Bitcoin infrastructure firm Blockstream has refused to negotiate further with hackers who last week stole 4,000 bitcoins from its Liquid network.
Writing on X Friday, Blockstream said that the hackers still had time to return the funds before the company would work with law enforcement.
White-hat hackers on Sunday withdrew about $320 million from the federation wallet that backs Liquid, a sidechain by Blockstream. After negotiating with Blockstream, they returned most of the funds but kept 598.5 coins worth over $46 million — demanding it as ransom.
“Blockstream will not pay a ransom for the return of stolen funds,” the post read. “Taking assets without authorization and withholding their return is a crime, not responsible disclosure. It is not white-hat activity. It is theft.”
To those responsible for the theft of bitcoin from the Liquid Network:
Blockstream will not pay a ransom for the return of stolen funds. Taking assets without authorization and withholding their return is a crime, not responsible disclosure. It is not white-hat activity. It is…
It added: “We will work with law enforcement, exchanges, service providers, forensic specialists, and other relevant parties to trace and recover the assets and identify those responsible.”
“We will not pay for the return of stolen property. We will not abandon our users. The Bitcoin community will not stop pursuing the funds.”
Liquid, or L-BTC, is a layer-2 created by Blockstream that allows users to fast move assets backed 1:1 with bitcoin. One of the assets, LBTC, is a token backed by bitcoin that allows for quick settlement — a bit like the Lightning Network.
Hackers were able to get the funds by exploiting an inflation bug on the Liquid sidechain to create over 4,000 LBTC that did not exist before and cash them out for real, on-chain bitcoins.
The hackers then had an exchange with Blockstream via messages written into Bitcoin blocks.
In one message, the white hats wrote: “Please fix the bug first. The chain is under risk at latest commit right now. Make sure every node is patched. Then we will transfer the money back safely after confirming the fix.”
In the latest message, the hackers slammed Blocksteam as “delusional, greedy, and arrogant,” and threatened to reveal all of Blockstream’s encrypted messages in the exchange unless the company allowed thieves to keep 10% of the bitcoins.
“You SHALL pay 10% using your own money as bug bounty or you will cause all your holders a 15% loss for your irresponsibility and stinginess,” the message read.
The Bitcoin community is still reeling after hackers in July were able to steal over 1,800 bitcoins worth close to $140 million from Coldcard wallet holders.
Users of the popular hardware wallet, created by Coinkite, were targeted because the product’s manufacturer did not use a true random number generator, allowing hackers to essentially guess investor seedphrases.
The man behind one of the biggest bitcoin thefts in history this week pleaded guilty.
Malone Lam, 22, a Miami resident from Singapore, on Tuesday admitted his role as ringleader of the international crime group which stole 4,100 bitcoins — worth over $230 million at the time — to fund a life of luxury.
The U.S. Department of Justice said that from October 2023 and through at least May 2025, Lam and others hacked databases to steal crypto users’ information and con them into providing user logins and private keys. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies worth $245 million were taken in the theft.
On one occasion, a co-defendant broke into a residence in New Mexico and stole a hardware wallet while Lam monitored the victim’s movements by hacking their iCloud account.
“This defendant led an international network that preyed on victims through deception, invaded their privacy, and stole hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency,” U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro said in a statement.
“If you build a cybercrime empire, we will find you, dismantle your operation, and hold you accountable,” Attorney Pirro added.
The DOJ said: “The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act conspiracy used social engineering and occasional home break-ins to obtain information that allowed the conspirators to drain their victims’ cryptocurrency wallets.”
The crimes started after a group of online gamers became friends before working together to commit the cybercrimes, the indictment read.
Lam and co-defendants laundered the stolen bitcoin and spent it on bottle service parties, private jet rentals, security guards, luxury handbags and watches, and properties in Los Angeles, the Hamptons, and Miami.
The defendants would spend up to $500,000 a night on parties and give away designer handbags worth tens of thousands of dollars, Tuesday’s announcement read.
Lam was arrested in 2024 at his rental home in Miami.
The Hyperliquid Policy Center has asked a federal court to dismiss CME Group’s lawsuit against the CFTC, arguing that the derivatives exchange lacks standing and cannot rely on the Commodity Exchange Act provisions cited in its complaint. Hyperliquid policy group…
One chain won the volume. The other still holds the balance. The dollar you move and the dollar you park may not belong on the same chain.
Two chains, two jobs. The stablecoin market split into a movement layer and a settlement layer, and most comparisons still treat it as one race.
In January 2026, Solana passed both Ethereum and Tron in adjusted monthly stablecoin transaction volume.
By June 2026, Ethereum still held roughly $154 billion in stablecoin supply. About 49% of everything issued. Solana held around $15 billion. About 5%.
Both facts are true. Same year. Same asset class.
That gap is the entire Ethereum vs Solana argument, and most versions of it online miss the point.
Money does two jobs. It moves, and it sits. Solana got very good at the first one. Ethereum still holds the second.
Picking a winner only makes sense once you say which job you mean.
Stablecoin supply by chain, June 2026. Ethereum holds roughly 49 percent of everything issued. Solana holds roughly 5 percent.
Ethereum vs Solana Speed: Three Numbers, Not One
Payment speed is not a single metric. It is three, and people mix them up constantly.
Block time. How often the chain produces a block. Solana runs 400 millisecond blocks. Ethereum runs 12 seconds.
Confirmation. When your wallet turns green. Fast on both chains. Probabilistic on both chains.
Finality. When the transfer cannot be reversed. This is the only one a treasury desk cares about.
Finality is where the two chains genuinely diverge.
Settlement finality on a log scale. Confirmation is not finality, and finality is the number a treasury desk prices.
Ethereum finalizes after two consecutive epochs. Roughly 12.8 minutes.
Solana finalizes in roughly 12.8 seconds today.
Alpenglow, Solana’s consensus overhaul, targets 100 to 150 milliseconds, with mainnet activation guided toward late 2026.
Same digits, different units. It is a useful way to remember the scale.
Fees split along the same line. Solana transfers sit well under a tenth of a cent. Ethereum mainnet is priced like a settlement venue, because that is what it has become.
Ethereum has not stood still either. The Fusaka upgrade shipped in December 2025 and raised blob capacity for rollups across two follow-on increases.
Glamsterdam, the next fork, has been in testnet hardening through 2026. Fidelity Digital Assets read Fusaka as a shift toward economic sustainability rather than raw throughput.
Single-slot finality, which would collapse that 12.8 minute window toward 12 seconds, remains research rather than a shipping date.
Why Solana Won the Stablecoin Payment Volume War
Solana processed roughly $650 billion in stablecoin transactions in February 2026, close to triple its January figure.
The reasons are unglamorous and real:
400 millisecond blocks make retry logic cheap
Sub-cent fees make sub-dollar payments viable
Firedancer, the Jump Crypto validator client, lifted the throughput ceiling
Payment apps and neobanks route high-frequency, low-value flows there by default
Now the part most comparison posts leave out.
Roughly 88% of stablecoin transfer volume is exchange activity, bots and arbitrage routing. Not real-economy payments.
