DL News

A fake wallet verification prompt briefly appeared on the homepage of CoinMarketCap, a cryptocurrency data aggregator, on Saturday.

The front-end exploit was traced to malicious code embedded in a homepage image, triggering a security investigation and warnings for users not to connect their wallets.

“Do not connect your wallet,” the company warned in its initial post on X.

The surprise homepage prompt quickly raised alarms, and wallet providers like MetaMask and Phantom reportedly flagged the site as suspicious.

CoinMarketCap later confirmed that the pop-up originated from a corrupted homepage doodle image that triggered a rogue API call.

The company said it removed the malicious code, identified the root cause, and deployed “comprehensive measures” to prevent further issues.

“We can confirm all systems are now fully operational,” it said in its latest update.

It’s not the first time the Binance-owned platform has faced security issues.

In 2021, more than three million email addresses linked to CoinMarketCap accounts appeared on hacking forums.

While the company said its servers weren’t breached, it acknowledged a correlation with its subscriber base.

The incident also taps into a growing fear among crypto users: their own mistakes.

A recent Kraken survey found that nearly half of respondents worry more about making a security error themselves than falling victim to hackers.

Crypto market movers

Bitcoin has lost 1.1% in value over the past 24 hours and is trading at $103,560.

Ethereum is down 3.8% in the same period to $2,425.

What we’re reading

Joe Lubin just became Ethereum’s top champion. Just don’t call him ‘Mr. Saylor of ETH’ ― DL News

Tron Is Now More Expensive Than Ethereum. Will That Hurt Justin Sun’s New Company? ― Unchained

Top 7 public companies holding SOL — Milk Road

Stablecoins will be ‘once in a generation’ shift if Genius Act becomes law, crypto leaders say ― DL News

Kyle Baird is DL News’ Weekend Editor. Got a tip? Email at [email protected]

A new wave of crypto speculators is descending on Avalanche, lured by the prospect of quick gains from memecoins minted through The Arena, a token launchpad and decentralised exchange that has rapidly gained traction among retail traders.

Although precise user numbers are difficult to verify — as individual traders can operate multiple wallets — onchain data indicates a sharp increase in activity. Avalanche recorded over 430,000 active addresses on May 11, and the daily transaction count has remained above one million throughout June, compared to an average of roughly 300,000 earlier in the year, according to data from DefiLlama.

Modeled after Solana’s pump.fun, The Arena enables individuals to create and trade tokens with minimal effort — often requiring little more than a meme and a social media post. Some of the top memecoins on Avalanche minted through The Arena include LAMBO and WOLFI. They reached a high of $50 million and $20 million in market value, respectively.

The Arena has so far produced several memecoins worth over $10 million in market value.

According to a post by DappRadar on June 11, The Arena accounted for roughly one-third of all active wallets on Avalanche over the past 30 days.

The Arena

The Arena lets users monetise their content through a tipping and airdrop system, giving creators a way to earn money by posting and engaging. On May 6, it launched arena.trade, a token launchpad and decentralised exchange reminiscent of Solana’s pump.fun.

Following the launch, The Arena’s native token surged more than 400%, reaching a peak market value of around $25 million on June 9.

Since then, the total value deposited on the platform has increased more than twelvefold, from around $660,000 to over $8 million. Transaction fees also reached a yearly high, generating more than $110,000 on June 13 and over $1 million so far this month.

As of June 9, the combined market value of tokens launched via The Arena crossed $100 million — one of the few memecoins launchpads to register such sustained growth.

The largest winner was a memecoin called LAMBO. Launched on June 7, it quickly rose to a market value of over $50 million. After reaching its peak on June 16, the token’s price declined, currently sitting at a value of $35 million. Another memecoin, WOLFI, launched on June 11 and reached a value of $20 million within days. Since then, the token price dropped sharply to a market value of $5 million.

“There’s multiple tokens battling for 9 figures and a new token entering the $1 million club each day,” said Jason Desimone, CEO of The Arena.

Since launch, The Arena has averaged over 1,000 token mints per day. On June 19, The Arena minted about 1,800 tokens while pump.fun had about 25,000.

Around 83% of all wallets trading on the Arena decentralised exchange are profitable. Meanwhile, pump.fun has been slammed with criticism lately, with the majority of traders using the platform being unprofitable. According to data given on June 9, over 50% of traders lost money with over one million wallets making less than $500.

Since hitting its peak on June 9, the platform’s native Arena token has slid to a value of about $13 million, down 13% over the past day

Zachary Rampone is a DeFi correspondent at DL News. Have a tip? Contact him at [email protected]

When Joe Lubin led a $425 million investment to launch the largest corporate Ether treasury company, the comparisons to Michael Saylor were immediate.

Even Vitalik Buterin quipped that Lubin had become the “Mr. Saylor of ETH” at an industry event in Berlin this month.

At first glance, the similarities are clear. An obscure company begins ploughing millions into a cryptocurrency, boosting the token’s price along with the company’s shares.

But a closer look shows that amassing Ether on a listed firm’s balance sheet is actually quite different from the approach Saylor pioneered at MicroStrategy, now dubbed Strategy.

Different things

If Bitcoin was designed to be digital money, then Ethereum was invented to be an ecosystem for decentralised financial apps and ventures.

“We’ll do all the different things to raise money through equity sales and debt that Saylor’s brilliantly pioneered,” Lubin, the CEO of Consensys, told DL News in an exclusive interview on Wednesday.

“We can also do so much more,” he said.

At the top of the list is staking.

Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum relies on a proof of stake consensus model to validate and confirm various transactions on the blockchain. To become a so-called validator on the Ethereum network, users need to stake 32 Ether.

Validators earn rewards, or yield, for accurately confirming transactions. If they behave maliciously or dishonestly, such as validating fraudulent transactions, the network takes a small portion of the 32 Ether staked as a fine.

Staking yield

Now SharpLink Gaming, the company Consensys picked to be an Ether vehicle, is entering the staking arena in a big way.

As of June 13, SharpLink, an online sports betting company, has deposited more than 95% of its $463 million stash back into Ethereum to validate transactions.

The move is generating an average staking yield of 3%, which means SharpLink is raking in roughly $14 million on an annualised basis.

And the company, and by extension its stockholders, also benefit from any appreciation in the value of Ether.

‘They would learn quantum physics if they thought they could make reliable money on it.’

Joe Lubin

Ethereum’s staking model also benefits from the high price of Ether.

The lower the value, the cheaper it would be for someone to buy and control a majority of the network’s validators and begin approving fraudulent transactions on the network.

“The economic security of the network depends on the token being scarce,” Lubin told DL News. “It’s really good for the platform to lock up a giant amount of Ether.”

Lubin’s Wall Street

Lubin also says he has plans to turn SharpLink’s stock, which goes by the ticker SBET, into an onchain token, launch prediction markets, and potentially integrate Consensys’ crypto wallet MetaMask throughout.

The SharpLink manoeuvre has vaulted Lubin back into a precinct of the financial world he left long ago — Wall Street.

The Ethereum co-founder used to be a partner in the private wealth unit at Goldman Sachs, the white shoe investment bank.

As SharpLink’s new chairman, Lubin is now obliged to preside over quarterly earnings calls and engage with analysts and investors. He is keenly aware of the byways of the traditional capital markets.

As such, he is fascinated by how sophisticated investors will respond to his new Ethereum flywheel at SharpLink.

