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Key Takeaways: dYdX has acquired Telegram-native app Pocket Protector. Co-founders Eddie Zhang and Kaiser Kinbote will join dYdX as President and Head of Growth. Messaging-integrated trading is emerging as a frictionless gateway to DeFi, especially in markets with limited access to desktop platforms. dYdX has acquired Pocket Protector, a Telegram-native trading app, to expand its product suite and accelerate growth. According to a statement published by dYdX founder Antonio Juliano on July 16, Pocket Protector’s team will join dYdX Trading Inc. as part of the deal, including co-founders Eddie Zhang and Kaiser Kinbote, who will take on the roles of President and Head of Growth, respectively. Pocket Protector’s Developers to Join dYdX The acquisition follows the rapid growth of Pocket Protector’s app, which drew 50,000 users and reached $1 billion in annualized trading volume in under a year. “Eddie will help lead our core team’s day-to-day execution and drive our broader product and go-to-market strategy,” Juliano wrote. “Kaiser will focus on growth, bringing clarity to what matters, and pushing us to operate faster and smarter.” Pocket Protector’s core features, including Telegram-based perps and spot trading, will be incorporated into dYdX’s main platform. Juliano said the team is already working to adapt parts of the bot’s functionality. A four-person engineering team at Pocket Protector will also be integrated into dYdX’s product and engineering divisions. Juliano credited Zhang’s experience leading early Messenger development at Meta and launching consumer-facing products with shaping his decision. “He has strong product instincts, a track record of execution, and a rare ability to zoom between strategy and details,” he wrote. 1/ Some news today: we’re excited to share that we’ve been acquired by @dYdX ! The Pocket Protector you know and love isn’t going anywhere, and we’re excited to be building better and faster for you. — Pocket Protector (@pp_trading) July 18, 2025 From Infrastructure to Users dYdX has now positioned itself to scale beyond early infrastructure-building into user-facing expansion. “We’re no longer just proving the idea, we’re scaling it,” Juliano said. He added that dYdX is hiring across research and engineering roles to support the product roadmap. “Since then, we’ve spent years focused on 0→1,” he wrote. “Now is the moment to go from 1→n: delivering exceptional user experience, expanding the product surface area, and building the best exchange in crypto.” Telegram-native interfaces are gaining traction across Solana and Ethereum ecosystems, where lightweight apps allow onboarding without browser-based friction. In the meantime, exchanges may increasingly compete not just on liquidity and fees but on interface flexibility, user flow, and community retention. Integrating social tools into core trading infrastructure could become a differentiator in retail market share, especially in regions where messaging apps serve as primary financial access points. Are there regulatory implications for exchanges operating through social platforms? Yes, integrating with global messaging platforms could raise jurisdictional challenges around financial communication, user verification, and cross-border compliance. What makes social trading tools competitive in user retention? Features like in-app alerts, shared strategies, and group trading discussions create embedded communities, increasing user engagement and reducing churn. Could this trend extend beyond Telegram? Yes. Similar models may expand into WhatsApp or other high-usage chat platforms, provided technical integration and local compliance frameworks align.

Several C-suite executives from cryptocurrency companies attended the Friday event, some of whom directly contributed to Trump’s 2024 campaign.

Former Pump.fun senior developer Jarett Dunn sits in a London prison after breaching his bail conditions while awaiting trial for stealing approximately $2 million from the launchpad in May 2024, according to reports. The Canadian national, who had initially pleaded guilty to fraud charges, is now attempting to withdraw his plea and faces at least seven years in prison. His detention comes as his former employer has transformed into one of crypto’s most successful platforms, recently completing a $600 million initial coin offering and surpassing $770 million in lifetime revenue. 🚨NEWS: According to Decrypt, ex- @pumpdotfun senior dev @STACCoverflow (Jarett Dunn) is jailed in London for breaching bail conditions and faces at least 7 years in prison. Last year, he stole ~$2M from PumpFun and sent it to a random address.. pic.twitter.com/5mQGwwUppN — SolanaFloor (@SolanaFloor) July 18, 2025 The Theft and Its Aftermath Dunn’s attack on Pump.fun occurred during his brief six-week employment with the company in May 2024, when he exploited his access to private keys to drain funds from bonding curve contracts. The stolen SOL tokens, worth approximately $2 million, were intended for transfer to the Raydium decentralized exchange, but were instead diverted to unrelated wallet addresses. Rather than keeping the funds, Dunn immediately began airdropping the stolen tokens to random wallet addresses, selecting holders of various Solana tokens and NFTs as unwitting recipients. His actions prompted Pump.fun to temporarily shut down its platform while it investigated the breach and cooperated with law enforcement. Within minutes of the exploit, Dunn claimed responsibility through his Twitter account, posting erratically about his actions and motivations. “Everybody be cool, this is robbery,” he wrote , adding that he was “about to change the course of history” and expected to “rot in jail.” And now; Magick: everybody be cool, this is a r o b b e r y. What it do, staccattack? I'm about to change the course of history. n then rot in jail. am I sane? nah. am I well? v much not. do I want for anything? my mom raised from the dead n barring that: /x — stacc's futard arc. (@STACCoverflow) May 16, 2024 During a Twitter Spaces session immediately following the attack, Dunn expressed his disdain for the platform he had targeted. “I just kind of wanted to kill Pump.fun because it’s something to do,” he stated, claiming the platform had “inadvertently hurt people for a long time.” He described the company as “horribly managed” and said he had “personal grievances” against its leadership. Dunn initially pleaded guilty to fraud charges in October 2024, but requested to withdraw his plea during what was scheduled to be his sentencing hearing. His legal team subsequently quit the case, leaving him to handle the complex legal proceedings while living in London under bail conditions that included movement restrictions and electronic monitoring. The breach of his bail conditions occurred in early June 2025 when Dunn moved from London to Liverpool without authorization, violating the terms of his release. He was subsequently arrested and held at Walton Prison in Liverpool before being transferred to HMP Pentonville in London, where he remains on remand, awaiting a formal hearing to withdraw his guilty plea. His friend Mark Kelly, who has been communicating with Dunn through calls from behind bars, confirmed details of the bail breach to media outlets. “He’s remarkably cool and zenlike considering his situation,” Kelly said. The Growing Epidemic of Crypto Insider Attacks Dunn’s case contributes to a growing trend of insider threats within the cryptocurrency industry, where employees with privileged access exploit their positions for personal gain or ideological reasons. Recent incidents include Coinbase rejecting a $20 million ransom demand in May 2025 after overseas support staff were bribed to leak user data, and Pond.fun suffering a hack in March 2025 , allegedly perpetrated by its own lead software engineer who drained liquidity through blockchain privacy protocols. 🔐 @Coinbase has disclosed a data breach involving a small subset of customer information. #Coinbase #DataBreach https://t.co/qfBEmf3Cc0 — Cryptonews.com (@cryptonews) May 15, 2025 South Korea also recently sentenced an illegal XRP exchange operator to eight years in prison for defrauding investors of $3.4 million . Since Dunn’s attack, the platform has evolved from operating out of a WeWork office in London to become what analysts describe as “one of the most used apps in crypto history.” Despite the success of Pump.fun, it has also been continually criticized for allegedly facilitating pump-and-dump schemes and questionable promotional tactics.