Teams that filter the noise land on a few hundred billion dollars a year in genuine payment flow, not the trillions in the headlines.
So Solana did win something real. It is just not “most of the world’s money now moves on Solana.”
If your framing is strictly “best blockchain for payments,” Tron has an uncomfortable claim that the Ethereum vs Solana framing keeps out of frame.
Why Institutional Capital Still Settles on Ethereum
Volume leadership and where value actually sits are two different races.
Ethereum hosts about 61.4% of tokenized assets, roughly $206.2 billion in onchain value
BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and WisdomTree all selected Ethereum for tokenization products
Reversing a finalized Ethereum block would require an attacker to control and forfeit roughly 11 million staked ETH
Volume leadership and value custody are separate races. Solana leads one. Ethereum leads the other.
That last line is the one large allocators price. Ethereum finality is slow measured in seconds and expensive measured in dollars. On a $50 million transfer, 12.8 minutes is not a delay. It is the product.
As of this writing that figure sits at roughly $14.15 billion, against a stablecoin supply near $11.48 billion.
What Does Your Dollar Do Between Transfers?
Here is the question the chain debate never touches.
A payment takes one second, or twelve minutes. A dollar sits still for weeks.
Neither Solana’s 400 millisecond blocks nor Ethereum’s economic finality does anything about the idle balance in between.
Chain choice is a transport decision. Yield is a separate decision, and it is usually the larger one.
That is where USDS and sUSDS sit.
[USDS](https://www.skyeco.com/products#usds) is the fully backed unit of account of Sky Ecosystem. The transport-layer dollar.
[sUSDS](https://www.skyeco.com/products#susds) is the yield-generating version. Supply USDS, receive sUSDS, and the position accrues the Sky Savings Rate programmatically.
The Sky Savings Rate is variable and set by SKY-token-holder governance. The live figure is published on the financial dashboard.
No lockups. Convert back to USDS at any time, with no fees and no slippage.
The funding source matters more than any headline rate. The Sky Savings Rate is sourced from revenue accrued by Sky Protocol through institutional-grade collateral and deployment strategies, not from token emissions.
Independent allocators including Spark, Grove and Osero draw USDS liquidity under governance-set risk parameters and pay for that access.
Gross Protocol Revenue of $107.35M, up 10.5% year over year
Net Protocol Revenue of $40.09M, a 37.3% net margin
Net Protocol Surplus of $33.29M, a fifth consecutive positive quarter
sUSDS supply of $5.52B, up 149% year over year
USDS supply of $10.04B, up 41% year over year
Sky Protocol, Q2 2026, as published by Sky Frontier Foundation. The Sky Savings Rate is funded from revenue accrued by the protocol, not from token emissions.
SkyLink: How One Dollar Lives Natively on Both Chains
You do not actually have to choose. USDS already lives on Ethereum and Solana, plus Base, Arbitrum and Avalanche.
The mechanism matters here, because most multichain stablecoins are wrapped IOUs with a bridge operator hiding inside them.
Ethereum to Solana: USDS locks on Ethereum, the Solana program mints native USDS
Solana to Ethereum: the Solana side burns, the Ethereum adapter unlocks
No third-party bridge liquidity pool. No wrapped representation. USDS on Solana stays backed 1:1 by USDS on Ethereum
Daily transfer limits are set by Sky Governance, not by a bridge operator
In November 2025 the Ethereum to Solana route migrated from Wormhole to LayerZero through two governance spells, each carrying a 24-hour security delay. The USDS token address on Solana did not change.
How SkyLink moves USDS between Ethereum and Solana. Lock and mint outbound, burn and unlock on the return. No wrapped representation and no bridge liquidity pool.
There is also an incentive layer. The Pioneer Prime program rewards independent agents for growing USDS on a specific chain. Keel holds the Solana designation.
Grove pioneered the Avalanche route in April 2026, starting under a $5 million daily cap that governance raised over the following weeks.
One detail from that November migration says more about the operating culture than any tagline.
Sky Governance published the full timeline in advance: a 31-hour expected downtime window, the exact contract addresses before and after, what happened to pending transfers, and three separate scenarios for how long the checks might run.
>> PULL QUOTE >> Bridge operators do not usually pre-announce their worst case. It is a small thing that tells you which risk model you are buying into.
A Four-Question Test for Picking a Chain
Skip the tribalism. Answer these instead.
A chain-selection test that survives the next upgrade cycle. Ticket size, counterparty, holding period, token provenance.
What is the ticket size? Sub-dollar and high frequency favors Solana. Eight figures favors Ethereum finality.
Who is on the other side? If the counterparty settles through a regulated intermediary, ask which chain they support before optimizing for fees.
How long will the balance sit? Longer than a week and the yield question outweighs the fee question, by a lot.
Is the token native or wrapped? A wrapped representation adds a bridge operator to your risk stack. Native issuance does not.
The Answer Is a Division of Labor, Not a Chain
Solana is winning the movement layer. Ethereum is holding the settlement layer. That is not a contradiction.
It is specialization, and it rhymes with how clearing and depository functions split roles in the system stablecoins are quietly rebuilding.
Sky Protocol was designed for that world on purpose. Collateral and settlement logic on Ethereum.
Native distribution to Solana and other chains through SkyLink. One dollar in USDS, with a yield-generating version in sUSDS for the balance that is not moving today.
Check the numbers yourself rather than taking them from a post. Protocol financials are public, and so is the onchain state.
Now the argument I want to have in the comments.
If Alpenglow ships at 150 millisecond finality, does Ethereum’s economic finality still justify a twelve-minute wait on institutional-size transfers? Or does the settlement layer start losing ground too?
Pick a side and tell me why.
Disclaimer to append at the end of the post
This content is published for information purposes only. It does not constitute financial, legal or tax guidance.
Discover what smart crypto traders look at beyond price, including volume, liquidity, open interest, whale activity, sentiment, news, and market events.
Smart Crypto Trading
Price is the first thing most crypto traders look at.
A chart tells you whether an asset is moving up, down, or sideways. But price is only the visible part of what is happening in the market.
Behind every major move are changes in trading activity, liquidity, positioning, sentiment, news, and market conditions.
This is why experienced traders don’t simply ask, “Where is the price going?”
They also ask, “What is happening behind the price?”
Volume Shows How Much Activity Is Taking Place
Two assets can both rise by 5%, but the moves may have very different meanings.
One could be supported by strong trading activity, while the other could be moving in a relatively thin market.
Trading volume helps provide that missing information.
When volume changes significantly, it can indicate that market participation is changing. Traders can then investigate whether the increased activity is connected to buying pressure, selling pressure, news, or another development.
Volume isn’t a prediction tool by itself. It is another piece of the market picture.
Liquidity Shows How the Market Can Behave
Liquidity is another factor that traders often overlook.
An asset with deep liquidity can generally absorb larger orders more easily. A market with limited liquidity can react much more sharply to relatively small amounts of buying or selling.
Changes in liquidity can therefore help explain why some assets move quickly while others remain relatively stable.
