DeFi News Hub

Artificial intelligence (AI) tokens on Base are leading the market again, with established tokens like VVV and TIBBIR outperforming, while new launches are turning heads but also drawing criticism from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

TIBBIR and VVV are up 16% and 23%, respectively over the last 24 hours, and sentiment surrounding the AI sector continues to slowly make a comeback after flaming out in 2025.

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Crypto markets traded slightly higher on Friday, Feb. 20, as traders reacted to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs.

Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $67,728, up 1.2% over the past 24 hours, while Ethereum (ETH) is at $1,970, up 1.5%. Other large-cap tokens were also mostly higher, with XRP up 1.5% to $1.43, BNB rising 3.2% to $625, and Solana (SOL) gaining 4% to $85.

Meanwhile, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization is hovering near $2.4 trillion, up 1.3% on the day. Daily trading volume stood at around $114.5 billion, according to CoinGecko.

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Bitcoin is down 46% from its October peak—and the largest holders keep depositing to exchanges, presumably to sell, says CryptoQuant.

Eric Trump called the offering a balance against meme coins, as the tokenization project has a lengthy timeline.

Ethereum has spent years trying to fix high fees, and recent upgrades finally made transactions cheaper. But while they solved one problem, they may have opened the door to another.

Leon Waidmann, head of research at Lisk, noted in an X post on Wednesday, Feb. 18, that network activity is booming, with stablecoin volume hitting $7.5 trillion in a single quarter while transaction fees stayed under a dollar.

“Record usage. Record cheap. At the same time. The biggest divergence between fundamentals and price in all of crypto right now,” he noted.

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New tokens struggled to find a floor in 2025, with early trading dynamics often setting a trajectory that proved hard to reverse as the year wore on, data shows.

An 80-page analysis by Arrakis Finance found that about 85% of tokens launched last year finished below their initial price, after reviewing 125 token generation events (TGE) and surveying more than 25 founding teams.

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Lightspark, a Bitcoin Lightning Network startup founded by former Meta executive David Marcus, who oversaw the development of Meta’s Libra token, is pushing the idea of using BTC for everyday payments rather than long-term holding.

In a Wednesday announcement, Feb. 18, Lightspark said it had teamed up with Cross River Bank, a crypto-friendly, FDIC-insured bank, to support 24/7 settlement of Bitcoin network transactions through the U.S. banking system.

Cross River has become a key banking partner for crypto firms in the U.S., providing banking services to companies such as Circle, Coinbase and others, particularly across cards and stablecoin-linked programs.

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Despite endless debates over where gambling ends and predicting begins, a new Federal Reserve Board paper finds that prediction markets often pick up shifts in expectations faster — and sometimes even more accurately — than traditional tools.

The study, published by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday, Feb. 18, focused on prediction market Kalshi, comparing it with more traditional survey and market-implied forecasts and examining how expectations respond to macroeconomic and financial news.

When compared to standard benchmarks, the paper found that “Kalshi’s forecasts for the federal funds rate and CPI provide statistically significant improvements over fed funds futures and professional forecasters.” The authors also note that for inflation, Kalshi’s numbers often beat the consensus survey forecasts.

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States are scoring victories against prediction markets when they invoke congressional intent, said a legal expert—and losing when they focus on narrower legal definitions.

Software firm Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) and its co-founder Michael Saylor have become synonymous with Bitcoin. Here’s what you need to know.

Bitcoin ticked up after the Supreme Court ruled that President Trump exceeded his authority in imposing most tariffs on foreign goods.

BGD Labs, one of the main teams that builds and maintains Aave’s technology, said it will stop working with the Aave DAO when its contract ends on April 1, 2026.

Aave is currently the largest decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, with more than $26.8 billion in total value locked, according to DeFiLlama. In a new blog post, BGD said its decision to leave after four years follows disagreements about the protocol’s future direction.

One of the key issues, the team said, is increasing pressure to focus on v4, even though v3 remains the main system in use. The v4 testnet went live in November 2025 and introduced a new “hub-and-spoke” architecture aimed at reshaping DeFi lending.

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The cinema chain has stepped back from screening an award-winning AI short while Hollywood battles over the technology’s creative role.

Lawmakers in South Korea are intensifying scrutiny over the role of regulators after Bithumb accidentally gave out $43 billion in Bitcoin.

Lawmakers warned that approving World Liberty Financial's bank charter application could jeopardize the legitimacy of the U.S. banking system.

Dutch regulator the Netherlands Gambling Authority this week ordered the prediction market to halt operations immediately.

