Ripple released the XRPL AI Starter Kit on Wednesday, giving developers tools to build AI-agent payment applications on the XRP Ledger using XRP and RLUSD. The launch lands alongside Mastercard naming Ripple as a partner in Agent Pay for Machines, its agentic-commerce network.
The Defiant•The Defiant Team10 Jun
Mastercard launched Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M) Wednesday, extending its payments network to autonomous AI agents with 30-plus crypto and fintech launch partners including Coinbase, RippleX, Solana Foundation, Polygon, Aave Labs and Stellar.
The Defiant•The Defiant Team10 Jun
How close did DeFi come to a real systemic collapse? In this episode, Camila Russo sits down with Mike Silagadze, co-founder and CEO of Ether.fi, to break down the Kelp exploit, the DeFi United rescue effort, and why Mike believes the default path could have been far worse if nobody had stepped in.
The Defiant•Camila Russo10 Jun
A forensic report from Humanity Protocol found a single malware-infected developer machine held backups of seven private keys, giving an attacker full control over both its Ethereum and BNB Smart Chain infrastructure.
The Defiant•The Defiant Team10 Jun
Japan’s three largest banks have formalized their stablecoin ambitions, forming a joint council to govern infrastructure and governance for a yen-denominated stablecoin targeting live transactions by the end of Japan’s fiscal year.
The Defiant•The Defiant Team10 Jun
Polychain-backed Botanix Labs is winding down its Spiderchain Bitcoin Layer 2 after a year of mainnet operation, citing insufficient demand for Bitcoin-native DeFi. Users have until July 9 to withdraw assets.
The Defiant•The Defiant Team10 Jun
A genesis-block Ethereum wallet labeled "Joseph Lubin?" by Arkham Intelligence deposited 110,000 ETH into three Sky Finance vaults on Friday, shoring up collateral behind $259M in DAI debt as ETH fell sharply. Neither Lubin nor ConsenSys has made any public statement on ownership of the address.
The Defiant•The Defiant Team9 Jun
Polymarket's 2026 FIFA World Cup prediction markets have accumulated more than $1.8 billion in cumulative trading volume as the tournament's group stage gets underway, with France and Spain trading as the narrowest co-favorites.
The Defiant•The Defiant Team9 Jun
Citrini Research, known for moving AI equities with its reports, published an analysis calling Hyperliquid compelling, citing the protocol's Assistance Fund directing more than 90% of fees to HYPE buybacks and its command of close to half of all crypto token buyback activity this year.
The Defiant•The Defiant Team9 Jun
Arthur Hayes published a macro thesis arguing Bitcoin cannot rally until the AI stock bubble deflates, citing $1.5 trillion in AI debt issuance that absorbed the liquidity Bitcoin needed. He exited HYPE, NEAR, WLD, and ZEC and rotated Maelstrom's equity book into US energy producers.
The Defiant•The Defiant Team9 Jun
LlamaRisk has submitted two Aave governance proposals covering a four-layer protocol-wide risk standard and a PT oracle upgrade to Chainlink CRE. Founder Stani Kulechov says assets that fail the new standard will be off-boarded.
The Defiant•The Defiant Team9 Jun
OKX launched 13 new X-Perps markets in Europe on Monday, adding perpetual futures on all seven Magnificent 7 stocks, gold, silver, oil benchmarks, SPY, and QQQ with 24/7 trading and up to 10x leverage.
The Defiant•The Defiant Team9 Jun
An attacker compromised a Humanity Protocol foundation member's private keys, drained 17-plus Gnosis Safe wallets across Ethereum and BNB Chain, and minted 100 million additional H tokens on BSC. Total losses reach about $36 million. The H token fell nearly 70% on the day. On-chain investigator
The Defiant•The Defiant Team9 Jun
Starknet launched STRK20 on Tuesday, a note-based privacy framework that lets users shield ERC-20 token balances and conduct private transfers and swaps on the Ethereum layer-2 network, with an encrypted viewing-key path for compliance.
The Defiant•The Defiant Team9 Jun
Janus Henderson Investors, the $480 billion asset manager, has announced a four-part partnership with Ethena covering CLO fund distribution, a strategic ENA token investment, USDe treasury deployment, and exploration of exchange-traded instruments for USDe distribution.
The Defiant•The Defiant Team9 Jun
The full text of H.R. 8957, the American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026, is now public, revealing a mandatory 20-year prohibition on selling any acquired BTC and a requirement for quarterly, publicly audited proof-of-reserve reports.
The Defiant•The Defiant Team9 Jun
Sam Bankman-Fried formally filed a petition for a presidential pardon with the Trump White House, his attorney confirmed Monday. FTX's FTT token surged roughly 52% on the news.
The Defiant•The Defiant Team9 Jun
Morpho Association has raised $175 million in a round co-led by Paradigm, a16z Crypto, and Ribbit Capital, with Apollo Funds and VanEck among the strategic participants. The round, which values Morpho at $2 billion, is among the largest fundraises in DeFi history.
The Defiant•The Defiant Team9 Jun
BitMine Immersion Technologies acquired 126,971 ETH for approximately $207 million last week at an average of $1,630 per token, its largest weekly purchase of 2026, lifting its total treasury to 5.54 million ETH, equal to 4.59% of Ethereum's circulating supply.
The Defiant•The Defiant Team8 Jun
The Consensys-owned wallet provider opened early access Monday for autonomous AI agents to trade across 25+ EVM chains and Hyperliquid, with transaction simulation and $10,000 in loss coverage as the security pitch.
The Defiant•The Defiant Team8 Jun