defi

AML / KYT provider Shard disclosed that the number of cyber attacks in the cryptocurrency industry doubled year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026, exceeding 80 incidents, but total losses decreased by 69% year-on-year to $496 million, compared to $1.6 billion in the same period last year. Shard stated that the losses in the same period of 2025 were mainly impacted by a significant theft incident of approximately $1.4 billion involving Bybit; while the attacks in 2026 were more dispersed, targeting DeFi protocols, infrastructure services, and individual users.Looking at the months, there were a total of 29 attacks in January, with losses exceeding $392 million; 26 attacks in February, with losses exceeding $22 million; and 27 attacks in March, with losses exceeding $81 million.

The crypto sentiment platform Santiment published an analysis stating that the ratio of positive to negative comments about Ethereum has shifted from a strong FOMO sentiment in late April to a clear FUD sentiment now. Harvard University completely liquidated its $87 million Ethereum ETF one quarter after buying in; researchers from the Ethereum Foundation announced their resignations; and David Hoffman publicly stated his exit from the Ethereum project. The Santiment team interprets this trend as a mildly bullish signal, similar to the significant rise that followed the mid-2023 market sentiment low.Despite the panic sentiment, the number of non-bearish wallets for Ethereum remains as high as 192.92 million, more than three times Bitcoin's approximately 59 million. The activity in DeFi and staking trading surged at the beginning of the year and has since normalized, but the creation of new wallets continues to maintain a healthy growth rate. Fundamental data such as holders and activity do not support the claim that "the Ethereum network is dying." Additionally, the long-to-short ratio for Bitcoin has reached 2.23, the highest level since 2026. Previously, the highest daily long-to-short ratios often resulted in short-term price corrections, while extremely low short ratios indicate a local bottom. The current optimism stands in stark contrast to the outflow of short funds from ETFs, thus caution is warranted.

Zama protocol founder Rand posted on the X platform that, with the assistance of on-chain detective ZachXBT, the root cause of the cUSDC contract freeze has been identified. This freeze was caused by a court-issued injunction against addresses related to the Overnight Finance hacker, which had deposited approximately $12.5 million USDC into the cUSDC contract, accounting for over 99% of the funds within the contract, leading to the entire contract being frozen.Rand emphasized that this freeze is unrelated to the protocol itself or privacy technology, and it is not a sanction against Zama, but rather a typical DeFi judicial restriction scenario. The project adheres to compliance and privacy principles, not confusing the parties involved in transactions, only hiding balances and amounts. Currently, Zama is communicating with multiple parties to advance a resolution, has suspended the cUSDC, cUSDT, and cWETH contracts, and will restore them after completing the investigation and handling of the involved addresses, and will release a detailed review report as soon as possible.

According to SoSoValue data, the cryptocurrency market sector is generally in a downward trend, with the NFT sector down 4.68% in 24 hours. Within the sector, Pudgy Penguins (PENGU) fell by 4.46%, and Audiera (BEAT) dropped by 14.38%. Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC) decreased by 1.21%, falling below $74,000; Ethereum (ETH) fell by 0.79%, briefly dropping below $2,000.Only the DeFi sector rose against the trend, increasing by 0.35% in 24 hours, with Hyperliquid (HYPE) up 6.79% and Dexe (DEXE) up 5.53%.In other sectors, the PayFi sector remained unchanged at 0.00%, with Stellar (XLM) rising 13.35%; the Layer1 sector fell by 0.80%, but Algorand (ALGO) rose by 7.72%; the Meme sector decreased by 1.02%, with Pump.fun (PUMP) down 5.06%; the Layer2 sector dropped by 1.12%, while Stacks (STX) remained relatively strong, rising by 1.84%; the CeFi sector fell by 1.25%, with OKB (OKB) gaining 1.45% during the session.The cryptocurrency sector index reflecting historical market trends shows that the ssiDeFi and ssiPayFi indices rose by 1.44% and 0.65%, respectively, while the ssiAI index fell by 9.50%.

According to Decrypt, analysts at Standard Chartered Bank pointed out in a report on Thursday that the current price of Ethereum does not reflect the growth in its on-chain transaction volume, nor does it reflect the value of digital assets deposited in DeFi applications. The price of Ethereum has "significant room" to catch up with its internal metrics, as its native network is expected to benefit from Wall Street's steady migration to digital assets.Ethereum has dominated the stablecoin and tokenization markets, which are set to experience rapid growth. Analysts reiterated a year-end target price of $4,000 for Ethereum, predicting it could reach $40,000 by 2030. This would bring the price ratio of Ethereum to Bitcoin back up to 0.08. Standard Chartered stated that year-to-date, stablecoins have accounted for 33% of Ethereum transactions.The "Economic Zone" supported by the Ethereum Foundation will launch this summer, further enhancing on-chain activity. As real-world assets go on-chain, if RWAs grow as expected by 50 times, the importance of Ethereum will increase dramatically, with transaction volume and total locked value continuously setting new historical highs.

