Kraken Closes the Gap

Plus, 📜 Uniswap approves $165.5M in new funding, 🚨 EOS targeted, 💸 Sanctioned Russian exchange pulls a fast one, and more!

Author

Juan Aranovich
March 20, 2025

Hi! In today’s edition:

  • 🛑 EOS targeted in new scam

  • 🚨 Sanctioned exchange slips the net

  • 📈 Kraken nears $1.5B acquisition

  • ✅ Uniswap passes major vote

  • ⚖️ DOJ keeps up crypto enforcement

  • 🧐 SEC drops Ripple appeal

  • 📉 Fed pauses for thought

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By Tikta, Veronica Irwin and Steven Ehrlich

Major U.S. crypto exchange Kraken is nearing a $1.5 billion deal to acquire U.S.-based retail futures trading platform NinjaTrader, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.

The acquisition would see Kraken expand its offerings into crypto futures and derivatives in the U.S., leveraging NinjaTrader's Futures Commission Merchant license. NinjaTrader currently serves more than 1.8 million customers.

The deal would position Kraken more competitively against other major exchanges that already offer crypto futures trading, such as Binance and CME.

Kraken claims it’s one of the world’s biggest stable-to-fiat onramps among major centralized exchanges, with a stable-to-fiat market share of more than 40%.

Uniswap Community Passes Two Major Governance Proposals

The Uniswap community has approved two significant governance proposals granting the Uniswap Foundation $165.5 million in new funding to drive the growth of the recently launched Unichain layer 2 and Uniswap v4 protocols. 

The proposals earmarked $95.4 million for grants to developers, core contributors, and validators, $25.1 million for operational expenses and $45 million for liquidity incentives.

They are part of the "Uniswap Unleashed" plan, which aims to expand the Uniswap ecosystem.

One of the priorities of the Uniswap Unleashed plan is to reintroduce a governance vote on Uniswap protocol revenue earned by validators. 

For UNI token holders, that means a long-awaited fee switch proposal entitling them to a portion of liquidity provider fees earned could be back in play.

Blockchain security firm SlowMist detected that the EOS network was being targeted by address poisoning attacks on Wednesday.

Malicious accounts sent 0.001 EOS tokens to EOS users to poison addresses, SlowMist said.

Address poisoning attacks exploit users' habits of copying recent transaction addresses from their wallets. Attackers create addresses that closely mimic legitimate ones, often with similar beginning or ending characters.

In the EOS incident, the attackers created the impersonator address “oktothemoon,” which closely resembles OKX’s real address, “okbtothemoon.” 

They then sent small amounts of EOS tokens from the fake address, attempting to "poison" users' transaction histories. 

When users later copied and pasted an address for a transaction, they might have accidentally selected the attacker's address instead of the intended recipient.

EOS was one of the best-performing tokens on Wednesday following the announcement of a rebrand to Web3 banking under the name Vaulta.

The operators of sanctioned Russian cryptocurrency exchange Garantex have reportedly launched a new trading platform called Grinex, effectively continuing their operation despite a coordinated international effort to shut it down earlier this month.

Swiss blockchain analytics firm Global Ledger said it had found onchain evidence that user balances were being transferred from Garantex to Grinex. 

The new exchange appears to use similar infrastructure and is seemingly being promoted as a sanctions workaround. 

Between Feb. 8 and March 1, Garantex transferred several billion ruble-backed A7A5 stablecoins on Tron to new addresses associated with Grinex.

Onchain data show that Grinex has already processed nearly $30 million of transactions.

Most Federal Agencies Have Changed Their Tune on Crypto. Not the DOJ.

The U.S. federal government made an about-face when it comes to crypto under President Donald Trump. The Securities and Exchange Commission is dismissing lawsuits against crypto companies left and right, while Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, said he would “end the regulatory weaponization against digital assets” at the White House’s crypto summit earlier this month. 

But the Department of Justice is not following the same path. 