Base is taking their ball (onchain revenue) and going home (to their own chain).

Bitcoin ETF outflows near $4 billion over the past five weeks, as experts debate whether the streak signals a reset or structural weakness.

Three engineers are accused of stealing sensitive mobile processor and cryptography files from Google and two other companies.

At ETH Denver, Caitlin Long said the ethics controversy around Trump-linked crypto projects has complicated Senate support.

Capital is rotating out of DeFi into tokenized assets as experts say the shift reflects maturing markets, not capitulation.

U.S. prosecutors say the former defense contractor executive took about $1.26 million in crypto to transfer sensitive exploit tools tied to Five Eyes intelligence work.

Stablecoin incentives remain a key unresolved issue as lawmakers seek to advance digital-asset market-structure legislation.

U.S.-based centralized exchange (CEX) Kraken announced its acquisition of token management platform Magna yesterday.

The deal closed on Friday and marks the CEX’s latest strategic move as it prepares for an initial public offering (IPO).

The move was reported by Fortune, which said Kraken declined to disclose the deal terms, but Kraken’s co-CEO Arjun Sethi told the news outlet that the acquisition will allow Kraken to support token issuer teams “early on in their life cycle,” indicating that it may provide Kraken a strategic leg up in terms of token listings.

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The longtime Warhammer designer backed Games Workshop’s generative AI ban, arguing the technology undermines creative work.

“Silicon Valley” actor T.J. Miller joked that an AI bot “replaced” him as this week’s ETH Denver host, amid actual growing job fears.

Base’s decision to move away from the OP Stack to a unified software stack is raising questions about the long-term economics behind Optimism’s Superchain model.

The OP Mainnet, which is powered by the OP Stack, is currently the third-largest Ethereum Layer-2 by total value locked (TVL) at $1.84 billion, per L2beat.

OP, Optimism’s native token, is currently trading at around $0.14, down 26% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data. The sell-off followed a Wednesday, Feb. 18, blog post from Base – the Ethereum Layer-2 blockchain launched by Coinbase with a TVL of $3.8 billion – outlining plans to move away from Optimism’s software over the coming months.

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Google AI music generator Lyria 3 is now available on the Gemini app. It works—mostly—but the competition has a big head start.

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has outlined its Protocol priorities for 2026, focusing on scalability, improved user experience, and enhanced network security.

Over the coming year the EF looks to push its gas limit “toward and beyond” 100 million, lean into account abstraction and interoperability, and continue to “harden the L1” focusing on security, censorship resistance, and network resilience.

Today’s initiative release comes shortly after co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak announced his intent to step down at the end of the month. Stańczak indicated he will continue to spend his professional time in the Ethereum ecosystem, working closely with developers and founders. Bastian Aue is assuming interim co-executive director duties for the time being.

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Layer 1 blockchain Aptos is proposing a major shift in its tokenomics, intended to reward long-term stakers and use transaction fees to fund token buybacks, as the APT token continues to hit new lows.

The team posted the update on X today, stating that “The Aptos network is transitioning to performance-driven tokenomics designed to align supply mechanics with network utilization.”

Through this update, Aptos aims to transition from its high-inflation, subsidy-based model to a deflationary, revenue-driven supply. The update proposes a hard cap of 2.1 billion APT, and the Aptos Foundation will permanently lock 210 million APT, worth $180 million, and use staking rewards to support network operations rather than token sales.

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Sharplink is shaking up its branding as it reports additional Ethereum holdings and a rising number of institutional investors.

NilChain, a privacy-focused blockchain built with the Cosmos SDK by Nillion, is winding down operations on Cosmos as part of broader shifts across the interoperability-focused ecosystem.

In an X announcement on Feb. 17, the team said the network will halt operations on March 23, urging holders of the NIL token to migrate their assets to Ethereum before the shutdown.

NilChain was designed as a network for secure computation. But the chain has seemingly not been able to reach broad usage inside the Cosmos ecosystem.

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World Liberty Financial’s plan to tokenize loan revenue interests tied to the Trump International Hotel & Resort in the Maldives is just the start of a larger plan, World Liberty Financial co-founder Eric Trump said in an exclusive interview with The Defiant.

The project, announced Wednesday, Feb. 18, is being developed with real estate firm DarGlobal and Securitize, a platform known for tokenizing real-world assets (RWAs), including funds like BlackRock’s BUIDL.

Trump told Camila Russo, founder of The Defiant, that tokenization will change real estate finance by making deals simpler and allowing more people to invest who couldn’t before.

