The Ethereum Foundation is cutting its workforce by 20% and laying off about 54 staff members following a month-long reorganization.

 

The layoffs aim to make the foundation leaner, aligning with the foundation’s March updated Mandate and Treasury Management Policy, which together eliminate activities that fall outside the foundation’s core priorities. Affected staff will still be able to contribute to the Ethereum ecosystem from outside the EF, with the foundation stating that plans are in place to compensate those who have been laid off.

 

“In order to make sure those who are leaving are set up well for the transition, we are offering a package comprising severance and transition support. The severance is the higher of one month’s pay per year worked at the EF and the amount locally mandated by the individual’s jurisdiction,” the Ethereum Foundation wrote in a blog post.

 

“This is the same severance we offered to the colleagues who left the EF in the past few months. The transition support includes help finding a new place to contribute in the ecosystem, plus a small transition grant earmarked to cover individual transition expenses.”

 

The New 5-Cluster System

As part of its restructuring effort, the Ethereum Foundation will adopt a five-cluster system that effectively divides the foundation into five layers or domains of work. The clusters include:

 

Protocol Layer: This layer will focus on the protocol’s core priorities, playing a key role in scaling and hardening Ethereum while preserving the protocol’s core features, including censorship resistance, privacy, and security. Members of this cluster will also be involved in the safe deployment of protocol upgrades, addressing toxic MEV, reducing complexity and trust dependencies, and advancing long-term research.

 

Access Layer: The main role of this layer is to ensure self-sovereignty for users and agents. Team members in this cluster will work to ensure that key protocol actions, such as reading chain state, transacting privately, and delegating authority, are possible without relying on unverifiable intermediaries.

 

User Layer: This layer will be responsible for bridging the gap between what Ethereum provides and its relevance and usefulness to users. Team members in this cluster will conduct research on user segments and use cases, and focus on education, to ensure that protocol decisions reflect users’ needs and choices.

 

Community Layer: This layer will manage the foundation’s external presence and relationships. Team members in this cluster will help clarify and advocate for what the Ethereum Foundation represents and how it differs from financial or corporate crypto organizations. They will also focus on building the foundation’s relationships beyond the crypto sector.

 

Institutional Layer: This layer will manage the foundation’s engagement with institutions, including financial firms, enterprises, governments, universities, and nonprofit organizations. To support large-scale adoption, members of this cluster will work to ensure Ethereum meets institutional needs while complying with regulatory standards.

 

 

Hsiao Wei Wang, co-executive director and board member of the Ethereum Foundation (EF), has announced her departure from the foundation, shortly after co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak left in February this year.

 

“After my sabbatical, I have decided to step down as co-executive director and board member of the Ethereum Foundation, effective today,” Wang wrote in an X post.

 

“Serving as EF co-executive director let me see the bigger picture of how the Ethereum community collaborates. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished, not only at the EF, but across the builders, researchers, educators, validators, users, and many other contributors who have helped build, maintain, secure, and use the infrastructure and applications on top of it.”

 

Wang joined the EF research team in 2017, where she worked on protocol design, consensus mechanisms, sharding proofs-of-concept, and distributed systems. In March 2025, she was appointed co-executive director and board member alongside Tomasz Stańczak. During her time at the EF, Wang contributed to a range of projects, including sharding research, data availability sampling, EIP 4844, ETHTaipei, and the Taipei Seminar.

 

Reacting to her departure, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin commended Wang for her contributions to the foundation. “I still remember her early days in the Ethereum research community, first outside the Foundation and then inside it, and the thought and care she put into making Ethereum research and consensus work more organized and legible,” Buterin wrote in an X post.

 

“Last year, she, along with Stańczak, voluntarily took on the burden of what is perhaps the most challenging position in the Ethereum Foundation, at one of the most challenging times for Ethereum and, realistically, a challenging time for all of humanity. She handled the task skillfully and gracefully, and has constantly strived to find and insist on outcomes that are right both for the Ethereum protocol and for the human beings who build and maintain it.”

 

Wang’s departure from the Ethereum Foundation comes as several notable researchers have left the organization, including Tomasz Stańczak and Josh Stark, who departed in April. So far, at least eight senior researchers have left the Ethereum Foundation this year.

