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Volo Protocol loses $3.5 million in exploit days after KelpDAO’s breach

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Another day, another exploit. The security crisis in blockchain-based decentralized finance (DeFi), once touted as a challenger to legacy infrastructure, is only getting worse.

The latest victim is Volo Protocol, a platform built on the Sui blockchain, where users deposit assets into yield-generating “vaults,” which function as pooled investments. Deposited tokens such as bitcoin, stablecoins and tokenized assets are deployed using various onchain strategies to generate returns.

Early Wednesday, the protocol confirmed a security breach that drained a total of roughly $3.5 million in digital assets from three of the vaults. Assets locked in other vaults were not affected, it said in a post on X.

“The ~$28M in TVL across all other Volo vaults is safe. The exploit was isolated to 3 specific vaults, and we have confirmed no shared attack vector exists with the remaining vaults,” the protocol said, adding that it is “prepared to absorb” the financial loss rather than pass it on to users.

The attack hit vaults holding wrapped bitcoin (WBTC), Matridock’s tokenized gold token, XAUm, and the dollar-pegged stablecoin USDC. In response, the protocol froze all vaults and began working with the Sui Foundation and onchain investigators to contain the damage and trace funds.

Since the incident, Volo has “frozen” $500,000 in assets through coordination with ecosystem partners, meaning those funds have been immobilized onchain to prevent any movement or withdrawal. Still, the majority of the stolen funds remain under investigation.

Growing unease

The breach adds to growing unease across decentralized finance, where a string of exploits has raised questions about smart contract security and protocol oversight. The timing is particularly sensitive, coming just days after the weekend’s KelpDAO exploit, in which an attacker drained millions by artificially minting unbacked liquid restaking tokens, rsETH.

The aftermath has rippled across the DeFi, triggering collateral damage in multiple protocols, including leading lending platform Aave, where users rushed to withdraw funds because of the heightened uncertainty.

To date, decentralized finance has suffered roughly $7.78 billion in hacks, according to data from DeFiLlama. Bridge protocols — which enable the transfer of assets across blockchains — account for another $2.90 billion in losses. Combined, the figure exceeds $10 billion, roughly equivalent to the market capitalization of cryptocurrencies ranked between 10th and 15th globally.

Volo says it will publish a full post-mortem once its investigation is complete and remediation steps are finalized.

But for DeFi users and investors, a broader pattern is becoming harder to ignore: while institutional adoption is accelerating, relatively little of that capital appears to be flowing into improving security, with exploits continuing to arrive in clusters.

Read more: The $13 billion DeFi wipeout in two days, and it started with KelpDAO attack

AI slop has created a search problem crypto companies can’t ignore

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AI-generated content may seem like an easy win for companies, especially when the promise is simple enough to sell internally: publish more crypto content, cover more keywords, spend fewer resources, and pick up more organic traffic along the way.

On paper, that may sound cost-efficient, and in some cases, AI can absolutely help with research, structure and early drafting. But once that logic turns into pumping out large volumes of thin and repetitive pages, the whole strategy starts to work against itself, and in the crypto space, that can become a bigger problem than some companies seem willing to admit.

The reason is fairly straightforward: A company might think they’re improving their search visibility, but if the pages it publishes feel like generic fluff pieces, the content stops looking like a serious effort to inform readers and starts looking like a cheap attempt to occupy search results.

This ends up defeating the purpose of creating those pages in the first place, since no goal is being achieved; it’s like you’re just throwing content at your website, with no strategy and thinking that will get you results.

If readers don’t trust you, how will they convert or take any action? And if your pages start slipping down in the rankings, how will your platform, exchange or dapp be discovered?

When AI Slop Turns Into Scaled Content Abuse

Google’s policy on scaled content abuse is pretty clear: The problem is creating and publishing lots of web pages mainly to manipulate search rankings while giving users very little to no value in return, and that standard applies regardless of how it’s created.

That is worth stressing, because many people still talk as though the real issue is the tool, when Google is actually focused on how the content is produced and why it is published in the first place.

So when a site starts pumping out huge volumes of unoriginal, low-value pages just to win more search visibility, it is moving straight into the kind of territory Google says can lead to lower rankings or even removal from search results.

And that is where some crypto companies should probably be more honest with themselves. If AI is being used to support a real editorial process, where a writer or editor checks the facts, adds context, sharpens the argument and makes sure the finished piece actually helps the reader, then that is one thing.

