DeFi United

Plus: 🪖 Soldier busted for Polymarket bets on the Maduro raid he helped execute | ⚡ MegaETH hits KPI for MEGA token launch | 🌏 Treasury sanctions Cambodian senator over pig-butchering crypto scam network

David Okoya
April 24, 2026

Hi! In today’s edition:

🔥 Aave and DeFi partners launch "DeFi United" to cover the rsETH shortfall from the KelpDAO hack
🪖 A U.S. Army master sergeant is arrested for using classified Maduro raid intel to win $409K on Polymarket
⚡ MegaETH activates first KPI with 10 live apps, starting the clock for MEGA's TGE
🌏 Treasury sanctions Cambodian Senator Kok An and 28 associates over a pig-butchering crypto scam network

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Aave Leads "DeFi United" Push to Cover KelpDAO's $292M Hole

The KelpDAO exploit has evolved from a bridge hack to DeFi's biggest collective action problem of the year. Aave and a growing group of industry partners launched a recovery initiative called "DeFi United" on Thursday, aimed at restoring the backing of rsETH and preventing bad debt from crystallizing across the sector's largest lender.

Lido Finance, EtherFi, Ethena, LayerZero, Mantle, Tydro, and the Ink Foundation have all indicated contributions or commitments. Aave founder Stani Kulechov personally pledged 5,000 ETH.

The Kelp DAO attacker minted 116,500 unbacked rsETH tokens, deposited nearly 90,000 into Aave as collateral, and borrowed roughly $190 million in ETH and other assets before the protocol could freeze markets. Aave's total value locked dropped by $10 billion in the days that followed amid bad debt concerns.

The total rsETH shortfall is estimated at more than 112,000 rsETH.

U.S. Soldier Arrested for Polymarket Bets on Maduro Raid He Helped Plan

A U.S. Army Special Forces master sergeant was arrested Thursday for allegedly using classified military intelligence to win more than $409,000 on the prediction market Polymarket.

Gannon Ken Van Dyke, 38, was stationed at Fort Bragg and was directly involved in the planning and execution of Operation Absolute Resolve, the January raid that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. In the week before that operation, he allegedly placed 13 bets totaling about $33,000 on markets related to Maduro's removal and a U.S. military presence in Venezuela.

After collecting his winnings, Van Dyke allegedly transferred most of the proceeds to a foreign cryptocurrency vault and asked Polymarket to delete his account. Polymarket said it identified the suspicious trades and referred the matter to the DOJ before cooperating with the investigation.

The DOJ charged Van Dyke with unlawful use of classified government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud, and theft of nonpublic government information. The CFTC filed parallel charges in what it described as the first-ever insider trading case tied to event contracts in the U.S.

MegaETH Sets April 30 for MEGA Token Launch After Hitting First KPI

MegaETH announced Thursday that its MEGA token generation event is scheduled for April 30, after the Ethereum Layer 2 cleared its first performance milestone.

The network confirmed that 10 Mega Mafia-incubated applications are now live on mainnet, a threshold that automatically triggered a seven-day countdown under the project's KPI-linked token release structure. Each qualifying app was required to demonstrate a functioning core loop with more than 100,000 total transactions over a 30-day period.

The KPI model was designed to tie token issuance to real network activity rather than fixed vesting dates. Out of a total supply of 10 billion MEGA tokens, 53.3% will be distributed as staking rewards linked to four topline performance goals. Live apps include Cap, Brix, Avon, Kumbaya, and Ubitel, with backing from Kraken Ventures, Wintermute, and Vitalik Buterin, among others.

MEGA premarket perpetuals on Hyperliquid had been trading at an implied valuation of $1.5 billion to $2 billion, well below the $6 billion peak reached in October.

Treasury Sanctions Cambodian Senator Tied to Pig-Butchering Crypto Fraud Network

The U.S. Treasury sanctioned Cambodian Senator Kok An and 28 associated individuals and entities Thursday, accusing him of using his political connections to shield a network of scam compounds that stole millions of dollars from Americans through cryptocurrency fraud. The action was taken by the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control in coordination with the interagency Scam Center Strike Force, acting under an executive order President Trump signed in March directing agencies to target foreign-backed fraud networks.