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Crypto gaming metaverse platform The Sandbox is rolling out its Season 7 content push, making it easier than ever for players to jump in.

Decentralized neobank and crypto card issuer etherfi is leaving Scroll for Optimism, taking with it millions of dollars in total value locked and monthly fees generated on Scroll, data shows.

In an X post on Wednesday, Feb. 18, etherfi said it plans to move its Cash accounts and card program from Scroll to Optimism’s OP Mainnet, migrating more than 70,000 active cards, roughly 300,000 user accounts, and nearly $160 million in TVL in the coming months.

With etherfi, Scroll’s own TVL is only around $188 million as of today, Feb. 19, per data from DefiLlama.

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Consulting giant Accenture is monitoring senior staff logins to AI tools and tying career advancement to adoption rates—all while AI threatens to eliminate jobs.

Bitcoin's recent plunge has prompted a wave of investors and observers seeking answers about why the top cryptocurrency is cratering.

The longtime crypto critic warned against using taxpayer dollars to rescue investors and firms amid the current market slide.

Top derivatives marketplace CME will adopt 24/7 crypto trading on May 29, pending regulatory approval. The CFTC has indicated it supports such moves.

Anchorage Digital has announced the launch of Stablecoin Solutions, a federally regulated service that enables banks to conduct near-instant USD settlements globally via blockchain technology. This move by Anchorage Digital, the first federally chartered crypto bank in the U.S., aims to modernize cross-border settlements while adhering to stringent regulatory standards.

The new offering consolidates minting, redemption, custody, fiat treasury, and settlement under Anchorage Digital Bank, N.A., operating under the oversight of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). This positions Anchorage to offer a seamless integration of stablecoin technology within traditional banking frameworks, eliminating the complexities of state-by-state licensing.

"Stablecoins are becoming core financial infrastructure," said Nathan McCauley, co-founder and CEO of Anchorage Digital. "Stablecoin Solutions gives banks a federally regulated way to move dollars globally using blockchain rails, without compromising custody, compliance, or operational control. This is about modernizing settlement while preserving the standards the financial system depends on."

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As AI systems grow more autonomous, Walrus argues that verifiable data infrastructure will determine which systems earn trust.

Base is designed to house Coinbase’s on-chain products and provide an open ecosystem for dapps, onboarding “billions of users.”

PayPal’s PYUSD stablecoin crossed $4 billion in total market capitalization this month, while its supply on Layer 2 Arbitrum One rose enough to rank it the network’s fourth-largest stablecoin.

According to data compiled by consulting firm Entropy Advisors, Arbitrum now has over $220 million worth of PYUSD circulating on the network, next only to USDAI, USDC and USDT. DefiLlama data records the PYUSD supply on Arbitrum at $256.6 million.

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GLM-5 beat Claude in business simulation by pretending to be American. Claude fell for it, shared strategies with competitors, and lost. Wall Street's AI deployment just got more complicated.

CME Group, the world's largest financial derivatives exchange, is set to launch 24/7 crypto futures trading on its CME Globex platform beginning on May 29, pending approval from U.S. regulators.

In a press release published today, the exchange said crypto futures and options will trade continuously on CME Globex "with at least a two-hour weekly maintenance period over the weekend.”

The exchange added that all holiday or weekend trading from Friday evening through Sunday evening will have a trade date of the following business day.

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OpenAI and Paradigm have released EVMbench—a framework for evaluating AI agents' ability to find vulnerabilities in Ethereum smart contracts.

ECB Governing Council member Joachim Nagel argued a wholesale CBDC and euro-pegged stablecoins could boost the euro’s international role.

Brian Armstrong downplayed fears that quantum computing will break blockchain encryption, pointing to Coinbase’s new advisory council.

Optimism's OP token sank after Base announced it's moving away from the OP Stack to a unified, self-operated tech stack.

A new UNESCO report projects steep revenue losses for music and screen creators as lawyers say the fair use doctrine is buckling under AI’s scale.

Selling pressure across altcoins has continued to build, with net outflows now matching levels last seen in 2021

Research is casting prediction markets as policy-relevant forecasting tools just as state regulators escalate efforts to curtail their use.

ETH Denver founder John Paller says serious interest has replaced hype-driven crowds.

Coinbase signaled its crypto-backed lending product is expanding in the U.S., unveiling support for XRP, Dogecoin, Cardano, and Litecoin.

OpenAI and Paradigm launched EVMbench, a tool that tests how capable AI agents are at finding and fixing smart contract vulnerabilities.

