According to on-chain analysts, wallets tagged as potentially linked to Bhutan's Druk Holdings have built a 117K ETH leveraged position on Aave by withdrawing ETH and USDT from Binance, purchasing more ETH, and borrowing against it. The same entity has become more active in Ethereum DeFi, moving $735M through Aave and holding $275.6M on Lido, with its positions reportedly facing liquidation risk if ETH falls toward $1,400 while the broader treasury value has declined from over $1B to around $556M.

Ethereum is experiencing a large address poisoning campaign that has already dusted over 1.5M wallets and stolen more than $740K from 116 victims. One user lost about $510K in the largest single incident, as attackers exploited low transaction fees after the Fusaka upgrade to send vast numbers of spam transfers. The activity is driven by several smart contracts that flood users with tiny stablecoin amounts and fake history entries, increasing the risk of misdirected transactions.

On January 19, 2026, ASTER hit a fresh all-time low around $0.62 and briefly dipped to $0.53, prompting the Aster DEX team to activate Strategic Buybacks, according to Cryptopolitan. The Stage 5 framework is currently channeling 20%–40% of daily platform fees into targeted repurchases, with provisions allowing up to 80% allocation. Aster said its treasury has begun swapping BNB for ASTER through a reserve wallet.

On January 16, 2026, on-chain researcher ZachXBT said Monero's latest upswing was tied to laundering proceeds from a $282M hardware-wallet breach, with BTC and LTC rapidly converted into XMR and some funds routed via Thorchain. After spiking above $788 and rallying from $454 on January 10, XMR pulled back to $667.43, roughly 20% below its record high.

In early 2026, vault curators significantly increased the value they manage, reinforcing their role as a key growth engine for DeFi lending. Steakhouse Finance's vaults surpassed $1.8B, while Morpho's total value locked rose from $5.79B at the end of 2025 to $6.91B in mid-January 2026. Vault curators now actively manage risk, concentrate on USDC-based strategies, and support the expansion of Morpho V2 and other onchain lending products.

Kaito said it will retire its Yaps product after losing access to the X API, shifting focus to curated creator content on X, TikTok and YouTube. On January 16, 2026, KAITO traded at $0.54, near its $0.49 all-time low, according to CoinGecko. The platform plans stricter curation and tiered incentives for influencers and KOLs.

Mantra confirmed January 15, 2026 as the final day to migrate OM from Ethereum to its mainnet, with about 7% of supply still unmigrated as ERC-20 tokens. On January 14, 2026, CEO JP Mullin said the company will restructure and reduce roles after OM's April 2025 crash and weaker market conditions.

On January 15, 2026, several large Polymarket wallets that had posted major gains on prediction markets tied to the US operation in Venezuela were reported as inactive or deleted, while one key trader, Sbet365, redirected activity to an Iran-focused market. The main tracked wallet exited with gains of 194,741.73 before deletion, two of three wallets stopped placing new bets for 11 days, and Sbet365 accumulated "yes" tokens in a market on Iran's Supreme Leader ahead of a January 31 deadline, even as another trader lost over $40K on a failed Iran strike prediction.

Whale transfers of BTC to Binance decelerated in January 2026 after heavier December activity, according to Binance data. Year to date, about 15,800 BTC moved to the exchange, 42.5% slower than December's 37,133 BTC, while BTC briefly topped $97,500 before pulling back to $95,449.56. Mean deposits stayed above 20 BTC, and whales accounted for 20.85% of inflows.