Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko said a major upgrade to the network, dubbed Alpenglow, is expected to arrive as soon as this year, potentially within the next quarter, marking what he described as a pivotal step in the blockchain’s technical evolution.

“So the Alpenglow release is basically due sometime this year, I think next quarter,” Yakovenko said during a fireside panel at Consensus Miami 2026. “That, to me, is this exciting step in the evolution of the protocol.”

In simple terms, Alpenglow is about making Solana faster, more predictable and more secure at its core. Blockchains like Solana rely on a network of computers to agree on the order of transactions. Today, that process can introduce delays or uncertainty depending on network conditions.

Alpenglow aims to tighten those guarantees. Yakovenko described a system where transaction confirmations approach the physical limits of how fast information can travel, essentially, near the “speed of light” around the globe. For users and developers, that means quicker finality (knowing a transaction is permanently settled) and a more reliable foundation for building applications.

He framed the release of Alpenglow as a transition from Solana’s early innovations to a more mature phase focused on guarantees around performance and reliability.

The upgrade builds on Solana’s original design, which emphasized high throughput, like the ability to handle large volumes of transactions, but shifts focus toward consistency and timing precision. That matters for financial applications, where milliseconds can affect trading, payments or other time-sensitive activity.

If successful, Alpenglow could strengthen Solana’s pitch as infrastructure for global-scale financial systems, where both speed and certainty are critical.

“That, to me, is this exciting step in the evolution of the protocol,” Yakovenko said.

Read more: Solana Set for Major Overhaul After 98% Votes to Approve Historic ‘Alpenglow’ Upgrade

DeFi lending platform Aave has filed an emergency motion to vacate a request to seize $71 million worth of ether rescued by Arbitrum’s Security Council following April’s $290 million Kelp DAO hack.

It claims the restraining notice “is causing immediate harm, right this very moment, to blameless third parties,” i.e. Aave users affected by the hack’s fallout.

Law firm Gerstein Harrow filed the restraining notice on May 1, claiming that the stolen funds seized by “potential garnishee” Artbitrum are, in fact, North Korean property. 

The firm requested funds be turned over to “collect unpaid judgements” owed to their clients who had previously been awarded damages, which North Korea hasn’t paid.

Gerstein Harrow has previously taken action against a range of crypto projects, often seeking to stake a claim to North Korea-linked funds.

Read more: DeFi sector in $14B meltdown as $290M rsETH hack fallout burns Aave

Kelp DAO hack’s effects on Aave

April 18’s Kelp DAO hack exploited Layer Zero’s bridging infrastructure to fraudulently release $290 million rsETH tokens.

The hackers, suspected to be North Korea’s notorious Lazarus Group (due to on-chain connections to ByBit and BTC Turk hacks), borrowed $236 million of WETH against the stolen rsETH on Aave.

With outstanding loans made against partially unbacked collateral, Aave faced between $124 million and $230 million worth of bad debt.

Arbitrum Security Council’s rescue was the first step in a week-long effort to secure funding from across the DeFi ecosystem.

Read more: DeFi plays the blame game

DeFi United planned to use the funds to re-back rsETH, before force-liquidating the hackers’ positions via manual oracle adjustment.

That was until Gerstein Harrow threw a spanner in the works on Friday.

Aave has come out strongly against Gerstein Harrow’s theory that “momentary theft triggers possession rights.” It says the reasoning “defies logic, common sense, and the law.”

Comparing the argument to “the kindergarten adage ‘finders’ keepers’,” Aave points out that, even in that case, “the Arbitrum blockchain community has title, not North Korea.”

Judge Margaret Garnett has scheduled a remote court hearing for Wednesday, May 6 to discuss the developments.

Firm’s history of crypto lawsuits

Gerstein Harrow isn’t popular in the crypto community, to say the least.

Crypto security expert Taylor Monahan called the firm “worse than fucking ambulance chasers,” accusing it of attempting to secure a payday off other people’s work.

She points to a similar case involving $2.5 million of frozen USDC traced by fellow blockchain investigator ZachXBT.

ZachXBT also criticized the “predatory” firm for using his work to go after funds for a “victim from 26 years ago that has zero relation to crypto or exploits/hacks.”

Gerstein Harrow has previously brought legal action against DeFi and crypto projects related to PoolTogether, Railgun, Huobi and Nomad Bridge.

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Major US banking associations rejected the Clarity Act’s stablecoin yield compromise, splitting publicly from Coinbase and Circle

Major US banking associations publicly rejected the stablecoin yield compromise brokered by Senators Tillis and Alsobrooks in the Clarity Act. The banking groups argued the deal introduces systemic risk to traditional financial institutions, warning that yield-bearing stablecoins could drain trillions from the deposit base.

Standard Chartered analysts estimated the risk at up to $500 billion in deposit flight by 2028 if an open-ended yield provision were allowed.