Crypto markets slipped further on Wednesday, Feb. 18, as political and macroeconomic uncertainty continued to weigh on sentiment.

Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $66,344, down 2.5% over the past 24 hours, while Ethereum (ETH) is at $1,953, down 2.3%. Separately, Founders Fund, a venture firm tied to billionaire Peter Thiel, disclosed it had exited its entire 7.5% stake in Ethereum treasury company ETHZilla Corp. last year, according to a recent SEC filing.

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A Bitcoin‑focused public company just bought two businesses that its own CEO originally founded, leaving many in the crypto circles scratching their heads over who’s really running the show.

The buyer, recently launched Bitcoin treasury company Nakamoto Inc., said in a Feb. 17 press release that it will merge with BTC Inc., the media and events group behind Bitcoin Magazine and The Bitcoin Conference, and UTXO Management, a Bitcoin-focused investment adviser.

David Bailey, Nakamoto’s chairman and CEO, co-founded BTC Inc. and UTXO Management, meaning he is effectively the buyer, seller, and CEO approving the deal.

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EVMbench, a benchmarking tool, is set to enhance blockchain security by measuring the capabilities of AI agents in detecting, patching, and exploiting vulnerabilities in smart contracts. This new tool underscores the growing role of artificial intelligence in enhancing the security of decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystems.

EVMbench employs historical vulnerabilities and a Rust-based harness to evaluate AI performance. At the forefront is GPT-5.3-Codex, an AI model developed by OpenAI, which achieved a score of 72.2% in exploit-mode evaluations.

EVMbench's evaluation is comprehensive, utilizing 120 curated vulnerabilities from over 40 audits. These include scenarios provided by Tempo L1, which focuses on payment-oriented evaluations.

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Memecore (M) jumped as much as 19% on Tuesday, Feb. 17, making it one of the crypto market’s top performers on the day – but experts aren’t sold on the token’s lofty valuation.

MemeCore, launched in 2025, is a Layer 1 blockchain designed to connect creators and communities through meme-native applications and decentralized apps (dApps). The token traded as high as $1.59 on Tuesday, but has since retraced to $1.45, down 3.5% over the past 24 hours.

The token’s market capitalization currently stands near $2.5 billion, while its fully diluted valuation is about $7.7 billion – down from $8.11 billion a day earlier, according to CoinGecko.

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Base, the Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain solution developed by Coinbase, is making a significant strategic shift by moving away from reliance on Optimism's OP Stack.

Optimism's OP token plunged 7% following the news.

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Canary Capital on Wednesday, Feb. 18, officially launched the Canary Staked SUI ETF (NASDAQ: SUIS).

The exchange-traded fund seeks to track the spot price of SUI while participating in the Sui Network's proof-of-stake protocol, with net in-kind staking rewards reflected in the fund’s NAV, according to a blog post.

“The Canary Staked SUI spot ETF (SUIS) brings exposure to SUI in a registered, exchanged-traded structure, while also enabling investors to benefit from net staking rewards generated through SUI’s proof-of-stake mechanism,” said Steven McClurg, CEO at Canary Capital.

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ether.fi, a crypto neobank with $5.7 billion of total-value locked, said in an X post it’s migrating from the Scroll blockchain to Optimism's OP Mainnet.

The move aims to capitalize on Optimism’s OP Enterprise to enhance global payment capabilities, access established liquidity and users, and provide enterprise-grade support, according to the company’s blog post.

The migration is significant given ether.fi's substantial user base, boasting approximately 50,000 active cards, according to Cipher Research.

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World Liberty Financial’s WLFI token surged as much as 30% over the past 24 hours as top Wall Street CEOs prepare to headline a crypto forum at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

The token climbed to a high of $0.128 this morning before retracing to around $0.123, still up 21% on the day. The move raised 24-hour trading volume to about $450 million and pushed the Trump-backed decentralized finance (DeFi) project’s market capitalization to $3.3 billion, according to CoinGecko.

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Hyperliquid, the largest on-chain perpetual futures exchange by trading volumes, said it is backing a new Washington-based policy organization with 1 million HYPE tokens (around $29 million at current prices), as crypto firms try to influence U.S. rules for decentralized finance.

According to a press release published today, Feb. 18, the so-called “Hyperliquid Policy Center” — or just HPC — received the tokens from the Hyper Foundation and plans to use them to produce research and lobby for practical regulations on decentralized markets. The foundation is an independent organization that supports the development of the Hyperliquid ecosystem, per the release.