For traders, understanding liquidity can also be important when considering how easily they can enter or exit a position.
Open Interest Reveals Changes in Positioning
Price tells you what the market has done.
Open interest can provide additional insight into what is happening in derivatives markets.
When open interest changes significantly, it can indicate that traders are opening or closing positions. Combined with price and volume, this can provide a better understanding of market participation.
For example, a sharp price move accompanied by a large change in open interest may tell a different story from a similar price move with little change in positioning.
The key is to interpret the data together rather than treating one metric as a guaranteed signal.
Funding Rates Can Add More Context
For traders using perpetual futures, funding rates can offer another useful perspective.
Funding can provide clues about the balance of demand between long and short positions.
Extremely positive or negative funding may indicate that positioning has become heavily skewed. That doesn’t automatically mean a reversal is coming, but it can tell traders that the market deserves closer attention.
Again, the value comes from context.
Whale Activity Can Reveal Unusual Movement
Large transactions can sometimes provide another clue about what is happening beneath the surface.
Significant transfers involving exchanges, wallets, or large holders can attract attention because they may affect available liquidity or reflect changes in market behavior.
However, a large transaction does not automatically mean that a whale is buying or selling.
The important question is what the activity means within the broader market environment.
News Explains Why the Market Is Reacting
Sometimes the most important information isn’t on a chart at all.
A regulatory announcement, token unlock, exchange listing, protocol update, security incident, partnership, or macroeconomic event can quickly change market expectations.
Price shows the reaction.
News and events can help explain the reason.
This is why traders who only watch technical data can sometimes miss important developments happening outside the chart.
Sentiment Shows How Traders Are Thinking
Markets are driven by people as well as data.
When traders become extremely optimistic, expectations can rise quickly. When fear spreads across the market, selling pressure can increase even when fundamentals have not changed significantly.
Social activity, market sentiment, and broader narratives can therefore provide useful context.
Sentiment shouldn’t replace market analysis, but it can help traders understand the environment in which price movements are happening.
Correlation Can Change the Meaning of a Move
A token doesn’t always move independently.
Bitcoin can influence the broader market. Sector-specific movements can affect related tokens. Macro events can move multiple assets at once.
This means traders should sometimes look beyond the individual asset.
If several related assets are moving together, the reason may be broader market conditions rather than something unique to one token.
Understanding these relationships can prevent traders from interpreting a market-wide move as an isolated opportunity.
Where i5 labs Fits Into the Bigger Picture
This broader approach to market analysis is the idea behind i5.xyz
The platform focuses on AI-powered trading intelligence that brings together different layers of market information, including market activity, liquidity, derivatives, events, and real-time developments.
Rather than focusing only on what the price is doing, the goal is to help traders understand what is happening around the price.
That distinction can be important in fast-moving markets where a chart alone may not provide enough information.
Look Beyond the Number
Price will always be one of the most important things for a crypto trader to watch.
But it shouldn’t be the only thing.
Volume can show changes in activity. Liquidity can reveal market conditions. Derivatives can provide insight into positioning. Whale activity can highlight unusual transactions. News can explain sudden reactions. Sentiment can show how traders are responding.
Together, these elements can provide a much clearer picture than price alone.
The smartest question isn’t simply:
“What is the price doing?”
It’s:
“What is happening underneath the price, and why?”
Polish prosecutors have charged Roman Ż., a former business partner of missing BitBay founder Sylwester Suszek, with two offenses as the Zondacrypto investigation expands beyond 3,600 customer complaints. Zondacrypto suspect faces two charges According to a report published Monday, Roman…
What if you could hand your trades to someone with a better track record than you — without handing over control of your money?
Copy-Trading Platforms Explained — Following Smart Traders in 2026
That’s the entire pitch behind copy trading, and in 2026 it’s no longer a niche feature buried in a broker’s settings menu. It’s one of the fastest-growing ways ordinary people are entering markets, from stocks and forex to crypto and perpetual futures. If you’ve ever watched a skilled trader’s portfolio outperform yours and thought, “I wish I could just do what they’re doing,” copy trading is the answer someone already built for you.
This guide breaks down exactly what copy trading is, which platforms dominate the space right now, how the fees actually work (they’re rarely as simple as advertised), and whether this “set it and forget it” strategy deserves a spot in your portfolio.
What Is Copy Trading (And Why Is It Also Called Social Trading)?
Copy trading — sometimes called social trading — is a system where you automatically mirror the trades of another investor, often called a “lead trader,” “elite trader,” or “Popular Investor,” depending on the platform. When they open a position, your account opens a proportional version of that same position. When they close it, yours closes too.
You’re not just watching a signal and manually clicking “buy.” The execution is automated. Once you connect your account to a trader you want to follow, the platform handles the mirroring in real time, scaling the trade size to match whatever amount of capital you’ve allocated.
The “social” label comes from the community layer most platforms build around this feature: public leaderboards, win-rate stats, follower counts, live P&L transparency, and sometimes a social feed where traders explain their reasoning. It turns investing from a solitary research project into something closer to following creators — except the “content” is real trades with real money behind them.
This isn’t new in concept. Forex and stock traders have used social trading for over a decade. What’s changed in 2026 is the sheer scale of platforms offering it, the arrival of crypto-native copy trading with far lower entry minimums, and much more sophisticated risk controls than the early versions ever had.
The Platforms Leading Copy Trading in 2026
eToro — The Original Social Trading Platform
eToro — The Original Social Trading Platform
eToro effectively invented mainstream copy trading and remains the most recognized name for stocks, ETFs, forex, and crypto CFDs. Its CopyTrader feature lets you browse trader profiles, filter by risk score, review historical performance, and allocate capital starting from a relatively low minimum copy amount.
What makes eToro appealing to beginners is the built-in safety net: you can set a Copy Stop Loss to automatically halt copying if losses hit a threshold you define, pause copying without closing existing positions, or stop entirely and choose what happens to your open trades. You stay in control even while automation runs in the background.
Bitget has built one of the largest copy trading ecosystems in crypto, with a database of verified lead traders numbering in the hundreds of thousands, spanning spot, futures, and even bot copy trading. Traders are filterable by return, drawdown, win rate, and follower count, which makes due diligence far easier than blindly picking a name off a leaderboard.
Bitget’s structure separates spot copy trading, futures copy trading, and bot copy trading, each with slightly different mechanics and fee caps, giving both cautious and aggressive investors a lane that fits their risk appetite.
FOMO — Social-First, Mobile-Native Copy Trading
FOMO represents the newer generation of copy trading apps: mobile-first, built around a live social feed showing what top traders are buying in real time, and heavily focused on Solana-based execution for speed. Rather than bolting a copy feature onto an existing exchange, FOMO was designed from the ground up around the idea of trading socially — following traders, seeing public win rates, and mirroring positions with a few taps.
Other notable names worth researching if you’re comparing platforms include Bybit Copy Trading, OKX, and BingX, all of which run similar profit-share models with varying trader pools and minimum investment thresholds.
