUSD and USD3—redemption functionality remains operational. Maple Finance stated all USDT provided on Aave Mantle using syrupUSDT has been withdrawn. Its syrupUSDC and syrupUSDT products are not impacted by the rsETH exploit. Polygon has been actively monitoring the rsETH exploit. The Polygon chain, Agglayer, and entire ecosystem (including Katana and Vaultbridge) have not been impacted by the incident. EtherFi announced its protocol’s liquidity pool remains unaffected by the Kelp rsETH exploit, and pool users will not suffer any fund losses. Hyperliquid’s DeFi project Hyperwave announced it has temporarily suspended all LayerZero bridging of Hyperwave assets as a precautionary measure.

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Analysis: Bitcoin miners face profit pressure, with around 20% of mining firms now operating below the break-even point.

Bitcoin miners' revenue continues to decline, with the current 7-day average daily income dropping to around $30 million, a notable pullback from the over $50 million level seen last summer. Meanwhile, on-chain transaction fee revenue has fallen to less than $250,000, accounting for an extremely small share of miners' total income. Data from JPMorgan Chase shows the average production cost is approximately $78,000, and Bitcoin’s price has remained below this level for five consecutive months — the longest such stretch in the current cycle. An estimated 20% of miners are already operating at a loss; some high-cost miners have begun frequently powering their mining rigs on and off in response to price fluctuations, leading to a stronger correlation between network hash rate difficulty and Bitcoin’s price. Additionally, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty was adjusted down by roughly 10% in the second week of June, marking the second pullback of the same magnitude this year. Publicly listed mining companies, meanwhile, are relying more on their balance sheets to sustain operations, selling over 32,000 BTC in the first quarter alone to cover operating costs. Analysts note that against the backdrop of continuously shrinking block subsidies and stagnant fee revenue, a recovery in miners’ profits will primarily depend on a rise in Bitcoin’s price.

1 seconds ago

Japan and South Korea's stock markets opened higher, with South Korea's KOSPI index rising 2.9% and SK Hynix surging 11%.

According to Bitget market data, the Nikkei 225 index opened 1.4% higher at 70114.09. South Korea’s KOSPI index rose 2.9%. South Korean stocks SK Hynix gained 11%, while Samsung Electronics rose 5%.

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Trader Maji was liquidated on his 25x leveraged long Ethereum position, incurring $1.9 million in losses, and subsequently opened a new position.

According to monitoring by OnchainLens, Stanley Huang, known as "Machi Big Brother" (@machibigbrother), has had his 25x leveraged long Ethereum (ETH) position fully liquidated, incurring a loss of approximately $1.9 million. Notably, he opened a new 25x leveraged long ETH position immediately after the liquidation. Machi Big Brother’s cumulative historical losses exceed $35.4 million.

1 seconds ago

Micron posted strong quarterly results, with its quarterly revenue and next-quarter outlook significantly exceeding market expectations. Its stock surged nearly 16% in after-hours trading, driving a broad rally across the storage sector.

According to its official financial report, Micron Technology (MU.O) reported Q3 fiscal 2026 revenue of $41.456 billion, beating market expectations of $35.423 billion and surging from $9.301 billion in the year-ago period. The company issued Q4 fiscal revenue guidance of $50 billion, against market expectations of $42.915 billion. Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra stated: "Micron’s record-breaking Q3 fiscal financial results and stronger Q4 outlook reflect the strategic value of memory chips in the AI era. We believe our multi-year strategic customer agreements will significantly enhance the durability and predictability of Micron’s strong financial performance." Micron’s Q3 report showed net profit of $28.24 billion, or $24.67 per share, up from $1.89 billion, or $1.68 per share, in the same period last year. Excluding certain one-time items, Micron reported adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $25.11, exceeding analysts’ consensus estimate of $20.86. Driven by the quarterly revenue and outlook that topped expectations, as of press time, Micron jumped 15.95% in post-market trading on the U.S. stock market, also lifting other memory stocks sharply: Seagate (STX) rose 10.21%, Western Digital (WDC) gained 12.31%, and SanDisk (SNDK) surged 15.77%.

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Kalshi is reportedly seeking a new round of financing, with its valuation potentially rising to $40 billion.

