Weekly Recap: Blast, Balancer And Abracadabra Move To Shut Down
Plus, Robinhood turns on 10x crypto perps for US traders, and September losses hit $766 million
gm, Defiers!
Three DeFi protocols put shutdown plans on paper this week, and a fourth started paying exploit victims about a penny on the dollar. Blast is closing its Layer 2 with about $63.5 million still in the bridge, Balancer holders voted to wind down and turned down an official fork, and Abracadabra proposed retiring MIM at roughly four cents. Drift opened claims on its April exploit worth about 1% of losses.
Robinhood switched on crypto perpetual futures for U.S. traders, up to 10x on bitcoin and ether, routed through Bitstamp and away from the Lighter instance in its own wallet; LIT fell 13%. Coinbase won CFTC approval to clear its own derivatives, and Kalshi filed to end its volume incentive program a week after its ether perp volume came under scrutiny.
MetaMask pulled its validators out of Lido after an infrastructure compromise. NEAR Intents lost $3.8 million and had it back within a day of naming a 48-hour deadline. Chainalysis tied the Bitget theft to North Korea, and CertiK counted $766.4 million in September losses, the worst month of 2026 in its tally.
Base activated Cobalt, which adds a named function for token administrators to move a holder's balance. SEC staff narrowed last week's buyback FAQ to networks with "no central party," and community banks sued the OCC over crypto trust charters.
Bitcoin ETFs took in nearly $3 billion over seven sessions, enough to turn 2026 flows positive. And the most-read story on The Defiant all week was Coinbase teasing Pokémon card packs.
Enjoy!
Stellar Hits $4B+ in RWAs: Why Wall Street Institutions Are Choosing Stellar
Tokenized real-world assets on Stellar are nearing $4 billion, up about 360% this year. Camila Russo asks Stellar Development Foundation CEO Denelle Dixon what institutions like Franklin Templeton and U.S. Bank needed before they would come, and why so few RWAs get used in DeFi. Watch the full conversation.
Top Stories This Week
Blast, Balancer And Abracadabra Moved To Shut Down
Blast said Friday it will shut down its Ethereum Layer 2 because "we do not see a credible path to making the chain economically sustainable." About $63.5 million remained in its canonical bridge, and users have until Oct. 26 to withdraw through the normal interface, after a roughly weeklong pause to unwind its Lido position. Balancer holders approved a wind-down and rejected an official fork, with 99.2% of voting power behind the plan, and the protocol set Oct. 30 for moving pausable pools to withdrawals-only. Abracadabra proposed retiring MIM at roughly four cents on the dollar: about $1.2 million of collateral backs nearly $22 million of MIM held outside the protocol, and SPELL would be written to zero. Drift opened claims on its April exploit with a recovery pool covering about 1.04% of verified losses.
Robinhood Turned On 10x Crypto Perps For US Traders
Robinhood began rolling out crypto perpetual futures to U.S. traders on Sept. 29: eight assets, up to 10x leverage on bitcoin and ether and 3x on the rest, offered by Robinhood Derivatives through Bitstamp, with in-app access arriving over the coming months. The route skips the Lighter instance that runs perps inside Robinhood Wallet, and LIT fell 13%; Robinhood flow is about a quarter of Lighter's perp volume. Coinbase won CFTC registration for its own clearinghouse for fully collateralized futures, options and swaps, settled in USDC. Kalshi filed to end its volume incentive program no earlier than Oct. 13, and on Friday a federal judge partly sided with Kalshi and Coinbase against Illinois, finding the state's licensing rules likely conflict with federal law on certain sports-event contracts.
MetaMask Pulled Its Validators Out Of Lido As September Losses Hit $766 Million
MetaMask Staking began exiting the validators it runs inside Lido after an infrastructure compromise, and Lido put the exit, withdrawal and re-entry cycle at up to 45 days; neither company has said how the breach happened. NEAR Intents halted services after a $3.8 million loss and, a day after Alex Shevchenko named a 48-hour deadline, said the funds came back in full. Chainalysis attributed the $387 million Bitget theft to North Korea, and Arbitrum's Security Council paused new Stylus activations on Friday as a precaution, saying no attack had occurred. CertiK counted $766.4 million in September exploit and phishing losses, the most of any month this year.
Base's Cobalt Upgrade Gives Issuers A Way To Move Holders' Tokens
Base activated Cobalt on mainnet Wednesday, its third upgrade of 2026. Traders get validity transactions: sign once, attach conditions on balances, storage or block number, and the sequencer keeps the transaction out of blocks until every condition holds. Issuers get three additions to B20, the token standard behind Coinbase's tokenized stocks: composable transfer policies, scheduled multiplier changes for corporate actions, and a named function that lets an administrator move a holder's balance. Base holds $6.25 billion in total value locked, third among all chains behind Ethereum and Solana.
SEC Staff Narrowed The Buyback FAQ As Banks Sued The OCC
Three days after publishing it, SEC staff amended the buyback FAQ so its assurance applies only to systems that are functional and have "no central party," meaning no person or group with operational, economic or voting control. The SEC separately proposed letting registered advisers self-custody client crypto when no qualified custodian will take it. In Europe, ESMA proposed a regulated "gatekeeper" category for crypto firms that route clients to DeFi. On Friday the Independent Community Bankers of America sued the OCC to overturn its crypto trust-charter policy and cancel Protego's conditional approval.
Other Stories
Coinbase Teases Pokémon Card Packs Backed by Physical Collectibles — users would open packs on their phones and either vault or ship each card. Coinbase gave no launch date and no word on which blockchain records ownership, and the teaser drew ten times the traffic of anything else we published this week.
Tether Says It Helped Freeze Nearly $550 Million in Iran-Linked USDT — the disclosure landed the same day a Senate minority report found USDT dominated activity in 84% of 846 Iran- and proxy-linked wallets it studied.
Authors Pull Ethereum Staking Reward Burn From Hegotá — EIP-8363's authors withdrew the burn from the upgrade, leaving current issuance rules in place and moving the debate to an issuance forum at Devcon in November.
Open USD Launches as Stripe's Default Stablecoin — the consortium token went live Sept. 30 with business access through Stripe, BVNK and a limited Visa rollout, and Stripe made OUSD on Tempo its default stablecoin configuration.
Bitcoin ETFs Draw Nearly $3 Billion in Seven Sessions as 2026 Flows Turn Positive — $2.98 billion from Sept. 17 through Sept. 25 took year-to-date net flows to about $1.02 billion, from a $1.96 billion deficit.
Chainlink Launches CCIP 2.0 With Custom Verifiers and Faster Transfers — optional verifiers, configurable settlement speeds and compliance checks arrive for new token pools, while existing integrations keep running with full-finality defaults.
Hyperliquid’s USDC Yield Program Gets $14.6 Million for HYPE Buybacks — the first reserve-yield payment, 14.58 million USDC, sat in the interest-collection address early Saturday, awaiting transfer to the Assistance Fund that buys HYPE.
Trending on The Defiant
Aave Labs Proposes Foundation to Bring Brand and IP Under DAO Oversight · DEFI
IMF Approves $138 Million for El Salvador After Bitcoin Waiver · REGULATION
Centrifuge Confirms Three Tokenized Funds Are Live on Arc · DEFI
Ethereum Foundation Introduces zkAPI for Private API Payments · INFRASTRUCTURE
Most Tokenized Cash Never Trades, Dune Finds · TRADFI
That's it for today — have a great weekend! If you enjoyed this newsletter, tell your friends!
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