Apple and Nvidia tokens already trade against USDC on Aerodrome. There is an opportunity to earn from that activity, but the return depends on the position you choose: trading fees for an unstaked LP, or AERO incentives for a staked one.

My take: the stock pools are worth investigating for eligible readers who want equity exposure and can manage a liquidity range. I’d keep wtSGOV on the watchlist until its product terms are clearer. The Aero merger also makes today’s emissions a short-term variable, so I would assess a position’s fee economics after incentives change.

The first check is access. Coinbase’s stock tokens are intended for eligible non-US investors. A working DEX interface does not establish eligibility, and European access needs a jurisdiction-specific check. US readers can follow the market development without assuming these products are available to them. Product information.

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What the three pools show

The figures below were displayed on Aerodrome’s Stocks screen on October 13, around 13:07–13:08 Stockholm time. They are floating interface estimates, rather than forecasts of the return on your deposit.

There are two separate APR measures. Emissions APR values AERO rewards against staked liquidity in the current tick-spacing band. Your full position can span a wider range. Fee APR is an annualized proxy using current-epoch fees accruing to voters and the pool’s total token reserves. It is not the net yield an unstaked LP earns. The two rates should not be added.

Apple: AAPLc / USDC

The screen showed $1.41 million in TVL, an emissions APR of 7,115%, and a fee APR proxy of 56.21%. That emissions estimate is especially sensitive to the amount of staked liquidity in the current band. It is not a 7,115% forecast for your whole deposit.

Apple-linked inventory gives this position equity exposure as well as AMM risk. A fall can leave an LP holding more AAPLc; a rally can sell that inventory into USDC. A narrow range can stop earning when price leaves it.

AAPLc pool · AAPLc prospectus.

AAPLc / USDC on Aerodrome, captured October 13 at 13:07 Stockholm. Displayed TVL: $1.41M; emissions APR: 7,115%; fee APR proxy: 56.21%. These rates use different denominators and should not be added. Emissions APR is an active-band estimate, not a return forecast for the full deposit. Source · Captured 2026-10-13T13:07:59+02:00.

Nvidia: NVDAc / USDC

The screen showed $1.95 million in TVL, an emissions APR of 1,332%, and a fee APR proxy of 47.38%.

A high annualized rate against a small active band says little about the return on every dollar deposited. Nvidia exposure, time in range, reward allocation and the AERO price all affect the result. Holding both stock pools also keeps the same Coinbase issuer, Base and Aerodrome exposures.

NVDAc pool · NVDAc prospectus.

Both stock tokens represent beneficial interests in shares held through Coinbase Onchain SPV Ltd, with Alpaca as custodian/broker. Unvested DEX holders retain a beneficial interest, but direct redemption and voting instructions require KYC and vesting. Dividends are generally reinvested through the backing ratio after tax and issuer fees, rather than paid directly as cash. The terms also give the issuer blacklist, freeze, pause and burn powers. Those rights and restrictions belong in the LP decision alongside the stock price.

Treasury ETF wrapper: wtSGOV / USDC

This pool showed about $210,700 in TVL, an emissions APR of 37.69%, and a fee APR proxy of just 0.07654%. The incentive is AERO paid to liquidity providers; it should be assessed separately from the ETF’s underlying return.

wtSGOV wraps tSGOV exposure to the iShares 0–3 Month Treasury Bond ETF. The issuer structure differs from the Coinbase stock tokens: st0x describes holders as unsecured contractual creditors of S01 Issuer GmbH. The issuer’s hedge does not give token holders a trust or a secured claim over those assets.

The programme provides for in-kind redemption to a holder’s KYC’d account at an eligible broker, with a $10 minimum. Product-specific Final Terms govern access and other conditions. The research did not locate SGOV-specific Final Terms, so I’d leave eligibility, fees and distribution terms open rather than infer them from the programme’s general retail-offer countries. US persons are excluded.

wtSGOV pool · SGOV product · Holder rights · Base prospectus.

Combined source excerpts of three selected pools, captured around 13:07–13:08 Stockholm time. TVL: AAPLc $1.41M; NVDAc $1.95M; wtSGOV $210.7K. Emissions APR estimates: 7,115%, 1,332% and 37.69%. Fee APR proxies: 56.21%, 47.38% and 0.07654%. The source rows were cropped and combined without changing their figures. APRs use different denominators and should not be added; the displayed volume is not a trailing-day series. Source · Captured 2026-10-13T13:08:00+02:00.

Trading activity helps. Execution still needs checking.

At 08:33 Stockholm time, the research pull recorded DefiLlama one-day volume of $6.17 million in AAPLc and $11.27 million in NVDAc. Its one-day field is a trailing snapshot measure, not a completed Monday session. Its window differs from the Aerodrome screen’s displayed volume. That is a reason to investigate fee income through more than one observation. It does not establish LP profit. DefiLlama yields data.

The morning KyberSwap quotes put a $100,000 AAPLc buy about 0.058% above pool spot through Aerodrome, and a corresponding sale about 0.058% below. For NVDAc, the buy was about 0.097% above spot, and the sale about 0.071% below.

wtSGOV was a different market. A $100,000 buy came out 23.6% above spot through Aerodrome alone, or 7.4% above spot on the best aggregator route. A $50,000 buy was around 0.01% above spot. Position size changes the economics sharply.

These were KyberSwap-only quotes at 08:32 Stockholm time, before US pre-market. The comparison includes swap fees, route effects and a small timing gap against pool spot. A quoted buy cost also does not establish how an LP position will exit after a price gap. Requote the direction and size you intend to use. KyberSwap.

Who gets paid on Aerodrome?

An unstaked LP earns its in-range share of trading fees, less the applicable protocol take. Morning research checks found a 10% take in these three pools. Their swap fees were 0.05% for AAPLc and NVDAc, and 0.01% for wtSGOV.

A staked LP earns AERO emissions; fees generated by that staked liquidity flow to veAERO voters. Voters can also receive separate voting incentives. Buying liquid AERO alone does not collect those fees.

AERO rewards add reward-token exposure to the inventory you already hold. To assess the position, model the full deposit, time out of range, execution costs and the value of the rewards when sold. Annualizing a momentary active-band rate leaves those costs out.

Protocol mechanics · Public calculation code. The emissions calculation was checked against public source code; a match to the deployed calculation contract remains unverified.

What changes at the Aero launch?

The official launch update schedules Aero for October 21 at 8pm New York time: October 22 at 00:00 UTC, or 02:00 in Stockholm. It is a planned upgrade, not a completed merger.

Official Aero launch graphic: October 21, 2026 at 8pm EDT equals October 22 at 00:00 UTC, or 02:00 in Stockholm. This is the announced schedule, not evidence that the upgrade has executed. Source · Captured 2026-10-13T13:05:37+02:00.

Legacy AERO converts 1:1 into new AERO. The published VELO conversion is approximately 0.044 new AERO per VELO, with the final ratio dependent on supply. The stated allocation split is 94.5% Aerodrome and 5.5% Velodrome.

Existing veAERO and veVELO locks become sAERO, keeping their remaining duration rounded up to a week. Permanent locks become maximum-duration stakes. The new system replaces weekly voting with continuous allocation and removes rebases. There is no early unstaking, although the stake NFT can be transferred.

For LPs, legacy emissions are scheduled to end at launch. The morning snapshot’s current reward period ends October 15, so today’s APR cannot be projected unchanged through the transition. The hub’s separate October 15 deadline is for protocol incentive deposits; it is not a blanket October 15 cutoff for LP emissions.

For existing holders, the hub says the self-custody upgrade is manual and irreversible, with no migration deadline currently stated. It tells Aerodrome ALM depositors to withdraw as soon as possible and Relay users to withdraw veNFTs by October 20. It also says to claim outstanding rewards before upgrading: unclaimed amounts cannot be recovered afterward. Follow the current official hub rather than an old announcement or a link sent in a DM.

Launch update · Official upgrade hub.

What would make these pools worth using?

For the stock pools, I’d want repeat trading, fees that compensate for inventory risk, and a range I can manage through an equity-market gap. The underlying market closes while the DEX keeps trading, so weekend liquidity and redemption access deserve their own check.

For wtSGOV, I’d resolve the product terms and test execution at the intended size before treating its headline rate as an opportunity. The issuer claim and the small market can matter more than the Treasury label.

AERO itself is a separate investment case. Exchange activity has to translate into rewards under the new staking system, while price and supply still matter. More tokenized assets trading on Aerodrome does not by itself establish a return for a liquid AERO holder.

Would you rather hold the stock token outright, or manage an LP position to earn from its trading?

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Onchain Analytics

Blur’s website is closing; its contracts still hold assets

Blur plans to retire its website on November 12, while its marketplace contracts remain operational on Ethereum. Its separate Blend announcement says new loan matching stops that day, asks borrowers to repay or allow their loans to default, and promises an asset-withdrawal tool afterward. A service closing its interface changes how users manage positions even when the contracts continue to exist. Blur announcement · Blend announcement.

Two contracts from Blur’s official registry show different movements. Just before the announcement, at 21:59 Stockholm time on October 12, the bidding pool held 6,967.35 ETH. At the finalized October 13 snapshot, 14:06 Stockholm time, it held 6,832.62 ETH. That is a net decrease of 134.73 ETH, or 1.93%. The balance was still 1.47% higher than seven days earlier. Those are ETH units, so a changing ETH price does not explain the comparison. This measures capital remaining in the bidding pool; it does not measure marketplace revenue or how much NFT trading took place. Bidding contract.

Blend’s Pudgy holdings moved more sharply. The lending contract held 295 Pudgy Penguins before the announcement and 233 at the later block, a decline of 62, or 21.0%. The intervening ERC-721 logs record 97 transfers out and 35 in, which reconcile exactly with that net change. The count had already fallen from 343 a week earlier to 295 before the announcement, so the full weekly decline cannot be attributed to the closure notice. Blend contract · Pudgy contract.

This counts one collection’s custody at Blend. It does not establish that every NFT backs an active loan, or measure total Blend debt. The transfer logs also do not tell us how many moves were repayments, sales or liquidations. Blend’s original design lets lenders trigger refinancing auctions; when an auction fails, the lender can take the collateral. Protocol mechanics.

I’d check the actual loan’s terms and the current official exit instructions before relying on an old interface. A lower contract balance shows assets moving; it does not by itself explain where they went or why.

Five developments from October 7–13 affecting DeFi markets, products and access.

Blur closes its website; the marketplace contracts remain

Blur announced on October 12 that its website will be deprecated on November 12. The marketplace protocol will remain operational onchain, with $BLUR retaining fee-switch control. Blend will also stop matching new loans on November 12. Its notice addresses how borrowers resolve existing loans and promises a withdrawal tool afterward. It does not establish that every loan automatically matures on that date. See Onchain Analytics for the marketplace, lending and borrower implications. Blur’s announcement · Blend update.

Sky receives a B3 counterparty rating

Sky Frontier Foundation said on October 7 that Moody’s assigned Sky Protocol a B3 counterparty risk rating with a stable outlook. The release identifies reserves as a central concern and describes retaining part of net protocol surplus to build them. B3 is below investment grade on Moody’s scale. Institutions have another credit framework for assessing Sky, while the USDS peg, collateral liquidity and contract risk still need separate checks. For an sUSDS position, the capital buffer belongs alongside the savings rate in the decision. Foundation release · Moody’s scale.

Unichain prepares for OP Stack interoperability

Uniswap Labs announced on October 9 that Unichain will move to OP Enterprise, with testnet migration scheduled for October 13 and mainnet for October 29. Existing chain ID, balances, contracts and Uniswap deployments are expected to stay the same. Optimism will run the production infrastructure. The stated goal is native transfers between OP Stack chains, starting with ETH, once interoperability launches. LPs and app users should separate the migration dates from the later availability of native cross-chain transfers; interoperability is not live simply because the infrastructure changes. Uniswap Labs.

Orca and Loopscale combine as tokenholders revisit fees

Orca and Loopscale announced their merger on October 7, with the combined team operating as Formation. Orca’s October 8 council update confirmed the deal and rescheduled its tokenholder vote for October 11–16. The associated proposal would cut the direct xORCA allocation of protocol fee revenue from 40% to 10%, put another 10% toward discretionary ORCA buybacks, and assign 80% to operations. Those changes remain a proposal in the inspected sources. If the proposal passes, xORCA holders would receive a smaller direct fee allocation; the discretionary buybacks would need their own execution record. Merger report · Council update · Fee proposal.

Samsung brings USDC into its wallet

Samsung announced on October 7 that eligible US Galaxy users will gain USDC transfers in Samsung Wallet in the last week of October. The service uses Bastion with Coinbase Prime as sub-custodian; Solana and Sui are named infrastructure partners. Samsung’s 82 million figure counts compatible US devices, not adopters. Bank transfers cover eligible accounts in more than 60 countries, with fees depending on the route. This is a distribution test for stablecoin payments: actual repeat transfers and conversion costs will tell us more than the device count. Samsung announcement.

Podcast Picks

Five recent conversations on collateral, execution, liquidity, security and the routes into DeFi. Descriptions and chapters guide the selections; no full listening is claimed.

Kamino’s plan for useful tokenized assets

Empire · October 12, 2026 · Michael Weisz

Kamino’s new CEO makes the case for adding credit to tokenized assets. Start at 23:34 for private-asset lending, 27:23 for collateral selection and 43:28 for liquidations. It pairs with this issue’s stock pools: trading a wrapper and borrowing against it solve different problems, with different exit requirements. Episode and chapters.

Hyperliquid beyond perpetuals

Empire · October 7, 2026 · Jeff Yan

Hyperliquid’s co-founder discusses institutional access, options and the tradeoff between speed and execution. The relevant chapters begin at 07:17, 11:46 and 18:19. Useful for comparing exchange models: what does the venue improve for a trader, and how much of the founder’s roadmap is already available? Episode and chapters.

Does Ethereum still have the liquidity advantage?

0xResearch · October 7, 2026

The panel debates Ethereum’s liquidity moat as activity spreads to other chains. Skip to 30:35 for liquidity, 43:00 for the Ethereum bull case and 55:14 for value capture. A useful companion to Aerodrome’s expansion: more trading on an Ethereum L2 does not settle which token captures the resulting value. Episode and chapters.

NEAR Intents’ account of the recovery

Unchained · October 9, 2026 · Alex Shevchenko

NEAR Intents’ general manager gives the team’s account of the bridging bug, loss coverage and recovery effort. The discussion separates the contract failure from the response, including who absorbs the loss and which services can be halted. Recovery figures in the episode remain the guest’s account. Episode and publisher notes.

