Coin Market

Privacy will unlock blockchain’s business potential

Published

3 days ago

March 28, 2025

Opinion by: Eran Barak, CEO at Midnight

It’s been almost 16 years since blockchain emerged from its esoteric fringes to enter global discourse, evidenced most recently by continued backing from Wall Street incumbents. Despite this remarkable ascendancy, the unfortunate truth is that this technology has yet to realize its true business potential. A core challenge persists: Too much sensitive data remains publicly unshielded.

The crux of the issue is that companies must keep business data confidential, and people strive to safeguard their personal information as best they can. Once data is put on a public blockchain, however, it becomes irreversibly and indefinitely exposed.

Even if a business takes every possible precaution to conceal data, mistakes made by others or vulnerabilities in the system can expose sensitive onchain data or metadata, including participants’ identities. This can lead to privacy breaches, compliance violations or both, undermining the foundational assumption that blockchain is trusted and underscoring the importance of robust measures to protect sensitive data.

On the other side of that coin, concealing activity on a blockchain can open the door to money laundering, triggering negative government responses. Instances in which this has occurred have led to a false impression that governments oppose Web3 privacy, a criterion businesses fundamentally need for them to adopt the technology.

From whichever angle we look at it, maintaining privacy onchain is a real and complex issue for Web3. Until we solve it, businesses will not and should not be expected to cross the chasm.

The belief that governments oppose privacy on the blockchain is wrong

Web3 entrepreneurs have grown to fear that building decentralized applications and businesses that provide financial anonymity could land them in regulatory trouble. Just look at Samourai Wallet, whose co-founders were charged with money laundering, or Tornado Cash, whose developer was sentenced to 64 months in prison for similar reasons.

These responses have led to a consensus that governments are opposed to privacy altogether when it comes to blockchain.

Recent: AI agents and blockchain are redefining the digital economy

This couldn’t be further from the truth. Governments don’t oppose privacy but mandate it across industries. Data protection laws, like the General Data Protection Regulation or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, are in place to ensure businesses protect our customer data from misuse and security threats.

The real issue these high-profile cases reveal is that Web3 measures to protect data have created opportunities for misuse, enabling the facilitation of criminal activities that have understandably raised serious concerns on behalf of governments. Blockchain data protection capabilities should not undermine established cross-jurisdictional laws safeguarding the global community from terrorism, human trafficking, fraud and other criminal offenses.

This begs the question: What does privacy, done right, look like?

Selective disclosure

When it comes to using blockchain, protecting sensitive data is typically accomplished by either keeping the data offchain, or encrypting data onchain. The latter is not durable privacy given quantum computing’s rapid advances in cracking encryption.

The advent of zero-knowledge (ZK) technology, a complex cryptographic technique, allows users to ensure sensitive data remains offchain by sharing attestations about the validity of the data instead. In Web3, ZK has emerged as a transformative way to enhance privacy as it enables untrusted parties to validate that a transaction has occurred without sharing any information about the transaction.

Decentralized applications can exercise selective disclosure by choosing between putting data onchain (full disclosure), putting it onchain with encryption (disclosure via viewing keys) or using ZK to only publish attestation about the data (offering utility without any disclosure). Selective data disclosure only solves half of the puzzle. It was not designed to account for metadata.

The next privacy frontier

Metadata, the information surrounding our data, is an under-discussed component of blockchain’s exposure of sensitive information; it can be used to make inferences, creating an added layer of vulnerability even when the data itself is concealed.

For example, through transaction metadata, investment and trading strategies can be inferred in addition to other behavioral patterns. For businesses, the implications of this can be detrimental to their growth and ability to stay ahead of competitors. They can’t afford to have trade secrets and strategies, or even the identities of other parties they are transacting with, made public.

The need to protect metadata and remove the ability to make inferences is paramount to security and can be addressed using a private token. Such capability can, however, be easily misused for money laundering.

If using a private token is not the solution, and using a public token does not provide sufficient levels of confidentiality, then the way to solve this challenge is to rethink Web3’s approach to protecting metadata altogether. We need to combine the benefits of both approaches, effectively creating a dual-asset system in which a public and a private token are used. Each asset functions independently, meaning specific restrictions can be placed to prevent illicit activities such as money laundering while retaining all the benefits.