Google’s own guidance says generative AI can be useful for research and structure, and that deserves to be part of the conversation. But when a company starts publishing fully generated articles with little or no editorial review because it wants to rank for more queries at a lower cost, it is getting very close to the kind of scaled output Google is warning about.

There is also a real difference between using AI to assist the writing process and using it to dump out content at scale. Some publishers use AI for research, brainstorming, or outlining, and then pass the piece to a real writer or editor who checks the facts, adds unique reporting, sharpens the argument, and makes sure the article actually has something worth saying.

It’s the same old SEO playbook… with a faster machine

From that perspective, AI slop is really just the same old mass-page SEO playbook, with a faster machine behind it and a much lower cost to produce weak content.

That is one reason this keeps getting worse. Once publishing more pages starts to feel cheap and easy, it becomes much easier to keep feeding the machine instead of stopping to ask what is actually worth publishing. And with Google’s March 2026 spam update rolling out recently across all languages, it is clear the company is still working on how it handles web spam at scale.

That does not mean every weak article gets hit instantly, but it does show that Google is still refining how it detects and handles spammy behavior.

Some crypto companies are already using AI to publish large volumes of pages aimed mainly at pulling in search traffic.

Sometimes that takes the form of comparison pages built around competitor terms and location-based keywords. In other cases, it shows up in token pages, wallet guides, airdrop explainers, exchange reviews, educational content, or service pages that look like they were created to get clicks without providing any real value.

When you look closely at how those pages are made, and how little they actually do for readers, it becomes much easier to understand the search risk involved.

Under Google’s scaled content abuse guidelines, crypto companies relying on this kind of low-value material should think carefully about whether those pages belong in search at all. In many cases, setting them to “noindex” may be the safer move.

So, crypto companies treating mass AI output like a marketing shortcut are taking a real gamble in an environment where Google keeps updating enforcement in plain view.

There’s a smarter way to use AI

There is still a smart way to use AI in publishing, and it starts with keeping the SEO strategy in place while using AI for support tasks where it can genuinely save time. Research help, idea generation, outlining and early structuring all make sense, especially for crypto companies that want to move faster without lowering their standards.

Google explicitly says those uses can be helpful, and that gives crypto companies a sensible way to use AI, so let it speed up the early groundwork and then leave the reporting, writing, editing, verification and final judgment to human hands.

That approach is safer for search, and it also leads to better content, because people can usually tell when something has been properly thought through, carefully put together, and written by someone who actually knows what they’re talking about. In the crypto industry, especially, where trust already has to be earned more carefully, that difference carries a lot of weight.

The crypto companies that come out ahead will be the ones that use AI as a support tool within a proper editorial process, because that gives them a better chance of creating work people actually want to read, cite and come back to.

Revolut targets a $200 billion IPO just months after its $75 billion share sale

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British crypto-friendly fintech firm Revolut notified investors that it was targeting a valuation of up ​to $200 billion in its stock market listing, the ‌Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

Europe’s largest fintech firm recently said ⁠it would not seek a listing before 2028 ​and that it had not laid out any formal ​valuation targets, following a share sale in November last year which valued the company at $75 billion.

Revolut had ​discussed a potential valuation of $150 billion to $200 billion in ‌ ⁠a future initial public offering (IPO) with investors, according to the FT’s report, citing sources familiar with the matter.

Media reports have also said that Revolut, which received a full U.K. banking license in March, is preparing for a secondary share sale in ​the second half ​of 2026, ⁠with expectations of a $100 billion valuation post sale.

Co-founder Nik Storonsky said in December that his ​stake ⁠would be worth about $80 billion in the company if it reached a $200 billion valuation.

In 2025, Revolut’s pre-tax profit ⁠surged ​57% to 1.7 billion pounds ($2.3 ​billion), a smaller gain than the previous year’s nearly 150% increase.

In March, Revolut also applied for a banking licence with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which, if approved, would allow the London-based fintech to operate more like a traditional bank in the world’s largest economy.

While Revolut is targeting a record-breaking IPO, a source close to fintech said no formal valuation has yet been decided, according to FT.

Revolut did not immediately respond to a CoinDesk request for confirmation.

Neura Robotics, AWS Collaborate on Physical AI

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German robotics firm Neura Robotics has entered a partnership with AWS to accelerate the rollout of physical AI and bring intelligent robots closer to large-scale, real-world deployment.