“Wall Street cares about one thing. They care about making money,” Lubin said. “They would learn quantum physics if they thought they could make reliable money on it.”

Critical timing

He hopes analysts will pore over his treasury strategy.

And the timing couldn’t be more critical.

Just as Bitcoin and Solana soared to all-time highs in the first quarter, Ethereum lagged far behind.

“Bitcoin ended up doing very well, partially because Saylor did a great job,” Lubin said.

“Solana did what they needed to do to get some attention, and that was all the meme coins. And Ethereum was kind of squeezed between.”

In fact, if you had bought Ethereum this time last year and held, you would be down 27% on your investment.

In April, the sluggish price performance turned many in the industry against the blockchain’s leadership.

Some DeFi users blamed the Ethereum Foundation, the network’s non-profit steward, for a development roadmap that didn’t accrue enough value to the blockchain. They demanded change.

Instead, they got Lubin and a dozen other crypto investment firms, including Arrington Capital and Galaxy Digital, to buy up more than 69,000 shares in SharpLink and turn the online sports betting company into the second-largest holder of Ether after the Ethereum Foundation.

“It took an external shock from how Bitcoin was doing compared to Ether, and how Solana was doing compared to Ether, to wake up,” said Lubin.

Major plunge

SBET soared 2,700% in just four days following the announcement, raising similar bullish expectations for Ethereum.

But on June 12, the company said investors involved in the Ether treasury deal may sell their shares. This prompted a major plunge in the stock.

Lubin said Consensys was not planning on selling its stake but the damage was done — SharpLink’s gains have evaporated.

Ethereum evangelist

In any event, Lubin appeared comfortable playing the role of Ethereum’s evangelist at DappCon in Berlin this week.

Back in 2014, he collaborated with Buterin, Gavin Wood, and other co-founders to develop the DeFi talisman.

But with the SharpLink play, he hopes to captivate a new audience.

Alongside pitching SBET analysts on Ethereum applications and DeFi on earnings calls, Lubin expects mainstream news networks will come calling soon, too.

But that’s where the comparison to the Strategy chairman ends.

When I asked Lubin whether he wants to be the Michael Saylor of Ethereum, he pushed back.

“I’ll be the Joe Lubin of Ethereum.”

Liam Kelly is a DeFi Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email at [email protected].

Federal Reserve governor Christopher Wallace just flashed a bullish signal for Bitcoin.

On Friday, he said that inflation isn’t flaring up the way people feared, which means the US central bank should “move now, don’t wait” to cut interest rates.

According to Wallace, the Fed is in a position to cut rates “as early as July.”

Chances of a July rate cut jumped to 13% from 6% on Polymarket.

A rate cut would be a boon for Bitcoin. Lower interest rates tend to incentivise investors to bet on risk-on assets like cryptocurrencies.

Wallace’s comments comes as investors are holding their breath. Since tensions erupted between Israel and Iran on June 3, Bitcoin has fallen about 3% to around $104,000, while Ethereum has slid nearly 10% to about $2,500.

In the past 24 hours, both assets have remained spellbound.

Welcome words

Rate cuts tend to revive risk appetite.

That’s because when interest rates drop, borrowing gets cheaper and money flows easily through the economy. That extra liquidity tends to trickle into riskier corners of the market as investors hunt for higher returns.

Moreover, lower rates also show that the Fed is making decisions to activate the economy. That kind of signal gives investors more confidence to take risks again.

For crypto, a market that thrives on momentum and speculation, this type of psychological tailwind can be a powerful force for prices to rise.

A July cut, even a small one, could be the spark that pulls sidelined capital back into Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Monetary policy’s role

In fact, monetary policy tends to play a big role in Bitcoin’s price action, according to Bitcoin analyst James Check.

In 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, Bitcoin fell by 40% in the first year. But there was more at play than just the conflict, said Check.

“I should note that the US Federal Reserve was aggressively raising interest rates, and most markets were in a bear market,” Check wrote in his Monday newsletter, Checkonchain.

Sticky inflation

To be sure, Wallace’s isn’t the popular view at the Federal Reserve.

On Wednesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said that the money printer isn’t coming back anytime soon, and that inflation remains stubborn.

This suggests interest rates will stay high — which when meshed in with the conflict in the Middle East — doesn’t bode well for cryptocurrencies.

Moreover, investors don’t seem to be betting on a rate cut in July. Fed Funds futures contracts tracked by the CME Group’s FedWatch tool suggest that there is less than a 15% chance of a rate cut next month.

Those chances rise to 71% ahead of the Fed’s September meeting and to 86% in October.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him at [email protected].

The team behind Jupiter, the Solana-based exchange aggregator, has paused the protocol’s governance in response to negative feedback from participants.

On Thursday, Kash Dhanda, a Jupiter team member, announced on X that holders of the JUP governance token will not be able to propose and vote on changes to the protocol until 2026.

“The current DAO structure isn’t working as intended,” Dhanda said. “We hear the complaints. We see the breakdown in trust.”

Jupiter, like many DeFi protocols, was until yesterday governed by a decentralised autonomous organisation, or DAO, a type of crypto collective where holders of the protocol’s governance token propose and vote on changes to it.

DeFi protocols often set up DAOs to decentralise power among a protocol’s users and supporters.

Jupiter’s move to pause DAO voting comes as a blow to the project’s decentralisation, and throws into question the value of its JUP governance token.

The move comes after several Jupiter DAO members complained in recent weeks about the amount of influence the project’s team has over its decentralised governance structure.

Jupiter is the biggest decentralised exchange aggregator on Solana with over $2.3 billion in user deposits.

‘Perpetual FUD cycle’

Jupiter’s decision to pause DAO voting in response to criticism is unusual.

When participants at other DAOs have complained about a lack of decentralisation, project teams have taken measures to address their concerns. But in Jupiter’s case, its team has chosen to make the protocol more centralised by temporarily shutting its governance down.

“We feel the perpetual FUD cycle that grows with every vote,” Dhanda said, using the acronym for fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Instead of the DAO and Jupiter’s team working in cohesion, they’re stuck in a negative feedback loop, Dhanda said, adding that all stakeholders in the project needed to be “locked in and aligned.”

Hence the DAO voting pause.

Active staking rewards, additional tokens given out to those who lock up their JUP and participate in governance, will continue.

Working groups previously greenlit by a DAO vote will also continue their operations. However, no new DAO-funded groups will be created, and no additional JUP emissions approved, Dhanda said.

Not the only one

Jupiter isn’t the only DeFi project struggling to balance the amount of power afforded to its DAO.

On June 4, Rep. Sean Casten brought up a recent squabble about the level of centralisation in governance at Uniswap DAO, the collective that governs the Ethereum decentralised exchange, during a congressional hearing.

The testimony highlighted the complex governance practices at work in DAOs, and raised questions about how lawmakers may legally define decentralisation as they consider legislation for the industry.

In April, Steven Goldfeder, CEO of Offchain Labs, the firm behind the Arbitrum blockchain, addressed Arbitrum DAO members complaining about a lack of decentralisation.

“The Arbitrum DAO has historically confused decentralisation with direct democracy,” he said. “The fact that the power stems from the DAO doesn’t mean that the DAO should directly vote on what brand of toilet paper is used at Arbitrum events.”

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi correspondent. Reach out to him with tips [email protected].

Investors who bought XRP before its November price breakout are finally getting their payday.

