Industry Reports

Solana Foundation Chief Product Officer Vibhu Norby responded to the Drift Protocol security incident, confirming that an attack occurred. The cause of the attack is still under investigation. The incident is related to operational security or social engineering, highlights the potential risks of multisig mechanisms, and says that this incident does not represent a systemic issue with Solana DeFi.

At EthCC, Jonathan Passerat-Palmbach discussed the evolution and challenges of crypto mempool technology, noting that current solutions cannot meet protocol-level requirements. He also argued that blind ordering mechanisms could increase centralization and degrade transaction quality. He suggested exploring programmable privacy as a compromise, emphasized that privacy must be combined with economic incentives, and advocated conducting experiments outside the protocol.

Franklin Templeton is launching a cryptocurrency division, Franklin Crypto, by acquiring active crypto firm 250 Digital. Led by CoinFund's Christopher Perkins, this initiative aims to enhance institutional access to actively managed crypto products amid growing demand in the market.

Polymarket’s daily fees jumped from about $363,000 on March 30 to $995,000 on April 1, then fell to $899,000 on April 2. This increase was driven by the platform expanding its fee categories, covering multiple areas.

Prediction market Polymarket’s recent fee expansion has started to affect its numbers, with daily fees and revenue climbing sharply in the days following a March 30 price overhaul.  According to DefiLlama data, daily fees rose from about $363,000 on Monday to over $1 million on both Wednesday and

Ethereum Foundation project manager Hester Bruikman updated the “Trillion-Dollar Security Plan” at the EthCC conference, released a WalletBeat wallet security maturity rating model, and emphasized progress on user security and Clear Signing. She also disclosed that in the first quarter of 2026, Ethereum experienced 16 security incidents, with losses totaling $93 million.

The Uniswap Foundation's unaudited financial snapshot for 2025 shows $49.9 million in cash, 15.1 million UNI, and 240 ETH, enough to fund operations until January 2027. It plans $106.2 million for grants and incentives, emphasizing its role in ecosystem support.

Tokenized bonds open the door for more capital beyond T-bills OpenEden has launched tokenized, high-yield corporate bonds, expanding the RWA market beyond T-bills and attracting additional on-chain capital flows. Tokenized bonds are rapidly expanding into higher-yield asset categories. OpenEden is focusing on the debt segment.

Axe Compute (NASDAQ: AGPU) released its FY2025 annual financial report, showing a total contract amount of $12 million over the past 30 days, an estimated Q2 revenue of $835,000, and more than 20 clients. Following the earnings release, AGPU’s stock price surged by up to 152%, with trading volume reaching a record high. All computing power is supplied by the Aethir network, covering 94 countries and deploying over 435,000 GPUs.

A CEX CEO said they will study Bitcoin’s quantum-resistance-related issues and urged the industry to address potential threats as early as possible. Although post-quantum cryptography is feasible, execution must be approached with caution to avoid new risks. The exchange has already initiated infrastructure upgrades and is pushing community collaboration to develop quantum-resistant solutions.

This essay discusses the inefficiencies of stablecoins, highlighting that 90% are unproductive and act as a hidden tax. It identifies a significant opportunity within DAO treasuries and DEX liquidity, as well as emerging solutions like HyENA and Solomon that aim to enhance yields for users.

Digital asset ETPs saw a peak of over $250B, ending 2025 with $184B AUM, mainly driven by Bitcoin products. The market is evolving, with over 125 new filings indicating a trend toward diversified asset offerings.

Gate News message, on April 2, Clem Chambers, founder of the European stocks and market news platform ADVFN, said that the crypto industry is moving out of a cycle centered on token speculation, and that the next bull market will be driven by real-world blockchain use cases. Chambers noted: "That era may have ended, and is heading toward its conclusion; what will replace it is genuine use cases." He advised investors to "forget financial primitives (Fi) and instead focus on applications—the actual use-case scenarios where tokens and blockchain are put to work."

Google releases a white paper warning that quantum computers may break Ethereum, putting hundreds of billions of dollars in assets at risk. The report points out that there are multiple vulnerabilities in systems such as giant whale wallets, DeFi management keys, and staking systems, and that a high level of alertness is needed. The Ethereum Foundation has already launched research into post-quantum cryptography and plans to carry out a system upgrade before 2029.

The TON core team announced a consensus mechanism upgrade: Catchain 2.0 has started mainnet deployment. The goal is to reduce block confirmation time to about 1 second. This upgrade improves block generation speed and emphasizes that application developers need to adapt to the Streaming API to ensure a good user experience. If they do not adapt, the benefits of the upgrade will be greatly diminished.

The founder of SlowMist, Yu Xuan, disclosed that the Drift Protocol theft incident was caused by its migration to a 2-of-5 multisig scheme without a timelock, which enabled the attacker to quickly seize control of permissions and resulted in losses of over $200 million. He urged DeFi project teams to regularly review risks, and users need to pay attention to the protocol’s risk of capital loss.

Standard Chartered predicts the stablecoin market could reach $2 trillion by 2028, driven by increased token velocity and greater adoption in traditional finance and AI payments, particularly with USDC. The bank envisions a more efficient circulation of stablecoins alongside market growth.

Stablecoins are undergoing an evolution into a foundational financial infrastructure. North America leads in development, focusing on regulated, compliant options. The market shows a shift with RLUSD gaining traction due to integration with Ripple, emphasizing real demand over exchange liquidity.

At the EthCC conference, Protocol Guild contributor cheeky-gorilla said that Ethereum L1 core developers are paid less than the market, and that high-performance projects lure them away with higher salaries, which could cause critical roadmaps to stall. To protect the Ethereum ecosystem, they urged project teams to give back to Protocol Guild with a "1% Pledge," emphasizing the necessity of maintaining L1 development.

In March 2026, total funding in the crypto primary market reached $2.58 billion, up sharply 286.3% from February. DeFi, CeFi, and infrastructure are the main funding areas. The predicted-market projects Kalshi and Polymarket together raised $1.6 billion, accounting for 64.3% of the total. M&A events pushed the broader total funding amount to $4.279 billion.