Warnings are intensifying across multiple crypto tokens as an on-chain investigator flags structural risks and questionable trading behavior. The growing list of red-flagged assets is heightening concern that retail investors remain exposed to engineered liquidity and sudden price shocks.
Key Takeaways:
Broader warnings point to structural weaknesses across parts of the crypto token market.
Major exchanges face rising pressure to respond faster to questionable trading behavior.
Retail investors remain exposed as oversight concerns spread beyond a single token.
Rising Crypto Exchange Manipulation Concerns Spread Across Tokens
Market manipulation concerns on major crypto exchanges moved back into focus after on-chain investigator ZachXBT tied $RAVE’s collapse to concentrated supply and questionable trading activity. He outlined the episode on social media platform X on April 19. The post described how a token that entered the top 15 by market cap fell 95% within hours.
ZachXBT stated on X: “A summary of the $RAVE -95% price fluctuation from $26 to $1 over the past 24 hours.” He said the sequence began on April 18, when he urged Binance, Bitget, and Gate to examine possible manipulation and offered a $10,000 bounty, later raising it to $25,000. Bitget, Binance, and Gate each publicly acknowledged the request that day, while RaveDAO said it had no involvement. ZachXBT also said he confronted RaveDAO co-founder Yemu Xu on April 13 and 14 without receiving a response. Highlighting broader concerns beyond $RAVE, he remarked:
“Other projects with highly questionable price action recently include: $SIREN, $MYX, $COAI, M, PIPPIN, $RIVER.”
Similar structural and behavioral risks have surfaced across several recently flagged tokens. $SIREN showed extreme supply concentration, with Bubblemaps finding that a single cluster controlled roughly half the supply across 47 wallets. ZachXBT recently said he traced that cluster to wallets tied on-chain to several obscure DWF-affiliated tokens, including LADYS, RACA, and TOMO, reinforcing concerns that the token’s liquidity was engineered rather than driven by organic retail demand. $COAI raised a different red flag: its proxy contract ownership was not renounced, leaving the deployer or admin able to change key functions. $RIVER and PIPPIN exposed weaker market structures in different ways, with $RIVER associated with a low circulating-supply profile and PIPPIN unraveling in a derivatives-driven liquidation cascade. $MYX and M also came under scrutiny, tied respectively to extreme funding conditions and allegations that Axiom staff had access that could enable front-running and deanonymization of users.
The blockchain investigator argued that $RAVE’s structure made the move difficult to dismiss as normal volatility. ZachXBT said $RAVE launched in December 2025 on Binance Alpha with a one billion total supply, while addresses tied to the initial distribution controlled about 95% of supply.
He also pointed to suspicious April 2026 centralized exchange activity connected on-chain to RaveDAO team addresses, which he said could conflict with the project’s denial. ZachXBT added:
“$RAVE is not the only token with manipulation we have seen on major centralized exchanges. It’s just the most blatant, reaching a top 15 market cap within 10 days before dropping 95% in hours.”
The episode widened scrutiny on how quickly trading platforms respond to extreme dislocations in thinly distributed tokens. ZachXBT argued: “Exchanges need faster intervention on manipulation. Detection at scale isn’t easy, but each day of delay means retail traders absorb losses while platforms collect fees on the volume. The outcome is the same regardless of intent.” He also emphasized the broader impact on market participants, saying: “I recognize how much this behavior takes from retail traders, and I plan to investigate similar movements in hopes of identifying the responsible parties.”
Mindy Cohn, best known for her role as Natalie in the 1980s sitcom The Facts of Life, revealed Sunday that she was diagnosed with cancer for a second time.
On Instagram, the actress posted a photo of her lying in a hospital bed with the caption: “have been off social media for awhile ‘ cuz i had to go kick cancer’s ass.”
In the photo, Cohn is smiling and giving a thumbs-up. In her post, she thanked the staff of Providence Saint John’s Hospital, located in Santa Monica, and her “phenomenal” oncology surgeon, Dr. Anton Bilchik.
She also thanked close friends including The Morning Show actress Tara Karsian and The Rookie star Gregory Zarian, along with his husband, John Stewart.
They “have been my advocates and always on the ready to help me when it’s ‘my turn’. recouping for another couple of weeks and then ready for my next adventure. onwards! F**K Cancer!” she ended the post.
