News linked to this event type.
Odaily News Vitalik Buterin stated at the 2026 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival that Ethereum's ultimate goal is to build a digital infrastructure where users do not need to trust any intermediaries, possessing "self-sovereignty." It will support various decentralized applications ranging from finance and social to identity verification, serving as a trust anchor for off-chain applications (such as private voting, prediction markets, decentralized social networks).
According to the Guangdong Provincial Cyberspace Administration, as of April 20, Guangdong Province has added six newly registered generative AI services, bringing the cumulative total to 47 registered services. Per the Interim Measures for the Management of Generative Artificial Intelligence Services, any generative AI service—delivered via API interfaces or other means—that invokes a registered large model and provides services with public opinion influence or social mobilization capability to the domestic public must complete registration procedures with the local cyberspace administration authority. For related applications or features already launched, their registration numbers must be clearly displayed in prominent locations.
According to the official announcement, Upbit will list PIEVERSE trading pairs against KRW, BTC, and USDT.
According to the official announcement, Binance Futures updated the leverage and margin tier parameters for the QQQUSDT, SPYUSDT, EWYUSDT, and EWJUSDT perpetual contracts denominated in their respective base assets at 15:30 (Beijing Time) on April 21, 2026. Existing positions held by users prior to the update will be affected, and active futures grid trading strategies may become invalid due to the changes in leverage and margin tiers. Users are advised to take appropriate actions before the adjustment.
Bitget has launched a futures trading leaderboard campaign, running from April 20 to April 27. During the campaign period, the first 5,000 registered users will receive random rewards of 1–5 USDT each. The campaign comprises three components: a new-user individual contest, an all-user individual contest, and a tiered trading-volume reward program. In the new-user individual contest, participants are ranked by their total futures trading volume; the top-ranked user (Top 1) wins 3,000 USDT. Similarly, the all-user individual contest ranks participants by futures trading volume, with the Top 1 winner receiving an Apple Vision Pro. Additionally, users who reach specific cumulative trading-volume thresholds can claim extra USDT rewards. Full campaign rules are published on Bitget’s official platform. Eligible users must click the “Join Now” button to complete registration in order to participate.
According to an official announcement, BitMart Futures will list ABTUSDT, PEPONUSDT, and MAONUSDT perpetual contracts at 16:00 (UTC+8) on April 20, 2026, supporting up to 50x leverage.
Bitget has launched a new-user-exclusive campaign running from April 20 to April 27. During the campaign period, new users who complete their first deposit and futures trading task totaling at least $100 USDT will receive $10 USDT. Additionally, users whose futures trading volume reaches specified thresholds can earn up to $208 USDT plus a physical DJI Pocket 4 as a reward. Full campaign rules are published on the official Bitget platform. Eligible users must click the “Join Now” button to register in order to participate.
According to an official post on Ethena’s X account, due to the absence of a satisfactory root-cause analysis regarding the rsETH incident, Ethena has decided to extend the suspension period for its LayerZero OFT cross-chain bridge. Meanwhile, Ethena released its latest Proof of Reserves, independently verified by four third-party entities—Chainlink, Chaos Labs, LlamaRisk, and Harris & Trotter—confirming that USDe’s collateral coverage ratio remains above 100%. The verification results have been published on Ethena’s Transparency Page and Data Dashboard. Ethena stated it will continue monitoring the situation and provide updates as they become available.
Odaily According to a report released on the 19th by Windward, a UK-based maritime analysis company, Iran briefly reopened the Strait of Hormuz before closing it again. In the past 36 hours, 35 ships have turned around and headed back while attempting to exit the strait. The report states that after Iran announced the reopening of the strait on the 17th, ship responses that day were relatively cautious. On the 18th, traffic through the strait was initially sparse but then rapidly increased, with ships rushing to pass through before the situation deteriorated. A total of 35 ships transited the strait that day, including 8 entering (comprising 4 oil tankers, 2 bulk carriers, and 2 other cargo ships) and 27 exiting (comprising 8 oil tankers, 3 bulk carriers, 15 other cargo ships, and 1 passenger ship). (Xinhua News Agency)
Odaily News: A LayerZero cross-chain bridge related to Kelp DAO was hacked on Saturday, resulting in 116,500 rsETH worth $291 million flowing to a new wallet. The hacker used the illicitly obtained rsETH as collateral to borrow on Aave, causing the utilization rate of Aave's core lending pool to reach 100% and triggering a liquidity crunch. According to monitoring by 0xngmi, as of early Sunday, the net withdrawal amount from Aave had reached $6.2 billion. Kelp DAO has suspended the rsETH contracts on the Ethereum mainnet and several L2 networks. Affected by this, the price of the Aave token fell 16% to $90.13, and the price of Ethereum dropped 2% to $2,300. Currently, Justin Sun has posted on platform X attempting to negotiate with the hacker.
