News linked to both this project and an event.
Odaily News: The Ethereum Community Hub, supported by the Ethereum Foundation, has announced it will be held in Hong Kong at 1:30 PM on April 21st. ETH HK HUB is Asia's first offline Ethereum community Hub, supported by the Ethereum Foundation and jointly operated by SNZ and ETHTAO, aiming to build a collaborative hub connecting Asia with the global Ethereum ecosystem. The event will cover areas including: ZK, privacy computing, AI × blockchain, stablecoins and payments, on-chain liquidity, and more.Participating institutions and projects include Sharplink, Brevis, Primus, HashKey Chain, Chainlink Labs, Lido Finance, Galaxy Digital, SignalPlus, Morpho, Animoca Brands, EVG, Zand Bank, Pay Protocol, and others. Guests include Vitalik Buterin, Aya Miyaguchi, and more.
Monetsupply.eth, Strategy Lead of Spark Protocol, posted on X stating that in January this year, low-utilization assets such as rsETH were delisted, and the scope of acceptable collateral and protocol functionalities has been continuously tightened. At the time, this move triggered strong backlash from users employing “ETH circular leverage” strategies. Additionally, Spark has long imposed relatively high maximum interest rate caps on its ETH lending market. Over the past year, Spark has ceded part of its business and revenue to Aave—whose ETH borrowing rates at one point dropped to 10% or lower. However, amid the current market crisis, this strategy has proven more prudent: SparkLend still maintains ample ETH withdrawal liquidity, whereas Aave is experiencing liquidity strain—or even “locking”—across Ethereum mainnet and multiple Layer-2 chains including Arbitrum and Base. Monetsupply.eth further warned that, since ETH serves as the core collateral asset, when market utilization reaches 100%, liquidations of collateral will fail to execute normally. Liquidity exhaustion not only degrades depositors’ experience but may also pose systemic risk. Given Aave’s current liquidity shortage, a 15–20% drop in ETH’s price could trigger significant bad debt accumulation—exacerbated by potential fallout from the rsETH incident.
Odaily News: Sonic Labs co-founder and Flying Tulip founder Andre Cronje posted on platform X, stating that his team is continuing to investigate the L0/rsETH incident. Preliminary reports indicate that approximately $200 million worth of rsETH was stolen, possibly due to a private key leak or configuration error. The related assets were subsequently deposited into Aave as collateral to borrow ETH (due to insufficient rsETH liquidity).Andre Cronje pointed out that the affected positions are technically still overcollateralized. However, if bad debt occurs, Aave's token mechanism and Safety Module will serve as the first line of defense to absorb the risk. Nevertheless, Aave has no mechanism to subsidize user losses, as doing so could trigger a bank run. Currently, Aave holds approximately $7 billion in ETH with an outstanding borrowing amount of around $100 million, so the overall impact of this incident is limited. Furthermore, prioritizing user liquidity, Flying Tulip has withdrawn all its ETH from Aave to its fund management wrapper contract. This action was taken because Aave's available liquidity had fallen below its set minimum threshold.
Odaily News The Ethereum restaking protocol Kelp has officially confirmed suspicious cross-chain activity involving rsETH. It has currently paused the rsETH contracts on the mainnet and multiple L2s and launched an investigation into the attack. It is also collaborating with LayerZero, Unichain, as well as audit firms and security experts to conduct a root cause analysis (RCA). A post-mortem report will be released subsequently.
According to GlobeNewswire, Intchains Group, an Ethereum treasury company listed on Nasdaq, has announced the latest progress on its Ethereum staking initiatives and strategic transformation. As of April 16, 2026, the company has staked a cumulative total of 8,040 ETH—1,000 ETH deployed on the FalconX platform and 7,040 ETH deployed on its proprietary Goldshell Stake platform. Its current multi-platform staking strategy helps enhance returns and diversify risk. The company also announced an accelerated transition toward an AI-powered operational model, focusing on introducing automation and intelligent tools across chip and product development, marketing and sales, and overall operations to improve efficiency and decision-making capabilities.
According to an official announcement, Mint Blockchain officially ceased operations on April 17, 2026, and urged users to withdraw four assets from Mint Chain to the Ethereum mainnet: ETH, WBTC, USDC, and USDT. The announcement states that the asset withdrawal deadline is October 20, 2026, and users may complete the process via the official withdrawal channel. Assets not withdrawn by the deadline will no longer be processable.
