Odaily News: Andre Cronje, founder of DeFi platform Flying Tulip and creator of Fantom Network, stated that most DeFi protocols are no longer truly decentralized, with only a few niche areas still qualifying as DeFi. He believes DeFi has evolved into "on-chain finance" or "open finance." He pointed out that true DeFi should possess characteristics such as decentralization, immutability, and the absence of intermediaries, whereas the intermediaries in most current protocols have become corporations, taking on traditional financial institution roles such as decision-makers and risk committees. Cronje noted that this does not mean true DeFi has completely disappeared, as some protocols are still innovating. Data from DefiLlama shows that the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi has dropped from $167 billion in early October 2025 to $75 billion at the time of the original report over the past 10 months, a decline of more than half. In a working paper published in March, the European Central Bank (ECB) analyzed Aave, MakerDAO, Ampleforth, and Uniswap, finding that based on holding snapshots from November 2022 and May 2023, the top 100 addresses holding governance tokens in these protocols each controlled over 80% of the token supply. The ECB consequently questioned the level of decentralization of these DAOs and whether they should continue to be regarded as "fully decentralized" services exempt from the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA). (Cointelegraph)

Odaily News – A body of a Chinese national was discovered outside the Jade Park high-rise apartment complex in the Trinidad district of Asunción, Paraguay. Preliminary identification suggests it is Harry Chun Tak Yeh, founder and managing partner of Quantum Fintech Group. Police stated that he is suspected to have fallen from the 30th floor of the building, and his body was found naked and covered with a black plastic bag. Investigators found the door of his suspected residence on the 30th floor wide open, with the interior in severe disarray, and confirmed that he also owned another apartment on the 27th floor of the same building. Criminal forensic technicians have collected evidence from the exterior of the building and both apartments, and relevant physical evidence has been handed over to the prosecutor's office. The prosecutor's office is currently investigating multiple possibilities in parallel, including accident, suspected suicide, and homicide. The judicial authorities will determine the specific cause and circumstances of death through an autopsy.It is reported that Chinese-American crypto investor Harry Yeh entered the Bitcoin market in 2013, when BTC was trading at $60. He launched his first fund with $250,000, and his investment network claims to manage over $2.4 billion in assets, with close ties to Fantom, Tomb Finance, Lif3, ZooCoin, L3 USD, and L3 Reserve. (Latribuna)

Odaily reported that Sonic Labs announced multiple governance and operational adjustments on the X platform. The Fantom Opera network, originally scheduled to shut down at the end of this month, will now continue to operate at least until the end of 2026. Correspondingly, the cross-chain bridge will also continue to receive funding support during this period. Sonic Labs stated that this decision was made based on community feedback.Meanwhile, the team announced the cancellation of the generic "Contributors" label and revealed a new leadership structure. Matt Visser will serve as Chief Executive Officer (CEO), bringing a background in product management and financial restructuring, having co-founded Squire.Law and led Web3 product strategy. Kosta Kourkoumelis will assume the role of Chief Operating Officer (COO), bringing over 20 years of experience in the financial services and digital asset industry, and has been involved in ecosystem development since the Fantom ICO stage.Previously, Andre Cronje had announced his departure from the Sonic Labs board, stating that he would focus on technology research and development going forward.

Odaily reported that Andre Cronje (AC) issued a statement on June 21st, responding to his departure from the Sonic Labs board and clarifying his specific role within the Fantom and Sonic ecosystems.AC stated that his resignation from the Sonic Labs board is true, but some external reports have conflated his technical role with the project's business operations, tokenomics, and migration decisions. AC claimed he is not the founder of the company or the original token project, having initially participated only as a technical advisor.AC further stated that he was not involved in designing, leading, or executing the migration from FTM to the S token, is not responsible for the design and management of the Sonic airdrop, and was not the decision-maker for the FTM-S token migration and the S token economic model. Meanwhile, he emphasized that he does not support shutting down the Ethereum ERC-20 version of FTM or stopping the Opera network.AC stated that he will no longer participate in Sonic Labs' business decisions in the future and will focus his main efforts on building the Flying Tulip project.

Odaily News: Sonic Labs (formerly Fantom) has officially announced the launch of its network-native stablecoin, US Sonic Dollar (USSD), which serves as the core liquidity layer for the Sonic ecosystem. USSD is built on Frax Finance's GENIUS-compliant frxUSD infrastructure and features institutional-grade reserve backing. Its reserve assets are pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar and consist of tokenized U.S. Treasury products provided by institutions including BlackRock's BUIDL, Superstate's USTB, and WisdomTree.USSD is designed to capture underlying yield and redistribute it back to the ecosystem for token buybacks and user incentives. The stablecoin supports zero-fee minting across more than 10 chains, including Ethereum, Base, and Arbitrum, via LayerZero. Users can perform 1:1 swaps using assets like USDC and USDT, and it supports flexible cross-chain redemptions through the CCTP protocol.

Odaily News: Sonic, a Layer 1 public chain built by the original Fantom team, announced plans to upgrade the value accumulation mechanism for its native token S by building and acquiring core protocol applications and infrastructure. It also hinted at potential related mergers and acquisitions in the future.In its latest statement, Sonic Labs indicated that the team will focus on deploying key infrastructure at the intersection of token utility, liquidity, and use cases. By internalizing and commercializing core economic activities, it aims to reduce value leakage from the ecosystem's application layer. Meanwhile, Sonic will maintain its openness and permissionless nature for developers.The team stated that the previous model relying on "user growth — increased transactions — higher Gas consumption — token value recycling" has become difficult to sustain. With the development of Rollups, modular architectures, and high-performance public chains, the increased supply of block space has led to continuously compressed transaction fees. Relying solely on Gas revenue is no longer sufficient to support the long-term value of an L1.Sonic is a high-performance, EVM-compatible public chain aiming to achieve near-instant confirmation and extremely high throughput. It is currently attempting to reshape the value capture path for Layer 1 through deeper ecosystem integration.

According to Odaily Planet Daily, Andre Cronje, co-founder of Sonic (formerly Fantom), said that the team has invested more than US$7 million to help victims of the Multichain incident recover their assets, including more than US$5 million in legal-related expenses. The foundation recently added a US$2 million funding agreement to continue related work in the United States and China.

Odaily News Andre Cronje, co-founder of Sonic Labs (formerly Fantom), posted on the X platform that the new version of the Sonic client will be launched in the next few weeks, which will support: account abstraction, dynamic fees, gas subsidies. The next step will be to build Sonic CS 2.0, which aims to increase the on-chain speed by two times and reduce memory redundancy by 68%.

Odaily News On May 9, the Singapore High Court ruled to approve Sonic Labs' application to liquidate the Multichain Foundation. KPMG was appointed as the liquidator to handle the liquidation of the foundation's assets. The ruling stems from the July 2023 hacking incident on Multichain, which resulted in the loss of assets on multiple chains including Fantom and Ethereum, with a total amount of more than $210 million. Michael Kong, CEO of Sonic Labs, said that the company had to take legal action because former Multichain employees refused to cooperate with the investigation. The liquidator will initiate an asset recovery process, and if the funds are successfully recovered, they will be returned to the affected users. Multichain ceased operations in July 2024, and its CEO was previously detained by the police. (Cointelegraph)

Odaily News According to on-chain analyst Ember’s monitoring, the Fantom Foundation withdrew 11.074 million CRV from Curve 10 minutes ago and transferred them to Binance.