defi

According to SoSoValue data, the cryptocurrency market sector maintains an upward trend, with Bitcoin (BTC) rising 1.83%, approaching $67,000; Ethereum (ETH) rising 1.38%, breaking through $1,900.At the same time, the SocialFi and RWA sectors performed outstandingly, rising 6.15% and 5.85% respectively in 24 hours. Within the SocialFi sector, Gram (GRAM) rose 6.89%; within the RWA sector, Ondo Finance (ONDO) rose 11.68%, Centrifuge (CFG) rose 6.25%, and Plume (PLUME) and RE rose 8.2% and 12.04% respectively.In other sectors, the PayFi sector rose 2.24% in 24 hours, with Monero (XMR) rising 6.24%; the Meme sector rose 0.8%, with SPX6900 (SPX) rising 4.94%; the Layer2 sector rose 0.62%, with Optimism (OP) rising 5.02%; the Layer1 sector rose 0.33%, with Hedera (HBAR) rising 4.87%; the CeFi sector rose 0.32%, with Bitget Token (BGB) rising 2.53%. In addition, the DeFi sector fell 2.54%, but ZeroLend (ZERO) rose against the trend by 50.73%.

According to market news, the U.S. Congress is engaged in bipartisan discussions on ethical issues. Negotiators are also discussing DeFi provisions, but ethical issues remain the main obstacle.When asked about the ethical proposal, Sen Lummis's spokesperson stated that the dialogue with the White House last week "went smoothly," and the ethical text to be released in the coming days will reflect this productive conversation.

Vitalik posted on the X platform stating that a new type of "high-level programming language" worth trying is a language compiled to Lean (or HOL, etc.), focusing on making it as easy as possible for humans to read definitions and theorems. Rather than proofs, because proofs only need to be correct, the key lies in the definitions and theorems themselves. The envisioned use is that AI outputs a large segment of proof, and the reader needs to understand as easily as possible which precise claims have actually been proven in these outputs.

According to SoSoValue data, the cryptocurrency market sector has generally rebounded, with the DeFi sector performing outstandingly, rising 2.28% in 24 hours. Among them, Hyperliquid (HYPE) increased by 3.55%, DeXe (DEXE), Uniswap (UNI), and Lido DAO (LDO) rose by 4.96%, 5.32%, and 11.80% respectively. At the same time, Bitcoin (BTC) rose by 0.80%, breaking through $65,000; Ethereum (ETH) increased by 1.88%, surpassing $1,900.In other sectors, the RWA sector rose by 2.02% in 24 hours, with Maple Finance (SYRUP) increasing by 6.13%; the PayFi sector rose by 1.00%, with Telcoin (TEL) increasing by 2.62%; the Layer1 sector rose by 0.62%, with NEAR Protocol (NEAR) increasing by 4.40%; the CeFi sector rose by 0.22%, with NEXO (NEXO) increasing by 1.85%; the Meme sector rose by 0.17%, with Bonk (BONK) increasing by 15.22%; the Layer2 sector rose by 0.04%, with Arbitrum (ARB) increasing by 2.14%.Only the SocialFi sector slightly declined by 0.96%, with Gram (GRAM) decreasing by 0.76%, but Chiliz (CHZ) rose by 3.06%.The cryptocurrency sector indices reflecting historical market trends show that the ssiDeFi, ssiRWA, and ssiDePIN indices rose by 2.38%, 2.14%, and 1.59% respectively.

According to the latest report released by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), FATF conducted the seventh special assessment of the implementation of Recommendation 15 (R.15) across global jurisdictions. The report indicates that since the last update in 2025, countries have continued to advance in the regulation of virtual assets (VA) and virtual asset service providers (VASP), including conducting risk assessments, improving licensing and registration frameworks, implementing travel rules, and strengthening law enforcement actions.However, the report also points out that significant gaps still exist, mainly reflected in: the difficulty in effectively translating risk assessment results into mitigation measures, insufficient implementation of licensing and registration frameworks, challenges in identifying VASP activity subjects, and inadequate effectiveness of risk-based supervision and law enforcement. In terms of emerging risks, the report focuses on the following areas: the exacerbation of the "industrialization" trend of organized crime groups using virtual assets to commit fraud, the rising risk of stablecoin abuse, risks associated with non-custodial wallet peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions, offshore VASPs operating outside of regulation, and ongoing challenges in the DeFi sector. FATF calls for the public and private sectors to jointly strengthen the implementation of R.15, enhance risk mitigation capabilities, and deepen domestic, international, and public-private cooperation mechanisms.

According to CoinDesk, Galaxy Digital has launched an institutional-grade vault curation business, Galaxy Curator, on the decentralized lending protocol Morpho, and opened it to institutional clients through Fireblocks Earn. The product is designed to allow institutions to allocate idle stablecoins to selected on-chain yield strategies without the need to build and manage DeFi infrastructure themselves.Galaxy stated that the initial products include two types of strategies: one focuses on capital preservation, allocating only to markets supported by high-quality collateral; the other, while taking on higher risks, allocates to liquid staking re-staked tokens, Pendle principal tokens, and Ethena products to achieve higher yields. The company noted that the related vaults adhere to the collateral standards, risk exposure limits, and market monitoring framework used in its institutional lending and trading business.

