DeFi | Crypto

Many in the industry expect it could be weeks before lawmakers on the Senate Banking Committee return to consider a markup for the CLARITY Act. With a markup of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (CLARITY) in the US Senate Banking Committee postponed indefinitely, leaders in decentralized finance are using the delay to press lawmakers on concerns with the bill. Before Republican leaders on the Banking Committee moved late Wednesday to postpone the markup, crypto industry groups had raised concerns about provisions related to tokenized equities, stablecoin rewards and their potential impact on DeFi platforms. The DeFi Education Fund said on Wednesday that some proposed amendments could “seriously harm DeFi technology and/or make market structure legislation worse for software developers.” Crypto venture capital companies said the legislation would need revisions to address concerns around DeFi and developer protections. Read more

A growing amount of the blockchain industry’s fees are captured by DeFi protocols rather than the underlying networks, signaling a potential investor shift to front-end facing applications. Revenue in the crypto industry is increasingly flowing to user-facing applications rather than the underlying blockchain networks, according to recent data, signaling a potential shift in where investors and developers focus their attention. Decentralized finance (DeFi) applications now capture five times the fees generated by blockchains, according to data shared by Jamies Coutts, chief crypto analyst at crypto intelligence platform Real Vision. The trend suggests that more of the industry’s fees will be captured by DeFi applications like wallets, decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and other protocols, while the underlying networks will attract a smaller share of revenue. Read more

The integration marks a key step in the crypto exchange's second-phase rollout, bringing Uniswap’s markets directly to its layer-2 network. Uniswap has launched on X Layer, a layer-2 blockchain built by crypto exchange OKX, becoming the chain’s preferred decentralized exchange as OKX expands its decentralized finance footprint. The integration gives X Layer users access to Uniswap’s markets, including crypto token pairs and liquidity pools, with swaps executed at layer-2 costs and no fees charged by Uniswap Labs, the protocol told Cointelegraph. Launched in 2024, X Layer is OKX's Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible network, serving as core infrastructure for its DeFi applications. The network is integrated with OKX’s wallet and exchange, allowing users to move assets into the layer-2 network. Read more

The latest push to establish a comprehensive U.S. crypto market structure framework hit a snag this week, but leaders in DeFi don’t seem alarmed by the collapse.

Vitalik Buterin argues DeFi still lacks resilient decentralized stablecoins, highlighting benchmark risk, oracle design flaws and staking-driven incentives. A decentralized stablecoin aims to maintain a stable value while being issued and managed onchain, without relying on a single company to mint or redeem dollars. Stablecoins are already central to decentralized finance (DeFi). Because fiat money is not native to blockchains, stablecoins perform the day-to-day role of moving value between protocols and acting as collateral. Read more

The eight-figure investment in Genius Trading highlights how execution-focused tools are gaining relevance as crypto trading activity spreads across blockchains. YZi Labs, an independent investment firm led by Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, has invested in onchain trading terminal Genius Trading, highlighting growing investor attention on cross-chain trading infrastructure. While financial terms were not disclosed, YZi Labs said Tuesday that it made an eight-figure investment in the company. Zhao is also joining Genius Trading as an advisor, according to the announcement. The investment suggests that cross-chain trading terminals are increasingly being viewed as core market infrastructure rather than purely user-facing tools, as activity continues to spread across multiple blockchains and liquidity venues.  Read more

Following a rejected governance vote, Stani Kulechov laid out a plan to expand beyond DeFi lending and reshape how tokenholders capture value. Aave founder and CEO Stani Kulechov has outlined a broader strategic vision for the protocol following a contentious governance vote that rejected a proposal to transfer control of Aave’s brand assets and intellectual property to its decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). The failed vote has prompted renewed debate within the Aave community over the protocol’s long-term direction and governance structure, an issue Kulechov addressed directly. In a post published Friday on the Aave governance forum, Kulechov argued that the protocol must evolve beyond its core decentralized finance (DeFi) lending business to pursue opportunities in real-world assets (RWAs), institutional lending and consumer-facing financial products.  Read more

Lighter’s LIT token launch sparked debate over insider ownership, while prediction markets and whale trades revealed divided expectations regarding valuation. Lighter, one of the fastest-growing perpetual decentralized exchanges (DEXs), drew mixed reactions in the decentralized finance (DeFi) community after unveiling the tokenomics of its new Lighter Infrastructure Token (LIT). Under its structure, 50% of LIT’s supply is reserved for the ecosystem, while the remaining 50% is allocated to the team and investors, with a one-year cliff and a multi-year vesting schedule. As part of the rollout, Lighter said it had already distributed 25% of LIT’s total supply through an airdrop tied to its first two points seasons, which ran throughout 2025. Read more

RWA protocols have overtaken decentralized exchanges by total value locked, as tokenized Treasurys, private credit and commodities become core onchain building blocks. Real-world asset (RWA) protocols are one of decentralized finance’s (DeFi’s) winners in 2025, overtaking decentralized exchanges (DEXs) to become the fifth-largest category by total value locked (TVL), according to DefiLlama.  RWAs now account for about $17 billion in TVL, up from $12 billion in Q4 2024, highlighting how quickly tokenized Treasurys, private credit and other real-world claims have moved from niche experiments to core DeFi plumbing. As DefiLlama noted, “At the start of this year, they weren’t even in the top 10 categories.”  Vincent Liu, chief investment officer at Kronos Research, told Cointelegraph that RWA growth is being driven by “balance-sheet incentives rather than experimentation,” with higher-for-longer rates making tokenized Treasurys and private credit attractive as onchain, yield-bearing assets, amid improving regulat...