 

 

Morpho, a leading decentralized finance lending protocol, has raised $175 million in a funding round led by Paradigm, a16z crypto, and Ribbit Capital. Other firms involved in the round include Apollo Funds, Circle Ventures, VanEck, Ledger Cathay, Variant, Wintermute Ventures, Prelude, IOSG, HashKey, Mirana, NJJ Capital, SBI Group, Bpifrance, and Bam Azizi.

 

 

With the funds raised, Morpho aims to further deepen its technical and commercial integrations with strategic partners and continue its mission of developing and strengthening the on-chain infrastructure businesses need to build programmable credit products.

 

“The true value of finance has always been held back by outdated infrastructure, fragmented systems, and extractive intermediaries,” says Paul Frambot, co-founder of Morpho. “We started Morpho to change that. We’re building the open credit network for the world, connecting those with excess capital to those who need financing globally.”

 

About Morpho 

Morpho is a leading decentralized, permissionless lending protocol operating across Ethereum, Base, and other EVM-compatible blockchain networks. Launched in 2021, Morpho aims to efficiently connect lenders and borrowers globally through its decentralized credit network.

 

Morpho claims to have facilitated more than $11 billion in deposits since its launch. Its decentralized lending platform is currently used by several institutional clients, including Bitwise, Galaxy, Anchorage Digital, Ledger, Trezor, Bitpanda, Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance. In total, Morpho has raised more than $244 million, with a valuation of approximately $2 billion.

 

The State of DeFi Lending

On-chain lending remains one of the largest and most mature sectors in decentralized finance. According to data from DeFiLlama, the total value locked in DeFi lending across more than 600 protocols stands at approximately $35.5 billion to $35.8 billion, with Aave, Morpho, and SparkLend holding the largest market shares in the sector.

 

Institutional adoption in DeFi lending has also accelerated significantly, with blockchain protocols such as Morpho launching Morpho Blue and MetaMorpho vaults, which allow easier integration of the Morpho platform with other centralized finance and institutional platforms. SparkLend has also launched dedicated products targeting institutional clients.

 

Several other companies, including Gemini, Crypto.com, Fireblocks, Bitwise, J.P. Morgan, and VanEck, have also become involved in institutional DeFi lending through partnerships or the launch of DeFi lending products.

 

 

Block's Cash App has officially begun rolling out USDC stablecoin payments to its nearly 60 million monthly users. The feature went live today for roughly 25% of the platform's user base, with full availability expected by the end of the week.

 

The rollout covers four blockchain networks: Solana, Ethereum, Polygon, and Arbitrum. Users can now send USDC from their Cash App wallet to external wallets on any of the supported chains, and incoming USDC is automatically converted into a dollar balance within the app. No separate transfer fee applies, at least for now.

 

A Reluctant Pivot, Years in the Making

The launch carries some ideological weight. Jack Dorsey, Block's CEO and longtime Bitcoin maximalist, spent years positioning Cash App as a Bitcoin-first platform. He built out Bitcoin trading, backed mining hardware development, and integrated Lightning Network support for Square merchants globally. Stablecoins were not part of that vision.

 

That changed, grudgingly. In March, Dorsey publicly acknowledged the shift. "I don't like that we're going to support stablecoins but our customers want to use them," he said. "I don't think it's wise to go from one gatekeeper to another." The comment was candid in a way that's rare for major fintech announcements, and it framed the product addition less as strategic enthusiasm and more as a concession to market demand.

 

Block first hinted at the feature on the Cash App website late last year, describing stablecoins strictly as a payments mechanism rather than an investment tool. But that early hint has carried through to the live product.

 

Why Solana (and Why Not Just Solana)

Solana started as the sole chain involved with Cash App. Back in November 2025, Solana confirmed its involvement after sharing a demo by Circle's Jeremy Allaire showcasing a USDC transfer on the network. The choice made sense: Solana transactions typically cost under a cent and settle in under a second, conditions well-suited for the kind of peer-to-peer and remittance use cases Cash App serves.