This is the second time Cohn has battled cancer. In 2017, she revealed that she’d had a five-year battle with breast cancer.
“I kept that secret for a long time,” she told People at the time. “I’ve always been an optimist, but the cancer metastasized. It kept spreading and coming back. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, and then it would. And then I’d wait for another shoe to drop, and it would. I was frustrated and enraged. I couldn’t control any of this. I couldn’t fix it.”
Cohn was one of the stars of Facts of Life for its entire nine-season run from 1979-88. More recently, she co-starred opposite Kristen Wiig in Apple TV+’s Palm Royale.
Cohn received a flood of well wishes from famous faces in the comment section of her most recent post, including Sarah Paulson, who wrote “Sending love … your way.” Rhea Seehorn wrote: “MINDY!!!! F**CK that nonsense!!!! Sending you love and healing to the moon and back!”
Other well wishers included Octavia Spencer, Chelsea Handler, Vicki Lawrence, Helen Hunt, Lucy Hale, Daphne Zuniga, Peri Gilpin, Johnny Weir and Holly Peete.
A day after J-pop fans gathered at Honolulu’s Tom Moffatt Waikiki Shell for a one-night-only concert, Asobi Expo Hawaii 2026, the artists and executives of Asobi System congregated backstage to discuss the event and the company’s global aspirations.
As J-pop continues to move further into the U.S. market, Japanese entertainment companies and labels are looking for ways to connect artists with both longtime and potential fans in what was a previously untapped market. Bringing Asobi Expo, an event meant to gather and showcase artists from the Asobi System family, to the U.S. is one way some labels are introducing talent stateside. Other events similar to it, like Japan Culture and Entertainment Industry Promotion Association’s Matsuri event held last year in Los Angeles, are label agnostic.
“I thought that was really important to bring [the event] abroad, to really spread the Japanese culture,” Asobi System CEO and founder of Yusuke Nakagawa, tells The Hollywood Reporter. The entertainment company, which he founded in 2007, works to showcase and spread Japan’s famed harajuku culture, which is essentially a collection of eclectic and diverse subcultures.
That Harajuku culture is on display plenty, all the way down to the variety of artists Nakagawa has picked for the Honolulu edition of Asobi Expo. There’s the high-energy, out-of-box Atarashii Gakko!, the adorable and endearing Kawaii Labs girl group Fruits Zipper and the veteran Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. The event’s audience featured a fair share of supporters for each act, a mix of both local residents and diehard fans who flew in from Japan.
Asobi Expo Hawaii 2026.
Hisashi Uchida, Taku Miyazawa
Nakagawa says he felt that Hawaii was the perfect location to expand Asobi Expo into the U.S. “I thought it was a really good place, where the Japanese people would be happy to come and the local people [would] have a lot of support,” he says.
“It was our first time in Hawaii,” says Suzuka of Atarashii Gakko! The four-member girl group is no stranger to performing in the U.S., having previously performed at Coachella and headlining a North American tour of their own.
“The audience was really enjoying [the] different artists, so I thought maybe that’s the atmosphere of Hawaii, that you get to be more relaxed. I thought that was really good,” the singer continues. She says they put together a setlist that they knew the crowd would enjoy.
“Even the Japanese people that traveled over here, they seemed to have more energy or were yelling in a higher tone or [had] more body movement,” she continues. “We actually got hyped watching the audience. And, as a team, I was really grateful that we all got to travel together with Kyary Pamyu Pamyu and Fruits Zipper, but also [with] the Asobi System staff.”
Fruits Zipper, hailing from Asobi System’s sublabel, Kawaii Labs, is admittedly a bit to newer the U.S. market, but the girl group — which operates on a system of each member being assigned a color — had a large fan presence at the Honolulu concert.
“It’s always nice to see that there are fans outside Japan because we never get to meet the person,” Noel, whose color in the group is yellow, explains. The 22-year-old is the group’s main fluent English-language speaker, having been born in Germany and raised in Japan.
The word “kawaii” means cute or adorable in Japanese, which is exactly the vibe that Fruits Zipper’s visual aesthetic and sound conveys. The label, much like its parent company, aims to bring Harajuku culture to the global stage. Kawaii Labs, led by Misa Kimura, oversees several girl groups, including Cutie Street, who have been going viral internationally following music show promotions in Korea.
J-pop girl group Fruits Zipper.
