DeFi | Crypto

EIP-8363 would drive net consensus yield to zero at 60.25 million ETH staked, shifting the burden toward variable fees, MEV and DeFi returns. The post A proposed Ethereum upgrade threatens to kill native yield and force SharpLink’s $125M treasury into high-risk DeFi appeared first on CryptoSlate.

DeFi recorded 99 hacks in the second quarter of 2026, more than any quarter on record in DeFiLlama's database. Real-world tokenized assets in use inside DeFi protocols have since climbed to nearly $3.97 billion, a fresh all-time high. DeFi gives tokenized assets something to do on-chain, turning them into collateral, lending liquidity, or inputs that […] The post Wall Street put $7B into tokenized funds, but under 1% is actually being used in DeFi appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Tokenized real-world assets moved beyond issuance as RWA deposits more than tripled to $7.4 billion, while lending and trading activity expanded despite a broader industry slowdown. Real-world assets (RWAs) are gaining momentum as tokenized versions of traditional investments move beyond issuance and become active parts of onchain financial markets. RWA deposits across decentralized finance platforms more than tripled year over year to $7.4 billion in the second quarter of 2026, while total DeFi deposits fell about 15%, according to a joint report by CoinShares and Token Terminal published Thursday. CoinShares CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti said the divergence shows that RWA demand is being driven by practical use cases rather than broader market conditions. Read more

A newly proposed Ethereum staking reward cut, outlined in Ethereum Improvement Proposal 8361 (EIP-8361), would lower validators' yield from 2.6% to about 1.2%, a 54% reduction phased in over 18 months. The mechanism is a burn: validators lose a larger share of their consensus reward as the total amount of staked ETH climbs, and the […] The post If Ethereum’s proposed 54% reward cut passes, DeFi’s favorite loop threatens to become a daily loss machine appeared first on CryptoSlate.

A RedStone report found tokenized bullion held up during gold’s sharp sell-off, but DeFi lending adoption remains limited despite surging market growth and trading volumes. Demand for tokenized gold has surged this year as physical bullion climbed to record highs, but very little of the asset is being put to work in decentralized finance, highlighting a major adoption gap, according to a new report by RedStone. Tokenized gold spot trading volume reached $90.7 billion in the first quarter as gold futures rallied above $5,600 per troy ounce. Yet only about $63 million worth of Tether Gold (XAUT) and PAX Gold (PAXG) is currently being used as collateral on Aave v3 and Morpho, RedStone said. That’s just 1.5% of the tokens’ combined $4.2 billion market capitalization. Despite the limited adoption, tokenized gold has already weathered a meaningful market test, RedStone said. Read more

DeFi projects that survived the fallout from the Terra and FTX collapses in 2022 are dying out in 2026. But analysts say it’s not a case of industry consolidation — but the opposite. When DeFi dashboard Zapper announced this month that it would shut down after nearly seven years, it joined a growing list of decentralized finance projects that have folded in 2026. Bitcoin DeFi platform Botanix, Solana portfolio tracker Step Finance, DeFi analytics platform Parsec and DEX aggregator Odos Protocol also wound down or are winding down this year after multiple market cycles. The carnage isn’t limited to DeFi — RootData has tracked 101 “dead” crypto projects in total this year as of July 26 — but it accounts for more than half the cadavers. Read more

Decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch announced the launch of its Aqua protocol allowing users to provide liquidity to many protocols at once. Decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch announced Aqua, a protocol aimed at unifying the liquidity pools of numerous markets in the decentralized finance ecosystem. According to Tuesday’s announcement, Aqua allows liquidity providers to authorize several strategies against one wallet inventory, while the assets remain in the wallet until a trade settles, rather than depositing the funds to any particular liquidity pool. The protocol has been deployed on 13 blockchains including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Robinhood Chain and BNB Chain. Source: 1inch Read more

The commissioner’s fact-specific framework reaches strategy, allocator appointment and asset movement without making any finding about Morpho. The post SEC warning over crypto yield vaults puts DeFi’s secret human controllers in the crosshairs appeared first on CryptoSlate.

DTCC now runs a tokenization trial with roughly 40 firms, including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Vanguard and the NYSE, to represent shares and Treasuries on-chain, tokens that become usable collateral only when a lending market can answer who prices them and what happens once the venues behind that price go quiet. DefiLlama puts on-chain RWA […] The post DeFi’s next institutional hurdle is deciding who can be trusted to price real-world assets appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Active use of tokenized real-world assets in DeFi has returned to about $3.77 billion, close to the level visible before an April 18 exploit triggered a $13 billion decline across DeFi as a whole in 48 hours. DefiLlama's tracking puts that recovery at roughly 95 days from the shock to July 22. The failure consisted […] The post Latest $3.8 billion RWA recovery shows how quickly DeFi absorbed the KelpDAO shock appeared first on CryptoSlate.