How Copy Trading Fees Actually Work
This is where most beginners get surprised, because “free” and “low-cost” marketing language rarely tells the whole story. There are generally two fee models at play, and most platforms blend them.
1. Profit-Sharing Model
This is the dominant structure in crypto copy trading. The lead trader sets a percentage — commonly somewhere between 5% and 20% — that they earn only when a copied trade closes in profit. If the trade loses money, no profit share is charged, but you still absorb the loss itself along with any standard trading fees.
Crucially, profit share is calculated on your realized gains, not on the total capital you’ve allocated. So if you copy a trader with a 10% profit share and your copied position nets you $500, you’d owe roughly $50 to that trader, with the rest as your net gain.
2. Standard Trading Fees (Layered on Top)
Even when a platform advertises “no copy trading fee,” your mirrored trades typically still pay the same maker/taker fees, spreads, or commissions a manual trade would incur. On crypto exchanges, this usually means small percentage-based fees on entry and exit, plus funding fees if you’re copying leveraged futures positions overnight.
3. Subscription-Style Fees (Less Common Today)
Some legacy platforms and premium trader tiers still charge a flat monthly subscription instead of, or in addition to, profit sharing. This model is less common in 2026’s leading platforms but still shows up in niche signal-selling services, so always check before committing capital.
The Real Math
The takeaway: your “all-in” cost as a copier is never just the headline profit-share number. It’s profit share plus trading fees plus any spread or funding cost, compounded every time the trader you’re copying opens and closes a position. A trader who makes frequent, small trades can quietly cost you more in fees than a trader who makes fewer, larger moves — even if their win rate looks better on paper.
The Pros of Copy Trading
A genuine learning curve, without the tuition. Watching a skilled trader’s entries, exits, and position sizing in real time teaches you far more than reading a textbook ever could. You start to notice patterns: how they size positions relative to conviction, when they cut losses, how they handle volatility.
Instant diversification: Instead of putting all your capital behind your own limited strategy, you can spread allocation across multiple traders with different styles — one conservative, one aggressive, one focused on a specific sector or asset class. This diversifies your exposure to strategy risk, not just asset risk.
Lower time commitment than active trading: You don’t need to watch charts all day or research every entry yourself. Once you’ve selected a trader and set your risk parameters, the system runs largely on its own.
Transparency you don’t get with traditional fund managers: Most copy trading platforms show you real-time win rates, drawdown history, and portfolio composition. Compare that to a traditional actively-managed fund, where you might get a quarterly PDF report and little else.
Full liquidity and control: Unlike a lock-up fund, you can pause, adjust, or stop copying at any moment, and in most cases withdraw your funds whenever you choose.
The Cons of Copy Trading
You’re only as good as the trader you pick: This is the single biggest risk. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results, and a trader with a great six-month track record can still hit a losing streak, change strategies, or take on excessive risk trying to defend their leaderboard position.
Fees compound against high-frequency traders: As covered above, copying an active trader who enters and exits constantly can quietly erode your returns through fees and spreads, even when the underlying trades are profitable.
Slippage and execution lag: Your copied trade doesn’t execute at the exact same price or millisecond as the leader’s. In fast-moving markets, especially crypto, this gap can matter.
It’s not truly passive risk management: “Set it and forget it” describes the execution, not the responsibility. You still need to periodically review whether a trader’s strategy still matches your goals, whether their risk profile has drifted, and whether it’s time to reduce allocation or stop copying entirely.
Platform and custody risk: On most centralized crypto exchanges, copy trading is custodial — your funds sit with the platform, not in a wallet you control. That’s an added layer of counterparty risk worth weighing against the convenience.
Is Copy Trading a “Set It and Forget It” Strategy?
Relative to manual trading, yes — largely. You’re not placing individual orders, monitoring charts hourly, or making split-second decisions. The heavy lifting of trade execution is automated the moment you allocate capital to a trader.
But “passive” is relative, not absolute. The real work in copy trading happens upfront and periodically afterward: selecting traders with a genuine, verifiable track record, understanding their risk profile and drawdown history, setting stop-loss limits so one bad run doesn’t wipe out your allocation, and revisiting that decision every so often rather than copying blindly forever.
Think of it less like a savings account and more like hiring a portfolio manager whose work you can audit in real time, and fire the moment you’re unhappy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is copy trading profitable?
It can be, but it’s not guaranteed. Your returns depend entirely on the trader you follow, the fees you pay, and how well you manage allocation and risk limits. Treat copy trading as a strategy that shifts effort from execution to trader selection, not a shortcut to guaranteed gains.
How much money do I need to start copy trading?
Minimums vary widely by platform, ranging from as little as $10–$50 on some crypto exchanges to $200 or more on platforms like eToro. Keep in mind that meaningful diversification across several traders usually requires more than the bare minimum per trader.
Do I need trading experience to use a copy trading platform?
No — that’s part of the appeal. Beginners can start copying experienced traders immediately. That said, a basic understanding of risk management, position sizing, and how profit-share fees work will help you make smarter allocation decisions.
What’s the difference between copy trading and a managed fund?
Copy trading gives you full liquidity and transparency — you see the trades and can exit anytime. A traditional fund often locks up capital and provides limited visibility into day-to-day decisions.
Which is better: eToro, Bitget, or FOMO?
It depends on your market. eToro suits stocks, ETFs, and forex with a highly regulated, beginner-friendly interface. Bitget offers the deepest pool of verified crypto lead traders across spot, futures, and bots. FOMO is built for fast, social, mobile-first crypto trading, especially around Solana assets.
Final Thoughts
Copy trading in 2026 isn’t a gimmick — it’s become a legitimate on-ramp for people who want market exposure without becoming a full-time trader. The technology has matured, the fee structures are more transparent than they used to be, and the range of platforms means there’s likely a fit for whatever asset class and risk tolerance you have.
But the core truth hasn’t changed: you’re still responsible for who you trust with your capital. Do the diligence on a trader’s track record, understand exactly how profit-sharing fees will eat into your gains, and use the risk controls every good platform gives you. Do that, and copy trading might just be the smartest passive strategy you add this year.
If this helped you understand copy trading platforms a little better, give it a clap and follow for more breakdowns on trading tools, platforms, and strategies in 2026.
Thirty-six of them have already died. The reason why is not the one you have been warned about.
The stablecoin safety debate, in four numbers. The failure everyone fears is the one that almost never happens.
Since 2022, 36 stablecoins have collapsed with measurable losses. Roughly $2.5 billion, gone. Six of those failures happened in 2026 alone.
Now here is the part that should change how you think about stablecoin safety.
The algorithmic death spiral everyone still talks about, the Terra scenario, accounts for about 4% of that damage. Backing that was never real accounts for about 72%.
People are afraid of the wrong thing.
That matters more every month. Around 269 million onchain addresses now hold a stablecoin balance, and the category sits near $308 billion, roughly 13% of all crypto by market value. This is no longer a niche question.
“Stablecoin” Is a Marketing Word, Not a Safety Rating
Ask how safe stablecoins are and you get an average. Averages are useless here.
A stablecoin is not one thing. It is a promise with a structure behind it. The promise is identical across every token. The structure is not.