“We will publish technical research, comment on proposed rules and legislation, and serve as a resource for policymakers who want to understand how DeFi really works,” the new organization said in an X post today.

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Upcoming Layer 1 blockchain Nexus has unveiled its native rewards stablecoin, USDX.

USDX will serve as the Nexus ecosystem’s native dollar and will implement a Global Yield Distribution System (GYDS), under which applications that hold USDX earn a share of protocol revenue based on their users’ USDX holdings.

The design is intended to provide yield as a revenue stream for the ecosystem’s application layer, incentivizing each underlying protocol to integrate USDX.

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Venice AI, an agentic artificial intelligence (AI) protocol created by Erik Voorhees, the founder and CEO of ShapeShift, has led the altcoin market over the past week.

Venice AI’s VVV token is up 135% over the last week, and 14% today to $4.28, or a $336 million fully diluted valuation (FDV), a 375% jump off its November low of $0.9.

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Elemental Royalty Corporation plans to offer dividends in Tether Gold (XAU₮), making it the first publicly listed gold company to embrace this financial model. According to the company, this move showcases the potential of tokenized assets in modern finance by integrating traditional gold with digital financial infrastructure.

Tether Gold (XAU₮) is a digital asset representing ownership of one troy ounce of gold on a London Good Delivery bar. It is available as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum and a TRC20 token on TRON, bridging the gap between conventional gold value and digital finance.

"Gold has always been one of the most trusted stores of value in the world, yet integrating it directly into modern financial distribution models has been difficult," said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether. "Using XAU₮ for shareholder dividends changes that dynamic completely. This marks a major step forward for the gold industry and shows how tokenized assets can unlock new financial models that were previously out of reach."

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Crypto markets edged lower on Tuesday, Feb. 17, as traders remain cautious ahead of new economic data.

Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at about $67,500, down 0.5% over the past 24 hours, while Ethereum (ETH) is up 1% at $1,995. Other large-cap tokens are largely unchanged, with BNB trading at $618, XRP at $1.48, and Solana (SOL) at $85.

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More than 30% of ETH’s circulating supply is now locked in staking contracts, per data from Validator Queue. The percent of supply staked continues to break new highs this month, climbing over 30% for the first time at the end of January.

As of today, Feb. 17, data shows that about 36.9 million ETH, or roughly 30.4% of total supply, is currently staked across nearly 967,000 active validators.

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Shares of GEMI fell about 14% to around $6.50 on Tuesday after Gemini Space Station, a U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange, said three top executives were leaving.

The company revealed in a new 8-K filing that Chief Operating Officer Marshall Beard, Chief Financial Officer Dan Chen and Chief Legal Officer Tyler Meade all stepped down effective immediately. Beard also resigned from the board, though his resignation “was not the result of any disagreement,” the filing reads.

Gemini currently ranks 19th among centralized exchanges (CEXs), with about $31.9 million in 24-hour trading volume, according to CoinGecko.

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Zora launched a new token market on Solana today, dubbed "attention markets,” where users can tokenize and speculate on real-world trends.

The platform is off to a slow start, with its flagship token, $attentionmarkets, trading at only a $70,000 market capitalization with just $170,000 in total trading volume 30 minutes after its launch. Meanwhile, only three of its tokens have market capitalizations above $10,000, indicating little immediate demand for the product.

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Solana-based token launchpad pumpfun has introduced a new feature called “Cashback Coins.”

Cashback Coins provide a choice for creators: they can decide to direct all creator fees towards traders or opt for traditional creator fees, but this choice must be made before launch and cannot be altered later. The introduction of these coins is part of pumpfun's strategy to address ongoing concerns in the crypto space about the distribution of rewards and incentives.

"Creator Fees are undeniably a net positive for helping teams, creators & founders grow & succeed. However, many tokens achieve success without a team or project lead, thereby disproportionately rewarding token deployers who don’t deserve the fees," the team wrote on X.

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Dragonfly Capital, a crypto venture capital firm, has closed its Fund IV at $650 million, to focus on DeFi, stablecoins and prediction markets, despite stagnant prices and a mildly down market.

Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly Capital, announced in an X post today, Feb. 17, that Fund IV is the firm's "biggest bet yet that the crypto revolution is still early in its exponential." Qureshi added:

"If you look at our recent bets — Polymarket, Ethena, Rain, Mesh — the growth speaks for itself. Agentic payments, on-chain privacy, the tokenization of everything — crypto's surface area is about to explode, and we want to be backing the founders at the center of it."

