Coinbase Invests in Hyperliquid, USDe Gains 550M+ on Solana, and many more...

May 18, 2026

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DeFi📈

Hyperliquid announced USDC will replace USDH as its primary margin and quote asset via AQAv2, with Coinbase as treasury deployer and Circle handling cross-chain infrastructure. Additionally, Coinbase significantly increased its existing staked HYPE position. USDH markets will sunset over time with feeless conversions to USDC available during transition.
Euler Finance is taking over HypurrFi’s Mewler markets on HyperEVM, with HypurrFi winding down its Pooled and Scale markets by July 15. All positions remain safe with no security breach. Pooled borrowers should migrate to Euler Prime or Yield markets via the built-in migration tool sooner rather than later as rates will rise during the wind-down.
Aave has restored WETH LTVs to pre-incident levels across Ethereum Core, Ethereum Prime, Arbitrum, Base, Mantle, and Linea, marking another completed step in the rsETH technical recovery plan. Users can now borrow against WETH normally across all affected V3 deployments.
Uniswap is expanding protocol fee collection to three additional blockchain networks following successful implementation on Ethereum mainnet in December, using an expedited governance process that bypasses standard review stages.
21Shares launched the Hyperliquid ETF (THYP) on May 12, offering US investors exposure to HYPE without direct token ownership.
Tydro has completed its oracle migration from Chaos Labs to Chainlink Data Feeds, with every market now reading from decentralized price data. Ink Points distribution on a weekly basis, with 218,000 points available this week across USDT0, WETH, kBTC, USDC, USDG, and GHO markets.

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Issues⚠️

Ranger Finance is winding down after a delayed MetaDAO raise, accumulated bills, and the Drift exploit drained remaining capital, with the co-founder acknowledging employees and vendors were left unpaid despite founders injecting personal funds. Vault users affected by the Drift exploit will receive Drift recovery tokens when distributed.
Resolv has reached a recovery agreement with Fluid, with pre-incident positions made whole by Resolv and post-incident bad debt split equally between both protocols. Settlement completes May 11. This is a developing story.
Stream Finance has announced it is exploring strategic alternatives to consolidate, liquidate, and distribute assets to customers and creditors, with legal counsel from Cooley LLP advising on the process. Further details are expected within the next few weeks. This is a developing story.
Adshares lost approximately $628K after an attacker used the bridge-minter EOA to mint approximately 1.2M wADS via fake native chain transaction IDs, dumping the tokens through Uniswap V4 for ~148.5 ETH and ~$305K USDC. This is a developing story.
Aurellion Labs was exploited for approximately $455,000 in USDC after an unprotected initializer in its SafeOwnable Facet allowed an attacker to reinitialize the contract, overwrite ownership, inject a malicious facet, and drain approved USDC from victim addresses.
Transit Finance appears to have been exploited for approximately $1.88M in DAI on Ethereum, with funds reportedly originating from Tron. The root cause remains unclear. Transit has sent an on-chain message offering a bounty for the return of funds within 48 hours. This is a developing story.
SQ Protocol on BNB Chain was exploited for approximately $346,000 after an attacker abused a hardcoded owner backdoor in the staking contract, minting fake staking claims and draining USDT through repeated unstake calls before dumping SQi tokens into the PancakeSwap liquidity pool.

Stablecoins/RWA🪙

3F, a leveraged RWA marketplace built on Morpho, launched private phase with features including exclusive borrow markets, pre-liquidation with custom liquidation premiums, and fixed rate borrowing coming soon.
Upshift launches Upshift Clear, instant redemption infrastructure for tokenized RWAs, fronting USDC instantly via Chainlink oracles. Liquidity providers deposit USDC, receive clrRWA, and earn fees with no underlying strategy exposure.
RISE, a perps focused chain, launched USDR, a T-bill-backed yield-bearing stablecoin built on M0, routing yield back to the ecosystem rather than the issuer to serve as the primary asset for trading, lending, and liquidity on the network.
Hastra, a RWA protocol originally launched on Solana, has expanded to Ethereum with its wYLDS and PRIME tokens now live. PRIME is available as collateral on Morpho Vaults curated by Sentora.
trade.xyz has launched a Pre-IPO Perpetual (IPOP) market for SpaceX (SPCX), launching at $150 per share with an implied reference market cap of $1.78T based on a fully diluted share count of 11.87B shares.