A powerful framework

The dual-asset system enables confidentiality without the ailments shielding metadata usually brings, making compliance and business policy enforcement possible. By combining this tokenomics structure with selective disclosure, privacy and regulatory compliance can coexist on the blockchain, which will have resounding effects on adoption and innovation.

Opinion by: Eran Barak, CEO at Midnight.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Coin Market

Hyperliquid DEX trading volumes cut into CEX market share: Data

Published

2 hours ago

March 31, 2025

Hyperliquid is one of the current bull market’s standout DeFi success stories. With daily trading volumes having reached $4 billion, the exchange has become the largest decentralized (DEX) derivatives platform, commanding nearly 60% of the market.

Hyperliquid still lags far behind Binance Futures’ $50 billion daily average volume, but the trend suggests that it has started to encroach on centralized exchange (CEX) territory.

What’s behind Hyperliquid’s parabolic rise?

Launched in 2023, Hyperliquid gained popularity in April 2024 after launching spot trading. This, combined with its aggressive listing strategy and easy-to-use onchain user interface, helped to lure in a wave of new users.

The platform’s real explosion, however, came in November 2024, following the launch of its HYPE (HYPE) token. Hyperliquid’s trading volume skyrocketed, and it now boasts over 400,000 users and more than 50 billion trades processed, according to data from Dune.

Hyperliquid cumulative trades and users. Source: Dune

While Hyperliquid started as a high-performance perpetual futures and spot DEX, its ambitions have since expanded. With the launch of HyperEVM on Feb. 18, the project has become a general-purpose layer-1 chain capable of supporting third-party DeFi apps built on top of its infrastructure.

As one of Hyperliquid’s founders, Jeff Yan, put it,

“Most L1s build infrastructure and hope that others will come build the killer apps. Hyperliquid takes the opposite approach: polish a native application and then grow into general-purpose infrastructure.”

If this approach works, the liquidity driven by Hyperliquid’s core DEX could naturally feed into the broader ecosystem and vice versa, creating a flywheel effect.

Will Hyperliquid become a sustainable CEX alternative?

According to CoinGecko, Hyperliquid now ranks 14th among derivatives exchanges by open interest, sitting at $3.1 billion. That’s still behind Binance’s $22 billion but ahead of older names like Deribit or derivatives divisions of Crypto.com, BitMEX, or KuCoin. It’s the first time a DEX is competing so closely with established CEXs.

Furthermore, as Hyperliquid deepens its focus on specialized trading pairs, it continues to chip away at the market share of major exchanges. The DEX accepts not only Arbitrum USDC as collateral but also native BTC. This makes it one of the few decentralized platforms that handle BTC wrapping and unwrapping natively, giving users the option to use BTC for Web3-wallet-based trading.

X user Skewga.hl noted that Hyperliquid’s BTC perpetual futures volume share recently hit an all-time high, reaching almost 50% of Bybit’s and 21% of Binance’s. Skewga.hl wrote,

“No DEX has ever come this close to matching Tier 1 CEX volume.”

Daily volume ratios, Hyperliquid vs Other exchanges (BTC perp). Source: Skewga.hl

Since 2024, perpetual swaps have seen a revival as a trading tool. During the 2021–2022 bull market, daily perps volume averaged around $5 billion. In early 2025, that number often exceeded $15 billion, with Hyperliquid accounting for nearly two-thirds of it.

Data from DefiLlama illustrates the shift: while dYdX (green) dominated in 2023–2024, the landscape diversified significantly in 2024—and by 2025, Hyperliquid (pink) had taken the lead.

Perps volume breakdown. Source: DefiLlama

Despite the recent JELLY token scandal, which involved the exchange halting trading and delisting a low-market-cap token that a whale had exploited, Hyperliquid remains a popular exchange among DeFi and DEX traders. It has yet to capture institutional investor flows or scale to the level of top-tier CEXs. However, if its layer 1 ecosystem gains traction with developers, Hyperliquid could evolve into more than just a leading DEX.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

Coin Market

North Korean crypto attacks rising in sophistication, actors — Paradigm

Published

2 hours ago

March 31, 2025

North Korean cyberwarfare attacks on the cryptocurrency industry are growing in sophistication and in the number of groups involved in such criminal activity, crypto firm Paradigm warns in report titled “Demystifying the North Korean Threat.”

