Without programmable infrastructure, DeFi risks becoming the next frontier for unchecked automation and financial exploitation. DeFi faces vulnerabilities that could hinder its evolution. Opinion by: Sean Li, co-founder of Magic Labs Crypto markets run 24/7. Human traders don’t. As AI agents begin to manage liquidity, optimize yield, and execute trades at all hours, they’re quickly becoming essential infrastructure for decentralized finance’s (DeFi) future. While AI agents are evolving from niche tools for quant traders into mainstream financial operators, they’re rapidly outpacing the wallets meant to secure them. Advancements in account abstraction and smart contract wallets have emerged, but most DeFi platforms still predominately rely on externally owned account wallets that require manual approvals at every step. Early-stage programmable solutions exist but remain fragmented, costly on layer-1 networks and adopted by only a tiny fraction of users. Read more
Bitcoin bulls are on the cusp of launching the market back to all-time highs and beyond, new BTC price analysis confirms ahead of a crucial weekly close. Key points: Bitcoin analysis identifies the all-important price point to hold into the weekly close as all-time highs loom. Liquidity is tightly clustered around current spot price, with $106,000 the likely next battleground. Read more
Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade introduces offchain wallet delegation via EIP-7702, allowing attackers to drain funds using just a signed message. Ethereum’s latest network upgrade, Pectra, introduced powerful new features aimed at improving scalability and smart account functionality — but it also opened a dangerous new attack vector that could allow hackers to drain funds from user wallets using only an offchain signature. Under the Pectra upgrade, which went live on May 7 at epoch 364032, attackers can exploit a new transaction type to take control of externally owned accounts (EOAs) without requiring the user to sign an onchain transaction. Arda Usman, a Solidity smart contract auditor, confirmed to Cointelegraph that “it becomes possible for an attacker to drain an EOA’s funds using only an offchain signed message (no direct onchain transaction signed by the user).” Read more
A number of high-profile crypto firms have announced relocations or expansions in the United States this year. Crypto services platform Nexo shared its plans to reenter the United States market on Monday, marking the eighth major crypto firm to announce such plans since US President Donald Trump took office at the start of the year. Firms like Circle, Binance and OKX are banking on favorable regulatory clarity in 2025 to herald their US expansion. Bills like the STABLE Act and the GENIUS Act are advancing in Congress, which, if implemented, will lay the groundwork for swift success. Trump and his family are actively involved in some of these planned expansions. Nexo’s recent announcement was backed by Donald Trump Jr., who said, “We see the opportunity for the financial sector and want to ensure we bring that back to the US.” Read more
Worldcoin’s Orb Mini device was met with mockery across Crypto Twitter, as critics questioned its ethics and usefulness. Worldcoin’s latest hardware, the Orb Mini, aimed at enabling portable human verification, has been met with ridicule across Crypto Twitter. Launched with the slogan “It goes where you go,” the device has instead triggered dystopian comparisons and widespread mockery for its unsettling implications and unclear use case. “The thing about humans is they can tell when a human is in front of them,” Alicia Katz from decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform Euler Finance wrote on X. Read more