Market data from Glassnode shows those early XRP buyers are cashing out after accumulating over 300% profits. The data shows holders exiting at a pace of $68.8 million in daily profits this month.

It’s a clear sign that XRP whales are offloading into thinning summer liquidity.

And XRP’s price performance this year might justify this strategy.

XRP hasn’t budged since the euphoric November rally that topped at $3.36 in January. What was once a frenzied uptrend has become a sluggish downward grind, with XRP down 36% this year.

XRP traded for $2.16 on Friday.

As the early cohort sell their holdings, those who bought near or at the top of the rally are left sitting on huge paper losses.

And the next big XRP price move seems uncertain.

Capital inflow into XRP dried up in the first quarter, but that has improved in the second quarter amid renewed speculative fervour in South Korea.

XRP options traders are hedging their bets amid renewed conflict in the Middle East. Market data show traders have piled into bets that XRP will fall below $2 this month.

To be sure, there are also scattered signs of institutional curiosity.

In June, companies like VivoPower and Webus announced plans to acquire XRP for their corporate balance sheet. VivoPower even took the experiment a step further by moving to earn yield on their XRP on the Flare Network.

The regulatory fog that clouded XRP might soon dissipate.

The Securities and Exchange Commission wants to settle its case against Ripple for alleged securities violations. But US Judge Analisa Torres hasn’t signed off on the settlement. Crypto lawyer John Deaton puts the chances of approval from the judge at 70%.

Meanwhile, Polymarket bettors have given XRP an 89% chance of an approved exchange-traded fund in 2025.

Osato Avan-Nomayo is our Nigeria-based DeFi correspondent. He covers DeFi and tech. Got a tip? Please contact him at [email protected].

A version of this article appeared in our The Roundup newsletter on June 20. Sign up here.

Hi! Eric here.

Venture capitalists are bullish.

That’s pretty much the takeaway from DL News’ reporting and conversations I’ve had with investors this week.

VCs are on course to invest $18 billion in crypto startups this year, which is almost double the level in 2024.

The reasons are plentiful. Jonas Kristensen, head of Wintermute Ventures, the popular liquidity provider’s investment arm, said President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto policies are clearly a boost. So, too, is the entry of traditional financial institutions to the sector.

While investors in past cycles may have thrown money at anything and hoped something would stick, market maturity is now spurring VCs to analyse key metrics such as revenue, distribution, and user bases.

“The general kind of sentiment in 2025 is that fundamentals matter when investing,” Kristensen told me. “There has to be a proper, real business.”

So what are investors betting on?

Kristensen is looking at the blending of fintech and crypto. As financial institutions are using crypto-native solutions like stablecoins, that also means they’ll have to look at things like custody and compliance.

Liam Kelly spoke to VCs on the sidelines of Berlin Blockchain Week this week who said they’re exploring how blockchain can be combined with AI agents. They are also hunting for startups that are building sites with user experiences that are easy to navigate, as well as innovative trading platforms.

Let the good times roll.

Komainu CEO eyes deals to push beyond custody amid crypto M&A boom

Crypto custodians are part of a bigger mergers and acquisitions boom. I spoke with Komainu’s CEO to hear more.

Project Eleven: VCs throw $6m at project securing Bitcoin against quantum threats

Quantum computers are threatening the security of all industries, including crypto. Tim Craig wrote about how one startup just raised $6 million to protect Bitcoin wallets.

Genius Act clears Senate in historic vote for stablecoins as focus turns to House

The landmark Genius Act passed the Senate this week, Aleks Gilbert reported. It now has to pass the House before it can be turned into law and set the stage for a stablecoin bonanza.

The crypto mantra, “the future of finance,” has become a jab sceptics have used every time an exchange failed or billions vanished in a hack.

But with the US Senate approving a landmark stablecoin bill this week and sending it to the House of Representatives for a vote, the old rallying call suddenly has new life.

Analysts say the next era of crypto will be built around digitally-native money that’s backed by the US dollar, audited by regulators, and used by everyone from bankers to street vendors.

“This is a once-in-a-generation platform shift,” tweeted Fred Ehrsam, co-founder of Coinbase, a US-listed crypto exchange.

“The major pillars of the future of finance are up for grabs.”

And that kind of scale may be closer than it looks.

“The float is expected to grow from roughly 250 billion to trillions of dollars” as regulation clears the way for institutional adoption, David Sacks, President Donald Trump’s crypto czar, told Bloomberg News on Thursday.

Dual-track growth

The Genius Act, which passed in a very bipartisan 68–30 vote on Wednesday, is designed to create a federal framework for dollar-backed stablecoin issuers.

The legislation will requiring tokens to be backed by highly liquid assets like US Treasuries, with monthly reserve disclosures and law enforcement cooperation built in.

For Paolo Ardoino, the CEO of Tether, the longtime stablecoin market leader, the Genius Act validates stablecoins as a potential new fixture in the financial system, especially when it comes to payments.

But he’s quick to point out that the value they deliver looks very different depending on where you are.

“In the US, stablecoins take a system that’s 90% efficient to 95%,” Ardoino explained in a recent appearance on Anthony Pompliano’s The Pomp Podcast.

“But in many emerging markets, stablecoins take you from 20% to 50%. That’s a 30% leap in financial utility.”

That disparity has shaped Tether’s global strategy.

While USDT continues to dominate in countries like Turkey, Nigeria, and Argentina, where it’s often used as a de facto savings account, Ardoino has also floated plans for a second, highly regulated product tailored to US markets.

He’s betting that Tether can thrive in both arenas: one as the “stablecoin for the people,” and the other as compliant infrastructure for banks and fintechs.

It’s an approach that mirrors the dual-track growth Citi expects.

The bank projects that stablecoin supply could swell by almost 1,400% to $3.7 trillion by 2030 from about $252 billion, driven by rising adoption in developed and emerging economies.

Crypto market movers

Bitcoin has grown 1.1% in value over the past 24 hours and is trading at $105,950.

Ethereum is up 0.7% in the same period to $2,550.

What we’re reading

Self chain founder denies involvement in $50m OTC crypto fraud as accusations fly ― DL News

Tron Is Now More Expensive Than Ethereum. Will That Hurt Justin Sun’s New Company? ― Unchained

Woah. A multi-year trend just broke — Milk Road

US Treasuries and private credit dominate $23bn tokenisation market, analysts say ― DL News

Kyle Baird is DL News’ Weekend Editor. Got a tip? Email at [email protected]

Paul Frost Smith said he wants to make a deal — or several.

The CEO of Komainu, a crypto custodian, said he’s looking to scoop up crypto companies across the world to either get a foothold in new regions or to open up additional business lines.

And there’s plenty of opportunities to go around as crypto downshifts into its richest bull market since 2021.

“The industry is in a state now where nearly everything is for sale. I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” Frost Smith told DL News in a wide-ranging interview.

Komainu’s goal? To “become the dominant digital asset service provider outside of the US,” Frost Smith said.

That’s a tall order.

$75 million raise

While Komainu says it has “well over $10 billion” assets in custody and bagged $75 million in a Series B raise in January, it isn’t the only bank-backed custodian offering its services to international institutional clients like banks and governments.

Rivals such as Zodia Custody are similar in size, and also have offices in many of the same regions that Komainu is targeting.

Komainu declined to provide a valuation.

Acquisitions appear to be a key piece of both companies’ growth strategy.