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Decentralized crypto exchange World Markets (WM) launched today, Feb. 17, becoming one of the first decentralized applications (dApps) on the MegaETH network. WM bundles spot, perps and lending under one on-chain account.

In commentary to The Defiant, World Markets co-founder Kevin Coons framed the launch as an effort to fix broken incentives, arguing that traders often get punished even when their positions are properly hedged. Coons explained:

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The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) took a firm stance on prediction market regulation, arguing that the markets should fall under federal, not state, oversight.

On Feb. 17, the CFTC filed a "friend-of-the-court" brief in the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in support of Crypto.com amid its fight with the Nevada Gaming Control Board, according to a video statement from CFTC Chairman Mike Selig.

"The CFTC will no longer sit idly by while overzealous state governments undermine the agency’s exclusive jurisdiction over these markets by seeking to establish statewide prohibitions on these exciting products,” Selig said in a statement.

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A new study suggests that token launch timing barely changes how the asset performs in the long run. The report by Haseeb Qureshi, a managing partner at crypto VC firm Dragonfly Capital, analyzed every token that had its listing announced by Binance, filtering out stablecoins, wrapped assets and other non-independent tokens.

The sample covers 202 tokens in total. When the tokens were split by launch environment — 101 tokens went to market in bull markets and 33 in bear markets — the performance gap all but disappeared.

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Ethereum Layer 2 MegaETH’s mainnet, which launched on Feb. 9 following a high‑profile stress test ahead of its debut, has seen total value locked climb to roughly $66.48 million as of today, Feb. 16. The total value on MegaETH represents a roughly 65% increase compared with TVL at the immediate post‑launch period, where it was around $40.3 million, data from DefiLlama shows.

Stablecoins account for the bulk of on‑chain balances, with the chain’s $99.2 million stablecoin market cap up 56% over the past week, while bridged asset TVL are about $122 million.

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Crypto markets opened the week on softer footing, with prices slipping lower after last week’s brief rebound.

On Monday, Feb. 16, Bitcoin (BTC) was trading around $67,500, down about 2% on the day and 1.7% over the past week, though it briefly rallied to $70,000 earlier today.

Since dropping to as low as $60,000 the first week of February, BTC has mostly been trading in a tight range between $68,000-$70,000. Trading volumes remained around $40 billion over the past 24 hours, suggesting active but indecisive positioning.

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Compound was once the default answer for crypto lending in decentralized finance. Launched in 2018 by Robert Leshner and Geoffrey Hayes, the protocol lets users earn interest or borrow assets directly on Ethereum, in a fully decentralized manner, without banks or brokers.

For early DeFi users, it felt obvious. The project raised millions in backing from Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital Crypto, Paradigm, and Coinbase Ventures.

Compound also helped popularize yield farming, especially after launching its governance token, COMP, in 2020, which turned passive users into active participants.

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Cryptocurrency payments tied to suspected human trafficking services rose 85% in 2025, reaching hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a new report from Chainalysis.

Much of the activity is linked to groups operating in Southeast Asia, the report said, adding that nearly half of transactions from Telegram-based “international escort” services were for over $10,000.

Researchers also found that most payments in these networks were made using stablecoins, while other categories, such as CSAM vendors, used more Bitcoin or privacy coins (specifically Monero) for laundering. “Instant exchangers, which provide rapid and anonymous cryptocurrency swapping without KYC requirements, play a crucial role in this process,” the report reads.

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Less than a year after Mantra’s OM token inexplicably plummeted 90% in minutes, the real-world asset (RWA) protocol is rebranding to a new token, and OM is up 33% today after MEXC announced its support for the token swap.

OM's market capitalization jumped from $55 million to $72 million after the crypto exchange said it would support the upcoming migration from OM to MANTRA. MEXC will accept deposits of OM, which will be swapped 1:4 to MANTRA.

Despite rallying 33%, OM is still down 99% from its all-time high of $8.5 in February 2025 and currently trades at $0.06.

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Decentralized prediction market Polymarket is catering to its high-risk audience by introducing 5-minute crypto markets and teasing an airdrop for power users.

The new 5-minute markets allow users to bet on whether or not BTC’s 5-minute candles will close up or down, while providing market maker rebates to liquidity providers.

Following the launch, Polymarket’s “senior intern” and developer, Mustafa Aljatery, responded to one of the platform’s power users in a post saying “1m markets and $POLY next.”

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LIT, the native token of decentralized perpetuals exchange Lighter, rose as much as 13% over the past 24 hours as the platform rolled out new trading features, including unified collateral accounts.