DeFi fundamentals and public-market wrappers

The Edge · October 9, 2026 · Kyle (@zeroxkyle), DeFiLlama research analyst

Start at 22:19 for the StablecoinX/Ethena treasury trade and 27:29 for bringing DeFi yield to public markets. Kyle also explains his investing framework. The useful question here is what a listed wrapper changes about access to a DeFi business, and whether that distribution creates a better investment. Episode and chapters.

Two useful reads

• Base’s stock-token launch: how the products and their liquidity venues fit together.

• Aero’s upgrade hub: current conversion, managed-position and migration instructions.

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Thanks for reading,
Yannis

For more DeFi commentary between editions, follow me on X.

For education and information only, not financial, investment, legal or tax advice. Access depends on eligibility and issuer terms. Positions can lose value through equity moves, issuer or custody failures, contract failures, inventory losses and illiquidity. APRs are variable annualized estimates, not verified net returns.

At a glance

• Exit window: Abstract closes on December 15. Check your assets and withdrawal route before the deadline.

• The business: consumer spending reached its apps, while Igloo kept funding the chain.

• For Pudgy: renewed attention needs to become collector demand or a concrete mechanism that benefits PENGU holders.

• Five developments from October 1–7 and five podcast picks follow the analysis.

Hello everyone,

I own a Pudgy Penguin. Seeing the floor around 2.9 ETH on October 8, alongside Abstract’s closure news, felt rough. I still think Pudgy can recover. I want people to have stronger reasons to buy and hold than hoping for another airdrop.

Abstract announced on October 6 that the chain will close on December 15, 2026. It warns that assets left on the network after that date will become inaccessible. Official announcement.

Abstract’s official wind-down announcement, published October 6. Screenshot captured October 7, 2026. Source: Abstract on X.

My conclusion: Abstract made its apps easier to use, but Igloo decided to stop subsidizing the network. Holders have an exit to manage now. For Pudgy, I would watch repeat customer demand and the specific benefit to NFT or token holders before treating the change in focus as an investment case.

In The DeFi Digest, I look at where DeFi returns come from and what could go wrong. Subscribe to receive the next breakdown.

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What Abstract got right

Abstract launched on January 27, 2025 as an Ethereum rollup using the ZK Stack and ETH for gas. It focused on games, trading and digital collectibles. L2Beat’s project profile.

Abstract Global Wallet let users sign in through email, social login or a passkey and carry one smart-contract account across apps. Apps could sponsor gas. Limited session keys let a game act without prompting for every signature; their permissions can expire or be revoked. AGW overview, wallet architecture and session keys.

That removed friction for players. Sponsored gas still has a payer, though, and easy transactions tell us little about returning customers or the revenue the operator keeps.

The rise and retreat in Abstract’s TVL

DeFiLlama records $6.72 million of TVL at launch, a $57.84 million peak on August 14, 2025, and $27.21 million by September 1. The September 1 daily point fell roughly 36.2% from the day before.

TVL recovered to $41.90 million on November 1, then fell to about $9.8 million by July 1, 2026. The October 7 daily point was $8.44 million, about 85% below the peak. Live balances and prices update separately. Historical chain series and Abstract dashboard.

Abstract’s DeFi TVL history and key metrics. Snapshot captured October 7, 2026. Source: DeFiLlama.

The retreat began well before the shutdown announcement. This week’s news cannot explain the whole decline.

SakuraSwap’s pools held $28.16 million, nearly 49% of chain TVL, at the August peak. Aborean’s held $24.44 million, about 58%, at the November rebound. The recovery was concentrated in another DEX. SakuraSwap AMM, SakuraSwap CLMM, Aborean AMM and Aborean CL, using Abstract balances.

Dollar TVL includes token prices and deposited amounts. An 85% drop cannot tell us how many depositors left or what a typical investor lost.

Base held $4.86 billion on Abstract’s peak day and $6.23 billion at the latest October 7 daily point. Abstract was roughly 1.2% and 0.14% of those totals. Base historical series.

That shows the difference in scale. It does not trace Abstract’s former deposits into Base.

Where the business struggled

At the October 7 snapshot, SakuraSwap held about $4.1 million and Aborean $2.51 million, together roughly four-fifths of reported DeFi TVL. Morpho Blue’s Abstract balance was about $73,000. Protocol rankings.

Lending existed: Morpho’s Abstract TVL reached $1.53 million in March 2026 and Kona’s $1.50 million in January. Both later shrank, limiting the depth available to borrowers and strategy users. Morpho history and Kona history.

DEX TVL also cannot promise a good execution price. Capital may sit in other pairs or outside your trade’s price range. Check the quote for your asset and size, including its route home.

Application fees did not pay every chain bill

The latest 30-day application-fee aggregate was $2.44 million. Gacha TCG contributed $2.10 million and DYLI about $237,000, together roughly 96%. Abstract fee rankings.

Gacha’s fee measure is gross USDC.e card-pack purchases. After card buybacks, its revenue measure was $498,000 over 30 days, before operating costs. DYLI uses a different net-card and marketplace methodology. These figures cannot be compared as profit margins. Gacha fees, Gacha revenue and DYLI methodology.

Abstract’s own gas-fee series reported $118,000 over 30 days. Its dashboard showed $3,945 in chain fees beside $82,556 in app fees for the latest completed daily observation. Customers paying an app does not mean that money reaches the chain operator. Abstract chain fees.

We do not have a full account of payroll, incentives or infrastructure costs. These fee totals cannot establish profitability, and annualizing a wind-down day would mislead. DeFiLlama’s fee definitions.

Points made retention harder to judge

Abstract awarded XP for app activity and trading. CoinGecko’s February 2025 guide documented the early program and warned that participation did not guarantee an airdrop.

I would look for repeat purchases and returning players after rewards fall. Transaction counts alone cannot separate product demand from reward expectations.

Farmers pay fees, slippage and asset risk today for an unconfirmed payout. That does not make every user a farmer, but it makes incentive-driven activity harder to interpret.

Abstract’s Panoramic Governance whitepaper explored governance tokens, escrowed voting and sequencer rewards. It documents a proposed model, not a launched token or guaranteed XP allocation.

Why Igloo stopped funding it

Luca Netz said on October 6 that Igloo funded Abstract for 18 months and lost tens of millions of dollars over two years without finding product-market fit. He cited limited DeFi activity, thin liquidity, little institutional overlap and high costs. These are his claims, not audited accounts. Netz’s statement.

Excerpt from Luca Netz’s October 6 statement. Funding and losses are his claims, not independently audited figures. Source: Luca Netz on X.

Netz also said Igloo declined to launch a token or ICO to fund it further. I respect that choice. Raising another round would still have left the problem of sustaining the business.

What the wind-down means for PENGU

Netz says Igloo’s focus returns to Pudgy Penguins, Pudgy NFTs and PENGU. At 19:12 CEST on October 7, PENGU traded around $0.00852, with a $536 million market cap and $234 million of 24-hour volume. It was down about 9% over 24 hours and 15% over seven days. These windows include other market moves and cannot isolate the announcement’s effect. CoinGecko market data.

Kung Fu Tea’s October 1–15 collaboration includes blind boxes at 100 participating locations and a Walmart-powered New York Comic Con presence on October 8–11. The brand still reaches customers outside crypto; that reach does not establish PENGU-holder income. Kung Fu Tea’s September 30 announcement.

Closing Abstract could conserve Igloo’s cash and attention. PENGU holders have no automatic claim on those savings: the issuer-linked whitepaper gives them no equity or dividend rights. I would look for an implemented mechanism that creates token demand or distributes value to holders.

My view as a Pudgy holder

I own a Pudgy Penguin, so this is personal too. On October 8, I posted about how it felt to see the NFT floor around 2.9 ETH. I still believe Pudgy can recover, but I want stronger reasons for people to own the original NFTs.

Some sellers may have bought for future airdrops. I haven’t traced their wallets, so that remains a hypothesis. What would make me more confident is new collectors buying and holding without needing another reward. The brand can keep growing while that demand takes longer to develop.

Read my post and the discussion on X.

My October 8 post and its floor-price chart. Engagement shown is a snapshot.

Onchain Analytics

Three dollar totals describe different things

The October 7 snapshots show $8.4 million DeFi TVL, $36.09 million total value secured and $66.93 million bridged assets. Each measures different, overlapping exposure. Adding them would overstate the assets involved. DeFiLlama and L2Beat.

Abstract’s value secured, October 7, 2025–October 7, 2026. TVS measures different coverage from DeFi TVL. Source: L2BEAT.

Transfers show movement without proving a sale

At 19:18 CEST on October 7, L2Beat’s 24-hour panel showed $2.12 million inbound, $12.70 million outbound and a displayed $10.57 million net outflow. Gross volume was $14.83 million across 34,570 transfers. Display rounding accounts for small subtraction differences. Volume and flows.

Abstract’s directional transfer figures in the October 7 snapshot. Token transfers do not establish token sales. Source: L2BEAT.

Capital was leaving during the exit window. The separate $5.30 million PENGU transfer volume is gross movement, not measured sales. Bridging, migrations and ordinary portfolio moves can all raise activity during a closure.

Falling fees need the right comparison

The latest seven-day application-fee total is about $483,000, down roughly 39.5% from $798,000 in the preceding seven days. Both windows include time before the closure announcement. DeFiLlama fees series.

Fees were weakening, but this comparison cannot isolate the shutdown’s effect. The dashboard’s roughly 52,000 active addresses also cannot establish customer retention.

Data snapshot: October 7, 2026, around 19:15–19:20 CEST. The flow panel uses its own 24-hour window; API fee totals use the latest completed daily observations. Live charts and partial current-day points can update separately. Rounded figures are used throughout.

Risk signal: the December 15 exit deadline

The official migration page repeats the December 15, 2026 cutoff and warns that remaining assets will become inaccessible. Plan the withdrawal while the network still operates.

Use Abstract’s official website and announcement to find the routes. The X notice links migrate.abs.xyz and native-bridge.abs.xyz; the October 6 Terms of Service link migration.abs.xyz. Verify the final domain before connecting. Replies, DMs and sponsored search results do not establish an official route.

Check wallet assets and app positions separately: LP tokens and loans may need extra steps. Confirm the supported asset, receiving chain and gas required. Official bridge documentation says L2-to-L1 withdrawals can take up to 24 hours. Allow time for the entire process; a front-end estimate cannot guarantee completion for every route.

L2Beat lists Abstract as Stage 0 with an emergency upgrade path without the normal delay. These control assumptions deserve review; they do not predict theft. L2Beat’s risk analysis.

The terms also retain certain XP records for six months after discontinuation, without creating a right to a token, airdrop or payment. Keeping a record does not entitle a user to compensation.

What I would demand from the next consumer chain

A game can be useful with little DeFi capital. Abstract’s problem was sustaining this standalone chain with the available demand, liquidity and funding.

For the next consumer app, I would want a clear reason to run its own network rather than use an established one. Then I would check:

1. Who keeps the money? Separate app fees, chain revenue and cash reaching holders.

2. Who pays the costs? Identify the sponsor of gas and incentives, and what happens if funding shrinks.

3. Will users stay? Look for repeat purchases after rewards fall; value unconfirmed airdrops at zero.

4. Can my position exit? Check executable liquidity, the bridge route and the operator’s upgrade powers.

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This Week’s Intel

Five developments from October 1–7 that change a product, a risk or the route into DeFi.

Drift opens recovery claims

Drift opened DFX claims on October 1 for losses from its April incident. Each verified USDT lost receives one DFX, but the launch redemption value was only about 0.0104 USDT per token. The recovery pool opened with roughly 3.1 million USDT against 299.5 million DFX. Drift’s announcement.

Claiming DFX and redeeming it are separate decisions. Redemption burns the tokens submitted, ending their participation in future deposits. Holders can also retain or sell them. I would compare the amount available now with the future claim being surrendered, while treating promised recovery funding separately from cash already in the pool. Receiving one recovery token for every dollar lost does not mean receiving a dollar back.

Aave proposes closing a GHO carry trade

On October 2, TokenLogic proposed raising the Ethereum Core GHO borrowing rate from 4.25% to 4.50%, matching the Aave Savings Rate. At the rates quoted in the update, borrowers could mint GHO at 4.25% and deposit it into sGHO at 4.50%. The proposal also raises Prime’s base rate from 2.75% to 3.00%. Borrowers should check the live rate before relying on that spread. GHO Stewards update.

The same update reported depleted USDC reserves in the Stability Module, while the other module held about 22.5 million USDT. That concerns redemption liquidity in those modules, not the disappearance of all GHO collateral. Reserve replenishment matters for anyone depending on an immediate redemption route.

Uniswap’s institutional test moves to Japan

SMBC Nikko and Nethermind announced a DeFi Gateway for Japanese investors on October 2. It is being developed on Uniswap v4 with support from Uniswap Labs, Base and Nyx Foundation. Custom pools would use hooks for compliance checks and investor protections across stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets and other digital assets. Completion is targeted for mid-2027. Uniswap Labs.

Uniswap Labs’ announcement of the SMBC Nikko–Nethermind DeFi Gateway. Completion is targeted for mid-2027. Source: Uniswap Labs.

This offers a route for institutional distribution, which Abstract struggled to build. The next test is funded pools and repeat trading after the venue opens, followed by any revenue that actually reaches UNI holders.

Ethereum wants wallets to enforce transaction outcomes

The Ethereum Foundation’s October 5 research update describes native transaction assertions. These are signed conditions checked against what a transaction changes, with its actions reverted if the conditions fail. A wallet could independently require a minimum output, a spending limit or an approval policy, adding a check even when a transaction builder is compromised. Ethereum Foundation.

The Ethereum Foundation’s October 5 research update on transaction assertions. This is a proposed design, not an activated protection. Source: Ethereum Foundation.

EIP-7906 is one possible design being considered for Hegotá. It is not a confirmed activation or protection users can assume is already live. The rule also has to come from somewhere trustworthy: a malicious frontend can write an assertion that permits its own attack. I like the direction because it gives the wallet something concrete to enforce beyond a reassuring description of the signature.

FinCEN withdraws two pending crypto proposals

FinCEN announced on October 5 that it was withdrawing its 2020 proposal covering certain transactions involving self-hosted wallets and its 2023 proposal on international crypto mixing. The withdrawal notices list October 6 publication dates. Both proposals would have imposed additional reporting or recordkeeping requirements on covered financial institutions. FinCEN’s announcement, wallet notice and mixing notice.

For privacy and self-custody, this removes two pending policy threats. It does not erase existing anti-money-laundering or sanctions obligations. The mixing notice also leaves open future action against illicit finance.

Podcast Picks

Five recent conversations to pair with this issue.

Alt Season, Zcash, Collectibles & The Tokenization Trade

0xResearch · September 30, 2026

Start at 40:38 for tokenization’s utility, 48:01 for onchain stocks and 56:41 for Aave’s consumer push. The useful question alongside Abstract is what customers can do with their capital after onboarding. The speakers’ case for lending and tokenization is a thesis to test against actual use. Episode and chapters.

