Crypto World
FanDuel Alternatives Continue Building Steam and ZunaBet Has Become the Name That Keeps Showing Up
There is a pattern in every industry where the dominant players eventually face pressure not from direct imitators but from platforms that rethink the fundamentals. Online gambling is living through that pattern right now. The established brands — large, well-funded, deeply embedded in mainstream culture — continue to operate strong products that millions of people use every day. But alongside that continued strength, a parallel movement is gaining force. Players are searching for alternatives with a frequency and consistency that signals something deeper than casual curiosity. FanDuel, among the most established and visible gambling brands anywhere, has become the reference point against which many of those searches are framed. And the platform that keeps emerging as the most credible answer is ZunaBet — a crypto-native casino and sportsbook that launched in 2026 and delivered a product that does not compete within the existing framework but proposes an entirely new one.
FanDuel: A Proven Platform Meeting Evolving Demands
FanDuel built its empire by reading the market better than most. It saw daily fantasy sports as a gateway to a broader gambling audience before the competition understood the opportunity. It expanded into sports betting and casino gaming with timing that aligned perfectly with the regulatory environment opening across American states. The result is a platform with licenses in a wide range of US jurisdictions, partnerships with the biggest professional sports organizations in the country, and brand visibility that reaches tens of millions of consumers through relentless and effective advertising.
The product does what it was designed to do with consistency and professionalism. The sportsbook covers all major American leagues — NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL — along with college athletics and a solid range of international events in football, tennis, golf, motorsports, and other categories. The casino delivers a curated collection of slots, table games, and live dealer experiences from reputable providers. The mobile app is polished and reliable. Customer support is available and the infrastructure handles scale without notable issues.
Money flows through conventional channels. Bank accounts, debit and credit cards, PayPal, Venmo, and equivalent services provide the financial framework. These methods serve the widest possible audience with the least friction, which is consistent with a platform strategy built around mainstream market penetration.
FanDuel’s challenge is not that its product has grown weaker. It is that the audience evaluating it has grown more demanding. The game library that was considered competitive several years ago is now outmatched by platforms offering ten times the volume. The loyalty program that was adequate when every competitor ran the same model now feels like a missed opportunity as newer platforms introduce genuinely creative alternatives. And the payment infrastructure that was the only practical choice when the platform was built now looks slow and expensive to players who already live in the world of instant, fee-free cryptocurrency transactions. FanDuel was purpose-built for a specific set of market conditions. Those conditions have not disappeared, but they now coexist with a new set of conditions that the platform was not designed to address.
ZunaBet: Purpose-Built for Conditions That Already Exist
ZunaBet was designed by people who understood exactly what the next generation of gambling platforms needed to look like. It launched in 2026 under the ownership of Strathvale Group Ltd, guided by a team whose combined experience in the gambling industry spans more than two decades. The platform operates under an Anjouan gaming license with corporate registration in Belize. Every system within it was built around cryptocurrency as the core infrastructure — not as a supplementary payment method, not as a marketing angle, but as the foundational layer that shapes the entire product experience.
The game library makes the platform’s ambition unmistakable. ZunaBet opened with 11,294 games from 63 different providers. That is a staggering figure for any operator at any stage of development. The providers contributing to this catalog include the names that define quality in the industry — Pragmatic Play, Evolution, Hacksaw Gaming, Yggdrasil, and BGaming lead the roster — backed by a deep and varied bench of additional studios whose combined output covers every conceivable game style, mechanic, and format.
Slots account for the bulk of the catalog, as they do universally across online casinos. The distinction at ZunaBet lies in everything else. RNG table games provide comprehensive coverage of blackjack, roulette, baccarat, poker across multiple variants, and various specialty titles. The live dealer section offers high-definition real-time streaming from premium production studios, creating immersive experiences that match the atmosphere of a physical casino with the accessibility of a digital platform. Sixty-three providers contributing to a single library means genuine diversity — not just in themes and visuals but in underlying game mechanics, volatility profiles, and design philosophies. Players encounter meaningfully different experiences as they move between providers, which keeps the platform feeling alive and varied long after the initial novelty of signing up has passed.
The sportsbook operates as a complete product with the same account and wallet infrastructure as the casino. Football, basketball, tennis, NHL, combat sports, and virtual sports all receive dedicated coverage. Esports is treated with the seriousness it deserves through full betting markets on CS2, Dota 2, League of Legends, and Valorant. This commitment signals an understanding of the modern gambling audience that most traditional operators still lack. Esports viewership continues to grow globally, and the segment of that audience interested in betting grows alongside it. ZunaBet positioned itself to serve that audience from the start, which gives it a natural connection with a demographic that traditional platforms have been slow to engage.
The payment infrastructure supports more than 20 cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT across multiple chains, Solana, Dogecoin, Cardano, XRP, and additional tokens. No platform processing fees are charged on any deposit or withdrawal. Blockchain settlement delivers funds to player wallets in minutes regardless of timing. Because the entire financial architecture was designed around crypto from inception, there are no fiat-system remnants creating inconsistency or friction. Every transaction follows the same fast, free, seamless path.
New players receive a welcome package of up to $5,000 plus 75 free spins over three deposits. First deposit gets a 100% match up to $2,000 with 25 spins. Second deposit earns a 50% match up to $1,500 with 25 spins. Third deposit rounds out the offer with a 100% match up to $1,500 and 25 final spins. The three-deposit format encourages sustained platform exploration rather than one-time bonus collection.