 

But Block's Miles Suter framed the company's stance as "chain- and coin-agnostic" from the beginning. Solana was a starting point, not a commitment. The live rollout now includes Ethereum, Polygon, and Arbitrum alongside Solana, giving users flexibility across networks with different cost and speed profiles. Ethereum's gas fees can still spike during congestion, which is precisely why Layer 2 options like Arbitrum and Polygon matter.

 

The multi-chain approach also future-proofs the integration somewhat. If one network faces congestion or reliability issues at scale, users and the platform aren't locked in.

 

The Guardrails Are Real

Cash App is not positioning this as a DeFi on-ramp. The feature comes with meaningful restrictions. Sending is capped at $2,000 per day and $5,000 per week; receiving tops out at $10,000 weekly. The service is currently unavailable in New York and on sponsored accounts. Identity verification is required.

 

Perhaps most importantly, the app warns users that blockchain transactions are irreversible. Funds sent to a wrong address or unsupported network are gone permanently. That's a steep hill to climb for a consumer platform serving tens of millions of people who may be encountering on-chain transfers for the first time.

 

Stablecoins Are Here To Stay...and Thrive

Cash App's move lands against a backdrop of surging stablecoin adoption. As of this week, the total market value of stablecoins has hit a record $322 billion, exceeding the foreign exchange reserves of 95 nations, including the UK and Canada. USDC, issued by Circle, is the second-largest stablecoin and already sees over $14 billion in liquidity on Solana alone.

 

Western Union launched Solana-based remittances in the first half of 2026. Stripe has added USDC support across multiple chains. Visa has integrated Solana for stablecoin settlements. The regulatory picture has also clarified somewhat, with the GENIUS Act signed in July 2025 establishing a clearer federal framework for stablecoin issuance.

 

Taken together, this feels less like a novelty launch and more like a platform making its peace with where consumer payments are heading. Dorsey may not love it, but the product is live, the networks are there, and 60 million people now have a relatively frictionless path to on-chain dollar transfers whether they know what a blockchain is or not.

 

The wife of Sébastien Borget, co-founder and chief operating officer of The Sandbox, an Ethereum-based virtual world platform, reportedly narrowly escaped being kidnapped at the couple’s home in Villenoy, Seine-et-Marne, France, this week.

 

According to Le Journal du Dimanche, a local French newspaper, one of the kidnappers disguised as a deliveryman wearing a branded vest, knocked on the couple’s home.

 

On opening the gate, five other hooded accomplices charged at Borget’s wife in an attempt to forcefully drag her into a vehicle. However, her cries alerted neighbors, forcing the group to scatter and leave the victim behind.

 

Four suspects escaped in the vehicle, while two others fled on foot and hid nearby. The two suspects attempted to book a ride-hailing car but were later captured by officers from the Meaux Anti-Crime Brigade.

 

The two suspects arrested were identified as Mateo V. and Walid H., reportedly born in 2010 and 2009, respectively, and are both residents of Pantin in Seine-Saint-Denis. They were found carrying a fake handgun, zip tie restraints, and balaclavas.

 

While investigations are ongoing, local news reports have linked the attempted kidnapping to cryptocurrencies, citing an increase in crypto-related wrench attacks and kidnapping incidents reported this year.

 

France Remains a Hotspot for Crypto Wrench Attacks

There has been an increase in attacks on crypto holders, with France leading and becoming the global epicenter.

 

In just the first four months of this year, between 41 and 47 incidents were reported in France, an average of one incident every 2.5 days. The French authorities have also charged 88 suspects, including more than 10 minors, across 12 major investigations, with 75 in pretrial detention.

 

Jameson Lopp, cofounder and chief security officer of Casa, a well-known blockchain security company, has long been tracking these crypto-wrench attacks in a GitHub repository named "physical bitcoin attacks." According to the repository, there have been about 35 recorded incidents this year, with France accounting for 74 percent of those, or 26 incidents in total.

 

To help combat the increasing number of wrench attacks, Binance recently added a withdrawal protection feature to the Binance wallet that activates a lockdown period, preventing withdrawals from the wallet, especially by intruders.

 

 

 

Deloitte, one of the Big Four professional services firms, has acquired Blocknative, a crypto infrastructure company, in a talent acquisition deal following Blocknative’s plan to wind down its operations.