Why Reinsurance Could Become DeFi’s Best Collateral

0xResearch · September 23, 2026 · Ryan Connor and Ayyan Rahman

The source of the yield comes at 14:38, the risks that can wipe it out at 26:47, and the discussion of DeFi leverage at 37:53. This is useful background for evaluating returns funded by insurance premiums. “Best collateral” is the episode’s argument; insurance losses and leverage still need their own due diligence. Episode and chapters.

Bankless Rollup: Robinhood, exchange security and prediction markets

Bankless · October 2, 2026

A broader catch-up on market positioning, distribution and venue risk. It pairs well with this issue because a better route into crypto can bring users while leaving custody and operating risks unresolved. Episode.

Why the Near $NRR ETF is Different

Bankless · October 5, 2026 · Hunter Horsley and Sal Ternullo

This interview explores an institutional NEAR wrapper and the treasury-asset thesis with participants from Bitwise and Sovereign. Listen for who supplies the capital and what exposure they are buying. The guests have an interest in the product; their case is useful to examine alongside the distinction between network adoption and token demand. Episode.

Everyone Is Watching AI While Crypto’s Bull Market Builds

Empire · October 2, 2026

Skip to 21:23 for the crypto market discussion, 37:22 for regulation and funding, and 41:42 for whether growth looks different this cycle. The funding discussion helps test how much of the recovery comes from new business. Episode and chapters.

My take

Before funding the next consumer chain, I would want to see returning customers and revenue that covers its costs. For Pudgy, I will watch what Igloo funds next and whether it brings collectors who buy and hold without another reward. I’m still hopeful about the brand; those are the signs that would strengthen my case.

If you own a Pudgy, what would make you more confident in holding it from here? Reply to this email; I’d like to hear your view.

For related research, revisit Aave, Morpho or Pendle? Where I’d Look for Yield and Would I Lock My USDC in Morpho Midnight?. The figures in those earlier editions are dated; the questions about available liquidity and the actual source of a return still apply.

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Thanks for reading,

Yannis

For more DeFi commentary between editions, follow me on X.

This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial, investment, legal or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any asset. Crypto and DeFi positions can lose some or all of their value through price moves, smart-contract failures, bridge or oracle failures, limited liquidity, changes in governance, chain shutdowns and fraud. Data is a snapshot from October 7, 2026 and may change. Team statements are attributed, and editorial interpretations are opinions. Verify the current terms, supported assets and official addresses before using any service.

An extra percentage point on $10,000 is about $100 a year before costs. That is the scale of the decision across much of this week’s stablecoin shortlist. Add Ethereum gas, an early exit or a few swaps, and the difference gets smaller.

There are five setups below, including a higher-risk LP and points strategy. The question for each is whether the extra return pays for the extra exposure. One apparent double-digit opportunity failed the source check, so it stays off the shortlist.

In this edition:

• Five stablecoin yield opportunities on Ethereum and Base

• Five important stories across DeFi and Ethereum

• Onchain analytics: TVL, rates and available cash

• Five podcast picks on yield, markets and DeFi

Five yield opportunities to compare

Snapshots from September 27, 2026, around 17:50–18:15 UTC. APYs are annualized estimates, not the return for the remaining holding period. Rates, incentives and liquidity can change. Transaction costs are excluded.

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1. Sky sUSDS on Base: 3.60% variable APY

The simplest USDS option here. sUSDS accrues the governance-set Sky Savings Rate, funded from the protocol’s aggregate surplus. Sky can change that rate. The Base pool tracked by DefiLlama held about $12.03 million; that is its size, not a promise that the full amount is immediately withdrawable. Sky · Base pool data

This makes sense to compare if you already want USDS exposure. USDS backing, smart contracts and the Base deployment still matter. Before entering through Spark’s Base savings page, check the route back into the asset you actually plan to spend. A savings rate does not remove conversion or bridge risk.

2. Aave v3 USDC on Base: 4.10% variable APY

Borrowers pay the interest. DefiLlama’s 30-day average was 3.72%, which is a useful reminder that today’s quote is one point in a moving series. Rate history

The onchain check found 179.49 million USDC supplied and 17.32 million available, or roughly 90.35% utilization. Withdrawals depend on available cash; deposited capital already on loan cannot all leave at once. This is a straightforward USDC lending option, with Aave, collateral, USDC and Base risks. The quote is only half a percentage point above Sky, with a different underlying asset. Open the reserve · Withdrawal mechanics

3. Gauntlet USDC Prime on Morpho Base: 4.40% net variable APY

This vault spreads USDC across lending markets selected by Gauntlet. Morpho’s API showed $415.25 million deposited and $175.68 million of liquidity at the check. The return was only about 0.30 percentage points above Aave, roughly $30 a year on $10,000 if both rates stayed unchanged. Vault and allocations

That small spread is the reason to examine the collateral list, market caps and oracle choices. A large vault can still hold a market you would never choose directly. I would compare it after reviewing those allocations and the withdrawal queue, rather than treating the curator’s name as the risk assessment.

4. Pendle PT-sUSDS, November 26: 4.83% implied fixed APY

On Ethereum, this PT is bought below its maturity value. The displayed rate applies if the position is held to November 26, 2026, subject to the underlying and contracts performing as intended. An earlier exit happens at the market price. PT holders give up the underlying floating yield and points; the Sky savings rate is not an extra payment on top. Live market · PT mechanics

At roughly 60 days to maturity, 4.83% annualized works out to about 0.78% over the remaining period, or around $78 on $10,000 before costs. Holding a constant 3.60% savings rate for the same period would earn about $58. That roughly $20 difference can disappear into execution costs.

This is a way to fix the rate for a defined period. It is not automatically the highest-paying sUSDS route: the screen’s boosted underlying yield was higher. Check campaign eligibility, the executable quote and exit slippage before deciding.

5. Pendle sUSDe LP, November 26: 5.58% estimated APY, plus points exposure

This Ethereum pool adds Ethena exposure and liquidity provision. The live screen showed 5.58% LP APY, split into 5.17% in USDe-denominated return and 0.41% in PENDLE incentives, with about $4.02 million in AMM liquidity. It combines PT, the yield-bearing side of the pool, trading fees and incentives. These figures move. Live pool

For the points version, Keep YT retains a separate yield-token position. That preserves more points exposure but leaves less of the starting capital earning the displayed LP rate. YT reaches zero at maturity; its yield and points must be assessed alongside the PT component. You cannot apply the 5.58% LP estimate to the entire combined position and then add a made-up airdrop return. LP mechanics

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The market displays 20x Sats for YT exposure. That multiplier is neither a dollar yield nor a multiplier on the whole LP deposit. I would assign points zero value in the base case and check eligibility before entering. Points mechanics

Ethena brings funding, custody, exchange and backing-asset risks; Pendle adds contract and exit-pricing risks. A single-token exit can incur slippage, and unwinding the LP may leave PT and yield-bearing assets to redeem or sell. This is the experimental end of the list. At these rates, points need a separate thesis to justify the extra work. Ethena’s risk disclosures

Why Aerodrome missed the shortlist

Aerodrome: the attractive number needed a second look. DefiLlama showed about 15.93% APY for the Base USDC/USDT CL1 pool, combining a fee estimate with AERO rewards. Aerodrome’s docs say LPs earn emissions when staked or swap fees when unstaked. The native app also marks this pool MIGRATING. Its fee and emission estimates use different denominators and can differ sharply from an aggregator. I would resolve the migration destination and quote for the intended range before considering an entry. Aggregator · Aerodrome docs · Pool listings

This week’s intel

Five developments from September 21–27, 2026.

1. Aave brings stock collateral to Base

September 25. Aave V4 opened an Equities Hub where eligible users outside the US can borrow USDC against seven Coinbase stock tokens, including Apple and Nvidia. The initial borrowing cap is 21 million USDC. This gives tokenized equities a practical use beyond trading. The wrinkle: Chainlink’s feeds hold their last price over weekends while interest keeps accruing, so reopening can bring a sharp collateral repricing. This is a separate market from the Aave v3 reserve in the shortlist. The Block · Aave announcement

2. Ethena takes USDe’s basis trade into equities

September 25. Ethena announced an expansion of USDe’s backing strategy using Binance’s bStocks paired with short equity perpetuals. The aim is to earn funding from a new market while hedging stock-price exposure. For sUSDe holders, that broadens the sources of return and the risks behind them. The published risk framework flags thin weekend pricing and concentration within Binance’s group. I’d watch the actual allocation and net returns before assuming this will lift sUSDe’s yield. The Block · Risk framework

3. Vitalik sets out Ethereum’s direction after Hegota

September 27. Vitalik Buterin’s new essay describes Ethereum combining onchain verification with more computation performed across decentralized infrastructure outside the chain. Zero-knowledge proofs, privacy and parallel processing sit at the centre of that vision. My takeaway for DeFi: application design could increasingly determine how much cheaper and more private transactions become. This is a long-term technical direction; the post leaves substantial engineering challenges open and does not announce a live upgrade. The Defiant · Vitalik’s essay

4. SEC staff clarifies staking receipts and token buybacks

September 25. New SEC staff FAQs place qualifying staking receipts in non-security categories and say a buyback announcement for a non-security token on a functional crypto system does not, by itself, promise essential managerial efforts. Those conditions matter for staking providers and protocols considering buybacks. A receipt issuer’s ability to lend or pledge the deposited assets changes the analysis. The FAQs express staff views, carry no legal force, and give no blanket clearance to every staking or buyback design. The Defiant · SEC FAQs

5. Bitget’s hack estimate reaches $387.5 million

September 24–26. Bitget raised the loss estimate after adding assets missed in its initial accounting. The exchange says its protection fund covers the loss. Its announced withdrawal restart begins with BTC on September 28, followed by ETH on September 29, USDT on September 30 and other assets on October 2. As of this issue, those are planned dates. For anyone funding DeFi positions through an exchange, the practical lesson is that an intact account balance does not guarantee immediate access to the funds. CoinDesk · Bitget’s withdrawal schedule

Onchain analytics

Ethereum TVL rose 2.45% over the week. DefiLlama’s completed September 26 observation was $53.55 billion, versus $52.27 billion on September 19. These are dollar valuations. They do not establish how much fresh capital entered. Ethereum data

Base grew faster from a smaller starting point. The same dates show $6.25 billion, up 5.95% from $5.90 billion. Asset prices and changes in positions can both move TVL. This supports watching Base’s lending and trading markets, without treating the whole increase as new deposits. Base data

Aave’s rate history puts the current quote in context. The 4.10% supply APY is above its 3.72% 30-day average. Available USDC was about 9.65% of supplied USDC in the onchain snapshot. For an unlevered lender, the practical check is how much can be withdrawn when needed, alongside the collateral risks supporting the loan book.

Podcast picks

1. Guy Young on Ethena’s next markets, The Rollup, September 22. The conversation covers the founder’s thesis for RWA perpetuals and Ethena Pay, alongside buybacks and investor selling. Useful context for the sUSDe end of the shortlist. Treat it as the founder’s case for the business, not evidence that a particular yield will persist. Listen

2. Will Peck on tokenized money-market funds, The Rollup / Convergence, September 22. A discussion of WisdomTree’s onchain fund growth and how funds fit alongside stablecoins. The useful question for this issue is what a tokenized wrapper changes about access and trading, and what it leaves unchanged about the underlying asset’s liquidity. Listen

3. Ryan Connor and Ayyan Rahman on reinsurance collateral, 0xResearch, September 23. The guests explain how ONyc earns from reinsurance premiums and can be used as collateral on Kamino. The published chapters also cover catastrophe losses and the extra risks from DeFi leverage. Start at 14:38 for the source of yield, then 26:47 for what could wipe it out. Listen

4. Ryan Sean Adams and David Hoffman on the rally’s breadth, Bankless Rollup, September 25. The hosts debate whether this is an early bull market and why tokens with revenue or buybacks have attracted attention. They also cover Zcash, NEAR and rising bond yields. A useful companion to the onchain section: listen for the evidence behind their market call, rather than treating their confidence as confirmation. Listen

5. Kain Warwick, Taylor Monahan and Austin Griffith on ETH perp activity, Uneasy Money / Unchained, September 24. Kalshi’s reported volume sparked a debate over wash trading and paid market makers. The hosts examine competing explanations and whether the activity improves price discovery. Useful for judging exchange dashboards: turnover alone tells you little about who is trading or why. Listen

For cash needed soon, exit flexibility deserves more weight than a small rate spread. A fixed-rate position makes more sense when the holding period matches the maturity. LPs and points add a different job: monitoring the position and deciding whether the incentives still pay for its risks.

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This newsletter is research, not personalized investment advice. Stablecoins can depeg, contracts can fail, and exits can become expensive or unavailable. None of these returns is insured or guaranteed. Check current rates, fees, eligibility and withdrawal conditions before committing funds.

• UNI’s rally meets a tougher revenue test

• AERO’s fee position, and the emissions I would watch

• A new stablecoin LP setup and Pendle’s November trade

• 🧐 Three onchain signals behind the move

• 📚 This week’s intel and two podcast picks 🎧

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Hello everyone,

ETH is up about 13% over seven days. UNI has gained roughly 54%, with several Ethereum-related tokens moving even faster than ETH. The opportunity now is to work out which protocols can turn that attention into durable revenue.

In our September 6 issue, UNI and AERO were two of the places I wanted to investigate. This week’s follow-up is less comfortable: UNI’s tracked holder revenue fell over the latest completed week, and AERO’s recent chart is dominated by one exceptional day.

I still want to follow both. But I would set a different bar for buying a liquid token, locking into a fee position and earning on stablecoins while waiting.

What Has Already Moved

At the September 23 snapshot, ETH traded near $2,724, up 12.8% over seven days. UNI was up 54.1%, ARB 42.5%, OP 45.5% and ZRO 51.8% over the same interval.

That is a broad improvement in risk appetite. It also means “Ethereum is waking up” is already reflected in several prices. I would want a more specific reason to buy after these moves.

UNI: I Want Revenue to Catch Up

Uniswap’s appeal is that there is now an operating mechanism connecting eligible protocol fees to UNI burns. The v4 fee activation proposal executed on July 27. This is more concrete than waiting for a future fee-switch vote.

But the recent numbers do not yet justify extrapolating the token rally. DefiLlama recorded $3.12M in holder revenue from September 16–22, versus $3.63M from September 9–15, a decline of about 14%.

The dashboard’s roughly $209M in 30-day trading fees should not be treated as money accruing to UNI. Its corresponding protocol and holder-revenue measure was about $16M. Those are different parts of the economics, and a burn mechanism is not a cash dividend.

