DeFi | Crypto

Crypto faces backlash for freezing stolen funds and for doing nothing, with expectations pulling in opposite directions. Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols are stepping in to freeze stolen funds while centralized issuers face criticism for holding back. A recent intervention on Arbitrum saw attacker-linked assets frozen after a major exploit, while some stablecoin issuers, including Circle, have faced public backlash for slower or more limited responses in similar situations. Connor Howe, CEO and co-founder of cross-chain infrastructure project Enso, said that crypto protocols are not that different from centralized platforms or banks if a small group of people can freeze funds. Read more

Carrot's total value locked has collapsed 93% in a month, from $28 million to $1.99 million, leaving the protocol financially unable to continue. Solana-based decentralized finance yield protocol Carrot said Thursday that it is shutting down permanently, becoming one of the first DeFi protocols to fall due to contagion from the Drift Protocol exploit in early April.  In an X post on Thursday, Carrot said the Drift exploit was “catastrophic” for the protocol and had left it financially unable to continue operating. The platform set a May 14 deadline for users to withdraw remaining funds. It said it will continue to help recovery efforts related to Drift and distribute assets once they become available. “We are setting May 14th as the deadline to withdraw any remaining funds from Boost, Turbo, and CRT before we will then begin to deleverage the system. Your deposited funds are still yours, but all leverage will be reduced to zero, freeing up all liquidity for CRT redemption,” the protocol’s team said. Read more

Sentora has announced that Sentora Smart Yield is now publicly available, opening access to its DeFi vault discovery and monitoring platform to all users. April 30, 2026 – Sentora has announced that Sentora Smart Yield is now publicly available, opening access to its DeFi vault discovery and monitoring platform to all users. As DeFi vaults become a core way capital moves onchain, Sentora is opening public access to the same research-led yield infrastructure it has used to support institutional deployments. This comes as vaults have become a key part of DeFi infrastructure, and risk curators already account for nearly $7 billion in DeFi capital through curated vault structures. Read more

Flying Tulip’s Andre Cronje says circuit breakers can give teams time to respond during abnormal outflows, while Curve’s Michael Egorov warns they may create new human vulnerabilities. Andre Cronje says much of decentralized finance is “no longer DeFi” in the strict sense, as builders debate whether circuit breakers and other emergency controls are now necessary to protect users from exploits. The Flying Tulip founder told Cointelegraph in an interview that many protocols are no longer immutable public goods, but rather “teams running for-profit businesses” with upgradeable contracts, offchain infrastructure and operational controls. That shift changes the security model, he said. While early DeFi protocols were mostly defined by immutable smart contracts, newer systems often depend on proxy upgrades, multisigs, infrastructure providers, admin processes and human response teams, according to Cronje.  Read more

A new system targets the mismatch between fast DeFi liquidations and slow asset redemptions, a key barrier to the use of tokenized assets in lending markets. RedStone, a decentralized oracle provider, has launched a new settlement layer for decentralized finance, aiming to make tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) usable as collateral in lending protocols. The system, called RedStone Settle, is designed to address a long-standing structural issue in DeFi. While lending platforms such as Aave rely on near-instant liquidations to manage risk, RWAs, including tokenized funds and bonds, typically have redemption periods ranging from 60 to 180 days. This mismatch has largely prevented RWAs from being used as collateral. According to RedStone, the new layer introduces an onchain auction mechanism that is triggered during liquidation events. Liquidity providers can step in to purchase positions immediately, supplying protocols with liquidity while assuming the delayed redemption risk tied to the underlying assets. Rea...

AAVE, the native token of the Aave DeFi platform, is now available on the Solana blockchain network. The move will give Solana users access to one of the largest lending protocols in decentralized finance without leaving the network. This came less than two days after the Solana Foundation revealed that it would deploy part of […] The post Latest $290M exploit hit DeFi so hard it forced Aave onto Solana as part of rescue efforts appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The official DeFi United site shows over 69,550 ETH raised from 222 wallets across 1,623 transfers, all aimed at restoring rsETH backing, acting as DeFi's emergency recapitalization desk. The effort is the closest thing the industry has built to a lender of last resort, assembled without a regulator, a central bank, or a mandate. Aave's […] The post DeFi lost $13B this month as the KelpDAO rescue shows both the best and worst of DeFi appeared first on CryptoSlate.

A $20 billion hit from the KelpDAO exploit highlights systemic risks, while flat ETH-denominated growth and a shift to stablecoins point to ongoing fragility in DeFi.

