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Editorial policyThe DeFi briefing
Blockchain infrastructure, AI tools, Layer 2 networks and integrations changing how people access decentralized finance.
41 articles · Updated
Aave Labs introduced its official MCP server on 8 September 2026. It supports protocol queries and unsigned transaction preparation across V3 and V4. The key distinction is between reading data, preparing an action and signing it.
Read analysis →Morpho announced its Arc deployment on 16 September 2026. Variable-rate credit is live; further distribution and fixed-rate products remain roadmap items. Here is how to assess the integration and its risks.
Read analysis →Curve’s July recap and early-August gauge votes put LlamaLend V2 on Ethereum with Inverse Finance sDOLA and Frax sfrxUSD as the first yield-bearing markets. Convex now votes those gauges on-chain; Resupply remains the CDP that sits on Curve Lend and Fraxlend collateral — adjacent, not the same product.
Read analysis →BitMine, SharpLink, and other corporate ETH holders are funding Ethlabs while expanding balance-sheet Ether positions — signalling institutional conviction in Ethereum as settlement infrastructure.
Read analysis →Historical June 2026 coverage of the CLARITY Act’s Senate progress. The later 15 September procedural vote failed; see the updated canonical vote report for the outcome.
Read analysis →Aave, Morpho, SparkLend, and Compound supply APYs have compressed in mid-2026 as TVL rebounds post-restaking stress. We break down where borrowers still pay premium rates and where LPs earn real yield.
Read analysis →Solana DeFi TVL and DEX volume rebounded in June 2026, led by Jupiter aggregators, Kamino lending, and liquid staking flows into JitoSOL and mSOL. Alpenglow upgrade anticipation adds a protocol roadmap tailwind.
Read analysis →Ethlabs (ethlabs.org) is an independent nonprofit R&D lab launched in June 2026 by five former Ethereum Foundation researchers — focused on faster finality, mainnet capacity, and institutional-grade Ethereum infrastructure.
Read analysis →Base, the Layer 2 network incubated by Coinbase and built on the OP Stack, has crossed $10 billion in total value locked — entering the top three DeFi networks by TVL alongside Ethereum mainnet and Arbitrum. The milestone reflects rapid protocol deployment, growing stablecoin liquidity, and Coinbase's retail distribution advantage.
Read analysis →BlackRock's BUIDL fund — a tokenised US Treasury money market fund on the Ethereum blockchain — has crossed $2 billion in assets under management, making it the largest tokenised real-world asset fund in existence. The milestone signals that institutional RWA tokenisation is moving from experiment to mainstream.
Read analysis →Ethereum's Pectra upgrade — combining the Prague execution layer and Electra consensus layer changes — is now live on mainnet. The upgrade introduces account abstraction improvements, increased validator stake limits, and higher blob throughput, with meaningful implications for DeFi protocols, Layer 2 networks, and ETH stakers.
Read analysis →Total tokenised real-world assets on public blockchains have crossed $20 billion — a milestone that reflects growing institutional confidence in on-chain infrastructure. From US Treasuries and private credit to real estate and commodities, the RWA tokenisation market is expanding rapidly across Ethereum, Base, and Stellar.
Read analysis →Solana's DeFi ecosystem has surged to $12 billion in TVL in 2026, driven by a thriving memecoin culture, the growth of Jupiter Exchange as the dominant Solana DEX aggregator, Jito's liquid staking dominance, and a wave of institutional interest in Solana-based financial products including spot ETF applications.
Read analysis →Tether's USDT has reached a $150 billion market capitalisation — making it the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap after Bitcoin and Ethereum, and by far the most widely traded digital asset in the world by daily volume. Here is what drives USDT's dominance, the ongoing reserve transparency debate, and what $150B in tether means for DeFi.
Read analysis →Donating cryptocurrency to charity is one of the most tax-efficient ways to give in 2026. In the UK, crypto donations to registered charities are treated as non-cash gifts and may be exempt from capital gains tax. This comprehensive guide explains how to donate Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and BNB to charity, which UK charities accept cryptocurrency, what the tax rules are, and how to maximise the impact of every donation.
Read analysis →Solana's planned Alpenglow consensus upgrade, developed by Anza — a Solana Labs spinoff — targets block finality in 100–150 milliseconds. It introduces two new components: Votor, which finalises blocks faster than current BFT mechanisms, and Rotor, a more efficient data relay protocol replacing Turbine.
Read analysis →Cryptocurrency is legal in the UK. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies can be legally bought, sold, held, and used as payment by UK residents. This guide explains current UK crypto regulation under the FCA, HMRC tax obligations, and what the upcoming UK crypto regulatory framework means for investors in 2026.
Read analysis →A $292 million bridge exploit on KelpDAO on April 18, 2026 sent shockwaves through DeFi, triggering a $13 billion TVL outflow across the ecosystem. Here is what happened, how it was exploited, and what the response revealed about DeFi's composability risk.
Read analysis →The Uniswap DAO activated a fee switch in December 2025 routing 17% of swap fees to buy back and burn UNI — the first time the token has accrued protocol revenue. Now, six months later, Uniswap's own Layer 2 Unichain handles roughly 50% of all Uniswap V4 volume.
Read analysis →Aave V4 launched on Ethereum mainnet on March 30, 2026, introducing a hub-and-spoke lending model, unified liquidity across chains, and a governance package that routes 100% of protocol revenue to AAVE buybacks. With $26.18 billion in TVL, Aave is now the most valuable DeFi protocol ever.