Privacy🔓

Arcane launched as a decentralized privacy layer on Solana, using zk technology to remove visible links between wallets and enable private onchain payments.

Prediction Markets🔮

Kalshi partnered with Interactive Brokers, to enable broker’s clients trade prediction markets directly within their existing trading environment alongside traditional portfolios. Initial markets will cover election outcomes, climate events, and economic indicators.

Perps DEX📉📈

Sushi has launched Perps v2, powered by Hyperliquid, with points earned on every trade.
Hotstuff has launched Hotstuff Invest, a 24/7 spot trading platform for tokenized stocks, ETFs, and crypto powered by xStocks, operating on a hybrid RFQ and order book model with Bebop as the first RFQ venue. Airdrops🪂
PancakeSwap launched a new perps platform powered by Aster DEX, featuring a full order book, one-tap Simple Mode, and up to 200x leverage, fully onchain.

Airdrops

Zest Protocol announced the upcoming ZEST token with a fixed supply of 1 billion, allocated 27.83% to community, 25% to team, 24.82% to ecosystem development, and 22.35% to investors. Season 1 airdrop recipients receive 2% of supply with 0.1% unlocking at TGE and the remainder vesting over six months. The token launches on Stacks and BNB Chain, with team and investor allocations subject to a one-year lock and three-year linear vesting.

Raises💰:

Saturn, a digital credit protocol layer built on STRC, has raised $2M led by Spartan Group with participation from Anchorage and Susquehanna Crypto. The protocol has grown to $125M in TVL since launch, offering USDat (T-bill-backed stablecoin) and sUSDat (STRC-backed RWA) across Morpho, Pendle, and Strata Markets.
a16z has announced a $75M investment in ARC, Circle’s native token for its Arc Layer-1 blockchain, describing Arc as an institutional-grade economic operating system built around USDC with sub-second settlement, configurable privacy, and known institutional validators.
Osero, a stablecoin savings protocol, has raised $13.5M led by Sky Ecosystem and Plasma to build embeddable savings accounts on top of Sky Protocol, allowing wallets, exchanges, and neobanks to offer stablecoin yield without becoming DeFi asset managers themselves.
Boundary has raised $2M in a pre-seed round led by Galaxy Ventures to build USBD, an overcollateralized institutional stablecoin on Ethereum with real-time onchain reserve verification and no yield, paired with a separate sUSBD token earning yield for eligible institutions. Launch is targeted for summer 2026 with a $100M TVL goal by year-end.

News🗞️

The Senate Banking Committee advanced the CLARITY Act in a bipartisan 15-9 vote on May 14, moving the crypto market-structure bill closer to a full Senate vote. The legislation would clarify SEC and CFTC jurisdiction over digital assets, while the announcement generated broad market and social-media attention across the crypto sector.
Kevin Warsh has been confirmed as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
Strategy has acquired an additional 535 BTC for approximately $43M at ~$80,340 per coin, bringing total holdings to 818,869 BTC acquired at an average price of ~$75,540 per bitcoin (~$61.86B total). BTC Yield stands at 9.4% YTD 2026.
JPMorgan has filed to launch the JPMorgan OnChain Liquidity-Token Money Market Fund (JLTXX) on Ethereum, investing exclusively in short-term US Treasuries, cash, and overnight repo agreements.
The US Senate has released an updated CLARITY Act draft permitting activity-based stablecoin rewards, with members filing over 100 amendments ahead of Thursday’s markup session.
Fidelity has endorsed the CLARITY Act following its Senate Banking Committee advancement, calling it a balanced framework that would provide statutory clarity for digital asset markets and strengthen US leadership in the sector.

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