Hisashi Uchida, Taku Miyazawa
“One of the main thing Kawaii Labs strives to do is to bring the Japanese idol culture to the world, so when we do anything abroad like in U.S. and elsewhere, we don’t try to customize it to that region,” Kimura explains. The 35-year-old serves as the project’s leader and producer for Fruits Zipper and Cutie Street, along Candy Tune and Sweet Steady.
“In the case of the U.S., they think [this kind of group] is a breath of fresh air,” the producer says. “It’s just completely different than what they’re used to.”
Kimura was once in the J-pop scene herself, having previously been the leader of idol group Musubizm. The producer’s experience as both an executive and a former idol makes her uniquely qualified in conveying just how much J-pop has grown globally. “I’m very happy to see that the Japanese culture is actually spreading in different countries, even in places that I didn’t think it was there,” she says. “I’m very happy to [be able] see that in person.”
Asobi System and Asobi Expo plan to continue their global growth, says Nakagawa. “Watching the audience’s reaction really touched me. It was really very emotional and made me realize I really want to [bring this to] L.A., Miami, London, Paris,” the executive explains.
“The music is so different when you experience it [in person], not just on the social media side [or] listening to it,” he continues. “It’s a challenge to bring [the show] over and then to find the right artists that will be able to communicate to the audience, but it’s something we want to think about and challenge ourselves to make it happen.”
Ted Danson recalled an intimidating first encounter with former President Bill Clinton and his Secret Service detail during an early date with his now-wife, Mary Steenburgen.
Moderating a panel with Bill and Hillary Clinton at History Talks in Philadelphia on Saturday, Danson started off by telling the audience that his wife has been close with the Clintons “since the early days” — and that she used her friends in high places to test his character on one of their first dates.
“One of the first things she did was take me to meet her dear friends in the White House,” Danson said. “Bill — Mr. President — took me around the corner, and there were three Secret Service agents behind him, all of them looking at me. The president asked me what my intentions were.”
The “Cheers“ star then turned to Bill and asked, “My first question is to you, Mr. President: Do you think that was fair?”
“No, but it was effective. And I didn’t think I had to be fair,” Clinton replied after a brief silence. “As it turned out, you became the best thing that ever happened to her.”
Staying on topic about the Clintons’ early days in the White House, Hillary described the jarring transition from Arkansas to presidential life. After attending the presidential inaugural parade and a dozen balls, the exhausted couple “collapsed into bed” around 3:30 a.m. — only to be awakened two hours later by staff.
“At 5:30 a.m., the doors opens with a White House butler,” Hillary recalled. “He walks in with a silver tray and two cups of coffee because that’s how the Bushes — George H.W. and Margaret Bush — liked to woken up.”
Even basic tasks became an ordeal. Hillary recalled one instance when her staff spiraled after she asked for two eggs, a pan and butter to whip up a quick breakfast for Chelsea when she fell sick.
“You would’ve thought I’d asked for the nuclear codes,” she quipped. “If you said, ‘Can I have a banana?’ and they didn’t have one, then everywhere you went for a week, there’d be bunches of bananas.”
Parenting, childhood upbringings and creating a better world for their grandchildren anchored the Clintons’ conversation, largely steering clear of Trump and other partisan topics. This tone echoed across the four presidential panels, which promoted bipartisanship and the values of the nation’s Founding Fathers (the term “working towards a more perfect union” was heard repeatedly throughout the day).
Beyond politics, History Talks drew a range of entertainment figures, including Nicole Kidman, NFL icons Tom Brady and Jason Kelce, country singer Garth Brooks and comedians Tina Fey and Colin Jost.
Don Schlitz, one of the most widely revered names in the history of country music songwriting, died April 16 in a Nashville hospital after what was described as a sudden illness. He was 73.
A member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, Schlitz may be best recognized by the public as the sole author of one of country’s most iconic singles, and possibly the genre’s most quoted song ever: “The Gambler,” a country-pop crossover smash for Kenny Rogers in 1978. It was the first song he ever had recorded by someone, but it was not all downhill from there.
Most of his other hits were co-writes, many of them with fellow songwriting legends like Paul Overstreet. The collaborations with Overstreet include “Forever and Ever, Amen,” an 1987 smash in the hands of Randy Travis; other songs for Travis that included “On the Other Hand,” from 1986, and “Deeper Than the Holler,” in 1988; and “When You Say Nothing at All,” made into a country No. 1 by Keith Whitley in 1992 (and also successfully recorded by Alison Krauss & Union Station, plus Ronan Keating, who had a U.K. No. 1 with it in 1999).