The platform is built on HTML5 with a dark-themed responsive interface that loads quickly on any screen. Native apps serve iOS, Android, Windows, and MacOS users. Live chat support runs without interruption every hour of every day.
What Crypto Infrastructure Delivers That Traditional Systems Cannot
The gap between crypto and traditional payment infrastructure in online gambling produces real consequences that players experience with every transaction. This is not a theoretical debate about the future of finance. It is a practical difference with immediate measurable impact.
Traditional platforms process payments through networks of financial intermediaries. Deposits pass through card networks or bank systems. Withdrawals travel the same path in reverse, adding platform review stages, banking processing queues, and method-specific settlement timelines. The total elapsed time for a withdrawal commonly ranges from one to five business days depending on circumstances. Weekends and holidays extend that window further. Fees may be imposed at multiple stages by different parties in the processing chain.
Crypto payments reduce that entire sequence to a single blockchain confirmation. Deposits arrive in minutes. Withdrawals return to player wallets in minutes. No banking hours restrict the process. No intermediary fees accumulate. ZunaBet charges zero platform fees on any transaction. The experience is the same at three in the morning on a holiday as it is during peak business hours on a weekday.
A player who transacts regularly on ZunaBet saves meaningful time and money over any comparable period on a traditional platform. Those savings are structural and permanent — built into the infrastructure rather than offered as a promotion. Every transaction automatically benefits because the system itself is inherently more efficient.
ZunaBet achieves this level of consistency because crypto is not one of several payment options. It is the only payment infrastructure the platform has. There are no hybrid systems. There are no fiat layers underneath. The singular architectural focus produces a singular quality of experience that platforms operating on mixed foundations are unable to match.
Why ZunaBet’s Loyalty System Stands Apart From Everything Else
Loyalty programs in online gambling represent one of the clearest cases of industry-wide creative neglect. The template has not changed meaningfully in over a decade. Wager money. Earn points. Cross a threshold. Claim a bonus. Every platform runs some minor variation of this formula, and no variation is different enough to be noticed by the average player. Participation happens passively. Engagement does not happen at all.
ZunaBet replaced that template with a loyalty system designed as a genuine product feature. The dragon evolution program creates a progression journey through six tiers — Squire at 1% rakeback, Warden at 2%, Champion at 4%, Divine at 5%, Knight at 10%, and Ultimate at 20%. Each tier brings additional escalating benefits beyond the rakeback rate — free spins that grow to 1,000 at the top level, VIP club membership, and double wheel spins. A dragon mascot named Zuno ties the experience together visually, evolving in appearance as the player advances from one tier to the next.
The system applies video game progression mechanics to a context that had been crying out for them. Clear levels with defined requirements. Rewards that escalate meaningfully enough to create genuine anticipation around reaching the next tier. Visual feedback that makes progress feel personal and observable. Achievement mechanics that give advancement an emotional weight that numerical point balances lack entirely.
ZunaBet players engage with their loyalty tier in ways that players on traditional platforms simply do not. They set goals around reaching the next level. They monitor their progress between sessions. They experience real satisfaction when they advance. That active participation transforms the loyalty program from a passive retention mechanism into an active engagement driver that contributes directly to how players experience the platform. It is one of the most effective differentiators in the current market because it addresses the one area where virtually every competitor chose to do the absolute minimum.
What the Momentum Means Going Forward
The sustained momentum behind FanDuel alternative searches carries a message that extends beyond any individual platform comparison. It reflects a market that has reached the point where the standard set by the previous generation of leaders is no longer accepted as the ceiling. FanDuel will continue to hold significant market share. Its brand, licenses, existing users, and financial strength guarantee relevance for years to come. Nothing about the current momentum threatens the platform’s viability in its core markets.
What the momentum does threaten is the broader assumption that the model FanDuel represents — traditional finance, standard game catalogs, template loyalty mechanics — remains the default definition of what a gambling platform should be. That assumption weakens every time a player discovers that alternatives exist which are faster, deeper, more creative, and more aligned with how they interact with digital products everywhere else in their lives.
ZunaBet was constructed from scratch to be the alternative that holds up under scrutiny. Its game library exceeds what most operators build over entire lifetimes. Its payment system delivers speed and cost efficiency that traditional infrastructure cannot approach. Its esports coverage meets a massive and underserved audience where it already is. And its loyalty program brought genuine innovation to the most neglected corner of the gambling experience. That is not a collection of incremental improvements. It is a different model altogether. The momentum building behind alternative searches exists because players have recognized that a different model is exactly what they need. They find ZunaBet because ZunaBet is the most complete version of that model that anyone has built.
Disclaimer: This is a Press Release provided by a third party who is responsible for the content. Please conduct your own research before taking any action based on the content.
Privacy-preserving crypto protocol Umbra has pulled its front-end hosting offline in a bid to complicate misuse by hackers who have been moving funds from recent high-profile breaches. The move comes as Umbra disclosed that roughly $800,000 worth of stolen funds were routed through its protocol, a signal that attackers continue to exploit cross-chain bridges and related services despite ongoing security efforts.
