Kraken Eyes 15% Aave Stake at $385 Million Valuation

Kraken, through Payward, is in talks to buy a 15% stake in Aave at a $385 million valuation, according to people familiar with the matter. The proposed deal would put 35,000 ETH into the DeFi lending protocol for 250,000 AAVE tokens and common equity.

Aave remains the largest decentralized lending protocol, letting depositors earn yield and borrowers take loans against crypto collateral through smart contracts. The talks come after the KelpDAO bridge exploit created roughly $190 million to $230 million in bad debt, despite Aave’s own code not being compromised.

The April attack, tied to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, minted about $292 million of unbacked rsETH through KelpDAO’s cross-chain bridge. Hackers used those tokens as collateral on Aave, borrowed real assets and triggered more than $8 billion in withdrawals as depositors cut exposure across interconnected DeFi markets.

Kraken’s parent Payward has been expanding before a potential public listing, including an agreement to buy Bitnomial for up to $550 million. The Aave investment would support Payward Asset Management, deepen Kraken’s exposure to decentralized lending and broaden its strategy beyond spot trading.

Spark, Uniswap Seed FX Layer With $150 Million

Spark and Uniswap are building FX Layer, a stablecoin swap system meant to help institutions move between dollar tokens with limited slippage. The infrastructure runs on Uniswap v4, while Spark coordinates liquidity allocation across issuers that want shared rails rather than isolated pools.

Spark will migrate $150 million from its USDS ecosystem to seed a pool for USDS, USDT and PYUSD. The design targets banks, fintechs and payment firms exploring stablecoin issuance, where fragmented liquidity could weaken redemptions, pricing and institutional confidence in dollar wrappers.

Story Becomes DATA With 1.5 Billion Records

Story has rebranded as DATA Foundation, shifting from broad intellectual-property infrastructure toward rights-cleared AI training data. The foundation launched Trace, an onchain registry that records data origin, licensing, consent and contributor payments for model developers facing rising legal pressure over training datasets.

Kled will bring more than 1.5 billion user-contributed records onto DATA, covering voice, video, images and other real-world data. The foundation said the IP token will migrate one-to-one into DATA, while AI buyers can verify dataset provenance through rails tied to AI crypto infrastructure.

Base Outage Stalls Blocks During Beryl Window

Base suffered a major outage after a problematic block disrupted subsequent block building, according to the network’s status page. The Coinbase-incubated Ethereum Layer 2 reported an Unsafe Head Stall, leaving new blocks unreliable while transactions, deposits and withdrawals were delayed or stalled across mainnet.

The incident came during the same window as Base’s scheduled Beryl upgrade, though the outage appeared separate from planned maintenance. As the most active Ethereum scaling network, Base’s interruption hit a major Layer 2 venue for users, bridges and applications relying on fast settlement.

Data of the Day

Google search interest for stablecoins has fallen sharply, with June’s partial reading annualizing near 45, down 54% from May. The decline follows an August 2025 peak tied to the GENIUS Act, Circle’s IPO and announcements from Stripe, Visa, Mastercard and banks.

Aggregate stablecoin supply peaked just below $300 billion at the start of June, then slipped by $5 billion within three weeks. Supply is up only 0.23% this year, after rising 56% in 2024 and 46% in 2025, cooling interest in stablecoin markets.

More Breaking News

• Binance withdrew its Greece MiCA bid with one week before the EU deadline, while co-CEO Richard Teng said the exchange remains committed to approval.
• Indonesia introduced certification rules for crypto influencers, forcing digital-asset promoters to recommend only authorized exchange-listed assets through regulated financial service channels.
• Trump canceled signing a bipartisan housing bill with a CBDC ban, calling it minor while demanding Congress first pass voting-rights restrictions.
• Polymarket became a first crypto touchpoint for 60% of World Cup bettors, as Bitget Wallet tracked 857,000 users over 90 days.
• CoinShares found 52% of UK wealth advisors say most client crypto sits outside oversight, while 61% of European peers face restrictive firm policies.
• Kalshi is reportedly seeking a $40 billion valuation weeks after its $1 billion raise, as sports-market regulation battles spread across multiple states.
• Polish authorities arrested four suspects in a crypto SIM-swap and laundering case, with ZachXBT alleging threat actor Merry was among those detained.
• Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin launched in Japan after regulatory approval, giving SBI VC Trade clearance to offer it to institutions and retail users.
• SBI Holdings signed a $289 million Bitbank acquisition deal, expanding its regulated exchange footprint and stablecoin distribution channels in Japan.
• TRM Labs said CoinEx processed $3.84 billion in Iran-linked flows since 2019, while the exchange denied knowingly serving sanctioned entities.

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