DeFi mobile platform Legend has announced plans to shut down after nearly two years of operation, adding another closure to a growing list of crypto applications struggling to remain viable.

According to a statement shared Tuesday by Legend co-founder and chief executive Jayson Hobby, the company decided to wind down operations after concluding the product had not reached a scale that could support the business over the long term. 

Hobby said the app had managed to attract users, but sustaining the company and meeting investor expectations ultimately proved difficult.

Built by former Compound Finance executives in late 2024, Legend operated as a non-custodial mobile app that combined services from protocols such as Aave, Compound, and Uniswap into a single interface for trading, borrowing, swapping, and yield generation. The platform promoted itself as a simplified entry point into decentralized finance, allowing users to access DeFi products without constantly switching wallets or applications.

In comments posted alongside the shutdown notice, Hobby said the company initially believed mainstream users would engage with decentralized finance if the interface became easier to use. He argued that most users are not focused on whether a product operates on-chain, but instead care about practical outcomes such as better yields, faster payments, and more direct control over their money.

Back in February 2025, Legend raised $15 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase Ventures. Even with backing from major crypto investors, the company said long-term sustainability remained out of reach.

More DeFi platforms continue to close

Across the crypto sector, several DeFi projects and infrastructure platforms have announced shutdowns this year as lower activity and weaker market conditions continue pressuring business models.

Earlier this year, Solana-based aggregator Step Finance closed its operations after a January breach compromised executive devices and drained assets later estimated at nearly $40 million. Step Finance stated in February that it had explored funding and acquisition options before concluding that continuing operations was no longer possible. The company later confirmed that its smart contracts were not exploited directly, attributing the incident to compromised endpoints and weak device security controls.

Elsewhere, decentralized finance analytics platform Parsec announced its closure in February after five years in operation. In a statement posted on X, Parsec’s leadership said user activity patterns changed substantially after the collapse of FTX, particularly in DeFi lending markets where leverage failed to recover to earlier cycle levels. The company said temporary traffic spikes tied to products such as Friend.tech dashboards and election-related prediction markets did not translate into sustained growth.

Additional closures have followed in recent months. DeFi protocol Balancer Labs shut down in March after dealing with financial strain linked to a $116 million hack disclosed in November, while Base based lending platform said in April that volatile market conditions contributed to its decision to wind down. ZeroLend also announced plans earlier this year to cease operations, citing an unsustainable business model after roughly three years in operation.

For Legend users, Hobby said the application will remain operational for another 60 days before going offline on July 12. The company has not released active user figures or total value locked data tied to the platform.

The Ethereum community has launched Clear Signing, an open standard that aims to replace unreadable transaction prompts with human-readable details before users approve onchain actions. 

The Ethereum Foundation said a working group of wallet developers, security firms and its Trillion Dollar Security Initiative released the standard on May 12. The change targets self-custody users and institutions that need readable approval records. 

The effort targets blind signing, a weak point where users approve calldata or partial transaction data they cannot understand. The Foundation said approvals are often the last defense when users control assets onchain, but “When it is done blindly, that defense does not hold.” It wants “What You See Is What You Sign” to become the default for Ethereum users. 

ERC-7730 brings clearer transaction details

Clear Signing uses ERC-7730, a shared JSON description format, a public registry, and independent reviews. The setup lets wallets show what a transaction intends to do without changing existing smart contracts or how transactions settle on Ethereum. 

Ethereum.org says a descriptor links a contract deployment to readable labels and field formats. A compatible wallet can then show action details such as the asset sent, the minimum received, the recipient and expiry time, instead of raw function selectors and integer values. Developers can add support to existing protocols without redeploying contracts. 

Additionally, Ledger helped start ERC-7730 and early tooling, while teams including ZKnox, Sourcify, Cyfrin, Zama, WalletConnect, Fireblocks, Trezor, Keycard, MetaMask, Argot and independent contributors took part in the wider effort. The Foundation said its security initiative will host the infrastructure and support adoption. 