The collaboration will span three core areas, each designed to move physical AI from theory into practice.

First, AWS will become Neura’s primary cloud provider, hosting its “Neuraverse” platform, designed to train physical AI systems for use across robot fleets.

On the development side, Neura’s Gym training environments (where robots learn complex tasks in high-fidelity simulations) will be integrated with Amazon’s machine learning platform SageMaker.

Finally, the partners will also look at real-world deployment of Neura’s systems. As part of this effort, Amazon is planning to deploy Neura’s robots in selected fulfillment centers to gather data on how the systems operate in complex physical environments.

The deal is pitched as addressing an ongoing challenge in scaling physical AI

Related:Anthropic Seals $100B Infrastructure Deal With Amazon

Defined as systems that can perceive and reason as humans do, the tech is currently hobbled by a lack of training data. While large language models can draw on vast amounts of information from scraping the internet and other sources, robots have a much smaller foundation to learn from. 

Bridging this data gap is seen as critical to unlocking AI’s full potential in industrial deployment, and the partners say they can address it by combining simulation, cloud infrastructure and operational environments.

“Physical AI will only reach its full potential if intelligence can be trained, validated, and continuously improved in the real world,” David Reger, CEO and founder of Neura, said in an emailed statement. “With AWS, we gain the infrastructure to scale the Neuraverse globally. With Amazon, we have the opportunity to bring physical AI into one of the most advanced operational environments in the world.”

“This is how physical AI moves from vision to global reality,” he added.

For Neura, the partnership is also part of a wider push to build a global robotics ecosystem, bringing together cloud providers, industrial players and semiconductor firms to support and accelerate development timelines. 

Existing ecosystem members include robotics firm Kawasaki, and industrial leaders such as Schaeffler, Bosch, and Qualcomm Technologies. 

Tron’s Justin Sun sues Trump-linked World Liberty Financial over frozen assets

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Tron creator Justin Sun sued World Liberty Financial, the stablecoin and crypto firm backed by members of U.S. President Donald Trump’s family, on Tuesday, alleging that the project had unfairly locked up his $WLFI holdings, made fraudulent misrepresentations, and threatened and defamed Sun.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday, which includes a line about Sun’s support for Trump himself, alleged that World Liberty’s leadership had engaged “in an illegal scheme to seize property” in the form of Sun’s tokens, which Sun alleged he had purchased after being solicited by the World Liberty team in 2024.

“At that pivotal time for World Liberty, Mr. Sun invested $45 million to purchase $WLFI tokens from World Liberty not only because of the project’s claims that it would promote adoption of decentralized finance — an issue Mr. Sun cares deeply about and to which he has devoted much of his life’s work — but also because of the Trump family’s association with the project,” the suit said.

A spokesperson for World Liberty Financial said they had no comment on the lawsuit.

World Liberty asked Sun to continue investing through 2025, including through a request to mint World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin, the filing said. “By July 2025, when it became clear that Mr. Sun would not invest or mint USD1 on their terms, World Liberty principals became hostile toward Mr. Sun.”

“World Liberty induced Plaintiffs to make their investments in World Liberty through fraudulent misrepresentations and omissions about the economic rights and liberties that would come with purchasing $WLFI tokens,” the filing said.

These allegedly fraudulent misrepresentations include statements about the rights of token holders, various public statements by World Liberty or its executives about the governance rights of token holders, and statements about “freedom to transact.”

Sun’s suit also alleged that World Liberty, despite presenting itself as a business operating in the decentralized finance sector, had centralized control over its tokens.

According to the complaint, World Liberty changed the smart contract governing $WLFI in August 2025 to add a “blacklisting” function that allowed the company to freeze tokens in specific wallets. The modification was not put to a governance vote or disclosed to investors, Sun alleges, even as token holders had just approved a proposal to make a portion of the supply tradable.

“While the upgrade is technically visible on the public blockchain, World Liberty buried it in the code without alerting token holders to its existence or implications,” the complaint states. “In the dark of night, the company thus created a ‘blacklisting’ function that it could wield at will.”

The complaint alleges that World Liberty’s freezing of Sun’s tokens served a dual purpose: pressuring him to mint $200 million of the company’s USD1 stablecoin on his Tron blockchain, and manipulating $WLFI’s market price by preventing one of the largest holders from selling.