Three tokens can all say one dollar and mean three completely different things:
One holds Treasury bills at a regulated custodian and publishes monthly attestations.
One holds crypto collateral worth more than the tokens it issued, visible onchain, around the clock.
One holds a sister token it printed itself and calls that a reserve.
Same peg. Same ticker format. Wildly different odds.
So the honest answer to “are stablecoins safe” is that the category tells you nothing.
The structure tells you everything. That is not a dodge. It is the actual finding sitting in four years of stablecoin failure data.
What Actually Kills a Stablecoin: The Data Nobody Quotes
What actually kills a stablecoin. Misstated reserves take nearly three quarters of the money. Terra-style collapses take four percent.
Look at the record and the pattern shows up fast.
Backing that was not real. The largest cause of loss by a distance. Reserves misstated, illiquid, or quietly lent out.
Runs and thin liquidity. Real reserves, not reachable fast enough. USDC touched $0.8789 in March 2023 when $3.3 billion of Circle’s reserves froze at Silicon Valley Bank. It recovered, because the money existed.
Oracle and smart contract failure. In March 2026, an attacker minted 80 million unbacked USR tokens and walked off with roughly $24 million. The token fell 95% in hours.
Freeze and seizure. Not a depeg at all. Your balance is fine and simply not yours to move.
Algorithmic design failure. Terra’s UST, roughly $40 billion erased in May 2022. Famous, catastrophic, statistically rare.
Moody’s counted 1,914 depeg events through mid-2023. Almost all were tiny and brief.
The 2026 contraction was the sharpest since Terra. It was also not a depeg. Supply falling and a peg breaking are different events.
This year handed the category its first genuine squeeze in four years.
Stablecoin supply peaked near $322.1 billion in mid-May, then shed roughly $14.5 billion by early August. The sharpest contraction since Terra. You can watch the whole curve live on DefiLlama.
Here is the nuance most headlines skipped. That was a redemption story, not a depeg story.
USDT and USDC both held within about 0.1% of a dollar throughout. Tokens were being burned at a dollar, not dumped at ninety cents.
Supply shrinking and a peg breaking are completely different events. Confusing them is how people panic at exactly the wrong moment, and it happened at scale this summer.
What moved the money was policy, not fear. The GENIUS Act bars permitted payment stablecoin issuers from paying holders any yield.
So capital rotated toward structures that still can: tokenized Treasuries, and yield-generating stablecoins.
That rotation is not marginal. Yield-bearing stablecoins drove more than half of net stablecoin supply growth in Q1 2026.
The category is quietly splitting in two: tokens built to move, and tokens built to sit still and earn.
Five Questions That Tell You If a Stablecoin Is Safe
The four-minute stablecoin safety check. Most holders have never run it on the token they are holding.
Safety is checkable. It just is not checkable from a homepage. Ignore the marketing and ask these five instead.
Can I see the collateral right now, without asking permission? A live number, not a quarterly PDF.
Is there more collateral than there are tokens? One-to-one leaves zero margin for a bad day.
What absorbs the first loss? If nobody can answer that, the answer is you.
Can anyone freeze or seize my balance? Non-custodial is a structure, not a slogan.
Has this structure survived anything? A model that has never met a crash is a hypothesis.
If a token fails three of these, the yield is not compensation. It is a warning label.
What Verifiable Stablecoin Backing Actually Looks Like
What overcollateralization looks like when it is auditable. Roughly $1.23 of Protocol Collateral behind every dollar of supply.
Sky Protocol is worth walking through here, not as the only answer, but because every one of those five questions has a public answer.
USDS is overcollateralized by design. At the time of writing, skyeco.com shows $14.15 billion in Protocol Collateral against $11.48 billion in stablecoin supply. Roughly $1.23 sitting behind every dollar.
That collateral is not a slide in a deck. It splits across:
The Peg Stability Module, roughly 38%
Sky Agent vaults, roughly 40%
Overcollateralized crypto vaults, roughly 22%
Three structural controls matter more than any of the marketing around them:
Price data waits one hour in the Oracle Security Module before it takes effect. A manipulation attack has to hold a false reading for over an hour, in public, under governance observation.
Undercollateralized positions are liquidated through descending-price Dutch auctions rather than panic sales.
No sensitive parameter change goes live the moment a vote passes. The Governance Security Module enforces a delay on every one.
None of that requires trusting a press release. Every position is auditable at financial.skyeco.com.
When Something Breaks: The Order of Operations
Who eats the first loss, in a fixed and published order. The sequence matters more than any reassurance.
Most protocols answer “what if you lose money” with reassurance. Sky Protocol answers it with a sequence.
Sky Agent risk capital. Each Agent posts capital proportional to its exposure, sized by asset class using a Basel III (CRR) methodology. It absorbs the shortfall first.
The Surplus Buffer. Protocol revenue accumulates here before distribution. In May 2026, Sky Governance raised the target to $150 million USDS.
Recapitalization through SKY issuance. Requires an Executive Vote with a mandatory time delay.
Emergency Shutdown. Last resort. USDS minting halts and every holder redeems directly against the remaining collateral pool at the then-current ratio.
Knowing the order is the whole point. Ambiguity about who eats the first loss is itself the risk, and Sky Governance publishes every parameter behind that sequence onchain.
Where sUSDS and the Sky Savings Rate Fit
Where the money is moving. Yield-generating stablecoins are gaining share while the wider category contracts.
The yield has to come from somewhere real, and that is the part worth understanding.
The Sky Agent Network is a group of independent capital allocators that access USDS liquidity and deploy it across diversified strategies, paying a Base Rate back to the protocol.
sUSDS is the yield-generating stablecoin that gives access to the Sky Savings Rate funded by that revenue.
It closed Q2 2026 at $5.52 billion, up 149% year over year. Cumulative yield accrued to sUSDS holders has passed $250 million since inception.
One structural detail most people get backwards: sUSDS holders access the Sky Savings Rate. They are not exposed to any single Agent’s performance. Losses run down the waterfall above, not into the rate.
The Sky Savings Rate itself is variable and set by Sky Governance, funded from Sky Protocol revenue rather than from a marketing budget.
It is published live rather than promised, which is a meaningful difference when rates move.
The Track Record Nobody Can Fake
Solvent through Black Thursday in March 2020, when ETH fell more than 60% in hours.
Zero exposure to the UST collapse and the FTX bankruptcy. Governance had never approved either as eligible collateral.
Held through the SVB week in March 2023, when depeg pressure reached the Peg Stability Module and the peg was restored without an emergency.
Zero exploits on the core protocol across seven years.
S&P Global assigned a B- rating in 2024, the first structured finance credit rating given to an onchain protocol.
Contracts under ongoing review by Certora, ChainSecurity and Cantina.
The economics are public too. Sky Protocol generated $107.35 million in Gross Protocol Revenue in Q2 2026, up 10.5% year over year, with a fifth consecutive quarter of Net Protocol Surplus.
Not safe as a category. Some are about as safe as onchain dollars currently get. Some are a spreadsheet somebody is quietly hoping you never open.