According to an official announcement by Orca, Vercel—the frontend hosting provider for Solana’s liquidity protocol Orca—recently experienced a security incident involving unauthorized access to its internal systems. Orca stated that, as a precautionary security measure, it has proactively rotated all keys and deployment credentials potentially compromised in the incident. Orca emphasized that this incident affected only the frontend hosting layer; the on-chain protocol and user funds remain unaffected. The team is currently monitoring the situation closely and will provide timely updates.
A new NBC News poll shows President Trump’s overall approval rating has fallen to a new low for his second term, with only 37% of respondents approving and 63% disapproving—50% of whom strongly disapprove. Roughly two-thirds of respondents expressed dissatisfaction with his handling of inflation, cost-of-living issues, and the Iran war. The poll also found that 40% of Americans believe their personal financial situation is worse than it was a year ago, and 61% oppose further U.S. military action against Iran. The survey was conducted by SurveyMonkey from March 30 to April 13 among 32,433 adults.
Odaily News, Spark's strategy lead monetsupply.eth posted on X, stating that as the stablecoin market begins to face a liquidity shortage, the situation is entering a more dangerous phase, in my opinion. Approximately 16.5% of the ETH market is backed by rsETH. If losses on rsETH-backed loans are shared across the mainnet and external chains, they could face a 10% to 15% cut in emode, with the remaining 2% to 3% cut left for ETH suppliers to flatten the umbrella structure. ETH suppliers naturally tend to exit as soon as possible to avoid this risk, so utilization is locked at 100%, and the borrowing rate is insufficient to incentivize the repayment of unrelated LST loops (wstETH, weETH) to release liquidity. Since ETH cannot be withdrawn, users who borrowed stablecoins like USDT using ETH as collateral cannot close their positions even when stablecoin borrowing rates rise, which cuts off the typical incentive mechanisms that maintain market health. Currently, there are two unhealthy incentives causing market utilization to be locked at 100%:1) ETH holders cannot close positions to maintain a healthy LTV, and liquidators cannot atomically withdraw or sell collateral. A drop in the ETHUSD price could lead to bad debt.2) Users supplying USDT, in order to exit their holdings, tend to maximize borrowing of other stablecoins. This position is currently generating positive yield (temporarily), so the exit cost is low; if conditions worsen, they can recover at least 75% of the position's value.The bottom line is that for these pooled/restaking lending markets to function properly, liquidity must be maintained at all costs. The recent weakening of the slope2 for Aave's maximum borrowing rate is having a negative impact and significantly increasing the risk of cascading market failure.
Vitalik Buterin and Aya Miyaguchi, Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation, have confirmed their attendance at the opening event of the Hong Kong Ethereum Community Center on April 21, where they will deliver keynote speeches. This center—the first physical community space in Asia supported by the Ethereum Foundation—is operated by SNZ and ETHTAO and located in West Kowloon, Hong Kong. It is positioned as a strategic hub connecting the Ethereum ecosystems of East and West. The event agenda also features multiple keynote speeches and panel discussions across domains including zero-knowledge (ZK) technology, privacy, AI, and on-chain payments. Industry participants include Joseph Chalom, CEO of Sharplink; Yat Siu, Co-Founder of Animoca Brands; and Niki, Vice President of Chainlink APAC.
According to official news, Gate has now launched ASTEROID perpetual contract trading (USDT-settled), supporting 1-20x leverage.