In October, Komainu agreed to acquire Propine Holdings, a Singapore based crypto custodian. In May, Zodia Custody announced plans to buy Tungsten Custody, a Dubai-based firm.

‘There’s an awful lot of concentration risk in Coinbase at the moment.’

Paul Frost Smith

Frost Smith declined to offer details about how much Komainu is willing to spend on acquisitions or how it plans to fund them. He said that, apart from tapping into the funds provided in the January raise, it has access to “other funding if needed.”

It’s not just crypto custodians that are looking to make deals — the entire crypto industry is in a state of consolidation.

In May, Messari estimated that there had been almost 120 mergers and acquisitions worth about $8 billion in 2025, which means crypto M&As are set to hit levels not seen since 2021.

Firms like Stripe, Coinbase, Ripple, Robinhood, and Kraken are among the bigger players to have bought smaller startups this year.

What’s Komainu’s deal?

Komainu first launched in 2018 as a joint venture by Nomura, the Japanese financial services group; CoinShares, the digital asset firm; and Ledger, the crypto hardware developer.

Komainu is named after the mythical lion-dog statues that guard Shinto temples.

Komainu’s team of roughly 70 employees are spread across its headquarters in Jersey, one of the Channel Islands, and offices in the US, Singapore, and Dubai. It is also opening an office in Italy.

In Asia, Komainu is looking to be fully operational in Singapore and Japan over the next six to nine months, the company’s CEO said.

Frost Smith said he expects his staff to increase to about 120 people by the end of the year — which would bring it in line with Zodia Custody’s staff numbers.

US opportunity

Frost Smith is bullish about the US.

Since Donald Trump was elected president, the country has grown more welcoming for crypto firms. That’s created an opportunity for Custodians like Komainu.

“There’s an awful lot of concentration risk in Coinbase at the moment,” he said, noting that eight of nine US Bitcoin exchange-traded fund issuers custody with the crypto exchange.

“There are very good arguments to say that that custody base should be split among several custodians [to spread the risk,]’ Frost Smith said.

A company spokesperson added: “Komainu sees its main competition coming from the US and is taking steps to ensure it is the go-to provider outside the US.”

Even so, the main priority for Komainu is to expand its business in Asia.

Komainu is also toiling to get licensed under the European Union’s new Markets in Crypto-Assets, or MiCA, regime.

“It’s less of an important market for us than Asia,” Frost Smith said, adding that the firm doesn’t want to lose the few European clients that it has, which is why Komainu is pursuing the licence.

Withdrawing from the UK

Across the English Channel, the UK government has signalled a move to introduce new crypto-specific laws and regulations.

CryptoUK, the industry body, has welcomed this push, even though those rules will require crypto companies to ramp up background checks on users to avoid being used for money laundering or other financial crimes.

More oversight may run counter to the prized tenets of financial privacy at the heart of crypto.

Even so, Komainu registered with the Financial Conduct Authority, the UK’s key financial markets regulator in 2023. Frost Smith warned that the firm may leave the UK if the FCA’s new proposed rules prove too costly.

“We would consider withdrawing from the UK,” Frost Smith said, noting that no decision one way or another has been made.

“The regulators here need to be a little bit careful that they don’t make things so different and so onerous that they force sensible, conservative operators like ourselves out of the market,” he added.

Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email at [email protected].

The founder of Self chain, a Binance-listed project, has denied involvement in a crypto scam ring that fleeced investors for an estimated $50 million with phoney token deals.

In a post on X, Ravindra Kumar denied accusations on social media that he had sold vested allocations of various crypto tokens to investors that never existed.

“I’ve been accused of serious wrongdoing, which is completely false,” Kumar said Friday. “My legal team and I are working on a statement to address this matter.”

Fraudulent deals

On Thursday, Mohammed Waseem, the CEO of Aza Ventures, an Indian over-the-counter deals broker, revealed that his firm unwittingly helped mediate dozens of fraudulent deals over the course of several months.

“We have been scammed,” Waseem said on Telegram. “There is no easy way to say it, but it is what it is.”

He said a figure he referred to as “Source 1” sold vested crypto tokens for multi-billion dollar projects such as Sui, Near, Axelar, and Sei at steep discounts and under favourable conditions.

Although early deals were legitimate, Waseem said, later ones “shifted entirely to Ponzi schemes.”

When the time came for Source 1 to transfer tokens to buyers, they kept delaying, leading to several buyers to raise the alarm.

Waseem said he chose to keep Source 1’s identity private because he believed it gave himself and investors the best chance of recouping their investments.

But suspicions mounted online that Kumar was Source 1. With his denial, Kumar appeared to confirm this.

‘Stop falling for scammers selling you OTC deals. There is NO deal.’

Adeniyi Abiodun

The scam has hit the crypto industry’s wealthiest cohort of investors who often look to invest over-the-counter in the vested tokens of early-stage projects because of the potential for outsized returns.

Over-the-counter, or OTC, refers to trading of assets done directly between two parties, and without the supervision of an exchange.

It’s usually the only way to sell illiquid assets such as large tranches of vested crypto tokens.

Multiple warnings

Before Waseem informed investors about the fraud, several crypto project founders warned about phoney deals involving their tokens.

“Stop falling for [Telegram] scammers selling you OTC deals. There is NO deal.” Adeniyi Abiodun, co-founder of Mysten Labs, the firm behind the Sui blockchain, said in an X post in May.

Later that month, Lucian Mincu, Co-founder of MultiversX, another project impacted by the phoney OTC deals, posted a similar warning.

Smokey The Bera, the pseudonymous founder of the Berachain blockchain, said he had previously told Waseem that OTC deals involving Berachain’s BERA token weren’t legitimate.

“He insisted that his sources were good, and wouldn’t cooperate with any investigation,” Smokey said.

Refund plans

Waseem has assured victims that he plans to issue refunds to everyone who got ripped off.

How he will do so isn’t clear.

The Aza Ventures CEO said he has already exhausted all of his personal funds trying to maintain distributions under the assumption that Source 1 would eventually pay him.

He also told investors that Source 1 said they will begin to return funds by the end of June.

Waseem also said that he had been in contact with the authorities in India, who confirmed that Source 1 was running a Ponzi scheme and committed to assisting him in the refund process.

“I did not do this knowingly,” he said. “I have been taken for a ride myself.”

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi correspondent. Reach out to him with tips at [email protected].

This week, Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto fund backed its 29th crypto deal of the year.

The venture capital giant’s crypto arm, known as a16z crypto, backed both EigenLayer and PrismaX’s rounds.

The deals topped up $928 million a16z crypto has deployed in the crypto sector this year. That’s about a tenth of the total VCs have invested in crypto startups in 2025, according to DefiLlama data.

The venture capital firm’s investment came as the overall industry received $155 million across 15 deals between June 14 and 20.

That brings the total money injected into the industry to almost $9.4 billion, just $200 shy of the total raised in 2024 and on course to meet analyst expectations of it hitting $18 billion this year.

Here are the three biggest funding rounds of the last week:

EigenLayer, $70 million

On Wednesday, Eigen Labs, the engineering and research organisation behind the popular Ethereum restaking protocol EigenLayer, raised $70 million.

The raise took the form of a token purchase from a16z crypto. The deal follows its previous backing of Eigen Labs’ $100 million Series B round in February 2024.

PrismaX, $11 million

On Wednesday, PrismaX announced that it had raised $11 million in a seed round led by a16z, Crunchbase reported.

