Today in crypto, Hyperliquid has delisted perpetual futures linked to the JELLY token, citing “evidence of suspicious market activity.” A Polymarket pool on a potential US-Ukraine mineral deal drew backlash after a whale-controlled vote led to an incorrect resolution. Meanwhile, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has announced plans to host four additional crypto roundtables.

Hyperliquid delists JELLY perps, citing ‘suspicious’ activity

Hyperliquid has delisted perpetual futures tied to the JELLY token after identifying “evidence of suspicious market activity” involving the trading instruments, the blockchain network said. 

The Hyper Foundation, Hyperliquid’s ecosystem nonprofit, will reimburse most affected users for any losses related to the incident, Hyperliquid said in a March 26 post on the X platform.

“All users apart from flagged addresses will be made whole from the Hyper Foundation,” Hyperliquid said. “This will be done automatically in the coming days based on onchain data.” 

Hyerliquid added that the perpetuals exchange’s primary liquidity pool, HLP, has clocked a positive net income of around $700,000 in the past 24 hours. 

The incident began when a trader “opened a massive $6M short position on JellyJelly” and then “deliberately self-liquidated by pumping JellyJelly’s price on-chain,” Abhi, founder of Web3 company AP Collective, said in an X post. 

Had Hyperliquid not closed the position, the perpetuals exchange could have faced “full liquidation if JellyJelly reaches $150M mcap,” Abhi added. 

Source: Hyperliquid

Gracy Chen, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Bitget, later criticized Hyperliquid’s handling of the incident, saying it put the network at risk of becoming “FTX 2.0.”

The decision to delist the contracts, which was reached by consensus among Hyperliquid’s relatively small number of validators, flagged existing concerns about the popular network’s perceived centralization.

“Despite presenting itself as an innovative decentralized exchange with a bold vision, Hyperliquid operates more like an offshore [centralized exchange],” Chen said, after saying “Hyperliquid may be on track to become FTX 2.0.”

Polymarket faces scrutiny over $7 million Ukraine mineral deal bet

Polymarket, the world’s largest decentralized prediction market, is under fire after a controversial outcome raised concerns over potential governance manipulation in a high-stakes political bet.

A betting market on the platform asked whether US President Donald Trump would accept a rare earth mineral deal with Ukraine before April. Despite no such event occurring, the market was settled as “Yes,” triggering a backlash from users and industry observers.

This may point to a “governance attack” in which a whale from the UMA Protocol “used his voting power to manipulate the oracle, allowing the market to settle false results and successfully profit,” according to crypto threat researcher Vladimir S.

“The tycoon cast 5 million tokens through three accounts, accounting for 25% of the total votes. Polymarket is committed to preventing this from happening again,” he wrote in a March 26 X post.

Source: Vladimir S.

Polymarket employs UMA Protocol’s blockchain oracles for external data to settle market outcomes and verify real-world events.

Polymarket data shows the market amassed more than $7 million in trading volume before settling on March 25.

Ukraine/US mineral deal betting pool on Polymarket. Source: Polymarket

SEC plans four more crypto roundtables

The US Securities and Exchange Commission said on March 25 that it will host four more crypto roundtables focusing on crypto trading, custody, tokenization and decentralized finance (DeFi) after hosting its first crypto roundtable on March 21.

The roundtables were organized by the agency’s Crypto Task Force and will kick off with a discussion on tailoring regulation for crypto trading on April 11.

A series of four crypto roundtable discussions are scheduled from April through to June. Source: SEC

The specific agenda and speakers for each roundtable have yet to be disclosed, but a roundtable on crypto custody will follow on April 25, with another to discuss tokenization and moving assets onchain on May 12. The fourth roundtable in the series will discuss DeFi on June 6.

“The Crypto Task Force roundtables are an opportunity for us to hear a lively discussion among experts about what the regulatory issues are and what the Commission can do to solve them,” said SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, the task force lead.