In a post on X, Umbra said it had transitioned the hosted front end into maintenance mode and would bring it back online only when it can be done without disrupting recovery efforts. The team stressed that the decision was a precaution aimed at safeguarding the recovery process while acknowledging that the open-source nature of its front end means other implementations could still be used by malicious actors.
Key takeaways
- Umbra paused its hosted front end to hinder attacker use, citing approximately $800,000 in stolen funds moved through its protocol.
- The development follows a high-profile sequence of exploits, including the Kelp protocol breach that netted around $280 million, with investigators suspecting North Korean actors were involved.
- Despite the suspension, Umbra emphasized that on-chain activity and self-hosted or locally deployed interfaces remain possible, underscoring the limits of front-end restrictions.
- Analysts and commentators warn that front-end freezes alone may not satisfy regulators or prosecutors who view interface changes as indicative of broader control over a protocol.
- Ambiguity persists about how to balance privacy objectives with anti-fraud and sanctions enforcement in decentralized systems.
Umbra’s action in a shifting security landscape
Umbra’s decision to take its front end offline highlights a growing debate about defensible responses when breaches spill over into the tooling that users rely on most. The targeted move aims to reduce the surface area hackers can exploit for money movement tied to the latest breaches, according to Umbra’s statement. The project noted that the protocol “protects the identity of the receiver, not the sender,” a distinction it says does not assist hackers trying to conceal fund trails. It also stressed that every stolen fund routed through its contracts can be identified, and that it has been collaborating with security researchers involved in the investigation.
In parallel, security researchers and industry observers have repeatedly warned that the tokenized services bridging assets across networks remain a common vector for theft. The Kelp breach, which saw illicit gains reach hundreds of millions of dollars, has intensified scrutiny of cross-chain activity and the ways in which attackers pivot across networks to move funds. PeckShield and other monitoring outfits have flagged Umbra as a target of interest for opportunistic attackers attempting to bridge stolen Ether into Bitcoin and other assets, underscoring the ongoing liquidity risk within the bridge ecosystem.
The front end debate: is a UI pause enough?
Roman Storm, a co-founder of the crypto mixer Tornado Cash, has argued that a temporary freeze on the front end may not be sufficient to placate authorities or deter illicit use. Storm’s comments reference his own legal battles over sanctions-related charges, where prosecutors characterized control over a protocol as equivalent to controlling its operations. He has argued that limiting user interfaces may be read as exerting influence over a broader system, raising questions about what constitutes meaningful control in decentralized architectures.
Umbra’s own note touched on this tension, noting that the protocol’s core remains usable through smart contracts and, in many cases, through self-hosted front ends. The company asserted that even if the hosted front end goes offline, attackers could still access the open-source components if they choose to deploy their own interfaces or use local deployments. The broader implication is that while operators can reduce risk through UI changes, the core protocol’s code and governance remain the ultimate locus of control—and the primary determinant of how funds move once a user interacts with the protocol on-chain.
Privacy versus enforcement: what changes for users and investigators?
Umbra’s framing of its front-end pause as a protective measure for recovery efforts reflects a nuanced approach to privacy-preserving design. The project reiterated that its technology is intended to protect recipient anonymity, rather than to obscure the sender’s trail. In practice, this means that investigators and security researchers can, with cooperation and the right tools, trace flows of stolen funds even when they pass through privacy-centric constructs. Umbra’s statement that all stolen funds can be identified when appropriate signals and data are available is consistent with ongoing industry norms that seek a balance between user privacy and fraud prevention.
For investors and builders, the incident reinforces a persistent theme in crypto: even advanced privacy protocols operate within a broader ecosystem where law enforcement, sanctions regimes, and compliance expectations shape what is feasible in practice. The ongoing sanctions regime targeting North Korean cyber actors adds a layer of regulatory risk to the activity around cross-chain platforms and mixers, as authorities increasingly couple enforcement actions with industry-wide stances against funding networks linked to sanctioned entities.
What to watch next
As recovery efforts continue, observers will be watching for updates on when and how Umbra will restore front-end access without compromising investigators’ ability to trace and recover funds. The episode also raises questions about the durability of privacy-first designs in the face of coordinated enforcement and incident response. Other protocols with similar privacy-centric aims may reassess their own front-end exposure, governance processes, and incident-response playbooks in light of Umbra’s experience.
In the near term, market participants should monitor whether other bridges and privacy-focused contracts adjust their public interfaces or deploy additional mitigations to reduce exploit risk. Regulators and prosecutors will likely keep a close eye on how developers balance user privacy with the need to curb illicit finance, particularly as high-profile attacks continue to test the resilience of cross-chain ecosystems.
Ultimately, the event underscores a core dynamic in the crypto security landscape: improvements in on-chain privacy and usability must be matched by robust off-chain collaboration, transparent communications, and adaptable incident response plans if communities are to navigate the evolving threat environment without stifling innovation.
readers should stay tuned for further disclosures from Umbra and for subsequent analyses from security researchers detailing how such vulnerabilities are being addressed and what this portends for the broader privacy-centric segment of DeFi.
Another day, another exploit. The security crisis in blockchain-based decentralized finance (DeFi), once touted as a challenger to legacy infrastructure, is only getting worse.
The latest victim is Volo Protocol, a platform built on the Sui blockchain, where users deposit assets into yield-generating “vaults,” which function as pooled investments. Deposited tokens such as bitcoin, stablecoins and tokenized assets are deployed using various onchain strategies to generate returns.