In future, DeFi protocols will either become unhackable…. or they will cease to exist. Both outcomes are now possible due to AI.

Flying Tulip said its withdrawal safeguard is designed to fail open, while a status page lets users monitor the system in real time. Flying Tulip, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform founded by DeFi developer Andre Cronje, has added a circuit breaker that can delay or queue withdrawals during abnormal outflows, as April DeFi losses climbed amid a string of major exploits.  According to Flying Tulip’s documentation, the mechanism is designed to slow funds leaving the protocol if outflow capacity is exceeded, giving the team time to investigate suspicious activity and limiting how much an attacker could drain in a worst-case scenario. Flying Tulip said the circuit breaker works differently across products. In the first version of the circuit breaker, used in its Perpetual PUT product, withdrawals can revert and users must retry later. In the second version, used in Flying Tulip’s stable asset and settlement currency, ftUSD, withdrawals are queued and become claimable after a delay instead of being rejected ...

In this week’s Crypto Long & Short Newsletter, Jennifer Rosenthal writes on the need to protect the people actually building DeFi infrastructure. Then, Alexis Sirkia comments on how Ethereum's L2 strategy is failing due to a fundamental design flaw.

Aave’s supplied balance has tanked since the Kelp DAO bridge exploit, as users pull funds amid uncertainty over how much of the rsETH-linked shortfall the protocol will ultimately absorb. Aave, the largest decentralized lending protocol, has seen around $15 billion in deposits withdrawn since the Kelp Dao exploit on Saturday.  Total value supplied to Aave fell from $45.8 billion on Saturday to $30.8 billion on Wednesday, according to Aavescan data. The decline followed an attack that drained about 116,500 restaked Ether (rsETH), worth roughly $293 million, from Kelp DAO’s LayerZero-powered rsETH bridge. The exploiter then used part of the stolen funds to borrow on Aave. Read more

Crypto steadied despite rising Iran tensions, but DeFi is reeling from one of the largest exploits of the year.

Bitcoin pulled back after Friday’s surge as traders considered a CME futures gap, a DeFi exploit rattled altcoins and macro pressures weighed on sentiment.

A $292 million exploit at KelpDAO set off a broad retreat across decentralized finance over the weekend, draining roughly $10 billion across the DeFi industry and forcing multiple protocols to freeze markets tied to rsETH. The breach began late Saturday when an attacker drained about 116,500 rsETH from KelpDAO’s cross-chain bridge. The stolen tokens were […] The post DeFi users pull $10 billion out of the market as $292 million exploit sparks bank-run optics appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Developers and traders warn of structural risks as a cross-chain exploit spreads fear and prompts billions to flee DeFi platforms.

The contagion from the Kelp exploit could have been contained, but at the cost of capital efficiency, according to the founder of Curve Finance. The exploit of the Kelp liquid restaking protocol shows how non-isolated lending and integrations in decentralized finance (DeFi) can cause broader ecosystem contagion, according to crypto industry executives and blockchain security firms. Non-isolated lending on DeFi platforms, including earlier versions of the Aave lending protocol, exposes users to risks from all the various tokens used as collateral on the platforms, according to Michael Egorov, founder of the Curve Finance DeFi protocol. Kelp was the target of a cyber attack on Saturday, causing the platform to pause smart contracts for its restaking token (rsETH) while it moved to investigate the attack that left the platform drained of about $293 million. DeFi teams should also vet prospective digital assets to ensure that tokens do not feature single points of failure or attack surfaces before approving token...

A new report finds that agents have taken over the predictable corners of DeFi, but humans still clear the table when trades get complex.

DeFi fared pretty well under the House’s version of the CLARITY Act — but the Senate’s revised draft could throw a spanner in the works.

AllUnity says it is expanding EURAU stablecoin liquidity pools across major DEXs such as Uniswap and Raydium, with trading pairs against USDT and USDT0. AllUnity, a regulated European stablecoin issuer, is expanding its euro-pegged stablecoin, EURAU, across major decentralized exchanges (DEXs). The company announced Thursday that its EURAU stablecoin is entering liquidity pools across major DEXs, including Uniswap, currently the largest decentralized exchange by trading volumes. The rollout includes two EURAU trading pairs, one against Tether USDt (USDT) on Ethereum, and another against USDT0 — an omnichain version of USDT — on the Tempo blockchain. It also includes the EURAU/USDT pair on Solana via the Raydium DEX. Read more