DeFi | Crypto

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...

The nonbinding report outlines Parliament's vision for future EU crypto regulation and warns against national MiCA rules. The European Parliament's economic affairs committee has urged the European Commission to assess whether crypto lending and borrowing, staking, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized finance (DeFi) should be regulated. The recommendations were part of a report tabled Friday for plenary vote. It also called for promoting tokenization across financial services, encouraging euro-denominated stablecoins and assessing whether additional crypto activities should be regulated under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA). Drafted by Belgian Member of the European Parliament Johan Van Overtveldt, the report is an own-initiative resolution by the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) that outlines recommendations for the Commission on digital asset regulation.  Read more

The failure of Botanix suggests that Bitcoiners still prefer Ethereum DeFi to Bitcoin L2s. How can Bitcoin L2s change to win hodlers over? For the past two cycles, Bitcoin DeFi has lived more as a promise than a category. Programmable Bitcoin has remained a vision held by a certain breed of Bitcoin maxi who believes that the world’s largest cryptocurrency can become productive without losing its security or sound money qualities. Yet the closure of Bitcoin scaling platform Botanix earlier this month has called that vision into question. Read more

DeFi TVL fell 39% in 2026 as a broader market downturn and fallout from major exploits, including the Kelp DAO hack, weighed on the sector. Total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (DeFi) has fallen by about 39% in 2026 so far, declining to just over $70 billion from roughly $115 billion in January. A Wednesday report from crypto data aggregator CryptoRank attributed the decline to the broader market correction that followed the October 2025 crypto market peak. After Bitcoin reached a record high above $122,000, a market-wide liquidation event on Oct. 10, 2025, erased more than $19 billion in leveraged positions and accelerated a deleveraging cycle across digital assets. Read more

Geoff Kendrick said Aave has moved past April's cyberattack-related market disruption and is well positioned to benefit from growth in tokenized assets and DeFi.

Standard Chartered said tokenized assets moving into DeFi could drive deposits into Aave and help the protocol rebuild its position as a dominant onchain lending platform. Banking giant Standard Chartered has identified Aave as a potential beneficiary of tokenized assets as they move into decentralized finance (DeFi), saying the protocol could rebuild its position as a dominant onchain lending platform. In a Wednesday research note, Geoff Kendrick, the bank's global head of digital assets research, said active tokenized assets in DeFi could drive more deposits into Aave. “Despite recent setbacks, we are bullish on the outlook for Aave, the largest [DeFi] lending protocol,” Kendrick wrote. Read more

GIP-87 shows how tokenized lending can shift from yield growth to borrower workouts, legal administration, and governance-funded cleanup. The post Goldfinch wind-down raises a hard question – can DeFi RWA survive real-world debt? appeared first on CryptoSlate.

bStocks tied to Tesla, Nvidia, and SpaceX exposure are now in Venus' Core Pool, but launch caps keep the borrowing story unfinished. The post Tokenized stocks as DeFi collateral arrive before the borrowing risk is settled appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The Maltese regulator is seeking industry feedback on a legal framework for software-governed organizations, arguing that many DeFi projects are not fully decentralized. Malta’s financial regulator has issued a discussion paper outlining a potential legal framework for decentralized finance (DeFi), including recognition of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), as European policymakers continue to grapple with how to regulate blockchain-based financial services. On June 12, the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) opened a public consultation on DeFi under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation. The paper invites industry feedback through July 10 and proposes a new legal category for so-called “software-based organizations,” which would encompass DAOs and other software-governed DeFi entities. Rather than treating DAOs as a standalone legal concept, the MFSA suggests recognizing them as a type of software-based organization, separating the legal framework governing the or...

For years, DeFi's growth strategy was to pull users on-chain, and the next institutional wave is testing where users may never know they're touching DeFi at all. Matt Fisher, CEO of Katana, shared with CryptoSlate how the front end owns the user. If a credit card, a fintech app, or an exchange routes deposits into […] The post DeFi’s next institutional wave may come from users who never see “behind the scenes” – CEO of Katana appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Users face a September exit deadline while fresh Solana minting signals show liquidity moving faster than recovery systems. The post Solana’s $1B USDC mint collides with DeFi app shutdown as users face unfinished Drift recovery appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Crypto yield has always carried a credibility problem. The same market that learned to demand proof after incentive-heavy protocols unwound still tends to compress risk into a single APY. That tension sits at the center of Solstice’s pitch: whether stablecoin-native, delta-neutral strategies can become usable yield infrastructure without recreating the same opacity, reflexive incentives, and […] The post Solstice’s Ryan Day on why sustainable DeFi yield depends on business fundamentals, not token incentives appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The reported $100 UNI target hinges on tokenized assets leaving closed rails for liquid, composable markets. The post Standard Chartered’s $100 Uniswap call exposes the open DeFi problem Wall Street may need to solve appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Standard Chartered forecasts assets locked in decentralized finance will reach $2.7 trillion by 2030, driven by tokenization and crypto-native growth. Standard Chartered expects assets locked in decentralized finance (DeFi) to grow 37-fold to $2.7 trillion by the end of 2030. The expansion would be driven by both tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) and crypto-native assets moving through onchain protocols, Geoff Kendrick, head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, said in a research note on Monday.  “I think the next opportunity for generational wealth in digital assets is going to come via the DeFi protocols,” Kendrick said. “I estimate that the amount of tokenized assets active in DeFi will 37x by the end of 2030.” Read more

The following is a guest post and opinion from Vincent Maliepaard, VP of Marketing at Sentora. On January 26, 2026, Kraken launched DeFi Earn. The announcement was straightforward: users could deposit stablecoins and receive up to 8% APY, directly within the exchange interface they already used for trading. No seed phrases. No gas management. No […] The post The future of vaults: neobanks and invisible DeFi appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The Raydium AMM V3 exploit drained roughly $1.34 million from a phased-out program tied to five pools outside the current product path, unsupported by Raydium’s UI or SDK, and inaccessible to current users. The exploit hit legacy DeFi contracts and infrastructure that nobody treated as a live attack surface, exposing a lifecycle-management failure that extends […] The post The next DeFi drain could come from legacy contracts everyone forgot appeared first on CryptoSlate.