As Treasury yields sink, Spark’s $100 million move into Superstate’s regulated crypto carry fund signals DeFi’s pivot toward uncorrelated yield sources. Decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol Spark has rotated a portion of its treasury reserves from US government bonds into crypto-native yield strategies, signaling new approaches to onchain yield generation as Treasury returns continue to compress. On Thursday, Spark said it allocated $100 million of its stablecoin reserves to Superstate’s Crypto Carry Fund (USCC), a regulated basis-trading fund that generates yield from price differentials between spot and futures markets across major digital assets. The fund allows DeFi protocols to earn market-neutral yield from the same derivatives markets traditionally used by hedge funds. According to Superstate’s website, USCC manages about $528 million in assets and currently produces a 30-day yield of 9.26%. Read more
Current laws in the United States do not explicitly protect open source software developers and create the risk of retroactive prosecution. Roman Storm, a developer of the Tornado Cash privacy-preserving protocol, asked the open source software community whether they are concerned with being retroactively prosecuted by the US Department of Justice for developing decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms. Storm asked DeFi developers: “How can you be so sure you won’t be charged by the DOJ as a money service business for building a non-custodial protocol?” The DOJ could prosecute a case, arguing that any decentralized, non-custodial service should have been developed as a custodial service, as it did in the case against him, Storm added, citing his recent motion for acquittal, which was filed on September 30. Read more
Babylon unveils a proof-of-concept for using native Bitcoin in DeFi lending, as BNB Chain and Hyperliquid post major updates. Bitcoin infrastructure company Babylon Labs claimed to have developed a system that enables native Bitcoin to be used as collateral for borrowing assets on Ethereum. Babylon Labs co-founder and Stanford University professor David Tse said on Wednesday that the company built a proof-of-concept that allows native Bitcoin to be used “trustlessly” as collateral for loans on Ethereum. The comments follow a white paper release from the company, revealing a Bitcoin trustless vault system that leverages Bitcoin smart contract verification BitVM3 to lock BTC in per-user vaults. Here, withdrawals are gated by proofs of external smart contract state verified on Bitcoin. Read more
Democratic senators have been criticized for pitching a counter-proposal to the market structure bill that could effectively “kill DeFi.” Despite previously supporting a crypto market structure bill, several Democratic US senators have reportedly introduced a counter-proposal that could see decentralized finance protocols placed on a “restricted list” if deemed too risky. This move, among others they proposed, could “kill DeFi” or move it offshore from the US, according to critics. The Senate Banking Committee Democrats sent a proposal to the committee’s Republicans on Thursday seeking to impose Know Your Customer rules on the frontends of crypto apps — including non-custodial wallets — and to strip protections from crypto developers, Punchbowl News reported on Thursday. Read more
DeFi TVL reached a record $237 billion in the third quarter of 2025, but DApp wallet activity fell 22% as SocialFi and AI DApps lost momentum. The decentralized application (DApp) industry ended the third quarter of 2025 with mixed results, as decentralized finance (DeFi) liquidity surged to a record high while user activity fell sharply, according to new data from DappRadar. In a report sent to Cointelegraph, DappRadar said that daily unique active wallets averaged 18.7 million in Q3, down 22.4% compared to the second quarter. Meanwhile, DeFi protocols collectively locked in $237 billion, the highest total value locked (TVL) ever recorded in the space. The report highlights an ongoing divergence between institutional capital flowing into blockchain-based financial platforms and the engagement of retail users with DApps. While DeFi TVL reached record levels of liquidity, overall activity lagged, suggesting weaker retail participation. Read more
Fully Homomorphic Encryption could unlock trillions in traditional finance for DeFi by enabling private lending, encrypted credit scores and confidential transactions. Opinion by: Jason Delabays, blockchain ecosystem lead at Zama Despite decentralized finance’s (DeFi) recent resurgence, most capital in traditional finance remains out of reach. Most will blame scalability, regulation or poor UX. The real blocker is far more fundamental: a lack of confidentiality. Solve that, and trillions will be unlocked. At its December 2021 peak, DeFi’s total value locked (TVL) hit an incredible $260 billion. Zoom out, however, and that figure starts to feel small, especially when the global financial system moves trillions every day. Foreign exchange alone sees over $7.5 trillion traded daily, and the global bond market’s worth more than $130 trillion. Read more
1inch co-founder Sergej Kunz said centralized crypto exchanges will gradually fade and serve only as frontends for decentralized finance. Centralized crypto exchanges could disappear within the next decade as decentralized finance (DeFi) aggregators take over, according to 1inch co-founder Sergej Kunz. In an interview with Cointelegraph at Token2049 in Singapore, Kunz predicted that exchanges will slowly transition into frontends for decentralized exchanges (DEXs). “I think it will take like five to 10 years,” he said. Kunz argued that while centralized exchanges are isolated markets, 1inch and its aggregator act as a global liquidity hub. His comments came as 1inch announced a deal with major US crypto exchange Coinbase, integrating its service to provide DEX trading to its users. Read more
The crypto exchange integrates Morpho lending into its app, letting USDC users tap DeFi yields of up to 10.8%. Coinbase is rolling out a new way for users to earn yields on their USDC holdings, marking one of the exchange’s first large-scale integrations with decentralized finance (DeFi) at a time of accelerating stablecoin adoption. The company announced Thursday that it is integrating the Morpho lending protocol, with vaults curated by DeFi advisory company Steakhouse Financial, directly into the Coinbase app. The move will allow users to lend USDC (USDC) without navigating third-party DeFi platforms or wallets. Coinbase already pays up to 4.5% APY in rewards for holding USDC on its platform. With the new DeFi lending option, however, users can tap into onchain markets and potentially earn yields of up to 10.8% as of Wednesday, according to Coinbase. Read more
AI-powered DeFi creates new security risks. This calls for transparent, rigorous auditing to protect decentralized systems. Opinion by: Jason Jiang, chief business officer of CertiK Since its inception, the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem has been defined by innovation, from decentralized exchanges (DEXs) to lending and borrowing protocols, stablecoins and more. The latest innovation is DeFAI, or DeFi powered by artificial intelligence. Within DeFAI, autonomous bots trained on large data sets can significantly improve efficiency by executing trades, managing risk and participating in governance protocols. Read more