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81 Crypto Projects Shut Down in 2026

The bear market keeps claiming victims. Since January, 81 crypto projects have announced they’re shutting down, including some of the industry’s biggest names:

• Exchanges: BitMEX, BitMart, CoinEx, AscendEX, Bit.com
Chains & L2s: Blast, Abstract, Polygon zkEVM, Loopring, Sophon
• DeFi: Balancer, Radiant, ZeroLend, Angle, Seamless
• NFTs & wallets: Blur, Foundation, Magic Eden Wallet, Leap Wallet

The reasons are mostly the same: trading volumes collapsed, airdrop farmers left, and some protocols never recovered from hacks, as with Balancer and Radiant.

April was the worst month with 16 shutdowns, and the pace hasn’t slowed since: Blur, Abstract and Blast all announced closures in October alone.

Top 7 Perks | Variational Points +12% | Nado Private Invite | Kolo Free Card Issuance | $20 in KAST Points

- The adoption of Solana OFAs has increased over the past six months.

to learn about how they work, some issues we hear about from the top Solana apps, and brief thoughts on if these arrangements making Solana better for apps and users. - link

- The sandwich attack vector built to be missed. - link
@EthSecurity1

An institutional entity lost ~$2.3M (973K MORPHO) a few hours ago from two addresses and the funds were deposited to Tornado Cash:
0x4943b0c9959dcf58871a799dfb71bece0d97c9f4
0x10bf1dcb5ab7860bab1c3320163c6dddf8dcc0e4

On Oct 9 the same 0x4943 entity had ~$3.5M claimed from old bridges stolen, which was bridged from Ethereum to Zcash via Near Intents and shielded into the Ironwood pool:
0x24a9e00be5f169142c4f0797b41dacdf807d3e63

Both thefts from 0x4943 & 0x10bf involve EIP-7702 delegation transactions.

0x4943 has onchain overlap with an address suspected to belong to Nima Capital, which reportedly lost eight figures due to a private key compromise in Sep 2023, after which the family office allegedly exited crypto.

​Bitcoin yield platform HoneyB raised $5M in a Seed funding round led by Portal Ventures, with participation from PEER Venture Partners, Anchorage Digital.

An institutional entity is suspected to have lost ~$2.84M to DPRK-linked SquidSquad on October 8, 2026 on BSC.

Yesterday (Oct 20), the attacker deposited 1111.2 ETH into Tornado Cash and withdrew to three addresses.

Tornado withdrawal addresses:
0xb8b25f535a6e51d0b18c48941d791c7e83559d2b
0x35c72e26f6888b4cba8668c6cfa4143599680bfe
0x8e4a232ac8a05d1f4cfe4458a96a581ceeb7e848

From there, all funds were bridged from Ethereum to Tron via USDT0 and consolidated at:
TEvUsnwXvprdvB7eNGiqh6rDiMqFiC8TBU
TVxzjnx3GPDTciiuagXPaUbU5f5y13Voux

Both consolidation addresses have exposure to previously attributed DPRK addresses.

Within minutes, the funds moved through intermediary addresses to Chinese OTCs, likely to evade any potential Tether freeze.

Victim address:
0x579be84d2a0f7bcfc34b4b3883153adec84ff153
Theft address:
0x049b1ecce5e2fb254821bc9dc3ae98c5a6eb7e80

Fresh Watchlist

E.T.A - freemint. wl form

Bitizens - nft on Elysium. wl form

Lutra.hl - nft on Elysium. wl form

Degen moves: Lethe ΛΗΘΗ, Quantic OS

More projects, forms, degens: https://x.com/OwlLfg/status/2112670645083652326

2 giveaways on X:
freemint on hood
freemint on hood

​Financial infrastructure platform Mural raised $15M in a Series A funding round led by Tether, with participation from North Island Ventures (NIV).

​Thai crypto exchange platform Z.com EX has been acquired by Bitget.

A new centralized laundering service FreedomXMR (FXMR) appeared on Hyperliquid Core in August 2026. More than 87% of its inflow volume is tied directly to illicit activity.

A manual review of all historical FXMR inflows above $10K traced $20M+ directly to ransomware, exploit, malware, and social engineering incidents, including:
• DCENT Wallet exploit (Sep 2026)
• Fetch[.]ai exploit (Sep 2026)
• Axelar exploit (Sep 2026)
• Unnamed ransomware payment (Sep 2026)
• Gamdom exploit (Oct 2026)

The admin sources XMR liquidity from KuCoin, with 3K+ deposits to KuCoin, and likely uses a swap model similar to Wagyu's.

