DeFi | Crypto

The rsETH crisis resulted in $200 million in bad debt on Aave's books, despite not a single line of its contracts misbehaving. On Apr. 18, attackers that Chainalysis preliminarily linked to Lazarus compromised RPC infrastructure, forced a failover to poisoned nodes via DDoS, and injected false data into a 1-of-1 DVN configuration on KelpDAO's rsETH […] The post After the $16.5 billion in exploits, DeFi is now being forced toward the controls it once resisted appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Hyperliquid, EdgeX and Pump.fun returned a combined $96 million to token holders in 30 days, as the crypto community shifts its focus from transaction volumes to real earnings. Three of DeFi’s relatively young applications, including Hyperliquid, EdgeX and Pump.fun, have distributed a combined $96.3 million to token holders over the past 30 days, as the sector’s focus shifts to actual earnings. Hyperliquid led the pack, generating $50.95 million in revenue over the period, all of which went directly to token holders with zero spent on incentives, according to data from DefiLlama. Pump.fun came in second with $22.09 million returned to holders out of $38.81 million in total revenue. EdgeX followed with $23.26 million distributed to holders from $8.26 million in protocol revenue, suggesting that the platform is drawing on reserves or alternative income streams to reward holders. On an annualized basis, Hyperliquid has generated $945.87 million in revenue over the past year, all returned to holders, while Pump.f...

Ethereum's share of the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi compressed from 63.5% at the start of 2025 to around 54% as of May 7, hovering near the lowest level recorded since May 2025. DefiLlama puts Ethereum's current TVL at $45.4 billion, while the chains absorbing share have each staked out a distinct function, such […] The post Ethereum loses 10% of its DeFi market share as rival chains close in appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Solv Protocol and other DeFi projects are migrating to Chainlink infrastructure after the $293 million exploit exposed risks in third-party bridge and oracle setups. Decentralized finance protocols are reevaluating their blockchain oracle providers’ security after the fallout from the $293 million Kelp DAO exploit last month. Several protocols have announced migrations to Chainlink infrastructure in recent days, citing security concerns around third-party oracle and bridge providers. On Thursday, Bitcoin DeFi platform Solv Protocol announced it would migrate to Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) and replace LayerZero bridges, citing an “extensive security review” concluding that CCIP provided the “strongest security assurances.”  A day earlier, liquidity protocol Tydro also said it was moving to Chainlink after its previous oracle provider, Chaos Labs, suffered an incident that prompted Tydro to pause markets over concerns about inaccurate price feeds. Read more

DeFi and its underlying technology have already proved themselves at scale, said eToro CEO Yoni Assia.

In 2026, choosing where to deposit in DeFi starts with a question that audits and total value locked (TVL) leave unresolved: what breaks under stress? That is the shift behind any serious trust check this year. A Q1 2026 security report counted $482 million stolen across 44 incidents and said six audited protocols were still […] The post How to choose a safe DeFi platform before you deposit in 2026 appeared first on CryptoSlate.

With $114 trillion in custodied liquid assets, Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation looks to position tokenization as future of existing financial system. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) plans to pilot trading of tokenized securities in July with a goal of a full service launch in October. The post-trade market infrastructure giant said Monday that more than 50 TradFi and DeFi firms will play a role in the design and deployment of the service. That DTCC Industry Working Group includes Alpaca, Anchorage Digital, BitGo Bank & Trust, BlackRock, Circle and Fireblocks, along with some of the biggest banks in the country. Source: DTCC Read more

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.