North Korea-originated cyberattacks range from assaults on exchanges and social engineering attempts to phishing attacks and complex supply chain hijacks, the report says. In some cases, the attacks take a year to play out, with North Korean operatives biding their time.

The United Nations estimates that between 2017 and 2023, North Korean hackers have netted the country $3 billion. The total haul has skyrocketed in 2024 and this year, with successful attacks against crypto exchanges WazirX and Bybit, which together netted attackers around $1.7 billion.

Paradigm writes that the North Korean organizations orchestrating these attacks number at least five: Lazarus Group, Spinout, AppleJeus, Dangerous Password, and TraitorTrader. There is also a coalition of North Korean operatives who pose as IT workers, infiltrating tech companies around the world.

High-profile attacks and predictable laundering methods

Lazarus Group, the most well-known North Korean hacking team, is given credit for some of the most high-profile cyberattacks since 2016. According to Paradigm, the group hacked Sony and the Bank of Bangladesh in 2016 and helped orchestrate the WannaCry 2.0 ransomware attack in 2017.

It has also taken aim at the cryptocurrency industry, sometimes to great effect. In 2017, the group hit two crypto exchanges — Youbit and Bithumb. In 2022, Lazarus Group exploited the Ronin Bridge, resulting in hundreds of millions in lost assets. And in 2025, it infamously stole $1.5 billion from Bybit, sending shock throughout the crypto community. The group may be behind some Solana memecoin scams.

As Chainalysis and other organizations have explained, Lazarus Group also has predictable money laundering methods after securing a haul. It breaks up the stolen amount into smaller and smaller pieces, sending them to countless other wallets. It then swaps the more illiquid coins for those with higher liquidity and converts much of it to Bitcoin (BTC). After that, the group may sit on the stolen money for a long period of time until the attention from law enforcement dies down.

The FBI has so far identified three alleged members of the Lazarus Group, accusing them of cybercrimes. In February 2021, the US Justice Department indicted two of those members for involvement in global cybercrimes.

Magazine: Lazarus Group’s favorite exploit revealed — Crypto hacks analysis

Coin Market

VC Roundup: 8-figure funding deals suggest crypto bull market far from over

Published

3 hours ago

March 31, 2025

Venture capital funding continued to pour into the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry in March, even as market commentators sensationalized the end of the bull market amid Bitcoin’s 30% retracement.

VC flows are considered a vital sign for the blockchain industry, with higher deal activity indicative of strong investor appetite and growing innovation in the space.

As Cointelegraph reported, blockchain startups raised a combined $1.1 billion in February alone, with projects spanning decentralized finance, decentralized physical infrastructure networks and payments attracting the lion’s share of capital flows.

Despite fear and trepidation in the crypto market, February was a strong month for blockchain VC. Source: The TIE

Early signs suggest that March was arguably a stronger month for crypto VC deals, as evidenced by the growing size of the investment rounds and the number of investors participating.

Eight deals are featured in this month’s VC Roundup — and seven of them were valued in the eight-figure range.

Across Protocol raises $41M via token sale

Across Protocol, an Ethereum crosschain interoperability platform, raised $41 million in a token sale that was led by San Francisco-based venture firm Paradigm. Coinbase Ventures, Bain Capital Crypto and Multicoin Capital also participated in the token sale round.

Across Protocol is expanding Ethereum layer-2 connectivity through so-called “intents,” an architecture approach that decouples asset transfers and message verification.

Across Protocol (ACX) price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap

“The urgent tasks — moving assets and fulfilling the intent — are carried out immediately by a relayer […] while the time-consuming message verification is done afterward,” wrote Aiden Park, an engineer and technical writer, in an explanatory note on intents.

“This approach enables Across to send messages cheaply, quickly, and securely, setting it apart from other message-passing protocols,” he said.