The FXMR ticker was bought in an HL auction on July 27, 2026 for 518.28 HYPE ($28K).

HL Core has seen several centralized laundering services, such as b1exch, abuse the chain’s permissionless design and adoption.

A spreadsheet with source data has been shared with the HL team.

FXMR hot wallet
0x51687f549b9a4607e8e6f7714a0b986c0dbcdef2
FXMR admin
0x1b7fb7709b146d74aad0b2b853bc741d8885bdb2
0x06ecb2a427c3d51a66c29d9b4fb1960107d10b19
0xecbb61b2aabd32da2082acd989218b0911b79406

​Payment orchestration platform AptPay has been acquired by KORT Payments.

​AI agent platform for real-world asset tokenization Blocksight has been acquired by Open World.

📈 Five weeks after the Fed's first rate hike since 2023, Bitcoin is up 7% and gold is down 6%.

On Sept 16, 2026 the Fed raised its rate by 0.25% to 3.75–4.00%. Higher rates usually hurt crypto and tech stocks, yet Bitcoin beat both stocks and gold.

🔵 16 of 18 Fed officials expect at least one more hike by the end of 2026. The next decision is on Oct 28, and traders have bet $50M on it on Polymarket (still open):

• Rates stay the same: 85.5%
• Another 0.25% hike: 14.5%
• A cut: under 1%

👇 Get a DropsBot alert when BTC moves or the Fed odds shift👀

➕ BTC 🚀
➕ Track Fed odds

AlpsCon.ai hacked $152K

Rootcause:
Access-control / operational failure (the entry point)
The Hardhat/Anvil default account #0 (0xf39fd6e51aad88f6f4ce6ab8827279cfffb92266) — whose private key is publicly known — was added to the production KYC whitelist in a bulk import on 2025-08-24 and left there for ~14 months.
Anyone could therefore use EIP-7702 to delegate arbitrary code to that address and execute transactions as a fully verified, whitelisted wallet.
Reward-accounting bug (the actual value extraction)
Newer reward contracts (V7–V9) recursively imported balances from earlier versions. When a fresh stake appeared in an older hub that still accepted deposits, the newer contracts multiplied the newly visible balance by the already-accumulated profitPerShare while the account’s entryProfitPerShare stayed at zero.
This let a brand-new (flash-loan funded) stake claim the entire historical reward history (~$355K USDC), emptying the pool. The attacker then unstaked, sold the ALPS, repaid the flash loan, and kept the net ~$152K.

@EthSecurity1

​Decentralized storage and persistent memory platform for AI agents Lighthouse.storage raised $1.6M in a funding round from Walrus Protocol, Protocol Labs, Smape Capital, Kinetic Kollective (ex CSP DAO), Balaji Srinivasan, Big Brain Holdings, Fenbushi Capital, HASH CIB (Crypto Investment Bank), LongHash Ventures, Mask Network, NGC Ventures, 2Link Buidl, Formless Capital.

​Business banking and stablecoin platform Meow raised $31.6M in a Series B funding round led by Stifel Financial Corp, with participation from Archetype.

🟩 Bitmine is 63K ETH from 5% of Ethereum. Then it stops buying.

Tom Lee's Bitmine holds 6.04M ETH, 4.9% of supply. Lee says buying stops at 5%.

At this pace, Ethereum's biggest buyer is done in 5 weeks.

💧 Portfolio "Bitmine Ethereum Treasury"

BNB Chain burned $1.2B worth of BNB on its 37th Quarterly Burn

37th quarterly $BNB token burn of 1,646,196 tokens, worth around $1.2B at the time of the burn, has been completed. A total of 68,487,915 $BNB tokens have been burned so far, worth around $49.7B at the current rate.

• Current $BNB price: $724
• Current FDV: $95.5B

🔗 bnbchain.org/en/blog/37th-bnb-burn

Top 7 Perks | Variational Points +12% | Nado Private Invite | Kolo Free Card Issuance | $20 in KAST Points

Trillion Dollar security - link

Validator sniping: How to harvest IP addresses to redirect MEV - link

The Crypto Threat Landscape: Threats and Exploits Targeting Crypto Users
@EthSecurity1

Fresh Watchlist

https://x.com/OwlLfg/status/2111960385381138558

Elytra - first nft on Elysium

Droplets - early nft on sui

4 giveawats on X:
1) freemint on hood
2) nft on ink
3) nft on ink
4) nft on ink

osec_io used AI agents (led by Claude Opus) and custom tooling to decompile GoonFi V2, a closed-source Solana propAMM written in Rust, achieving byte-identical recompilation of all 219 functions from on-chain bytecode. - link

@EthSecurity1

Former Mt. Gox CEO: Ledger Received Hardware Wallet Tampering Reports Since December 2025 but Issued No Public Warning
@EthSecurity1

Here's how exactly Telegram provides user data to U.S. authorities. A letter recently filed in court shows how Telegram transfers that data, such as IP address and phone number.