The tokenized U.S. Treasury fund VBILL under VanEck has officially launched on the DeFi lending protocol Euler. The fund is issued and tokenized by Securitize, allowing investors to use tokenized U.S. Treasuries as collateral for on-chain lending and liquidity operations, while also meeting compliance requirements. This move reflects that DeFi protocols are accelerating their transformation towards institutionalization and compliance to attract traditional financial capital into the on-chain market.Data shows that the scale of tokenized U.S. Treasuries has surpassed $15 billion, growing approximately 150% over the past year. Traditional asset management giants such as BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Janus Henderson have all launched on-chain Treasury or money market products. Euler has previously integrated Securitize's DS Protocol to support the access of tokenized securities with investor qualification restrictions and transfer rules to the lending market. DeFi protocols like Aave are also laying out institutional-level RWA business. Institutions expect that the asset tokenization market could reach $18.9 trillion by 2033. Securitize executives stated that as traditional financial institutions enter the crypto space, DeFi protocols must find a balance between openness and compliance requirements.

ETH has fallen below $2000 for the first time since March this year. Over the past 7 days, ETH has cumulatively dropped nearly 8%, with a decline of over 5% in the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, ETH futures open interest (OI) has risen for the third consecutive day, reaching a historic high of 16.39 million ETH, with a nominal value of approximately $3.25 billion. Analysts believe that the continuous rise in OI against the backdrop of falling spot prices indicates that the market is experiencing more aggressive leveraged short-selling behavior.Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research, stated that more and more investors are beginning to abandon ETH, "ETH does not generate cash flow, and in the context of rising U.S. Treasury yields, the attractiveness of staking yields is declining." Additionally, U.S. spot ETH ETFs have seen a cumulative net outflow of $401 million this month, completely reversing the net inflow of $354 million in April. Market sentiment has also continued to deteriorate due to the departure of core members from the Ethereum Foundation.David Hoffman, co-founder of Bankless, previously stated that he has sold his ETH holdings, believing that the narrative of "ETH as currency" has been fully priced in. The Web3 research institution House of Chimera indicated that the market is questioning the advantages of the Ethereum ecosystem in DeFi, RWA, and tokenization, and whether it can truly reflect back to the ETH token itself.

Decentralized USDD announced that its yield-bearing token sUSDD officially launched on Pendle's Ethereum chain 91-day fixed income market, marking another breakthrough for USDD in the DeFi yield scenario and capital efficiency layout.This event will take place on May 28 at 8:00 AM (Singapore time), and sUSDD holders can participate by locking in fixed rates, trading yield rights, providing liquidity, and more. During the event, YT users can share over $300,000 in incentives, combined with Pendle's official 30% exclusive rewards, and have the chance to receive random airdrops of TRX.The official stated that they will continue to explore diversified yields in the future, effectively meeting market liquidity demands and promoting USDD's deep integration into the mainstream DeFi ecosystem.

According to CoinDesk, the cryptocurrency exchange platform Kraken announced the launch of the Bitcoin Vault product, allowing users to maintain exposure to Bitcoin prices while earning BTC-denominated yields through DeFi strategies. This product is now available on Kraken Earn.Kraken stated that Bitcoin Vault is primarily aimed at long-term Bitcoin holders, enabling users to automatically participate in on-chain yield strategies through the platform without having to operate complex DeFi protocols themselves.

According to the official announcement, Binance Wallet has launched a brand new DeFi experience, integrating three core functions: DeFi earning, DeFi lending, and liquidity pools, supporting over 40 protocols including BNB Chain, Ethereum, Base, and Arbitrum, as well as more than 1000 pools. Users can view staking, liquidity pools, and lending positions on the same interface, and directly operate to add/remove liquidity, collect fees, and borrow through protocols like Venus.To celebrate the launch, Binance Wallet will kick off the DeFi Season event with a total prize pool of $2 million starting from May 28, 2026, covering three main themes: Staking, lending, and liquidity pools.

According to The Block, OpenZeppelin co-founder Manuel Aráoz stated that he now believes "all DeFi is unsafe," and he has advised friends and family to exit all DeFi positions, including Aave, MakerDAO, and Compound.

a16z crypto pointed out that not all tokenized assets are fully utilized on-chain. Bonds are currently the largest category of tokenized assets, with a market value of $15.2 billion, but only about 5% of the supply is used for DeFi; precious metals are similar, having been tokenized but mostly idle.In contrast, smaller categories perform differently: reinsurance tokens have 84% of their supply deployed in DeFi, while private credit stands at 33%. a16z believes this makes sense, as the categories with the highest DeFi usage were built for DeFi from the start, such as Nexus Mutual and Maple Finance.a16z noted that many practices currently referred to as tokenization are actually closer to digitization, meaning that records are moved onto the blockchain but do not unlock more new features, while one of the core value propositions of on-chain financial systems is composability.