Weekly Recap: Mantra Crash Erases Billions in Minutes

Happy Easter Defiers!

It was a relatively calm week for crypto markets, with Bitcoin trading in a tight range between $83,000 and $85,000 amid ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty.

RWA blockchain Mantra is under fire after its OM token suddenly plunged by over 90%, wiping out billions in market capitalization within minutes.

Coinbase’s Layer 2 Base sparked controversy after promoting a ‘content coin’ minted on Zora.

Plus, Galaxy proposes Solana inflation tweak, TAC attracts $150M, TRUMP developer pulls liquidity, and PumpSwap volumes surge.

Also, don’t forget to check out our podcasts with Sid Powell, CEO of Maple Finance, and Base creator Jesse Pollak.

Enjoy!

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PODCAST & INTERVIEWS

Dive Into Lending, Borrowing, and Real World Assets with Maple Finance: Sid Powell

By bridging the gap between traditional finance and decentralized systems, Maple Finance is demonstrating how institutions can leverage blockchain technology for more efficient and transparent lending solutions.

In an insightful conversation, Camila Russo sat down with Maple Finance’s CEO, Sid Powell, to delve into the potential of real-world assets (RWAs) within DeFi, the evolving role of stablecoins in this ecosystem, and strategies to unlock new lending markets onchain. Their discussion highlights the rapid innovations taking place in the DeFi space and sheds light on the future of decentralized credit markets.

Base Creator Jesse Pollak on How Content Coins Will Fix the Creator Economy

Jesse Pollak discusses why Coinabse Layer 2 Base decided to launch two tokens on Zora.

He highlights the challenges creators face in the web2 economic model, the differences between content coins and meme coins, and the role of crypto and tokens in enabling creators to monetize their work. Pollak emphasizes the importance of experimentation in the blockchain space and how it can lead to a more equitable creator economy.

Friday

Galaxy Research Proposes Voting on a Spectrum to Curb Solana Inflation The proposal introduces weighted voting to determine Solana's inflation schedule.
Synthetix’s sUSD Slides Further Away from Peg After Protocol Update Bouncing back to $0.83, sUSD is far from out of the woods as it hit as low as $0.66 in a depegging caused by a stabilization mechanism in transition.
Crypto Market Slips Amid Fed Uncertainty and Trade Tensions BTC and ETH hold steady as leveraged liquidations total $92.4 million.
RWA Blockchain Converge Turns to Arbitrum and Celestia for High Speeds, Low Costs Synthetic dollar protocol Ethena and tokenization firm Securitize are building Converge.

Thursday

TAC Attracts $150M to Bring Ethereum-based Liquidity to Telegram’s TON Blockchain TAC worked with the Turtle Club to build and provision liquidity vaults on Ethereum that can be used by DApps accessing the TON blockchain.
Base Creator Jesse Pollak Denounced “Stigma” Attached to Creators Issuing Tokens Pollak said in an interview with The Defiant he wants to help create a new category of token differentiated from memecoins, called Content Coins.
Crypto Markets Stumble for Third Day Amid Trump Tariff Jitters, Fed Uncertainty Bitcoin hovers at $85K while SOL surges 5%.
Web3 Rugpulls Plummet in Number but Explode in Scale in 2025: Report A single incident accounted for 92% of all rugpull losses this year so far.
Babylon Sheds $1.3 Billion in TVL After Mass Bitcoin Unstaking The unstaking event occurred around the same time as Lombard, another Bitcoin staking platform, announced it was switching finality providers.
Stablecoin Transactions Surpassed Visa’s in Q1: Bitwise The asset manager’s Q1 review noted that despite political and regulatory wins coming in quick succession, crypto prices dropped across the board since the November election.
Top Ethereum L2 Arbitrum Unveils Timeboost Upgrade to Accelerate Transactions The new upgrade introduces sealed-bid auctions for MEV searchers.
‘Congress Is Aligned with Innovation,’ Says Sei Labs General Counsel Last week, an IRS rule that threatened to upend DeFi was repealed in what some see as another signal of a major sentiment shift in Washington.
Eliza Labs Launches ‘No-Code’ Platform for Creating AI Agents The project, previously known as ai16z, aims to democratize the deployment of AI agents.
Crypto Winter is Coming, Says Coinbase Institutional Less than four months into the new year, the total crypto market cap, excluding Bitcoin, is down 41%.
NFT Marketplaces Pivot to Memecoins Less than two weeks after Magic Eden acquired token trading platform Slingshot, Opensea launches Solana token support.

Wednesday

TRUMP Memecoin Developer Pulls Liquidity Ahead of Massive Unlock The wallet that launched the token removed $4.6 million of USDC liquidity.
Maple Finance TVL Surpasses $1 Billion Maple’s SYRUP token has surged 20% in the past 24 hours.
Crypto Market Extends Losses as Tariff Tensions Rattle Investors Bitcoin holds steady while Ethereum and altcoins dip.
AWS Outage Disrupts Crypto Exchanges, Raising Questions About Web3’s Centralized Backbone The brief disruption led to failed trades and service delays across Binance, KuCoin, and MEXC.

Tuesday

Bitcoin Holds Steady at $85,000 While Tariff Concerns Pressure Broader Market Most major cryptocurrencies posted losses amid market jitters tied to Trump’s new tariff plans.
After a Long Focus on Layer 2s, Ethereum Foundation Turns Its Attention Back to Mainnet Consensys’ Mallesh Pai tells The Defiant that Ethereum hasn’t kept pace with its competitors or Layer 2s.
The SEC Has Dropped 10 Crypto Cases in Q1 Alone The agency has backed away from a slew of cases against prominent crypto companies, marking a clear shift away from its approach under Gensler.
Onchain Gold Trading Volume Soars to All-Time High PAXG and XAUt trading volumes hit fresh highs last week as spot gold surged above $3,100/oz.
PumpSwap Weekly Trading Volume Hits All-time High of $2.3 Billion The Solana-based decentralized exchange processed 40% more volume than the previous week.
TRUMP Memecoin's $300M+ Unlock Is ‘One to Watch’: Analyst Only 20% of the total supply of the Official Trump memecoin has been unlocked since it launched in January 2025.
OpenEden Stablecoin Crosses $100 Million Valuation USDO’s market capitalization is up more than 200% since its launch in March.
Mantra Bounces 60% Following Recent Crash Mantra’s native OM token crashed by 95% on Apr. 13, sparking rumors of insider dumping.
zkSync Suffers $5M Loss After Admin Wallet Exploit The zkSync team reassured users that their funds remain unaffected.
SOL/ETH Ratio Hits Another All-Time High Solana’s outperformance of Ethereum continues to trend as the metric hits a new weekly high of 0.08.