More: 404media.co/heres-what-tel…
@EthSecurity1

- Red Flags and Green Flags of Yield Bearing Stablecoins - link

- EVM – Cosmos Convergence Research From Security Base Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 

- Exploring Vulnerabilities and Audit Tips for TON Smart Contracts

@EthSecurity1

Fresh Watchlist

The Vault - freemint on hood. wl form

Payphone - freemint on hood. wl form

Re:Born - early collection on Unvault

https://x.com/OwlLfg/status/2111202386568167626

🦙 Llama News Round-Up | 9 Oct - 16 Oct

News 📰
→ The CFTC seeks public comment on a proposal to classify prediction market contracts as swaps
→ DTCC and Chainlink detail 24/7 collateral management details for upcoming Collateral AppChain
→ France proposes 31% tax on stablecoin swaps
→ Ledger halts reseller sales after confirming unauthorized device tampering
→ South Korea blocks 27 unregistered overseas crypto exchanges
→ Interactive Brokers launches Ethereum staking service for clients
→ HEX & Pulsechain founder Richard Heart arrested in Turkey
→ Russia to ban P2P BTC trading by mid-2027
→ USDC becomes the first “significant” e-money token classified by the EBA

 Layer 1 & 2 ⛓️
→ Uniswap is upgrading to OP Enterprise
→ A new Ethereum proposal uses ZK proofs for private stablecoin transactions
→ Injective becomes the first L1 registered with the SEC as a transfer agent

DeFi 🏦
→ Tether blacklists four THORChain vaults on TRON network, then unfreezes them one day later
→ Blur’s frontend to shut down on November 12
→ Base launches Earn & Borrow stack for stablecoin yield and loans against crypto
→ Aave DAO approves incentives for Coinbase tokenized stocks market on Base
→ StarkWare launches OffMarket for trading Polymarket privately via Starknet zero-knowledge pools
→ Lido launches direct staking support on L2s via Chainlink CCIP
→ Uniswap launches VolatilePair Hook, beginning with ETH/USDC
→ 10/10/2026 was good for holder revenue

Reads 📚
→ Who is planting backdoors in Ledger crypto wallets?
→ Tempest: How PaperTrade 1000x perps work
→ CZ: Keep your crypto safu in 2026
→ DefiLlama Research: What happens to Circle’s revenue model when interest rates change?

Raises & Acquisitions 💰
→ Sui Foundation invests $30M in DATA Network
→ OpenAI considers acquiring Trail of Bits
→ Crypto payments network Mesh acquires Bluvo
→ Farcaster gets acquired again, this time by Network School
→ Binance seeks $100M at $1B valuation

Security 🛡
→ Papertrade loses $1.28M to BBO oracle manipulation
→ AI-native web3 security firm Firepan launches pentesting for web apps, APIs, infrastructure
→ Pirate Chain halted after exploit
→ A 2015 bug in XRP Ledger, which allowed for large amounts of XRP minting, was just patched

AI 🤖
→ a16z: How close is AI to breaking cryptography?
→ The IMF warns of an AI “crisis era” that would eliminate 40% of jobs around the globe
→ An OpenAI model accessed funds from a public seed phrase to finish a Sepolia testnet task
→ Octra bug bounty submissions drastically reduced after contributor builds 24/7 agent pipeline for security testing

Llama Update 🦙
→ The RWA dashboard got another big upgrade
→ Exploring helpful features found within the Yields dashboard
→ Yields API V2 is now live; migrate from V1 before November 12
→ Listen to the DefiLlama Research x Zama X space w/ CEO Rand Hindi here
→ The Equities dashboard now tracks 180 pre-IPO companies

🗞 Subscribe to the DefiLlama newsletters

​Lending platform for tokenized equities Spout Finance raised $2M in a Strategic funding round from Draper Dragon, Anchorage Digital, Flow Traders, Taisu Ventures, Vessel Capital, Solayer, 2Square, Bering Waters Ventures, Blockstreet Capital, Solana Labs, Anatoly Yakovenko, Raj Gokal, J. Christopher Giancarlo, Eric Chen, Dean Swennumson, Anna Yuan, Paul Taylor, Saiprasad Raut, Shane Qiu, James Parillo, Stefano Glauser, Whales Lee, Steve Schoonebeek, Riley Wild.