The difference has never been the word printed on the token. It is whether the backing is real, visible, and larger than the liability, and whether somebody wrote down in advance what happens when things go wrong.
You can check all of that in roughly four minutes. Almost nobody does.
Which of those five questions have you actually asked about the stablecoin sitting in your wallet right now? Drop the token and your honest answer in the comments. I want to know how many of them pass all five.
Published by Sky Frontier Foundation. Nothing here is financial advice. Rates are variable and set by Sky Governance. Verify every figure at financial.skyeco.com.
Japan Bitcoin Industry Co., Ltd. has debuted a self-custodial Bitcoin payments platform designed to help Japanese companies sell to international fans who are often shut out by traditional payment systems.
Using this week’s Bitcoin Asia conference in Hong Kong to introduce the product, JPI dropped Aurora — aiming to reach an audience that could not be serviced before.
The pitch is simple: anime, manga, games, and other Japanese content have a massive global following, but the payment rails supporting that content haven’t kept pace.
Aurora aims to close that gap by letting international customers pay in Bitcoin over the Lightning Network, while giving Japanese merchants a simple point-of-sale and API layer to manage invoicing, payment tracking, and integrations.
According to JBI, the market for Japanese anime content outside Japan reached ¥2.17 trillion in 2024, up 26% year-over-year — yet many overseas fans still struggle to pay for streaming subscriptions, digital merchandise and limited-access drops due to geographic payment restrictions.
The platform’s core design principle is that JBI never touches the money. Each merchant runs its own self-custodial Lightning node, receiving Bitcoin directly from customers.
JBI says this setup gives businesses cleaner regulatory footing, since the company isn’t acting as a custodian, while still handling the harder operational lift — node uptime, liquidity, accounting and auditing, and conversion to fiat — that has historically kept enterprises from adopting Bitcoin payments on their own.
JBI says aurora draws on lessons from its existing consumer business, UseBitcoin.jp, which has let customers buy digital gift cards — including au PAY, V-Preca and Kyash cards — using Lightning payments for the past two years.
The company is inviting media, prospective merchants and wallet providers to connect with the team at Bitcoin Asia 2026 in Hong Kong.
Ethereum surged 18% intraday as spot trading volume jumped sharply across major global exchanges, putting ETH back at the center of the market’s risk-on move.
Market data showed ETH trading near the $2,500 level during the rally, with spot volume reportedly rising about 400% compared with the prior 24-hour average.
That is a major move, but it needs a careful read.
A sudden volume spike can reflect strong demand, but it can also include forced positioning, short covering, momentum chasing, exchange rebalancing, and fast-moving liquidity. The next question is whether ETH can hold the move once the first wave of volume cools.
TL;DR
Ethereum rose 18% intraday.
Spot trading volume reportedly jumped around 400%.
The move should not be treated as a guaranteed trend shift until follow-through appears.
Why Volume Matters
Price can move on thin liquidity.
Volume tells us whether more market participants were involved.
An 18% move with weak volume might look fragile. An 18% move with a sharp volume spike suggests broader participation. That does not guarantee the rally continues, but it makes the move harder to dismiss as a random wick.
For Ethereum, the volume surge is particularly important because ETH had been competing for attention with Bitcoin’s push toward $70,000 and renewed ETF inflows.
A strong ETH session reminds the market that Ethereum can still lead risk appetite when conditions line up.
Spot Demand Is The Key Question
The most important part is whether the move was spot-led.
Spot volume suggests actual buying and selling of ETH rather than only derivatives positioning. If spot buyers are driving the rally, that can be more durable than a move based purely on leveraged shorts getting liquidated.
But the distinction is not always clean.
Spot volume can rise because arbitrage desks, market makers, and derivatives hedgers are responding to futures activity. Crypto markets are deeply connected, and price action often moves across spot and derivatives at once.
That is why follow-through matters.
Ethereum Has Multiple Catalysts In The Background
Ethereum’s rally did not happen in isolation.
The market is also watching ETF inflows, corporate ETH treasury activity, staking economics, tokenized asset growth, and broader risk appetite. ETH can benefit when traders rotate beyond Bitcoin into assets with higher beta and stronger ecosystem narratives.
Ethereum also has a different institutional story from BTC.
Bitcoin is the scarcity and macro asset. Ethereum is the smart contract, stablecoin, DeFi, tokenization, and staking infrastructure asset. When investors become more comfortable taking crypto risk, ETH can move quickly.
Do Not Turn A Volume Spike Into A Forecast
A 400% volume jump is meaningful, but it is not a prediction.
Markets can surge on heavy volume and still retrace. Traders may take profits. Leverage may rebuild too quickly. Macro conditions may shift. Bitcoin may fail at resistance and drag the market lower.
The responsible read is that ETH had a powerful intraday session backed by unusually heavy spot activity.
That is bullish in the moment. It is not proof of a permanent breakout.
What To Watch Next
The next signals are simple: does volume stay elevated, and does price hold higher levels?
If ETH consolidates near the rally zone with continued spot interest, the move may develop into a stronger trend. If volume fades and price slips back quickly, the surge may look more like a fast squeeze and momentum event.
ETF flows will also matter.
If Ethereum ETFs keep seeing inflows alongside spot buying, the institutional story becomes stronger. If ETF demand stays small, the rally may remain mostly crypto-native.
For now, Ethereum has delivered the kind of move that makes traders pay attention again.
The next test is whether buyers stay after the spike.
Bitcoiners have been warned after France’s tax administration confirmed that hackers breached its information system, exposing sensitive financial and personal data belonging to hundreds of thousands of taxpayers and businesses.
Writing on X on Friday, Bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp said the leak was “more bad news for Bitcoiners living in the leading country for wrench attacks.”
Lopp has created a tracker counting wrench attacks — when physical violence is used to steal crypto — across the world. A large amount happens in France, where data has been leaked before.
More bad news for Bitcoiners living in the leading country for wrench attacks. The French tax authority has been hacked and 678K records leaked.
26,805 people with income over 100K€ 386 people with income over 1M€ 8 people with income over 10M€https://t.co/KlT0XqPLFR
The news comes one day after hardware wallet manufacturer Trezor announced a data breach exposing customer data.
Cybersecurity researchers at FrenchBreaches, who reviewed samples of the leaked data, reported that the affected records break down to roughly 392,867 individuals and 285,570 businesses.
Among the individuals, an estimated 26,805 have a reported annual taxable income of €100,000 or more, 386 exceed €1 million, and eight exceed €10 million. The hacker is said to be offering the full dataset for sale for several thousand euros.
The breach first surfaced publicly on August 12, when a hacker using the alias “ZeroBytes” posted on a cybercrime forum claiming to have infiltrated internal DGFiP servers and obtained VPN credentials that unlocked an internal lookup tool covering millions of taxpayers.
According to the hacker’s own account, the extraction was interrupted before it could be completed, leaving what they described as only a partial dataset of 678,438 records.