According to Cointelegraph, ARK Invest's research director Lorenzo Valente published a rebuttal to a16z crypto's view that "traditional finance will adopt blockchain rather than DeFi," arguing that institutions will increasingly rely on DeFi infrastructure in the future.Valente stated that public chains are leading private chain projects in actual development, with the growth of tokenized assets on open networks like Ethereum as an example. He also believes that crypto-native companies like Circle and Coinbase are better positioned than traditional financial institutions to build the next generation of financial infrastructure.a16z crypto previously stated that banks and asset management institutions would not directly adopt DeFi but would choose blockchain technologies that comply with existing regulatory, governance, and operational requirements, including features like tokenization and atomic settlement, while continuing to maintain licensing and institutional control.Sentora co-founder Jesus Rodriguez also disagreed with a16z's viewpoint, suggesting that institutions might adopt the underlying infrastructure of DeFi and overlay compliance, custody, and other enterprise-level controls on top of it.

According to official news, the DeFi protocol DeltaDeFi announced that due to a lack of operating funds, all operational activities will be suspended starting today, and development and maintenance work will also be halted. The official statement indicated that the team is currently evaluating subsequent plans and promises to return funds to users, provided that the minimum UTXO requirements are met.

Multicoin Capital Managing Partner Tushar Jain shared in detail his valuation logic and investment framework for HYPE during the "When Shift Happens" podcast. He believes that HYPE is currently severely undervalued, with a benchmark valuation of $319, and recommends a pragmatic accumulation strategy to cope with volatility.Tushar candidly stated that trying to precisely time the market is nearly impossible. The recommended framework is: the first third: buy immediately (enter the market right away); the second third: invest according to a fixed schedule (for example, in batches over 1-2 months); the third third: increase positions opportunistically when prices dip. This method can significantly reduce psychological burden while achieving a good average cost when optimistic about the long-term prospects of the asset.Tushar's valuation model is based on four relatively conservative assumptions: the trading volume of crypto derivatives will maintain a 35% annual compound growth rate over the next two years; the DeFi derivatives market share will increase to 32%; the USDC collateral balance will grow in sync with trading volume; and the "false prosperity" currently created by some projects relying on subsidies will disappear after the subsidies are withdrawn, leading to an increase in Hyperliquid's true market share. Even with these conservative assumptions, HYPE's current price still has significant upside potential, possibly exceeding $600 in some optimistic scenarios.Tushar believes that Hyperliquid is far more than just a rapidly growing perpetual contract platform; it is expected to become a core part of crypto financial infrastructure.

Starknet announced the opening of its privacy development stack to developers, launching a privacy SDK and privacy wallet API, allowing applications, wallets, and protocols to integrate private balances, private transfers, and related DeFi interaction features based on STRK20.

According to RootData, the total financing amount in the cryptocurrency industry in the first half of the year was $9.081 billion, with a total of 259 financing events; among them, the primary market financing amount (excluding IPO/Post IPO/M&A rounds) was $8.658 billion, a decrease of 26.1% compared to the same period last year, and the number of financing events decreased by 28.5% year-on-year.March and May were the two peaks for financing amounts in the first half of the year, with the number of financing events reaching 66 and 68 respectively; in June, the number of financing events fell back to 43, indicating that after entering the end of the second quarter, market funding activity has cooled down. Overall, large financing still significantly boosts monthly financing scale, but the enthusiasm for regular financing rounds has begun to shrink.In the first half of 2026, there were a total of 75 M&A transactions in the cryptocurrency industry, of which 16 disclosed specific amounts (totaling approximately $3.836 billion). M&A activities were mainly concentrated in the CeFi, tools and information services, DeFi, and infrastructure sectors. Representative M&A events include: Mastercard acquiring BVNK ($1.8 billion), Kraken acquiring Reap ($600 million), etc.Leading cryptocurrency venture capital firms still maintain a high frequency of investments, with Coinbase Ventures participating in 25 investments in the first half of 2026, ranking first; Animoca Brands participated in 20, while a16z and Tether participated in 14 each. In the past 12 months, Coinbase Ventures participated in a total of 68 investments, continuing to lead the industry, followed by Animoca Brands, Pantera Capital, YZi Labs, a16z, Tether, and GSR.From the perspective of sectors, DeFi, infrastructure, and CeFi were the three most active directions for financing in the first half of 2026. In the first half of the year, DeFi completed 129 financing events, infrastructure completed 116, and CeFi completed 69. AI, payments, prediction markets, and RWA were also key sub-sectors of capital focus, with AI-related financing at 59 events, payment-related projects at 46 events, and RWA-related projects at 28 events.Overall, the primary market for cryptocurrency in the first half of 2026 has not completely stagnated, but the market structure has changed: the total financing amount is still supported by a few large transactions, institutional investments are more concentrated, sector preferences are more pragmatic, and M&A has become an important means of industry consolidation. Funds are shifting towards structural allocations around infrastructure, DeFi, CeFi, payments, AI, and RWA.