On Dec. 18, David Sacks said Sens. Tim Scott and John Boozman confirmed a CLARITY Act markup for January 2026. The article notes that key DeFi sections and the definition of "security" remain bracketed in Senate drafts, and most rules would be written over 360 days to 18 months after enactment.

On December 21, 2025 in San Francisco, Gem Wallet announced a unified USDT infrastructure across 10+ chains, adding integrated swaps, bridges, and anti-scam protections. The self-custody, open-source app supports Tron, Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain, and TON, with biometric security and address-poisoning alerts. Availability spans iOS, Android, and web, with fiat on/off-ramps via MoonPay, Paybis, and Transak.

On December 21 2025, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin used Farcaster posts to argue that prediction markets help counter extreme opinions and misinformation on emotionally sensitive topics. He responded to criticism of platforms like Polymarket, claiming that small markets on major events do not create harmful incentives and can offer more accurate risk signals than social media or headlines. While Buterin firmly opposed assassination markets, he suggested social norms, oracle design, and journalistic standards as ways to make such markets unworkable.

A delivery network called Pipe reported that the Solana blockchain recently faced traffic peaking at around 6 terabits per second, a level its co-founders broadly acknowledged while the network continued producing blocks without downtime. Unlike earlier outages in 2021 and 2022, Solana’s mix of QUIC networking, stake-weighted quality of service, local fee markets, and priority fees throttled spam and kept confirmations stable with no major fee spike. Debate remains over whether the 6 Tbps figure represented a brief burst or sustained load, but the episode highlighted a design that channels malicious or low-stake traffic into slower lanes instead of knocking the chain offline.

On December 21, 2025, SantaStealer was detailed as a malware-as-a-service that prioritizes crypto wallets. It is promoted on Telegram and hacker forums with monthly plans at $175 (Basic) and $300 (Premium). Rapid7 links it to BluelineStealer and notes weak evasion, while data is exfiltrated in 10MB chunks over port 6767.

On Tuesday, Aave founder and CEO Stani Kulechov presented a 2026 roadmap built around Aave V4, Horizon, and a new Aave App. The plan aims to redesign the lending protocol, grow Horizon's real-world asset markets beyond its current $550 million in net deposits, and onboard the first million users via the consumer app. This long-term vision follows the conclusion of a four-year SEC investigation into Aave.

A crypto trader reportedly lost $50,000,000 in USDT after an address‑poisoning scam led to a mistaken copy‑paste. Stablecoins remained pegged, so broader markets saw little reaction, highlighting the finality risk in self‑custody. The incident shows how spoofed look‑alike addresses can appear in wallet history and mislead hurried senders.

On 20 December 2025, a crypto user mistakenly transferred nearly $50 million in USDT to a scam-controlled wallet by copying a spoofed address from their transaction history. Investigators describe this as an address poisoning attack, where the malicious address closely mimicked a legitimate one, leading the victim to send a successful test payment before moving the full amount. Analysts note that the incident is part of a wider rise in onchain losses and highlights how behavioral exploits can bypass technical safeguards.