According to a report from the U.K.’s Financial Times, prediction market platform Kalshi is in discussions with investors for a new funding round targeting a roughly $40 billion valuation, with a potential close as early as the third quarter of this year. The development follows Kalshi’s $1 billion financing round completed last month, which valued the firm at $22 billion, with backers including leading institutions such as Coatue, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Morgan Stanley. Data shows Kalshi’s trading volume last month surpassed $17 billion, a sharp jump from less than $5 billion a year prior, with approximately 65% of that volume stemming from sports-related prediction contracts.

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Polymarket integrates with Telegram via TON, enabling users to participate in prediction markets directly within the messaging app.

Polymarket has been integrated into Telegram via Predict, a native decentralized application (dApp) of the TON ecosystem. Developed by the Getgems team, the app allows users to directly participate in prediction markets covering sports, politics, cryptocurrency, culture and other sectors within Telegram. Transaction results are settled on-chain, and users retain full control over their assets. Users can participate in trades using USDT on the TON network, and pay a small amount of GRAM for gas fees. The cross-chain infrastructure is powered by STON.fi’s Omniston protocol, enabling the prediction market service to seamlessly integrate into the Telegram ecosystem.

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Posted: September 15, 2019

AirSwap reported that their development team had detected a ‘critical vulnerability’ in a recently launched AirSwap smart contract. According to a blog released on medium, AirSwap, a decentralized token-trading platform built on the Ethereum blockchain, revealed that on 12th September, the internal security review team recognized a major flaw in the mainnet of the smart contract.

The vulnerability would have allowed any hacker to perform a swap with another party without requiring their signature. It was stated that the tainted code was active in the system for less than 24 hours and only a few addresses were affected. The article stated,

“When the issue was detected, the team immediately rolled back AirSwap Instant to use the original smart contracts. Both the AirSwap Instant and Trader products are no longer affected by the vulnerability.”

The AirSwap team also carried out a few remediations after the vulnerability was reported. Dev team initiated identification of affected users and started the process of de-risking [process of protecting user asset without alerting the network]. All vulnerable components were removed from the production AirSwap UI and from all related tools.

AirSwap released a statement of apology and remarked,

“We would like to deeply apologize to our affected users for any inconvenience these vulnerabilities may have caused, and hope that the important lessons we continue to learn throughout these processes form the basis for a more open, secure, and efficient trading environment.”

Posted: October 1, 2019

Dubbed by many the fastest growing Ponzi scheme on Ethereum, the smart contract FairWin has emptied its account, according to data from Etherscan. Just a few days ago, the account possessed almost 50,000 ETH (~$9 million).

While the nature of the withdrawal has not been confirmed, the total volume of withdrawing addresses suggests that concerned users had taken their funds out after multiple crypto-users on social media speculated that the smart contract was actually a Ponzi scheme. 

It is unclear whether the contract was drained by its owner, some malicious actors or concerned users, but the multitude of withdrawing addresses suggests the latter.

According to Horizon Games’ Blockchain Researcher & Developer Philippe Castonguay, the “scheme” contains critical vulnerabilities which put the funds at risk.

The https://t.co/1HHnXNCWsL Ponzi Scheme contains critical vulnerabilities that put all funds at risk.

Spread knowledge (especially in Asia) ? Users need to withdraw their funds and stop interacting with the contract ASAP.

Details on the exploits will be published soon.

— Philippe Castonguay (@PhABCD) September 27, 2019

Later, Castonguay expanded on the details of the three main vulnerabilities he’d discovered on the Ethereum smart contract. One allowed the owner or administrator to drain the account and another allowed the admin to lock withdrawals. The third vulnerability allowed anyone to steal the deposits.

CTO of Kleros, Clement Lesaege, also posted a detailed explanation concerning the vulnerabilities on Reddit.

After the vulnerabilities were publicly announced, FairWin’s team responded to Lesaege by stating,

“Thank you for your suggestion. We have already found the vulnerability, but we don’t think it is a vulnerability. The contract is judged and the invitation code generated by the user for the first time will be used as the final invitation code. So the loophole is invalid.

In addition, we have real-time monitoring on our side. Once it is entered, it will be invalid. The intruder, we will alert at the first time, and then exclude the intruder.”

According to Castonguay’s more detailed blog post on the matter, there is no evidence to say that the funds were withdrawn by malicious attackers. The last successful withdrawal took place yesterday at around 9.21pm +UTC.

