However, the two largest incidents were not simple smart-contract exploits of the type AI could engineer. In one, a North Korea-linked group drained about $285 million from Drift Protocol after a six-month social-engineering campaign that won it admin access. For the other, the attacker exploited a single-verifier flaw that allowed roughly $292 million to be […]
Bitcoin layer-2 network Botanix is being wound down a year after its mainnet went live. The project cited market conditions and broader indifference within the cryptocurrency industry towards establishing greater utility on the Bitcoin network, in a post on X on Tuesday. “It did not work,” Botanix summed up. “At least not in this market […]
The two biggest DeFi exploits of the past two months have one thing in common. They used a tool that does not exist on the XRP Ledger. Thorchain lost roughly $10.8 million on May 15 to a cross-chain attack that drained funds across Bitcoin, Ethereum, BSC, and Base. Drift Protocol, a Solana-based decentralized perpetual exchange, […]
Until last Friday, April 17, lending stablecoins into Aave, widely considered the gold standard of DeFi, paid 2.32% APY. The Federal Reserve’s overnight rate was 3.64%. Taken at face value, the market was pricing an unregulated, open-source smart contract as a lower credit risk than the United States Treasury. In 48 hours, that ended. The […]
Less than three weeks after North Korea-linked hackers used social engineering to hit crypto trading firm Drift, hackers tied to the nation appear to have pulled off another major exploit with Kelp. The attack on Kelp, a restaking protocol tied into LayerZero’s cross-chain infrastructure, suggests an evolution in how North Korea-linked hackers operate, not just […]
Aave, one of the largest decentralized lending platforms, debuted its long-awaited v4 upgrade on Ethereum, aiming to push DeFi beyond crypto trading and into broader financial markets. The upgrade has been in development for about two years and is designed to make it easier to use Aave for a wider range of lending and borrowing […]
For months, Aave, one of decentralized finance’s (DeFi) largest lending protocols, has been at the center of a very public debate about what it is supposed to be. At the core, much of the community wants the network to be a decentralized financial layer governed by token holders, while a fraction of it warns that […]
Bitcoin’s BTC$69,925.80 biggest limitation just got shattered. A new protocol went live Thursday, making it simple to put the largest cryptocurrency directly to work in powerful, yield-generating strategies within the booming world of decentralized finance (DeFi). OpNet, a new smart-contract protocol, was activated on the Bitcoin blockchain, marking the arrival of DeFi-powering smart contracts that […]
About $27 million was liquidated on the decentralized lending platform Aave over the last 24 hours, in what some market participants say may have been caused by a temporary pricing issue involving the token wstETH. Blockchain data flagged by risk-management firm Chaos Labs shows a spike in liquidations in the past 24 hours. Some observers […]
A purpose-built AI security agent detected vulnerabilities in 92% of exploited DeFi smart contracts in a new open-source benchmark. The study, released Thursday by AI security firm Cecuro, evaluated 90 real-world smart contracts exploited between October 2024 and early 2026, representing $228 million in verified losses. The specialized system flagged vulnerabilities tied to $96.8 million […]
The year 2025 has emerged as a year of consolidation, with major layer-1 networks laying the groundwork for the tooling and technology that will lead to better interoperability, as well as pushing forward with real-world financial use cases. For Ethereum, that meant a surge in institutional adoption and steady progress on scaling, while builders increasingly […]
After a 13-page letter from investment powerhouse Citadel Securities advised the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols handling tokenized securities demand a closer regulatory grip, the industry answered back with its own correspondence on Friday, calling the arguments “baseless.” “While we share Citadel’s aims with respect to investor protections, orderly markets, […]