Other investors included Volt Capital, Virtuals Protocol, Symbolic Capital, Stanford Blockchain Accelerator, and Blockchain Builders Fund.

The startup is building a decentralised data incentive mechanism to promote the standardisation of robotics vision data and the development of remote control infrastructure.

Gradient Network, $10 million

Also on Wednesday, Gradient Network announced the completion of a $10 million seed round.

Pantera Capital and Multicoin Capital led the raise and HSG (formerly Sequoia Capital China) and “other distinguished partners,” also participated in the raise according to a press release.

Gradient is building a decentralised AI infrastructure for open-source intelligence.

You’re reading the latest installment of The Weekly Raise, our column covering fundraising deals across the crypto and DeFi spaces, powered by DefiLlama.

Eric Johansson is DL News’ News Editor. Got a tip? Email at [email protected].

Bitcoin and Ethereum are holding steady after plunging earlier this week — but traders aren’t breathing easy just yet.

Since the conflict between Israel and Iran erupted on June 3, Bitcoin has dropped 3% to about $104,000, while Ethereum has shed nearly 10%, falling to $2,500.

But in the past 24 hours, both cryptocurrencies have traded sideways, stuck in a tense wait-and-see scenario as investors sideline themselves.

“Markets will be swayed by rising Middle East conflict updates and any shifts in Bitcoin ETF flows over the coming week,” Vincent Liu, CIO of Kronos Research, a crypto research firm, told DL News.

“Macroeconomic uncertainty could fuel fresh volatility across crypto and drive investor sentiment.”

This week, Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have taken in nearly 10,000 Bitcoin or about $1 billion, according to Coinglass. That brings their total holdings up to about $131 billion.

Hedging bets

Options traders aren’t betting on a speedy recovery for crypto prices.

Deribit data shows that Bitcoin put options — bearish bets — are gaining ground, especially around the $100,000 price tag.

Now, it’s not that traders see a long-term collapse, Liu said, but rather that they’re hedging for short-term swings.

“Puts act as a hedge, especially for spot holders. It’s more risk management in the short term,” said Liu. “As news shifts sentiment between fear and greed, uncertainty grows.”

XRP traders are also hedging their bets for a price drop.

Flaring tensions

Geopolitical tensions have gripped global markets.

US President Donald Trump hinted this week that the US could soon intervene in the Israel-Iran conflict, warning Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that “our patience is wearing thin.”

In fact, Trump cut short a G7 summit and ordered the National Security Council to convene.

Meanwhile, prediction platform Polymarket shows odds of a US military strike against Iran before July at 61%, down from 70% earlier this week.

That saber-rattling has jolted assets.

US stocks dipped, oil prices jumped, while gold slid. Crypto also got caught in the crossfire. Shares of Strategy, Coinbase and Circle fell as much as 4%.

Coinbase and Circle’s shares surged after the Genius Act, a stablecoin bill, passed the US Senate.

Sticky inflation

Data from the Federal Reserve doesn’t offer much optimism, either.

The money printer isn’t coming back anytime soon, said Fed Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday.

Inflation, meanwhile, remains stubborn, and interest rates will stay high — a situation that doesn’t help risk-on assets like cryptocurrencies.

Moreover, Iran produces 4% of the world’s oil, and the country is at the footsteps of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 30% of the world’s seaborne oil and 20% of global liquified natural gas passes.

For now, capital markets remain on edge.

Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him at [email protected].

It’s a mind-bending proposition, even by the standards of the self-styled degenerate traders who revel in crypto’s lightning-fast markets.

A new protocol called opt.fun is set to debut on the Hyperliquid blockchain on Thursday. It will offer decentralised options trading with 1,000x leverage and one-minute expiry options.

That’s a lot of torque.

In an interview, opt.fun founder Ryan Galvankar said that to his knowledge the venture will offer the highest leverage of any crypto protocol.

“It seems like crypto users today, they’re early adopters. A lot of them are coming in with small portfolios to experiment,” Galvankar told DL News.

“And what’s meaningful for them, and what they’re seeking by coming onto the blockchain, is incredibly high returns.”

Hyperliquid boom

Opt.fun aims to leverage the popularity of the platform on which it’s built — Hyperliquid.

Hyperliquid launched in 2023 as a standalone, blockchain-based derivatives trading platform. It’s become a magnet for traders comfortable with white-knuckle risk taking.

Hyperliquid allows users to make massive leveraged bets on crypto perpetuals, which are derivatives contracts that don’t expire. Hyperliquid, for instance, lets traders take out 40x leverage when trading Bitcoin derivatives.

It has grown rapidly this year: It clocked $244 billion in trading volume in May, 10% of the $2.3 trillion derivatives haul of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange.

In February, Hyperliquid launched its own blockchain, which has attracted dozens of protocols and more than $2 billion in user deposits.

Opt.fun takes the Hyperliquid model a step further. Galvankar said the idea came to him while working on his first crypto protocol, Plaza Finance.

“We were talking to users about what they cared about most,” Galvankar said. “And most users wanted short term, high volatility.”

‘Big boy products’

Adding leverage can turbocharge a trader’s gains — and their losses. While it can provide savvy traders a path to quick riches, it can also lead to financial ruin.

Several Hyperliquid traders have lost tens of millions of dollars on the platform, using far less leverage than they’ll have access to on opt.fun.

Galvankar said offering such trading was a matter of levelling the playing field.

“I am annoyed that I today as an individual don’t have access to the same products that I had access to as a trader on behalf of a large hedge fund,” Galvankar said, “simply because I don’t have the capital base to get access to the, quote-unquote, big boy products.”

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Galvankar worked at hedge fund Magnetar Capital for three years before entering crypto.

The name opt.fun is a nod to Pump.fun, a memecoin creation and trading platform on the Solana blockchain. Memecoins are crypto assets that are explicitly valueless, trading on hype rather than purported utility.

Galvankar said he wants to give traders a more equitable alternative to “rigged” memecoin markets.

“The insider set of people launching the token, those people hold the majority of the liquidity, and as soon as there’s some buying pressure, they’ll pull that liquidity and then profit from your entry,” he said.

On opt.fun, traders can make leveraged bets on blue chip crypto assets, which are highly liquid, making their prices exceedingly difficult to manipulate.

“It’s truly a fair arena for people who want extraordinary amounts of volatility, extraordinary amounts of upside,” Galvankar said.

Wen token?

But he was careful to insist that users should only bet what they’re comfortable losing.

Traders who have expressed interest in opt.fun vary in size, but skew “on the smaller trade size,” Galvankar said.

“They’re the types of people who are like, ‘Hey, I’m gonna put 10 bucks in and see if I can make 100 bucks today.’”

Market makers and crypto hedge funds have also expressed interest in opt.fun, according to Galvankar, in part because the platform will launch with negative maker fees.

The upgradeable smart contracts that underpin opt.fun will be public and open source, according to Galvankar. The protocol will feature a “governance committee” at launch, with plans to decentralise over time.

“One thing that always helps with decentralisation is having a governance token,” Galvankar said.

“No plans at the moment, besides an inkling. But it’s the path we can see it going if it gets significant community adoption.”

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at [email protected].

Project Eleven just bagged $6 million to secure the $2 trillion Bitcoin blockchain against the looming threat of quantum computers.

On Thursday, the group of cryptography experts announced the seed round, which was co-led by Variant Fund and Quantonation. Nic Carter’s Castle Island Ventures, Nebular, and Formation also participated.

