DEX

Cardano deployed USDCx, a USDC-backed stablecoin infrastructure built with Circle that links to the xReserve framework for 1:1 minting and redemption. The rollout integrates with Minswap, Liqwid, and SundaeSwap. Stablecoin capitalization on Cardano is around $34 million while TVL exceeds $137 million, pointing to deeper dollar liquidity despite subdued on-chain activity.

On February 27, 2026, major Wall Street firms stepped up their DeFi involvement by purchasing governance tokens and seeking influence over core protocol infrastructure. Over the past three days, MORPHO rose 18%, UNI 15%, and JUP 9.7%, alongside price moves to $1.76, $3.75, and $0.152 respectively.

Solana's SOL token has fallen 72% from its $295 all-time high and trades below $188, the level reached when spot SOL ETFs launched in October 2025. Despite the four-month price pullback and slower ETF inflows, onchain data shows leading DEX volumes, rising RWA value and strong address activity compared with rival networks. Technical levels between $51 and $80 and resistance near $120 are being watched as key areas for how this valuation gap might eventually close.

On 25 February, t54 Labs announced Ripple as a strategic investor in its $5 million seed round to build agent payments infrastructure on the XRP Ledger via x402 with a compliance-first design and RLUSD. Data from agentevm shows Ethereum hosts 27,903 distributed AI agents and Base 20,623, while RLUSD stands at about $1.5386 billion in circulating supply and $1.6109 billion in reserves.

A large leveraged ARC perpetuals long on Lighter unraveled after ARC fell around 6:00 pm ET on Wednesday, according to the platform. Auto-deleveraging engaged as the LLP briefly absorbed 200 million ARC worth $14.7 million; the trader lost about 8.2M USDC while LP losses were held near $75,000 under risk caps. Lighter later set a $40 million ARC open-interest limit and shifted the pair to a capped liquidity strategy with about $100,000 USDC.

On 25 February 2026, President Vladimir Putin signed a law empowering Russian courts and investigators to seize cryptocurrency, which the act classifies as "intangible property." It takes effect ten days after publication and precedes a July 1, 2026 regime with a 300,000‑ruble annual cap for non‑qualified retail and domestic licensing rules for exchanges.

Developers have proposed XLS-56d to add Batch Transactions to the XRP Ledger, enabling atomic bundling of up to eight transfers for more predictable outcomes. The amendment remains under validator voting, and a bug discovered prior to activation led to a temporary veto recommendation. A software update is expected next week to deprecate the current version before a fixed release.

On February 24, 2026, Meteora emerged as the leading candidate on Polymarket to be named in ZachXBT's upcoming insider trading investigation scheduled for February 26. Traders pushed Meteora's implied odds as high as 53%, while MET fell over 15% to around $0.18 amid short positions and growing speculation. The Solana-based DEX currently supports $494M in liquidity and significant USDC trading activity, particularly in TRUMP-related pools.

According to Arkham, wallets attributed to Ethereum co‑founder Vitalik Buterin declined from about 241,000 ETH in early February to 224,000 ETH by Tuesday, a net outflow of roughly 17,000 ETH. In January, he said he had earmarked 16,384 ETH (about $45 million) to support privacy‑focused projects and related open hardware and verifiable software efforts.

On Feb. 23, World Liberty Financial's USD1 slipped to $0.994 and recovered within minutes, a 0.6% deviation, according to DEX Screener. WLFI attributed the move to a "coordinated attack," while Arkham's tracking shows Binance controls roughly 93% of the about $5 billion circulating supply, concentrating peg tests on one venue.