Read analysis →Rebranded from MakerDAO in 2025, Sky Protocol is targeting a USDS circulating supply of $20.6 billion in 2026 — a doubling from current levels. Gross protocol revenue is forecast at $611.5 million, and the Sky Agent Network launched April 2, letting independent firms deploy USDS across DeFi.
Read analysis →Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol saw weekly volume surge 260% to over $1.3 billion in late April 2026. Exchange outflows hit a single-day record of 970,430 LINK, cumulative spot ETF inflows crossed $111.5 million, and CCIP v1.5 enters its final security audit before mainnet.
Read analysis →Ethereum's Fusaka upgrade, activated December 3, 2025, raised blob capacity from 6 to 48 per block and lifted the gas cap to 150 million. The result: Layer 2 transaction fees fell by more than 80% and DeFi throughput surged across Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and Scroll.
Read analysis →The market for tokenized real-world assets — Treasury bonds, private credit, commodities, real estate, and equities — grew from $5.8 billion in January 2025 to over $30.8 billion by April 2026. Ethereum holds 94% of tokenized commodities and the majority of stablecoin supply.
Read analysis →Ethereum recovered toward $2,388 on 4 May 2026, buoyed by sustained developer activity following the Pectra upgrade and record institutional inflows into US-listed ETFs. The recovery marks a continued rebound from early-2026 lows below $2,000.
Read analysis →Escalating US–Iran tensions on 1 May 2026 triggered a sharp cryptocurrency selloff, with Bitcoin falling below $79,000 from $82,000 in hours. Ethereum, Solana, and XRP declined 4–7%, reversing earlier weekly gains as geopolitical risk reasserted itself as crypto markets' primary macro headwind.
Read analysis →US-listed Ethereum spot ETFs achieved their strongest monthly inflows of 2026 in April following the SEC's approval of staking capabilities for these products, enabling institutional investors to earn yield on their holdings.
Read analysis →Six months after Firedancer's mainnet deployment, Solana's second validator client is delivering measurable performance gains, with DeFi protocols reporting improved latency and lower transaction failures. The client's capabilities are attracting developers from higher-cost networks.
Read analysis →BlackRock's tokenised money market fund BUIDL has been integrated into OKX's collateral framework, enabling institutional traders to use tokenised US Treasury positions as margin for cryptocurrency derivatives. The development marks a significant convergence between traditional finance and on-chain infrastructure.
Read analysis →Fluid Finance activated a $1 billion cap aWETH redemption mechanism integrated with Lido, EtherFi, 0x, and 1inch, allowing Aave depositors to redeem trapped ETH directly through liquid staking issuer queues — bypassing DEX slippage cascades entirely.
Read analysis →The $292M Kelp DAO rsETH exploit spilled across chains as Kamino Finance on Solana saw USDC lending pools reach 100% utilization, with lenders racing to exit before bad debt from bridged rsETH collateral materialized.
Read analysis →Security researchers sounded emergency alerts warning DeFi users to stop interacting with any dApps built on Vercel infrastructure after stolen GitHub and NPM keys raised the possibility of compromised JavaScript served directly to user wallets.
Read analysis →Paxos Labs cofounder Chunda McCain argues that enterprises adopting stablecoin infrastructure can cut payment costs, unlock credit lines, and earn on-chain yield — but warns that not every company needs to issue its own token.
Read analysis →US regulators have approved staking inside spot Ethereum ETFs, a decision that reshapes the competitive landscape between institutional staking wrappers and native DeFi liquid staking protocols like Lido and Rocket Pool.
Read analysis →Bitcoin's $1 trillion in largely idle capital is finally entering DeFi. Babylon Protocol's native Bitcoin staking, combined with a growing BTCFi ecosystem on Stacks, Rootstock, and Merlin Chain, is opening a new chapter in decentralised finance.
Read analysis →Ethereum's Layer-2 ecosystem has become one of the most competitive arenas in crypto. Arbitrum, Base, and Optimism each hold distinct strategic positions — and the battle between them is reshaping where DeFi activity happens.
Read analysis →Autonomous AI agents are increasingly managing DeFi positions, executing trades, rebalancing liquidity, and optimising yields on behalf of users — raising new questions about market stability, MEV, and what it means to be a DeFi participant.
Read analysis →MetaMask published an extensive threat report documenting a new generation of AI-automated attacks against crypto users, including fake Google security pages, malware targeting 850 browser extensions, and AI agents autonomously generating exploits against DeFi wallets.
Read analysis →Polymarket has posted a $5 million bug bounty on Cantina security marketplace, opening its entire infrastructure — smart contracts, UMA oracle adapters, and web application — to public vulnerability disclosure in one of the largest bug bounties in DeFi history.
Read analysis →HSBC has successfully completed a tokenised deposit pilot on the Canton Network, demonstrating interoperable issuance, transfer, and atomic settlement for regulated institutions — a milestone that positions Canton as the emerging settlement rail for institutional DeFi.
Read analysis →Aave V4 went live on Ethereum on 30 March 2026 with Hub & Spoke accounting, a new liquidation engine, and a user risk premium on borrows. V3 did not disappear. This is the launch recap and who should not migrate yet — not a click-path.
Read analysis →We cover decentralized lending, stablecoins, protocol infrastructure, regulation and security. Each briefing separates reported facts from analysis and links to research that explains the underlying mechanisms.
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We prefer original protocol announcements, governance proposals and official legislative records. We identify issuer claims, distinguish proposals from live changes, and update earlier coverage when a development changes its conclusion.