Sometimes Schlitz co-wrote with a recording artist, as with “I Feel Lucky,” a smash he co-wrote with its singer, Mary Chapin Carpenter, in 1992, and “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her,” which Carpenter turned into another hit the following year.
He had several enduring hits with the Judds, co-written with their producer, Brett Maher, including “Turn It Loose,” “Rockin’ With the Rhythm of the Rain” and “I Know Where I’m Going,” each of them a No. 1 country hit in the late ’80s for the mother/daughter duo.
Others who recorded his material included Alabama, Sara Evans, Waylon Jennings, George Strait, Ronnie Milsap, Reba McEntire, the Bellamy Brothers, Tanya Tucker, Garth Brooks, Pam Tillis, Sweethearts of the Rodeo, Kathy Mattea, the Oak Ridge Boys and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.
Schlitz’s many honors include his inductions into the Nashville Songwriters Association Hall of Fame in 1993, the (New York-based) Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2012, the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2017 and the Grand Ole Opry in 2022.
The Country Hall of Fame is especially notable because Schlitz was only the sixth songwriter to be inducted, at that time. The Opry’s recognization is similarly noteworthy because he was the only non-performing songwriter to be so inducted in the Opry’s history — although he certainly became a performer for his many regular appearances there, as he had in many songwriters’ round appearances at the Bluebird Cafe.
Don Schlitz speaks onstage during the Class of 2023 Medallion Ceremony at Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on October 22, 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Getty Images for Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
Awards-wise, “The Gambler” won him the Grammy for best country song in 1978, and it became the CMAs’ song of the year the following year. Ultimately he won two Grammys, three CMA song of the year prizes and two ACM song of the year awards. He also was named ASCAP Country Songwriter of the Year for four consecutive years, from 1988-91.
His prowess extended to Broadway, when he wrote both music and lyrics for the 1999 musical “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”
Schlitz often told the story of how he wrote “The Gambler” when he was 23, working at Vanderbilt University as a computer operator, aspiring to be a writer. One day, without a car, he walked 2-3 miles home from work and wrote the entirety of the song in his head along the way, except for the kicker. “I’m just making up this story song; I’m good at rhymes and meter, so I’m putting that in to it…. When I made it back to my efficiency apartment, I sat down at my dad’s old Smith-Corona typewriter — I’m a pretty good typist — and wrote it start to finish…without a last verse. When I was done, I knew it was too long and it didn’t have a love angle, and it wasn’t up-tempo, and it was a pretty linear melody,” he told the Library of Congress in a 2018 interview.
One solution for the song was to have no solution. “At that time, I didn’t have the last verse, though I wrote 50 or 60 options. One version of it had 50 lines, another had another 50 lines. I didn’t know how to end it, how to get out of the song, and finally I just decided to leave it open-ended, let the listener decide what happens in the end, like an O. Henry finish.”
Bobby Bare recorded it, but his record company didn’t think it was worthy of releasing. Three other versions came out, including one recorded by Schlitz himself, which he recalled peaking at No. 61. Then an ASCAP exec took to it and got it recorded by both Johnny Cash and Rogers, and the latter singer’s version was the one to make it to the starting gate.
“Kenny’s version was really special and fit his persona. Then they did this amazing album cover. He changed a couple of words, he modulated after the first chorus. His version was more up-tempo. … The song became ubiquitous. It was everywhere. … Actually, I think it was a hit because it was a story, somewhat linear, and, it had no ‘finished’ ending! It allowed the listener to be involved. It respected the intelligence of the listener. And I say this with humility, or as much as I can muster, it wasn’t dumb. (Bob) McDill once told me, ‘You can’t write country music, looking down your nose at it.’ You have to respect your listener. Listeners are smart people. And it was a good time for a story song…
“I can’t tell you enough about what Kenny did, for the song, for me, and for country music. Kenny has always been loyal, kind, generous with his praise. The power of Kenny Rogers, and Larry Butler — a genius producer. The right people at the right time.”