Coinbase and Circle both backed the compromise immediately after it was announced, urging the Senate Banking Committee to proceed. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong posted “Mark it up” after the text dropped, and Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal said the language preserves activity-based rewards tied to real platform participation.

The split between banking associations and crypto trade groups now sits at the centre of the committee’s deliberations.

What the compromise actually says

The Tillis-Alsobrooks text draws a firm line: platforms cannot offer yield for simply holding a stablecoin. Rewards remain permissible only when tied to user activity, not passive balances. The framework gives the SEC, CFTC, and Treasury twelve months to define exactly what reward programs are permissible under the new language.

Banking associations, including the North Carolina Bankers Association, urged members to contact Senator Tillis’s office and demand changes, reopening a compromise they had helped negotiate just weeks earlier.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, speaking at Consensus 2026 in Miami on May 5, said he still believes the bill will pass, describing the past week as a “big positive shift” even as the committee vote remains unscheduled. The Memorial Day recess begins May 21, leaving a narrow window for either side to claim a win before the legislative clock runs out.

Congressman Steven Horsford told CoinDesk’s Consensus Miami conference Tuesday that his bipartisan PARITY Act is an incremental path forward in a Congress where Senate market-structure negotiations have stalled.

“PARITY is designed to set a durable floor, not to be the last word,” he said, noting that existing problems need to be resolved “clearly within the tax code’s jurisdiction in order to have the protection for the consumer, small businesses, and those who are owners of these assets to define whether it gets treated as income or capital gains.”

The Nevada Democrat co-authored the PARITY Act discussion draft with Republican Representative Max Miller of Ohio in December, and revised it on March 26. He told moderator Yesha Yadav that he prefers a narrow approach over comprehensive alternatives, including Sen. Cynthia Lummis’s proposal. The risk of a comprehensive bill, Horsford said, is that “it pairs genuinely helpful provisions with definitional language that is so broad that it creates other problems.”

PARITY’s headline provisions include a stablecoin-payments cost-basis test, a five-year tax-deferral election on staking and mining rewards and an extension of wash-sale rules to digital assets. Horsford said that while retirement account access is absent in present drafts, he considers it “something that I personally want to see, because in order to close the wealth gap, we have to be able to help people plan for their retirement. Digital assets are a way to do that. I know that there is genuine bipartisan appetite for us to work on this, but rushing it and just putting language in a bill without getting it right creates these unintended consequences.”

On the broader policy climate, Horsford said that Senate negotiations to advance the CLARITY Act between Senators Thom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks seem to be “on hold.” When asked whether bipartisan crypto legislation could pass before the November midterms, he declined to commit to a timeline.

“It’s less about a timeline and more about getting it right,” he said. “You can rush and pass a bill in Congress that has unintended consequences that you won’t be able to fix later.”

Analysts arriving at a study of open interest and on-chain trading patterns say some market participants may have positioned before Robinhood’s crypto listing announcements. A Kaiko data debrief points to conspicuous activity that, in some cases, preceded public signals by more than an hour and could reflect either privileged access or highly effective front-running strategies based on public indicators.

In one notable example, a single wallet identified as 0xa1EE1c4cbB40A7b3D15E30a59d3633361Cfb177 opened a long position on Lighter (LIT) via the Hyperliquid decentralized venue at 11:05 UTC on Jan. 15 — roughly an hour before Robinhood disclosed that it would list the token at 12:12 UTC. The position was closed at 13:00 UTC, shortly after the listing was announced. The same address later opened a HOOD-linked perpetual short on April 28, just before Robinhood reported first-quarter revenue that missed expectations, and closed the position later that day as HOOD moved lower.

Kaiko’s researchers emphasized that the behavior from this wallet was not an isolated incident. A broader pattern emerged as the firm tracked open interest, funding-rate changes, and volume around multiple Robinhood listings, suggesting that sophisticated traders were reacting to market microstructure signals rather than relying solely on private information.

“Traders who understand microstructure could have noticed funding spikes, increases in volumes and open interest, and positioned accordingly,” said Laurens Fraussen, a research analyst at Kaiko. “The data shows that more than one participant acted on similar signals ahead of the announcements.”

While the activity raises questions about possible access to non-public listing timelines, Kaiko noted that the patterns could also reflect a disciplined response to publicly observable signals, rather than a single insider channel. The firm stressed that the behavior was consistent with a broader class of front-running strategies that exploit public information in the minutes surrounding a listing event.

Beyond LIT, Kaiko highlighted other listings that exhibited a pre-announcement drift in price and indicators such as open interest and funding rates. Tokens like Zcash (ZEC), Synthetix (SNX), and Near Protocol (NEAR) showed abnormal returns in the hours leading up to and immediately after Robinhood’s public listing announcements. In each case, the data pointed to a drift that traders could observe and exploit, raising questions about market microstructure surrounding exchange listings.

