Katana Launches A Perps DEX

Katana acquired IDEX and is leveraging its infrastructure to launch Katana Perps,

Katana, a DeFi-focused, ZK-powered Layer 2 built on Polygon’s Agglayer, acquired IDEX and is leveraging its infrastructure to launch Katana Perps, its native perpetual futures DEX, now live in early access. The move reflects Katana’s broader strategy of owning and integrating core DeFi infrastructure at the chain level. Katana Perps is powered by a structural yield model using its Vault Bridge. The Vault Bridge uses USDC bridged onto the L2 to generate ongoing yield, which is used to fund trading incentives like liquidity, market making, and user rewards, allowing incentives to be sustainable and scale with deposits. Katana will also flow trading fees from Katana Perps back into its ecosystem. The move aims to link its KAT more directly to real protocol revenue generation.

Balancer published two governance proposals announcing the wind-down of Balancer Labs and a restructuring that cuts the team roughly in half, from 25 to 12.5 FTE and reducing its annual budget from $2.87 million to $1.9 million in hopes of extending the protocol's runway from under 4 years to 9 years. The move follows Balancer’s November 2025 exploit and a $2.6 million annual deficit. BAL emissions compounded the problem by diluting holders without generating proportional returns. The proposals aim to halt BAL emissions immediately, route 100% of protocol fees to the DAO treasury, cut the V3 swap fee in half, sunset the veBAL system, and offer a BAL buyback at $0.16/token. Balancer will focus on Boosted Pools and reCLAMM, with the restructure aiming to bring long-term sustainability.

Resolv, the issuer of the USR stablecoin on Ethereum, suffered a private key compromise on March 22, 2026, allowing an attacker to use the offchain account responsible for finalizing mint requests. The attacker minted 80 million unbacked USR by exploiting the lack of onchain oracle checks and minting caps. The attacker converted the tokens into wstUSR and sold it across Curve, KyberSwap, and Velodrome, extracting approximately $25 million (primarily 11,409 ETH) and triggering a depeg of the stablecoin. While Resolv’s $141 million collateral pool remained unaffected, users experienced impacts across multiple DeFi protocols. On Morpho, automated allocators continued supplying liquidity after the exploit, resulting in millions of dollars in bad debt. Fluid fully covered its exposure through emergency loans, ensuring no user funds were affected on its platform. Resolv paused the protocol and began enabling redemptions for pre-incident holders on March 23. It also issued an onchain message to the attacker seeking recovery of funds.

Ethereum researchers Josh Rudolf, Julian Ma, and Josh Stark outlined their vision for how Ethereum L1 and L2s should work together as a unified system. Their core idea is that Ethereum can best scale and achieve mass adoption by leveraging the strengths of both layers. Ethereum L1 remains secure and decentralized, acting as the primary hub for settlement, liquidity, and DeFi, while scaling without compromising its core principles. L2s have evolved beyond just scaling solutions. Their primary role is to provide differentiation through innovation, customization, and specialized use cases. L2s access Ethereum’s security, users, developers, and capital, without needing to operate their own validator networks. Together, the layers create a mutually reinforcing system to power a global, interoperable onchain economy.

• ACDT #75

• 2026 Ethereum Staking Survey

• Encrypted Mempools 101

• What to know for Glamsterdam

• Privacy Pools SDK bug

• ePBS variable payload deadline

• Octant seeks social lead

• Arbitrum Sepolia outage

• Conduit G3 sequencer

Disclaimer: Content is for informational purposes only, not endorsement or investment advice. The accuracy of information is not guaranteed.

Katana, a DeFi-focused, ZK-powered Layer 2 built on Polygon’s Agglayer, acquired IDEX and is leveraging its infrastructure to launch Katana Perps, its native perpetual futures DEX, now live in early access. The move reflects Katana’s broader strategy of owning and integrating core DeFi infrastructure at the chain level. Katana Perps is powered by a structural yield model using its Vault Bridge. The Vault Bridge uses USDC bridged onto the L2 to generate ongoing yield, which is used to fund trading incentives like liquidity, market making, and user rewards, allowing incentives to be sustainable and scale with deposits. Katana will also flow trading fees from Katana Perps back into its ecosystem. The move aims to link its KAT more directly to real protocol revenue generation.

Balancer published two governance proposals announcing the wind-down of Balancer Labs and a restructuring that cuts the team roughly in half, from 25 to 12.5 FTE and reducing its annual budget from $2.87 million to $1.9 million in hopes of extending the protocol's runway from under 4 years to 9 years. The move follows Balancer’s November 2025 exploit and a $2.6 million annual deficit. BAL emissions compounded the problem by diluting holders without generating proportional returns. The proposals aim to halt BAL emissions immediately, route 100% of protocol fees to the DAO treasury, cut the V3 swap fee in half, sunset the veBAL system, and offer a BAL buyback at $0.16/token. Balancer will focus on Boosted Pools and reCLAMM, with the restructure aiming to bring long-term sustainability.

Resolv, the issuer of the USR stablecoin on Ethereum, suffered a private key compromise on March 22, 2026, allowing an attacker to use the offchain account responsible for finalizing mint requests. The attacker minted 80 million unbacked USR by exploiting the lack of onchain oracle checks and minting caps. The attacker converted the tokens into wstUSR and sold it across Curve, KyberSwap, and Velodrome, extracting approximately $25 million (primarily 11,409 ETH) and triggering a depeg of the stablecoin. While Resolv’s $141 million collateral pool remained unaffected, users experienced impacts across multiple DeFi protocols. On Morpho, automated allocators continued supplying liquidity after the exploit, resulting in millions of dollars in bad debt. Fluid fully covered its exposure through emergency loans, ensuring no user funds were affected on its platform. Resolv paused the protocol and began enabling redemptions for pre-incident holders on March 23. It also issued an onchain message to the attacker seeking recovery of funds.

Ethereum researchers Josh Rudolf, Julian Ma, and Josh Stark outlined their vision for how Ethereum L1 and L2s should work together as a unified system. Their core idea is that Ethereum can best scale and achieve mass adoption by leveraging the strengths of both layers. Ethereum L1 remains secure and decentralized, acting as the primary hub for settlement, liquidity, and DeFi, while scaling without compromising its core principles. L2s have evolved beyond just scaling solutions. Their primary role is to provide differentiation through innovation, customization, and specialized use cases. L2s access Ethereum’s security, users, developers, and capital, without needing to operate their own validator networks. Together, the layers create a mutually reinforcing system to power a global, interoperable onchain economy.

• ACDT #75

• 2026 Ethereum Staking Survey

• Encrypted Mempools 101

• What to know for Glamsterdam

• Privacy Pools SDK bug

• ePBS variable payload deadline

• Octant seeks social lead

• Arbitrum Sepolia outage

• Conduit G3 sequencer

Disclaimer: Content is for informational purposes only, not endorsement or investment advice. The accuracy of information is not guaranteed.

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