The exposed sample reportedly includes highly sensitive information: full legal names, dates and places of birth, home and mailing addresses, marital status, number of dependents, internal tax identification numbers, reference taxable income, individual withholding tax rates, phone numbers, email addresses, and records of past correspondence with tax officials.
Security analysts warn that this combination of identity, contact and financial data could fuel highly convincing phishing campaigns impersonating tax authorities, as well as identity theft and fraud schemes tailored to victims’ income levels or family circumstances.
2025 was the worst on record for wrench attacks (crypto targeted kidnappings), with around 55 reported globally last year, according to TRM Labs. Lopp’s tool counted over 70 throughout last year. And this year is already looking bad, according to the tracker: 54 attacks have been documented so far.
Wrench attacks made headlines last year when crooks kidnapped David Balland, co-founder of crypto hardware wallet brand Ledger, and his wife in France.
Criminals held the pair for around 24 hours before they were rescued by the French authorities.
A Federal Bureau of Investigation agent allegedly took $1 million in seized cryptocurrencies before turning himself in, according to court records.
Documents unsealed this week allege Patrick Steven Yaroch, who was a FBI Supervisory Special Agent working at the FBI Headquarters Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, claimed he “was frustrated that the FBI could not or would not act against adversarial cryptocurrency accounts.”
He then proceeded to “take matters into his own hands,” according to the affidavit filed with a district court in Virginia, and transfer $925,426.07 in crypto to his personal wallets over numerous transactions.
Yaroch then allegedly toyed with the idea of retiring in Portugal with his wife, court documents claim, citing his ChatGPT history, but later confessed to a Department of Justice employee what he had done.
“Yaroch told DOJ employee 1 that he made some very poor decisions related to cryptocurrency wallets,” court documents read. “Yaroch said that he went into FBI systems and found keys needed to transfer money from wallets to himself.”
A motion for a detention order, made public on Tuesday, added: “The weight of the evidence against the defendant is strong. He confessed to stealing the cryptocurrency from the adverse nations’ wallets.”
Court filings further allege that Yaroch “previously had access to some of the nation’s most secret and important information. He then chose to misuse this information to steal money, for his own financial gain.”
It adds that the defendant has been charged with two felonies that carry a maximum penalty of 10 years of incarceration each.
The nation in question has not been named in the documents.
The court documents made public this week only briefly mention that Yaroch had a tiny amount of Bitcoin in his Kraken account; the vast majority of his funds were held in stablecoins.
Yaroch, from Ashburn, Virginia was fired from the FBI on July 31, and investigations are ongoing, according to the court documents.
BNB trading activity jumped sharply into July 31, with 24-hour volume reportedly rising more than 65% as the token traded near the $589 to $590 range.
The validated notes show BNB derivatives open interest near $950 million, with long-to-short ratios above 1.9. Price was also working to hold above the 50-day and 100-day exponential moving averages, while traders watched whether the token could push toward the $600 area.
That is a useful market setup, but it needs to be framed properly.
Rising token volume does not prove Binance’s business is recovering, and it does not automatically mean BNB will break higher. It means traders are paying more attention, activity has picked up, and positioning has become more crowded.
For more details, visit the official Coinglass platform.
TL;DR
BNB 24-hour trading volume rose by more than 65%.
Derivatives open interest sat near $950 million.
The move shows higher trader activity, not necessarily a confirmed Binance business recovery.
Volume Is Interest, Not Proof
Trading volume tells you that more market activity is happening. It does not tell you why, and it does not tell you what happens next.
Sometimes volume rises because buyers are returning. Sometimes it rises because sellers are active. Sometimes derivatives traders are repositioning around a level everyone is watching. Sometimes market makers increase activity during volatility.
For BNB, the volume increase matters because the token sits at the center of one of crypto’s largest exchange ecosystems. When BNB activity rises, traders naturally ask whether confidence around Binance-linked assets is improving.
That is a fair question.
But the answer cannot come from token volume alone. It would need broader evidence: exchange market share, product growth, user activity, regulatory clarity, reserves, ecosystem development, and on-chain usage.
BNB’s volume spike is a signal to watch, not a conclusion.
The $600 Area Is Psychological
Round numbers matter in crypto because traders treat them as obvious battlegrounds.
The $600 area is one of those levels. It is easy to remember, easy to trade around, and likely to attract both breakout buyers and profit-taking sellers.
BNB trading just below that level creates a familiar setup.
If buyers can push through and hold above it, sentiment may improve. If the token rejects the level, short-term traders may pull back. The moving-average context adds another layer, because holding above the 50-day and 100-day EMAs can be read as a healthier technical structure.
Still, support and resistance are not guarantees.
They are areas where traders make decisions.
Derivatives Positioning Needs Care
Open interest near $950 million and long-to-short ratios above 1.9 suggest traders are leaning long.
That can be bullish if spot demand follows. It can also become risky if too many traders are positioned the same way.
Crowded longs can unwind quickly. If price fails to move higher, leverage can amplify the downside as positions are closed or liquidated. Crypto has seen that pattern repeatedly across major altcoins.
So BNB’s derivatives data cuts both ways.
It shows interest and confidence, but it also raises the risk of a sharp move if the market disappoints.
Binance Ecosystem Context Still Matters
BNB is not just another altcoin.
It is tied to Binance’s ecosystem, including exchange activity, BNB Chain, tokenized assets, launch products, fees, user incentives, and broader brand confidence. That gives it a different profile from purely speculative tokens.
When BNB volume rises, traders may be reacting to more than the chart.
They may be looking at exchange-sector strength, tokenized equity activity, BNB Chain usage, or macro flows into exchange-linked assets.
But again, the link must be made carefully. BNB trading volume does not prove Binance’s operating business has suddenly accelerated. It only shows that the market is more active around the token.
A Better Read
A better read is that BNB is at an active market point.
Volume has jumped. Open interest is elevated. Long positioning is strong. Price is near a watched level around $600. That creates opportunity, but also risk.
For bulls, the setup is attractive because higher participation can support a breakout if spot buying continues.
For cautious traders, the crowded derivatives picture is a reason not to chase blindly.
BNB’s next move will depend on whether volume translates into sustained demand, or whether the current positioning becomes too heavy.
This article is based on public BNB market and derivatives data for July 30–31.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
This report is based on information released by Coinglass. at Coinglass
MakerDAO governance has executed a new set of parameter adjustments under the broader Sky transition, including changes tied to Sky Spreads, staking reward normalization, and the offboarding of an older real-world asset vault.
The July 20 governance update shows how Maker’s Endgame-era structure continues to move from broad strategic design into ongoing operational changes.
The details are technical, but the theme is straightforward: Maker and Sky governance is still actively tuning the system behind USDS, vaults, spreads, rewards, and legacy assets.
That matters because Maker is no longer just a single stablecoin protocol in the old DAI sense. It is now a more complex governance and yield infrastructure stack, with the Sky brand, USDS, real-world asset exposure, and multiple moving parts that need regular adjustment.
TL;DR
MakerDAO governance executed new Atlas and settlement-cycle changes on July 20.
The update included Sky Spread reductions, LSSKY-SKY reward normalization, and RWA001-A offboarding.