By locking up Sun’s position, the complaint argues, World Liberty “artificially propped up the market price of $WLFI tokens held by World Liberty founders and the company’s corporate treasury.”

World Liberty’s ability to issue, freeze, and even reassign tokens may not just undercut its decentralization claims, but also raise regulatory questions. The filing argues that those powers could qualify the firm as a money transmitter under the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s rules, subjecting it to registration and anti-money laundering requirements.

Other allegations in the complaint include that “World Liberty made two overt threats” to Sun and his businesses. Chase Herro, one of World Liberty’s co-founders, allegedly threatened to burn Sun’s $WLFI tokens if Sun did not ask for his tokens to be burned.

“Second, Mr. Herro also falsely claimed that the know-your-customer (‘KYC’) documentation submitted by Mr. Sun and the Sun Companies in connection with their $WLFI token purchases was inadequate,” the filing said.

Herro threatened to report Sun to U.S. authorities, the suit alleged.

Chunks of the lawsuit were redacted. Another filing attached to the lawsuit cited a confidentiality provision, saying Sun’s team was giving the World Liberty team an opportunity to decide whether or not these redacted provisions should remain sealed.

In a post on X, Sun said he had “tried in good faith to resolve this situation.”

“All I want is to be treated the same as every other early investor who received tokens — no better, no worse,” he said.

“I also want the community to know that I strongly oppose the new governance proposal World Liberty published on April 15,” Sun said in his post.

Since Trump took office, Sun has visited the U.S. after previously staying away from the country. He was a guest at Trump’s first memecoin dinner (tied to a different Trump-linked crypto project) last year.

Sun settled charges with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last month, agreeing to pay a $10 million fine to resolve a case brought by the previous presidential administration.

Bitcoin’s Coinbase premium just posted its strongest bullish signal since October’s record price of $126,000

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There is a popular indicator that crypto pundits watch closely for cues on whether U.S.-based investors, especially institutions, are actually buying bitcoin or sitting on sidelines watching the market.

It is called the Coinbase premium index and as of now it is flashing the most sustained bullish signal since bitcoin traded at record highs above $126,000 in October.

This index has been positive for 14 consecutive days, from April 9 through today, April 22, according to data source Coinglass. That is the longest unbroken stretch of positive readings since October.

Here is why it matters

The Nasdaq-listed Coinbase is the go-to-exchange for U.S. institutions – corporate treasuries, hedge funds and regulated alternative investment vehicles such as the ETFs. So, when bitcoin’s price trades at a premium on Coinbase relative to prices on offshore giant Binance, it means U.S. buyers are being aggressive in purchasing BTC. Historically, strong buying from U.S. investors has been a feature of bull runs.

The opposite, a negative premium or discount, signals that U.S. demand is lagging while offshore markets do the heavy lifting. For context, the premium was mostly negative from mid December to late February. During that time, BTC fell from roughly $100,000 to nearly $60,000.

The latest stretch of positive readings is all the more important as it shows sustained demand through geopolitical noise, DeFi crisis.

It’s no surprise that bitcoin is rallying. The cryptocurrency topped $78,000 on Wednesday, taking the month-to-date gain to 14%.

Alipay AI Pay launches new service enabling OpenClaw-type AI agents to make payments

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Alipay today launched a new AI Pay-powered payment service that enables OpenClaw-type AI agents to make purchases and complete payments based on user instructions. These autonomous AI tools, which execute tasks on a user’s behalf, have been nicknamed “lobsters” in China. The use of the new service requires no coding or complex setup, and includes multi-layer security safeguards for every transaction, making AI agents with Alipay more capable and effective.

The launch builds on Alipay AI Pay, an AI-native payment solution introduced in 2025 that enables secure, seamless transactions through AI agents via voice command, eliminating the need to switch between pages. Alipay AI Pay surpassed 100 million users in February 2026, becoming the world’s first AI-native payment product to reach this milestone. During the week of February 5-11, 2026, it processed over 120 million transactions.

The new service extends Alipay AI Pay’s capabilities by enabling OpenClaw-type AI agents to make payments, with user authorization. After installing Alipay AI Pay from its official website (https://aipay.alipay.com/) into their AI agents, users can simply say “enable Alipay payment function” and complete identity verification. From that point, the agent can handle purchases in three steps: the user states a need (for example, “help me renew my membership”), confirms the order and authorizes payment via Alipay AI Pay. Orders can be modified or canceled at any point with a single command.