The move follows several wallet and signing attacks that exposed weak approval screens. Earlier reports noted that North Korea’s Lazarus Group stole more than $1.4 billion in ETH from Bybit by exploiting Safe Wallet’s user interface and that Bybit’s CEO could not fully verify transaction details before signing. That case made signing transparency a direct exchange security issue. 

Why timing matters

Market updates have tied Clear Signing to the wider rise of phishing and approval scams. As previously reported, ERC-7730 replaces “hex gibberish” with auditable transaction summaries and said Binance security data showed 22.9 million phishing attempts were blocked in the first quarter of 2026. 

Related coverage also said crypto protocols lost more than $606 million in the first 18 days of April 2026, the worst month since the Bybit breach. Clear Signing does not remove every attack path, and wallets still choose which registries they trust. But it gives users and institutions a clearer chance to see what they are about to approve before assets move. 

Wells Fargo increased its exposure to spot Ether exchange-traded funds in the first quarter of 2026, according to its latest 13F filing. 

The bank reported larger positions in BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust ETF and the Bitwise Ethereum ETF.

ETHA rose from about 672,600 shares in the fourth quarter of 2025 to roughly 1.1 million shares in the first quarter. ETHW increased from around 186,800 shares to more than 257,000 shares. The filing placed Wells Fargo’s Ether ETF holdings at around $21.5 million.

Ethereum exposure grew during weak prices

The Ether ETF increase came while the underlying asset was under pressure. Ethereum posted two straight quarterly losses, falling about 28% in the fourth quarter of 2025 and about 29% in the first quarter of 2026.

Spot Ether ETFs also faced withdrawals during that period. Still, Wells Fargo reported higher positions at quarter-end. The filing does not state whether the positions were held for clients, internal portfolios or other investment accounts. That point remains important because 13F filings show holdings, not the reason behind each trade.

Meanwhile, Wells Fargo’s Bitcoin ETF exposure moved in different directions. The bank slightly reduced its position in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, while increasing holdings in the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF and the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF.

IBIT still accounted for the largest crypto ETF position in the filing, with a value of about $250 million. Earlier crypto.news coverage noted that Wells Fargo and Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch allowed some brokerage clients to access spot Bitcoin ETFs after the products saw strong early demand.

Strategy rises as Galaxy stake falls

The larger shift appeared in crypto-linked equities. Wells Fargo cut its Galaxy Digital position from about 2.5 million shares in the fourth quarter of 2025 to around 78,600 shares in the first quarter of 2026.

At the same time, the bank raised its Strategy stake from about 322,700 shares to roughly 726,000 shares. Strategy remains the largest public holder of Bitcoin, making its stock a common indirect Bitcoin exposure for some investors. Wells Fargo’s filing does not explain why it reduced Galaxy Digital and increased Strategy.

The update adds to evidence that large financial firms continue to use regulated products for crypto exposure. A recent crypto.news report cited a Coinbase and EY-Parthenon survey showing that many institutions planned to raise crypto allocations in 2026, with exchange-traded products among the preferred routes.

Predict 2026 says it moved to New York from Las Vegas because of “regulatory pressure” from the Nevada Gaming Control Board. A spokesperson for the regulator says otherwise.

“The Nevada Gaming Control Board did not direct, request, or otherwise pressure any licensee or venue to cancel or decline to host any recent or upcoming event or conference, as has been suggested,” a spokesperson told CoinDesk.

Earlier this month, the Prediction Conference, which featured some top traders from Polymarket, took place in Las Vegas – but at a hotel without a casino.

“We had a successful event last month that was attended by several stakeholders and will be hosting a second edition in November again in Las Vegas,” its founder, Ish Milly, told CoinDesk. “Our venue is off the strip and not in a casino.”

A spokesperson for the Nevada gaming regulator also told CoinDesk that “Gaming licensees are expected to adhere to all federal, state, and local statutes and ordinances and prevent any occurrences that may bring discredit to the state or the gaming industry.”

Nevada is one of the states that is locked in a legal battle with the prediction market industry.

