DeFi | Crypto

Novozhenov argues that despite lingering governance, security and regulatory hurdles that have shuttered several protocols, DeFi remains resilient.

Claude Mythos Preview identified thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities across every major operating system and browser, including in cryptography libraries that DeFi infrastructure depends on.

The Cardano community has officially approved the first tranche of the Orion Fund, a venture-style initiative designed to bridge Bitcoin liquidity into its decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. The governance vote unlocks 50 million ADA from the network's treasury, marking a pivotal shift in how Cardano funds its long-term economic expansion. The approval, which cleared required […] The post Cardano targets Bitcoin liquidity with $80 million fund to meet $3 billion DeFi goal by 2030 appeared first on CryptoSlate.

DeFi yields have collapsed below TradFi rates, forcing investors to face higher smart contract risks for lower returns as regulation and exploits mount.

The Solana Foundation and Web3 security firm Asymmetric Research unveiled a new security initiative called STRIDE, along with a real-time incident-response network. The Solana Foundation on Monday announced a new security auditing framework for Solana-based protocols in addition to an incident-response network, warning that “adversaries are rapidly innovating.” The Solana Foundation, a Swiss organization that supports the adoption and security of Solana, and Web3 security firm Asymmetric Research unveiled the Solana Trust, Resilience and Infrastructure for DeFi Enterprises (STRIDE), stating that it was a “structured program for evaluating, monitoring and escalating security across Solana projects.” The initiative works to evaluate the security of protocols across eight pillars: program security, governance and access control, oracle and dependency risk, infrastructure security, supply chain security, operational security, monitoring and incident response, as well as log management and forensics.  Read more

Security researcher Taylor Monahan listed at least 40 decentralized finance platforms she claims have been infiltrated by North Korean IT workers at some stage of their lives. North Korean IT workers have been embedding themselves in crypto companies and decentralized finance projects for at least seven years, according to a cybersecurity analyst. “Lots of DPRK IT workers built the protocols you know and love, all the way back to DeFi summer,” said MetaMask developer and security researcher Taylor Monahan on Sunday.  Monahan claimed that over 40 DeFi platforms, some being well-known names, have had North Korean IT workers working on their protocols. Read more

Wall Street spent the first quarter of 2026 systematically narrowing DeFi's claim to the future of finance. In January, ICE announced NYSE was building a tokenized securities platform with 24/7 operations, instant settlement, dollar-based order sizing, and stablecoin funding, with BNY and Citi providing tokenized deposits for clearinghouse funding outside normal banking hours. In February, […] The post As Wall Street moves on-chain, DeFi faces a $330 billion trust test it can’t dodge appeared first on CryptoSlate.

January saw the largest attack against a DeFi protocol of the quarter, the $40 million private key compromise of portfolio management platform Step Finance. Crypto hackers stole over $168.6 million in cryptocurrency from 34 decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols in the first quarter of 2026, falling significantly from the same period last year, according to data from DefiLlama.  The $40 million private key compromise of Step Finance in January was the largest exploit of the quarter, the data shows, followed by a smart contract manipulation that drained $26.4 million in ether (ETH) from Truebit on Jan. 8. The third-largest was a private key compromise targeting stablecoin issuer Resolv Labs on March 21. The quarterly figure is low given that the industry saw $1.58 billion stolen in the first quarter of 2025, with the bulk coming from the $1.4 billion Bybit exploit. However, experts warn that crypto hacks aren’t tied to specific periods within a year. Read more

DeFi prioritizes gas efficiency over market resilience. Simplified financial logic fails under volatility due to computational constraints. Opinion by: João Garcia, DevReal lead at Cartesi. Decentralized finance presents itself as a transparent alternative to Wall Street. Yet, what it has largely reconstructed is a simplified version of finance, engineered less around market resilience than around the constraints of gas fees. That trade-off, once treated as a technical footnote, is increasingly shaping the limits of what DeFi can become. So long as computational minimalism remains the overriding priority, financial robustness will remain secondary, and periods of market stress will continue to expose that imbalance. DeFi has rebuilt the familiar architecture of finance, including exchanges, lending markets, derivatives and stablecoins. However, the way these systems function reveals how tightly they are bound by their execution environments. Read more

Fira debuted its fixed-rate DeFi lending protocol with $450 million in pre-launch deposits, seeking to make long-term decentralized lending rates more predictable. Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol Fira said on Tuesday it was launching with about $450 million in deposits, highlighting demand for fixed-rate onchain credit. Fira said the protocol’s fixed-rate credit market allows users to lock borrowing costs and lending returns for defined periods by organizing lending around maturities rather than floating utilization-based rates, according to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph. The fixed-rate model differs from most DeFi lending protocols, where borrowers cannot lock funding costs, and lenders cannot predict returns, making long-term DeFi lending less predictable. Fira’s said its model organizes markets by maturity and determines interest rates by supply and demand mechanics, replacing utilization algorithms that fluctuate with borrowing activity. Read more