Early Wednesday, the protocol confirmed a security breach that drained a total of roughly $3.5 million in digital assets from three of the vaults. Assets locked in other vaults were not affected, it said in a post on X.
“The ~$28M in TVL across all other Volo vaults is safe. The exploit was isolated to 3 specific vaults, and we have confirmed no shared attack vector exists with the remaining vaults,” the protocol said, adding that it is “prepared to absorb” the financial loss rather than pass it on to users.
The attack hit vaults holding wrapped bitcoin (WBTC), Matridock’s tokenized gold token, XAUm, and the dollar-pegged stablecoin USDC. In response, the protocol froze all vaults and began working with the Sui Foundation and onchain investigators to contain the damage and trace funds.
Since the incident, Volo has “frozen” $500,000 in assets through coordination with ecosystem partners, meaning those funds have been immobilized onchain to prevent any movement or withdrawal. Still, the majority of the stolen funds remain under investigation.
Growing unease
The breach adds to growing unease across decentralized finance, where a string of exploits has raised questions about smart contract security and protocol oversight. The timing is particularly sensitive, coming just days after the weekend’s KelpDAO exploit, in which an attacker drained millions by artificially minting unbacked liquid restaking tokens, rsETH.
The aftermath has rippled across the DeFi, triggering collateral damage in multiple protocols, including leading lending platform Aave, where users rushed to withdraw funds because of the heightened uncertainty.
To date, decentralized finance has suffered roughly $7.78 billion in hacks, according to data from DeFiLlama. Bridge protocols — which enable the transfer of assets across blockchains — account for another $2.90 billion in losses. Combined, the figure exceeds $10 billion, roughly equivalent to the market capitalization of cryptocurrencies ranked between 10th and 15th globally.
Volo says it will publish a full post-mortem once its investigation is complete and remediation steps are finalized.
But for DeFi users and investors, a broader pattern is becoming harder to ignore: while institutional adoption is accelerating, relatively little of that capital appears to be flowing into improving security, with exploits continuing to arrive in clusters.
Read more: The $13 billion DeFi wipeout in two days, and it started with KelpDAO attack
Crypto World
Justin Sun Takes Legal Action Against World Liberty Financial Over Frozen Crypto Holdings
TLDR
- Justin Sun, founder of Tron, initiated legal proceedings against World Liberty Financial in California’s federal court system
- The lawsuit alleges WLFI improperly froze Sun’s token holdings, stripped voting privileges, and issued threats to destroy his assets
- Sun attempted private resolution before pursuing litigation
- A new governance measure would permanently lock tokens of holders who don’t consent to new terms
- Sun maintains his support for President Trump’s cryptocurrency initiatives despite the legal conflict
Justin Sun, the blockchain entrepreneur behind Tron, has initiated legal proceedings against World Liberty Financial—a cryptocurrency venture supported by the Trump family—in California’s federal court.
According to Sun’s complaint, the World Liberty Financial team improperly locked his token holdings, eliminated his governance voting capabilities, and issued threats to permanently destroy his investment without providing adequate justification.
Sun maintains he pursued private negotiation channels before resorting to legal action. When the WLFI management refused to restore access to his frozen assets, he determined that litigation was his only remaining recourse.
Previously recognized as World Liberty Financial’s most significant external investor, Sun has now emerged as the project’s most outspoken detractor.
On April 12th, Sun made public allegations that WLFI developers had secretly incorporated a blacklist mechanism within the project’s smart contract infrastructure. This hidden functionality, he asserts, grants the development team authority to freeze, limit, and essentially seize investor assets.
World Liberty Financial addressed these accusations on their social channels, dismissing them as “baseless allegations” and portraying Sun as someone “playing the victim.” The organization suggested imminent legal proceedings with the statement: “See you in court pal.”
The Governance Dispute
The situation intensified following World Liberty‘s April 15th release of a governance resolution. This measure proposes converting more than 62 billion WLFI tokens from unlimited lockup periods into predetermined vesting timelines.
The resolution establishes that founders, development personnel, and advisors would face a two-year token freeze, followed by incremental distribution across three additional years. Additionally, a 10% token destruction would occur upon proposal approval.
Investors declining to accept these revised conditions would see their holdings locked permanently under the current framework.
Sun characterized the resolution as “one of the most absurd governance scams” he’s encountered. He contends it masquerades as a governance initiative while actually functioning as an investor trap for those who don’t actively participate.
Due to his frozen token status, Sun reports he’s completely unable to participate in the voting process—neither in support nor opposition.
Sun Still Backs Trump Despite Legal Fight
Sun emphasized through his public statements that this legal action doesn’t represent opposition to President Trump or his administration’s initiatives.
“Unfortunately, certain individuals on the World Liberty project team have been operating the project in a manner that goes against President Trump’s values,” Sun wrote.
Sun reportedly ranks among the top holders of the TRUMP memecoin. This substantial investment secured him access to an exclusive cryptocurrency gala dinner in May 2025, where he received a commemorative watch during the event.
Analytical data from CoinCarp reveals 642,882 holders of the TRUMP memecoin currently exist. More than 91% of total supply concentration resides within the top 10 wallet addresses.
World Liberty Financial has not issued any official statement regarding the lawsuit when approached by journalists.