The token traded as high as $1.62, but has since retraced to $1.59, up just over 11% on the day, according to CoinGecko. However, LIT is still down around 50% from its launch price of above $3.

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Tomasz Stańczak said on Friday he will step down as co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) at the end of February.

Stańczak, who has served in the role for around a year, said in a post on X that Bastian Aue will take over as interim co-ED alongside current co-ED Hsiao-Wei. He added in a separate blog post that the foundation is in a strong place with “new voices”, making it a good time for a leadership change.

“I am happy with the current state of things; the roadmap is clearer; the goals are set; the leaders at the EF grew more confident about making decisions by themselves and owning more,” Stańczak said.

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Truth Social Funds has filed a registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for two digital asset exchange-traded funds (ETFs) - the Truth Social Cronos Yield Maximizer ETF and the Truth Social Bitcoin and Ether ETF.

The Truth Social Cronos Yield Maximizer ETF will provide exposure to CRO, the native cryptocurrency of the Cronos ecosystem, while the Truth Social Bitcoin and Ether ETF will hold BTC and ETH. Both ETFs will also offer staking rewards.

The funds will be advised by Yorkville America Equities with a management fee of 0.95%.

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Crypto markets caught some relief on Friday, Feb. 13, as investors digested a softer-than-expected U.S. inflation report.

Total crypto market capitalization surged almost 5% over the past 24 hours to $2.44 trillion, while most large-cap crypto assets saw moderate gains on the day.

Bitcoin (BTC) climbed back over 69,000, up 4.5% today and pushing its weekly price change into the green, up 1.7%.

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Prediction markets are everywhere. But rising participation doesn't necessarily transform into profits for regular users.

Prediction market aggregator Stand announced today, Feb. 13, that it’s launching a tool to let users automatically take the opposite position of trades across popular platforms — namely from traders that tend to lose. Edward Ridgely, founder of Stand, said in a press release shared with The Defiant that conventional copy‑trading breaks down in prediction markets.

“Many operate multiple wallets and can easily front-run anyone copying their moves. The more interesting edge is in systematically counter-trading the consistent losers,” Ridgely explained.

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Crypto trading terminal Nexa, formerly known as InsiDeX, is shutting down just a year after its acquisition by decentralized exchange Bluefin, citing what it calls “extremely low” trading volumes on the Sui blockchain.

In a Feb. 10 post on X, the team said “only 2-3 coins [are] seeing some decent activity” on Sui, leaving traders with few real opportunities, and added that it was built for fast trades and active markets, conditions that never appeared.

“There’s a real sense of sadness in shutting down Nexa because we succeeded in building a product that was actually the most used trading suite on Sui at one time. Unfortunately, the market it was built for never truly materialized,” the team wrote.

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Espresso, a decentralized rollup base layer, launched its native ESP token this morning at a valuation of roughly $275 million following its token airdrop and distribution.

The token debuted at $0.072 before jumping up to $0.083 shortly after its launch and has reported $115 million in trading volume over its first 7 hours across CoinGecko-tracked platforms.

The protocol is designed to support rollups and appchains with everything they need from a base layer to ensure high performance, including finality, data availability, and real-time interoperability.

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Ventuals, a protocol that lets users trade tokenized exposure to private and pre-IPO companies, has crossed $200 million in cumulative trading volume less than three months after launch, according to a Feb. 11 X post from the platform’s co-founder, Alvin Hsia.

The milestone was reached just 17 days after cumulative volume first hit $100 million, on Jan. 24, a level that took the platform 73 days to achieve, Hsia noted.

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Vitalik Buterin shared in a long post on X on Feb. 12, originally written in Russian, his views on Russia’s war against Ukraine and what Russia’s future could look like under a “decentralized governance” model.

In the first half of the post, published ahead of the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion, the Ethereum co-founder called the war “criminal aggression,” not a “complicated situation” where both sides are equally at fault. He then argued that real, lasting security for Ukraine and Europe will not come from a temporary ceasefire alone, but from change inside Russia itself.

In his view, the strongest guarantee of peace would be for Russia to transform into a different kind of system. To do that, he said, the country would need deeper structural reform based on decentralized governance.

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Two months after the Aave DAO and Aave Labs clashed on the DeFi platform’s governance forum, Aave Labs has formally submitted a new strategic framework proposal to the DAO called “Aave Will Win.”

The proposal intends to align the DAO and Labs over the future growth of Aave v4, and to direct 100% of product-layer value directly to the DAO.