 

The acquisition is not a full company buyout but rather a transfer of Blocknative’s talent pool to Deloitte, with the former Blocknative team set to drive Web3 innovation across Deloitte’s client portfolio.

 

 

The move, according to Blocknative, is aimed at leveraging blockchain and cryptographic technology to address the trust, coordination, and verification problems that hinder enterprise adoption of agentic artificial intelligence, particularly as several traditional financial institutions, including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, develop their own agentic AI solutions.

 

“This chapter of our work in the ecosystem is coming to a close: on mempool visibility, transaction orchestration, block building, MEV auctions, private order flow, transaction pricing, and more,” said Matt Cutler, Blocknative founder and chief executive officer.

 

“That work was shaped by our customers, the protocol teams, wallet builders, researchers, and institutions who pushed for better answers.”

 

With Blocknative winding down its operations, the company has announced that it will shut down its application programming interface (API) services on June 19, 2026, alongside its gas network, which relies on the API. Teams and companies that depend on the Blocknative API have been advised to begin migration planning, including testing, swapping, and confirming operational readiness, before the June 19 deadline.

 

The shutdown of Blocknative comes amid a wave of crypto company closures over the past few months. The last quarter saw more than 20 crypto companies restructuring or shutting down due to declining market conditions, high operational costs, and strategic pivots toward artificial intelligence, including Dmail, Balancer Labs, Magic Eden, and Tally.

 

About Blocknative 

Blocknative is a San Francisco-based blockchain infrastructure company that specializes in real-time observability and optimization tools for public blockchains, particularly Ethereum and other EVM-compatible Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks.

 

Before its planned shutdown, Blocknative had raised around 34 million dollars from investors and built a decentralized oracle gas network that provides real-time gas pricing data across more than 40 networks.

 

It has also served several notable blockchain companies, including the Ethereum Foundation, Curve Finance, and Tally.

 

 

The Ethereum Foundation has appointed Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik as co-leads of its protocol cluster, following the departure of some of its prominent engineers.

 

“While Barnabé and Tim are moving on from the Ethereum Foundation soon, and Alex Stokes will be on sabbatical, the Protocol cluster, as it exists today, is in large part due to their work. Under their coordination, Protocol launched tracks and helped to ship Fusaka to mainnet in December 2025, introducing PeerDAS and raising the mainnet gas limit on the path to 200M and beyond,” the foundation wrote in a blog post.

 

“Tim, Barnabé, and Alex shaped Protocol in ways that will outlast their time as cluster leads. We are grateful, and we are looking forward to what each of them takes on next.”

 

What to Know About the New Co-Leads

Will Corcoran is a research coordinator within the protocol, with experience working on zkVM proving, post quantum consensus, and the Fast Confirmation Rule. He has also facilitated numerous community calls, breakout rooms, and in-person protocol events, giving him a deep understanding of how the protocol works.

 

Kev Wedderburn leads the zkEVM team in the protocol and has experience working at the intersection of research and engineering, while Fredrik leads the protocol’s security and has been deeply involved in cross-cluster work.

 

About the Protocol Cluster 

The protocol cluster, often called the protocol, is the core group within the Ethereum Foundation responsible for designing, researching, coordinating, and developing Ethereum's base layer, or L1, blockchain protocol. After its rebranding in 2025, it had one goal: to tackle Ethereum's biggest challenges.

 

To address these challenges, the protocol prioritizes three main areas: enhancing Ethereum's scalability, improving user experience, and strengthening the security and resilience of the Ethereum blockchain network.

 

The protocol also oversees several technical domains, including AllCoreDevs meetings, cryptography, prototyping, security, zkEVM, and peer-to-peer systems. It is currently working on Glamsterdam, the next major Ethereum L1 upgrade, which will introduce features such as enshrined proposer builder separation, known as ePBS under EIP 7732, and gas repricing to support higher gas limits.

 

The restructuring of the Ethereum protocol comes shortly after key figures in the foundation, Josh Stark, last month, and Tomasz K. Stańczak, more recently, left the protocol. Other developers within the foundation have also departed to join other Layer 1 blockchain projects such as Tempo.

 

 

JPMorgan Chase filed paperwork Tuesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a new tokenized money market fund on Ethereum, marking the bank's second push into blockchain-based investment products and the latest signal that Wall Street is serious about putting traditional finance on-chain.