Crypto World
Mastercard Joins Blockchain Security Standards Council Alongside Coinbase and Fireblocks
Mastercard has joined the Blockchain Security Standards Council (BSSC) as a Charter-level member. The payments company will help shape security frameworks for blockchain networks and tokenized assets.
The announcement arrived on April 21, 2026, from Wakefield, Massachusetts. Mastercard will also join working groups that focus on security and privacy guidelines.
A Payments Giant Deepens Its Blockchain Commitment
The BSSC operates as a nonprofit consortium. It builds audit frameworks and security standards for digital asset ecosystems.
Mastercard joins a roster that already includes Coinbase, Fireblocks, and Anchorage Digital. BitGo, Figment, and Ribbit Capital also sit on the council.
Meanwhile, Claire Le Gal will represent Mastercard on the BSSC board. She leads Integrity and Standards at the firm’s Security Solutions unit.
Her team handles fraud prevention, cyber resilience, disputes, and threat intelligence. Therefore, her input should carry weight inside the council’s working groups.
Adam Rak serves as the council’s Executive Director. He called Mastercard’s payments experience valuable for setting strong blockchain security rules.
“Part of my job is to make life difficult for criminals,” Claire Le Gal, Mastercard Senior Vice President, said.
Why the Move Matters for Institutional Adoption
Mastercard already runs the Multi-Token Network and Crypto Credential products. Both aim to embed trust into blockchain and tokenized infrastructure.
The company launched Crypto Credential in 2023 to replace complex wallet addresses with simple aliases. In addition, the BSSC publishes its General Security and Privacy standard for blockchain operators.
However, fragmented security practices remain a hurdle for institutional capital. Unified standards could therefore speed up TradFi participation across digital asset markets.
The move signals that traditional finance now treats blockchain as critical infrastructure. Consequently, shared security rules look less optional and more essential.
Mastercard’s security team will feed guidance into BSSC working groups. Moreover, the company plans to share operational insights from decades of payments risk management.
The coming months will show whether the council’s standards gain traction beyond member firms. For now, blockchain governance has gained a major institutional voice. The BSSC can also point to Mastercard as proof that legacy finance wants to help write the rules.
The post Mastercard Joins Blockchain Security Standards Council Alongside Coinbase and Fireblocks appeared first on BeInCrypto.
A senior U.S. military commander has described Bitcoin as a cybersecurity tool with potential use in national defense.
Summary
- A U.S. military commander said Bitcoin can function as a cybersecurity tool, noting its proof-of-work design raises the cost for potential attackers.
- Lawmakers examined Bitcoin’s role in national security during a Senate hearing focused on Indo-Pacific threats and cyber risks from state-linked actors.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday, Samuel Paparo said Bitcoin’s role goes beyond financial use cases and can support security systems tied to U.S. strategic interests.
“It is a valuable computer science tool, as a power projection,” Paparo said, adding that the network’s proof of work design “imposes more cost” on attackers attempting to interfere with it.
“Outside of the economic formulation of it, it has got really important computer science applications for cybersecurity.”
The hearing focused on the U.S. military’s posture in the Indo-Pacific, with discussions spanning ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, China’s military activity, and threats linked to North Korea.
Paparo’s remarks follow earlier comments from Jason Lowery, who has argued that proof-of-work networks can be used to secure digital systems in a cyber conflict. He said Bitcoin is often seen only as a monetary system, while its design can also secure “all forms of data, messages, or command signals.”
State-linked cyber operations have increased in recent years, with attacks such as ransomware, phishing, and denial of service targeting infrastructure and financial systems. The Lazarus Group remains one of the most prominent examples, having stolen billions in crypto over the past decade, funds that U.S. officials say have supported North Korea’s nuclear program.
Paparo’s comments came after Tommy Tuberville asked how the U.S. could lead in Bitcoin-related competition, noting that Chinese policy groups are also examining the asset as a strategic tool. Paparo did not directly address policy steps but pointed to Bitcoin’s underlying structure.
“Bitcoin is a reality. It is a peer to peer zero trust transfer of value. Anything that supports all instruments of national power for the United States of America is to the good,” he said.
Concern over reliance on foreign-made mining hardware has also drawn attention in Washington, even as the U.S. holds the largest Bitcoin reserves among nation states and a significant share of global hashrate.
Last month, Bill Cassidy and Cynthia Lummis introduced the Mined in America Act, aimed at expanding domestic production of Bitcoin mining equipment. The proposal also seeks to formalize the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve established under an executive order signed by Donald Trump.
The attacker behind the roughly $290 million Kelp DAO exploit began moving tens of thousands of Ether to newly created blockchain addresses on Tuesday, in what appears to be an effort to start laundering the stolen funds.
The wallet tagged by Arkham as linked to the Kelp DAO exploit moved about 75,700 Ether (ETH) worth roughly $175 million across three transactions on Tuesday, including a 25,000 ETH transfer to one newly created address and transfers of 50,700 ETH and 0.7 ETH to another.
Blockchain investigator ZachXBT wrote in a Tuesday Telegram post that addresses tied to the exploit had begun moving funds through THORChain and Umbra. He flagged three THORChain transactions totaling about $1.5 million and a separate $78,000 transfer through Umbra.