The new service is now pre-installed on Alibaba Cloud’s JVS Claw, and has been rolled out on DTClaw of Ant Group Digital Technologies. Alipay AI Pay is also available to other OpenClaw-type AI agents, including Claude Code and Hermes Agent via easy installation.

Security is built into every layer of the new service. Activation requires user initiation and identity verification, each payment requires user authorization and a 24/7 intelligent risk control system safeguards every transaction. Alipay also is extending its “Full Compensation” account protection program to the new service, ensuring worry-free payments for users.

As agentic commerce has grown in China, Alipay AI Pay has expanded across a range of use cases — from AI agents embedded in apps and mini programs for traditional retailers such as Luckin Coffee, to AI smart glasses such as Rokid’s, consumer-facing AI applications like Alibaba’s Qwen and now OpenClaw-type AI agents.

In addition to the consumer-facing AI payment service, Alipay has unveiled a number of developer-facing services to support AI commercialization more broadly, including Payment MCP Server (enabling developers to integrate payment services to AI agents using natural language), Payment Integration Skill (enabling vibe coding developers to integrate payment services to applications easily using natural language), AI Tipping (providing developers who need to receive tips within an AI agent with convenient payment capabilities), and AI subscription payment (enabling developers to receive payment from an AI agent based on service usage times or duration), each the first of its kind in China.

Bitcoin Short Squeeze Bets Return With Market ‘Heavily Short and Bearish’

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Bitcoin (BTC) sought to match 10-week highs on Tuesday as market participants bet on a new short squeeze.

Key points:

  • Bitcoin is due a fresh short squeeze as funding rates uniquely stay negative as price grinds higher, say market pundits.

  • Short-term targets include a trip to $85,000 in the coming weeks.

  • Bitcoin bulls still need to clear the nearby 21-week trend line keeping price pinned since October 2025.

“Cannon is loaded” for Bitcoin short squeeze

Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD approaching $77,000 for the first time this weekly candle.

BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

A slight comedown into the Wall Street open meant that price continued to coil below a large area of resistance.

Mixed signals over the US-Iran war continued on the day, with Iran denying that its delegations had arrived in Pakistan for a new round of negotiations with the US. As Cointelegraph reported, markets offered only a muted reaction to the latest closure of the Strait of Hormuz oil route.

Among Bitcoin traders, a sense of cautious optimism was slowly growing.

“A period of consolidation, but clearly upwards pattern,” crypto trader Michaël van de Poppe wrote in an X post. 

“This means that there’s likely more upside to come for Bitcoin towards the $85,000 area.”

Van de Poppe gave a time frame of “two to three weeks” for that level to come into focus, reiterating earlier comments about Bitcoin’s correlation with the Nasdaq.

BTC/USDT one-day chart. Source: Michaël van de Poppe/X

Others focused on ongoing negative funding rates on exchanges, despite price rising.

“We’ve never actually gotten one when the chart was grinding up. NEVER. It only occurred during the local BOTTOMS,” trader Osemka noted on X alongside charts showing past negative funding periods.

Osemka suggested that “something is brewing beneath” the surface, just as BTC/USD eyed a reclaim of lost support.

Binance BTC/USDT futures one-day chart. Source: Osemka/X

Responding, crypto market intelligence platform Decode agreed, seeing the potential for another short squeeze.

“What this tells you is that the market is heavily short and bearish, and Bitcoin is setting up for a short squeeze. The cannon is loaded, bulls just need to light the fuse…,” it told X followers.

CME gap thins with BTC up against resistance

Multiple lines in the sand for bulls lie immediately above the spot price.

Related: Bitcoin can grow ‘probably a lot bigger’ than $30T+ gold market — Analysis

These include the 21-week exponential moving average (EMA), true market mean, and average buy-in price for investors of the US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

BTC/USD one-day chart with 21-week EMA. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Trader Daan Crypto Trades observed that price had also filled the latest weekend “gap” in CME Group’s Bitcoin futures market.

“$BTC Closed a big part of the gap from this weekend but still not everything. Market still just following the headlines and no $STRC raises for now. So we will just patiently wait and see,” he commented.

CME Bitcoin futures one-hour chart. Source: Daan Crypto Trades/X