 

The proposed fund, called the JPMorgan OnChain Liquidity-Token Money Market Fund and carrying ticker JLTXX, would issue digital tokens on the Ethereum blockchain representing shares backed by short-term U.S. Treasuries, cash, and overnight repurchase agreements. The fund's underlying blockchain infrastructure would be operated by Kinexys Digital Assets, the bank's blockchain unit that was formerly known as Onyx.

 

Built for the GENIUS Act

What makes this filing a bit different from typical money-market launches is who it's designed for. JPMorgan has structured JLTXX specifically to satisfy reserve asset requirements under the GENIUS Act, the U.S. legislation aimed at bringing stablecoin issuers under a regulatory framework. In short, the fund is positioned as a yield-bearing reserve vehicle for stablecoin firms looking for compliant, on-chain Treasury exposure.

That's a strategically significant market. Stablecoin supply has surged past $303 billion as of May 2026, with a large chunk of that liquidity sitting idle in exchange wallets generating nothing. When a bank the size of JPMorgan launches a regulated, on-chain money market product, this changes the game for institutional stablecoin issuers.

 

BlackRock Moved First, Then JPMorgan Followed Days Later

Just days before JPMorgan's Tuesday filing, BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager overseeing roughly $14 trillion, submitted its own pair of SEC filings tied to tokenized Treasury products. One of those filings outlined the BlackRock Daily Reinvestment Stablecoin Reserve Vehicle, designed to hold cash and short-term Treasuries and issue what the firm is calling OnChain Shares. Another filing proposed adding an Ethereum-based tokenized share class to its existing $7 billion Select Treasury-Based Liquidity Fund, with BNY Mellon maintaining official ownership records on-chain using ERC-20 token standards.

 

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has been vocal about this for a while. He's argued publicly that blockchain-based settlement can compress transaction cycles, enable round-the-clock trading, and add transparency to capital markets. The firm is now acting on this, and at scale. BlackRock's existing BUIDL fund already manages more than $2.5 billion across eight blockchain networks including Ethereum, Solana, and Avalanche, and is increasingly being used as collateral across crypto markets.

 

A Market That Has Tripled in a Year

The broader tokenized real-world asset sector has crossed $30 billion in total value, more than tripling over the past twelve months. Tokenized U.S. Treasuries alone represent $14 billion of that, with Ethereum holding over $8 billion of the total. These aren't little numbers anymore.

 

Goldman Sachs and BNY Mellon have also announced tokenization initiatives in recent months. Just last week, JPMorgan's Kinexys platform joined Mastercard, Ripple, and Ondo Finance in completing the first cross-border, cross-bank redemption of a tokenized U.S. Treasury fund, settling the transaction on the XRP Ledger in under five seconds. This is another huge step... it's one thing to file an SEC registration, quite another to actually run a live settlement across borders in the time it takes to read this sentence.

 

The Race Is On

For context on how quickly this space is evolving, a Boston Consulting Group and Ripple joint projection estimates the tokenized asset market could reach $18.9 trillion by 2033. Whether or not that number proves accurate, the direction is pretty clear. Major banks are not waiting for the market to come to them.

 

JPMorgan seeded its first tokenized fund, the OnChain Net Yield Fund (MONY), with $100 million of its own capital after launching it through its $4 trillion asset management unit. JLTXX represents the bank's next step, this time aimed squarely at the emerging stablecoin compliance market rather than traditional qualified investors.

 

The filings from JPMorgan and BlackRock within days of each other are not a coincidence. Regulatory clarity, combined with the sheer scale of idle stablecoin liquidity looking for a compliant home, has created an opening. Wall Street is moving quickly to fill it, and the tokenization race is looking less like a crypto experiment and more like the next phase of institutional finance.

 

Stablecoin startup Boundary Labs is preparing to launch USBD, a “verifiable” institutional-grade stablecoin, following its most recent successful fundraising round.

 

The $2 million preseed funding round, which began last year, was led by Galaxy Ventures, with other investors, including First Block Capital and BlackWood, also participating in the round.

