News

The latest weekly report from JustLend DAO, a leading decentralized lending protocol on the TRON network, reveals that the platform's total value locked has exceeded $6.72 billion. According to ChainCatcher, the number of users has also surpassed 480,000. As a core DeFi infrastructure within the TRON ecosystem, JustLend DAO is demonstrating robust growth in the DeFi market, offering efficient on-chain lending services to users worldwide.

The InfoFi ecosystem has experienced a significant collapse, primarily attributed to its dependence on centralized platforms. According to NS3.AI, this downturn followed a policy change by X, formerly known as Twitter, which prohibited reward-based user posting. This shift led to the rapid disintegration of the ecosystem, affecting projects such as Kaito. Despite these challenges, the report suggests that certain projects with a strong product-market fit may endure and adapt. These projects could potentially evolve into a reimagined 'InfoFi 2.0' through strategic pivots.

Alchemy Pay has obtained a Money Transmitter License in Nebraska, bringing its total number of licensed states in the U.S. to 14. According to NS3.AI, this regulatory achievement strengthens Alchemy Pay's capacity to provide cryptocurrency payment services across the United States. The acquisition of this license marks a significant step in the company's strategic expansion within the U.S. market.

Decentralized lending protocol Aave has reported that its cumulative loan issuance from January 2020 to January 2026 is approaching $1 trillion. According to BlockBeats, this significant milestone highlights the growing influence and adoption of decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms in the financial sector. Aave's platform allows users to lend and borrow cryptocurrencies without the need for traditional financial intermediaries, contributing to its rapid growth and widespread use. The protocol's success reflects the increasing demand for decentralized financial services and the potential for further expansion in the coming years.

MakinaFi, a decentralized finance protocol, has been exploited for 1,299 ETH, equating to approximately $4.13 million. According to NS3.AI, the stolen assets have been transferred to two new cryptocurrency addresses. This incident underscores the persistent security challenges faced by DeFi platforms.

A user has reportedly lost approximately $3.02 million in SLVon and XAUt due to a phishing signature. According to Foresight News, the incident was monitored by Scam Sniffer, highlighting the risks associated with signing fraudulent transactions. This event underscores the importance of vigilance in digital asset management to prevent similar occurrences.

A senior security researcher at a16z Crypto, Daejun Park, has called for a shift in DeFi protocols from 'code as law' to 'specification as law,' advocating for a more principled security approach. According to ChainCatcher, Park suggests implementing standardized specifications and invariant checks to hard-code security measures, automatically reversing transactions that violate predefined rules. He notes that nearly all known vulnerabilities would trigger these checks, potentially preventing hacker attacks during execution.A report from Slowmist highlights that hackers stole over $649 million last year through code vulnerabilities. Even established protocols like Balancer, which has been operational since 2021, suffered a $128 million loss due to code vulnerabilities in November last year. Developers are increasingly concerned about hackers using AI to find vulnerabilities.The head of security at Immunefi points out that invariant checks could increase gas costs, potentially driving away users, and are not a cure-all solution. The co-founder of Asymmetric Research mentions that many vulnerabilities are challenging to write invariant rules for that can detect attacks without false positives.

According to Odaily, Starknet ecosystem's perpetual contract decentralized exchange, Paradex, announced on its maintenance page that the team has identified the root cause of the current issue. They plan to roll back the chain state to block height 1604710, which corresponds to 04:27:54 UTC. This block represents the state before database maintenance began and is confirmed as the last normal state.Paradex stated that once the rollback is complete, all user accounts will be restored to their status prior to the database maintenance.