Update: A few hours ago UAE law enforcement published a press release confirming legal action against multiple cybercriminals with $54M+ seized and 33 arrests.

Social engineering threat actors such as Danish Zulfiqar (Danny), Ibrahim Mustafa (Krust), & Cameron Cureton (CX) were all featured in the video posted.

​Settlement platform for tokenized assets and stablecoins Multiliquid raised $8M in a Seed funding round led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Strobe Ventures (ex BlockTower Capital), CMT Digital, Metalayer Ventures, Generative Ventures, Circle Ventures.

​Liquidity platform for tokenized investment funds Fission Labs raised $10M in a Series A funding round led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Circle Ventures, New Form Capital, gumi Cryptos Capital (gCC), Borderless Capital, Ari Rubenstein.

Ripple Prime now offers institutions RWA swaps tied to more than 100 Trade XYZ perpetual markets on Hyperliquid, with 24/7 settlement and $RLUSD collateral support.

https://defiprime.com/ripple-prime-rwa-swaps-hyperliquid

Celebrity NFT Graveyard. Still Holding, Still Losing

The ten priciest celebrity NFT buys on this board cost $6.04M in 2021-22. At today's floors they are worth about $263K, down 96%. Justin Bieber paid $1.31M for a Bored Ape that now sits near $12.9K.

Punks held up best: Snoop Dogg and Marshmello are down 81% and 85%. Logan Paul's 0N1 Force fell 99.99%, from $623K to about $71. All ten are still sitting in the stars' wallets.

The wider NFT market in 2026 👉 cryptodiffer.com/feed/project-updates/nft-market-2026-marketplaces-survival

Stripe and Plasma Build Multi-Currency Cards

Stripe and Plasma announced multi-currency cards backed by stablecoins. Cardholders will spend euros, reais or pesos directly instead of converting through dollars first.

Stripe is expanding its stablecoin card infrastructure to USD, EUR, BRL, MXN and COP, plus USDC, OUSD and other GENIUS-compliant stablecoins. It is live in 30+ countries and targets 100+ in 2027. Plasma, an account for people whose finances span countries, is moving onto Stripe's card stack as design partner.

Next, cards will pick the right balance automatically at checkout. Other businesses can issue the same cards through Stripe.

Partner Offers | Get Your Instant BTC Cashback | Your Gateway To Crypto | Arcus Private Whitelist

​Resource and payment platform for AI agents AIsa received funding from Tether. Amount is not disclosed.

Stripe and Plasma are developing cards that can spend from fiat and stablecoin balances, with support available in more than 30 countries and a move past 100 planned for 2027.

https://defiprime.com/stripe-plasma-multi-currency-stablecoin-cards

​Loan servicing and collateral management platform Zaria raised $5.2M in a Seed funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Refract Ventures, Epoch Ventures.

USDC Becomes EU's First Significant E-Money Token

The EBA classified Circle's USDC as a significant e-money token under MiCA. It is the first of 45 notified e-money tokens in the EU to get the label.

From November 12, USDC moves to dual supervision. The EBA takes over direct oversight of its own funds, reserve assets, liquidity, and recovery and redemption plans from France's ACPR. The ACPR keeps governance, qualifying holdings, fit and proper checks, outsourcing and conflicts of interest.

The EBA also signed a memorandum with New York's DFS to cooperate on cross-border stablecoins, as USDC is issued in both the EU and the US.

Partner Offers | Get Your Instant BTC Cashback | Your Gateway To Crypto | Arcus Private Whitelist

ASIC proposed daily custody reconciliation, public real-time order data and capital requirements for Australian digital asset platforms ahead of the April 2027 licensing regime.

https://defiprime.com/asic-proposes-australian-crypto-platform-standards

Spy Ledgers Have Now Turned Up in 6 Countries

Public teardown tracker by Mark Karpelès lists 12 Ledgers with a hidden LTE implant, bought everywhere from Lazada Thailand and Amazon Japan to Changi Airport.

