Fatal Shooting at Trump Event Prompts Secret Service Evacuation
A fatal shooting at an event associated with President Trump led to his immediate Secret Service evacuation from the stage. One individual was confirmed killed. Initial disclosures identified the event as either a Trump-related dinner or a crypto conference. Authorities have not yet released specific information regarding the deceased individual or the circumstances of the shooting. The $TRUMP token, associated with official Trump branding, recorded a 24-hour price change of -9.8% to $2.66 following the news.
Believe Founder Arrested; $BELIEVE Token Dumps 99%
Ben Pasternak, the 26-year-old founder of the Solana-based token launchpad Believe, has been arrested in New York on felony charges of second-degree strangulation. The arrest led to a 99% dump for the project's native token, $BELIEVE.
Before the arrest, the token had reached a $900,000 market capitalization and was in a ten-day consolidation period.
French Tax Official Arrested in Crypto Data Scandal
A French tax official has been arrested following allegations of illegally selling sensitive personal information belonging to crypto investors. The official is accused of distributing home addresses and financial records to criminal networks. This unauthorized data transfer has been directly linked to 41 reported kidnappings.
Kelp Protocol Exploited for $292M; DeFi United Recovers $160M
On April 18, the Kelp Protocol suffered an exploit. The incident was caused by a single forged LayerZero message that allowed the attacker to mint 116,500 rsETH tokens. This exploit subsequently created up to $230 million in bad debt on the Aave protocol, requiring approximately 75,000 $ETH to cover losses.
In response to the bad debt impacting Aave, its founder, Stani Kulechov, initiated the 'DeFi United' donation project. Within six days, this collective effort raised over $160 million from 27,619 unique addresses. Notable contributions included 55,000 $ETH from Mantle and the Aave DAO, 5,000 $ETH from Stani Kulechov, and pledges from ether.fi and Lido Finance. Arbitrum DAO also released 30,765 $ETH that had been frozen, bringing the total raised in the designated donation address to 100,360 $ETH.
Following the coordinated recovery efforts, available liquidity for $USDC and $USDT on Aave began to normalize, with utilization rates for both stablecoins decreasing by approximately 5%. Available liquidity recovered to between $92 million and $110 million. During the crisis week, Aave generated $1.7 million in daily fees, representing 63% of Ethereum's daily revenue. Kelp DAO, the protocol directly responsible for the exploit, contributed $1 million towards the recovery, accounting for 0.34% of the total damage incurred.
Litecoin Reorg, Double-Spend Attack Hits NEAR Intents
The Litecoin network experienced a 13-block reorganization (reorg) and a coordinated double-spend attack on April 25. The resolution took over three hours, rolling back the chain by approximately three hours. The attack exploited a zero-day vulnerability within Litecoin's MimbleWimble Extension Block (MWEB) implementation, reportedly present since 2022. This bug allowed non-updated mining nodes to validate invalid MWEB transactions, enabling attackers to peg out funds to third-party decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and trigger a Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack on several major mining pools.
The bug has since been fully patched, and the network has returned to normal operation. All valid transactions remained unaffected, and Litecoin's uptime was maintained. As a direct consequence of the $LTC double-spends, NEAR Intents incurred a $600,000 loss. Following the incident, $LTC recorded a 24-hour price change of -0.5% to $56.20, with its mindshare changing by 0.7%.