He added, ” if it’s become an American folk song, I’m good with that. You know, I’m not a card player, not a gambler. I don’t do that. Besides, that’s not what the song’s about anyway. If it is, to some people, that’s great. But [the song’s] really about discretion. It’s about choices and the choices you make. Very simply — but very directly. I think when you hear the song, you hear the meaning of the story in Kenny’s voice. He put the wisdom in there.”
Schlitz had only been performing on the Opry on a few occasions when Vince Gill formally invited him to become a member. Soon, he became a favorite of Opry audiences, regaling them with stories from his songwriting career after bluntly beginning with: “You have no idea who I am.”
“I remember whispering to Vince onstage, ‘Don’t leave me here alone,’” Schlitz recalled of his first Opry appearance to American Songwriter in 2022. “I went out and played ‘The Gambler’ and everyone applauded. As we were driving home, we were quiet like old friends can be. I asked him, ‘Does it ever get old?’ He told me ‘Nope,’ and that has turned out to be true.”
Don Schlitz
Chris Hollo
He had officially quit songwriting some time ago, saying the constant sense of inner mental research had wearied him. ““I woke up and looked at my wife and said, ‘I want to stop. I want to stop thinking about it all the time.’ That was my process. I listened to people talk. I read. I wanted to write songs that I wanted to hear. Most importantly, I wanted to find an honest way of saying something that came from my heart.”
He still marveled at the unpredictable magic that makes for a hit, saying, “You never know what song is going to be the song, You’re going to tell me that a song that is too long about a guy talking to an older guy who is either drunk or doesn’t have any cigarettes of his own is something that needs to be written? Yeah, I wanted to hear that story.”
Schlitz added, ““I’m not gonna think about my legacy yet. But I get to share Kenny Rogers’ legacy. Keith Whitley’s legacy. Randy Travis’ legacy. These are songs that they know from their heroes.”
Schlitz is survived by his wife, Stacey; his daughter Cory Dixon and her husband Matt Dixon; his son Pete Schlitz and his wife Christian Webb Schlitz; his grandchildren Roman, Gia, Isla, and Lilah; his brother Brad Schlitz; and his sister Kathy Hinkley. Service plans are pending.
“We are heartbroken by the news of the passing of Don Schlitz,” said Country Music Association CEO Sarah Trahern. “Don loved his family, his home state of North Carolina, and above all, songs and songwriters. He carried that love into every room, every stage and every lyric he ever wrote. His work, including timeless classics like ‘The Gambler,’ helped shape our genre and rightfully earned him some of its highest honors.
“In recent years, he found great joy performing at the Grand Ole Opry, mentoring the next generation of songwriters, and sharing his music at Room In The Inn, giving back to the community he helped build. Wayne and I send our love to Stacey and the entire family. Not long ago, we shared a dinner, and as we were leaving, Don picked up a guitar and began to play. That is how I will always remember him, smiling and with a guitar in his hand. His legacy lives on through his music and the many artists and writers he inspired. He will be deeply missed.”
The highly volatile crypto market has witnessed another tragic tale of loss at the brink of a breakout. In this respect, an Asteroid Shiba ($ASTEROID) trader has recently sold their holdings at a loss just before the staggering price pump. As per the data from Lookonchain, the trader has missed a life-changing opportunity of $2.6M profit in this respect. The incident highlights the significance of patience amid the wider market fluctuations.
This is the unluckiest guy I’ve ever seen!
80 days ago, trader 0x5811 spent $542 to buy 7.43B $ASTEROID.
Just one day before $ASTEROID pumped, he sold all 7.43B $ASTEROID for $405, taking a $137 loss.
Today, those 7.43B $ASTEROID are worth over $2.6M.
He missed a… pic.twitter.com/xHDPp5OD8p
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) April 19, 2026
Trader ‘0x5811’ Offloads $ASTEROID Holdings at Loss, Missing $2.6M Opportunity
As the market statistics suggest, the trader, with the wallet address “0x5811,” has recently made a pessimistic move of offloading their $ASTEROID holdings at a loss. Interestingly, this took place only 1 day before the meme token’s huge upsurge. Hence, the trader could not attain a possible $2.6M profit following the bull rally.
Particularly, the trader’s journey with the $ASTEROID token started 80 days ago. At that time, the trader purchased a notable amount of 7,426,982,235 $ASTEROID tokens by spending 0.20 $ETH, equaling just $541.47. That was the moment when the token was changing hands at just a fraction of the present value it has. However, the trader gave up amid shifting market conditions following stagnation and decided to offload the $ASTEROID holdings.