It’s not entirely clear how Project Eleven plans to monetise its goal, but Alex Pruden, Project Eleven’s CEO and co-founder, said he was confident there was money to be made.

“If you don’t believe there’s a business opportunity somewhere in that $2 trillion — say, to build wallet infrastructure to help wallets manage the migration for users — then I think you have to be pretty bearish on Bitcoin and crypto generally,” Pruden told DL News.

The raise comes as quantum computing experts warn that Bitcoin could be at risk from cryptography-cracking quantum computers in as little as five years time. Yet so far, there’s no concrete plan to upgrade the blockchain to make it resistant to quantum computers.

“The entire Bitcoin protocol needs to be re-architected, tested, and every single wallet needs to migrate to a secure protocol,” Pruden said. “If that doesn’t happen then I guess the $2 trillion of value in Bitcoin goes to zero.”

Bitcoin development is conducted by a loose group of core developers who contribute to the project, often alongside other jobs. Private companies, NGOs, and wealthy Bitcoiners support them via grants and donations.

Some Bitcoin developers are already independently exploring ways to secure the blockchain against quantum computers.

Securing Bitcoin

The first facet of the Bitcoin protocol at risk from quantum computers are old Bitcoin wallets that use outdated cryptography, which includes Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto’s $115 billion stash.

However, eventually quantum computers will be able to crack the cryptography used in newer wallets, too.

Project Eleven’s aim is to eventually secure all Bitcoin wallets with so-called exposed public keys.

When a user sends Bitcoin, they must expose their wallet’s public keys. Normally this isn’t an issue as public keys are encrypted. However, with the advent of sufficiently powerful quantum computers, these exposed public keys become a target because they can theoretically be cracked.

Project Eleven estimates approximately $600 billion worth of Bitcoin in such wallets will be at risk in the future.

Ahead of a more permanent solution, the company aims to protect wallets with exposed public keys by enabling users to claim provenance over their funds using post-quantum cryptography.

To do this, Project Eleven is launching Yellowpages, a cryptographic registry designed to help Bitcoin holders prove ownership of their funds.

“With Yellowpages, we’re giving users free, audited, and open-source tools to proactively establish quantum-resilient ownership today,” Conor Deegan, co-founder and vice president of engineering at Project Eleven, said in a statement.

Yellowpages won’t solve the Bitcoin protocol’s vulnerability to quantum computers, but it will provide a fallback solution, allowing users to secure their Bitcoin holdings without immediate on-chain transactions or reliance on protocol upgrades.

Quantum advancements

Quantum computers exploit quantum mechanical phenomena to produce so-called qubits, the basic unit of information in quantum computing.

The quantum properties of qubits mean they can theoretically be used to create computers that are orders of magnitude more powerful than those that use conventional methods, meaning they could break advanced cryptography that secures encrypted data.

But quantum computers are difficult to build. The more qubits a quantum computer utilises, the more difficult it is to run computations with producing errors.

For many years, the development of quantum computers has been slow. But in recent months, several advancements have been made.

In December, Google unveiled a new quantum computing chip called Willow, which boasts a 56% improvement over the tech giant’s previous chip.

Then in February, Microsoft announced its own chip that it says solves the scaling issues that have persistently plagued the field.

Unconvinced

Yet some Bitcoin advocates, like Strategy Chair Michael Saylor, are unconvinced of the threat of quantum computers.

“I don’t worry about it,” Saylor told Bloomberg News on June 10. “Microsoft and Google market their quantum projects, but they would never sell a quantum computer that cracked cryptography as it would destroy their own companies.”

Pruden, on the other hand, believes Bitcoin will be future quantum computers’ number one target.

“An economically motivated actor will 100% go for Bitcoin versus something else like a bank,” Pruden said.

With Bitcoin, cryptography is the entire mechanism of ownership. Banks on the other hand, have a lot of legal and operational controls that could thwart a potential quantum computer attacker, he said.

Like other experts, Pruden estimates that quantum computers will pose a threat to Bitcoin within five to 10 years time.

“That’s probably how long it will take to fix and migrate everything,” he said.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi correspondent. Reach out to him with tips [email protected].

Ethereum will become more valuable than Apple and Microsoft.

Really.

A group of the blockchain’s more prominent boosters made that argument in a paper published June 12.

They said the world’s second biggest cryptocurrency will not only hit $8,000 in the short term, but that the price will eventually crest $80,000.

At that higher price, the combined value of all Ether currently in circulation would approach $10 trillion, a figure greater than the combined present value of Apple and Microsoft, two of the world’s most valuable companies.

“Everyone has heard of Ethereum, everyone uses Ethereum,” Vivek Raman, the co-founder of Etherealize, a research firm, and one of the paper’s co-authors, told DL News.

“But I feel like we’ve left out and sort of just had on the sidelines this asset powering [the whole DeFi] ecosystem.”

The report and Raman didn’t offer any hint of what either the short-term or long-term cases were.

Still, it’s an astonishing prediction, especially in the face of other analysts’ bearishness as Ether has lagged other digital assets this year.

In March, UK bank Standard Chartered projected that Ethereum’s price will hit $4,000 by the end of 2025, down from a previous $10,000 prediction.

Ethereum’s bull case

The paper, entitled “The Bull Case for ETH,” is an attempt to change perception of Ethereum among traders who struggle to understand why they should be bullish on it.

The problem? The case for Ethereum is harder to explain than Bitcoin’s.

The world’s top cryptocurrency has a reputation as a safe haven asset thanks to its fixed supply recorded on a tamper-proof, ownerless ledger.

Countries are stockpiling Bitcoin. Traditional finance titans have launched Bitcoin exchange-traded funds that have seen breakneck growth since their January 2024 debut.

Raman and his co-authors argue that Ethereum can provide that, and more.

Not only is Ether a commodity that works as a store of value like Bitcoin, it will also power the new generation of financial and social applications, much like the internet gave rise to social media and digital banking, they argued.

Or, to put it another way, while Bitcoin is likened to digital gold, Ethereum should be seen as “digital oil powering the digital economy,” the paper reads.

Seen in that light, Raman and the others argue that the $10 trillion market cap ain’t that outlandish.

Foundational software

“Global proven oil reserves have a combined market valuation of approximately $85 trillion,” they write. “This is a meaningful reference point for ETH given that it is on a similar trajectory, but for the digital realm.”

If Ethereum becomes the foundational software layer of the new economy — akin to an operating system, like Microsoft Windows — then that’ll yield a massive boon for the network as every transaction on the Ethereum blockchain incurs a cost that must be paid in Ether.

And things are changing, Raman said.

While crypto advocates used to struggle to pique the interest of skeptical investors and financiers, Raman said he’s found himself fielding inquiries from institutions that want to better understand the world’s second largest blockchain.

“I spent four years trying to shout into the wind about this whole ETH thing and tokenisation thing, and no one cared. Now it’s gone the other way,” he said.

Crypto market movers

Bitcoin is trading flat over the past 24 hours at $104,947.

Ethereum is down 0.3% at $2,528.

What we’re reading

How institutions and $4bn crypto-native asset managers are shaping DeFi: report— DL News

Tron Is Now More Expensive Than Ethereum. Will That Hurt Justin Sun’s New Company? — Unchained

Visa says every institution that moves money will need a stablecoin strategy — Finextra

How to profit from stablecoin adoption— Milk Road

An interview with 0xngmi on DefiLlama’s new Pro dashboard — DL News

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at [email protected].

