DeFi | Crypto

For years, Balancer stood as one of DeFi’s most reliable institutions, a protocol that had survived several bear markets, audits, and integrations without scandal. However, that credibility collapsed on Nov. 3, when the blockchain security firm PeckShield reported that Balancer and several of its forks were under an active exploit spreading across multiple chains. Within […] The post How 11 audits couldn’t stop Balancer’s $128 million hack redefining DeFi risks appeared first on CryptoSlate.

High yields mean nothing without execution certainty. Institutional DeFi adoption demands predictable transactions over speculative returns at scale. Opinion by: Robin Nordnes, co-founder and CEO of Raiku Many decentralized finance (DeFi) diehards assume that the future of institutional adoption will be driven by sparkly, sky-high yields. The reality is that the mainstream will be most impressed with consistency and reliability. DeFi opened the door for ordinary people to access financial tools that were previously reserved for institutions. For the first time, anyone could invest their money in open markets from anywhere in the world. That was a massive step forward. The same openness that made this possible came with a trade-off. Decentralization gave us freedom, but it sometimes meant unpredictability. Read more

Broadcasting transactions before they are executed imposes a "hidden tax" on retail crypto users while alienating financial institutions. Maximal extractable value (MEV), the process of miners or validators reordering transactions in a block to extract profits, is preventing financial institutions from adopting decentralized finance (DeFi), which hurts retail users, according to Aditya Palepu, CEO of DEX Labs, the lead contributor to decentralized crypto derivatives exchange DerivaDEX. All electronically-traded markets suffer from maximal extractable value or similar issues inherent in the information asymmetry in ordering trading transaction data, Palepu told Cointelegraph.  The solution is to prevent order flow data from being visible before execution through processing transactions in trusted execution environments, which handle transactions privately through a funded vault or some other mechanism, Palepu said. He added: Read more

Broadcasting transactions before they are executed imposes a “hidden tax” on retail crypto users while alienating financial institutions. Maximal extractable value (MEV), the process of miners or validators reordering transactions in a block to extract profits, is preventing financial institutions from adopting decentralized finance (DeFi), which hurts retail users, according to Aditya Palepu, CEO of DEX Labs, the lead contributor to decentralized crypto derivatives exchange DerivaDEX. All electronically-traded markets suffer from maximal extractable value or similar issues inherent in the information asymmetry in ordering trading transaction data, Palepu told Cointelegraph.  The solution is to prevent order flow data from being visible before execution through processing transactions in trusted execution environments, which handle transactions privately through a funded vault or some other mechanism, Palepu said. He added: Read more

Solana (SOL) processes approximately 70 million transactions per day and recorded over $143 billion in monthly DEX volume as of Oct. 30, according to DefiLlama. The network operates with 1,295 consensus validators across 40 countries, and a Nakamoto Coefficient of 20, according to the Foundation’s June 2025 Network Health Report. Production throughput runs at approximately […] The post 70M daily transactions, $143B volume: How Solana won DeFi’s throughput race appeared first on CryptoSlate.

On Oct. 20, a hiccup in Amazon’s US-EAST-1 region set off a chain reaction across the crypto industry. Coinbase reported degraded service, Infura and Alchemy posted AWS-related incident notes, and several wallets and rollups began timing out. None of these failures came from the blockchains themselves. Consensus was fine. The problem was everything wrapped around […] The post If Web3 is decentralized, why do DeFi dApps still break when the cloud goes down? appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Like early email protocols, DeFi remains complex and isolated. Bridging DeFi and TradFi through hybrid payment solutions could unlock crypto’s mainstream potential. Opinion by: Mark Jones, founder of Hana Wallet It’s often forgotten that the first emails were sent between US college professors looking to share files and work collaboratively in the early 1970s. The sending of emails between two professors initially involved using a closed system between two computers on the ARPANET that would enable messages to be sent over the File Transfer Protocol.  The process was slow, complex, time-consuming and consequently didn’t gain any traction beyond Ivy League universities or government research facilities. Read more