Kok An, described by Treasury as one of Cambodia's wealthiest and most politically connected businessmen, owns Crown Resorts, a hospitality company whose casinos and office buildings across Poipet, Sihanoukville, and Bavet have allegedly been converted into fraud operations. Victims of human trafficking at the properties reportedly were forced to run pig-butchering scams under threat of violence, building fake romantic or investment relationships with their marks to extract crypto transfers.

The DOJ separately charged two individuals with running a scam compound in Burma and attempting to open another in Cambodia. Treasury estimates Americans lose at least $10 billion annually to Southeast Asian scam operations.

🏛️ President Trump will deliver remarks at a crypto conference at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday at noon ET. Attendance is limited to the top 297 holders of his $TRUMP meme coin, drawing fresh conflict-of-interest scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers.
🏛️ More than 120 crypto firms including Coinbase, Ripple, and Kraken urged the Senate Banking Committee to schedule a markup of the Clarity Act, warning that further delays risk pushing crypto investment and jobs overseas. The push comes after a widely expected late-April markup date slipped following disagreements over stablecoin reward provisions.
📈 Bitcoin spot ETF flows have turned positive year-to-date, with every rolling period tracked by Bloomberg now in the green for the first time in months, according to Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas. BlackRock's IBIT led with a single-day inflow of $246 million, pushing total 2026 year-to-date flows to roughly $245 million after a difficult first quarter.
🟡 Tether froze $344 million in USDT across two Tron addresses Thursday in coordination with OFAC and U.S. law enforcement, marking one of the stablecoin issuer's largest compliance actions on record. The wallets were flagged for suspected sanctions evasion and criminal network activity; Tether did not name the underlying investigation.
⚖️ Wisconsin sued Kalshi, Coinbase, Polymarket, Robinhood, and Crypto.com Thursday, arguing their sports event contracts are illegal gambling under state law. The suits deepen a growing state-versus-CFTC standoff over whether prediction markets are federally regulated financial instruments or state-regulated sportsbooks.
⚖️ Jane Street filed a motion to dismiss the insider-trading lawsuit brought by Terraform Labs' bankruptcy administrator, calling it an attempt to "extract cash from Jane Street to foot the bill for a fraud that Terraform itself perpetrated.” The firm argued its largest trades came after damaging information about UST and LUNA was already public, and that Do Kwon's 15-year fraud conviction precludes a second recovery.
📉 Pantera Capital is pushing London-listed Satsuma Technology to sell its remaining 646 BTC worth about $50 million and return the proceeds to shareholders. Satsuma's shares have fallen 99% from their June 2025 peak after bitcoin pulled back nearly 40% from its all-time high, leaving the company's market value below the value of its own bitcoin holdings.
⚖️ Benjamin Pasternak, founder of the Solana-based token launchpad Believe, was arrested Tuesday on charges of second-degree strangulation and third-degree assault tied to an alleged March 31 incident; he has pleaded not guilty. The arrest compounds a federal class-action lawsuit filed in March alleging Pasternak ran deceptive token sales across three successive token names, with investors claiming losses in the hundreds of millions.

🏦 The Bank for International Settlements warned in a new report that major crypto exchanges have evolved into "shadow banks," bundling lending, yield, and trading services without deposit insurance or meaningful regulatory safeguards. The BIS said high-yield "earn" products are effectively unsecured loans, and cited Celsius, FTX, and a $19 billion October 2025 liquidation cascade as evidence of systemic risk.

💰 3F, a vault protocol built on Morpho, raised $4 million in a seed round led by Maven 11, with participation from F-Prime, Susquehanna Crypto, GSR, and Gate Ventures. The platform offers one-click leveraged exposure to tokenized real-world assets and plans to launch in Q2 2026.
🤖 Cluster Protocol raised $5 million led by DAO5 to accelerate CodeXero, a browser-native AI coding tool for the EVM ecosystem that converts natural language prompts into production-ready smart contracts. The round brings the company's total funding to $7.75 million.
💸 RealGo, an AR and AI-powered Meme 3.0 app on BNB Chain, completed a $3.5 million funding round backed by Animoca Brands, Cogitent Ventures, X21 Digital, and others. The company plans to deploy the capital toward its token generation event scheduled for Q2 2026.

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