Weekly Crypto Recap: Haven1’s remaining validator council members revealed!

TGIF and happy Friday Havenauts and Web3 frens! 

Here’s what we have this week:

• Haven1 news
• Regulation and compliance
• DeFi 2.0
• Blockchain infrastructure
• Security
• The Haven1 take

Haven1 news

We had a big week of news after we announced not one but two major partnerships as Paysafe and Bitcoin Suisse officially joined Haven1 as network validators. That means we’ve now announced the full line-up.

Check out the announcements below for the full and very exciting details. We’ll have more information soon on the importance of our validator council, which includes huge names like AWS and WorldPay—stay tuned!

• Paysafe Joins Haven1 as Network Validator to Enhance Security, Connectivity, and Decentralization
• Bitcoin Suisse Joins Haven1 as a Strategic Validator, Strengthening Network Decentralization

With the memecoin market down, smart investors are piling into DeFi as we noted in another post this week:

• Why smart investors are doubling down on DeFi now memecoin season has peaked

Now, let’s get into this week’s report.

Regulation and compliance

1. US moves towards stablecoin regulation

We’re writing a lot each week about the US advancing a framework to regulate crypto, and that’s a great thing for the industry. The latest move is around stablecoins with the Senate advancing a bill that promises to regulate US stablecoin issuers at a federal level. 

There’s still some way to go before the proposal becomes law, and there’s likely to be plenty of changes along the way with President Trump’s business groups being linked to stablecoin issuance. But this is symbolic of this new and positive approach to crypto.

2. Thailand approves Tether’s USDT stablecoin

Speaking of governments and stablecoins, Thailand just gave Tether’s USDT the green light to be traded in the country. 

Governments are wary of stablecoins as they’re seen as a threat to national currencies. Thailand has taken a tight approach, with some laws including a ban on using crypto for payment. That’s changing with the country trialing crypto for payments and now giving its blessing to USDT, and likely other stablecoins in the future.

3. Ripple bags UAE payment license

Ripple has become the first blockchain company to land a payment license in the UAE. The company recently launched its own stablecoin, which likely ties into this licensing approval news. Paying for goods and services using stablecoins is on the horizon.

DeFi 2.0

1. Stablecoins are now bigger than Ethereum

Here’s an interesting statistic that was highlighted by Wu Blockchain: the total market capitalization of all stablecoins crossed $235 billion meaning that it is larger than Ethereum’s coin market capitalization for the first time. That’s quite something—USDT is the largest ($143 billion) as you’d expect.

Stablecoin adoption will be a major catalyst for DeFi. We firmly see that as part of our plan at Haven1, where we are developing a DeFi 2.0 ecosystem with a host of top names, including payment companies. We’ll have plenty more updates to come on this in due course!

Blockchain infrastructure

1. Uniswap trader loses $215,000 on stablecoin swap

Uniswap ushered in the era of decentralized exchanges (DEXes) which promised to make trading fairer for crypto holders by removing middlemen and cutting the often large fees that centralized exchanges charge. 

That’s largely the case, but occasionally you hear of stories like this one which saw a trader’s wallet lose $215,000 after swapping $220,764 between USDC and USDT stablecoins on Uniswap.

The transaction was hit by a Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) bot, as Coin Telegraphed explained:

“The MEV bot front-ran the transaction by swapping all the USDC liquidity out of the Uniswap v3 USDC-USDT pool and then put it back in after the transaction was executed, according to founder of The DeFi Report Michael Nadeau.

The attacker tipped Ethereum block builder “bob-the-builder.eth” $200,000 from the $220,764 swap and profited $8,000 themselves, Nadeau said.”

Uniswap founder Hayden Adams clarified that a third-party using Uniswap was responsible and the platform has a range of protections in place to prevent such a transaction.

The plot thickens because the same trader suffered similar losses on two other transactions that same day. It was suggested that these transactions and losses could be an effort to launder ill-gotten money.

As is often the case, everyone will have their own opinion but be safe out there when trading.

Security

1. North Korea deploys new attacks targeting crypto and more

The Lazarus Group has been found deploying new techniques to deploy backdoors to steal credentials and assets, as Decrypt reports:

“The attack works by targeting files in Google Chrome, Brave and Firefox browsers, as well as keychain data on macOS, specifically targeting developers who might unknowingly install the packages."

The Haven1 take

We’ll be talking a lot about our validator council and the important role it plays in the Haven1 network now that we’ve announced all of the members. You won’t want to miss out on this important piece of information before we reach the mainnet launch.

Finally, here’s an insightful weekend read: the crypto team at a16z explained 14 topics that they’re excited about right now.