David Sacks announced on Dec. 18 that Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott and Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman confirmed a January 2026 markup for the CLARITY Act. “We look forward to finishing the job in January!” The problem: a January markup isn't finishing anything. It's the opening move in a multi-year pipeline where the most […] The post CLARITY Act explicitly leaves DeFi rules blank, risking a total retail protection collapse if negotiations fail appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The Maple Finance CEO says institutions will stop distinguishing between DeFi and TradFi as private credit moves onchain, and stablecoins process $50 trillion in payments.

Arthur Hayes rotates over $3M from Ethereum into DeFi tokens as ETH consolidates, signaling a liquidity-driven shift toward yield-focused crypto opportunities. The post Ethereum Price Prediction: Hayes Moves $3M as ETH Loses Momentum to DeFi appeared first on Cryptonews.

Securitize plans to launch compliant, natively tokenized stocks in early 2026, enabling real equity ownership to trade 24/7 fully onchain. Securitize, a company focused on tokenizing securities, said Tuesday it plans to launch what it calls the first compliant, onchain trading experience for public stocks that are issued as tokens representing real share ownership. According to the announcement, Securitize’s stock product is expected to launch in the first quarter of 2026. The company said the offering is designed to avoid structures that mirror stock prices without conveying ownership, and instead, the tokens “are real, regulated shares: issued onchain, recorded directly on the issuer’s cap table.” It also said trading will be presented in a “swap-style” interface familiar to users of decentralized finance (DeFi). Read more

As crypto platforms explore prediction market integrations, retention data highlights why sustaining user engagement remains one of the industry’s most challenging tasks. While attracting new users may not be a core challenge for crypto, keeping them active beyond the first month is far more difficult, and data from prediction markets is spotlighting the issue.  Polymarket retention data, compiled by analytics company Dune and market maker Keyrock, tracked monthly cohorts of new active users and measured the number of users who returned to trade in subsequent months.  According to the report, which sampled 275 crypto projects spanning networks, decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, wallets and trading apps, Polymarket’s average retention outperformed over 85% of protocols.  Read more

For two years, decentralized finance operated on the concept that purely crypto-native assets could serve as the monetary base for a parallel financial system. Ethereum staked through Lido anchored billions in DeFi loans, wrapped Bitcoin backed perpetual swaps, and algorithmic stablecoins recycled protocol emissions into synthetic dollars. The entire edifice assumed crypto could bootstrap its […] The post How tokenized US Treasuries are replacing DeFi’s foundation appeared first on CryptoSlate.

With the US Senate set to break for the holidays, Senator Elizabeth Warren asked Justice and Treasury Department officials to disclose any potential investigations into the DeFi platform. US Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of the more outspoken voices against digital assets in Congress, is calling for answers from Justice Department and Treasury Department officials about a potential investigation into decentralized crypto exchanges, citing concerns over PancakeSwap and Uniswap.  In a Monday letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Attorney General Pam Bondi, Warren asked whether their respective departments were “investigating significant national security risks posed by decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges like PancakeSwap.” The Massachusetts senator raised concerns about “improper political influence” from the Trump administration over the selective enforcement of crypto companies and reports of money laundering tied to North Korea, asking for a response by Jan. 12. Read more

The UK's FCA launched three consultations on new crypto market rules covering exchanges, staking, lending and DeFi, with feedback due Feb. 12, 2026. The United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) launched a series of consultations on proposed rules for digital asset markets, marking the next phase in the government’s effort to establish a comprehensive regulatory framework for crypto assets. The proposals, published across three consultation papers, cover crypto trading platforms, intermediaries, staking, lending and borrowing, market abuse, disclosures and decentralized finance (DeFi). The FCA said consultation responses will be open until Feb. 12, 2026. The regulator said the proposals aim to support innovation while ensuring that consumers understand the risks associated with crypto investment. It added that regulations should not eliminate risks entirely, but should ensure that participants operate responsibly and transparently.  Read more

The DeFi Education Fund has led a rebuttal to Citadel Securities’ call for the SEC to bring DeFi platforms under securities laws if dealing in tokenized stocks. A group of crypto organizations has pushed back on Citadel Securities’ request that the Securities and Exchange Commission tighten regulations on decentralized finance when it comes to tokenized stocks. Andreessen Horowitz, the Uniswap Foundation, along with crypto lobby groups the DeFi Education Fund and The Digital Chamber, among others, said they wanted “to correct several factual mischaracterizations and misleading statements” in a letter to the SEC on Friday. The group was responding to a letter from Citadel earlier this month, which urged the SEC not to give DeFi platforms “broad exemptive relief” for offering trading of tokenized US equities, arguing they could likely be defined as an “exchange” or “broker-dealer” regulated under securities laws. Read more

Coinbase has plugged directly into Solana’s fast-growing DeFi ecosystem, letting users trade any Solana token via DEX rails without a formal listing. Coinbase is moving deeper into the Solana ecosystem, letting users trade native Solana tokens through a decentralized exchange integration rather than traditional listings. Andrew Allen, Coinbase protocol specialist, said in an X post that Coinbase now allows its users to trade all Solana (SOL) tokens through a decentralized exchange (DEX) integration, “without listings,” he noted, adding that “very soon you will be able to open the Coinbase app and see native Solana assets on Coinbase.” “For issuers and builders, if your token has sufficient liquidity, this means you can be accessible to the millions of users on Coinbase without getting listed,” Allen said. Read more

The proposal, with input from major industry players, aims to bring tax rules in line with how DeFi works, reducing outcomes that don't reflect reality.