According to ChainCatcher, Vitalik Buterin has expressed concerns that the current practices in the crypto industry regarding Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) have deviated from their original vision. He suggests a need to rethink and construct 'different and better DAO designs.' Buterin notes that Ethereum's initial concept was heavily inspired by DAOs, but they have now often been reduced to 'token-voting controlled vaults,' which, while operational in form, are inefficient, easily manipulated, and fail to address issues arising from human political games.Buterin emphasizes that DAOs remain an indispensable infrastructure with applications such as improving oracle design, enabling on-chain dispute arbitration, maintaining various critical lists, quickly launching short-term collaborative projects, and supporting long-term project maintenance after the original team exits. He believes the current issues lie not in participant motivation but in the inadequacies of governance and oracle system designs.In terms of governance frameworks, Buterin introduces the analysis perspective of 'concavity and convexity problems,' suggesting that different types of issues require different governance structures. Scenarios favoring consensus and robustness should emphasize broad participation and resistance to manipulation, while those requiring decisive action should allow for leadership, balanced by decentralized mechanisms.Buterin further points out that for DAOs to truly function, they must address the challenges of privacy and decision fatigue. This can be alleviated through privacy technologies like zero-knowledge proofs (ZK) and multi-party computation, as well as AI and consensus-based communication tools to ease governance burdens. He stresses that AI should not replace human judgment but serve as a tool to amplify and assist human intentions.Finally, Buterin states that future DAO designs need to consider governance mechanisms, privacy technologies, and communication layers as core components rather than auxiliary modules, ensuring that the decentralization and robustness of Ethereum's underlying infrastructure are maintained in its upper-layer applications.

According to Foresight News, the decentralized social platform Towns will implement support for EIP-8004 and EIP-7702. EIP-8004 offers a standardized framework for trustless discovery, selection, and interaction with autonomous AI agents across various organizations or ecosystems. Meanwhile, EIP-7702 introduces a new type of transaction that allows traditional externally owned accounts (EOA) to permanently or temporarily set executable code.

According to BlockBeats, on January 19, Paradex, a decentralized perpetual derivatives Layer2 application chain within the Starknet ecosystem, announced temporary maintenance. Despite the expected completion time having passed, the protocol remains offline.Community feedback indicates that some users experienced forced liquidation of their perpetual contract trades on Paradex due to unusually high funding rates.Public information reveals that Paradex combines the liquidity of the crypto institutional platform Paradigm with the transparency and self-custody of DeFi. It operates as its own chain based on the Starknet developer stack and is the result of a six-month collaboration between StarkWare and Paradigm.

According to Foresight News, X Product Head Nikita Bier responded to community concerns regarding the platform's creator incentive mechanism. Users have criticized the system for degrading the quality of replies to popular tweets while blaming InfoFi for issues related to bots and spam content. Bier clarified that replies are no longer included in statistics, with only homepage timeline views being counted.

According to Foresight News, the Zero Network, an L2 network developed by Web3 wallet company Zerion, has resumed full operations. Previously, data from ZERO Explorer indicated that the network had ceased block production for over three weeks. Zerion, which has raised $22.5 million in funding, is behind the development of this network.

Qinbafrank posted on X. KGeN, a project in the cryptocurrency market, has recently achieved an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $80 million, up from $70 million in December of last year. This growth highlights the project's success in addressing a significant challenge faced by AI companies, DeFi protocols, and gaming projects: distinguishing real users from bots and ensuring genuine user engagement.KGeN operates as a Web3 Verified Distribution Protocol, focusing on accelerating community growth, building loyalty, and creating reward mechanisms through the verification of real human users. The project positions itself as VeriFi, utilizing a framework that verifies user identity across four dimensions: engagement, skills, social interactions, and transactions. As the first global verified distribution protocol, KGeN has aggregated 48.9 million real users and provides enterprise-level AI training data services to tech giants, having served over 200 AI, DeFi, and gaming projects.The project's revenue model is clear and sustainable, unlike projects driven solely by market speculation. KGeN's token captures real revenue from game publishers' user acquisition (UA) and AI data sales. The revenue sources include AI training data services, loyalty protocols for Web2 brands transitioning to Web3, user growth and distribution services through API/SDK integration, and monetization of data and reputation via the POGE framework.KGeN's approach to solving real-world problems is reasonable, and its commercial progress is commendable in the current market environment. However, new technologies require long-term market validation. For those interested in KGeN, it is crucial to focus on the quality of user growth, stability of revenue sources, scalability of the technical architecture, and the execution capability of the team. Additionally, it is important to monitor whether business growth continues to empower the token, as the current market trend shows a disconnect between business growth and token value.As Web3 transitions from speculation to value, many projects will be eliminated, while some truly valuable ones will emerge. Whether KGeN will be among the latter remains to be seen, as they aim to achieve their vision of 'VeriFi.'

