DeFi | Crypto

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...

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.