Ahmed Barakat

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Ahmed Balaha is a journalist and copywriter based in Georgia with a growing focus on blockchain technology, DeFi, AI, privacy, digital assets, and fintech innovation.

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June 22, 2026

A tax proposal posted to the Ethereum Research forum by Kleros founder Clément Lesaege would let ETH validators vote to redirect up to 10% of staking rewards to public goods funding. If a majority of validators signal above zero, that rate becomes mandatory for every validator on the network, including those who voted for none.

For Bitmine (BMNR), which has staked 4.72 million ETH through its MAVAN platform and projects $258 million in annual net staking revenue, the exposure range is $50–100 million in lost income per year.

Ethereum Validators Face 10% Staking Reward Redirect Plan for Ecosystem Funding

A new proposal on Ethereum's $ETH research forum wants validators to redirect up to 10% of their staking rewards toward ecosystem funding. If a majority signals support, the contribution becomes… pic.twitter.com/16PgRfEBd5

— BSCN (@BSCNews) June 22, 2026 That figure is not speculative padding. It represents the direct arithmetic of applying a forced yield reduction to the single largest ETH staking position held by any public company. The proposal is still a forum post, not an EIP. That distinction matters – but so does the direction of travel.

Discover: The Best Token Presales

The ETH Validator Redirected Revenue Tax ProposalLesaege’s post, titled “Validator Redirected Revenue,” frames the mechanism as a solution to a coordination failure. According to his ETH tax proposal, Ethereum’s shared infrastructure generates value for everyone but is funded by no one in a structured, protocol-level way.

His proposed fix is a signaling system embedded in the consensus layer. Each validator declares a preferred redirect rate between 0% and 10% of their staking rewards. If more than 50% of total staked ETH signals are above zero, a single rate is selected and applied universally.

Ethereum ResearchNow, a validator that voted for 0% redirection does not retain its full yield if the majority crosses the threshold, as it gets swept into the mandatory rate alongside everyone else. Funds flow automatically to an allocation smart contract, with a splitter routing capital to designated recipients such as Gitcoin, Octant, and audit organizations.

Lesaege explicitly described the post as a conversation-starter: “We seek further feedback before working on a technical implementation to put forth as an Ethereum Improvement Proposal.” As of now, no EIP number has been assigned.

A parallel mechanism called Validator Revenue Redistribution (VRR), presented by Ethereum Foundation researcher Devansh Mehta at EthCC, provides the technical plumbing layer. Mehta described the threshold dynamically, “If 51% put their flag up, all 100% of stakers have to part with a portion of their rewards.”

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Bitmine’s MAVAN Platform: The $258M Revenue Thesis Exposed to Protocol GovernanceBitmine’s May 8-K reported 4,718,677 ETH staked via MAVAN, or 87% of its 5.42 million ETH total holdings and 4.49% of total ETH supply. The 7-day annualized yield at that date was 2.73%, against a CESR benchmark of 2.81–2.84%. At full deployment, Bitmine projects $296 million in gross staking rewards and $258 million in net staking revenues annually.

Photo by Brett Sayles on PexelsThe math for a protocol-level redirect is straightforward. Each 1 percentage point reduction in effective annual yield on 4.72 million ETH costs approximately $94 million per year in gross rewards at an ETH price around $2,000.

However, a 10% redirect of the current 2.73% yield diverts 0.27 percentage points, translating to $25 million per year flowing away from BMNR’s validators. At this rate alone, the direct hit is meaningful but not existential.

The $50–100 million exposure range reflects a wider scenario set. If the mandatory redirect rate compounds with any secondary compression in overall validator economics like reduced participation incentives, institutional validators exiting to restaking or L2 yield strategies, or ETH price movement, the effective yield impact on 4.72 million ETH staked.

Staking revenue is not a secondary income line for Bitmine. It constituted more than 93% of quarterly revenue in Q2 FY2026, and the company declared a $0.01 annual dividend in January 2026. Bitmine is the first large-cap crypto company to do so, funded directly by staking income.

A material yield cut would pressure that commitment in a way that no operational decision by management can offset. The ETH validator tax is not a cost Bitmine can engineer around; it is a protocol-level deduction from the asset class itself.

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Decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Aave has suspended operations in a number of markets after receiving a problem report on a certain function of the protocol.

