Leo Jakobson

New York

Journalist at Freelance

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thedefiant.io

Articles

With ETFs in Sight, Solana’s Latest Network Health Report Is Upbeat

4 days ago | thedefiant.io | Leo Jakobson

Solana is booming, with record-beating app revenue and 100% network uptime for 16 months, per the latest report from the Solana Foundation. With Solana Exchange Traded Funds in the offing, the No. 6 blockchain by market capitalization is booming, according to the Solana Foundation’s June 2025 Solana Network Health Report. It’s by far the leader in application revenue, consistently beating Ethereum for at least seven months, and in several cases absolutely demolishing it, according to the report.
Jupiter DAO Pauses Voting After Backlash Over Team's Voting Power

1 week ago | thedefiant.io | Leo Jakobson

Jupiter DAO has halted voting for the remainder of the year following controversy over team members using their outsized voting power to influence outcomesThe Jupiter decentralized exchange (DEX) has paused governance voting through the end of the year, citing a “perpetual FUD cycle that grows with every vote.”“The current DAO structure isn’t working as intended. We hear the complaints.
Stablecoins Are Vulnerable to Real Security Risks: Chainalysis

1 week ago | thedefiant.io | Leo Jakobson

Both centralized and decentralized stablecoins face risks that can ripple through the crypto ecosystem, according to the analytics firm. Stablecoins are the lubricant that keeps the crypto industry rolling, but they come with distinct risks, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. Broadly speaking, there are two types of stablecoins: centralized ones like Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC, and decentralized ones like Ethena’s USDe and Sky’s (formerly MakerDAO) USDS.
Fighting MEV Spam Bots Is Vital to Scaling Blockchains: Flashbots

1 week ago | thedefiant.io | Leo Jakobson

Maximal extractable value (MEV) is now the ‘dominant limit to scaling blockchains’ according to the research group. Maximal extractable value, or MEV, has become a problem so severe that it is limiting the ability of major blockchains to scale, according to research group Flashbots. MEV refers to the maximum profit that validators can extract by including, excluding, or reordering transactions within a block.
GENIUS Act Gains Senate Approval, But Key Regulatory Questions Remain

1 week ago | thedefiant.io | Leo Jakobson

While House Democrats don’t have the same power to block stablecoin legislation that their Senate counterparts did, the process will likely be slow. The Senate passed its GENIUS stablecoin regulation bill by a 68-to-30 margin, with 18 Democrats voting in favor, sending the bill to the House and marking the crypto industry's first major legislative win. So, what happens next?
Stablecoins at a ‘Critical Inflection Point’ After GENIUS Act Senate Approval

1 week ago | thedefiant.io | Leo Jakobson

The stablecoin regulatory bill now moves to the House of Representatives. With the Senate having voted in favor of the GENIUS Act on June 17, it’s worth examining what will happen next as stablecoin legislation moves to the House of Representatives and potentially into law. BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes warned in a post today that there will be a wave of stablecoin companies trying to duplicate Circle’s wildly successful IPO, and that most of them will fail.
Plasma’s $1B ICO Access Vault Sparks Familiar Backlash

1 week ago | thedefiant.io | Leo Jakobson

When whales and bots took too much of the stablecoin-focused chain's $500 million ICO deposit quota, it doubled down, raising the size of deposits to $1 billion. When the Tether-backed, stablecoin-focused blockchain Plasma saw its $250 million deposit vault fill nearly instantly on June 9, the founders doubled the deposit cap to $500 million on the spot. Despite that, the sale was dominated by whales and bots — so much so that a few days later, they raised the cap to $1 billion.
JPMorgan Files JPMD Trademark for Digital Asset Services

1 week ago | thedefiant.io | Leo Jakobson

The banking giant filed a trademark application for services that include trading, exchanging, and issuing digital assets, such as payment tokens and ‘blockchain-enabled currency.’Banking giant JPMorgan may be considering launching a stablecoin of its own, according to a Sunday trademark filing.
ETH Is Mispriced ‘Digital Oil’ That Could Hit $80,000, New Report Argues

2 weeks ago | thedefiant.io | Leo Jakobson

In a new report, prominent Ethereum community members argue that as Ethereum becomes the underpinning of the new digital economy, ETH’s value will skyrocket. A new report argues that ETH is a vastly underpriced asset that has become the “digital oil fueling the digital economy.”“The Bull Case for ETH” is aimed at institutional buyers, making the case that Ethereum’s native asset is deeply underpriced and ripe for inclusion in institutional digital asset portfolios.
With Morpho V2, the Top Crypto Lender Seeks to Make DeFi More Like TradFi

2 weeks ago | thedefiant.io | Leo Jakobson

DeFi lending platform Morpho offers fixed-rate and fixed-term loans while allowing lenders and borrowers to set their own terms. Decentralized lending platform Morpho has unveiled a new version of its product that adds a number of features, including fixed-rate and fixed-term loans, according to a company blog post published yesterday, June 12. Morpho is currently the second-largest lending protocol in decentralized finance (DeFi), with over $6 billion in total value locked (TVL).