Specifically, the proposal requests that the DAO ratifies Aave v4 as the protocol’s core foundation for future development, establishes a funding and growth framework to compete at a global financial scale, and formalizes a model where 100% of revenue generated by Aave-branded products, including those built by Labs, flows to the DAO treasury.

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Crypto markets took a tumble Thursday morning, Feb. 12, pushing Bitcoin below $66,000 and Ethereum below $2,000, as investor sentiment deteriorated to unprecedented lows.

Total crypto market capitalization is flat over the past 24 hours around $2.33 trillion, while large-cap assets are mixed today. At press time, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $65,747 at press time, down marginally on the day and bringing 7-day losses to about 5%.

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Ethereum Layer 2 Optimism is partnering with Succinct as its first zero-knowledge (ZK) proving provider, in order to provide instant and real-time withdrawals from the L2, according to an announcement shared exclusively with The Defiant.

The move makes Succinct Optimism’s first official ZK partner, and by leveraging Succinct’s proof system, users can off-ramp capital from Optimism to any other chain in a timely fashion, as opposed to the bridge’s traditional, multi-day wait time.

By accelerating the bridge time from Optimism, large on-chain operators such as market makers or treasuries, can move capital quickly without having to rely on a third party bridging solution.

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ETHZilla Corporation (Nasdaq: ETHZ) on Thursday, Feb. 12 launched Eurus Aero Token I, a tokenized asset backed by two commercial jet engines currently in use by a U.S. air carrier.

The tokens — which are issued on Ethereum Layer 2 networks and distributed through the Liquidityio platform — give investors exposure to lease payments generated by the engines. ETHZilla said it acquired the engines for about $12.2 million. Meanwhile, tokens are priced at $100 each, with a minimum purchase of 10 tokens.

The company said in a press release viewed by The Defiant that the investment targets annual returns of about 11% over the life of the leases, which run through 2027 and 2028.

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Lombard on Wed., Feb. 11, launched Bitcoin Smart Accounts, a new product that allows institutions to use their Bitcoin in decentralized finance (DeFi) without moving it out of custody.

Lombard is a DeFi protocol with more than $1 billion in total value locked (TVL), according to DeFiLlama. The new product allows Bitcoin held with custodians, in MPC setups, or in self-custody wallets to be used as on-chain collateral, according to a press release viewed by The Defiant.

The process eliminates the need to transfer Bitcoin to a DeFi platform first, allowing institutions to keep their BTC in their existing custody arrangements. Bitcoin is currently trading at $67,615, down 1.5% on the day, per CoinGecko.

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Institution-focused crypto lender and liquidity provider BlockFills is blocking its clients' deposits and withdrawals, a move reminiscent of previous crypto downturns.

The Financial Times first reported the development, which comes after BTC reached as low as $60,000 on Feb. 5, a 52% drop from the asset’s all-time high in October.

"In light of recent market and financial conditions, and to further the protection of clients and the firm, BlockFills took the action last week of temporarily suspending client deposits and withdrawals. Clients have been able to continue trading with BlockFills for the purpose of opening and closing positions in spot and derivatives trading and select other circumstances,” the company said in a statement earlier today.

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Open interest (OI) across crypto prediction markets just hit $1 billion for the first time, a surge likely fueled by increased activity around the 2026 Super Bowl.

According to data from Artemis, open interest across platforms, Polymarket, Kalshi, Limitless, Opinion, and others, jumped above $1.1 billion for the first time on Feb. 7, setting a new all-time high. OI indicates the value of all currently active positions — in this case, the “yes” or “no” positions across predictions — that have yet to be resolved, making it an indicator of capital inflow and liquidity.

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The Provenance blockchain hit a new milestone on Wed. Feb. 11, as its total value locked (TVL) climbed to an all-time high of $1.2 billion.

This marks a 7% increase in TVL over the past 24 hours, and a roughly 570% jump since early November 2025, when TVL stood at about $179.9 million, according to DeFiLlama data.

Notably, Figure Markets is currently the only protocol tracked on Provenance by DeFiLlama, meaning the network’s entire TVL is essentially tied to Figure’s activity. Figure Markets is described as a decentralized custody platform, which offers spot trading, crypto-backed lending, and yield-bearing assets.

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LayerZero’s ZRO token is leading the altcoin market today, rallying 40% after unveiling Zero, its new Layer 1 blockchain.

ZRO sold off immediately after yesterday’s announcement; however, after more details emerged - such as Ark Invest founder Cathie Wood stepping on board as an advisor - the token surged from $1.7 to $2.5.

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