SEC comments on DeFi vaults.
AFX Trade $24m bridge hack.
Uniswap ships new V4 hooks.
Venus bridge hacked (again).
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SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce published a statement warning that crypto vaults and onchain lending strategies may be subject to federal securities law, and that participants should not assume moving activities onchain takes them outside regulatory scope. Vaults are smart contracts that allocate user assets to yield-generating activities including staking and lending. The SEC claims vaults could constitute a common enterprise akin to investment advisers. Peirce also says lending strategies could also involve notes that qualify as securities regardless of the underlying assets. Peirce advised parties involved in selecting yield-generating activities to analyze whether their activities implicate securities.
AFX Trade, a perpetuals DEX on Arbitrum, was drained of approximately $24.15 million USDC on July 22 after attackers compromised the hot-validator signing keys on its USDC custody bridge. Five compromised hot-validator signatures carrying 7,142 of 10,000 validator power met the required two-thirds quorum, authorizing a withdrawal that settled after the 200-second dispute window. The stolen USDC was bridged to Ethereum via CCTP and swapped for roughly 12,467 ETH, representing nearly all of AFX's TVL. Arbitrum's native bridge was not involved and was not compromised. AFX has paused the bridge, engaged Blockaid, PeckShield, SlowMist, and Zellic, and offered a white-hat settlement of 30% (~$7.2M) for returning 70%.
Uniswap Labs shipped two new v4 hooks, one solving a core capital efficiency problem for market makers and one opening AMM liquidity to regulated asset issuers. DualPool, built in collaboration with Spark Protocol, keeps a pool's capital parked in ERC-4626 yield vaults between trades and pulls exactly what's needed into concentrated liquidity the moment a swap arrives. The Permissioned Pools v4 hook enforces allowlists at the protocol level, where every swap and every LP mint gets checked against an issuer-managed allowlist before settling. The solution is designed for regulated asset issuers such as Superstate and Securitize.
ACDC #183 summary.
Erigon v3.5.3 Tidal Tails release.
Venus bridge hacked (again).
Polygon Ithaca upgrade live on testnet.
Phantom supports Robinhood Chain.
Fake World Assets explained.
Lean Ethereum explained.
Vlad Tenev X account hacked.
BitMEX shuts down September 23.
EIP-8161 is now final.
Coinbase latest agentic features.
Augur migration window ends soon.
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