Blockchain’s global development is producing two sharply different stories.
ETHSafari is celebrating five years of connecting African developers and founders with the international Web3 ecosystem, while J.P. Morgan’s tokenised money-market funds demonstrate that public blockchains are attracting increasingly meaningful institutional capital.
At the same time, Immunefi’s research shows that most tokens affected by hacks never recover their previous value. A serious Coldcard vulnerability has prompted users to reconsider the security of self-custody, while a collection of incidents across Asia illustrates how scams, reputational failures and inadequate consumer protection continue to undermine adoption.
Together, the developments demonstrate that blockchain’s next phase will be defined not only by what the technology can support, but also by whether its institutions, devices and communities can earn durable trust.
ETHSafari celebrates five years of connecting African blockchain builders
Kenyan blockchain gathering ETHSafari is marking its fifth anniversary with an extended programme designed to connect African Web3 builders with international investors, protocols and technology communities.
The 2026 edition, called “The Fifth Safari”, will take place from 4 to 13 September. According to Capital FM Africa, the programme will combine a hackathon, technical workshops, networking events and a journey between Nairobi and Kenya’s coast.
The event begins in Nairobi, where developers will build blockchain products, receive mentorship and compete for hackathon prizes. Participants will then travel aboard the BlockTrain through Tsavo National Park before joining the main conference in Kilifi.
The format deliberately breaks with the conventional technology-conference model. Instead of concentrating every conversation inside an exhibition hall, ETHSafari uses the journey between locations to encourage less formal collaboration among builders, investors, researchers and community leaders.
ETHSafari was created after African Web3 participants attending international conferences repeatedly encountered questions about what was happening on the continent. Its founders concluded that Africa’s blockchain story needed a platform led by the people building within its markets.
Over five years, the event has received support from more than 20 international organisations, including the Ethereum Foundation, Visa, Coinbase, Polkadot, Celo, Optimism, Filecoin Foundation, Algorand Foundation, NEAR Protocol, StarkWare, Base, EMURGO Africa and ETHGlobal.
That range of supporters highlights the breadth of Africa’s emerging blockchain ecosystem. The opportunity extends beyond cryptocurrency trading and includes:
- Cross-border payments and remittances.
- Digital identity and verifiable credentials.
- Stablecoin-based commerce.
- Tokenised assets.
- Agricultural and supply-chain applications.
- Developer infrastructure and protocol engineering.
- Community-owned financial services.
African markets offer compelling use cases because many consumers and businesses already operate across fragmented payment systems, volatile currencies and limited conventional financial infrastructure.
However, the continent should not be treated merely as a testing ground for products controlled elsewhere. Sustainable development requires African founders to own intellectual property, secure funding and participate in the governance of the protocols they help expand.
ETHSafari’s fifth anniversary therefore measures more than the longevity of a conference. It reflects the development of a community capable of connecting local problems and talent with global blockchain infrastructure.
Immunefi finds that 84% of hacked tokens remain below pre-attack prices
A major blockchain exploit damages far more than the wallet or protocol from which funds are initially stolen.
Research from Immunefi found that approximately 84% of hacked tokens remained below their pre-incident prices six months after an attack. As CoinMarketCap reports, affected tokens recorded a median decline of 61% during that period.
Immunefi examined 425 publicly disclosed incidents between 2021 and 2025, involving combined losses of approximately $11.9 billion.
Attack frequency has remained persistently high. The industry recorded 94 incidents in 2024 and 97 in 2025, with those 191 breaches producing approximately $4.67 billion in losses.
The median value stolen per incident has declined to around $2.2 million, but the average loss has risen to approximately $25 million. This divergence shows that a small number of catastrophic incidents account for a disproportionately large share of total damage.
The five largest exploits during 2024 and 2025 represented 62% of all stolen funds during those two years. The largest ten accounted for 73%.
Centralised exchanges were attacked less frequently than decentralised protocols but suffered considerably larger losses. Twenty exchange compromises produced approximately $2.55 billion in losses—around 55% of the total recorded across the two-year period.
This concentration reflects the economic logic of attackers. A successful compromise of one large custodian can provide access to assets belonging to thousands or millions of users.
The effect on a project continues long after the attacker transfers the funds. A falling token price can:
- Reduce the value of the project’s treasury.