Instead, its investigations and enforcement actions against the industry continue apace, and some industry watchers claim that its activities imperil the entire DeFi ecosystem.

Can DeFi defy the department and the doomsayers?

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is dropping its appeal against Ripple Labs, according to a Wednesday morning X post by CEO Brad Garlinghouse. 

The legal battle, which began in December 2020 during President Donald Trump’s first term, was launched under former SEC Chair Jay Clayton. It became a landmark case regarding how digital assets align with U.S. securities laws.

“This is the moment we’ve been waiting for. The SEC will drop its appeal — a resounding victory for Ripple, for crypto, every way you look at it,” Garlinghouse said on X. “The future is bright. Let’s build.”

Still to be decided is the fate of Ripple’s $125 million fine, as multiple legal experts tell Unchained that the SEC dropping its appeal does not automatically eliminate the penalty.

Ripple donated tens of millions of dollars to Trump and a political action committee called Fairshake that spent more than $130 million in the last election cycle to create a pro-crypto Congress. 

Money well spent?

The U.S. Federal Reserve left its benchmark interest rate target unchanged at 4.25% to 4.50% as expected on Wednesday as it navigates a challenging economic landscape. 

The uncertainty has sent major stock indices including the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 into correction territory, or worse, in recent weeks. Bitcoin has not been immune, as the $1.68 trillion asset is down 10.82% year-to-date and nearly 20% from its all-time high above $108,000 in late January. The broader crypto market has lost 16.04% this year and is nearly 24% off its all-time high.

“Uncertainty around the economic outlook has increased,” the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement. “The committee is attentive to the risks to both sides of its dual mandate.” 

Is a crypto-damaging “Trumpcession” on the cards?

Mantle is building the largest sustainable hub for on-chain finance. Launching three new core innovation pillars: Enhanced Index Fund, Mantle Banking and MantleX. 

  • 🛡️ ETH staking protocol EigenLayer strengthened its role in Ethereum’s security stack as Mantle Network adopted EigenDA for data availability while ZKsync integrated both EigenDA and EigenLayer’s actively validated services.

  • 📊 Asset manager Volatility Shares is launching two Solana futures ETFs, with SOLZ offering standard futures exposure and SOLT targeting double the daily price movement, potentially paving the way for a spot Solana ETF as firms such as Franklin Templeton await approval.

  • 📈 DeFi protocol Spark could inject up to $3.6 billion into tokenized treasuries through its Spark Liquidity Layer, significantly expanding the industry’s market cap after selecting three winners — BlackRock’s BUIDL, Superstate’s USTB, and Centrifuge’s JTRSY — to receive an initial $1 billion allocation.

  • ⚖️ Digital asset derivatives exchange Bitnomial dropped its lawsuit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and will launch the first-ever Commodity Futures Trading Commission-regulated, physically settled XRP futures in the U.S. on Thursday, following the SEC’s decision to end its legal battle with Ripple, which confirmed XRP’s status outside securities laws for secondary sales.

  • 🎤 U.S. President Donald Trump will speak at the Digital Asset Summit in New York, following White House adviser Bo Hines’ remarks on the administration’s plan to accumulate bitcoin for a strategic reserve.

  • 📲 Web3 wallet infrastructure firm Privy secured $15 million in new funding led by Ribbit Capital, bringing its total raised to more than $40 million as it plans to double its 25-person team within 18 months to expand its embedded crypto wallet solutions.

  • 💳 StableSea, a startup focused on off-ramping stablecoins into fiat for financial institutions, emerged from stealth mode with a $3.5 million raise led by Kindred Ventures, aiming to streamline cross-border transactions for banks, neobanks, and payment processors.

  1. The Defiant: Aerodrome Founder Denies that Coinbase 'Stabbed Them in the Back'

  2. Programmable Asset Ledgers by Robbie Petersen, junior partner at crypto venture firm Dragonfly

  3. A Hyperliquid Proposed Valuation by digital asset research firm GLC