Stablecoins are only a fraction of what the real-world asset, or RWA, sector could become.

According to new research from Standard Chartered Bank released Wednesday, the non-stablecoin RWA market could see significant growth over the coming years.

“The key lesson from tokenisation efforts so far is that it is pointless to tokenise an asset simply for the sake of tokenising it,” Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered Bank, said in the report.

“The tokenised asset needs to be cheaper, quicker to settle, and/or create access for more investors than its offchain equivalent.”

The non-stablecoin RWA tokenisation market has reached around $23 billion, about 10% of the size of the stablecoin market.

Currently, this market is dominated by private credit and US Treasury debt.

The tokenisation of US Treasury debt has gained a firm foothold, with the market reaching $7 billion and attracting major traditional finance players, including BlackRock’s BUIDL fund.

Opportunities

The report identifies onchain private credit as the largest RWA sub-sector, with a market of $13 billion. Most of this comes from Figure, a loan marketplace that simplifies the loan verification and approval process.

Figure launched on Provenance, a blockchain that focuses only on RWAs. Provenance leads all chains in terms of RWA tokenisation amounts.

“Private equity tokenisation, which has been slow to take off so far, may benefit from similar onchain positives to private credit,” Kendrick said.

“We would expect a successful platform to quickly catch up with (and keep pace with) the successful private credit platforms.”

Other non-stablecoin asset classes have experienced significantly slower growth, with a market of about $1.5 billion. The majority of this figure comes from gold-backed stablecoins offered by Paxos and Tether. Meanwhile, progress for onchain equities and other commodities has been extremely slow, according to the report.

“We suspect that [the slow progress] is because commodities like gold are already available to investors in easily accessible, liquid forms like ETFs. In this context, we think efforts to bring less liquid commodities onchain are likely to be more successful,” said Kendrick.

“In line with the lessons learned so far, we expect private equity and liquid offchain commodities to be the next growth areas for non-stablecoin tokenisation.”

There are multiple successful RWA projects that have launched tokens. Ondo Finance, a project with multiple offerings ranging from US Treasury debt to equity tokenisation, has a market value of over $2.3 billion with a total value of deposits at over $1.3 billion.

Maple Finance, a project primarily focused on institutional lending, recently surpassed a total value of deposits of $2 billion, leading to an almost 50% increase in token price within the past 30 days. The token’s current market value is over $530 million.

Zachary Rampone is a DeFi correspondent at DL News. Have a tip? Contact him at [email protected]

DefiLlama data isn’t just for the self-proclaimed degenerates making leveraged bets on volatile crypto markets.

It’s been cited by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the European Central Bank, the Bank for International Settlements, and other temples of high finance now trying to wrap their heads around blockchain technology — or DLT, as “suits” like to call it — and decentralised finance.

Both the degens and the suits, however, can benefit from doing more with that data.

This week, DefiLlama launched a new feature for Llama+ subscribers: the ability to build and share custom dashboards tailored to their specific needs.

DefiLlama users who pay for a Llama+ subscription can create an unlimited number of dashboards and share read-only versions with their collaborators, in addition to existing perks like LlamaFeed, CSV downloads, and support for custom calculated columns.

And DefiLlama’s pseudonymous developer 0xngmi told DL News that DefiLlama will eventually add more features to the Llama+ custom dashboards.

The llama lore

DL News — a DefiLlama sister company — sat down with 0xngmi to talk about the new feature and his reluctant embrace of what sometimes feels like the role of “DeFi police.”

DefiLlama, an aggregator of blockchain data, has long featured the fees and revenue that protocols generate. But its first webpage offering this data was overwhelming, and users flocked to the “worse version,” 0xngmi said — a slimmed-down page showing just the protocols and a single top line number.

That became the main page — and it immediately angered DefiLlama’s power users, 0xngmi recalled.

While DefiLlama kept the simpler dashboards front and center, its developers set out to build something for its more advanced users.

“The point is that if you’re a Pro user, you can just go there and you can go crazy,” 0xngmi said.

“You can build these weird tables with all the metrics that you want and combine them, in any way you want.”

That includes, of course, 0xngmi’s favourite charts, like the one tracking the median yield paid out by DeFi protocols and another tracking the dominance of so-called liquid staking protocols in the DeFi ecosystem.

The data available to Llama+ subscribers remains free on DefiLlama. But it’s an enormous amount of data to navigate. DefiLlama tracks almost 5,000 protocols spread over some 400 blockchains; it tracks airdrops, bridges, oracles, raises, hacks, and centralised exchanges; and it tracks protocol yields, volumes, and revenues.

“Something I’m jealous of is other people building software businesses where you just build the thing and, like, that’s kind of it,” 0xngmi said.

All software needs to be patched, of course. But most of the work goes into adding new features to an existing product.

“In our case, it’s this constant fight to just keep the product as-is,” 0xngmi said. “The default state is for it to regress over time and get worse.”

Protocols change. New versions are released. Entirely new blockchains and protocols enter the fray. Many are interoperable — DeFi protocols are often referred to as “money legos,” after all.

Wash trading is rampant. Lack of standardisation in a largely unregulated, nascent industry leads to social media squabbles over which data service best captures a project’s success – or lack thereof.

That has made DefiLlama, and 0xngmi with it, a sort of arbiter of crypto data.

“I didn’t want to become a DeFi police and just police all these metrics and be like, ‘Yeah, this is good, this is bad.’ I was more like, ‘We’re just presenting the data, and this is all left to our users.’”

But he’s grown to accept it.

“At the end of the day, users use us because they want to see where activity is going on and which kind of things are hot. And if there’s some protocol that has huge numbers, but they’re all fake, it makes our product way more useless.”

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at [email protected].

With additional reporting from DeFi Correspondent Zachary Rampone.

DefiLlama data isn’t just for the self-proclaimed degenerates making leveraged bets on volatile crypto markets.

It’s been cited by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the European Central Bank, the Bank for International Settlements, and other temples of high finance now trying to wrap their heads around blockchain technology — or DLT, as “suits” like to call it — and decentralised finance.

Both the degens and the suits, however, can benefit from doing more with that data.

This week, DefiLlama launched a new feature for Llama+ subscribers: the ability to build and share custom dashboards tailored to their specific needs.

DefiLlama users who pay for a Llama+ subscription can create an unlimited number of dashboards and share read-only versions with their collaborators, in addition to existing perks like LlamaFeed, CSV downloads, and support for custom calculated columns.

And DefiLlama’s pseudonymous developer 0xngmi told DL News that DefiLlama will eventually add more features to the Llama+ custom dashboards.

The llama lore

DL News — a DefiLlama sister company — sat down with 0xngmi to talk about the new feature and his reluctant embrace of what sometimes feels like the role of “DeFi police.”

DefiLlama, an aggregator of blockchain data, has long featured the fees and revenue that protocols generate. But its first webpage offering this data was overwhelming, and users flocked to the “worse version,” 0xngmi said — a slimmed-down page showing just the protocols and a single top line number.

That became the main page — and it immediately angered DefiLlama’s power users, 0xngmi recalled.

While DefiLlama kept the simpler dashboards front and center, its developers set out to build something for its more advanced users.

“The point is that if you’re a Pro user, you can just go there and you can go crazy,” 0xngmi said.

“You can build these weird tables with all the metrics that you want and combine them, in any way you want.”

