Chaos Labs has ended its three-year role as Aave's primary risk service provider, saying Aave's planned move to Aave V4 created added operational and legal exposure it would not take on. Chaos Labs founder Omer Goldberg said Aave Labs supported raising the engagement to $5 million, but the parties diverged on how risk management should work. Aave Labs CEO Stani Kulechov said the split was not hostile and claimed Chaos sought to become the sole risk provider and replace Chainlink oracles.

DeFi recorded $169 million in losses across 34 protocols in Q1, with incidents including a $40 million key compromise and Resolv's $24.5 million breach. While many current attacks focus on access control and key management, Circle is moving early on post-quantum cryptography, as networks face slow upgrade cycles and address-reuse exposure.

Development data tracked over the past 30 days highlights widening gaps among leading DeFi protocols, with Chainlink (LINK) ranked first and DeepBook (DEEP) second. Key milestones include Swift and major banks completing Chainlink CCIP tokenized-transfer trials on April 5, 2026, Aave V4 launching on Ethereum mainnet on March 30, 2026, and Euler reporting more than $100 million in new deposits across Base, Swell, and Sonic.

SEC Chair Paul Atkins said a crypto safe-harbor framework aimed at letting projects launch without immediate registration has moved to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for pre-publication review. Speaking Monday at a digital assets summit hosted by Vanderbilt University and the Blockchain Association, he said the agency expects to propose "reg crypto" shortly and outlined exemptions including a four-year startup pathway with disclosures and investor protections.

Ethena said on April 6, 2026 that it plans to broaden the reserve mix backing its USDe synthetic dollar token to reduce concentration risk. The protocol is finalizing overcollateralized stablecoin lending deals with Anchorage Digital, Maple Institutional, and Coinbase Asset Management, while also proposing additional RWA exposures and basis strategies beyond BTC and ETH perps.

Coinbase said it will support the DAI-to-USDS migration, with an automated conversion scheduled between 4 May and 6 May 2026 at an approximate 1:1 ratio. The exchange will disable DAI trading on 4 May, pause deposits and withdrawals from 4–6 May, and convert eligible balances with no fees, while excluding users in certain EEA jurisdictions.

On April 6, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit granted Kalshi a preliminary injunction blocking New Jersey's effort to halt its sports-related event contracts. The court said Kalshi's claim that federal law preempts state gambling rules had a sufficient likelihood of success, allowing the company to keep offering the contracts while the case proceeds.

The IMF says crypto tokenization represents a structural change to financial market "plumbing", warning it could amplify liquidity stress as settlement, margining, and compliance are embedded in code. The report argues that atomic settlement, 24/7 trading, and automated margin calls may accelerate shocks beyond regulators' response speed, while fragmented liquidity across chains can worsen slippage and risk management. It also notes emerging-markets exposure, where large flows of crypto tokens and dollar-pegged stablecoins could undermine local monetary policy tools.