defi
A US district court froze 30,766 ETH (~$71M) held by Arbitrum DAO after terrorism creditors invoked the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to attach recovery funds from the Lazarus Group's $292M Kelp DAO hack. Aave filed an emergency motion to unfreeze the assets.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin developer Paul Sztorc plans an eCash hard fork on August 21, 2026 (block ~964,000): 1:1 BTC airdrop plus manual reassignment of Satoshi's dormant coins to early investors. Rootstock's Sergio Lerner warned the mechanism is 'hazardous' due to replay attack risk and cold storage exposure.
Stablecoins
Coinbase Asset Management partnered with Superstate to launch CUSHY — a stablecoin credit fund whose tokenized share class will issue onchain via Superstate FundOS on Ethereum, Solana and Base, expected to go live in Q2 2026. Northern Trust handles fund administration.
Funding
Solana yield exchange Exponent raised $5 million seed led by Multicoin Capital, with Solana Ventures, RockawayX, L1D and angels Anatoly Yakovenko and Nick Ducoff. Total raised: $7.1M. The platform has cleared $2B+ in yield volume across 35,000+ users since late 2024.
Web3 Security
An attacker drained roughly 13.71 billion SWEAT tokens (~65% of total supply, ~$3.5M) from top holder accounts on Near in a 30-second window. Blockaid flagged it; the SWEAT team paused the contract; MEXC and Rhea Finance froze attacker liquidity. All external account balances were fully restored.
Funding
Liquid, the always-on trading platform backed by Paradigm, closed an $18M round led by Left Lane Capital and Neo to expand cross-asset coverage and U.S. distribution.
defi
A coalition of DeFi protocols has published a technical plan to recover roughly 30,000 ETH from attackers who exploited Kelp DAO — using oracle-adjusted liquidations funded by $303M in industry pledges.
defi
Aave-led DeFi United relief fund crossed $300M Monday after Consensys and Joseph Lubin pledged 30,000 ETH. Lido is sending up to 2,500 stETH, Compound up to 3,000 ETH, EtherFi 5,000 ETH — all to restore rsETH backing after Kelp DAO's $292M exploit.
AI
Gemini opened its trading APIs to AI agents Monday via Anthropic's MCP open standard, letting Claude and ChatGPT autonomously place trades, monitor markets, and manage risk. Gemini calls it the first agentic trading tool through a regulated US exchange.
defi
DeFi TVL dropped $13B in 48 hours after Kelp DAO's $292M exploit, but most of that wasn't real capital leaving — it was looping strategies unwinding. Spark TVL meanwhile jumped from $1.8B to $2.9B, suggesting capital rotation, not abandonment.
defi
A coalition led by Aave Labs and joined by Kelp DAO, LayerZero, EtherFi and Compound has filed a Constitutional AIP asking Arbitrum to release ~30,766 ETH (~$71M) into a DeFi United relief effort for rsETH holders.
AI
Anthropic's Mythos model can chain small protocol weaknesses into autonomous, multi-step exploits, and CoinDesk reports both Coinbase and Binance have approached the lab to stress-test their stacks.