Axelar Network stated that the hacker attack and theft of funds undermine users’ overall trust in blockchain systems and slow down the adoption of the global ledger it envisions. Axelar expressed its support for the LayerZero team in navigating this difficult situation and rebuilding trust. Regarding this approximately $290 million attack, Axelar emphasized that—pending final forensic findings—the incident once again highlights the need for multi-layered security in cross-chain bridge construction. This includes ensuring operational security for bridge operators, validators, and validating nodes; providing proper incentives and training; and removing validators whose technical capabilities are not adequately demonstrated. Additionally, operators must be sufficiently numerous, structurally heterogeneous, diverse, and geographically distributed to prevent ultimate control by a single entity.
Odaily News: The Ethereum Community Hub, supported by the Ethereum Foundation, has announced it will be held in Hong Kong at 1:30 PM on April 21st. ETH HK HUB is Asia's first offline Ethereum community Hub, supported by the Ethereum Foundation and jointly operated by SNZ and ETHTAO, aiming to build a collaborative hub connecting Asia with the global Ethereum ecosystem. The event will cover areas including: ZK, privacy computing, AI × blockchain, stablecoins and payments, on-chain liquidity, and more.Participating institutions and projects include Sharplink, Brevis, Primus, HashKey Chain, Chainlink Labs, Lido Finance, Galaxy Digital, SignalPlus, Morpho, Animoca Brands, EVG, Zand Bank, Pay Protocol, and others. Guests include Vitalik Buterin, Aya Miyaguchi, and more.
Monetsupply.eth, Strategy Lead of Spark Protocol, posted on X stating that in January this year, low-utilization assets such as rsETH were delisted, and the scope of acceptable collateral and protocol functionalities has been continuously tightened. At the time, this move triggered strong backlash from users employing “ETH circular leverage” strategies. Additionally, Spark has long imposed relatively high maximum interest rate caps on its ETH lending market. Over the past year, Spark has ceded part of its business and revenue to Aave—whose ETH borrowing rates at one point dropped to 10% or lower. However, amid the current market crisis, this strategy has proven more prudent: SparkLend still maintains ample ETH withdrawal liquidity, whereas Aave is experiencing liquidity strain—or even “locking”—across Ethereum mainnet and multiple Layer-2 chains including Arbitrum and Base. Monetsupply.eth further warned that, since ETH serves as the core collateral asset, when market utilization reaches 100%, liquidations of collateral will fail to execute normally. Liquidity exhaustion not only degrades depositors’ experience but may also pose systemic risk. Given Aave’s current liquidity shortage, a 15–20% drop in ETH’s price could trigger significant bad debt accumulation—exacerbated by potential fallout from the rsETH incident.
LayerZero tweeted that it is aware of the rsETH vulnerability incident and has been actively collaborating with the KelpDAO team on response and remediation efforts since the incident occurred, while continuing to monitor the situation. LayerZero stated that, aside from the rsETH-related incident, all other applications remain secure. Regarding the root cause of the incident, LayerZero is jointly investigating with SEAL_Org and other parties, and pledged to jointly publish a comprehensive post-mortem report with KelpDAO once all information has been gathered.
Odaily News: Sonic Labs co-founder and Flying Tulip founder Andre Cronje posted on platform X, stating that his team is continuing to investigate the L0/rsETH incident. Preliminary reports indicate that approximately $200 million worth of rsETH was stolen, possibly due to a private key leak or configuration error. The related assets were subsequently deposited into Aave as collateral to borrow ETH (due to insufficient rsETH liquidity).Andre Cronje pointed out that the affected positions are technically still overcollateralized. However, if bad debt occurs, Aave's token mechanism and Safety Module will serve as the first line of defense to absorb the risk. Nevertheless, Aave has no mechanism to subsidize user losses, as doing so could trigger a bank run. Currently, Aave holds approximately $7 billion in ETH with an outstanding borrowing amount of around $100 million, so the overall impact of this incident is limited. Furthermore, prioritizing user liquidity, Flying Tulip has withdrawn all its ETH from Aave to its fund management wrapper contract. This action was taken because Aave's available liquidity had fallen below its set minimum threshold.