Like early email protocols, DeFi remains complex and isolated. Bridging DeFi and TradFi through hybrid payment solutions could unlock crypto’s mainstream potential. Opinion by: Mark Jones, founder of Hana Wallet It’s often forgotten that the first emails were sent between US college professors looking to share files and work collaboratively in the early 1970s. The sending of emails between two professors initially involved using a closed system between two computers on the ARPANET that would enable messages to be sent over the File Transfer Protocol.  The process was slow, complex, time-consuming and consequently didn’t gain any traction beyond Ivy League universities or government research facilities. Read more

Crypto markets that trade 24/7 demand automated wallet protections, not manual vigilance. Passive vaults leave people exposed to overnight liquidations. Opinion by: Brian Huang, co-founder of Glider Crypto markets run 24/7. Today’s wallets leave users exposed to constant risk, highlighting the urgent need for automated protections that operate around the clock. While the US stock market closes every weekday at 4:00 p.m. ET, cryptocurrency markets never sleep.  As more assets, including stocks, move onchain over the next few years, it won’t be long before most assets will trade 24/7. While permissionless access to assets around the world is great, no consumer tool today, whether TradFi or DeFi, is built to protect users around the clock.  Read more

The Nasdaq-listed company will allocate 5.6% of its $3.57 billion Ether treasury through ether.fi and EigenCloud on Linea, marking one of the largest corporate DeFi deployments to date. SharpLink Gaming has announced plans to deploy $200 million worth of Ether (ETH) from its corporate treasury onto Consensys’ Linea network. The company said the multi-year initiative will use Linea’s zkEVM layer-2 infrastructure to generate onchain yield and increase the efficiency of its ETH holdings. According to Tuesday’s press release, the strategy aims to capture “highly competitive, differentiated, risk-adjusted ETH-denominated returns.” SharpLink plans to generate yields from staking, restaking rewards earned by helping secure EigenCloud’s decentralized verification services (AVSs), and incentives from Linea and ether.fi — a decentralized liquid staking and restaking protocol. Read more

Bitget Wallet, a leading self-custodial crypto wallet, has announced a full integration with HyperEVM— the Ethereum-compatible smart contract layer that powers the Hyperliquid Layer-1 blockchain.  The post Bitget Wallet Integrates HyperEVM – Could This Be the Next Big Bridge in DeFi? appeared first on Cryptonews.

As Treasury yields sink, Spark’s $100 million move into Superstate’s regulated crypto carry fund signals DeFi’s pivot toward uncorrelated yield sources. Decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol Spark has rotated a portion of its treasury reserves from US government bonds into crypto-native yield strategies, signaling new approaches to onchain yield generation as Treasury returns continue to compress. On Thursday, Spark said it allocated $100 million of its stablecoin reserves to Superstate’s Crypto Carry Fund (USCC), a regulated basis-trading fund that generates yield from price differentials between spot and futures markets across major digital assets. The fund allows DeFi protocols to earn market-neutral yield from the same derivatives markets traditionally used by hedge funds. According to Superstate’s website, USCC manages about $528 million in assets and currently produces a 30-day yield of 9.26%. Read more

Current laws in the United States do not explicitly protect open source software developers and create the risk of retroactive prosecution. Roman Storm, a developer of the Tornado Cash privacy-preserving protocol, asked the open source software community whether they are concerned with being retroactively prosecuted by the US Department of Justice for developing decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms. Storm asked DeFi developers: “How can you be so sure you won’t be charged by the DOJ as a money service business for building a non-custodial protocol?”  The DOJ could prosecute a case, arguing that any decentralized, non-custodial service should have been developed as a custodial service, as it did in the case against him, Storm added, citing his recent motion for acquittal, which was filed on September 30. Read more