DeFi Protocol Discovers Vulnerability; Is User Funds At Risk? On Saturday, November 4, decentralized lending protocol Aave announced – via a post on X (formerly Twitter) that it has paused the Aave V2 Ethereum market and suspended certain assets on Avalanche. In addition, the protocol has frozen specific assets on Aave V3 on Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism. 

Today we received a report of an issue on a certain feature of the Aave Protocol. After validation by community developers, the guardian has taken the following temporary prevention measure (no funds are at risk):

— Aave (@aave) November 4, 2023

According to the protocol’s announcement, these actions serve as a temporary precautionary measure following a problem report on a specific feature. 

Furthermore, Aave said in the post that the Aave V3 markets on Ethereum, Base, and Metis and the V2 markets on Polygon and Avalanche are unaffected. Meanwhile, no funds on any of the markets were at risk, according to DeFi lending protocol.

🚨🚨 🚨 On 11-04 17:38:35 UTC, Aave Guardian has taken necessary protection measurements to pause AaveV2 protocol (and all Aave pools are safe): https://t.co/3xJzfiejig

Given the protocol is “forked” by multiple third parties and the exact details are not disclosed yet, it is… pic.twitter.com/OkO1EZv6pW

— PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) November 4, 2023

While Aave did not specify what the issue is or the feature that caused the problem, the protocol said it would release a detailed explanation once there is a full resolution. The statement read:

A governance proposal to restore the normal operation of the protocols will be submitted shortly. A detailed postmortem will be released once the issue is fully resolved.

Aave further clarified that users supplying or borrowing from a frozen assets pool can still withdraw and repay positions. However, these users can’t supply or borrow more funds from the frozen assets pool until the issue is resolved. The protocol added: 

On paused assets, no action can be done until unpaused.

AAVE Price Remains Steady Despite Protocol Vulnerability There is no evidence to suggest that the problem has had any impact on the value of the protocol’s native token, AAVE. As of this writing, the token is valued at $90.15, reflecting a negligible 0.9% price dip in the past 24 hours.

Nevertheless, the token is outperforming on a bigger timeframe. Over the past week, AAVE’s price has swelled by more than 10%, touching the $100 mark – for the first time since February – at some point during the week.

Although the price of AAVE  has been moving mostly sideways in the past few days, a resolution of the current issue might trigger renewed momentum for the token. Hence, there is a chance that the cryptocurrency might revisit $100 again, especially considering the optimistic climate of the crypto market.

AAVE price slows down upward momentum on the daily timeframe | Source: AAVEUSDT chart on TradingView Featured image from Binance Academy, chart from TradingView

Xai, the layer-3 gaming network built on Ethereum scaler Arbitrum, kicked off 2024 with a bang, launching its XAI token to early supporters and then announcing that noted NFT game studio Laguna Games will bring Crypto Unicorns and related titles to the network.

So what’s next? More games, of course.

Ex Populus, which co-founder and CEO Tobias Batton described to Decrypt’s GG as the “labs company that serves the Xai Foundation,” is a game studio—and its games are set to be the first out the gate in the coming months as the Xai ecosystem takes shape.

The first, called Final Form, is a card-battler game with NFTs. According to its official website, the game will support NFT cards previously released on Solana via a bridge to Arbitrum. Batton said that the game is “penciled in for April,” but that the ETA could change. He said the game is playable and “moving into a polish phase,” so it can’t be far off.

LAMOverse is the other game from Ex Populus, and it’s a long-in-development online action game with colorful, cartoonish environments. Tied into physical LAMO toys based on gaming influencers like Ninja and Dr. Disrespect, LAMOverse is set to debut sometime after Final Form, and the game studio says it’s likewise playable and nearing a proper launch on Xai.

Batton recounted that Ex Populus spent substantial time seeking an ideal gaming chain for its projects and said that it explored building on other Ethereum scaling networks like Polygon or Immutable X. But, he said, each chain the studio tried had trade-offs that made the team “not enthusiastic” about committing to those ecosystems.

Ultimately, Arbitrum creator Offchain Labs proposed building a custom gaming chain that would suit the needs of Ex Populus while also providing a home for other studios in the future. Thus Xai was born.

In this team-up, Batton said, Ex Populus built the software that powers the Sentry Nodes that early users have purchased to support the Xai network. It also makes games and works in a publisher-like role to help other studios onboard to Xai and get their games in front of players.