Incurring $137 Loss Instead of Life-Changing Opportunity Amid Volatile Market
So, the trader, while endeavoring to cut losses, swapped the whole 7.43B tokens in return for just 0.1744 $ETH. This indicates that the trader sold that amount for up to $405, showing a loss of nearly $137. Following that, $ASTEROID started showing shifting market dynamics with significant price increase. As a result, the trader missed a remarkable opportunity as the sold $ASTEROID holdings currently have a value of more than $2.6M.
A roughly $292 million exploit over the weekend has rattled the crypto industry, exposing vulnerabilities in decentralized finance (DeFi) infrastructure and raising concerns about knock-on effects across lending protocols.
While investigations are still ongoing, early analysis suggests the attack centered on Kelp’s rsETH token — a yield-bearing version of ether ($ETH) — and the mechanism used to move assets between blockchains.
The attacker appears to have manipulated that system to create large amounts of tokens without proper backing, then quickly used them as collateral to borrow and drain real assets from lending markets, mostly from Aave , the largest decentralized crypto lender.
The incident is the latest blow to DeFi, happening only a couple weeks after the $285 million exploit of Solana-based protocol Drift, further denting investor trust in the nearly $90 billion crypto sector.
How the attack worked
At a high level, the exploit targeted a LayerZero bridge component — a piece of infrastructure that enables assets to move across different blockchains, Charles Guillemet, CTO of hardware wallet maker Ledger, told CoinDesk in a note.
Bridges typically work by locking assets on one chain and minting equivalent tokens on another. That process depends on a trusted entity — often called an oracle or validator — to confirm deposits.
In this case, Kelp effectively acted as that verifier. According to Guillemet, the system relied on a single-signer setup, meaning just one entity could approve any transactions.
“It seems the attacker was able to sign a message … allowing him to mint large amount of rsETH,” he said. He added that it remains unclear how that access was obtained.
Michael Egorov, founder of Curve Finance, pointed to the same weakness in the system’s configuration.
“Things can happen when you trust one single party — whoever that would be.”
That setup allowed the attacker to effectively create unbacked tokens, even though no corresponding assets were locked on the source chain.
Once minted, the tokens were quickly deployed. The attacker “immediately deposited them in lending protocols mostly Aave to borrow real $ETH against,” Guillemet explained.
That maneuver shifted the problem from a single exploit into a broader market issue. DeFi lending platforms are now left holding collateral that may be difficult to unwind, while valuable and liquid assets are already drained.
“Aave was left with rsETH which cannot be really sold and maxborrowed [sic] $ETH, so no one can withdraw $ETH,” Curve’s Egorov said.
As a result, Aave and other lending protocols may be sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars in questionable collateral and bad debt, he warned, raising concerns of a potential “bank run” dynamic as users rush to withdraw funds.
Aave saw about a $6 billion drop in assets on the protocol as users yanked their assets following the incident. The token associated with the protocol was down about 15% over the past 24 hours’ trading.
What we still don’t know
Key questions remain around how the validator was compromised. The system relied on LayerZero’s official node, raising uncertainty over whether it was hacked, misconfigured or misled.
“Was it hacked? Was it fooled? We don’t know,” Egorov said.
The attacker’s identity is also unknown, though Guillemet said the scale of the attack suggests a sophisticated actor.
“Clearly not some script kiddies,” he said.
Big blow for trust in DeFi
Beyond the immediate losses, the exploit the episode serves as another reminder that as DeFi grows more interconnected, failures in one layer can quickly cascade across the system.
Egorov argued that non-isolated lending models, where assets share risk across pools, amplify the impact of such events.
He also pointed to shortcomings in how new assets are onboarded to lending platforms, saying configurations like Kelp’s 1-of-1 verifier setup should have been flagged earlier.
However, Egorov said there’s a silver lining. “Crypto is a harsh environment which no bank would have survived — yet we are working with that,” he said. “I think DeFi will learn from this incident and become stronger than before.”
Still, even as incidents like this lead to protocol upgrades and redesigns, they also chip away investor confidence in the broader DeFi sector.
“All in all, the trust into DeFi protocols is eroded by this kind of event,” Guillemet said.
“And 2026 will most likely be the worst year in terms of hacks, again,” he added.