On Saturday, an attacker drained about 116,500 restaked Ether (rsETH), worth roughly $290 million to $293 million at the time, from Kelp DAO’s LayerZero-powered rsETH bridge.
LayerZero said Kelp DAO’s 1/1 decentralized verifier network (DVN) setup created a single point of failure by relying on a single verifier path for cross-chain messages. LayerZero said it had previously advised against that configuration.
Fallout spreads across DeFi
The transfers came hours after Arbitrum said its 12-member security council had taken emergency action to freeze 30,766 ETH tied to the exploit and move the funds into an “intermediary frozen wallet” accessible only through Arbitrum governance.
The exploit also hit other DeFi protocols, including Aave, where the attacker used the stolen funds as collateral to borrow against the protocol. Early estimates put the hole at about $195 million, but Aave’s Monday incident report later outlined two potential outcomes: roughly $123.7 million in bad debt under one scenario and about $230.1 million under another.
The transfers suggest the attackers had begun moving funds through non-custodial protocols that can complicate tracing and recovery. THORChain does not require traditional Know Your Customer checks.
During the $1.4 billion Bybit hack in 2025, attackers converted about 83% of the stolen Ether into Bitcoin (BTC), with 72% of the funds moving through THORChain, according to Bybit CEO Ben Zhou. Zhou said at the time that 77% of the stolen funds were still traceable.
Related: ZachXBT asks MemeCore to explain valuation and token supply
Aave unfreezes Ethereum V3 market as borrow rates spike
On Tuesday, Aave said it had unfrozen Wrapped Ether (WETH) reserves on the Ethereum Core V3 market, enabling users to supply WETH to the V3 lending protocol once again. However, WETH reserves across Ethereum Prime, Arbitrum, Base, Mantle and Linea remain frozen.
Meanwhile, the thinning liquidity saw Aave’s borrowing rates for USDt (USDT) rise from 3% to 14%, marking the highest figures since December 2024, wrote Julio Moreno, the head of research at analytics platform CryptoQuant, in a Monday X post.
Fears over a potential contagion caused significant outflows from Aave, as its total value locked (TVL) fell by about $10 billion since the exploit to $16.4 billion as of Tuesday, DefiLlama data shows.
Magazine: 53 DeFi projects infiltrated, 50M NEO tokens could be ‘given back’: Asia Express
Banks are moving onchain through competing models that take different approaches to how financial rules are enforced.
On the one hand are blockchain-native builders like Matter Labs co-founder Alex Gluchowski, who argue that financial systems require rules to be enforced across all participants. On the other are networks built for institutions like Canton, which prioritize privacy, control and interoperability over global state.
Gluchowski is among the most vocal critics of the latter approach, arguing it reproduces the limitations of traditional finance in a new form. The core of the critique is whether rules can be enforced across an entire network. That’s not possible in systems like Canton, he claimed.
“But they are possible with blockchains — specifically with zero-knowledge systems anchored to public blockchains like Ethereum, which is an environment all parties can trust because it cannot be captured by any single corporate interest,” Gluchowski told Cointelegraph.
Crypto’s institutional adoption is bringing banks and financial institutions onchain, but it’s also splitting the industry along a deeper fault line than geography or regulation.
What counts as a blockchain?
Canton has gained traction by targeting privacy and regulatory requirements, connecting banks and asset managers through a network where transactions are shared only with relevant counterparties rather than broadcast system-wide. The network includes institutional participants such as JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs.
Whether Canton counts as a blockchain depends on how the term is defined and what properties it is expected to guarantee.
For Gluchowski, a blockchain’s core feature is a single shared ledger that allows rules to be enforced across all participants at once. He claimed Canton does not qualify. The network connects institutions through bilateral or trilateral relationships, where each party sees and verifies the transactions it is directly involved in.
“Before blockchains, banks had to enter bilateral relationships and define how they handle edge cases through contracts and API interactions,” Gluchowski said. “It’s just taking these existing relationships and workflows and putting them into a tokenized form.”
Gluchowski said Canton’s model limits what the system can guarantee. While participants can verify the transactions they are directly involved in, they cannot independently verify system-wide properties such as total asset supply or other rules that apply across all users. He added that those kinds of guarantees require a shared state that everyone can check.
Related: Privacy tools are rising behind institutional adoption, says ZKsync dev
“[Gluchowski] is correct that Canton does not have a global shared state, but he is incorrect in implying that this negatively affects Canton’s trust model,” Shaul Kfir, co-founder of Digital Asset, responded through a statement shared with Cointelegraph.
“In Canton, as in all other blockchains, I only trust my own validator and assume anyone else can be malicious. This ‘don’t trust, verify’ approach is very different from a distributed API system,” Kfir added.
In Canton’s model, trust does not come from a single system-wide view, but from each party independently checking the transactions it is involved in.
Network rules clash with issuer control
Following the conversation with Cointelegraph, Gluchowski took part in a live debate with another Digital Asset co-founder, Yuval Rooz. He reiterated his argument that financial rules must be enforced across an entire network in a blockchain network.
Rooz countered that system-wide enforcement doesn’t eliminate reliance on trusted parties, as public blockchain users still depend on token issuers. Rooz pointed to hacks that involved assets like USDC to argue that issuers remain the key enforcement mechanism.