According to The Defiant, the NFT marketplace Foundation has permanently shut down following the failed sale to digital art display company BlackDove. Its platform infrastructure has been taken offline, and there are currently no plans to relaunch it. Foundation’s founder, Kayvon Tehranian, stated that the company had originally hoped to extend its operations through the sale, but the deal fell through—and the team concluded there was no need to continue seeking a buyer. Foundation previously facilitated approximately $230 million in primary sales. The report notes that BlackDove, after conducting comprehensive due diligence following operational handover, decided instead to build its own proprietary marketplace. Foundation also announced it will continue providing a fixed one-year service for media and metadata hosted on IPFS; users must manually cancel their listings and withdraw their NFT assets.
According to Cointelegraph, stablecoin issuer Circle faces a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts for failing to freeze stolen funds during the Drift Protocol hack on April 1. Plaintiffs allege that attackers transferred approximately $230 million worth of USDC from Solana to Ethereum via Circle’s cross-chain transfer protocol (CCTP) within hours—and that Circle failed to intervene. The lawsuit accuses Circle of aiding and abetting conversion and of negligence. Cryptocurrency analytics firm Elliptic previously suspected the attack may be linked to North Korea–backed hackers; the stolen funds were subsequently converted into ETH and laundered through Tornado Cash.
According to Decrypt, Rick Wurster, President and CEO of Charles Schwab, stated that the company may offer prediction market services in the future—but will focus on financial-event-related contracts, such as those tied to inflation, while avoiding themes like pop culture, politics, and sports. Earlier reports indicated that Charles Schwab plans to launch Bitcoin and Ethereum trading services within the coming weeks, with a flat transaction fee of 0.75% per trade. The company also intends to gradually expand its cryptocurrency business, including enabling digital asset deposits and withdrawals, and broadening the range of supported tokens.
Josh Stark, a key researcher and project manager at the Ethereum Foundation, announced that after five years of service, he has decided to depart and complete his transition—this decision was made in early March, and his work at the Ethereum Foundation will conclude by the end of April. Stark stated he currently has no concrete plans for the future and intends first to take an extended break and spend time with family and friends. He expressed deep honor in having worked on Ethereum at the Ethereum Foundation and extended gratitude to numerous leadership team members and community partners for their long-term collaboration. Stark also noted that the Ethereum ecosystem has repeatedly achieved goals once widely deemed “impossible,” including network launch, the real-world deployment of decentralized finance (DeFi), and the successful transition to proof-of-stake (PoS). Earlier this week, Trent Van Epps, another Ethereum Foundation contributor, also resigned.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Charles Schwab officially announced the launch of Schwab Crypto™ spot cryptocurrency trading services on April 16, which will be rolled out to retail clients in phases over the coming weeks. The service supports direct trading of Bitcoin and Ethereum, and is accompanied by educational resources and dedicated customer support. It is also integrated with Schwab’s existing investment, trading, wealth management, and banking services.
According to a CoinGecko report, the cryptocurrency market continued its bearish trend in Q1 2026, with total market capitalization declining by 20.4% (approximately $622 billion) to $2.4 trillion—down roughly 45% from its October 2025 peak. Key drivers of the downturn included tightened monetary policy expectations following Kevin Warsh’s nomination as Federal Reserve Chair and geopolitical shocks stemming from the U.S.-Iran war. The stablecoin market remained broadly stable, with total market capitalization rising slightly to $309.9 billion. USDT’s supply declined for the first time since Q2 2022, falling to $184.1 billion; USDC grew 2.4% to $77.1 billion; and USD1—issued by WLFI—rose 32.5%, boosted by Binance’s airdrop campaign. In terms of asset performance, crude oil prices surged 76.9% due to supply disruptions caused by the U.S.-Iran war, making it the strongest-performing asset this quarter; gold rose 8.1%; while Bitcoin fell 22.0%, underperforming both the Nasdaq (-7.1%) and the S&P 500 (-4.8%). Regarding trading volume, spot trading volume across top centralized exchanges dropped 39.1% to $2.7 trillion; March volume totaled just $0.8 trillion—the lowest since November 2023. Binance maintained a 37.0% market share. Among decentralized exchanges, Solana retained leadership with a 30.6% share—but was overtaken by Ethereum in March.
