Meta, Coinbase, and Kraken are racing to build financial superapps, blending 
stablecoin payments, 24/5 stock trading, and 24/7 tokenized derivatives as 
digital assets converge with mainstream markets under evolving SEC guidance. 
Crypto’s Superapp Era Ignites as Meta, Coinbase, and Kraken Redraw Financial 
Boundaries Major technology and crypto companies are accelerating efforts to 
blend payments, trading, […]

Meta, Coinbase, Kraken Accelerate Crypto Superapp Race Across Payments and Trading

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is urging the Ethereum ecosystem to treat 
oracle design and decentralization as a priority security problem, warning 
that key parts of DeFi’s stack still hide uncomfortable fragilities behind the 
industry’s recent growth. In a post outlining how the Ethereum Foundation is 
thinking about DeFi, Buterin framed decentralized finance as “a central part 
of the value that Ethereum provides” and argued that its next phase must pair 
renewed innovation with a harder line on security and centralization risks. 
“Defi is a central part of the value that Ethereum provides. Financial 
empowerment is a central part of what it means to have agency and freedom in 
our current world. Finance is far from the only thing that Ethereum is good 
for, but it is an important thing,” Buterin wrote, positioning DeFi not as a 
side quest, but as one of Ethereum’s flagship deliverables. Related Reading: 
Ethereum’s Legal Status Gains Clarity After SEC Leadership Signal Ethereum 
Foundation’s DeFi Crackdown: No Centralized Shortcuts Buterin’s thesis has two 
edges. The first is aspirational: DeFi should return to the early-era 
willingness to invent new primitives rather than iterating on the same product 
shapes. He pointed to AMMs as an example of the kind of paradigm shift he 
wants developers to chase again, arguing that teams should “dig a layer 
deeper” than surface-level improvements like “make a better stablecoin” and 
instead attack the underlying financial problems: risk management and hedging 
future expenses with new mechanisms. The second edge is a filter. Buterin said 
the Ethereum Foundation is not looking to support “onchain finance” or “defi” 
indiscriminately, but to push toward a narrower vision: “permissionless, open- 
source, private, security-first global finance that maximizes people&#8217;s control 
over their own assets, minimizes centralized chokepoints and trusted third 
parties, and democratizes risk management and wealth building … as well as 
payments.” A key standard in that vision is operational resilience. Buterin 
said the ecosystem should prefer protocols that “pass the walkaway test”: 
systems that keep functioning even if the founding team disappears overnight 
or worse, “becomes hostile / compromised without warning.” It’s a stark 
yardstick in a sector where governance keys, upgrade mechanisms, and offchain 
dependencies often concentrate power long after a protocol looks 
“decentralized” in marketing. Related Reading: Ethereum Price Holds Key 5-Year 
Demand Area Amid Heavy Whale Transfers Where the alarm bell rings loudest is 
oracles: the bridge between onchain logic and offchain reality. In a list of 
priority areas, Buterin singled out “oracle security and decentralization,” 
adding a blunt aside: “there&#8217;s A LOT of skeletons in the closet here, we as an 
ecosystem really need to point a big eye of sauron at it for a while.” The 
line is telling: it implies risks that are known, tolerated, or under- 
discussed, despite oracles sitting on the critical path for lending, 
stablecoins, derivatives, and liquidations. Buterin framed DeFi as a “complex 
toolchain” that mixes onchain components with user-side and other offchain 
pieces — wallets, local agents, and more. His roadmap-like list reflects that 
breadth: classic security work such as audits, standards, and wallet-side 
safeguards; newer approaches like “AI-assisted formal verification” and “user- 
side agents as safeguards”; privacy for both payments and more complex 
positions, including the question of what a “maximally privacy-preserving CDP” 
would look like; and renewed emphasis on open source licensing and 
forkability. The closing message is permissive but not passive. Ethereum will 
always allow people to deploy “insecure protocols” or systems that embed 
“ultimately unneeded centralized trust in the name of convenience,” Buterin 
wrote, as well as what he called “dopamine-maximizing gambleslop.” But he 
signaled the Foundation’s intent to actively collaborate with builders aligned 
around minimizing intermediaries and maximizing user agency, with the aim of 
making that version of DeFi not just Ethereum’s best option, but “a globally 
compelling way to manage funds” for anyone who values those properties. At 
press time, ETH traded at $1,912. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart 
from TradingView.com

Ethereum DeFi Warning: Vitalik Flags Oracles As A Hidden Time Bomb

Ripple is accelerating its push into institutional finance after deploying 
roughly $4 billion in acquisitions, as CEO Brad Garlinghouse positions the 
blockchain firm as core infrastructure linking traditional markets with 
digital assets. Ripple Channels Billions Into Powering the Next Era of 
Corporate Digital Assets, CEO Details Corporate adoption of digital assets 
continues to accelerate as […]

Ripple Deploys Billions to Transform Global Finance, CEO Says He’s ‘Incredibly Excited’

CFTC chair Mike Selig said the agency established a prediction markets 
advisory to help catch insider traders, warning there would be consequences.

Kalshi boots a US politician off the platform for insider trading

Tether’s market capitalization has declined for a second straight month, a 
rare occurrence last seen after the 2022 Terra collapse. This contraction, 
alongside muted bitcoin ETF demand, points to fragile market conditions. 
Stablecoin Slowdown Signals Crypto Capital Outflows Tether ( USDT) is flashing 
a signal the crypto market hasn’t seen in years. The world’s largest […]

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