These are the biggest news in DeFi and crypto:

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev's X account got hijacked on Thursday to promote a memecoin called Vladhood. The token drew more than $22 million in volume and roughly 85,000 swaps within hours. The wallet behind it had already funded itself and launched the token on Robinhood Chain 46 minutes before the hacked post went live.

Onchain records show the token launch and the account takeover were a single coordinated operation. The creator left liquidity locked and by press time had claimed the pool's trading fees six times, netting about 31.6 ETH plus roughly 7% of supply, and was still collecting as of press time.

It's the third memecoin-linked social hack on Robinhood Chain in three weeks, and the scams have done little to slow the network, which just overtook Base on daily active users. Robinhood pitched the chain for tokenized stocks; memecoins have driven its volume since day one. The memecoin trade is back in force, and the fraud has come with it.

Read more below!

PARTNER

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WATCH

Base's Memecoin Boom, Explained

Austin Campbell (ZeroKnowledge, ex Paxos & JPMorgan), Michael Lee (LienFi, long-time Base builder), Jason Yanowitz (Blockworks), joined us to discuss live how memecoins took over Robinhood Chain, Brian Armstrong’s pfp scandal, and whether Base leadership shifting focus away from more speculative use cases is the right call. Watch the replay.

PARTNER

Crypto's Quiet Revolution: How Stablecoins Deliver Aid Where Banks Can't

We interviewed Mercina Tillemann (Circle) & Matthew Keller (Algorand Foundation) at Algorand's Humanitarian Payments Council about how stablecoins are being used to make aid payments faster, cheaper and traceable.

HACKS

Hacker Behind Fake 'Vladhood' Token Still Collecting Fees After Robinhood CEO's X Hack

The wallet behind Vladhood was created for the occasion, funded with 0.2955 ETH routed through the Relay bridge to obscure its origin, then used to launch the token through Pons, a Pump.fun-style launchpad on Robinhood Chain. The launch listed Tenev's X profile as the token's official site — 46 minutes before his account posted the promotion. The token reached a $2.6 million valuation and 5,266 holders, and Robinhood's comms team flagged the compromise 41 minutes after the post. About 30 copycat VLAD pools appeared within hours; at least three were drained to zero.

	TICKER	VALUE	24H
	Hacker Behind Fake 'Vladhood' Token Still Collecting Fees After Robinhood CEO's X Hack Onchain records show the scam token was deployed 46 minutes before the hacked post appeared, and its creator has been harvesting trading fees without ever pulling liquidity. thedefiant.io

Why this matters: A CEO's verified account is a launchpad accessory. When the exploit is the marketing, every verified account is an attack surface, and locked liquidity lets the scam pose as a real token.

DEFI

Uniswap Adds Permissioned Pools to Bring Regulated Assets to v4

Uniswap introduced Permissioned Pools, a v4 hook that checks an issuer's allowlist on every swap and before any liquidity mint, with the pool itself verifying a wallet at the protocol level. Superstate, Securitize, and Dowgo are launch partners, and Dowgo contributed the ERC-3643 integration. Uniswap called it the first generalized, open-source, institutional-grade standard for trading regulated assets on an AMM, a superlative that comes from the company and is unverified here.

Why this matters: Onchain allowlists let issuers bring regulated funds and equities to AMM liquidity without surrendering control. For DeFi's largest DEX, it is a direct bid to become where tokenized assets trade.

TRADFI AND FINTECH

Ondo's Oasis Pro Markets Cleared to Offer Tokenized Stocks in US

Ondo Finance said its broker-dealer subsidiary, Oasis Pro Markets, secured authorization to offer tokenized equities and funds to US investors under SEC and FINRA oversight. The clearance covers tokenized public equities, ETFs, and mutual and index funds through OTC retailing, underwritten primary offerings, and private placements, and supports omnibus structures so RIAs and retirement accounts can reach the products through existing brokers. Ondo said its Ondo Stocks unit has logged over $20 billion in cumulative volume and more than $1 billion in TVL — its own figures, with no independent basis published.

Why this matters: Selling tokenized US stocks onshore, inside the SEC and FINRA perimeter, is the step most tokenization firms have avoided. Ondo is betting the next leg of volume comes from regulated onshore access.

REGULATION

SEC's Peirce Says Onchain Vaults, Lending Can Trigger Securities Laws

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said crypto vaults and onchain lending strategies can fall under federal securities laws depending on how they are structured and managed, in a July 22 statement titled "Headstands and Summervaults." The trigger she emphasized is active management — selecting yield strategies, reallocating assets, setting rates, or defining liquidation thresholds. She framed it as an invitation, warning that builders doing "headstands, backflips, and other gymnastics" to dodge the law will face "a painful fall," while urging compliant paths. The statement reflects her own view and carries no force as a Commission rule.

Why this matters: Peirce is the SEC's friendliest crypto voice, and even she says moving vaults and lending onchain does not exempt them. Curators and rate-setters, think Morpho's ecosystem, have a securities question to answer.

TRADFI AND FINTECH

KAIO Tokenizes Mubadala Capital Fund Across Base, Solana and Sui

KAIO launched tokenized access to one of Mubadala Capital's evergreen private-market strategies, live across Base, Solana and Sui with about $75 million in onchain value. Coinbase will add exposure to the offering, which KAIO tied to rising appetite among listed digital-asset companies for regulated RWAs. Figures diverged across channels — Solana framed it as $75 million in commitments on a single chain, while Sui cited a $385 billion sovereign fund and $3.7 billion NAV that KAIO's own post did not state — so treat the scale numbers as unverified.

Why this matters: A sovereign-wealth-linked private fund going onchain, with a listed US exchange taking exposure, pushes tokenization past Treasuries and stocks into illiquid alternatives, the harder and higher-fee frontier institutions actually care about.