According to FinanceFeeds, Morgan Stanley stated that real-world asset tokenization has become the “next major step” for its global business and is now a strategic priority in its initiative to upgrade traditional financial infrastructure using blockchain. The firm plans to integrate traditional and digital assets within regulated environments, advance near real-time on-chain settlement, and launch an institutional digital wallet in the second half of 2026—supporting tokenized traditional investment products as well as crypto assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley is also advancing the development of a tokenized private equity secondary market and building both on-chain and off-chain settlement processes.
Odaily News The ETH/BTC exchange rate has risen to a 10-week high, with Ethereum outperforming Bitcoin recently. The ratio broke through the resistance of the downtrend line since August 2025 and has risen above the 50-day and 100-day exponential moving averages. XWIN Research pointed out that the staff statement issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on April 13 explained that DeFi frontends and wallet interfaces do not need to register as broker-dealers if they meet conditions such as non-custody and a neutral fee structure, which has driven Ethereum's strength.On-chain data shows an upward trend in active addresses, and the Coinbase premium gap is also improving, indicating a recovery in institutional demand in the United States. Enterprise-level accumulation is accelerating; Bitmine accumulated 279,000 ETH in the past 30 days and currently holds 4.87 million ETH, accounting for over 4% of the circulating supply. In the futures market, the global ETH open interest reached $16.37 billion, and the funding rate remains negative, indicating that shorts dominate. However, the open interest on Binance increased by 10.47% to $6.04 billion, and the funding rate turned positive, creating an extreme imbalance between global shorts and longs on Binance.
Trent.eth, a member of the Ethereum Foundation, posted on X stating that he is no longer affiliated with the EF as of last Friday. He expressed respect for his collaborators across the team over the past five years on network upgrades and funding support efforts. Trent Van Epps also noted that, subject to available funding, he will continue participating in the Protocol Guild and work related to Ethereum’s political economy.
According to Crowdfund Insider, Circle has launched a new solution for high-frequency cross-chain USDC payments. Developers can leverage the Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) to enable local fulfillment providers to front-pay on the recipient’s designated chain, with the platform subsequently performing batch cross-chain settlement. This model reduces operational overhead associated with individual cross-chain transfers and is suitable for platforms processing large volumes of payments daily. Compared to the traditional CCTP process—which requires individual USDC burn-and-mint operations per transfer—the new solution supports batch settlement, reducing the number of burns on the source chain and eliminating the need for signature infrastructure on the destination chain. Circle also demonstrated the workflow using the Arc Testnet and Ethereum Sepolia.
According to CoinDesk, UK-based asset manager Legal & General Asset Management has tokenized over £50 billion in liquid funds via Calastone’s tokenized distribution network. The firm now offers money market funds on this network in the form of tokenized shares, supporting USD, EUR, and GBP, with capabilities spanning issuance, trading, and same-day settlement. Investors can purchase, hold, and transfer these tokenized shares within a permissioned, regulated network. The relevant funds will be deployed on Ethereum and compatible blockchains, with plans to expand to additional networks in the future.
Canaan Inc. released its Bitcoin mining update report as of March 31, disclosing that it mined 89 BTC in March, holding a total of 1,808 BTC. The company also holds 3,952 ETH. In March, its network added over 10 MW of new installed capacity, bringing its global installed capacity to 266.3 MW.
The Ethereum-based social protocol EFP has been integrated into Etherscan. Users can view an account’s ENS domain name and avatar, as well as its on-chain EFP followers and following count, by clicking the “Cards” tab on each account’s page. This integration further enriches Etherscan’s social functionality and advances the visualization and application of on-chain social data.
According to Cointelegraph, blockchain lending platform Figure Technology and its on-chain credit platform Hastra have officially integrated auto loans into their tokenized credit market, further expanding the range of real-world assets (RWAs) accessible to decentralized finance (DeFi) investors. Democratized Prime—the decentralized lending marketplace operated by Figure Markets—has launched auto finance as a new asset class for the first time. Hastra has also announced its expansion to Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible chains, with plans to roll out auto loan products first on Solana and then on Ethereum in June. According to Michael Tannenbaum, CEO of Figure, the platform has generated over $22 billion in on-chain loans to date. Analysts view Figure’s tokenized lending business as experiencing significant growth and have assigned it an “outperform” rating with a $67 price target.