In brief Decrypt's sister media outlet Rug Radio descended on Token2049 this month for a whirlwind tour.Founder Farokh Sarmad sat down with former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao for an exclusive interview.Rug Radio hosted its iconic R HAUS event alongside Infinex, with partners including Near Protocol, Auros, MOG, Uniqly, Bing Bong, Market Across, Magic Eden and TakeOverDecrypt’s Art, Fashion, and Entertainment Hub. Discover SCENEIt’s been an eventful month for Decrypt’s sister media outlet Rug Radio, as it descended on Dubai for Token2049 for a series of events and showcase interviews.“There was one of the days where we partnered with three events, and all three events were the same night,” Rug Radio Founder and President Farokh Sarmad revealed on the FOMO Hour podcast. “I was so dead.”Sarmad’s persistence throughout Token2049 paid off, though—he scored a one-on-one interview with former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao that made headlines, as the crypto exchange founder recounted his experience in prison.But the main event was altogether more upbeat, as Rug Radio joined Decrypt, parent company DASTAN and co-host Infinex for the exclusive R HAUS night at Dubai’s iconic Aura Skypool, at the heart of the Palm Jumeirah.The event played host to headline sponsors Near and Auros, along with MOG, Uniqly, Bing Bong, Market Across, Magic Eden and TakeOver.Infinex showcased its new Infinex Connect UX platform, which enables Infinex users to connect their account to third-party dapps and use Infinex features and their cross-chain portfolio within the dapp.“We're going to give you an SDK where you can build a new kind of crypto app that feels like a centralized exchange,” Infinex founder Kain Warwick told Sarmad at the event.Full Interview: @farokh with @kaiynne from @infinex 01:25 - Kain's background02:00 - Infinex inception03:20 - Competing with CEXs04:40 - Infinex Connect 👀08:20 - How can you get involved? pic.twitter.com/Hp4HVhnIg6 — Rug Radio (@RugRadio) May 20, 2025Near Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin joined Sarmad to discuss the chain abstraction stack’s vision for an AI-powered future. “AI is going to be effectively the way we interface with computing,” he said. “There are going to be no more apps, there are going to be no more websites.”AI assistants will run in the background, anticipating user needs, Polosukhin said. He pointed to the example of move-to-earn game Sweat, built atop Near, which recently launched an in-wallet AI agent, Mia.“Mia is an assistant that is directly in your crypto wallet, that knows everything about your crypto wallet, and your interactions and your physical fitness,” he said

In brief Glider is an automated, non-custodial crypto portfolio management platform.The project is the winner of the Start the Block competition at Paris Blockchain Week, judged by high-frequency trading firm Auros.Co-Founder Brian Huang told Decrypt that the goal is to lower the barrier to entry for crypto to the point where mainstream users can access sophisticated DeFi portfolios.Decrypt’s Art, Fashion, and Entertainment Hub. Discover SCENEManaging a crypto portfolio is a complicated business—unnecessarily so, according to Glider Co-Founder Brian Huang.“We need to get to a point where we can say, ‘Hey, Mom, do you want to participate in this?’” he told Decrypt. “We spend a lot of time on this at Glider: how can we make the barrier to entry so low that anybody could do it?”Glider is designed to enable users to “come to the platform with any trading idea,” Huang said, “and what we do is we automate that whole process for you. So you come in, you say what you want to do—you could even type it into our natural language text box—and we convert that into a portfolio that’s fully non-custodial.”That last point is important, Huang said. “We are not building a tokenized ETF issuer, or anything like that. Crypto is all about owning your assets, so when you use Glider, you actually create these portfolios.” Users have full control over their assets, meaning they can use them “in any way that you would typically use your assets in crypto,” including lending, staking and governance

Turtle Club, a Zurich, Switzerland-based on-chain liquidity distribution protocol provider, raised $6.2M in Seed funding