DeFi

DeFi

Finance

Wall Street’s trillion-dollar dilemma: Why AI-powered hackers are keeping big banks off the blockchain

CertiK CEO and co-founder Ronghui Gu says April was the worst month for DeFi in four years with exploits on 27 out of 30 days.

CertiK's Ronghui Gu (Ronghui Gu for CoinDesk)

Finance

Toddlers learn by falling: Why DeFi's $20 billion TVL drop is just a market stress-test

DeFi Technologies president Andrew Forson says the stablecoin layer is thriving, with more than $150 billion in U.S. Treasuries backing coins like USDT and USDC.

Andrew Forson, DeFi Technologies (Olivier Acuna/CoinDesk)

Finance

VanEck's tokenized fund lands on Euler as DeFi courts Wall Street institutions

DeFi protocols are increasingly adapting to host regulated, tokenized assets as tokenization is projected to bring trillions of dollars onchain.

(VanEck)

Tech

Kraken unveils Bitcoin Vault, expanding yield push for BTC holders

The new earn product lets users generate BTC-denominated rewards through DeFi strategies while keeping exposure to bitcoin’s price.

Payward and Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi. (CoinDesk)

Tech

DeFi isn't safe anymore because AI is becoming 'superhuman' at hacking, onetime OpenZeppelin founder says

As hacks pile up and DeFi TVL falls fast, OpenZeppelin co-founder and former CTO Manuel Aráoz says AI coding agents have made smart contracts fatally vulnerable.

A notable portion of Bybit's hacked funds remain dark. (TheDigitalArtist/Pixabay)

Markets

Near Protocol to automate its own growth and its token is skyrocketing

Near Protocol will introduce dynamic resharding in June, allowing the blockchain to automatically add shards as demand grows without human intervention.

SpaceX rocket launching into space (SpaceX/Unsplash)

CoinDesk Indices

Crypto Long & Short: Bitcoin-backed loans belong in the cost-of-capital conversation

In this week’s Crypto Long & Short Newsletter, Alec Beckman on why BTC-backed lending is not a crypto story, but a capital efficiency story. Then, Serena Sebastiani on how stablecoins aren’t a crypto product; they’re becoming the settlement infrastructure global finance forgot.

People on escalator blurred

Finance

Echo Protocol suffers $76 million exploit in eBTC minting attack on Monad

The Bitcoin-focused DeFi protocol suffered an attack whereby about 1,000 unauthorized eBTC $77 million were minted on the Monad blockchain

Hacker sitting in a room (Clint Patterson/Unsplash)

Markets

A DeFi exchange becomes the first to offer equity perpetuals powered by Nasdaq data

The partnership underscores both the rapid growth of equity perpetuals in onchain markets and Nasdaq’s broader strategy to support tokenized equity trading infrastructure.

Ostium team. (Ostium's LinkedIn)

Finance

Stripe-backed Tempo taps $7.5 billion DeFi lender Morpho to expand beyond payments

The move brings onchain yield and lending to the payments-focused chain in a bid to offer full-stack onchain finance platform to companies building on it.

Paul Frambot, CEO Morpho Labs (Morpho)