Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

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.