News linked to both this project and an event.
According to CoinDesk, Drift Protocol—the largest decentralized perpetual futures exchange on Solana—announced it has secured up to $147.5 million in funding from Tether and its partners (including $127.5 million from Tether and $20 million from other partners) following a hack that stole over $270 million. The funds will be used to restore user assets and relaunch the protocol. The attack was carried out on April 1 by a North Korea–linked group that had posed as a quantitative trading firm and infiltrated the protocol for approximately six months, causing the DRIFT token’s value to plummet roughly 70%. The funding structure combines revenue-linked credit, ecosystem subsidies, and market-maker loans, aiming to cover approximately $295 million in user losses. Upon relaunch, the protocol will replace USDC with USDT as its core settlement layer; Tether will simultaneously provide fee waivers, user incentives, and liquidity support.
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.
It is reported that Bybit Alpha has now launched trading for $UNC and $BULL. Both $UNC and $BULL are trending Solana-based meme projects. $UNC surged over 241% intraday, with its market cap briefly exceeding $21 million; it is currently trading at approximately $0.02.
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.
According to The Block, Sentinel Action Fund—a U.S. super PAC backed by the Solana Foundation—announced it will join forces with its sister advocacy organization Right Vote to spend $8 million supporting Republican Senator Jon Husted in Ohio’s upcoming election against Sherrod Brown, aiming to prevent the former senator and crypto skeptic Sherrod Brown from returning to the Senate. Jon Husted has long supported crypto innovation and backed several pro-crypto legislative initiatives, including the GENIUS Act. Per filings with the U.S. Federal Election Commission, the Solana Foundation has donated $750,000 to Sentinel Action Fund, while Multicoin Capital contributed $250,000.
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.
According to Cointelegraph, Nikita Bier, X’s Head of Product, previously posted a hint suggesting the platform may launch a product aimed at “fixing the crypto industry,” sparking widespread market attention and speculation. The market generally believes this crypto-related product will tie into X’s broader financial ecosystem strategy and is expected to involve the upcoming payment and digital wallet product, X Money—potentially incorporating Bitcoin payments, collaboration with the Solana ecosystem, stablecoin applications, and prediction markets, among other integrations. As of now, X has not issued an official statement regarding these plans. Elon Musk previously stated that the early public version of X Money will launch in April.
Aster, a high-performance on-chain trading platform, has announced an enhanced partnership with Binance Wallet, integrating native perpetual contract trading directly into the app. This enables users to trade crypto assets, U.S. equities, ETFs, and commodities seamlessly in one place—anytime, anywhere—while retaining full self-custody of their assets. As part of this upgrade, Aster has launched a USD1-denominated perpetual contract market, supporting BTC, ETH, and SOL trading with USD1 as margin. This new market offers lower fees and WLFI incentives. To celebrate the app integration launch, users who accumulate $1,000 USDT in perpetual contract trading volume on Binance Wallet between April 14, 2026, 20:00 and April 28, 2026, 20:00 (UTC+8) will receive an additional 3 Binance Alpha Points. As a high-performance on-chain trading platform, Aster continues to deepen integrations with top-tier wallets to deliver a secure, ultra-smooth trading experience for users worldwide—truly enabling the migration of derivatives trading from centralized platforms to wallet-native entry points.
According to The Block, renowned startup accelerator Y Combinator has completed its first fully stablecoin investment, paying $500,000 in USDC to prediction market startup Totalis via three on-chain transactions on Solana. The funds are held in custody by Ramp, a financial operations platform. Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan stated that the accelerator will make stablecoin payments available to all YC-backed startups—not limited to crypto-related companies. Totalis plans to use Ramp to execute both stablecoin and fiat transactions simultaneously and to pay credit card bills from its stablecoin account.