Babylon unveils a proof-of-concept for using native Bitcoin in DeFi lending, as BNB Chain and Hyperliquid post major updates. Bitcoin infrastructure company Babylon Labs claimed to have developed a system that enables native Bitcoin to be used as collateral for borrowing assets on Ethereum. Babylon Labs co-founder and Stanford University professor David Tse said on Wednesday that the company built a proof-of-concept that allows native Bitcoin to be used “trustlessly” as collateral for loans on Ethereum.  The comments follow a white paper release from the company, revealing a Bitcoin trustless vault system that leverages Bitcoin smart contract verification BitVM3 to lock BTC in per-user vaults. Here, withdrawals are gated by proofs of external smart contract state verified on Bitcoin.  Read more

Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 opens perpetual futures listing to anyone willing to stake $20 million. The question isn’t whether this democratizes the DeFi, but whether the safeguards can handle what comes next. Hyperliquid launched HIP-3 on mainnet in October 2025, introducing a model where any builder can deploy perpetual futures markets without committee approval. Deployers must stake 500,000 […] The post Anyone can now create Hyperliquid perp contracts with $20M: Is DeFi about to break? appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Democratic senators have been criticized for pitching a counter-proposal to the market structure bill that could effectively “kill DeFi.” Despite previously supporting a crypto market structure bill, several Democratic US senators have reportedly introduced a counter-proposal that could see decentralized finance protocols placed on a “restricted list” if deemed too risky. This move, among others they proposed, could “kill DeFi” or move it offshore from the US, according to critics. The Senate Banking Committee Democrats sent a proposal to the committee’s Republicans on Thursday seeking to impose Know Your Customer rules on the frontends of crypto apps — including non-custodial wallets — and to strip protections from crypto developers, Punchbowl News reported on Thursday. Read more

Coinbase has introduced decentralized trading to nearly all its U.S. customers, broadening access to one of its most ambitious products yet. The company confirmed on Oct. 8 that its decentralized exchange (DEX) service is now live inside the main Coinbase app for users across the country, except those based in New York, where state regulations […] The post Coinbase brings DEX trading to US users as CEXs go DeFi appeared first on CryptoSlate.

DeFi TVL reached a record $237 billion in the third quarter of 2025, but DApp wallet activity fell 22% as SocialFi and AI DApps lost momentum. The decentralized application (DApp) industry ended the third quarter of 2025 with mixed results, as decentralized finance (DeFi) liquidity surged to a record high while user activity fell sharply, according to new data from DappRadar. In a report sent to Cointelegraph, DappRadar said that daily unique active wallets averaged 18.7 million in Q3, down 22.4% compared to the second quarter. Meanwhile, DeFi protocols collectively locked in $237 billion, the highest total value locked (TVL) ever recorded in the space.  The report highlights an ongoing divergence between institutional capital flowing into blockchain-based financial platforms and the engagement of retail users with DApps. While DeFi TVL reached record levels of liquidity, overall activity lagged, suggesting weaker retail participation. Read more

Fully Homomorphic Encryption could unlock trillions in traditional finance for DeFi by enabling private lending, encrypted credit scores and confidential transactions. Opinion by: Jason Delabays, blockchain ecosystem lead at Zama Despite decentralized finance’s (DeFi) recent resurgence, most capital in traditional finance remains out of reach. Most will blame scalability, regulation or poor UX. The real blocker is far more fundamental: a lack of confidentiality. Solve that, and trillions will be unlocked.  At its December 2021 peak, DeFi’s total value locked (TVL) hit an incredible $260 billion. Zoom out, however, and that figure starts to feel small, especially when the global financial system moves trillions every day. Foreign exchange alone sees over $7.5 trillion traded daily, and the global bond market’s worth more than $130 trillion. Read more

XRP is entering a new development phase as its ecosystem embraces DeFi products and strategically moves into real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. These steps aim to give the long-standing digital asset practical roles beyond cross-border payments, a shift that could determine its future relevance in global finance. XRP DeFi expansion The introduction of mXRP, a liquid […] The post Ripple finally finds DeFi traction as XRP staking vault tops $30M appeared first on CryptoSlate.