Ribbit Capital leads $23.6M Crossmint raise

Enterprise Web3 company Crossmint has closed a $23.6 million funding round to scale its onchain onboarding technology, which is designed to help companies and AI agents embrace Web3 without needing blockchain expertise. The funding round was led by San Francisco-based venture firm Ribbit Capital.

According to Crossmint co-founder Rodri Fernandez, the platform provides low-code APIs for a variety of blockchain functions, including wallets, stablecoins, tokenization and credentials. The announcement also claimed that more than 40,000 companies and developers are now using Crossmint across more than 40 blockchains.

Financial app Abound gets backing from Near Foundation, Circle Ventures

New York-based remittance app Abound has closed a $14 million funding round led by Near Foundation, with participation from Circle Ventures.

The Abound app has been designed to bridge the remittance gap between India and its vast diaspora of citizens in the United States. The app claims to have processed more than $150 million in remittances.

Abound was developed by the Times of India Group, a Mumbai-based media company.

Although it’s not entirely clear how blockchain technology and digital assets factor into Abound’s service offerings, if at all, participation from Near and Circle Ventures suggests that blockchain-focused companies are increasingly focused on cross-border payments and remittance services.

Source: Near Protocol

Chronicle closes seed round

Chronicle, an Ethereum Oracle and tokenization infrastructure provider, raised $12 million in seed funding led by Strobe Ventures, formerly known as BlockTower Venture Capital. Additional investors included Galaxy Vision Hill, Brevan Howard Digital, Tioga Capital, Fenbushi Capital, Gnosis Ventures, 6th Man Ventures and several angel investors.

Chronicle connects protocol developers to real-time data feeds, which are essential for DeFi and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization ecosystems. The company cited growing institutional interest in RWA tokenization as one of the reasons for its early success in raising capital.

DeFi-yielding stablecoin Level debuts with $2.6M in funding

In March, blockchain developer Peregrin Exploration debuted the Level USD stablecoin with $2.6 million in backing from Dragonfly Capital, Polychain, Flowdesk and others.

Level USD is a yield-bearing stablecoin that issues digital dollars collateralized by restaked stablecoins. The stablecoin’s market capitalization has grown significantly since its launch, reaching $116 million at the time of writing.

Level USD is integrated with several DeFi protocols, including Pendle, LayerZero and Specta. It can also be used as collateral on noncustodial lending platform Morpho.

Demand for dollar-backed digital tokens has surged over the past two years, with the total stablecoin market approaching $230 billion. Source: RWA.xyz

Halliday raises $20M for Agentic Workflow Protocol

No-code blockchain developer Halliday has closed a $20 million Series A funding round to scale its Agentic Workflow Protocol (AWP) — an AI tool that helps developers build DeFi applications without the need to write smart contracts.

The funding round was led by a16z Crypto, with additional participation from SV Angel, the Avalanche Blizzard Fund, Credibly Neutral, Alt Layer and other angel investors.

Through AWP, blockchain companies can “build applications in hours, not years,” Halliday said in its announcement. Halliday’s programming model handles all the technical aspects of blockchain development and execution, which can theoretically enable companies to scale their products faster.

AI-driven Validation Cloud closes $15M Series A

Validation Cloud, a company at the intersection of artificial intelligence and blockchain infrastructure, has closed a $15 million Series A investment round backed by True Global Ventures. Additional investors include Cadenza, Blockchain Founders Fund, Bloccelerate and others.

The funding will be used to expand Validation Cloud’s Web3 infrastructure solutions, including staking, node API and data offerings.

Validation Cloud provides access to blockchain data and offers node and staking solutions to institutions. Its technology is used by Hedera, Aptos, Stellar, EigenLayer, Polygon and others.

Skytale Digital debuts $20M Polkadot Ecosystem Fund

Blockchain investment firm Skytale Digital has launched the Polkadot Ecosystem Fund, earmarking $20 million to further develop the so-called “network of networks.”

The fund combines financial support, technical expertise and mentorship to help Web3 developers expand their product offerings in the Polkadot ecosystem. Specifically, the fund is targeting decentralized applications and critical infrastructure projects.

Source: Cryptking.eth

Polkadot is the 20th largest blockchain network, with a total market capitalization of around $7.3 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.