Robinhood Chain contributed about $1.31M, or 42%, of the latest completed week’s tracked holder revenue. That makes retention there worth following. One update to our earlier issue: Robinhood’s eligible network-fee promotion now runs through December 31, so September 29 is no longer the test date.

What would make me interested: several completed weeks of improving holder revenue, with activity broadening beyond a single subsidized venue. A pullback would help the entry price, but I would still want those operating numbers.

What would make me pass: another sharp rerating while the revenue trend keeps weakening. I would also avoid valuing UNI on total LP trading fees. The burn can work as designed while the token remains expensive.

AERO: Follow the Fees, Then Price the Lock

Aerodrome handled about $3.11B in DEX volume over September 16–22, up 7.6% from the preceding seven completed days. It generated roughly $2.96M in fees and $1.93M in tracked holder revenue during that latest week.

That is enough activity to keep AERO on the list. It is not a reason to annualize the unusually large revenue day visible in the chart. I would want the repeatable baseline, especially before accepting a long lock.

The position also matters. Holding liquid AERO does not automatically collect those fees. Under Aerodrome’s voting and reward model, users lock into veAERO and vote to receive the relevant rewards. LPs have a different return profile, including emissions, pool exposure and possible impermanent loss.

The dashboard reported about $2.28M of token incentives over its seven-day window. That is a material subsidy beside the fee numbers. I would track both before describing the return as sustainable.

My entry test: inspect the specific pool’s fee history, the voting rewards available to the proposed lock and the lock’s exit terms. I would model a quieter month and a lower AERO price, rather than assuming the latest rewards persist.

My pass condition: the attractive APR relies mainly on emissions or one exceptional day, or the lock lasts longer than I am willing to hold the token. The liquid token and the fee position should be evaluated separately.

The LP Design I’d Investigate: StablePair

Uniswap’s new StablePair hook is worth a closer look for USDC/USDG and USDC/USDT liquidity. It changes the fee according to the pool’s deviation from a reference price and the direction of the trade, aiming to leave more of the rebalancing value with LPs.

The appeal is a potential improvement in fee capture on familiar stablecoin pairs. The unanswered question is how much an LP actually retains after adverse selection, costs and any incentives.

I would compare realized returns with an ordinary stablecoin pool before depositing. I would also review the hook’s upgrade controls and what happens when one stablecoin loses its peg. A reference price does not guarantee that either token can be redeemed at that price.

For now, this is a research watch, not a quoted yield opportunity. I do not have a verified, executable APR that would justify recommending an entry. Uniswap’s September 16 technical explanation and pool links

Pendle’s November Trade: What Is the Lock Worth?

For money I can leave until November 26, PT-sUSDS quoted about 5.17% implied fixed APY, with roughly 0.88% return remaining to maturity. The return comes from buying the principal token below its redemption value. The Sky savings yield does not stack on top.

On $10,000, that remaining return is about $88 before costs, assuming normal redemption and a stable USDS peg. The unboosted Sky savings rate was 3.60% in the earlier same-day snapshot, worth roughly $62 over about 64 days if unchanged. That puts the extra return near $26 before gas and swaps.

Pendle’s interface separately displayed 5.25% underlying APY including a campaign boost. That is another reason to inspect the promotion’s eligibility and duration before choosing between PT and a floating position; comparing PT only with the unboosted rate would miss part of the decision.

I would consider PT when the money has a November job and the executable quote still leaves enough return after costs. I would pass if I might need an early exit. Selling before maturity introduces price and liquidity risk, and “fixed” does not remove USDS or contract risk.

Flexible USDC While I Wait

The short list on Base is Aave v3 USDC at 3.91%, Gauntlet USDC Prime at 4.42% current net APY, and Steakhouse High Yield USDC at 5.24% current net APY. These are floating snapshots, not promised returns.

Gauntlet is the first curated vault I would investigate, with Aave as the direct-lending comparison. Gauntlet reported about $172.55M of liquidity against $415.81M deposited. Aave had 17.52M USDC available against 177.82M supplied; withdrawals depend on unborrowed liquidity.

Steakhouse’s premium over Gauntlet is only about $7 on $10,000 over 30 days, assuming unchanged rates. I would want to understand the extra collateral and curator exposure. Its normal withdrawal route reported $5.56M, with another $7.40M separately recoverable from zero-penalty adapters. Those routes should not be reduced to a single misleading “available” number.

September 23, approximately 12:11–12:19 UTC: Aave market, Gauntlet vault, Steakhouse vault. Morpho net rates already reflect applicable fees. Check current allocations and an exit quote before depositing.

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Onchain Analytics 🧐

1. TVL Is Rising Faster Than Stablecoin Supply

Ethereum DeFi TVL reached $54.47B on September 22, up 8.56% from September 15. Base reached $6.25B, up 10.63%. Higher token prices can lift dollar TVL, so these changes do not establish equivalent net deposits.

Over the same dates, growthepie’s stablecoin series showed Ethereum at $162.36B, up 0.09%, and Base at $4.94B, up 0.97%. Its coverage differs from DefiLlama’s stablecoin dashboard. I would look for sustained stablecoin growth alongside TVL before calling this a rush of fresh capital.

2. Base’s Transaction Count Has Yet to Confirm the Move

Base processed 9.50M transactions on September 22, versus 10.48M on September 15, a decline of about 9.4% between those daily observations.

That does not establish a falling weekly trend, and transaction counts do not measure economic value on their own. It does make “everything on Base is accelerating” too strong. I would watch whether activity catches up with the higher value deposited in DeFi.

3. Ethereum’s Fee Growth Is More Modest Than the Token Rally

Ethereum users paid about $466,000 in fees on September 22, up 4.4% from September 15. This is another daily comparison, not a change in weekly totals.

The price move is stronger than this usage signal. For now, my working view is improving risk appetite with uneven operating confirmation. That keeps me interested in specific fee-generating protocols, without treating a broad bull market as settled.

This Week’s Intel 📚

Robinhood’s fee-promotion deadline has moved. The official terms now cover eligible Robinhood Wallet swaps on Robinhood Chain through December 31, 2026. Transfers, bridges, third-party wallets and the in-app dapp browser are excluded. This replaces the September 29 date in our earlier issue and pushes back the clean test of demand without that network-fee subsidy. Current terms

Uniswap is live on Arc. The September 16 launch covers v2, v3, v4 and UniswapX, with app, wallet and API support. Another distribution channel is useful; sustained volume and LP returns will tell us more than the launch announcement. Uniswap Labs

Circle’s Arc mainnet is open. Circle announced the public launch on September 16, with native USDC integration and a founding institutional validator cohort. For DeFi users, I would examine bridge routes, validator assumptions and actual liquidity before treating a new venue as interchangeable with Ethereum. Circle announcement

EU central banks want tighter stablecoin yield rules. The ESCB’s MiCA review response recommends extending the remuneration ban to indirect returns through lending, borrowing and staking, and discusses DeFi arrangements. This is a policy recommendation, not a newly enacted ban on the products above. The Commission’s consultation closes September 30 at 23:59 CEST. Primary response · Consultation

The ECB prepares to buy tokenized securities. Its September 21 announcement concerns a small share of its own funds, initially euro-denominated public-sector and supranational securities, with settlement through Pontes. Timing and operational details remain open. It is an institutional adoption signal, not a plan to buy DeFi tokens. ECB announcement

Podcast Picks 🎧

Bankless: The Bull Market Test · September 18

Ryan and David discuss whether the market’s resilience to bad news signals an early bull phase. A useful companion to this week’s price moves and mixed onchain readings. Their market call is an interpretation to test against the data. Listen and read the transcript

Bankless: Arc Mainnet, AI Agents, and Tokenized Markets · September 16

Circle’s Nikhil Chandhok explains Arc’s launch, stablecoin gas and permissioned validator set. Useful context for the new Uniswap venue, with a clear distinction between the operator’s ambitions and evidence of sustained adoption. Listen and read the transcript

My order of work this week: follow UNI’s revenue, price AERO’s lock using ordinary weeks, and keep the stablecoin decision tied to when I need the money back.

Hit reply: which protocol’s fees would you trust to keep growing if token prices went sideways for a month?

For the earlier comparisons: Where I’d Look After UNI’s 45% Rally · Would I Lock My USDC?

Thanks for reading,

Yannis

If this helped, share it with someone looking beyond token prices.

This newsletter is for information only and is not financial, legal or tax advice. DeFi positions can lose capital through token volatility, smart-contract failures, depegs, collateral losses, oracle failures, curator decisions, bridge failures and limited liquidity. Fixed rates do not guarantee repayment. Rates and access rules can change. Do your own research and only risk what you can afford to lose.

• 🌙 Morpho Midnight vs Blue

• 🧐 Onchain Analytics

• 📚 This Week’s Intel

• 🎧 Podcast Picks

Hello everyone,

Morpho Midnight gives USDC lenders a useful option: agree a rate upfront for a defined term. If floating yields fall while the loan is outstanding, locking a good rate could pay off.

This week’s Ethereum expansion made me want to compare it with the Morpho Blue vaults already competing for that USDC. The first thing I’d check is whether a quoted rate is actually available to a lender. Today’s book makes that question more useful than a headline APY comparison.

Morpho Midnight vs Blue: Where I’d Look 🌙

Midnight matches lending and borrowing offers for fixed-rate, fixed-term credit. Blue remains Morpho’s variable-rate, open-term lending protocol. Ethereum now has listed USDC markets backed by WBTC and cbBTC, alongside the earlier Base deployment.

Start with the side of the book you can fill

Source: Morpho Markets, captured September 13, around 07:00 ICT. The rows are Ethereum-only. The $8.05M deposits and $2.64M loans header remains unchanged by the filter and represents the overall dashboard, not the Ethereum rows.

The Ethereum cbBTC market maturing September 25 showed roughly 740,000 USDC of lender offers, against just 3.64 USDC of borrower offers. Most other displayed maturities had no borrower offers available at that moment.

For someone supplying USDC, that is a very one-sided book. The large “Lend depth” number is capital other lenders are offering. Borrowers can take those offers. A new lender needs a borrower offer to fill immediately, or can post a lending limit order and wait for someone to take it.

An advertised lending offer is not an executed loan earning that rate. That is why I would not lift the largest percentage in this screenshot and call it “the Midnight yield.” Morpho’s API documentation distinguishes the two sides, and multi-market offers can share a capital budget across markets. Adding every depth number together can count the same capital more than once.

The opportunity is worth watching. On this snapshot, I’d be preparing a target rate and maturity, rather than assuming I could deploy meaningful size immediately.

What a fixed term needs to pay me

Lenders buy credit units at a discount to the amount due at maturity. Different offers have different prices, so the economics depend on the actual fills. Market mechanics

For example, paying 9,900 USDC for 10,000 USDC due at maturity would earn about 1.01% over the term, before costs or losses. The annualized rate depends on the time remaining. That is illustrative arithmetic, not a live quote.

I’d look for a competitive fixed rate and a maturity that matches when I expect to need the money. A small advantage can disappear into transaction costs, moving funds between chains, or selling early at an unattractive price.

Falling floating rates would help that decision; rising rates could leave the fixed position underperforming. And a fixed rate still leaves the lender exposed to collateral losses and bad debt. I’d plan to hold through maturity unless an acceptable exit quote was demonstrably available.

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Gauntlet USDC Prime: the larger floating comparison

The exact Gauntlet USDC Prime V1 vault on Base displayed 4.32% net APY, about $420.17M deposited and $167.07M of liquidity.

It gives me a practical benchmark for leaving USDC in a curated floating vault. The rate can change. Its size does not establish safety: the curator’s allocations, collateral and liquidation settings still determine what can go wrong.

Source: Morpho vault page, September 13, around 06:50 ICT. Figures use the header’s net APY; the deposit widget showed a slightly different rate at capture.

Steakhouse High Yield: look beyond the extra yield

Steakhouse High Yield USDC V2 on Base displayed 4.97% net APY, $32.16M deposited and $14.6M of liquidity, with a 5% performance fee and no management fee.

Its wider collateral range deserves attention before the roughly 0.65 percentage-point premium over Gauntlet. At capture, about 61% of this vault’s allocation was in its USDC market backed by cbXRP. That concentration is a more useful starting point for risk assessment than the APY alone.

The liquidity figure also needs care. It includes about $5.68M available through the liquidity adapter, plus roughly $8.92M that can be pulled back from other allocations without a deallocation penalty. I would still check the actual withdrawal route and available amount before relying on it for an immediate exit.

Sources: Morpho vault UI and GraphQL, September 13, around 06:50–07:00 ICT. Both vault rates are floating snapshots, not promised returns over a future Midnight term. These are Base vaults; the Midnight table above is Ethereum.

What would change my view

I’d become more interested if competitive Midnight quotes were repeatedly available for a useful lending size, with a maturity I co

uld hold. Future vault allocations could deepen the book, although more competing lenders could also compress rates.

On September 5, Paul Frambot said vault access was expected in Q4, following DAO activation. That was an expected rollout, not a guaranteed date or a promise that curators would move their deposits. I would watch implemented access and actual allocations before pricing in that demand.

Before committing USDC, I’d check:

• The exact chain, collateral, oracle and liquidation terms.

• A fill or limit order for my full size, including fees and maturity.

• The expected USDC return against a floating alternative over the same period.

• Whether I can hold to maturity if an early exit is unattractive.

• Whether the decision still works without future vault inflows.

For now, Midnight stays on my fixed-income watchlist. The product is interesting; today’s thin borrower side gives me a concrete reason to wait for a better fill.

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Onchain Analytics 🧐

Ethereum’s TVL rose, while Base slipped

DeFiLlama’s latest daily points put Ethereum DeFi TVL at $50.07B, up 2.03% over seven days, and Base at $5.59B, down 0.82%. Both points are dated September 12 and compared with September 5.

That is a mixed backdrop for a lending launch. Dollar-denominated TVL can move with token prices, so this is not evidence that fresh capital is entering Midnight. I’d follow its own executed loans and usable depth separately.

Source: Ethereum daily TVL and Base daily TVL, retrieved September 13 ICT. DeFi TVL is distinct from a chain’s total value secured.

Vault deposits are not all available for withdrawal

Gauntlet’s displayed liquidity was about 40% of deposits; Steakhouse’s broader displayed measure was about 45%, including the additional deallocation route described above. Those ratios help frame position size, but they are not safety scores and can change as borrowers act or curators move capital.

The practical comparison is between an executable fixed-term loan and a floating vault’s current withdrawal capacity. Neither a large deposit total nor an “open-term” label guarantees the exit you want.

Midnight’s Ethereum book still needs two sides

The eight visible Ethereum rows had only about 76 USDC of outstanding loans in total at capture, even though lender offers ran into much larger amounts. This is a snapshot of the displayed markets, not a claim about every possible market or a complete protocol balance sheet.