Related: Instant settlement strains crypto’s capital efficiency: Ethan Buchman
“Actually, we would have been happier — as we’ve seen a lot of the crypto space saying if the centralized issuer were to intervene sooner rather than allowing these assets being traded and swapped into permissionless assets where then they can no longer interfere,” Rooz said.
“On Canton, no different than any other public chain, the issuer is centralized in real world assets, and they have different properties or similar properties to what they would have on public permissionless chains,” he added.
Gluchowski argued that issuance limits can be embedded directly into smart contracts. He said that on networks like Ethereum, activity beyond a certain threshold can be restricted or require additional approval, rather than relying solely on the issuer’s infrastructure.
“On Canton, you rely solely on the multisig. On Ethereum, you rely on smart contracts that are enforced by the network,” Gluchowski said.
“It’s just absolutely not true,” Rooz replied.
Kfir, whose statement was shared with Cointelegraph after the live debate, said that Gluchowski is “confusing the capabilities of Canton” with how it is used by centralized RWA issuers.
“When there’s a centralized RWA issuer, e.g. a stablecoin issuer, you’re already trusting them with the ‘mint’ function, and you’re trusting them and their auditors that the amount onchain is backed by reserves off-chain,” Kfir said.
Competing visions for bringing banks onchain
Canton and Matter Labs are competing to solve the same problem of how institutional finance moves onchain. Matter Labs, the developer of ZKsync, is targeting institutional use cases with Prividium, a model that keeps transactions private while anchoring verification to Ethereum through zero-knowledge proofs.
Kfir argued that systems like Prividium risk concentrating trust in a different place. In his view, users are no longer independently validating the relevant state, forcing them to reconcile their own records against what an operator reports happened onchain.
“ZKsync relies on Prividium operators who create ZKPs, but ZKsync’s own open source client doesn’t verify these proofs,” he said. “And even if a user does verify, it doesn’t verify which smart contract logic is running. The user is completely at the mercy of the Prividium operator.”
Rooz did concede one point during the debate, which is that Canton does not have public verifiability, while adding that there are plans to introduce it in the future.
For now, the divide remains unresolved. Canton is built around privacy and institutional control, while ZKsync’s Prividium attempts to preserve those features while anchoring verification to a public network. Both claim to offer a viable path for bringing banks onchain, but they are built on fundamentally different assumptions about how financial systems should work.
Magazine: Adam Back says current demand is ‘almost’ enough to send Bitcoin to $1M
Key Takeaways
- Kalshi is preparing to introduce perpetual futures contracts for cryptocurrency trading in the U.S. market
- The initial rollout will feature perpetuals linked to digital assets including Bitcoin
- The platform operates under CFTC regulatory oversight and secured recent authorization for margin trading capabilities
- This expansion creates intensified rivalry with established players like Coinbase, Crypto.com, and Gemini
- Competing prediction platform Polymarket has similarly disclosed intentions to enter the perpetual futures arena
Kalshi, primarily recognized for its prediction market operations, is gearing up to introduce perpetual futures trading for cryptocurrencies within U.S. borders. According to a report from The Information, sources with knowledge of the initiative have confirmed the development.
https://twitter.com/CoinMarketCap/status/2046633854945902850?s=20
The platform intends to begin its offering with perpetual futures contracts connected to major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. These derivative instruments enable market participants to take positions on price movements without directly purchasing the underlying digital assets, and they feature no set expiration timeline.
Differing from conventional futures contracts, perpetual futures can remain open indefinitely provided the trader maintains adequate collateral backing. The mechanism keeps contract prices aligned with spot market values through periodic transfers between long and short position holders, commonly referred to as funding rate mechanisms.
Perpetual futures contracts have dominated trading activity on international crypto platforms for numerous years. BitMEX pioneered the widespread adoption of this contract structure within cryptocurrency markets. Currently, U.S.-based trading venues are working aggressively to establish domestic alternatives.
[[LINK_START_0]]Kalshi[[LINK_END_0]] operates under Commodity Futures Trading Commission supervision. The company maintains several CFTC licenses and just obtained clearance to provide margin trading services, establishing the regulatory foundation necessary for lawful derivatives operations.
CFTC Chair Michael Selig has indicated these financial products may soon become accessible to U.S. traders, as regulatory bodies work to redirect transaction volume from unregulated international platforms.
Intensifying Rivalry in Derivatives Markets
This strategic pivot places Kalshi in heightened competition with Coinbase. Coinbase has been broadening its derivatives portfolio and has unveiled products resembling perpetuals through extended-expiration futures contracts available to international clients. The exchange has yet to launch authentic perpetual contracts for U.S. customers.
Kraken has similarly deployed tokenized equity perpetual futures for its international user base. Meanwhile, Crypto.com and Gemini have rolled out prediction market offerings, demonstrating the growing convergence between these two financial sectors.
Earlier this week, Polymarket, another prediction market operator and Kalshi’s direct competitor, announced via X that it intends to launch perpetual futures products. Additional specifics were not disclosed.
Daily trading volumes for perpetual futures across cryptocurrency markets currently sit at approximately half their historical peaks but still reached close to $20 billion on Tuesday, based on DeFiLlama analytics.
The Convergence of Prediction Markets and Cryptocurrency Trading
Cryptocurrency trading activity has contracted in recent months amid broader market weakness. Simultaneously, prediction market engagement has experienced substantial growth, attracting both participants and investment funding.
