Paxos Labs has raised $12M in a strategic round led by Blockchain Capital, with participation from Robot Ventures, Maelstrom, and Uniswap. The funding supports the launch of its flagship product, Amplify.

About. Amplify is a modular stack enabling fintech and crypto platforms to integrate onchain financial products via a single SDK. It includes three core modules (Earn, Borrow, and Mint), allowing yield generation, crypto-backed lending, and branded stablecoin issuance.

The platform operates on a revenue-sharing model, where both Paxos Labs and its partners benefit from user activity. Liquidity management, counterparty vetting, and compliance controls are handled by Paxos behind the scenes.

Early adopters including Aleo, Hyperbeat, and Toku are already live, with Hyperbeat surpassing $510K in AUM shortly after launch.

👉 theblock.co/post/397348/paxos-labs-raises-12-million-amplify-onchain-financial-products

Deutsche Börse has made a $200M strategic investment in Payward Inc., the parent company of Kraken, marking a major move by a traditional exchange operator into crypto infrastructure.

The investment supports closer integration between traditional market systems and digital asset services, as institutional players continue expanding into crypto.

The deal values Kraken at ~$13.3B, down from $20B five months earlier when it filed for a US IPO, reflecting a shift in market expectations.

Recent updates from Kraken include the launch of the INK Points system on Kraken Pro and the rollout of Nado, a perp DEX on Ink L2, both tied to a future INK token launch expected in Q2–Q3 2026.

👉 x.com/CoinDesk/status/2043999552458387663?s=20

With Q1 2026 now complete, this ranking shows which prediction markets posted the strongest volume growth in 2026, with Limitless ranking first. While absolute size still matters, quarter-over-quarter growth offers a clearer view of where momentum is building fastest.

Exodus Movement is suing W3C, the parent company of crypto card and payments specialists Baanx and Monovate, and its CEO, Garth Howat, to complete its $175 million acquisition of W3C.

Howat and W3C accepted $80 million worth of loans from Exodus upon signing the deal, with $10 million given to Howat personally, who then declared that they did not need to repay these loans, according to the lawsuit.

The sale is now live and will last until April 20. 10% of OCT supply is allocated for sale. Users can now place bids in ETH to receive wOCT.

Octra is a privacy-focused Layer 1 blockchain that uses fully homomorphic encryption to process encrypted data without decrypting it and designed to work both as a standalone L1 and as decentralized encrypted middleware.

Ink is starting to look like more than a standalone Layer 2. The bigger story is that Kraken appears to be building a full on-chain stack around it, linking exchange distribution, wallets, infrastructure, DeFi apps, and now a reward layer that begins on Kraken Pro itself. Ink’s own docs describe the network as an OP Stack Layer 2 with 1-second block times and a mission to bring Kraken’s security, UX, and privacy principles on-chain.

That is why the launch of Ink Points matters. According to Kraken’s support documentation, points are earned through trading, holding assets, staking, and broader platform engagement on Kraken Pro, with existing clients collecting from April 6 and points added every Monday. In other words, Kraken is no longer presenting Ink only as a chain to explore, but as part of a wider user journey that now begins inside its exchange products.

The strategic angle is clear. Most new chains have to fight for attention first and liquidity later. Kraken is trying a different route: start with existing distribution, then route that flow into an ecosystem where users can trade, hold assets, bridge, and eventually interact with a growing on-chain app layer. Ink’s docs already show official support across wallets, RPC providers, and block explorers, reinforcing the idea that this is being built as a real operating environment rather than a thin-chain launch.

Kraken also announced earlier that $INK is intended to unify users, protocols, and builders across the ecosystem. At the same time, Ink’s public FAQ still says there is no token or TGE information to share, so the public documentation does not appear fully synchronized yet. Even with that caveat, the broader direction is becoming clearer: Kraken wants Ink to serve as the on-chain layer that ties together its exchange reach and a growing DeFi environment.

Today’s points rollout does not complete that vision, but it does make it more tangible. Ink is no longer just a chain with ecosystem ambitions. It is starting to look like Kraken’s first real attempt to turn centralized distribution into a lasting on-chain flywheel.

