Q: What unusual object was the first non-financial asset ever permanently recorded on the Bitcoin blockchain?

A temporary pricing anomaly from an oracle feed triggered roughly $27 million in liquidations on the DeFi lending protocol Aave this week after collateral values were briefly misreported. The lending positions rely on automated price feeds to determine collateral health, and the incorrect update caused some borrower positions to appear undercollateralized, prompting liquidations before the price corrected.

A trader lost nearly $50 million in a single transaction after swapping a large USDT position for AAVE through a routing system that ultimately hit a shallow SushiSwap liquidity pool. The order caused extreme price impact and MEV bots extracted tens of millions via sandwich trades, highlighting persistent risks around slippage and liquidity depth in DeFi markets.

Global markets experienced significant volatility linked to geopolitical tensions, wiping trillions from equities. Crypto markets proved relatively resilient compared to traditional assets, strengthening narratives around decentralized financial infrastructure as an alternative market system.

Development continues on Hemi’s ZK provability framework, including performance improvements to the Bitcoin indexer. Updates include faster indexing and expanded support for UTXO pagination, improving the system’s ability to efficiently prove Bitcoin state. The team expects the updated indexer and ZK proving components to be ready for audit before the end of March.

Hemi is preparing to launch limited public testing of its ZK Proof Marketplace, expected within the next two weeks. Early participants will be able to test UI features or run ZK mining software and submit proofs to the network, with HEMI token incentives offered for participation during the beta phase.

Work continues on upgrades to HVM precompiles, including bug fixes and new data feeds that expose additional Bitcoin metrics such as fees, coin flow, and coin days destroyed directly to smart contracts. These features will be part of the Jovian / HVM Phase 1 update, with testnet deployment tentatively targeted for early April.

veHEMI will support decentralized economic infrastructure for Hemi and external protocols through its phased deployment.

Read more.

This week, amid any confusion over daylight savings, the team delivered a focused set of engineering updates across Hemi’s core infrastructure.

See this week’s episode.

Join Hemi’s Discord and catch each Midweek with Max episode live.

The special AI Happy Hour discussion on autonomous agents and how advances in LLMs are changing our lives. The crew discussed this ever evolving topic and tackled community questions.

Listen to the entire discussion:

See the full AMA.

Join one of the architects of Bitcoin, Hemi Labs Co-Founder and CEO Jeff Garzik, for a discussion on automation, AI, privacy, and the intersection of this new technology of the blockchain ecosystem.

Streaming everywhere at 3 PM EST on Thursday, March 19, 2026.

A: A copy of Wikileaks’ insurance file hash.