That’s the kind of role that Ex Populus will serve for Laguna Games as it migrates its Crypto Unicorns games and associated NFTs from Polygon to Xai this year. And Batton said that he’s seen a “massive influx” of other studios reaching out since the airdrop to get involved with Xai, whether they’re building new games or migrating from existing chains.

In this dual role of game developer and distribution partner, Batton said that Ex Populus is attempting to be the Web3 version of Valve. That gaming powerhouse is known not only for operating the popular Steam PC gaming store, but also developing iconic games like Half-Life, Portal, and Counter-Strike. Fortnite maker Epic Games has charted a similar path.

Ex Populus doesn’t yet have the storied gaming legacy of those long-running giants, of course, but it also faces the immense challenge of trying to convince traditional gamers that user-owned NFT assets and crypto-driven economies are beneficial. And gamers have broadly not been too receptive to such overtures in the past.

What could make that easier is the way that the Xai network abstracts away the complexities of wallet use and asset handling for users who don’t want to get deep into the “crypto” of it all. Your average player doesn’t have to worry about self-custody of NFTs or tokens, plus Xai provides a gas-free experience for players.

“We had this crazy idea that if you remove wallets and remove gas from everything, that you can experience large growth,” Batton explained. “Really, the benefits of blockchain are the ability to trade items and own items—all the stuff we always hear about—but there's a tremendous amount of friction that stands in the way of that.”

There still are wallets, but for traditional gamers, they’re managed in the back end by the Xai team. And if you’d rather bring in your own wallet and self-custody your assets, that option is certainly available for veteran crypto users.

“As a traditional gamer who maybe isn't familiar with crypto or is a little averse to it, these games just seem like a normal game,” said Batton, who added that there would be wallet management features in the settings. “And then you're like, ‘Oh, I have a wallet. I didn't even know it.’ So it sort of breadcrumbs people into this experience in a way that doesn't seem so obtuse.”

our competitors aren't treasure, imx, ronin, or beam.

our competition is nintendo and valve.

decentralized gaming is inevitable.

— XAI (@XAI_GAMES) January 29, 2024

It’s been a busy couple of months for Xai. The Sentry Node sale, which let users invest in supporting the network and receive an allocation of XAI tokens, was a sizable success with about $30 million in sales. And the XAI airdrop that followed certainly made waves, putting over $150 million worth of tokens (at peak value) into users’ wallets.

But as Batton described, the journey dates back to 2022. It’s been a steady rise in prominence and buzz, in his view—and the biggest moves are still yet to come as games start going live on the network.

“It’s a grassroots approach—it didn't happen overnight,” he affirmed. “It took months and months and months of building this hype and this community and excitement.”

“Having Laguna agree to deploy their games is a big deal, because before this news, it was just hype. It's just an empty chain,” Batton added. “But now it's not an empty chain. It's got real games coming.”

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.

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Bitcoin DeFi app Sovryn is expanding to the Ethereum blockchain with the help of hybrid layer-2 network developer Build on Bitcoin, the two companies announced on Thursday.

Sovryn is a decentralized platform launched at the end of 2020 that offers lending, borrowing, and margin trading through smart contracts in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Built as a DAO on the Bitcoin sidechain Rootstock (RSK) that allows for the creation of smart contracts, Sovryn has been working to enhance Bitcoin with advanced DeFi capabilities.

The first project that Sovyrn will launch on Build on Bitcoin is a decentralized exchange (DEX) called Dex 2.0. The group claims this project will come with lower gas fees and faster transactions than competitors like Uniswap, and “unparalleled capital efficiency.”

“We've known Sovryn for a long time, and they've definitely been spearheading a lot of the early DeFi work in the Bitcoin space,” Build on Bitcoin co-founder Alexei Zamyatin told Decrypt. “Egan was the first person I called up when we started working on [Build on Bitcoin], trying to get him excited about expanding the Sovryn ecosystem and also trying to learn about the struggles they had.”

A layer-2 protocol refers to technology designed to mitigate congestion on a blockchain by creating a secondary chain that works in conjunction with the main network. For example, the Lightning Network is a layer-2 micropayments protocol for Bitcoin. Other examples of layer-2s include Arbitrum and Optimism on Ethereum.