 

 

Following its recent fundraising success, the Boundary Labs team aims to create a stablecoin whose reserves are completely verifiable on-chain, including the stablecoin’s net asset value and protocol performance. This marks a sharp contrast with other stablecoins that depend on trust-based off-chain reporting and attestations.

 

“The Boundary protocol provides daily reporting on system state, including overcollateralization levels and real-time NAV calculations. USBD is engineered with explicit over-collateralization and delta neutral hedging to protect against market direction risk and volatility,” said Matthew Mezger, co-founder and CEO of Boundary Labs, about the USBD stablecoin.

 

Because trust is important for enhancing institutional adoption of USBD, especially for treasury management, collateral, and fiduciary use cases, Mezger said the team is building the entire USBD infrastructure with advanced smart contract code that moves the industry from monthly off-chain attestations to daily on-chain verification. By doing so, Boundary aims to transition from common trust-based stablecoin systems to a trustless one. 

 

“This shift provides the structural resilience and auditability required for safe, permissionless staking and institutional fiduciary use cases, effectively transforming stablecoins into robust financial infrastructure,” Mezger said.

 

Boundary Lab’s Yield-Generation Strategies

Unlike other yield-generating stablecoins, USBD will not be a yield-bearing stablecoin. Nevertheless, Boundary Labs will create sUSBD, a separate staked token that will enable institutional clients to earn yield from the protocol’s decentralized finance strategies.

 

The revenue generated by the protocol will be used to build treasury reserves, fund operations, and will also be distributed to sUSBD stakers through an on-chain allocation system. The reward system will be fully on-chain and available for users to track and audit.

 

To onboard early institutional clients, Boundary Labs is planning to launch a private placement campaign with the goal of reaching $100 million in total value locked (TVL). Both USBD and sUSBD will be launched on Ethereum.

 

 

South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Upbit, has partnered with the Optimism Foundation to build Giwa Chain, a new Ethereum-based Layer 2 blockchain network.

 

Giwa Chain, which will be built on Optimism’s open source OP Stack, will be the first of its kind built on the self-managed tier of Optimism’s OP Enterprise and stems from the growing need for exchanges to build their own blockchains.

 

 

While crypto exchanges using shared chains are not inherently problematic, issues arise as usage increases, making it difficult for these networks to handle the growing workloads of exchanges, including institutional transaction volumes, compliance requirements, and fee economics, which often compound as an exchange scales. For a global exchange like Upbit, which serves more than 13 million users and ranks among the top exchanges by spot trading volume, owning and managing its own blockchain is critical for performance and scalability.

 

By partnering with Optimism to build a self-managed chain, Upbit allows Optimism to manage key technical aspects of the chain’s infrastructure, including tooling and engineering support, while still retaining sovereignty over the chain’s control and overseeing key functions such as the primary sequencer, chain configuration, and operational authority.

 

“Operating our own Giwa Chain is a strategic move for Upbit. Our goal is to provide institutional and retail users with a level of performance and compliance consistent with our existing platform,” said Minseok Jung, Chief Operating Officer of Dunamu Inc.

 

“The Optimism Foundation’s self-managed tier provides a suitable framework, allowing us to maintain operational control while building on established infrastructure. This approach aligns with our requirements for scalability and oversight.”

 

Giwa Chain is currently live on testnet, with mainnet deployment to follow. Dunamu, the parent company of Upbit, has also signed a memorandum of understanding with the Optimism Foundation on May 4, outlining key aspects of Giwa Chain, including its architecture reviews, performance benchmarking, and security audits.

 

Crypto Exchanges Building Their Own Chains

There has been an increase in the number of cryptocurrency exchanges building their own layer 2 blockchains, with many doing so for improved infrastructural performance and to gain control over fees, transaction sequencing, user experience, and compliance.

 

The OP Stack has been instrumental in this development, with the Optimism Foundation stating that its OP Stack currently houses over 32 layer 2 blockchain networks, including Binance’s opBNB chain, Kraken’s Ink chain, Gate.io’s Gate Layer, and OKX’s X Layer.

 

 

Wasabi Protocol, a multichain decentralized perpetual futures trading platform, was hit by an exploit that led to the loss of more than $5 million across several chains.

