On March 12, the CFTC released two updates that could shape the future of U.S. prediction markets. First, it issued a staff advisory reminding registered exchanges of their obligations when listing event contracts, particularly around manipulation risk, surveillance, and contract design. Second, it opened a public comment process on whether new rules are needed to determine which types of event contracts may be considered contrary to the public interest, including categories like assassination, terrorism, war, and gaming. The move comes as prediction markets continue to scale beyond election-driven activity, with combined February volume across Polymarket, Kalshi, and Crypto.com reaching $18.7 billion and sector open interest surpassing $1 billion for the first time.
Why this matters: After years of legal gray zones and enforcement-led friction, the CFTC is beginning to define a clearer federal framework for prediction markets. That raises the compliance bar, but also reduces uncertainty for platforms, partners, and potential institutional participants. In practice, it is one of the clearest signs yet that prediction markets are starting to be treated less like a regulatory outlier and more like a legitimate financial market category.
Source: dune.com/datadashboards/prediction-markets
This week, Aave saw two notable incidents that exposed different parts of DeFi's infrastructure stack. On March 10, a misconfiguration in the protocol's wstETH CAPO oracle triggered roughly $27 million in liquidations across 34 accounts on Ethereum Core and Prime. Two days later, a trader attempted to swap roughly $50 million of USDT into AAVE through the Aave interface, incurring extreme slippage—the difference between a trade's expected price and the price actually received—and ultimately receiving only a tiny fraction of the expected value. In DeFi, slippage typically occurs when large orders move through AMM-based liquidity pools, where prices adjust automatically as available liquidity is consumed. The larger the trade relative to pool depth, the greater the price impact.
Why this matters: The incidents highlight both the risks and resilience of DeFi at scale. The oracle event showed that even the largest protocols remain exposed to configuration and infrastructure failures, while the swap underscored the limits of onchain execution for institutional-sized trades. At the same time, Aave remained solvent throughout, losses were immediately visible onchain, and governance moved quickly toward reimbursement, an outcome that reinforces how mature DeFi protocols can increasingly self-correct in public without relying on centralized intermediaries.
Source: dune.com/KARTOD/AAVE-Liquidations
Risk Labs, the foundation behind Across Protocol, proposed on March 12 converting its DAO into a private U.S. company. ACX holders could swap tokens for equity in the new entity, AcrossCo, at a 1:1 ratio or sell for USDC at $0.04375 per token, a 25 percent premium to the 30-day average. The move addresses a core DAO limitation: the inability to sign enforceable contracts with enterprise partners that require a clear legal counterparty. Risk Labs noted that such deals are essential for the protocol's next growth phase. Across has already processed over $35 billion in volume and raised $41 million last year, led by Paradigm with participation from Bain Capital Crypto, Coinbase Ventures, and Multicoin Capital.
Why this matters: This is the first major protocol to openly argue that its token structure has become a liability rather than an asset for institutional deals. This taps into a broader debate: many governance tokens have struggled to deliver meaningful utility or durable value capture, leaving holders with speculative exposure but limited economic rights. Against that backdrop, Across's move suggests that while token-based coordination can work in early-stage decentralized networks, more traditional corporate structures may be better suited for protocols seeking enterprise deals, institutional capital, and clearer ownership alignment at scale.
Source: dune.com/risk_labs/across-protocol-stats
In the past week, the Hyperliquid ecosystem has continued its rapid momentum. The platform recently surpassed $4 trillion in cumulative perpetual futures trading volume after just three years of operation. This milestone coincided with the HIP-4 testnet launch, which introduces native prediction markets via fully collateralized periodic binary options, with no leverage or liquidations. Separately, on March 9, Hyperion DeFi (NASDAQ: HYPD) announced a private, permissioned lending pool on HyperLend, enabling HiHYPE liquid staking tokens as collateral for more efficient on-chain borrowing and expanded institutional yield opportunities across HyperCore and HyperEVM.
Why it matters: These developments further position Hyperliquid as a broader on-chain financial platform, not just a perps venue. Combining perpetuals (high-leverage, directional trading on assets like oil or pre-IPO names) with prediction markets (event-based hedging, binary outcomes on real-world events) creates powerful synergies: traders gain unified liquidity and composability—e.g., hedging perp positions with correlated prediction contracts—while reducing fragmentation across platforms. At the same time, the Hyperion–HyperLend integration improves capital efficiency, expands institutional-grade borrowing and yield strategies, and reinforces Hyperliquid's push into more sophisticated financial use cases without sacrificing its core advantages in speed, transparency, and on-chain execution.
Source: dune.com/sealaunch/hyperliquid
BlackRock launched the iShares Staked Ethereum Trust (ETHB) on Nasdaq on March 12, marking the firm's first crypto ETF to incorporate staking rewards. The fund holds spot ETH while staking 70–95% of its holdings on the Ethereum network, distributing roughly 82% of staking rewards to investors through monthly payments. ETHB debuted with about $100–107 million in initial assets, roughly 80% staked at launch, and recorded around $15.5 million in first-day trading volume. The product joins a growing wave of staking-enabled ETFs and ETPs introduced since late 2025, including offerings from Grayscale (ETHE, ETH, GSOL), Bitwise (BSOL), and REX-Osprey (ESK, SSK) that provide staking exposure across networks like Ethereum and Solana.
Why it matters: Staking ETFs represent a new phase in the institutionalization of crypto markets. By packaging blockchain yields inside a regulated, brokerage-friendly wrapper, these products allow investors to access staking income without managing validators, lockups, or operational risks. BlackRock's entry is particularly notable: as the world's largest asset manager, its move signals growing confidence that crypto assets can function not just as speculative instruments but as productive financial assets generating onchain yield. Combined with BlackRock's existing IBIT and ETHA funds, ETHB reinforces Ethereum's positioning within traditional portfolios as an asset capable of offering both price exposure and income.
Source: dune.com/hildobby/eth-etfs
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