"With Build on Bitcoin, you can use 350 [Ethereum Virtual Machine] wallets," Zamyatin said. "For the layman, that means you can pick almost any wallet; it doesn't necessarily need to be Bitcoin only or deal with UTXOs. It makes the whole thing much more user-friendly."

In January, Sovyrn launched BitcoinOS, which uses what the company called “sovryn rollups” to create a foundational layer for decentralized apps (dapps) on Bitcoin.

“By joining forces with BOB, we are not only expanding Sovryn's reach but also creating a DeFi ecosystem that is accessible to millions of Bitcoin users worldwide,” Sovryn co-founder Egan Yago said in a statement.

On Sovryn’s Dex 2.0, Zamyatin explained, users can select different networks via the user interface, such as the BOB Ethereum layer-2 protocol. He noted that the selection process is similar to choosing between Ethereum, Optimism, and Arbitrum on Uniswap.

When asked why developers are focused on bringing DeFi to Bitcoin, Zamyatin said it was because of Bitcoin's reliability.

"Bitcoin is the backbone of the entire Web3 ecosystem. If Bitcoin falls, everything else falls, if everything else breaks Bitcoin is still there," he said. "I think that is one of the main properties of Bitcoin—it's stable and robust. Bitcoin is predictable."

With renewed interest in the number-one blockchain by market capitalization stemming from projects like Ordinals and the approval of Bitcoin ETFs, Zamyatin is optimistic about the future of Bitcoin development.

“Bitcoin had its harsh times when nobody wanted to really engage with it,” Zamyatin said. “We both had a feeling that it was going to have a renaissance, and luckily, we were right.”

Edited by Ryan Ozawa and Andrew Hayward

Editor's note: This story was updated after publication to clarify descriptions of Sovryn and Build on Bitcoin.

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Ondo Tokenized Stocks has expanded the reach of tokenized US stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) through a new integration with LI.FI, allowing greater access to these assets on the blockchain. The integration is now live on both Ethereum and BNB Chain, with support for Solana expected to follow in later stages.

Wider reach for tokenized assetsWith this latest development, more than 438 tokenized US stocks and ETFs have become accessible via one of the most widely used cross-chain transaction infrastructures in the crypto sector. This move has broadened the audience for Ondo’s blockchain-based financial products, opening them up to a larger user base.

The integration allows users to access traditional market assets on-chain directly from their preferred crypto applications, without having to leave those platforms. This convenience is expected to further drive adoption and demand for tokenized securities among investors.

Direct access through the LI.FI ecosystemOver 1,000 partners within the LI.FI ecosystem now have direct access to tokenized products offered by Ondo Global Markets. Among the available assets are major US stocks such as Tesla, NVIDIA, and Apple, as well as widely followed ETFs like QQQ and SPY.

Glossary: An ETF is an exchange-traded fund that tracks an index or group of assets and is traded on stock exchanges. QQQ is one of the most well-known ETFs tracking the Nasdaq 100 index, while SPY tracks the S&P 500 index.

LI.FI serves as an execution infrastructure that facilitates both on-chain and cross-chain asset transfers. Rather than requiring users to select the technical route for their transactions, the system lets them define their desired outcome and relies on professional solution providers within the network to execute the process seamlessly.

With this integration, more than 438 tokenized US stocks and ETFs have become available to a wider user base through Ethereum and BNB Chain.

Transaction volume and custody structureAccording to the shared data, LI.FI has managed a trading volume exceeding $80 billion through more than 100 million transactions so far. The platform also provides its infrastructure services to several leading crypto exchanges and wallets in the industry.

Ondo Tokenized Stocks converts US securities into tokens that are fully backed by the underlying assets. These tokenized securities are held with one or more US-based brokerages and are subject to daily verification protocols. The platform also incorporates investor protection measures specifically designed for institutional participants.

Full backing of tokenized assets by the underlying securities and a daily verification process are highlighted as core structural features of the platform.

Impressive growth metricsAs of September 2025, the total value of tokens issued on the platform has surpassed $1 billion. The number of token holders has climbed into the tens of thousands, and the cumulative transaction volume has exceeded $20 billion.

The collaboration with LI.FI has increased the visibility of Ondo Tokenized Stocks in a variety of markets, underlining the continuing demand to bring financial assets onto the blockchain.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.