Best of protos.com on Kiwi News
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12 stories from protos.com have been shared on Kiwi News since 28 August 2024, with 19 upvotes and 1 comment in total. The latest was shared on 25 January 2026. They are listed below, most upvoted first.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- Saga becomes latest victim in DeFi hacking spree
Saga has paused its Saga EVM blockchain after a hack drained close to $7 million. The scaling solution describes itself as a "gasless EVM environment that gives you the full Ethereum experience," and its wider ecosystem reportedly includes web3 gaming, DeFi and AI agents. Blockchain security firm Decurity said the attacker "minted D tokens (Saga Dollar) out of thin air" using a helper contract that abused IBC mechanisms, while "Onchain Investigator" Specter suggested a private key compromise. The stolen funds were bridged to Ethereum as USDC and swapped for about 2,089 ETH, worth just over $6 million.
- Andrew Tate’s BRUV party is pro-bitcoin and batshit crazy
Andrew Tate launched a new UK political party, Britain Restoring Underlying Values (BRUV), publishing a manifesto that proposes a national bitcoin reserve and blockchain-based voting if it ever gains power. The manifesto also calls for capping non-British residents at 10%, enforcing a zero-immigrant policy with the Royal Navy, and purging the BBC. The article notes that the manifesto cites no sources for its statistics, and that BRUV is not yet listed as an official party with the Electoral Commission.
- Tornado Cash founder Roman Storm is running out of money for legal fees
Tornado Cash founder Roman Storm is asking for another $2 million in donations to fund his legal defense as he faces a criminal trial that could carry years in prison. The US government alleged in August 2023 that Storm and his co-founder made millions of dollars through Tornado Cash, and Storm says seizures and legal expenses have depleted those resources. Storm faces a maximum sentence of 45 years on conspiracy charges, with a jury trial scheduled to begin July 14 in a Manhattan courthouse. As of publication, his campaign page showed $256 raised toward the $2 million goal, while a tweet from Storm hours earlier showed $7,290; the article says the reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.
- ANALYSIS: Mapping Donald Trump’s growing crypto empire
The Trump family has used cryptocurrency ventures to cash in on its name, according to a Protos analysis mapping their projects. World Liberty Financial, which names Donald Trump Sr. its "chief crypto advocate," launched the USD1 stablecoin, which has grown to over $2 billion in market capitalization without any attestation or audit of its reserves. The $TRUMP memecoin has a market capitalization of approximately $2.6 billion, with 80% of its supply intended for token creators and CIC Digital LLC, and its largest holders earn the right to dine with the president. Melania's memecoin, issued by MKT World, LLC, has a market capitalization of approximately $200 million.
- TRUMP token -15% since dinner as 40% of guests dump by dessert
TRUMP, US President Donald Trump's memecoin, is the worst-performing digital asset in the top 100, down 15% since a dinner at Trump's National Golf Course. About 40% of the top 220 wallets that once qualified for the dinner held no TRUMP during the event. Many holders dumped tokens after receiving invites, partially explaining the slump. The dinner drew hundreds of the largest token buyers, including TRON founder Justin Sun, who spent $40 million buying the coin. Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley called it "the Crypto Corruption Club," while White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt denied that personal corruption by Trump was involved.
- Maker will be able to remotely freeze its new USDS stablecoin
Maker is introducing USDS, a new stablecoin whose holders can have their coins remotely frozen by Maker insiders, and is incentivizing users to convert DAI into it. During a phase-out period now underway, Maker will enforce a 1:1 convertibility peg between DAI and USDS, with rewards offered at Sky.money. The article says the remote freeze is expected to follow rule of law from jurisdictions where Maker needs legal certainty over real-world asset collateral, and Maker insiders said activating it on-chain could take months or even years. Founder Rune Christensen is also introducing the SKY governance token, which the article describes as superior to the prior token, MKR.
- ANALYSIS: Does the Circle IPO value Tether at $316B?
Protos argues that Circle's IPO pricing can serve as a benchmark for valuing Tether, but that the simple comparisons produce a figure that is unreliable. Circle's shares were expected to price at least $27-28 each, a valuation above $7.2 billion, with the final price set after the 5pm pricing. Applying Circle's 11.7% ratio of market cap to stablecoin market cap to Tether's $153.7 billion USDT would imply an $18 billion valuation. A profit-based comparison, which scales Circle's $156 million in 2024 net profit against Tether's roughly $7 billion in interest income, yields a $316 billion figure that the article presents as a caveated and doubtful result.
- Why Polymarket users are betting that Jesus Christ will return
Some Polymarket traders betting "Yes" on whether Jesus Christ returns in 2025 may be wagering that other traders will eventually sell their "No" positions to free up cash, according to a theory from Polymarket trader Jesse Richardson. Richardson's "Time Value of Money" idea holds that "No" bettors, facing year-end returns of 2.9%, might sell when more interesting markets appear, which could push the "Yes" odds from about 3% to 6%. Neyman noted that the Christ market had roughly $100,000 in volume when he published his blog last March and now has over $500,000.
- US sanctions Filipino company behind pig-butchering tech
The US Treasury has sanctioned Funnull Technology, a Philippines-based computer firm it says is behind hundreds of thousands of crypto scamming websites responsible for over $200 million in US victim losses. The sanctions, made possible with help from the FBI, also target the company's administrator, Liu Lizhi, and two crypto addresses linked to the firm. The Treasury claims Funnull buys IP addresses in bulk from cloud hosting businesses and sells them to cybercriminals, who can quickly switch domains and IP addresses when providers try to take sites down. The FBI says it has found 548 "Funnull Canonical Names" linked to over 332,000 unique domains since January.
- The corporate interests taking over Bitcoin development
Critics say a Bitcoin Core pull request by Peter Todd, PR 32359, would lift the OP_RETURN datacarrier limit from 83 bytes to nearly the full 1MB block size, exposing corporate interests in Bitcoin's development. The change was opened at the request of Chaincode Labs' Antoine Poinsot and was criticized for removing the config option that let node operators set their own limit. Critics linked the proposal to Citrea, whose co-founder Jameson Lopp was named as the leading spokesman for the PR, and to BitVM-related projects. The article says the PR will likely expire without consensus.
- Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base are fighting over $52 billion DeFi pie
Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base are competing for dominance of the Ethereum Layer 2 market, which holds about $52 billion in decentralized finance (DeFi). Arbitrum and Optimism were the two earliest major competitors, and both ARB and OP trade within 5% of a $3.2 billion fully diluted valuation. Base is a corporately incubated layer 2 without a native token, and its rewards went to its corporate founder Coinbase. The article says Arbitrum keeps most liquidity on its main chain, with about $2.3 billion in on-chain assets, while Base has about $3 billion in TVL.
- Aave could leave Polygon over plan to use bridge funds for yield farming
Aave governance delegate Marc Zeller has raised concerns about Aave's future on Polygon after a pre-PIP proposed by AllezLabs, the "Polygon PoS Bridge Liquidity Program," would use $1.3 billion in idle stablecoins locked in the network's bridge. The proposal would bridge those funds to Ethereum through Morpho, targeting a "conservative" 7% yield that could exceed $90 million per year. In a governance forum thread, Zeller cites bridge hacks such as Ronin, BNB Bridge, Wormhole, and Multichain, and proposes setting loan-to-value to 0% for all assets on Aave V2 and V3 Polygon. Polygon Labs said the proposal is at a very early stage and that it supports the community prioritizing ecosystem security.