decentralized finance

Crypto hacks and exploits have surged to record levels in the first half of 2025, with total losses exceeding $2.1 billion across at least 75 incidents, according to blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs. What Happened: The figure marks the highest-ever total for the first half of a year,...

UAE-based Web3 fund Aqua 1 has acquired $100 million worth of governance tokens from World Liberty Financial (WLFI) as part of a strategic effort to expand decentralized finance (DeFi) adoption and governance participation. The purchase aims to support WLFI's decentralized platform, which focuses...

D3 Global, a company building blockchain-based infrastructure for tokenized domains, announced a $1 million USDC (CRYPTO: USDC) developer fund on Tuesday to support projects on its newly launched Doma Protocol public testnet. The fund is intended to advance the DomainFi ecosystem, a decentralized...

A new protocol aims to redefine stablecoins as programmable assets for AI agents, much like the U.S. government establishes dollar-based rules. In the same week that the Senate passed the GENIUS Act to regulate fiat-backed stablecoins, MAITRIX, a decentralized finance protocol focused on AI-...

As Web3 interoperability becomes foundational for blockchain-based finance, critical gaps in infrastructure are slowing institutional adoption, according to Axelar co-founder Georgios Vlachos. "We’re likely just at the beginning of an explosion of blockchain-based solutions for tokenized...

Cardano co-founder Charles Hoskinson has proposed converting $100 million worth of (CRYPTO: ADA) from the protocol's treasury into a mix of stablecoins and Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC). The move, if implemented, would mark a significant step toward addressing the network's low stablecoin liquidity and...

The recent surge in yields from tokenized treasury protocols isn't a temporary arbitrage, but a more sustainable trend driven by macroeconomic fundamentals and one that could reshape on-chain yield generation, according to RWA.io's Co-founder and COO, Marko Vidrih. Vidrih emphasized that these...

Crypto payments are gaining traction but face significant barriers to mainstream adoption in the travel industry due to consumer discomfort with wallet-based transactions, according to Mathias Lundoe Nielsen, founder and CEO of EnTravel. In an interview with Benzinga, Nielsen emphasized that...

David João Vieira Carvalho, CEO and Chief Scientist at Naoris Protocol, outlined how decentralized security models can address government needs for blockchain infrastructure, emphasizing their role in critical use cases like secure communications and supply chain verification. In an interview with...

Humayun Sheikh, CEO of Fetch.ai (CRYPTO: FET), dismissed the notion that AI agents forming collectives or decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) is imminent, labeling it an overhyped crypto narrative. In an interview with Benzinga, Sheikh argued that the concept of AI agents autonomously...

Jiahao Sun, founder of Flock.io on Monday laid out a clear vision of the data economy's evolution over the next three to five years, one where users finally begin to earn from their data instead of giving it away for free. Sun believes the core technical hurdle to decentralized data sharing lies in...

Lunar Digital Assets has launched LitVM, the first zero-knowledge Layer-2 for Litecoin (CRYPTO: LTC), signaling a shift toward on-chain programmability and real-world asset integration for the decade-old cryptocurrency. What Happened: The Layer-2 was announced at the Litecoin Summit and is built...

BIMA, a Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC)-native DeFi platform, has partnered with exSat Network to advance the use of Bitcoin in decentralized finance. The collaboration kicks off with an initial $100 million deployment, equivalent to 1,000 BTC, towards enabling permissionless yield strategies. The two...

The Core Foundation on Tuesday announced an integration with digital asset custodian Ceffu, enabling institutional clients to directly stake Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and CORE (CRYPTO: CORE) tokens from within their custody accounts. The partnership brings Core's Dual Staking model to Ceffu's platform...

Lendr.fi on Friday introduced a decentralized platform that lets investors gain on-chain exposure to real-world assets like real estate, ETFs and commodities, combined with liquid staking, a structure that adds passive yield while preserving asset ownership. Lendr.fi has emerged as the first...