That includes, of course, 0xngmi’s favourite charts, like the one tracking the median yield paid out by DeFi protocols and another tracking the dominance of so-called liquid staking protocols in the DeFi ecosystem.

The data available to Llama+ subscribers remains free on DefiLlama. But it’s an enormous amount of data to navigate. DefiLlama tracks almost 5,000 protocols spread over some 400 blockchains; it tracks airdrops, bridges, oracles, raises, hacks, and centralised exchanges; and it tracks protocol yields, volumes, and revenues.

“Something I’m jealous of is other people building software businesses where you just build the thing and, like, that’s kind of it,” 0xngmi said.

All software needs to be patched, of course. But most of the work goes into adding new features to an existing product.

“In our case, it’s this constant fight to just keep the product as-is,” 0xngmi said. “The default state is for it to regress over time and get worse.”

Protocols change. New versions are released. Entirely new blockchains and protocols enter the fray. Many are interoperable — DeFi protocols are often referred to as “money legos,” after all.

Wash trading is rampant. Lack of standardisation in a largely unregulated, nascent industry leads to social media squabbles over which data service best captures a project’s success – or lack thereof.

That has made DefiLlama, and 0xngmi with it, a sort of arbiter of crypto data.

“I didn’t want to become a DeFi police and just police all these metrics and be like, ‘Yeah, this is good, this is bad.’ I was more like, ‘We’re just presenting the data, and this is all left to our users.’”

But he’s grown to accept it.

“At the end of the day, users use us because they want to see where activity is going on and which kind of things are hot. And if there’s some protocol that has huge numbers, but they’re all fake, it makes our product way more useless.”

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at [email protected].

With additional reporting from DeFi Correspondent Zachary Rampone.

On Wednesday, USDP, a memecoin based on Solana, ran up a $150 million in market value. Within hours, it nosedived 99%, to $1.2 million.

Onchain data from Dexscreener shows huge profits for a few wallets, including one trader who instantly parlayed a $300 bet into a 1,000 times return of $300,000.

But several other buyers are sitting on huge losses.

And onchain data from Dexscreener reveals the reason why.

Interconnected wallets

A web of interconnected wallets sold their holdings in short order after the token first surged tenfold on Wednesday morning.

These affiliated wallets were seeded by insiders linked to the project based on the flow of transactions among them, the wallet data shows. They held for a short stretch, just long enough to drive up the price and ride the hype.

With retail investors piling into the token to make quick money, its price rallied, and then the insider flipped the switch. They sold in waves and extracted all of the incoming liquidityand left only what is likely a death spiral for most USDP buyers.

The pattern isn’t new.

It’s called bundling: insiders pre-load wallets with massive amounts of a new memecoin either by stealth allocations or onchain sleight-of-hand to obscure the transaction trail.

Absurdly tight

These connected insiders don’t buy the tokens in the real sense; they receive them and sell at significant profits as the price rises.

Bundling ensures a memecoin’s token supply is kept absurdly tight.

That’s so that there’s an early price spike which can lure in the wider market. Even the memecoin launched by US First Lady Melania Trump had 24 wallets that acquired the tokens without any purchase transactions which indicates bundled transfers.

USDP’s slump is only the latest in a long string of crashes in a market sector rife with abuse. And despite the losses, retail traders keep showing up.

With no guardrails in sight, the formula may not change any time soon.

In February, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a memo that said it won’t bring memecoins under the purview of securities regulations.

Osato Avan-Nomayo is our Nigeria-based DeFi correspondent. He covers DeFi and tech. Got a tip? Please contact him at [email protected].

Institutional investors and crypto-native asset managers account for a growing share of decentralised finance users, and are increasingly shaping how onchain ecosystems develop.

That’s according to crypto data firms vaults.fyi and Artemis.xyz. On Wednesday, they offered that analysis in a new report and unpacked key trends driving the returns investors can earn through DeFi protocols.

“A more mature, resilient, and institutionally-aligned ecosystem is emerging, signalling a clear shift in the nature of onchain returns,” the report said.

“Engagement is driven less by the pursuit of the absolute highest APYs and more by the unique advantages of composable, transparent financial infrastructure, now bolstered by improving risk management tooling.”

APY, or annual percentage yield, stands for the total yield of an investment over the course of a year.

An industry in flux

The report marks a clear shift from when DeFi first gained momentum in 2020. Back then, the industry’s userbase mainly consisted of scrappy, risk-taking retail investors.

Now, with firms like $11 trillion asset manager BlackRock having legitimised crypto, more institutions and sophisticated players are piling in to take advantage of the instant settlement times and permissionless transactions that the sector offers.

“As DeFi infrastructure matures, institutional sentiment is moving towards seeing DeFi as a complementary, configurable financial layer – not merely a disruptive, ungoverned space,” vaults.fyi and Artemis.xyz wrote.

The growing influence of institutions is one of several factors that the report identified as impacting DeFi yields.

Others include maturing infrastructure that allows for more complex yield strategies, and the introduction of tokenised versions of fixed income bonds, like US Treasuries, which play a key role in traditional asset management.

Institutional impact

More institutional adoption means protocols now cater their offerings to more sophisticated users.

One example of this trend is Pendle, a yield derivatives protocol that splits deposits into their principal and future yield constituent parts, letting users speculate on interest rates, hedge risk, or offload yield exposure.

Pendle soared in popularity in early 2024, and is now the eighth largest DeFi protocol with over $5 billion in deposits. Much of this growth comes from sophisticated investors engaging in complex yield strategies.

Another example of a DeFi protocol leaning into institutions is Sky and its USDS stablecoin.

Launched during the protocol’s rebrand from MakerDAO in August, USDS has several compliance features built into it that the protocol says should make it more appealing to institutional investors.

Crypto-native asset managers

The report also identified a new cohort of so-called crypto-native asset managers among the sophisticated players piling into DeFi.

Such firms, like Re7 Capital, Gauntlet, and Steakhouse Financial, are made up of investors who straddle both DeFi and the traditional financial world, and are in the vanguard of DeFi’s shift to catering to more sophisticated users.

“These managers are deeply embedded in the onchain ecosystem, quietly deploying capital across a diverse range of opportunities, including advanced stablecoin strategies,” vaults.fyi and Artemis.xyz wrote.

Since January, this group of asset managers have grown their onchain capital base from roughly $1 billion to over $4 billion, the report said.

In addition to investing, many of these firms also advise DeFi protocols, play an active role in DAO governance, and help manage risks.

For instance, Steakhouse Financial manages financial reporting and asset-liability management for DAI stablecoin issuer Sky, while Gauntlet recently launched a levered real-world asset strategy on Polygon in collaboration with Securitize and DeFi lender Morpho.

“They are positioning themselves to compete as the leading money managers of the next generation,” the report said.

Remaining accessible

Sam MacPherson, CEO and co-founder of Phoenix Labs, the company behind Sky subDAO Spark, has also noted the shift in DeFi offerings.

“Our primary user base is whales and institutions with capital and technical expertise,” he told DL News. “They’re attracted by yield opportunities and the ability to efficiently manage liquidity, hedge positions, and access leverage in a permissionless environment.”

However, MacPherson also stressed that DeFi developers shouldn’t forsake the users who stuck by them before the institutions arrived.

“DeFi needs to remain accessible to the broader community,” he said. “While whales are important, it’s also important not to forget that DeFi can and should be used to address financial inequality.”

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi correspondent. Reach out to him with tips [email protected].