Read more: ‘DeFi is dead’: crypto community scrambles after this year’s biggest hack exposes contagion risks
But Coachella 2026’s biggest surprise is this: All of those guest appearances, and more besides, took place on the traditionally less-newsworthy Weekend 2.
For example: On Weekend 1, Justin Bieber brought out Dijon and Mk.Gee; on Weekend 2, he brought out Dijon andSZA, Billie Eilish (who was serenaded but did not sing) and Sexyy Red. Giveon brought out Kehlani on Weekend 1, but for his second performance, he was joined by Snoop Dogg and Teddy Swims. On Weekend 1, Addison Rae didn’t bring out any guests — but for her second set, there was Olivia Rodrigo, joining her not only for “Headphones On” but also the live debut of Rodrigo’s new single, “Drop Dead.”
And on Weekend 1, sure, Sabrina Carpenter had cameos from Susan Sarandon and Will Ferrell — but on the second, she did three songs with Madonna(leading one Variety staffer to moan, “Why oh why did I go last weekend?!”).
It didn’t stop there: On Weekend 2, Alex G didn’t just walk into the pit during one song, he went straight into the crowd and did his best to keep singing amid the mayhem. And the Strokes only played their fiercely political video montage, which assailed decades of U.S. meddling overseas as well as the ongoing loss of life in Gaza and Iran, at the close of their second set. (The reasoning behind saving that for Weekend 2 is more obvious.) And PinkPantheress threw a full-on party during “Boy’s a Liar” on her second Saturday night, filling up the stage with Janelle Monae, Zara Larsson, Chase Infiniti, Manon (on hiatus from Katseye), Blood Orange, Slayyyter, Tyriq Withers and DJ Ninajirachi.
Sombr and Teddy Swims split the difference, the former by bringing out a pair of Billys (Corgan and Idol) on successive weekends, while Swims was joined by David Lee Roth for both sets.
Traditionally, most artists have basically played the same set since the festival expanded to two weekends in 2012, and the second is usually musically superior — which makes sense, because there’s less pressure, and they know the “room” better. Occasionally in the past, artists have brought out a different guest or had a unique surprise on Weekend 2 — but it has never even come close to overshadowing if not crushing Weekend 1, which is traditionally the world’s biggest stage for music except for the Super Bowl.
So what’s going on? According to informal (and off the record) conversations with several live-music insiders on Sunday, several factors are at play beyond the shortest and most obvious one: on Weekend 2, a surprise is going to be more of a surprise.
Of course, that’s not the only reason — the headliner being upstaged by their guest(s) is a big one. “My theory would be that the artists wanted to make sure the spotlight was on them for Weekend 1, and then came back more relaxed and wanting to make another, maybe bigger statement on Weekend 2,” said one agent who has worked with the festival for many years.
Indeed, Madonna — who also made a surprise appearance at the festival during Drake’s 2015 headlining set — announced the July release of her “Confessions on a Dance Floor II” album last Wednesday, teased her new single on Friday afternoon and released it officially a couple of hours after her appearance with Carpenter — obviously a carefully timed strategy. But if she’d done any of that during Weekend 1, she would have stolen the headliner’s thunder.
That reasoning applies less to Bieber, although his two pre-Coachella warm-up shows and his Weekend 1 set showed that he very much wants to keep the focus on his new material. But by Weekend 2, he’d done that, and possibly felt he could loosen up a bit.
Other factors are in play as well. “Weekend 1 is driven heavily by influencer culture,” the agent added. “But the artist guest area and VIP sections thin out massively for Weekend 2, and there are also less late-night off-site parties, which means less of that [superficial] L.A. crowd makes the trek into the desert.”
A second insider noted, “I think it’s also [artists] giving more to the Weekend 2 crowd, which is generally there more for the music than the scene.” A third added, “Weekend two is always better in my opinion — there’s more to see and less to be seen.”
All agree that this year’s Weekend 2 trend is almost definitely not part of a larger plan, or an effort by Goldenvoice, the show’s founder and promoter, or to boost buzz and attendance to the former stepchild weekend — “It’s hard to see Goldenvoice inserting themselves into an artist’s creative,” another agent said.
However, they also agree that it’s definitely the end result. “It does bode well,” the agent concluded, “for weekend two not feeling like the afterthought next year.”