- Limit its ability to compensate users.
- Force staff and development cuts.
- Delay planned product releases.
- Trigger leadership changes.
- Weaken liquidity across exchanges and DeFi protocols.
- Damage confidence among users, partners and investors.
Projects holding much of their treasury in their own tokens are especially vulnerable. A 61% decline can remove the financial resources needed to complete remediation precisely when expenditure on security, communications and customer support is rising.
Interconnected DeFi systems create additional contagion risks. A loss affecting one protocol, collateral provider or stablecoin can spread through lending markets, liquidity pools and other platforms that depend on the compromised asset.
The findings support the principle that security must be addressed before deployment rather than treated as an emergency expense after an exploit. HIPTHER previously examined this approach through the OWASP Smart Contract Top 10 2026 framework, which prioritises access controls, economic invariants, oracle dependencies, upgrades and governance vulnerabilities.
An audit remains important, but the Immunefi data shows that projects also need incident plans, diversified treasuries, monitored infrastructure and clear recovery mechanisms.
Coldcard exploit drives users back towards centralised exchanges
A serious vulnerability affecting Coldcard Bitcoin hardware wallets has prompted record inflows to centralised exchanges, according to OKX.
Crypto.news reports that users have been moving assets away from personal wallets as they reconsider the risks involved in securing cryptocurrency independently.
Galaxy Research linked the Coldcard vulnerability to the theft of more than 1,300 Bitcoin, initially valued above $80 million, from thousands of addresses. Subsequent estimates placed confirmed losses above $100 million.
The vulnerability reportedly involved affected devices generating predictable rather than genuinely random private keys. This meant that a user could follow the expected self-custody process and still receive credentials that an attacker could reconstruct.
The incident challenges one of cryptocurrency’s most persistent assumptions: that moving assets from an exchange into a hardware wallet automatically removes custodial risk.
Self-custody eliminates dependence on a centralised company, but it introduces a different chain of trust involving:
- Hardware manufacturing.
- Firmware development and updates.
- Random-number generation.
- Software used to initialise the device.
- Backup and recovery procedures.
- Supply-chain integrity.
- The user’s own operational security.
A weakness at any point can undermine the security of the private key.
OKX Chief Compliance Officer Jonathan Brockmeier said the exchange was seeing record inflows following the Coldcard incident. He compared the movement with the aftermath of FTX’s collapse, when users withdrew funds from exchanges and moved them into self-custody.
The reversal does not prove that centralised custody is inherently safer. Bybit’s record-breaking 2025 breach demonstrated how much value can be lost when an institutional wallet is compromised.
Instead, the movement shows that users evaluate custody comparatively. When confidence in exchanges collapses, self-custody becomes more attractive. When a hardware-wallet failure causes major losses, professionally monitored custody can appear safer.
OKX says it prevented $26.3 million in scam-related losses during the first half of 2026 by blocking suspicious transfers. It also reported protecting more than $1.1 billion in assets belonging to over 500,000 customers.
The exchange uses AI to identify compromised devices, social-engineering patterns and unusual network activity before funds leave customer accounts.
Centralised exchanges can provide layered monitoring, account recovery and teams dedicated to investigating fraud. They also concentrate assets and require users to trust corporate controls, governance and solvency.
The more useful conclusion is that custody should reflect a user’s capabilities and risk profile. Self-custody may be appropriate for people who can verify devices, manage backups and maintain secure procedures. Other users may be safer with a regulated custodian offering withdrawal controls, insurance and continuous monitoring.
Asia’s blockchain growth is accompanied by escalating consumer risks
Asia continues to develop some of the world’s most active blockchain markets, but ecosystem growth is being accompanied by scams, controversial business models and increasingly complex enforcement challenges.
An industry roundup from LCX highlights the contrast between Malaysia Blockchain Week’s ecosystem-building ambitions and cases involving an OnlyFans-related scandal and a romance victim reportedly defrauded of $33 million.
These stories may appear unrelated, but they illustrate the same market tension. Blockchain enables permissionless financial activity across borders, while criminals use that same accessibility, speed and pseudonymity to target people outside conventional institutional safeguards.
Romance and “pig-butchering” scams are particularly destructive because attackers do not begin by exploiting code. They exploit trust.
