Inside DeFi 005: 🌪️ Base shuns Optimism, Discord’s KYC catastrophe

Welcome again to Inside DeFi

Coinbase-founded Base has determined to shun optimism, DeFi platforms are shutting down, and Discord has brought about a brand new crypto controversy round its use of age verification expertise.

Elsewhere, Synthetic Intelligence (AI) benchmarks counsel that AI is extra helpful to take advantage of protocols than patch them.

Optimism’s glass is wanting (greater than) half empty

Coinbase’s Base community introduced this week that it could be pursuing a “new, unified stack,” leaving Optimism’s OP Stack infrastructure and transferring to its personal Base Chain.

Sooner delivery, an easier structure, and Ethereum alignment are the three targets Base claims for the choice.

The transfer fueled hypothesis over a future BASE token, regardless of earlier repeated denials of getting plans to launch a token.

A nine-figure grant of OP tokens, value $180 million on the time, introduced Base to Optimism in August 2023, to be earned over the next six years. Since then, the token is down over 90%, and the total quantity could be value round $15 million at the moment.

Shutdown season

Half a dozen crypto initiatives have determined to name it quits in latest weeks.

Blockchain information analytics platform Parsec introduced at the moment it could be shutting down after 5 years. Liquid staking and restaking undertaking MilkyWay and NFT-focused Nifty Gateway each known as it quits in January

ZeroLend, a “copy-paste” fork of DeFi lending large Aave, introduced it could wind down, citing “prolonged periods where the protocol operated at a loss.”

A yr in the past, certainly one of ZeroLend’s markets was reportedly exploited, with the workforce failing to reveal the incident till after it was later found. The shutdown announcement states that these affected will obtain a “partial refund,” funded by way of the workforce’s LINEA airdrop.

Slingshot pockets can be closing as a standalone app from February 28. It reminded customers to export their non-public keys earlier than then, warning “after shutdown, recovery will no longer be available.” This shutdown had been initially introduced by Magic Eden in September 2025, and a lot of the Slingshot options are imagined to be built-in into Magic Eden.

PolynomialFi will even be absolutely closed from March third. The workforce admits defeat within the battle for liquidity and that the deliberate Q1 token launch is “not happening now.”

Discord’s KYC catastrophe

Close to-constant private information breaches have turn into, at greatest, a routine disappointment and, at worst, a real hazard in our inescapably on-line existence.

Unsurprising, then, that Discord’s latest announcement went down like a lead balloon.

The incoming “teen-by-default” settings would limit customers to a “teen-appropriate” expertise, until they confirm their age by way of video selfie or importing ID.

Many customers weren’t comfortable, particularly given the monitor file of many id verification, or know-your-customer (KYC), providers.

For instance, in early October 2025, Discord itself disclosed a knowledge breach of its third-party customer support supplier, 5CA. The corporate “identified approximately 70,000 users that may have had government-ID photos exposed.”

As scrutiny constructed up, three hacktivists stumbled upon an “identity surveillance machine that files reports on you to the feds,” constructed by Discord’s former KYC supplier, Persona, alongside OpenAI and the US Authorities.

AI auditors—nonetheless too quickly?

OpenAI and Paradigm introduced EVMbench this week, taking a look at AI brokers’ potential to “detect, patch, and exploit high-severity smart contract vulnerabilities.” The benchmark “draws on 120 curated vulnerabilities from 40 audits.”

Outcomes confirmed robust enhancements in exploit mode, with the most recent mannequin reaching a rating over double that of its six-month-old counterpart.

Nevertheless, “performance is weaker on detect and patch tasks.” Brokers are inclined to “stop after identifying a single issue” or battle to “maintain full functionality while removing subtle vulnerabilities.”

Provided that AI-assisted pull requests are inflicting million-dollar losses because of oracle misconfigurations, maybe it gained’t be lengthy earlier than we see an autonomous agent pull off its very personal exploit within the wild.

Nevertheless, paired with acceptable assets, reminiscent of this “LLM-optimized” repository of widespread Solidity vulnerabilities from Spearbit’s kaden.eth, the way forward for AI-aided auditing appears to be like step by step extra promising.

In different crypto safety information…

Researchers from Courageous warned about points with zkLogin, an authorization system primarily based on zero-knowledge proofs. They declare that zkLogin makes “assumptions” that “transform short-lived bearer authentication documents into durable authorization credentials.”

The latest Solidity model fixes a “Transient Storage Clearing Helper Collision Bug,” reported by Hexens. Regardless of its “high-severity” classification, solely three contracts have been regarded as affected, with “insignificant” funds in danger.

Lastly, a reminder to examine your take a look at transactions — that’s what they’re for!