I’d watch whether actual borrowing grows across maturities. That would make the fixed-rate comparison more meaningful than counting unfilled offers or attributing the overall dashboard’s millions to Ethereum.

Source: Ethereum-filtered market table, September 13, around 07:00 ICT. Global summary figures stay separate from the filtered rows.

This Week’s Intel 📚

Uniswap gives stablecoin LPs a new fee mechanism

Uniswap Labs launched StablePair Hook on September 10, starting with USDC/USDG and USDC/USDT pools on Ethereum. The v4 hook adjusts fees around a reference price and auctions certain arbitrage opportunities, aiming to leave more of that value with LPs. I’d watch realized fee income and volume before moving liquidity. Its fee logic is upgradeable through governance, and the mechanism does not remove stablecoin or contract risk. Uniswap Labs

Aave lets assistants read positions and prepare transactions

Aave’s September 8 MCP release connects AI assistants to live V3 and V4 data, including rates, positions and health factors. It can simulate an action and prepare a transaction. That could make comparing lending markets and monitoring debt easier, but prepared transactions remain unsigned until the user’s wallet approves them. I’d still review the transaction and resulting health factor. Aave Labs

Ethereum sets its Hegotá priorities

The Ethereum Foundation’s Protocol cluster published its Hegotá priorities on September 7, ranking FOCIL and Frame Transactions as the two leading commitments. FOCIL aims to give eligible transactions an inclusion route that does not depend on centralized builders. Frames support native account abstraction and a route toward new signature schemes. Both matter for DeFi access and wallet security; they remain upgrade priorities, not features already live on mainnet. Ethereum Foundation

Podcast Picks 🎧

Morpho Midnight: The Future of Fixed-Rate Lending | Paul Frambot

Bankless · July 29, 2026 · Background pick

An older episode worth revisiting for this issue. Frambot explains fixed terms, discounted obligations and the gradual rollout. Useful for the mechanics; July’s comments should not be mistaken for today’s market state. Listen and read the transcript

The New Economics of Crypto Tokens | Austin Barack

Bankless · September 7, 2026

Barack looks at application tokens through revenue, growth and value capture, with Venice, Hyperliquid, Pump and EtherFi doing most of the work. A useful companion when separating an interesting DeFi product from an attractive token investment. Listen and read the transcript

That’s it for this week. I’m interested in fixed-rate lending, but I’d want the actual fill to justify giving up flexibility. The rate, the amount and the maturity need to work together.

For the wider stablecoin comparison, revisit where I’d park stablecoins.

Hit reply: what premium would you need to lock USDC for three months?

If this helped, share it with someone comparing Morpho yields.

Share

Thanks for reading,
Yannis

This newsletter is for information only and is not financial advice. DeFi positions can lose capital through smart-contract failures, collateral losses, oracle failures and limited liquidity. A fixed rate does not guarantee repayment. Do your own research and only risk what you can afford to lose.

• 🔎 What has already pumped, and the trades I’d still investigate

• 💧 A stock-token LP with measurable turnover and deeper liquidity

• 🏦 USDG Earn as a place to wait

• 🧐 Onchain Analytics

• 📚 This Week’s Intel and two YouTube Podcast Picks

Hello everyone,

UNI is up nearly 45% this week. ARB has done even better. I’m still watching UNI, but I’d want fees to hold while its price cools off.

For trading income, I’d investigate SPY/USDG. PONS needs its burns checked, while AERO offers a fee position on Base. Here’s what would get me interested, and what would make me pass.

What Has Already Moved

ARB gained 54.1% over seven days and UNI 44.5%, against ETH’s 0.9%. ENA leads this selected screen over 30 days.

UNI Is My First Token Watch

DeFiLlama attributes $2.99M of seven-day Uniswap holder revenue to Robinhood Chain, out of $4.19M across Uniswap. Over 30 days, Robinhood contributed $5.64M of $10.71M. Robinhood data

The mechanism is live: accumulated protocol fees can be claimed in exchange for burning UNI. Holding UNI gives exposure to that supply reduction, without a cash distribution. Executed governance proposal

At roughly $6.33 and a $3.95B market cap, I’d wait for a pullback or sideways trading while Robinhood-origin holder revenue holds near its $2.99M weekly baseline. Falling fees and a rising valuation would weaken the setup.

The next test comes after September 29, when the promotion covering certain Robinhood Wallet swap fees is scheduled to end. A full week of retained activity would strengthen the thesis. Promotion terms

ARB ranks lower for me. Its revenue route benefits the ecosystem and DAO treasury, without an automatic holder payout. After a 54% weekly rally, I’d watch the September 16 unlock and subsequent revenue retention before entering. Arbitrum economics · Supply schedule

PONS Has My Attention, but I Want the Burns Reconciled

PONS rose from roughly $0.244 at the August 30 open to $0.897 on September 5, about 3.7x. That differs from the rolling seven-day window above. Reference pool

DeFiLlama reports $7.73M of combined V1+V2 protocol revenue over August 29–September 4. Its holder-revenue metric covers V1 only, so comparing those columns cannot establish whether all PONS buybacks are keeping pace. Dashboard and methodology

The v1 docs describe an 80% PONS buyback policy, run manually through a TWAP and still changeable. V2’s optional launch-token buybacks are separate. Before entering, I’d want current PONS-specific purchases and burns reconciled, with revenue holding and price consolidating. A fading launch business or a token price running ahead of verified burns would keep me out.

The LP I’d Investigate: SPY/USDG

The SPY/USDG Uniswap v4 pool had roughly $9.55M in liquidity, $3.55M of 24-hour volume and a 0.30% fee tier. Across August 30 through the partial September 5 day, it processed $29.07M. That implies about $87,200 in gross fees, before the protocol’s share. Dated volume

Gross fees equal 0.91% of current liquidity over the period, before the protocol share. This screening ratio is not an APY; realized LP returns depend on range and liquidity share.

I’d enter near the issuer’s adjusted reference price during market hours, after checking the protocol cut and choosing a manageable range. Track fees after rebalancing costs versus holding the starting assets. Persistent price gaps, repeated range exits or falling turnover would make me reduce or close it. The LP accumulates stock tokens after a fall and sells them into USDG during a rally.

One farm to distinguish: GIGA’s gauged pools trade swap-fee income for GIGA emissions. Its non-gauged route retains 97% of fees without emissions. The current WETH/USDG gauge’s indexed split shows no LP fees. Price the reward token and its emission schedule before valuing that farm. Pool split · GIGA docs

AERO Is the Base Alternative

Coinbase’s August 26 newsletter named Aerodrome as a venue for its first tokenized stocks on Base. Coinbase newsletter

The DeFiLlama snapshot reviewed September 5 records $12.76B of 30-day volume, $6.93M in fees and $4.84M for veAERO voters. AERO’s 22% monthly rise is smaller than several peers, though that alone cannot establish value.

Liquid AERO earns no fees. To collect revenue, you lock into veAERO and vote. Locks run from one week to four years, with longer locks getting more voting power. Monthly LP incentives were $9.28M, well above voter income. Lock mechanics

I’d compare the next epoch with the latest $1.12M in weekly voter revenue and $1.92M in LP incentives. Steady fees while AERO cools off would improve the entry. Stagnant fees and rising emissions would make me pass. The lock is a separate commitment from buying liquid AERO.

The Stock-Token Pool I’d Be Careful With

The reported HIMS print of $132.64 on August 30, against a $28.84 Friday share close, came with only about $39,000 of volume in the hour containing the high. Thin pricing can make arbitrage and LP returns look easier than they are. Reporting

Robinhood Stock Tokens are debt securities issued by its Jersey entity, rather than ownership of the underlying shares. Ordinary holders generally depend on secondary markets, with limited direct-redemption exceptions. I’d check the issuer terms, weekend exit and jurisdiction restrictions before funding any stock-token pool. Issuer FAQ · Eligibility

USDG Earn Is a Place to Wait

While waiting, eligible US customers can use Robinhood Earn’s Morpho USDG vault, curated by Steakhouse. Its September 5 page showed 3.70% native APY over seven days. DeFiLlama’s separate observation showed 6.98% total APY, including 3.23% rewards. Earn mechanics

Available liquidity was $29.78M against $447.23M deposited. Withdrawals depend on available liquidity, and the position carries USDG, Morpho and curator/collateral risk. I’d compare its borrower-paid return with last week’s stablecoin options and treat rewards as a bonus that can disappear.

Get the next Weekly Alpha in your inbox: DeFi setups, the evidence behind them and what would change my view.

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Onchain Analytics 🧐

The Revenue Jump Is Hard to Miss

DeFiLlama records $6.04M in chain fees and $5.44M in net chain revenue on September 4. Net chain revenue was about $495K on August 29. Those are completed UTC days, rather than an annualized projection from a partial day.

The Wallet promotion excludes bridges, transfers and third-party wallets. Its end will test retention.

Nearly $900M in TVL. How Much Stays?

The historical API’s September 5 point puts Robinhood Chain DeFi TVL at $890.10M, up 31.5% from August 29. USD TVL includes asset-price effects, so that increase cannot all be described as new deposits.

DEX volume totalled $10.73B across August 29–September 4, including $1.89B on September 4, in the DeFiLlama chain DEX series. That is trading turnover, with no stock-token breakdown or assurance of retention.

Who Can Change the Rules?

L2BEAT places Robinhood Chain below Stage 0, with node-software availability under review and two whitelisted challengers. Robinhood’s governance docs distinguish routine Security Council actions, which require six of eight approvals and a seven-day delay, from emergency actions, which can bypass that delay with seven of eight approvals.

Emergency upgrades can remove the expected exit window.

This Week’s Intel 📚

Cronos rolled back history after the Tectonic exploit

After the August 30 exploit, Cronos halted and rolled back 10,961 blocks, including unrelated transactions. 1delta gives the block count; TRM Labs corroborates the rollback. Loss estimates differ. Users should reconcile their balances and transaction status against the restarted chain.

Ethena approved the route to ENA buybacks

The vote closed September 2. Buybacks begin at a $7.5B 14-day average of USDe supply, taking 5% of gross protocol revenue at that rung. ENA has already risen 80.4% over 30 days. Watch the supply gate and actual purchases before treating approval as token income. Governance schedule · Outcome

Bitwise launched PAPY on Morpho

Bitwise launched its Premium RWA Vault on September 2. Users supply Agora’s AUSD to a vault lending against selected tokenized credit collateral. Its 5–6% target APY is variable, and the manager charges a 0.39% annual fee. I’d check the live allocations and net rate, collateral concentration and any separate rewards before relying on the launch target.

Pendle’s PT-USDG demand is showing up on Aave

Aave’s September 4 risk review put PT-USDG at 81.4% of its 35M supply cap on X Layer and recommended doubling that cap to 70M. That gives the Pendle thesis a measurable adoption signal. PENDLE is already up 42% over 30 days; I’d track additional deposits and fees after the cap change before treating the integration as a fresh reason to buy.

The SEC put blockchain records into a transfer-agent proposal

The September 1 proposal contemplates electronic and blockchain-based recordkeeping. It remains proposed rulemaking and does not settle the rights attached to stock-linked tokens already trading.

Podcast Picks 🎧

The Chopping Block: Robinhood Chain’s Memecoin Mania and Tokenized Stocks

Unchained · September 3

Start here if the stock-token and memecoin pairings still seem strange. The panel covers how that market works, what is driving the activity and where retail traders can get hurt.

Watch on YouTube

How Tokenized Stocks Could Undercut Interactive Brokers’ 77% Profit Margin

Unchained · August 28

For the longer-term stock-trading case, Alex Cutler of Dromos Labs discusses Base, Aerodrome liquidity, minting and redemption. It’s a useful companion to the Robinhood discussion because it asks how onchain markets might compete with established brokers.

Watch on YouTube

If you’re running one of these pools, I’d be interested in your realized fees after rebalancing, especially once rewards are stripped out. Hit reply.

For related reading, revisit Where I’d Park Stablecoins This Week and the ONDO value-capture discussion in Weekly Alpha #59.

Share this issue with someone comparing DeFi trades this week.

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Nothing in this newsletter is financial, investment or legal advice. Crypto, DeFi and tokenized securities can lose value or fail. Risks include issuer and counterparty failure, smart-contract bugs, collateral losses, oracle errors, changing rewards, limited liquidity and restrictions on access or redemption. Verify the current product terms and your eligibility, do your own research, and never invest more than you can afford to lose.

• 🧑‍🌾 Five live stablecoin yields compared

• ⚠️ What a $36.14M liquidation says about PT loops

• 📊 Ethereum and Base: TVL, stablecoin supply and fees

• ✅ Six questions before taking the extra yield

• 🎧 Two podcasts worth your time

  ---

Hey, welcome back. I disappeared for seven weeks, which is longer than I planned. Thanks for sticking around.

For the first issue back, I worked through a decision I needed to make for my own portfolio. I checked five places I would actually consider parking stablecoins. The APY was the easy part. I spent more time on where the yield comes from and whether I could get out without forcing a bad trade.

Where to park stables this week: five live options compared

The five rates sat in a narrow band, from 3.50% on Aave to 5.11% on Steakhouse. I would not take more risk for 161 basis points until I knew what changed underneath. The real choice is between USDC and USDS, fixed and floating rates, direct lending and curator-managed vaults, and the liquidity available on the day I want my money back.

1. Pendle PT-sUSDS 26 Nov (4.81% fixed)

• Capital and liquidity: $82.00M market TVL, with $3.47M shown as pool liquidity.

• Yield source: Buy PT below par and redeem at maturity.

• Main risk: USDS exposure, duration, early-exit pricing and the Pendle contract.

2. Sky sUSDS on Base (3.52% floating)

• Capital and liquidity: $12.00M Base TVL.

• Yield source: The governance-set Sky Savings Rate.

• Main risk: USDS, governance changes and the Base wrapper or bridge.

3. Aave v3 USDC on Base (3.50% floating)

• Capital and liquidity: $180.27M supplied, with $24.36M available.

• Yield source: Interest paid by USDC borrowers.

• Main risk: Utilization, the Aave contract, USDC and Base exposure.

4. Morpho / Gauntlet USDC Prime (4.42% floating)

• Capital and liquidity: $432.87M deposited, with $158.61M liquid.

• Yield source: Morpho lending markets selected by Gauntlet.

• Main risk: The curator’s collateral, LLTV and oracle decisions.

5. Morpho / Steakhouse High Yield USDC (5.11% floating)

• Capital and liquidity: $36.72M deposited, with $5.81M liquid.

• Yield source: Morpho lending markets selected by Steakhouse.

• Main risk: Broader collateral, curator and liquidity risk, plus a 5% performance fee.

How I think about the five options

I’ll keep tracking these rates and the liquidity behind them.