Digital asset investment products recorded $1.1B in inflows, the strongest level since January, supported by moderating inflation and easing macro risks.

Bitcoin led with $833M in inflows, while Ethereum ETFs attracted $187M. Meanwhile, Strategy continued accumulation, acquiring an additional 13,927 BTC ($1.00B), and Bitmine added 71,524 ETH ($156M)

The Mini App brings Oriole Insights’ prediction experience into Telegram. Moreover, Oriole now allows users buy INSIGHTS with Telegram Stars directly in its Telegram Mini App, making access to the platform’s in-app currency much easier.

New Features:

— Buy INSIGHTS with Telegram Stars in Earn section

— Exchange INSIGHTS for ORI directly in the app

— Keep making predictions along with farming 

— Fully native Telegram Mini App experience

— An additional path to accumulate ORI for users

GENIUS trading starts today at 11:00 UTC, backed by $6.0M in private funding. This board compares potential FDV scenarios using benchmarks from other DEXs / Trading Terminals like Banana Gun, Jupiter, 1inch, and Infinex.

World Liberty Financial (WLFI) is facing a growing backlash not because of a single incident, but because of a widening gap between how the project has been marketed and how it appears to operate in practice. In its own materials, WLFI presents itself as part of a broader push to democratize access to DeFi and expand participation in on-chain finance. But recent scrutiny has shifted the conversation away from that narrative and toward harder questions about control, transparency, and whether the project’s structure is far more centralized than its branding suggests.

One of the clearest reputational flashpoints came from WLFI’s public-facing presentation. Reuters reported that a “Meet our team” section on the project’s website previously listed Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Barron Trump, but that section was removed after Reuters asked questions about WLFI’s new “Super Nodes” proposal. That proposal created a privileged investor tier for users willing to lock up roughly $5 million worth of tokens in exchange for voting rights, yield, and access to the business development team. For a project built around the language of broader financial access, the optics were difficult to ignore: the model looked less like open participation and more like gated influence for large holders.

The bigger issue, however, is governance. WLFI’s own FAQ states that the company screens proposals before they reach Snapshot voting and reserves final discretion to reject proposals it believes create legal or security risks. The same FAQ also states that the WLF Protocol is not a DAO, and that it is administratively controlled by one or more multisigs whose signers are determined by the company. The Gold Paper makes the same point even more directly: World Liberty Financial is not controlled by token holders, even if token holders are allowed to vote on certain protocol matters. That is the core contradiction driving criticism today. WLFI has been promoted using the language of decentralized finance, but its governance design leaves meaningful control in the hands of a centralized operator.

The backlash intensified further after fresh concerns emerged around WLFI’s own token and stablecoin ecosystem. CoinDesk reported that World Liberty used 5 billion WLFI as collateral on Dolomite to borrow about $75 million in stablecoins, including exposure tied to its own USD1 stablecoin. Chaos Labs then described a looping structure in which USD1 borrowed in one position was used as collateral to borrow USDC in another, which was then cycled back into the first position. Even without alleging misconduct, this kind of structure inevitably raises questions about circular risk, related-party incentives, and whether the protocol is being engineered in ways that benefit insiders more than ordinary users.

That context made Justin Sun’s public attack especially damaging. Bloomberg reported that WLFI is now facing an investor revolt that includes Sun, one of its highest-profile backers. Other contemporaneous reports said Sun accused WLFI of hiding blacklist-style wallet controls, freezing investor funds without proper disclosure, and running governance in a way that withheld key information from voters. WLFI has pushed back and threatened legal action, and Sun’s claims remain allegations rather than established fact. Still, they fit neatly into the broader criticism already surrounding the project: that a platform sold under the banner of decentralization may in reality depend on concentrated discretion, selective control, and opaque decision-making.

Taken together, these issues explain why WLFI’s backlash now looks structural rather than temporary. The removal of team references, the creation of privileged governance tiers, the company-controlled proposal process, and the controversy around self-referential collateral strategies all point in the same direction. World Liberty Financial may continue to describe itself as part of the future of decentralized finance, but unless it meaningfully reduces centralized control and improves disclosure, that claim will become harder to defend.