In April, a judge in the state ruled that Kalshi’s prediction markets were “indistinguishable” from gambling and ordered an in-state ban on the platform to be extended.

Recently, Michael Selig, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, told Axios that sports betting and prediction markets are “two separate things.” Selig also said that the CFTC is working with major sports leagues on market surveillance and other market integrity measures.

XRP is back at the top of South Korean trading screens.

The token’s won pair was the most traded market on Upbit over the past 24 hours, with about $110.9 million in volume, ahead of bitcoin’s $88.6 million and ether’s $67 million, CoinGecko data shows. On Bithumb, XRP/KRW recorded about $41 million in volume, ranking second behind USDT/KRW and above both BTC/KRW and ETH/KRW.

That matters because Korea has long been one of XRP’s most active speculative markets. Bitcoin and ether usually dominate global exchange activity, but Korean traders have repeatedly pushed XRP into the top volume slot during periods of heightened interest, often before volatility expands.

Price-action has been muted, however. XRP traded near $1.44 to $1.45 across the two exchanges, up roughly 3% on the week. That beats bitcoin over the same period, but trails stronger gains in BNB and Solana’s SOL, both of which have risen around 8%.

The setup is less about a finished breakout and more about pressure building under a level the market has not been able to clear.

Data from CoinDesk analytics shows XRP is still battling the $1.49 to $1.50 zone, an area that has repeatedly rejected upside attempts since February. The token has continued to compress below that resistance while holding higher lows above the broader $1.40 support floor.

That kind of structure tends to matter when volume starts rotating in. Repeated tests can weaken resistance, and liquidity above current levels appears relatively thin. If sellers are absorbed near $1.50, a sustained move through that level could accelerate faster than the recent price action suggests.

Korean activity also stands out against a choppier local macro backdrop.

South Korea’s Kospi fell sharply Tuesday after comments from a presidential policy aide raised questions over how the government could return part of the country’s AI-driven corporate gains to citizens through tax revenue.

The index remains one of the world’s strongest markets this year, powered by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, but the pullback showed how sensitive local risk appetite has become after a steep rally.

That makes the XRP flow more notable. Traders are not simply buying everything tied to Korean risk appetite. They are concentrating activity in one of the market’s most familiar high-beta crypto names.

High volume does not guarantee upside, however. It can also mark aggressive selling or late positioning near resistance. But when XRP starts leading Korean exchange volumes while price compresses below a long-tested ceiling, the market usually pays attention.

The Ethereum community has introduced Clear Signing, a security feature that ensures users can clearly understand transaction details before signing, replacing unreadable hex data and reducing risks from blind signing attacks.

“Approving a transaction is meant to be the last line of defense when exercising control over what happens to your assets on the blockchain. When it is done blindly, that defense does not hold,” the Ethereum Foundation said on Tuesday, calling blind signing a “structural flaw” that has contributed to billions of dollars in losses, including the $1.4 billion Bybit hack last year.

The “What You See Is What You Sign” security feature aims to address this issue and is being integrated by several self-custody crypto wallets, including Ledger, Trezor and MetaMask. 

Source: Ethereum Foundation

The security feature comes as bad actors target the crypto industry with increasingly sophisticated hacks and scams despite considerable improvements in security measures in recent years.

North Korean state-backed workers have stolen over $7 billion in funds alone since 2009, with a large share of that coming from crypto protocols. The Bybit hack was its largest crypto heist by compromising a third-party service provider and manipulating transaction signatures. 

Trezor chief technology officer Tomáš Sušánka told Cointelegraph that attackers have been exploiting this relentlessly due to there not being a widely accessible security feature that is capable of distinguishing malicious smart contracts from legitimate transactions.

This issue has led users to “unknowingly sign them, and lose everything,” Sušánka said, adding that the Clear Signing feature “directly addresses this by making transactions human-readable before approval.”

The Clear Signing feature was introduced through the Ethereum Foundation’s Trillion Dollar Security Initiative and initiated by Ledger through the open-source ERC-7730 token standard.