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Pendle: fixed until 26 November

PT-sUSDS was trading below par, so holding it to 26 November and redeeming at par locked in a 4.81% implied APY at the snapshot. sUSDS itself was paying 3.52%. The extra 129 basis points pays me for giving up flexibility and taking another contract.

That only works if I am happy to hold. If I sell early, the market price, slippage and fees decide the return. The market had $82.00M in TVL but just $3.47M of pool liquidity, so I would size the position around the exit rather than the headline TVL.

The 5.04% figure in CryptoBriefing was for PT-sUSDe, a different underlying from the PT-sUSDS market used here. The article gave a broader 4.74% to 5.38% range for sUSDS markets, so I used the live Pendle quote above.

Sky and Aave: simpler floating rates

Sky is the easiest rate here to explain. Hold sUSDS and the protocol pays the governance-set savings rate. The Base wrapper showed 3.52% and about $12M in TVL. I would use it only if I already wanted USDS and was comfortable with the Base wrapper.

Aave is the plain USDC option. Borrowers pay lenders, and at 06:44 CEST the Base pool had $180.27M supplied with $24.36M available. If withdrawals picked up, I would watch the second number before the APY.

Morpho: the curator matters

Gauntlet USDC Prime was paying 4.42% with $432.87M deposited and $158.61M liquid. The vault looks simple from the outside, but Gauntlet chooses the Morpho markets, collateral caps, LLTVs and oracles. The rate comes with Gauntlet’s risk decisions.

Steakhouse paid the most at 5.11%, but only $5.81M was liquid against $36.72M deposited. It also charges a 5% performance fee and reaches into a broader set of collateral markets. That extra 69 basis points over Gauntlet is not free.

My choice changes with the job. For USDS, Sky is the cleanest floating rate. For direct USDC lending, Aave is easier to monitor. I would use Gauntlet only after checking its current market allocations. PT-sUSDS makes sense when I can hold until November. Steakhouse stays at the bottom of my list until I have reviewed every underlying market.

For context, I covered a 4.59% fixed Pendle lock in Weekly Alpha #54, and Weekly Alpha #55 showed Sky at 4.00%. Those posts still explain the mechanics, but this issue’s comparison replaces their expired dates and rates.

This week’s risk signal: $36.14M liquidated with zero bad debt

On 25 August, trades in a thin Pendle reUSD market pushed the principal-token price down about 2.8%. Morpho recorded 33 liquidations in roughly 14 minutes and repaid $36.14M of debt with zero realized bad debt. The Defiant

Nothing broke in the oracle. It did what it was configured to do and closed positions before lenders took a loss. The borrowers were running with less than a 3% buffer, while a small market was setting the price for much larger leveraged positions. A move that looked minor in the market was enough to wipe out the loopers.

These were Morpho markets using PT-reUSD as collateral. A curated USDC depositor sits on the lending side rather than running the loop. The curator can still allocate deposits to PT-backed markets. I would check the market list, oracle and available liquidity before treating a curated vault as a single risk.

Aave’s official forum described a separate PT-risk control on 28 August. Its LlamaGuard stack is deployed on Ethereum and ready for activation for PT-srUSDe-22OCT2026. The activation AIP still has to register and enable the agents, and the stack does not replace the reserve’s price feed. Aave governance

Capital held up while mainnet activity cooled

Ethereum DeFi TVL ended 29 August at $48.84B, down 1.13% for the week. Base edged up 0.34% to $5.52B.

L2Beat showed $12.43B secured on Base. That number includes a different set of assets from DefiLlama’s protocol TVL, so I keep the two separate.

Ethereum mainnet stablecoin supply still grew 0.66% to $161.92B. At the same time, fees paid on 28 August fell 56% from the prior week to $414,179.

To me, that looks like capital sitting still while people spend less to use L1. One quiet week is not enough to call an Ethereum exit or a clean rotation into Base.

Data checked 30 August from DefiLlama Ethereum, DefiLlama Base, L2Beat Base and growthepie’s stablecoin supply and fees pages.

Six questions before taking the extra yield

The Morpho liquidation reminded me what I want to know before I deposit:

1. Which stablecoin am I actually holding, and what backs it?

2. Can I explain the source of the yield in one sentence?

3. Is the rate fixed or variable, and what changes it?

4. How much liquidity is available if I need to exit today?

5. Who selects the collateral markets and configures the oracle?

6. What extra bridge, wrapper or contract sits between me and the underlying asset?

If I cannot answer all six, I leave the APY alone.

If this was useful, send it to the person who still sorts vaults by APY.

Share

Two podcasts I kept 🎧

• Peter Van Valkenburgh on Unchained: He talks through how the GENIUS Act’s freeze-and-seize rules reach the secondary stablecoin market. I listened because peg charts miss this part of stablecoin risk. Listen

• Empire on Ethena: The episode gets into the protocol’s tokenomics overhaul and growth. It helped me separate the ENA governance story from the mechanics behind USDe and sUSDe. Listen

  ---

That is all for this issue.

I am happy to earn less when I can explain exactly where the money sits and who pays the return. If I need a diagram and ten caveats to justify the APY, I probably should not be there.

If this was useful, send it to the person who still sorts vaults by APY.

Follow me on X and Farcaster

None of the information in this newsletter is financial advice. Protocols involve substantial risk, including smart-contract, liquidity, duration, curator, oracle and underlying-asset risk. Do not invest what you cannot afford to lose. Do your own research.

🧑‍🌾 AI x Crypto on Ethereum
🧐 Onchain Analytics
📚 This Week’s Intel
🎧 Podcast Picks

Hello everyone,

AI x crypto is back in the market’s attention.

The useful read is narrower than the headline.

Four different things are being priced under one label: AI networks, access tokens, payment rails, and early onchain AI markets. Those are not the same trade.

The question for investors is simple: where is there real usage, where does crypto improve the product, and who captures value if that usage grows?

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AI x Crypto on Ethereum

Start by separating the benchmark from the Ethereum trade.

Bittensor is the outside benchmark. It has an active subnet market and a real cost to compete for capacity, but its EVM runs on Bittensor/Subtensor, not Ethereum. For ETH and EVM investors, TAO is a comparison point, not direct Ethereum-native AI exposure.

The EVM watchlist is much narrower.

Investor map:

• Bittensor: outside benchmark. What has to be proven: useful subnet demand. beyond TAO speculation.

• Venice / VVV: Base-nativeprivate AI access token. What has to be proven: users stake or hold VVV for inference, not. just narrative exposure.

• x402: stablecoin payment rail fo. APIs and agents. What has to be proven:API providers, agents, wallets, and facilitators actually adopt it.

• Gensyn: liveAI-settled information-market product, with optional verifiable settlement. What has to be proven: real users, workloads, and settlement volume. has to be proven: users stake or hold VVV for

That is the map for this issue.

Bittensor: The Outside Benchmark

Bittensor should not be treated as an Ethereum AI project.

Its docs describe a subnet model where miners produce digital commodities and validators evaluate the work. Those commodities can include AI inference, training, compute, storage, prediction markets, and more.

Subnet registration cost is one useful demand signal. At 1,500 TAO, the slot price is roughly $326K using the June 24 CoinGecko price of about $217 per TAO.

TAO itself is weak, down about 14.8% over seven days at the time I checked. That does not kill the subnet-demand story, but it does mean price and network demand are moving in different directions.

For Ethereum investors, the point is simple: Bittensor sets the bar. If EVM AI projects want serious capital, they need to show comparable demand instead of borrowing the AI label.

VVV: The Cleanest Base Token to Watch

Venice Token is an ERC-20 on Base tied to Venice AI, a privacy-focused generative AI product. CoinGecko describes the token as a way to access Venice Pro and API inference capacity through staking.

This is not mainly an “AI verification” protocol. It is closer to an access and capacity token for private AI inference.

VVV had a market cap of about $609M when I checked on June 24, down about 21.2% over seven days.

The underwriting question is whether VVV becomes a service-access asset or just another AI narrative coin. I would watch staked supply, API usage, paying users, contract/admin risk, and whether demand holds up when price is weak.

x402: Important, but Not a Token Trade

x402 is not a GPU compute tokenization project.

It is an open payment protocol developed by Coinbase that revives HTTP 402 Payment Required. The idea is simple: an API or digital service can request payment over HTTP, and a human developer or AI agent can pay programmatically. Stablecoins are the cleanest current use case.

That could matter if AI agents start buying APIs, data, tools, or content per request.

The bad trade is buying random x402-labeled tokens as if they own the standard. For now, the cleaner expression is indirect: Base, USDC usage, Coinbase distribution, and real API providers adding support.

Gensyn: Too Early for Conviction

Gensyn is building decentralized infrastructure for AI to train, verify, trade, and evolve. Its Delphi product is live as a Gensyn-built information market where users trade outcomes and markets use AI settlement prompts. Some markets can use verifiable settlement through Gensyn’s REE, but that is still early and not broad adoption yet.

That is better than a whitepaper, but still early.

Gensyn’s AI token had a market cap around $31M when I checked. I would want to see recurring users, real settlement volume, and workloads that clearly need crypto coordination before treating it as more than optionality.

My Ranking

If I had to rank the current setup:

1. Outside benchmark: Bittensor

2. Cleanest EVM/Base AI token to watch: VVV

3. Most important EVM-adjacent infrastructure idea: x402

4. Too early for conviction: Gensyn

The main mistake to avoid is paying conviction prices for projects that only have narrative evidence.

Onchain Analytics

This is what I checked on June 24.

Hyperliquid Is Still a Fee Machine, but Ecosystem TVL Cooled

Hyperliquid Perps did about $2.49M in fees over 24 hours and $14.5M over seven days in the DefiLlama fee dataset I checked on June 24.

That is still serious activity.

But the broader Hyperliquid ecosystem cooled over the week. Hyperliquid Bridge was around $5.75B, down about 2.8% over seven days. Kinetiq kHYPE was around $931M, down 13.5%. HyperLend Pooled was around $419M, down 13.1%. stHYPE was around $174M, down 13.3%.

The read: Hyperliquid remains one of the strongest onchain trading venues, but HYPE-denominated ecosystem TVL can move hard when the token moves.

Pendle Is Weak, but Not Below $1B

DefiLlama had Pendle around $1.03B, down about 13.0% over seven days.

So Pendle is back above $1B, but the seven-day contraction still matters. When yields compress, demand for splitting principal and yield gets weaker.

Spark Savings Is Drifting Lower

Spark Savings, the yield sub-pool rather than total Spark protocol TVL, was around $1.56B, down about 3.9% over seven days.

That is not a collapse. It is capital slowly repricing lower passive stablecoin yield.

Aave V4 Is Growing, but Still Tiny

Aave V4 was around $142M TVL, up about 10.2% over seven days.

That is worth tracking, but it is still tiny compared with Aave V3. Treat it as early migration data, not a full protocol shift.

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This Week’s Intel

Three DeFi stories worth watching after this issue.

1. THORChain Comes Back Online After Its Longest Shutdown

THORChain resumed swaps, trading, and LP operations on June 23 after being offline for more than five weeks.

The halt followed a May 15 exploit that drained about $10.7M from one Asgard vault across Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Base. The team shipped an emergency patch on May 20, a larger vulnerability fix on June 9, and a KeyVerify update on June 11 before reopening the network.

The investor read: the restart matters less than the market reaction. RUNE barely moved after trading resumed, which suggests the recovery was already priced in. The real test is whether liquidity returns to native cross-chain swaps after five weeks of downtime.

Watch: swap volume, LP deposits, RUNE liquidity depth, and whether Monero/Zcash integrations bring users back or just create roadmap noise.

Source/image: BitcoinFoundation report

2. Coinbase Opens a Door to DeFi Yield

SteakhouseFi launched a High Yield Vault inside the Coinbase app, powered by Ethena’s USDe on Morpho and running on Base.

That matters because Coinbase is not sending users to a DeFi front end. It is packaging DeFi yield inside a familiar consumer app. Portals says the vault is available to Coinbase’s 100M-plus users, while Ethena TVL rose 7.47% over the week to $4.94B.

This landed alongside Morpho’s $175M raise at a $2B valuation, co-led by Paradigm, a16z Crypto, and Ribbit Capital, with Apollo, VanEck, and Circle also participating. The pitch is bigger than lending TVL: Morpho wants to become an “Open Credit Network” for institutional credit markets on-chain.

The investor read: this is one of the cleaner DeFi adoption stories of the week. The question is whether Coinbase becomes a real distribution channel for DeFi yield, or just a short-term inflow event.

Watch: Ethena inflows, Morpho deposits on Base, vault retention after the first yield cycle, and whether Coinbase adds more DeFi-native products.

Source/chart: Portals Week 2, Portals Week 1

3. Aave Turns a Stress Event Into a Risk Framework

After April’s $292M KelpDAO exploit triggered an $8.45B, 48-hour deposit run on Aave, LlamaRisk proposed a new four-layer risk framework for the protocol.

The framework would require stronger bridge verification, a minimum bug bounty, automated Freeze Guardians, and better oracle circuit breakers. The important part is not that Aave avoided collapse. It is that the largest DeFi lender is trying to turn a live stress test into stricter collateral and bridge standards.

Separately, Aave’s “Aave Will Win” proposal shows how the DAO is thinking about monetization: revenue from Aave-branded products would flow to the treasury, with a one-year development budget to support growth. The proposal says Aave has roughly 60% lending market share.

The investor read: Aave is still the benchmark for DeFi lending. If it tightens risk without killing growth, it strengthens the moat. If new rules reduce supported collateral too aggressively, it could slow some usage in the short term.

Watch: whether the risk framework passes, which collateral assets are affected, and whether Aave keeps deposit share after stricter standards.

Source: Portals Week 2, Aave governance proposal

Podcast Picks

Podcasts worth your time this week.

Bankless: Venice is Here to Win: How a Private AI Company Plans to Take On OpenAI and Anthropic

Good companion to the Venice / VVV section. The useful question is whether Venice can turn private AI access and inference demand into a real token utility loop, not just another AI narrative trade.

Odyssey: #088 - x402 vs MPP and All About Agents w/David

Best fit for the x402 section. It gets into agentic commerce, pay-per-request services, and why payments may be the cleaner crypto use case than decentralized GPU compute.

Crypto Prime: Hyperliquid Explained with Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan

Useful after the onchain analytics section. Hyperliquid still has real fees and institutional attention, but HYPE and ecosystem TVL can move hard. The distinction matters.

That is it for this week.

My read is simple: AI x crypto is getting more interesting, but only when you separate usage from branding. Bittensor has the strongest network signal. VVV has the cleanest Base token surface. x402 is infrastructure, not a token thesis. Gensyn is live, but still needs usage.

Share this with someone trying to separate AI crypto infrastructure from the noise.