 

The exploit, according to blockchain security company PeckShield, was carried out across multiple chains, including Base, Berachain, Blast, and Ethereum, which is its main deployment chain.

 

The incident was also flagged by blockchain security firms CertiK and Blockaid, with both firms attributing the cause of the hack to a compromise of the Wasabi deployer wallet, which allowed the attacker to gain privileged admin access and subsequently drain funds from the protocol.

 

“The Wasabi deployer externally owned account was used to grant admin role access to an attacker-controlled helper contract, which then upgraded the perpetual vaults and LongPool to a malicious implementation that drained balances,” Blockaid wrote in a post on X.

 

“All Wasabi and Spicy liquidity provider share tokens minted by these vaults should be treated as compromised. The underlying assets backing them have been drained or are at risk while the Wasabi deployer key remains active. End users holding these tokens are showing book value, but the redemption value is zero,” the firm added, while recommending the immediate flagging and revocation of these tokens.

 

Blockchain security firm Cyvers also provided further details on how the incident occurred. According to Cyvers, a crypto wallet funded through Tornado Cash was used to deploy a malicious contract on Wasabi Protocol across the Base and Ethereum chains.

 

As a result of this malicious contract deployment, about $4.5 million in various crypto assets, including WETH, USDC, BTC, VIRTUAL, and cbBTC, as well as memecoins such as PEPE, MOG, and REKT, were stolen. The funds were later consolidated into Ether and distributed across multiple wallet addresses outside the protocol.

 

Wasabi Protocol Responds

Following the disclosure of the exploit by security teams, the Wasabi team, in a post on X, stated that they were aware of the breach and were actively investigating the incident alongside security experts, notably Security Alliance and Blockaid.

 

The team also warned against interacting with a list of compromised vaults and EVM positions across Base, Blast, and Berachain, while stating that users whose vaults were not among the compromised list could proceed with withdrawals at any time.

 

The Wasabi exploit closed the month of April, which recorded some of the largest crypto exploits, including those involving Drift Protocol and KelpDAO, which led to losses of $285 million and $293 million, respectively.

 

 

Cryptocurrency exchange OKX has launched Agent Payments Protocol (APP), a new payment protocol that allows AI agents to perform commercial activities.

 

The new payment protocol, according to OKX, is an open standard that defines how AI agents communicate and negotiate, pay for services, and pay each other. It also, for the first time, allows AI agents to move beyond simple payments and into full-scale commerce.

 

 

“In the past few months, AI agents moved from answering questions to running workflows, managing business processes, and acting autonomously on behalf of users,” OKX wrote in a blog post. “The bottleneck shifted from intelligence to commerce - not just paying, but the full cycle of doing business: quoting, negotiating, escrowing funds, metering usage, settling, and resolving disputes.”

 

This existing problem among AI agents is what OKX aims to solve with its new Agent Payments Protocol (APP), allowing agents not only to manage single payment requests but also to manage payment requests across multiple levels.

 

Inside the Agent Payment Protocol

The agent payment protocol (APP) from OKX is an open standard designed to work across all chains, especially the Solana and Ethereum blockchains.

 

APP unlocks new capabilities for AI agents, making it possible for these agents to operate and communicate autonomously across the full commerce lifecycle, pay each other through agent-to-agent payments, and also allowing AI agents to perform upfront and top-up payments, including deductions.

 

At its implementation layer is the payment software development kit (SDK) that makes it possible for developers to accept and make agent payments with just a few lines of code. According to the blog announcement, the agent payment protocol supports a wide variety of payments, including one-time payments, batch payments, pay-as-you-go, and escrow payments, which OKX says is coming soon.

 

Embedded within the payment protocol is the OKX self-custodial agentic wallet, which supports over 20 blockchains. Since the wallet is secured by means of a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), a hardware-based security environment, the wallet’s private keys and sensitive operations are kept highly secure.

 

Despite its early launch, the OKX agent payment protocol is currently supported by major cloud infrastructure firms, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Alibaba Cloud, as well as blockchain companies such as Uniswap, Paxos, MoonPay, Zerion, and Nansen.

 

With the launch of its payment protocol, OKX joins companies such as Coinbase, Stripe, and OpenAI, which have already launched their payment protocols, namely x402, Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), and Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), respectively.