Starknet, an Ethereum layer-2 ZK-rollup used by DeFi and gaming applications, is undergoing a new bout of mainnet downtime in 2026 after a series of outages in 2025. The team said on X that engineers are investigating the disruption and working to restore services, with the latest incident lasting just over two hours at the time of writing, while the STRK token price remained largely unchanged.

On January 5, 2026, a phishing campaign impersonating MetaMask support pushed a fake two‑factor authentication process to harvest recovery phrases. SlowMist's CSO described the operation as highly polished, with look‑alike domains and branded emails. Although 2025's phishing losses fell from nearly $494 million to about $84 million, attackers are reappearing with refined tactics.

A phishing campaign targeting MetaMask users deploys a convincing 2FA-style workflow to capture wallet recovery phrases. According to SlowMist's chief security officer, attackers use near-identical domains and branded emails to impersonate MetaMask Support. The scheme underscores increasingly polished social engineering tactics despite reports of falling crypto phishing losses in 2025.

MetaMask said users were targeted by a 2FA verification phishing campaign, with emails instructing recipients to update credentials by January 4, 2026 or face limited wallet access. On January 5, SlowMist's 23pds flagged the scheme on social media, urging caution. Security firms Halborn and MailGuard have advised proactive anti-phishing processes and immediate deletion of suspicious messages.

Spending on Visa-issued crypto cards rose 525% across 2025, with net volume growing from $14.6 million in January to $91.3 million in December, per Dune Analytics. EtherFi’s card recorded $55.4 million for the year, ahead of Cypher at $20.5 million, while Visa expanded stablecoin support and launched a dedicated advisory team in mid-December.

In 2025, crypto wallet-draining phishing scams caused about $83.85 million in losses, an 83% drop from roughly $494 million in 2024, according to Scam Sniffer's annual analysis. The number of impacted wallets fell to around 106,000 and average losses slid to about $790 per victim, even as attackers shifted toward smaller, more frequent thefts and exploited new vectors like Permit signatures and EIP-7702. Security experts say the decline likely reflects better wallet defenses and user tools, but warn that phishing tactics continue to evolve alongside market cycles.

On Sunday, SlowMist said it detected a potential critical vulnerability affecting HitBTC and went public on X after direct messages under responsible disclosure received no response. The firm urged the exchange to contact them to coordinate next steps. SlowMist's 2025 report logged 12 exchange-related incidents causing up to USD 1.809 billion in losses.

South Korea's Financial Intelligence Unit approved only two new virtual asset service providers in 2025, down from four in 2024. The average approval timeline increased to 16 months from 11, and VASPs filed 36,684 suspicious transaction reports between January and August 2025, with about 90% tied to illegal cross-border remittance schemes.