Sources checked: CoinGecko TAO, CoinGecko VVV, CoinGecko Gensyn, Bittensor docs, Bittensor EVM docs, Coinbase x402 docs, Venice AI, Gensyn, and DefiLlama.

Nothing in this newsletter is financial advice. I personally use several of the protocols mentioned here, but that does not make them safe. Crypto is risky, DeFi is risky, and things can break quickly. Do your own research, size positions carefully, and never invest more than you can afford to lose.

In this edition of The Weekly Alpha:

🧑‍🌾 5 Yield Opportunities on Base

🧐 Onchain Analytics

📚 This Week’s Intel

🎧 Podcast Picks

Base is not the loudest chain in crypto.

There is no Base token to trade. No airdrop campaign to farm. No governance chart for people to argue about every week.

That makes the chain easier to underrate.

But the underlying numbers are getting harder to ignore. L2Beat has Base at roughly $11.35B in total value secured and Stage 1 today. DefiLlama shows about $4.0B in DeFi TVL, $4.8B in stablecoins, and around $7.7B in 7-day DEX volume on the chain.

That is the more interesting version of the Base story. It is not growing because people are chasing a native token. It is growing because Coinbase distribution, low fees, deep USDC liquidity, and a few strong native protocols are starting to create a real DeFi surface.

The practical question is simple: if Base is becoming one of the main places onchain capital sits, where is the yield?

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Here are five Base yield opportunities I would look at first. APYs move quickly, so treat the numbers as a dashboard snapshot, not a promise.

1. Aerodrome Slipstream WETH/USDC

Aerodrome is still the main native DEX on Base.

Its WETH/USDC Slipstream pool is the highest-yield option on this list, with the current dashboard snapshot showing roughly 54% APY. That comes from two places: swap fees and AERO emissions.

This is not passive yield. It is concentrated liquidity. You choose a range, collect fees when trades pass through it, and take impermanent loss if price moves hard enough against your position.

That tradeoff is fine if you know what you are doing. It is not fine if you look at the APY and assume it behaves like a lending vault.

The real signal is that Aerodrome continues to matter for Base liquidity. If Base activity keeps growing, Aerodrome remains one of the cleanest ways to express that view. Just remember that part of the yield depends on AERO incentives, and incentives can move.

2. Uniswap V3 WETH/USDC

The cleaner comparison is Uniswap V3.

The WETH/USDC pool on Base is showing roughly 48.70% APY in the current snapshot, and the important part is that this is fee-driven. No AERO rewards. No gauge voting. No token emissions trying to make the number look better.

That makes it one of the stronger signals in the whole issue.

A high fee APY on a deep WETH/USDC pool means traders are actually using Base. That is harder to fake than TVL. Capital can be incentivized. Volume and fees have to keep showing up.

The risk is still concentrated liquidity. You are not just “earning 48.70%.” You are underwriting a WETH/USDC range. If ETH moves outside your range or volatility picks up, the pool can become much less comfortable very quickly.

3. Avantis USDC LP

Avantis is the more interesting passive option.

Instead of managing a DEX range, you deposit USDC as counterparty liquidity for perp traders. The current snapshot shows roughly 10% APY with about $35M in protocol TVL.

The appeal is obvious: single-sided USDC, no impermanent loss, no range management.

The risk is also different. You are taking exposure to perp trader flow and protocol design. Perp DEXs are more complex than simple lending markets. Funding, trader PnL, liquidations, oracle assumptions, and contract risk all matter.

So I would not put Avantis in the same “safe stablecoin yield” bucket as lending. It is more like structured market-making exposure with a simpler user interface.

4. Morpho Blue USDC

Morpho is the most straightforward lending option on Base.

The USDC market snapshot is around 4.06% APY. Nothing dramatic. But that is partly the point.

The yield comes from borrowers paying variable interest. No LP range. No perp counterparty exposure. No need to care about AERO emissions or trading volume every day.

For a reader who wants Base exposure without turning every deposit into an active strategy, this is probably the first place to look.

The risk is lower, not zero. Lending markets still depend on collateral quality, oracle behavior, utilization, liquidation mechanics, and vault curation. Morpho is a strong protocol, but the exact market matters more than the logo.

5. Moonwell USDC

Moonwell is the smaller lending option.

Its USDC market is showing roughly 5.21% APY, split between lending interest and WELL incentives. The TVL is much smaller than the largest Morpho or Aave-style markets, which cuts both ways.

Smaller pools can sometimes pay a better rate because utilization moves faster. They can also become unstable faster when one large depositor or borrower changes the balance.

I would treat Moonwell as a Base-native lending bet, not the default stablecoin parking place. The rate is fine, but the market depth matters.

How I Would Think About It

The high headline APYs are in DEX liquidity. Aerodrome and Uniswap can pay well because Base has real trading activity, but they require active management and IL risk.

The more boring yields are in USDC lending. Morpho and Moonwell are easier to understand, easier to monitor, and much less likely to surprise you with range problems.

Avantis sits in the middle. It gives you single-sided USDC, but the risk comes from perp market structure instead of lending utilization.

The strongest signal this week is not that Base has one amazing pool. It is that Base now has a full yield curve: active LP, fee-only LP, perp LP, lending, and incentive-backed lending.

That is what mature DeFi chains start to look like.

Base does not need a token for this to matter. In some ways, the lack of a token makes the signal cleaner. There is no native asset distorting the read. The question is just whether capital, volume, and useful protocols keep showing up.

Right now, they are.

🧐 Onchain Analytics

This is what I have actually been watching onchain this week.

Lending Is Recovering, But Not Everywhere

The lending market looks calmer than it did two weeks ago.

During the sell-off, Aave was printing $6.4M/day in liquidation fees and Morpho fees were up 372%. That was not normal growth. That was leverage getting forced out of the system.

Now the numbers look more balanced. Aave V3 is at $11.8B TVL, up 4.3% this week. Morpho Blue is at $6.67B, up 5.5%. SparkLend is at $3.34B, up 8.3%.

Fees are cooling too. Total DeFi fees over the past 7 days were $371M, down from $430M in the prior 7-day period. That is what you want to see after a stress event. The system worked, the fee spike faded, and capital started moving again.

The split is the part I care about. SparkLend is growing faster than Aave and Morpho. Maple bounced 13% to $2.12B. Kamino Lend on Solana went the other way, down 15.6% to $1.08B.

So lending is recovering, but not evenly. Capital is moving back toward Ethereum-aligned and institutional credit markets first. Solana lending is not getting the same bid this week.

The caveat is Maple. A 13% weekly bounce looks good, but one week does not prove a credit cycle has turned. I would want to see that TVL hold through another volatile week before treating it as a real trend.

RWA Is Starting To Sort Winners From Experiments

RWA TVL is roughly flat at $25.9B, but the category is not standing still.

Centrifuge is up 18.1% to $1.63B. Circle USYC is at $3.01B, up 6.5%. OpenEden TBILL is up 28.3% to $216M. BUIDL keeps grinding higher at $3.03B, up 2.6%.

At the same time, Ethena USDtb is down 9.2% to $916M and WisdomTree dropped 9.6%.

That is the useful signal. RWA is no longer just one broad trade where everything moves together. Capital is starting to separate the deeper, more institutionally credible products from the smaller experiments.

For anyone allocating to RWA products, APY is not enough. The better questions are: who is the issuer, how deep is the liquidity, who holds the token, and how clean is the redemption path?

The caveat is Centrifuge. An 18% weekly move is strong, but it could still be one large allocation. The real test is whether the capital stays over the next 30 to 60 days.

Base Is Quiet, Which Is Fine

Base did not have a dramatic week. That is not a bad thing.

Base bridge TVL is at $2.37B, up 3.8% weekly. Arbitrum is at $2.72B, up 3%. After the recent volatility, modest growth across both chains is healthier than another zero-sum rotation.

The number I keep coming back to is Base stablecoin supply: $4.76B, according to DefiLlama. That is a lot of capital sitting on the chain before it shows up in lending, DEX volume, or yield vaults.

Aerodrome still dominates the Base DEX story, but the stablecoin base matters more for the next leg. If confidence improves, Base already has the dry powder for lending markets, LP positions, and yield products to grow without needing a new bridge wave first.

The caveat is that stablecoin supply is not the same as deployable DeFi capital. Some of it sits in Coinbase-linked wallets, CEX flows, or passive balances that may never touch a protocol. Still, the raw base is there.

📚 This Week’s Intel

A few stories worth your time that did not make the main thesis.

1. Japan’s Lower House Passes Sweeping Crypto Bill — 20% Flat Tax Rate

Japan’s legislature passed a bill amending the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act to regulate cryptocurrencies more like securities. The standout change: a flat 20% tax rate on crypto gains, down from up to 55% for high earners. The bill also creates a clear regulatory path for crypto ETFs.

This matters because Japan is not a small market. 127 million people, one of the world’s deepest capital markets, and a government that has been methodically building crypto infrastructure for years. If the upper house clears it, this could become one of the more important regulatory shifts of the year.

The caveat: Japan has had progressive crypto laws before, and adoption has not always followed. Tax cuts help, but they do not automatically create demand.

Source: Unchained Crypto

2. BlackRock Files Final Amendment for BITA — a Yield-Bearing Bitcoin ETF

BlackRock submitted what appears to be the final filing for BITA, a covered-call Bitcoin ETF. The fee: 65bps, cheaper than many actively managed crypto products. The mechanism: BlackRock sells Bitcoin call options, collects the premium, and pays it out as yield to holders.

Why it matters: this gives income-focused investors a regulated way to get BTC exposure with cash flow, which is a different thesis than spot BTC alone.

The risk: covered-call strategies cap upside. In a bull market, you collect yield while missing part of the move. In a flat or slightly up market, they can work well. Know what you are buying.

Source: Unchained Crypto

3. CFTC Proposes First Formal Rulemaking for Prediction Markets

The CFTC released a 90-day framework to vet event contracts covering areas like war, gaming, assassination, and terrorism. This is the agency’s first formal rulemaking for prediction markets after years of ad-hoc enforcement actions.

The downstream impact is direct: Polymarket, Kalshi, and Hyperliquid’s new prediction-market expansion all operate in the regulatory gap this rule would narrow. A clear framework is better than the current uncertainty, but the scope of prohibited contracts will decide how much room the category has in the US.

The outcome matters for DeFi because prediction markets are one of the few crypto categories generating real, repeatable fees outside of perps and lending. A restrictive rule could cap that growth.

Source: Unchained Crypto

4. Tether Backs Neura’s Robotics Round

Tether participated in Neura’s large robotics funding round, reportedly worth up to $1.4B. The broader idea is to connect Tether’s wallet and edge-computing work with robots and machine-to-machine payments.

This fits Tether’s machine economy thesis. The company has been moving beyond stablecoins into mining, AI infrastructure, education, and now robotics.

The caveat: this is years out. Robots need to ship, customers need to care, and Tether’s non-stablecoin bets still carry execution risk.

Source: FT / WSJ coverage, plus Unchained Crypto

5. Centrifuge TVL Surges 18% to $1.63B

Centrifuge, the RWA credit marketplace, added roughly $250M in TVL this week, an 18% move to $1.63B. For context, most DeFi lending protocols are flat or recovering, while Centrifuge is growing.

Why it matters: Centrifuge is one of the cleaner institutional credit stories in DeFi. It connects real-world borrowers with onchain liquidity. The growth suggests institutional credit demand is real, not just a narrative trade.

The caveat: $250M in one week could be one large allocation from a single investor. The real test is whether the TVL holds over the next 30 to 60 days. Watch fee generation, not just the headline number.

🎧 Podcast Picks

Podcasts worth your time this week.

The Rollup: DeFi Dad: The Ethereum Bull Thesis In 2026

This one fits the Base issue because Base is still an Ethereum-aligned bet. DeFi Dad talks through ETH staking yield, RWA tokenization, and why Ethereum’s role as settlement layer still matters even when attention moves to faster venues.

The useful part is not the ETH bull case by itself. It is the framing: if ETH becomes the base collateral and settlement layer for onchain finance, chains like Base become part of that distribution layer.

Empire: CFTC Chair Michael Selig On Perps, Prediction Markets & Crypto In The U.S

Worth listening to after the CFTC item above. The discussion covers US perps, prediction markets, DeFi regulation, 24/7 markets, and coordination with the SEC.

For DeFi readers, this matters because perps and prediction markets are two of the few crypto categories with real fee demand. The open question is how much of that activity can survive inside a US regulatory framework.

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That’s it for this week.

If you found this useful, share it with someone who is trying to make sense of this market.

You can also follow me on X and Farcaster for more frequent updates.

Leave a comment

Nothing in this newsletter is financial advice.

I personally use many of the protocols I write about, but that does not make them safe. Crypto is risky, DeFi is risky, and things can break quickly.

Do your own research, size positions carefully, and never invest more than you can afford to lose.

In this edition of The Weekly Alpha:

🧑‍🌾 Pendle's Quiet Breakout Week

🧐 Onchain Analytics

📚 This Week's Intel

🎧 Podcast Picks

Hello everyone,

Crypto had a rough week.

BTC briefly traded below $60K, ETH was down more than 20% on the week, and roughly $1.6B in leverage was wiped out in a single day. CoinDesk framed it as the worst weekly drop for BTC and ETH since the FTX collapse, which gives you an idea of how violent the move felt.

But not everything traded the same.

Pendle was down too, but it held up better than most DeFi tokens. While ETH and AAVE were down more than 20%, PENDLE was down closer to 9% depending on the snapshot you use.

That alone does not make it a buy. Small caps can move strangely during crashes. But the timing was interesting.

During the same week, Pendle got two important catalysts: Revolut listed PENDLE for European users, and Sky, the protocol formerly known as MakerDAO, launched fixed-rate yield through Pendle.

That is the story this week.

Not just that PENDLE outperformed. More that the market had a stress event, and Pendle’s core product suddenly looked more useful.

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Pendle’s Quiet Breakout Week

Let me start with the simple version.

Pendle is a yield tokenization protocol. It lets users split yield-bearing assets into two parts: the principal and the future yield.

That sounds boring until markets start breaking.

In a calm market, fixed-rate yield can feel like a niche product. In a crash week, it starts to make more sense. Some users want upside from variable rates, especially when borrow demand spikes. Others just want to lock a fixed return and stop thinking about it.

Pendle sits directly in that trade.

Revolut listed PENDLE

The Revolut listing matters because it changes distribution.

A lot of crypto-native listings are just more access for people who were already going to buy the token anyway. Revolut is different. It puts PENDLE inside an app that many retail users already treat like a bank account.

I would not overstate it. A listing is not product-market fit by itself.

But for a protocol like Pendle, distribution matters. Yield tokenization is still hard to explain to normal users. If a major fintech app starts giving the token more visibility, the top of the funnel gets a lot wider.