According to Odaily, Eli5DeFi has expressed on the X platform that incentive-driven DeFi models are expected to vanish by 2026. The decline in user retention for DeFi protocols occurs when incentives end, as risk-adjusted returns revert to actual levels. The growth in total value locked (TVL) during the incentive phase often reflects subsidized participation rather than sustained demand or fee income.Eli5DeFi outlines three stages in the 'rented liquidity' model: the incentive phase attracts funds through high emissions compensating for risk; the normalization phase sees reduced incentives and real returns; and the exit phase involves funds recalculating costs and withdrawing as returns normalize. The collapse in retention rates is attributed to incentives temporarily masking structural weaknesses, including subsidized impermanent loss risks, marketing expenses rather than income, highly internalized demand, and high friction costs.Eli5DeFi believes that retention rates can only improve if the economic model remains effective after incentives normalize. Protocols must address impermanent loss and principal risk, anchor returns to real demand rather than token inflation, and expand ecosystems to increase revenue sources. Future DeFi should be evaluated based on sustainable income, capital efficiency, and risk-adjusted returns.

According to Cointelegraph, recent data indicates a significant shift in revenue flow within the crypto industry, with user-facing applications such as decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms increasingly capturing more fees than the underlying blockchain networks. This trend suggests a potential change in focus for investors and developers, as DeFi applications like wallets, decentralized exchanges (DEXs), and other protocols are now generating five times the fees compared to blockchains. Jamies Coutts, chief crypto analyst at Real Vision, highlighted this development, noting that while blockchain networks will continue to hold value due to their network effects, the front-end applications are beginning to capture more of the industry's revenue. Data from DeFiLlama further supports this trend, showing that DeFi protocols now dominate the list of highest-earning crypto products. Over the past 30 days, the top 17 fee-generating entities were applications or protocols, rather than base-layer blockchains. Solana was the only blockchain to make it into the top 20, capturing over $20.4 million in fees, while stablecoin issuer Tether led with $563 million. Ethereum also appeared in the rankings, generating $10.3 million in fees, placing it 27th. This shift in revenue distribution suggests that developers and institutional investors may increasingly focus on DeFi applications, as these platforms continue to attract a larger share of total revenue. The activity on blockchain networks also reflects this trend, with Solana emerging as the most-used network, boasting over 68 million active addresses in the past 30 days, a 14% increase according to Nansen. Ethereum, while still significant, ranked sixth with 13 million active monthly addresses, marking a 53% increase. This dynamic indicates a growing interest in DeFi applications, which are becoming central to the crypto industry's revenue generation, potentially reshaping the landscape for developers and investors alike.

According to ChainCatcher, Indonesia's Financial Services Authority (OJK) has officially approved and issued a license to ICEx, making it the country's second cryptocurrency exchange platform.

According to PANews, Andrei Grachev, co-founder of DWF Labs, announced on the X platform that the firm has already completed its first $1 million seed round investment in a DeFi project this year. Further details and transaction information will be disclosed later.

According to PANews, on January 10, onchainschool monitoring revealed that ONDO tokens valued at $23.1 million were transferred from a suspected team address to four different wallets early today. Historical data indicates that these wallets have previously deposited ONDO tokens to exchanges in batches, suggesting that the newly transferred tokens might also be moved to exchanges.

According to Foresight News, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued a warning about the North Korean cyber group Kimsuky, which is reportedly using malicious QR codes in targeted phishing attacks. The group's targets include think tanks, academic institutions, and organizations involved in diplomacy and international affairs. The attacks involve impersonating well-known figures in the field of foreign policy and embedding QR codes with malicious links in emails. These codes are designed to lure victims into switching from their computers to mobile browsers, thereby bypassing email security measures.