The foundation said the key components of the Clear Signing feature include “human-readable transaction descriptions” and a “neutral, mirrorable descriptor registry.”

Related: Ethereum’s EEZ could pull other blockchains into its orbit 

It also includes an attestation framework enabling auditors to verify those descriptors.

A host of crypto platforms are supporting Clear Signing

Several other crypto wallets and Ethereum privacy and security platforms contributed to the Clear Signing feature, including Keycard, WalletConnect, Argot, Sourcify, Zama, ZKnox and Fireblocks.

Sušánka said Trezor seeks to implement the security feature before June 30.

“We’re implementing this standard because it’s the right thing to do for our users,” Sušánka said before calling the Clear Signing feature a “critical security advancement for our entire industry.” 

Magazine: Guide to the top and emerging global crypto hubs: Mid-2026

More than 100 amendments have been attached to the Senate’s crypto market structure bill ahead of Thursday’s Banking Committee markup.

POLITICO reported that most of the proposed changes came from Democratic senators, while Republicans submitted a narrower set of revisions tied to sections already debated during months of closed-door negotiations. Committee members are expected to review and vote on the amendments during Thursday’s hearing before deciding whether to move the legislation to the Senate floor.

Released Monday, the Senate Banking Committee’s updated CLARITY Act draft revived talks that had stalled earlier this year after Coinbase publicly stepped away from negotiations. The company had objected to earlier restrictions tied to stablecoin reward programs, prompting lawmakers and industry groups to reopen discussions around the bill’s language.

One of the newest amendments targets the stablecoin yield compromise included in the revised draft. Senators Jack Reed and Tina Smith are seeking tougher wording that would prohibit interest-like rewards using a “substantially similar” standard instead of the current “functionally equivalent” test tied to bank deposits.

Banking organizations have already criticized the revised language. Earlier this week, the American Bankers Association and four other financial trade groups said the proposal could still allow stablecoin products to compete with traditional savings accounts by offering reward mechanisms that resemble deposit interest.

Senate debate expands beyond stablecoins

Away from the stablecoin fight, several amendments focus on ethics restrictions and criminal liability tied to crypto activity. Senator Chris Van Hollen has proposed a measure that would prevent the president, vice president, members of Congress, senior executive officials, and their families from holding or promoting crypto-related businesses.

Ethics provisions have remained unresolved since lawmakers restarted negotiations earlier this year. During Consensus Miami 2026, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said Democratic support would depend on conflict-of-interest protections being added to the legislation. Senate Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren later criticized the revised draft for leaving those restrictions out.

Developer protections have also resurfaced through a proposal from Senator Catherine Cortez Masto. Her amendment would create a safe harbor protecting software developers from criminal liability for failing to register as money transmitters.

Crypto advocacy groups have supported similar language tied to the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, which was folded into the committee’s updated draft earlier this week. Under that section, developers and infrastructure providers that do not control customer funds would not automatically fall under money transmitter rules.

Concerns from law enforcement officials, however, have not disappeared. Punchbowl News reported this week that Senators Chuck Grassley and Cynthia Lummis reached a separate agreement designed to preserve prosecutors’ ability to pursue crypto-related financial crimes.

Additional amendments expected during Thursday’s session include sanctions provisions, rules tied to institutional crypto activity, and a proposal from Senator Andy Kim seeking to restore the Justice Department’s National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, which was dismantled last year.

Republicans still control the Banking Committee and hold the Senate majority, though internal disagreements remain. Senator Thom Tillis previously warned he would not back the bill unless changes were made to several provisions.

Outside Capitol Hill, lobbying pressure has intensified ahead of the markup. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said during an X livestream on May 12 that the latest draft preserved the crypto industry’s “must haves,” while banking lobby groups continued pressing senators for stricter limits on stablecoin rewards.

Even if the Banking Committee advances the legislation this week, senators would still need to combine it with the separate version approved earlier by the Senate Agriculture Committee. Passage on the Senate floor would require support from at least 60 lawmakers, forcing Republican sponsors to secure Democratic votes before the bill can move forward.