The Zcash price has moved lower even after the network disclosed that critical software fixes had been deployed across major mining operations. $ZEC was trading near $325.95, down about 5.47% over 24 hours, while its market capitalization stood at $5.42 billion. Daily trading volume reached $476.94 million.
The decline came after Zcash Open Development Lab and the Zcash Foundation announced coordinated patches for vulnerabilities in both zcashd and Zebra.
The network said the flaws were not used to affect the consensus chain. It also said all user funds remained safe and user privacy was not at risk. According to the disclosure, none of the vulnerabilities could on their own have been used to inflate $ZEC supply. Even so, the market reaction stayed cautious, with traders focusing on near-term price weakness rather than the fact that the fixes were already in place before the public update.
Critical Patches Were Deployed Before Public Disclosure
Zcash said the updated releases included zcashd v6.12.1 and Zebra v4.3.1. The fixes addressed four vulnerabilities, including an Orchard action-encoding bug that could crash nodes processing certain transactions. The disclosure also referred to a consensus enforcement gap between the two implementations that could have triggered a chain split, a bug tied to zcashd turnstile accounting, and undefined behavior linked to unchecked integer arithmetic in pool balance calculations.
The project stated that mining pools representing a supermajority of network hash power had already deployed the patches. The main operator using Zebra in mining production had also updated before disclosure. Zcash said there was no evidence that any of the issues had been exploited. That reduced the risk of disruption at the network level, but it did not stop the token from slipping during the session.
The security update arrived at a time when market participants were already watching several moving parts across privacy coins and mid-cap crypto assets. In that setting, even a controlled disclosure can affect short-term sentiment, especially when traders react to the headline before reading the full technical explanation.
Network Data Remains Firm Even as Price Retreats
While $ZEC moved lower, several on-chain and network indicators remained steady. Zcash said the shielded pool recently reached an all-time high, with 31% of all $ZEC now held in the encrypted pool. A year earlier, that share was 11%. The project also said 59% of transactions are now shielded, pointing to continued usage of its privacy features.
Zcash is also testing NIST-standardized lattice-based cryptography, including ML-KEM and ML-DSA, as part of its post-quantum work. The update came after a Google paper published on March 31 raised new discussion around quantum computing timelines. At the same time, Zcash network hash rate reached a record 16.54 GS/s, showing continued mining participation even during the latest market pullback.
These metrics show that the selloff did not come with signs of network failure. Instead, the price move appeared to reflect a gap between market sentiment and network conditions. Traders often respond to immediate price pressure, while technical improvements and usage data tend to shape longer-term views.
$ZEC Price Chart Keeps Focus on Support Near $310
On the 12-hour chart, $ZEC price is still trying to transition from a recovery phase into a broader reversal structure. The chart shows a rounded base forming from the February lows, with price moving back into the $310 to $330 zone. That area now acts as a key support band after the recent attempt to break higher.
Source: X
$ZEC recently touched the $380 area before pulling back, which suggested that buying momentum cooled ahead of the next resistance test. As long as price stays above the $310 to $330 range, the higher-low structure remains in place. A stable retest of that area could support another move upward if buyers return.
The next major resistance zone remains between $430 and $450. That band has rejected price several times before, making it the main upside level on the chart. If support near $310 fails, traders may look back toward the mid-$200s, where the rounded base began to form.
Tensions between the US and Iran have risen again following a new maritime incident in the Gulf of Oman. US President Donald Trump announced that the USS Spruance, a US Navy destroyer, intercepted a cargo ship named “Touska,” believed to be linked to Iran, in the Gulf of Oman. Trump stated that US Marines had secured the ship and launched an investigation into its cargo.
From the Iranian side, harsh statements were issued. The Iranian military claimed that the US violated the ceasefire by firing on a commercial ship. Officials stated that the attacked ship was sailing from China to Iran, and accused the US of “maritime piracy” and “armed robbery.” Iran’s top military command said that a response to this action would be given soon and that retaliation was inevitable.
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These developments immediately impacted global markets. US index futures saw sharp declines; S&P 500 futures fell by approximately 0.9%, while Nasdaq 100 futures lost nearly 1%. In the cryptocurrency market, Bitcoin’s price dropped to $74,148.
Tensions also rose in energy markets. Following Iran’s renewed closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Brent crude oil prices increased by 7.3% to $96.94 per barrel.