Victims are contacted through social media, dating services or messaging platforms and gradually drawn into a relationship. The attacker then introduces a supposed cryptocurrency investment platform showing fabricated profits.
Early withdrawals may be permitted to create credibility. Once the victim commits significant capital, the platform blocks access and demands additional payments for taxes, compliance checks or account release.
Blockchain transactions make these frauds difficult to reverse. Once assets are transferred, criminals can move them through multiple wallets, exchanges, bridges and conversion services across different jurisdictions.
Consumer protection therefore requires more than smart-contract audits. The industry needs:
- Better detection of scam-related wallet activity.
- Faster information sharing among exchanges.
- Clear warnings before high-risk transfers.
- Stronger verification of investment platforms.
- Effective cooperation with law enforcement.
- Education addressing emotional manipulation, not only technical security.
Reputational controversies involving creators, platforms or promotional campaigns create a different form of risk. Projects may be technically functional while still damaging trust through weak governance, misleading marketing or inappropriate partnerships.
Events such as Malaysia Blockchain Week can help establish better standards by bringing regulators, developers and businesses into the same conversation. Their value will depend on whether ecosystem growth is accompanied by serious attention to consumer protection and accountability.
J.P. Morgan’s Ethereum-based tokenised funds exceed $900 million
J.P. Morgan has accumulated more than $900 million in tokenised money-market funds operating on Ethereum, according to a report carried by Bitget.
The milestone positions one of the world’s largest banks among the most significant institutional users of public blockchain infrastructure.
Tokenised money-market funds represent conventional cash-management products through blockchain-based records. Ownership and transfers can be recorded on-chain, allowing fund shares to interact with programmable settlement and collateral systems.
The underlying assets remain regulated financial instruments. Blockchain changes how ownership is represented, transferred and potentially integrated with other financial applications.
Passing $900 million in assets under management is significant because it moves institutional tokenisation beyond the experimental stage. The amount remains small compared with J.P. Morgan’s wider business, but it demonstrates that regulated financial products can operate on public infrastructure at commercially meaningful scale.
Ethereum offers institutions several relevant capabilities:
- Programmable ownership and transfer rules.
- Automated settlement.
- Continuous visibility into asset movements.
- Compatibility with digital wallets and tokenised collateral.
- A large ecosystem of developers and infrastructure providers.
- Established standards for issuing and managing tokens.
J.P. Morgan’s participation also sends a signal to competing banks and asset managers. Public blockchain networks are increasingly being evaluated as infrastructure for regulated assets rather than simply as venues for speculative cryptocurrency trading.
Important questions remain.
Institutional products need verified identities, compliant transfer restrictions, secure custody and clear legal rights over the underlying assets. They must also manage smart-contract vulnerabilities, network congestion and the possibility that on-chain records interact with systems outside the bank’s direct control.
There is also a distinction between tokenising an asset and creating an active market for it. Assets under management demonstrate issuance and adoption, but limited public information about transaction volumes makes it difficult to determine how frequently the tokens are transferred, traded or used as collateral.
Nevertheless, the milestone strengthens Ethereum’s position at the intersection of decentralised applications and regulated finance. Its infrastructure is now supporting both open DeFi protocols and products issued by systemically important banks.
HIPTHER has been tracking this convergence through its wider blockchain coverage, including the growing use of public networks for tokenised securities, money-market products and real-world assets.
The bigger picture: blockchain adoption depends on the full trust chain
The five developments demonstrate that blockchain trust is not determined by decentralisation alone.
ETHSafari is strengthening trust through community, education and long-term ecosystem development. J.P. Morgan is building institutional confidence by placing regulated financial products on Ethereum.
Immunefi’s findings reveal how quickly a technical exploit can destroy the value and operating capacity of a project. The Coldcard incident shows that self-custody still depends on trustworthy hardware and firmware, while the scams highlighted across Asia demonstrate that secure code cannot protect people from emotional manipulation.
Blockchain’s trust chain includes developers, smart contracts, devices, custodians, governance structures, data providers and users. Removing one intermediary does not remove every dependency.
The projects and institutions most likely to succeed will be those that make these dependencies visible, test them continuously and provide realistic recovery mechanisms when something fails.
