We will also review the latest price performace of the PI token, which has been rather impressive after last week’s crash.

The Core Team issued an important reminder about a deadline that has now past and the community is expecting updates on the nodes front.

We will also take a look at some of the criticism of the project, as well as the PI’s price resurgance.

Pi Network’s Latest Deadline

Recall that at the end of the previous business week, the team behind the protocol issued an important reminder for Pi Network nodes, describing them as the “fourth role” in the ecosystem. The reason for the February 15 deadline is because the team promised a new series of upgrades to be introduced soon. Nodes had to comply by that date; otherwise, they risked being disconnected from the network.

All nodes were prompted to use laptops or desktops instead of mobile phones. Although the deadline has passed now, the team has yet to publish any additional information about the number of nodes that have completed the necessary step or provide any extensions.

Criticism Grows

On the first Friday of February, the Core Team said they celebrated Pi Network moderators. They published a designated video praising this vital part of the overall ecosystem, indicating that moderators are volunteers not employed or paid by the official Pi Network team, who help moderate chats, answer Pioneers’ questions, monitor Pi apps and products, report bugs, and test new features.

The project’s community, though, was not in a celebratory mood. Many criticized the Core Team for a lack of transparency, clear planning, and failure to implement working KYC solutions. Some urged the team to “speed up the progress” and stop messing around with “all that superficial nonsense.” Others said they had been waiting for over seven years to migrate their Pi coins to no avail.

Separately, one user going by the X handle ‘pinetworkmembers’ addressed the PI token’s massive price calamity and drop to new all-time lows of $0.1312 last week. They blamed the team for failing to introduce a “functioning mainnet after years of promises, no real-world utility beyond ‘keep the app open,’ and a whole lot of mobile mining theater.”

You may also like:

PI’s Revival

As mentioned above, the project’s native token was hit hard during the broader market’s correction last week, plunging to a fresh low. However, while the cards were stacked against it, PI went on an impressive run in the following days and rocketed to over $0.20 during the weekend, prompting other Pioneers to celebrate the revival.

One popular analyst predicted a massive 500% surge, and hinted about buying some PI “for the midterm.” As of press time, PI remains the top performer on a weekly basis, having jumped 40% despite retracing to under $0.19.

PiScan data shows a sizeable reduction in the number of coins to be unlocked on average in the following month, down to under 6.2 million daily from well over 7.5 million last week. This could further ease the asset’s immediate selling pressure.

Investment manager Brevan Howard’s cryptocurrency fund fell almost 30% last year as the bitcoin BTC$66,975.98 bull run faltered, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Wednesday.

The BH Digital Asset fund lost 29.5% of its value, its worst performance in a calendar year since its inception in 2021, according to the report, which cited people familiar with the fund’s performance. The fund underperformed bitcoin, which lost 6% in the period.

BH Digital Asset, which invests in crypto tokens and digital asset-related companies, enjoyed gains of 43% and 52% in 2023 and 2024, respectively, as the crypto market recovered from the lows of 2022 and the bitcoin price eclipsed $100,000 in December 2024.

“There are a lot of private equity and venture capital type instruments [in BH Digital Asset],” said one hedge fund investor, according to the FT’s report. “They have underperformed bitcoin but to give them credit, last year was terrible for crypto.”

Brevan Howard did not immediately respond to CoinDesk’s request for further comment.

It was only a matter of time before “vibe-coded” smart contracts led to a significant loss of funds and on Sunday, an oracle misconfiguration led to users of DeFi lending platform Moonwell being liquidated for a total of 1,096 Coinbase Wrapped Staked Ether (cbETH).

The protocol was also saddled with $1.8 million worth of bad debt as a result.

The error was introduced in pull request 578, submitted by Moonwell core contributor “anajuliabit” and co-authored by Claude Opus 4.6.

Including this incident, Moonwell has suffered three oracle malfunctions in the past six months, leading to over $7 million in bad debt.

Read more: Claude AI plugins can now vibe code smart contracts

cbETH = $1.12

Moonwell’s post-mortem report states that, this time, the issue lies in calculating the dollar price of cbETH.

“The oracle used only the raw cbETH/ETH exchange rate. This misconfiguration caused the oracle to report cbETH’s price as approximately $1.12 (reflecting the cbETH/ETH ratio of ~1.12) rather than the intended market value of roughly $2,200,” the report explains.

As a result, the error “wiped out most or all of the cbETH collateral for many borrowers.”

A total of 1,096 cbETH was liquidated. In turn, $1.78 million worth of bad debt was generated for the protocol.

Monitoring systems picked up the discrepancy and strict borrow and supply caps were set to prevent further interaction.

Despite this, liquidation of existing positions continued. Any oracle correction requires “a five-day governance voting and timelock period, which could not be bypassed.”

Trading Strategy’s Mikko Ohtamaa pointed out that “regardless of whether the code is written by an AI or by a human, these kinds of errors are caught in an automated integration test suite.”

He highlights that Claude can even write these tests itself, but that in this case “there was no test case for price sanity.”

Others highlighted the contributor’s GitHub profile which shows an extremely high workrate, over 1,000 commits in the past week.

Read more: Clawdbot creator Peter Steinberger: ‘Crypto folks, stop harassing me’

The dark side of the moon

Moonwell is a lending protocol active on the Base, Optimism, and Moonbeam networks. It holds around $90 million in total value locked (TVL), according to DeFiLlama data, down from a peak of $380 million in August last year.

Since then, the project has suffered a number of hiccups.

DeFi commentary account “Yieldsandmore” details two further incidents in recent months. The first came during last year’s infamous October 10 crash, when a pricing discrepancy between Chainlink feeds and decentralized exchanges on Base led to $12 million in liquidations and $1.7 million of bad debt.