ARK Invest’s director of research disputed a16z crypto’s thesis that traditional finance will adopt permissioned blockchain infrastructure instead of decentralized finance, saying institutions will increasingly rely on DeFi rails. ARK Invest’s director of research pushed back against investor a16z crypto’s thesis that traditional finance will adopt blockchain through permissioned infrastructure rather than decentralized finance (DeFi). Lorenzo Valente said in a Wednesday X post that public blockchains have already outperformed private blockchain initiatives, citing the growth of tokenized assets on Ethereum and other open networks. He added that crypto-native firms such as Circle and Coinbase, rather than incumbent financial institutions, are best positioned to build the next generation of financial infrastructure. Read more

Total value stolen and median hack size are declining compared to 2025, signaling that the AI hacking apocalypse was a false alarm, argued Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi. Fears that artificial intelligence would trigger a wave of catastrophic decentralized finance (DeFi) hacks in what was coined as a “hackpocalypse” have not materialized, according to Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi. While the incident count grew to a record high, the median size of hacks has dipped below $500,000 this year, down from over $2 million in 2025. Qureshi argued that this shows malicious actors using AI are targeting “small protocols and abandonware” while larger DeFi protocols have fortified themselves against AI’s threat. Excluding outlier months with large incidents, such as the Bybit hack in February 2025 along with the Drift Protocol and KelpDAO exploits in April of this year, 2026 has still seen less value hacked per month than the previous year, said Qureshi. Read more

“DeFi usually swings much harder than Bitcoin, so holding up this well is unusual,” says Bitwise, as DeFi tokens have outperformed Bitcoin. Decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens have held up unusually well against Bitcoin over the past month, suggesting the market may be “quietly re-rating” the sector, says crypto index fund maker Bitwise. Bitcoin (BTC) fell about 22% in June, while Bitwise’s index tracking tokens from major DeFi protocols fell only 4% over the same period, Bitwise said in a report Thursday. “DeFi usually swings much harder than Bitcoin, so holding up this well is unusual, and almost no one is talking about it,” it said.  Read more

Dune data shows Tether's USDT has become crypto’s dominant payments stablecoin while Circle's USDC powers DeFi, highlighting how blockchain choice shapes stablecoin use. The world’s biggest stablecoins are increasingly becoming chain-specific financial products, with Tether’s USDt (USDT) and Circle’s USDC (USDC) serving distinct roles across the crypto ecosystem rather than competing head-on. Dune’s Digital Asset Brief found that USDT overwhelmingly dominates onchain payments. During the first half of 2026, the biggest stablecoin settled about $95 billion in identified commerce payments, compared with $14 billion for second-biggest USDC. It also accounted for roughly 92% of the $48 billion in business-to-business payment volume. On Tron, USDT’s largest network, around 93% of the token’s supply is held in ordinary wallets rather than on exchanges, underscoring its role as a payment and remittance asset. USDC, meanwhile, has established itself as the dominant stablecoin in decentralized finance. USDC on Base pr...

The broker plans to bring perpetual futures into Zengo wallet and expand DeFi products to its core platform as rivals like Robinhood expand onchain offerings.

The bank initiated coverage of Morpho with a $60 end-2030 price target, saying its DeFi lending and onchain infrastructure businesses are positioned to benefit from tokenization growth.

DeFiLlama data shows $780.3 million in Q2 known losses as bridges, keys and protocol logic turn security into a live cost of participation. The post DeFi hacks are turning high yields into a hidden liquidity tax appeared first on CryptoSlate.

US agencies are formalizing identity checks at the issuer gate while leaving the transfer layer politically exposed. The post US starts clock to bring in ID checks for converting dollars to stablecoins but DeFi stays outside the rules appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Aave's latest market move is becoming a referendum on how investors value DeFi lending as its economics begin to resemble those of financial infrastructure. The token rallied as AAVE traded around $94.32 on June 27, up 13.16% over 24 hours. At the same time, a reported Standard Chartered bull case described Aave in automated-bank terms, […] The post Aave rally makes DeFi lending look more like a bank to investors appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Claude Mythos has raised concerns about AI-driven attacks on DeFi protocols. However, the same AI tools are also available to security teams, not just attackers. When Anthropic introduced Claude Mythos-class models as its most advanced AI system for cybersecurity, it drew the usual mix of reactions from crypto communities. The lineup included Claude Fable 5, a Mythos-class model intended for broad use, although access was later suspended after a US government directive. The concern around decentralized finance (DeFi) was easy to understand. If AI systems can find software flaws faster and with less human input, attackers may also use them to spot weak points in protocols before security teams can fix them.  Those concerns may seem overstated, but they come from a real shift in technology. AI tools have become better at reviewing code, spotting flaws and supporting security teams. At the same time, DeFi remains a major target for attackers because its code is often public, its protocols hold large amounts of m...