"The implant sits inside the enclosure and reads the data shown on the screen … It does not modify the Secure Element or the Ledger operating system," Ledger's Donjon team said. That is why a tampered device still passes Genuine Check.

CryptoBilis buyers in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines lost ~$102M, per Bitquery. Ledger has not confirmed a total, but on October 13 it halted sales in 7 Asian markets.

Bought a Ledger outside ledger.​com this year? Move funds to a new device with a new seed.

BingX EU Wins MiCA License for 29 EEA Countries

BingX EU secured a MiCA license from Austria's Financial Market Authority (FMA), becoming an authorized crypto-asset service provider (CASP).

The license is held by MEGE zweite GmbH, the BingX EU entity in Vienna. Once passporting is complete, it can offer regulated broker services, including crypto custody and exchange, in all 29 countries of the European Economic Area.

The services are not live yet: BingX EU is still preparing the launch with the FMA and other European regulators.

Partner Offers | Get Your Instant BTC Cashback | Your Gateway To Crypto | Arcus Private Whitelist

KR1 launched 10 dedicated Ethereum validators through a P2P-operated Lido stVault, with a near-term target of staking up to 6,000 ETH.

https://defiprime.com/kr1-launches-dedicated-validators-on-lido-stvaults

StandX Shuts Down, Drops Token for DUSD Airdrop

StandX is winding down operations and will not launch a token. The BNB Chain and Solana perp DEX will instead airdrop DUSD, funded by all remaining revenue plus extra team money.

Perps go reduce-only on October 20, with no new positions or DUSD minting. Remaining positions are closed at mark price on January 15, 2027, and withdrawals and DUSD redemptions end on January 31. All yield and vault deposits stopped today. Since its November 2025 mainnet, StandX served 237K users and peaked above $200M TVL.

The airdrop checker goes live October 26. Claims run November 1 to December 31 with no lockup, and unclaimed DUSD is forfeited.

Partner Offers | Get Your Instant BTC Cashback | Your Gateway To Crypto | Arcus Private Whitelist

Perpetuals published notice for a tokenized U.S. equities venue, with 24/7 trading and shareholder rights proposed under a five-year SEC exemption framework.

https://defiprime.com/perpetuals-publishes-tokenized-us-stocks-notice

- Kocher's Timing Attack, A Journey from Theory to Practice - link

- Blockchain Security — Offense, Defense, and Practices

- Finding Ways To Break Smart Contracts (Auditing: Part 2) - link

@EthSecurity1

StandX will force-close remaining perps on January 15, then end $DUSD redemptions and platform withdrawals on January 31, 2027.

https://defiprime.com/standx-sets-january-closure-and-dusd-exit-dates

Hecto announced $NEOPRIME as a Canton-native token backed by pre-IPO shares, with Cantex trading promised while holder rights and eligibility await final terms.

https://defiprime.com/hecto-neoprime-private-market-token-canton

Tempo Zones now conceal internal stablecoin balances and payments while preserving operator controls and access to public liquidity, with Deel live for contractor payouts.

https://defiprime.com/tempo-zones-private-stablecoin-payments

VanEck withdrew its proposed $stETH fund before any shares were issued or sold, ending a planned brokerage wrapper for Lido staking exposure.

https://defiprime.com/vaneck-withdraws-lido-staked-ethereum-etf

Fresh Watchlist

https://x.com/OwlLfg/status/2110455513322234220

2 giveaways on X
NULORA - nft collection on Monero. 2 GTD spots on X. You need to create a wallet on the website and post it in the comments on X - https://nulora.io

25 GTD spots for nft on hood

Tomorrow, I’ll be monitoring the freemint: Computers Rh. Their token is almost dead, but maybe the NFT could still bring some attention

Sberbank now holds Russian registrations for principal crypto dealing and digital-asset recordkeeping, but its supported assets and launch terms are still undisclosed.

https://defiprime.com/sberbank-joins-russia-crypto-exchange-register

@UNCX_token hacked for ≈$87.7K.

Root cause:
VestingManager.release() subtracts claimed shares from global _totalTokenShares but leaves them in the position's _depositedShares.
After release → topUpVesting(), cancel() calculates sharesToRemove from the full lifetime _depositedShares without subtracting schedule released,

so already-released shares are removed from the global total a second time.

The attacker used a direct donation to magnify this stale-share debit,

corrupted the denominator, then released a second attacker-owned vesting to take tokens backing unrelated users.

Attack tx: etherscan.io/tx/0x352065378…
@EthSecurity1