The second came less than a month later, on November 4, when the $129 million Balancer hack had a knock on effect on Moonwell’s market-based wrsETH/ETH oracle, leading to $3.7 million of bad debt.

The two incidents were apparently exploited by the same attacker, who is “clearly constantly scanning Moonwell for extractable value.”

Previously, 2022’s $190 million Nomad Bridge hack devastated the protocol’s Moonbeam deployment, its sole instance at the time.

The incident saw TVL drop 80%, from over $100 million to just $21 million.

Got a tip? Send us an email securely via Protos Leaks. For more informed news, follow us on X, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

[PRESS RELEASE – Panama City, Republic of Panama, February 18th, 2026]

Sai today launched Sai Perps, a perpetuals trading platform built to be as fast and intuitive as a centralized exchange with the transparency and self-custody of on-chain settlement. The platform features gasless transactions, removing friction for traders while maintaining full on-chain security.

Sai also unveiled Let’s Go Saicho, a one-month on-chain trading competition running from February 18 through March 19, 2026, with $25,000 in total prizes. The campaign is structured in two phases designed to reward both performance and participation: a PNL competition for profitable traders, followed by a first-come, first-serve “Be Early” phase for traders who engage early and hit a minimum volume threshold.

“On-chain markets shouldn’t require traders to compromise between speed and self-custody,” said Matthias Darblade, a Sai contributor. “Sai Perps is designed for active traders who want a clean, CEX-like experience, while still getting the transparency and settlement guarantees that only on-chain infrastructure can provide.”

Why Sai vs. Other Perps DEXs

Sai Perps is built around the premise: trading should be accessible without the usual friction of on-chain perps. Compared to existing perpDEXs, Sai stands out in many ways:

• CEX-like UX, on-chain settlement: A streamlined trading experience designed to be fast and familiar, with trades settling on-chain for transparency and verifiability.
• Infrastructure built for deep, smooth markets: Sai has focused heavily on liquidity, risk systems, and oracle design to support more consistent execution and robust market integrity.
• Accessible to both new and experienced traders: A platform experience optimized for speed and clarity, without sacrificing advanced trading capability.
• Roadmap beyond crypto perps: Sai’s planned expansion includes stocks, commodities, and FX markets, plus user-focused capital efficiency features like Sai Savings (yield on deposits), and cross-chain deposits.

Let’s Go Saicho: $25,000 Trading Competition (Feb 18 – Mar 19, 2026)

Let’s Go Saicho is a one-month competition rewarding trading on Sai across two two-week phases:

• Phase 1 (Feb 18 – Mar 4): PNL Competition | $20,000 prize pool, 50 winners
• Phase 2 (Mar 5 – Mar 19): Be Early (First Come First Serve) | $5,000 prize pool, 50 winners

All markets listed on Sai are eligible in both phases. Traders may go long or short on any listed pair using supported collateral (e.g., USDC and other supported assets such as stNIBI, as available on Sai). For more details on Sai’s Trading Competition, visit here.

About Sai

Sai is a new perpetuals trading platform designed to feel as easy and fast as a centralized exchange, while still settling fully on-chain. Sai’s mission is to make advanced trading accessible without sacrificing transparency or self-custody.

Sai is focused on finalizing its core trading infrastructure and user experience, building liquidity and risk systems for smoother execution, and laying the groundwork for yield features that help users earn on idle collateral. Next on the roadmap: expanded markets (stocks, commodities, FX), Sai Savings, cross-chain deposits, and smart accounts for gasless trading.

The European Central Bank (ECB) is moving closer to a pilot for a digital euro, with Executive Board Member Piero Cipollone outlining plans to begin selecting payment service providers (PSPs) in early 2026, ahead of a 12-month test scheduled for the second half of 2027.

Cipollone on Wednesday held an executive committee meeting of the Italian Banking Association. He said the pilot would involve a limited number of payment service providers, merchants and Eurosystem staff. Selection of participating providers is expected to start in the first quarter of 2026.

Cipollone said the digital euro will be designed to ensure it protects European card schemes and keeps banks at the core of the Eurozone payments system, according to Reuters.

Pilot could give PSPs an early start

European Union-licensed PSPs will be at the core of digital euro distribution, Cipollone said. For participating PSPs, the pilot offers an early-readiness advantage ahead of a potential broader rollout, including hands-on experience with onboarding, settlement and liquidity management.

He added that it also provides clearer visibility on future infrastructure, compliance and staffing costs, helping companies plan investments more accurately.

With direct Eurosystem support and the ability to feed into the design process, participants should gain both operational insight and influence over how the digital euro ultimately takes shape.

Stablecoins are not the only threat to banks, says Cipollone

The digital euro pilot is also intended to protect domestic European payment projects, such as Italy’s Bancomat card network and Spain’s Bizum peer-to-peer system.

“Banks could lose their role in payments not just because of stablecoins but also due to other private solutions,” Cipollone said, pointing to Europe’s heavy reliance on international card networks like Visa and Mastercard.

He added that the digital euro would be structured to preserve the competitiveness of local systems.

“The cap on the fee that merchants will pay on the digital euro network will be lower than what the international payments network, normally the costlier, charge, but higher than what domestic payments scheme, normally the cheapest, charge,” Cipollone said.

Cointelegraph contacted the ECB for comment on the PSP selection but had not received a response by publication.

Related: Lagarde early exit report puts ECB succession and digital euro in focus

The news marks a milestone in the digital euro pilot after the ECB officially moved to the next phase of the project in October 2025, targeting a launch in 2029.

The central bank then projected that a pilot exercise could start in 2027 if legislation is put in place during the course of 2026.

Magazine: Is China hoarding gold so yuan becomes global reserve instead of USD?