Morpho Raises $175M, Zoomex Logs $5.25B Volume, $1.58M TOP Governance Hack

Crypto News

Derivatives venue Zoomex closed May with execution metrics that underscored how technical reliability draws volume even when Bitcoin chops sideways. The platform reported 24-hour futures turnover above $5.25 billion against open interest exceeding $893 million, a roughly 5.8x daily capital turnover ratio. The BTC/USDT pair led with $2.06 billion in daily futures volume, while spot trading climbed past $326 million after a 15.21% single-day surge. Sub-10ms matching latency and near-0.03% slippage on one-BTC orders helped the exchange retain more than 3 million registered users across 35-plus regions, supported by active money-services registrations in Canada and the United States.

On-chain lending protocol Morpho secured $175 million in a round co-led by Paradigm, a16z crypto and Ribbit Capital, with Apollo Funds, Circle Ventures, VanEck and Ledger Cathay also participating. The protocol now holds more than $11 billion in deposits and counts Bitwise, Galaxy, Anchorage Digital, Coinbase, Kraken and Binance among its institutional users. Rather than displacing banks, Morpho positions its open credit network as DeFi infrastructure that lets fintechs and asset managers build programmable lending products on blockchain rails. The raise reflects accelerating institutional appetite for tokenized assets and on-chain settlement, with fresh capital earmarked for scaling enterprise-grade credit tooling.

Pi Coin traded near $0.128, down roughly 10% on the week even as the broader altcoin market rebounded off recent lows. The recovery looked fragile: a smart-money positioning index kept diverging lower from price, signaling that informed traders were not chasing the bounce. Retail buyers drove the bid instead, with centralized-exchange wallets posting a net outflow near 260,000 PI over 24 hours as holders moved coins into self-custody. A weak 0.40 yearly correlation with Bitcoin means a BTC recovery may not lift the token, leaving it dependent on its own catalysts while social mentions slumped to a six-month low.

A governance exploit drained roughly $1.58 million from Token of Power, exposing persistent weaknesses in low-cap voting systems. An address funded through Tornado Cash accumulated more than half of the token's 16,384 total supply, then created, voted on and executed a malicious proposal in a single transaction. The maneuver minted 10 billion TOP directly to the attacker's contract, which swapped the newly created tokens for 944.2 WETH — about $1.585 million — draining liquidity from a Balancer V1 pool. The thin supply and low valuation made seizing majority control affordable, and proceeds were routed back through Tornado Cash, complicating any recovery effort.

The Morpho round sharpens a defining theme of the cycle: traditional finance is increasingly comfortable building directly on public ledgers rather than around them. With banks, asset managers and stablecoin issuers exploring tokenized credit, protocols that behave as neutral blockchain infrastructure are attracting capital that once flowed only to closed systems. Morpho's $11 billion deposit base and roster of exchange and custody partners suggest on-chain credit is moving from experiment to plumbing, unifying fragmented lending markets and supporting programmable products that settle in real time across jurisdictions and counterparties.

The Token of Power incident fits a 2026 pattern of attacks targeting smaller projects whose DAO parameters lend themselves to cheap takeovers. Security analysts urged teams running comparable Aragon or MiniMeToken setups to audit voting-power distribution, quorum and pass thresholds, mint permissions and related safeguards. Larger protocols have hardened defenses with timelocks and higher quorums, but many emerging tokens remain exposed when liquidity is thin and supply is concentrated. Liquidity providers in an AMM pool face particular risk, since a single malicious proposal can convert minted supply into real assets before anyone can react.

Taken together, these stories trace a market splitting along the line of institutional conviction. Capital is rotating toward audited, regulated infrastructure — exchange compliance stacks, $175 million credit-network raises and partnerships with established custodians — while speculative corners absorb the cycle's residual risk through governance exploits and retail-only bids that smart money declines to follow. The dominant narrative is consolidation around credible on-chain plumbing rather than broad risk appetite, with security discipline and regulatory footing increasingly separating projects that institutions will touch from those left trading on thinning attention and fragile liquidity.