This dynamic has prompted crypto exchanges to explore prediction market features while prediction platforms venture into crypto derivatives territory. Both sectors are now pursuing the same trader demographics.
Kalshi’s strategic expansion may ultimately reach beyond cryptocurrency assets. According to a source briefed on the plans, the company could eventually adapt the perpetual futures framework to additional asset categories.
The organization has not issued formal confirmation regarding launch schedules or specified which digital tokens beyond Bitcoin will receive initial support.
Coinbase’s quantum researchers have highlighted Algorand and Aptos’ work to prepare their networks for potential threats from quantum computing in a report on Tuesday, as they warned that other proof-of-stake chains may be more vulnerable to attacks.
Coinbase’s Independent Advisory Board on Quantum Computing and Blockchain released a paper outlining the threat that quantum computers pose to blockchains and suggested ways to prepare networks for the technology.
“A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could one day break the cryptography that secures digital assets across major blockchains,” Coinbase said. “The board has high confidence this type of machine will eventually be built.”
Quantum computers are an emerging technology expected to be significantly more powerful than today’s top supercomputers, which has some crypto analysts worried that the technology could eventually crack blockchains’ algorithms and break into crypto wallets.
Algorand and Aptos more prepared for quantum
Coinbase said in its report that the layer-1 blockchain Algorand has a “staged roadmap toward full quantum readiness,” and is among the first networks to have deployed cryptography designed to be secure against quantum computers.
“At the transaction and execution layers, Algorand already provides the cryptographic tools necessary to support quantum-resistant accounts,” the report said, adding that users can create such accounts “without requiring protocol modifications.”
It added that Algorand had recently completed its first quantum-resistant transaction on mainnet, but block proposals and committee voting mechanisms “remain vulnerable to quantum attacks,” which the blockchain is researching ways to secure.
Coinbase said that Aptos, a competing layer-1 blockchain, was “well positioned for the transition to post-quantum secure transactions.”
It explained that on Aptos, a user’s public key is stored as metadata associated with the account, and a user’s address isn’t derived from the hash of the user’s public key.
“Users who want to become post-quantum secure need only sign a transaction that updates their authentication key to a post-quantum public key,” Coinbase said. “There is no need to move assets to a new account.”
Proof-of-stake chains may be at greater risk
Coinbase warned that proof-of-stake blockchains, including Ethereum and Solana, may be at greater risk to quantum computing because of the signature schemes validators use to secure the network, according to the board.
Related: Adam Back says Bitcoin’s post-quantum shift may reveal true Satoshi stash
However, Coinbase acknowledged that Solana has created a new signature scheme, and users can move their tokens to a new address based on the upgraded scheme and will be “no longer exposed to a quantum attacker.”
Ethereum, too, “has a clear roadmap to address this in the near future,” Coinbase said, which includes upgrading signatures to be quantum-resistant.
The report also discussed how networks could deal with quantum-vulnerable tokens and wallets, suggesting that blockchains could tell their users to migrate to quantum-proof wallets and that wallets with assets that are quantum-vulnerable would be revoked and lost forever.
However, the board said that the threat of quantum computing “doesn’t exist yet,” as a computer that could threaten crypto “would need to be orders of magnitude more powerful than anything available today,” which could take at least a decade.
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Sullivan & Cromwell’s Andrew Dietderich said the company has AI policies to prevent incorrect citations and other errors, but procedures weren’t followed on this occasion.
Wall Street law firm Sullivan & Cromwell has apologized to a federal judge after submitting a court filing that contained around 40 incorrect citations and other errors caused by AI hallucinations.
“We deeply regret that this has occurred,” Andrew Dietderich, co-head of Sullivan & Cromwell’s global restructuring team, wrote Friday in a letter to Chief Judge Martin Glenn of the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.
“The Firm and I are keenly aware of our responsibility to ensure the accuracy of all submissions including under Local Bankruptcy Rule 9011-1(d), and I take responsibility for the failure to do so,” he said of an emergency motion filed nine days earlier.
The incident highlights the risk AI tools can pose in high-stakes professional work without proper oversight. A database managed by legal technologist Damien Charlotin has recorded 1,334 incidents of AI hallucinations in court filings around the world, including more than 900 in the US.
Charlotin pointed out that most of these hallucinations involve fabricated citations, though AI-generated legal arguments have also occasionally been identified.
Dietderich said Sullivan & Cromwell has policies in place for the use of AI tools, which include a review of the citations it uses, but said the policies weren’t followed.
“Regrettably, this review process did not identify the inaccurate citations generated by AI, nor did it identify other errors that appear to have resulted in whole or in part from manual error.”
Sullivan & Cromwell is one of the largest law firms in the US by revenue, ranking 30th on the AmLaw Global 200. The firm also represented crypto exchange FTX in its bankruptcy case.
Sullivan & Cromwell is conducting an internal investigation
Dietderich said the law firm took “immediate remedial measures,” including a full review of the circumstances that led to the errors.
Related: Coinbase’s AI payments protocol x402 launches app store for AI agents
The firm is also “evaluating whether further enhancements to its internal training and review processes are warranted,” Dietderich said.
Dietderich also noted that the errors were spotted by a rival law firm.
“I also called Boies Schiller Flexner LLP on Friday to thank them for bringing this matter to our attention and to apologize directly to them as well,” he said.
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