The changes show the Sky transition is still being actively managed through governance.
Maker’s Governance Work Is Becoming More Operational
Maker governance has always been detailed, but the Sky transition has made it even more operational.
The protocol now needs to manage legacy Maker components, Sky-branded products, stablecoin demand, savings rates, vault parameters, and real-world asset exposure. Each of those pieces can affect liquidity, revenue, user behavior, and risk.
That is why these executive changes matter even when they do not look dramatic from the outside.
A spread adjustment can influence the economics of a product. A staking reward change can affect incentives. Offboarding an RWA vault can simplify risk exposure or retire older structures. None of those items is a full protocol reinvention on its own, but together they show governance actively shaping the system.
Maker’s Endgame roadmap was always ambitious. The harder part is implementation.
This kind of governance update is where that implementation happens.
Sky Spreads And USDS Economics
Sky Spreads are part of the economic machinery around the Sky ecosystem.
For users, the visible side of the system may be USDS, savings products, and yield opportunities. Underneath, governance has to set parameters that determine how value moves through the system and how different products remain aligned.
Reducing spreads can make certain activity more attractive, depending on the specific product and market context. It can also reflect governance’s attempt to keep the system competitive as stablecoin users compare yields across DeFi and traditional markets.
That is a difficult balance.
If incentives are too low, users may leave for higher-yield alternatives. If they are too generous, protocol economics can become less durable. Maker and Sky governance therefore has to keep adjusting as rates, demand, and liquidity conditions change.
The July 20 execution fits that pattern.
Real-World Asset Offboarding Is Also Important
The offboarding of RWA001-A is another reminder that real-world asset exposure is not set-and-forget.
Maker became one of DeFi’s most important RWA-linked protocols because it used real-world collateral and yield sources to support the system. That helped stabilize revenue and connect the protocol to broader interest-rate conditions.
But RWA exposure also requires ongoing management.
Assets mature. Structures change. Risk preferences evolve. Governance may decide that certain vaults no longer fit the current strategy. Offboarding older vaults can help simplify the system and reduce unnecessary complexity.
For readers, the key point is that RWA growth is not only about adding new assets. It is also about removing or adjusting older ones when they no longer serve the protocol well.
That is part of mature balance-sheet management.
Maker And Sky Still Need Clarity
The biggest challenge for Maker may not be governance activity. It may be communication.
The Maker-to-Sky transition introduced new branding, new product names, and new governance language. Existing users may understand DAI and MKR, but Sky, USDS, Endgame, Atlas edits, spreads, and settlement cycles can feel dense.
That complexity can make it harder for outsiders to understand what is changing and why.
At the same time, the protocol’s underlying direction is clear enough. Maker/Sky is trying to build a more scalable stablecoin and yield ecosystem, supported by governance-controlled parameters, real-world asset exposure, and long-term revenue mechanisms.
The July 20 execution is one more step in that process.
It does not mark the end of the transition. It shows the transition is still active, technical, and governance-driven.
For DeFi, that matters. Maker remains one of the sector’s most important experiments in decentralized monetary infrastructure. Its daily governance details may be dry, but they shape how billions of dollars in stablecoin liquidity, collateral, and yield ultimately behave.
Jupiter Passes $1T In Cumulative Solana Swap Volume
Jupiter has passed $1 trillion in cumulative routing volume, cementing its role as one of the most important DeFi applications in the Solana ecosystem.
The milestone reflects aggregate swap volume routed across connected Solana liquidity pools. Jupiter is not just a single exchange pool. It is an aggregator, meaning it searches across venues to find better pricing and execution for users.
That role makes it central to Solana trading.
When users swap tokens on Solana, Jupiter is often part of the route. Passing $1 trillion in cumulative volume shows how much trading activity has flowed through the platform and how important aggregation has become for low-cost, high-speed DeFi.
TL;DR
Jupiter has passed $1 trillion in cumulative Solana routing volume.
The platform aggregates liquidity across connected Solana pools.
The milestone reinforces Jupiter’s role as a core Solana DeFi venue.
Liquidity is spread across pools, AMMs, order books, and protocols. If users have to manually search for the best route, trading becomes inefficient. Aggregators solve that problem by routing trades through the best available path.
Jupiter has become Solana’s most recognizable example of that model.
It helps users access deeper liquidity without needing to understand every underlying venue. That is especially useful on Solana, where low fees make smaller and faster trades more practical.
The $1 trillion milestone shows that users are not just experimenting with Jupiter. They are relying on it as part of Solana’s core market structure.
That matters because DeFi ecosystems are often judged by their liquidity layer.
If swaps are cheap, fast, and well-routed, the entire ecosystem becomes easier to use.
Solana DeFi Keeps Maturing
Solana’s early DeFi story was often overshadowed by meme coins and retail trading.
That attention brought volume, but it also made some investors question how much activity was durable. Jupiter’s cumulative volume milestone gives Solana a stronger infrastructure story.
A trillion dollars in routed volume does not happen without repeated use.
It suggests a large amount of trading activity has moved through Solana’s DeFi rails over time. That strengthens the argument that Solana is not only a speculative chain but also a serious venue for decentralized trading.
The launch of Jupiter’s Offerbook lending market adds another layer.
If Jupiter can expand from routing swaps into lending and broader market infrastructure, it may become even more central to Solana’s DeFi stack.
Cumulative Volume Needs Context
The number is impressive, but it should be understood properly.
Cumulative volume is not the same as current daily volume. It reflects all historical routing activity across connected pools. It does not mean $1 trillion is locked in the protocol, and it does not mean that every trade produced equal revenue or user value.
Still, cumulative volume is a useful adoption marker.
It shows that Jupiter has processed meaningful activity over a long period. For users, that can reinforce trust. For developers, it shows where liquidity is flowing. For Solana, it supports the network’s claim to be one of crypto’s leading trading environments.
The next question is how Jupiter maintains that position.
Competition in DeFi is constant. Aggregators need to keep routes efficient, interfaces clean, integrations broad, and execution reliable. If they fall behind, users can move quickly.
Jupiter Is Becoming More Than A Swap Router
The broader story is Jupiter’s evolution.
The platform started as a critical swap aggregator, but it has increasingly expanded into other Solana-native financial products. Offerbook is part of that shift, pointing toward a wider DeFi role beyond simple token swaps.
That matters for Solana.
A strong ecosystem needs anchor applications. Ethereum has Uniswap, Aave, Lido, and Curve. Solana needs its own set of core venues that users return to repeatedly. Jupiter is clearly one of them.
Passing $1 trillion in cumulative routing volume reinforces that position.
For traders, it shows where Solana liquidity is moving. For SOL supporters, it gives a concrete metric supporting the network’s DeFi maturity. For Jupiter, it raises expectations.
The platform now has to prove that it can keep growing beyond aggregation while maintaining the execution quality that made it important in the first place.
For now, the milestone is a strong signal: Solana DeFi has real volume, and Jupiter remains one of its main arteries.
This article is based on Jupiter’s public statement and platform data.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
This report is based on information released in official primary source disclosures at primary source documentation.
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