Wall Street won’t tame DeFi. Regulation creates compliant tiers atop permissionless liquidity, forcing TradFi to adopt DeFi’s superior speed and composability. Opinion by: Mitchell Amador, founder and CEO of Immunefi There’s an argument that regulation will split decentralized finance (DeFi) into two separate silos: one regulated and compliant and the other completely open and accessible by anyone, including anonymous participants. This argument is outdated. Read more

USR issuer Resolv Labs says its collateral pool remains intact after an exploit on Sunday that minted 80 million unbacked tokens and drove the US dollar stablecoin as low as $0.14. Resolv Labs moved Sunday to reassure users after an exploit hit the issuance mechanics of its USR stablecoin, knocking the token off its dollar peg and prompting decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols with exposure to move quickly to contain any fallout. Cointelegraph reported earlier Sunday that an attacker exploited USR’s minting mechanics, creating tens of millions of unbacked tokens and dumping them through DeFi pools, which broke the stablecoin’s peg and prompted Resolv to pause protocol functions as it assessed the damage. The token dropped as low as $0.14 (86% below its intended $1 price) after the exploit before rebounding to $0.42 at the time of writing, according to data from CoinGecko. Read more

The following is a guest post and analysis from Vincent Maliepaard, Marketing Director at Sentora. Stablecoins have become a meaningful settlement layer, lending markets continue to expand, and tokenized real-world assets keep growing. Visa said global stablecoin transaction volume rose from more than $3.5 trillion in 2023 to more than $5.5 trillion in 2024. That […] The post DeFi needs a metric for protected capital appeared first on CryptoSlate.

US Stablecoin Bill Revived: What Yield Rules Mean for DeFi The post Stablecoin Bill Enters Final Stage — Yield Rules and DeFi Are on the Line appeared first on Cryptonews.

Bitcoin’s biggest limitation is being challenged as OpNet brings native, yield-generating DeFi directly to the Bitcoin mainnet.

Crypto firms argue that DeFi should be taught at top schools so that students can eventually take on a rapid rise in non-technical crypto jobs on Wall Street. Twenty-one crypto organizations have signed an open letter urging US colleges to incorporate decentralized finance into their curricula, arguing that there will be massive demand for crypto talent on Wall Street. “Our purpose with this letter is simple: to respectfully urge higher education institutions across the United States to further integrate digital assets, blockchain, and decentralized finance into their business and legal curricula,” the open letter reads, which was published on Wednesday. The campaign was spearheaded by decentralized protocol aggregator 1Inch, with signatories including the Solana Policy Institute, Blockchain Association, DeFi Education Fund and crypto platforms like Aave, MyEtherWallet, Delphi Digital and Messari. Read more

Commodity Futures Trading Commission chief Michael Selig updated his progress on guidance for DeFi developers, crypto derivatives and prediction markets.

DeFi lacks its final primitive. Insurance turns hidden risks into priced, programmable coverage. Programmable insurance with uncorrelated capital creates TVC safety nets. Opinion by: Jesus Rodriguez, co-founder of Sentora If you look at decentralized finance (DeFi) as a stack of computational primitives, it’s remarkably complete — yet fundamentally broken. We have automated market makers for liquidity, like Uniswap. We have lending markets for capital efficiency, and bridges for cross-chain “packet switching.” Step back and look at the architecture from a systems engineering perspective. Read more

The following is a guest post and guest post from Thomas Pratter, Founder and CEO at Renesis. Liquid crypto funds are having a moment. The number of actively managed vehicles keeps growing, DeFi strategies are gaining legitimacy, and regulatory clarity is slowly catching up. Institutional allocators are paying closer attention than ever. But behind the […] The post Liquid crypto funds have a DeFi problem nobody talks about appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin bounced back this week as stablecoin inflows surged, and DeFi faced fresh pressure from Aave governance strife, exploits and exchange security moves. Bitcoin and the leading cryptocurrencies staged a recovery this week following initial shockwaves from the outbreak of the US-Israel conflict with Iran. Bitcoin (BTC) initially fell to $63,245 on Sunday, before briefly recovering to $73,000 on Thursday, assisted by renewed demand from US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which logged $1.1 billion in net weekly inflows leading up to Thursday. In the broader DeFi space, Aave’s governance dispute continued, with the Aave Chan Initiative (ACI) saying it will not renew its engagement with the Aave DAO and plans to wind down operations in the next four months. Read more