The takeaway for traders and investors is twofold. On the one hand, the presence of recognizable pre-listing patterns—spiking funding rates, surges in volume, and rising open interest—could provide a framework for risk assessment and positioning around future listings. On the other hand, the recurrence of these moves across multiple assets implies either broader visibility into the listing pipeline or a robust methodology built on public signals that allow for timely front-running or quick repositioning.

Kaiko’s analysis underscores a tension at the heart of crypto markets: as exchanges and listing processes become more interconnected with on-chain activity, the line between legitimate market anticipation and potentially privileged information grows harder to draw. The firm remains cautious about drawing sweeping conclusions, noting that the same signals could be a proxy for highly informed microstructure traders exploiting observable metrics rather than private disclosures.

For market participants, the episode serves as a reminder to monitor the evolving dynamics of token listings, funding-rate behavior, and open-interest shifts as a guide to potential liquidity and volatility around announcements. The research also highlights the importance of distinguishing between insider access and savvy interpretation of public signals when assessing risk and opportunity around listings.

Sources: Kaiko data debrief on front-running Robinhood on-chain evidence of informed positioning; mapped timeline of LIT, HOOD, ZEC, SNX and NEAR around listing announcements.

Key takeaways

• Kaiko identifies pre-listing activity tied to Robinhood crypto announcements, including a notable LIT trade on Hyperliquid before the public listing.
• A single wallet, 0xa1EE1c4cbB40A7b3D15E30a59d3633361Cfb177, opened a long LIT position shortly before the listing and closed it after the announcement, then opened a HOOD perpetual short ahead of Q1 results and closed the position later the same day.
• The patterns extend beyond a single token, with ZEC, SNX, and NEAR also displaying pre-announcement price drift and related activity in open interest and funding rates.
• Analysts caution that these moves could reflect privileged access to listing timelines or highly effective use of public signals, rather than simply insider information.
• The findings highlight evolving market microstructure around listings and the need for traders to distinguish between signals and potential information advantages when assessing risk and opportunity.

Pre-listing activity and a notable wallet

The January instance illustrates how on-chain activity can precede a public listing reveal. The wallet’s long position on LIT was established at 11:05 UTC on Jan. 15, about an hour before Robinhood announced the token’s listing at 12:12 UTC. The position was liquidated at 13:00 UTC, shortly after the listing became public. A separate action on April 28 saw the same address place a short on a HOOD-linked perpetual contract, timed ahead of Robinhood’s quarterly results, and closed the position later that day as the asset moved lower.

Kaiko framed these moves as part of a broader set of signals—funding-rate spikes, rising volumes, and open-interest growth—that traders could monitor to anticipate listing-induced volatility. The evidence suggests that such microstructure dynamics may be more widespread than a single insider scenario, though the possibility of privileged access to the listing pipeline cannot be ruled out.

Broader pattern across tokens and what it implies

In addition to LIT, Kaiko drew attention to a range of assets that exhibited pre-announcement drift around Robinhood’s listing cadence. Zcash (ZEC), Synthetix (SNX), and Near Protocol (NEAR) were cited as examples where prices and on-chain metrics moved in anticipation of listings. The firm noted that these episodes often featured “abnormal returns” in the hours surrounding announcements, coupled with shifts in funding rates and open interest.

Fraussen emphasized that while such patterns could indicate insider-like access, they more plausibly reflect the actions of traders who have refined techniques for interpreting public signals. The consistency of these moves across multiple assets points to a systematic effect in the market microstructure around listings, rather than isolated incidents tied to a single token.

As the crypto market continues to mature, observers are paying closer attention to how listing activity interacts with on-chain trading and whether regulatory or exchange-level safeguards can keep pace with increasingly sophisticated trading practices. The debate over insider access versus signal-based front-running remains unresolved, but the signals tracked by Kaiko illuminate how market participants are adapting to more transparent timing around announcements.

Market microstructure impulses and investor watchpoints

For investors and traders, the implications are clear: listing announcements can trigger a sequence of on-chain and derivatives signals that precede the public reveal. The pattern observed by Kaiko suggests that a subset of market participants actively monitors funding-rate volatility, volume surges, and open-interest trajectories as early indicators of impending volatility. While these signals can present opportunities, they also underscore the risk of price movements that precede official disclosures and the potential for front-running behavior in a nascent but increasingly efficient market.

The broader takeaway is not to assume a single explanation but to recognize that the crypto market’s listing events are becoming more predictable in their microstructure dynamics. Traders who can interpret the interplay of funding pressure, liquidity shifts, and public signals may position more effectively, while others may face elevated risk around these disclosures.

Readers should watch for further Kaiko analysis as Robinhood continues to refine its listing cadence and as more asset classes and exchanges become intertwined with on-chain data. The evolving picture of how information, timing, and liquidity interact around listings will likely shape risk management and strategy for years to come.