Sky launched fixed-rate yield through Pendle

This is the stronger catalyst in my opinion.

Sky, the protocol behind USDS and sUSDS, launched fixed-rate yield using Pendle’s infrastructure. The fixed-rate product was around 42%, and it is tied to one of the largest stablecoin pools in DeFi.

That matters because Pendle is not only serving degen yield chasers here. It is being used by a large stablecoin protocol to package yield in a cleaner way.

This is the kind of integration that makes the thesis easier to understand.

Pendle is not just a place to speculate on APY. It can become infrastructure for treasuries, stablecoin protocols, and users who want predictable returns in DeFi.

Why volatility helps the Pendle story

This week was a good reminder that yield behaves differently in stress.

When markets crash, borrow demand can spike. Liquidations hit. Rates move around. Protocols like Aave and Morpho start printing fees because the lending engine is working harder.

Pendle is interesting because it lets users choose which side of that volatility they want.

YT holders can benefit when variable yield spikes. PT holders get the fixed-rate side and do not need to care as much about the daily rate chaos.

That is the product-market fit.

Not in a perfect bull market where everything goes up. In the messy weeks where people actually need to manage risk.

The PT-sUSDE pool on Pendle’s Plasma chain also matured this week, with roughly $190M in fixed-rate yield paying out as expected. That kind of reliability is exactly what treasury managers and larger allocators care about.

Ticker: PENDLE, around $1.20 at the time of writing. Market cap around $200M, FDV around $340M.

The other side

There are real risks.

PENDLE is still down massively from its 2024 high. The token does not have a hard max supply, so emissions matter. TVL also fell this week, even if part of that was just asset prices dropping.

And at this market cap, PENDLE is still small by DeFi standards. One large seller can move the chart.

So I would not frame this as a clean breakout yet.

The better framing is this: Pendle had a real stress test, held up better than most DeFi tokens, and picked up two integrations that strengthen the long-term yield tokenization thesis.

That is worth paying attention to.

Onchain Analytics 🧐

This is what stood out to me onchain this week.

L2 TVL looked worse in dollars than it did in ETH

A lot of L2 dashboards looked ugly this week because ETH was down hard.

In USD terms, TVL dropped across most of the market. But that does not always mean capital left the ecosystem. Sometimes it just means the asset used to measure the ecosystem got repriced.

That is why I like checking both USD and native asset terms during weeks like this.

The cleaner signal is that some L2s still showed deposit strength even while the dollar value fell. World Chain was one of the standouts, with strong TVS growth while most major L2s were red.

The caveat is important: World Chain is still Stage 0, so the security model is not where I would want it to be for large long-term allocations.

But the inflows are still worth watching.

Fees showed where the stress went

The biggest fee spikes this week were not only in the obvious places.

Aave V3 had a huge fee day as liquidations picked up. Morpho and Spark also benefited from the lending layer running hot.

That is not the same as organic growth.

It is a volatility fee spike. Useful signal, but not something I would treat as a clean growth trend by itself.

The more interesting part is that DeFi kept functioning. The lending protocols did what they were supposed to do during a rough deleveraging event.

Block builders also had a strong week. That makes sense. When liquidations, arbitrage, and volatility increase, MEV capture increases too.

It is a reminder that Ethereum’s fee economy is much bigger than just the apps we usually talk about.

Stablecoins held up well

Stablecoin supply stayed around the $314B to $317B range depending on the source snapshot.

USDT is still around $187B. USDC is around $75B.

No major panic redemption signal there.

The one thing I am watching is Ethena’s USDe, which fell to around $4.5B. That makes sense if funding rates are shifting and delta-neutral strategies are being reduced.

For DeFi health, USDC staying steady is probably the cleaner signal

.

Hyperliquid is still a stress-test name

Hyperliquid’s TVS looked weak in dollar terms, but the more important question is whether deposits and trading activity hold up.

The perp venue still generated strong fees during the crash week. That is what you want to see from an exchange-like protocol during volatility.

The risk is still the same: HYPE and Hyperliquid are now a huge narrative, and huge narratives can unwind quickly when positioning gets crowded.

But from a usage perspective, it is still one of the more important protocols to track.

This Week’s Intel 📚

1. Zcash patched a critical Orchard vulnerability

Zcash disclosed and patched a serious Orchard vulnerability that could have allowed counterfeit ZEC creation inside the shielded pool.

That is the kind of bug that hits trust directly, especially for a privacy coin.

The important nuance is that Zcash Foundation said there was no evidence of an exploit. But the market still reacted hard because with shielded systems, proving what did or did not happen is harder than with a transparent ledger.

This is probably the most important privacy story of the week.

2. DeFi governance risk is becoming harder to ignore

Governance attacks and governance-related exploits keep showing up as a risk theme in 2026.

The problem is simple: a lot of protocols still have low voter participation, large idle treasuries, and governance systems that were not built for adversarial markets.

Flash-loan voting is only one version of the problem. Delegation, quorum design, timelocks, multisig control, and cross-chain governance all matter now.

This is worth tracking because the next major DeFi exploit may not be a smart contract bug. It may be a governance failure.

3. RWAs held up better than retail DeFi

The RWA sector still looks more resilient than the retail side of DeFi.

That fits the broader market structure story. Retail DeFi bleeds when leverage unwinds. Institutional RWA flows are usually slower, stickier, and less narrative-driven.

Pendle’s link with Sky and its Mu Digital integration in Asian credit markets fit into this trend.

This is also why I keep coming back to the same point: the next cycle probably will not be driven only by memecoins. RWAs, stablecoins, credit, yield, and settlement are still where the more durable onchain economy is forming.

4. Lighter is still getting attention

Lighter continues to show up in the perps conversation.

The Hyperliquid alternative thesis is easy to understand: high-performance perps, Ethereum L2 angle, zk verification, and a much earlier stage profile.

But it is still early.

Stage 0 on L2Beat means trust assumptions are still high. The product can be interesting while the infrastructure risk remains real.

That is exactly why I would track it, but not treat it like a proven Hyperliquid replacement yet.

5. World Chain had a strong week

World Chain was one of the few L2s showing clear strength during the drawdown.

The growth is worth watching because it happened during a week where most dashboards looked terrible.

The caveat is the same as above: Stage 0. Strong inflows do not remove the security question.

Podcast Picks 🎧

Bell Curve: What Brings Capital Back to DeFi?

This one fits the week well.

The main question is what actually brings capital back to DeFi after a market flush. Not just better charts, but better products, clearer yield, and protocols that can survive stress.

Empire: Hyperliquid Just Had Its Breakout Moment

A good short segment on Hyperliquid’s fee dominance and why HYPE is changing how people think about perp DEXs.

Useful if you want to understand why the market keeps treating Hyperliquid like more than just another exchange token.

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That’s it for this week.

If you found this useful, share it with someone who is trying to make sense of this market.

You can also follow me on X and Farcaster for more frequent updates.

Leave a comment

Nothing in this newsletter is financial advice.

I personally use many of the protocols I write about, but that does not make them safe. Crypto is risky, DeFi is risky, and things can break quickly.

Do your own research, size positions carefully, and never invest more than you can afford to lose.

🧑‍🌾 3 Tokens I’m Watching Right Now

🧐 Onchain Analytics

📚 This Week's Intel

🎧 Podcast Picks

Hello everyone,

We are starting to see more movement in the altcoin market, especially around the Ethereum ecosystem. A few narratives are beginning to take shape again: privacy, RWAs, and Base ecosystem tokens.

In this edition of Weekly Alpha, I want to look at three tokens I’m watching right now.

ONDO Finance and the Value Capture Question

Ondo is one of the RWA tokens I’m watching most closely.

The RWA thesis keeps getting clearer: more of the stock, bond, and money market universe is going to move onchain over time

The reason is simple. Tokenized assets can trade 24/7, settle faster, move across wallets and protocols, and plug into DeFi in a way traditional assets cannot.

Ondo is one of the strongest names in that category. It already has real products, strong institutional positioning, and a clear narrative behind it.

The part I’m more cautious on is the token.

ONDO has a fixed supply of 10B tokens, with roughly 4.87B currently circulating based on recent tokenomics data. That means a large part of the supply is still locked and will keep unlocking over time.

More importantly, ONDO still looks mostly like a governance token today. Ondo’s products may grow, but that does not automatically mean ONDO captures the value.

That is the reason I have not started accumulating yet.

The bullish case is that Ondo keeps growing, RWAs keep expanding, and governance eventually introduces stronger holder economics, whether through fee sharing, buybacks, or another mechanism.

The bearish case is that Ondo the company wins, but ONDO remains mostly a governance asset while most of the economic value stays at the product layer.

That is why I’m watching it closely. The narrative is strong, the category is real, but for me the token becomes much more interesting if it starts capturing more of the value that Ondo is creating.

Ticker: ONDO

RAILGUN: Privacy On Ethereum

The second token I’m watching is RAIL.

There is a lot of social attention around privacy right now. Last week, I wrote about VVV and private AI, but the same idea applies onchain: as crypto gets bigger, users will care more about what they expose publicly.

RAILGUN is interesting because it is not trying to be a separate privacy chain. It brings privacy directly to Ethereum and other EVM networks, using zero-knowledge proofs to let users interact privately with DeFi.

That matters. If Ethereum becomes the settlement layer for RWAs, stablecoins, trading, and onchain finance, privacy becomes more important, not less. Funds, traders, DAOs, and regular users will not want every wallet movement, strategy, or position fully exposed forever.

RAIL has already moved with the privacy narrative. The token is trading around $3, after reaching an all-time high near $5.66 in November 2025. So this is not an undiscovered chart anymore, but it is still one of the names I’d keep on the watchlist if the privacy trade keeps gaining attention.

The token setup is also worth understanding. RAIL is not required to use RAILGUN, and the docs are clear that it is not a privacy coin. It is mainly a governance and security token. Users can lock RAIL to participate in governance and collect security rewards, which gives the token more utility than a pure voting asset.

The main concern is regulation.

Privacy protocols will always sit in a difficult part of the market. Tornado Cash showed how quickly this category can become politically sensitive, even when the underlying technology has legitimate use cases.

RAILGUN is different in design, and one important feature is Private Proofs of Innocence. Users can prove their funds are not associated with known high-risk sources without revealing their full transaction history.

That matters because it gives RAILGUN a stronger compliance argument than a simple “hide everything” privacy tool. It keeps the privacy layer, but adds a way for users to show non-association when needed.

Still, the regulatory risk does not disappear. If privacy becomes a major narrative again, protocols like RAILGUN could attract more attention from regulators, exchanges, and analytics providers.

That is the tradeoff with RAIL: the upside is tied to privacy becoming important again, but the downside is that privacy tokens can attract serious regulatory pressure if they become too visible.

For now, I see RAIL as a high-risk privacy bet on Ethereum. Interesting, useful, and worth watching, but not something I would treat as a clean or low-risk trade.

Ticker: RAIL

Lighter: The Hyperliquid Alternative I’m Watching

The third name I’m watching is Lighter.

If you are still active in crypto, you know the Hyperliquid narrative has been extremely strong. It makes sense. Hyperliquid has product-market fit, volume, mindshare, and one of the clearest perps stories in the market.

But when a category gets that hot, I also like to look for earlier, higher-risk alternatives.

That is where Lighter becomes interesting.

The simple way to describe Lighter is this: a high-performance onchain perps exchange with an Ethereum L2 and zk verification angle.

It sits in the same mental bucket as Hyperliquid because both are trying to build fast, liquid, trader-focused perp venues. The difference is the architecture. Hyperliquid runs its own chain with a smaller validator set, while Lighter is built as an application-specific zk rollup that settles back to Ethereum.

That gives Lighter a different narrative.

It is not just “another perp DEX.” It is a bet that traders will eventually care about speed, liquidity, and better verification. Every trade does not need to feel like a slow DeFi transaction, but users still want stronger guarantees than a fully centralized venue.

That is the bull case.

Lighter could become one of the cleaner Ethereum-native answers to Hyperliquid if it keeps improving liquidity, execution, and user experience.

But this is still early.

On L2Beat, Lighter is currently listed as a Stage 0 appchain. That means there are still meaningful trust assumptions, especially around upgrades and operational control. So I would not pretend this is already fully decentralized infrastructure.

To be fair, Hyperliquid also has centralization questions because it relies on a relatively small validator set. So the comparison is not “one is perfect and the other is risky.” Both are early in different ways.

The real question is execution.

In perps, better architecture does not automatically win. Traders care about liquidity, spreads, uptime, markets, leverage, incentives, and whether the venue actually feels good to use. If Lighter gets those right, it can become a serious competitor. If it does not, the zk angle will not matter much.

For now, I see Lighter as a higher-risk bet on the same onchain perps trend that made Hyperliquid so successful.

Hyperliquid has the lead today. Lighter is the earlier, more speculative Ethereum-aligned alternative.

Ticker: LIT

Conclusion

The market feels boring right now.

Bitcoin and Ethereum are not doing much, and most altcoins still look weak. But the interesting part is that tokens with clearer fundamentals and stronger narratives are starting to move.

That is a healthier setup than another pure memecoin rotation.

I would rather see capital flow toward real protocols, useful infrastructure, privacy, RWAs, perps, and products people actually use. That is how the industry builds a stronger base for the next cycle.

Crypto is still early, but the direction matters. If the next alt market is led by projects with actual usage instead of pure speculation, I think that is a much better market to be involved in.

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Onchain Analytics 🧐

This is where I share what I’ve actually been looking at onchain. The stuff that shapes how I’m positioning, not just what I’m buying.

Obol TVL Spikes As Ethereum Staking Demand Stays Strong

Obol’s TVL jumped sharply this week, reaching roughly $780M on DeFiLlama.

That matters because last week we looked at Ethereum’s validator queue: more than 3M ETH waiting to enter staking, an estimated wait of around 60 days, and almost nothing sitting in the exit queue.

Obol does not magically skip the validator queue. Every new Ethereum validator still has to go through the normal activation process. But the move does show that demand for more advanced staking infrastructure is still alive.

That is the cleaner read: if ETH staking demand remains high, protocols that help coordinate distributed validator infrastructure should keep getting attention.

The chart to watch is simple. If Obol TVL keeps rising while Ethereum’s entry queue stays elevated, DVT is becoming one of the places where staking demand expresses itself.

Limitless Fees Jump As Prediction Markets Expand On Base

Limitless Exchange was one of the cleaner fee movers this week.

According to DeFiLlama, the Base prediction market protocol generated roughly $1.96M in fees over the past 7 days, up about 188% week-over-week.

That is a meaningful move for a newer prediction market venue.

Polymarket still owns most of the mindshare in this category, but Limitless is showing that prediction markets are not only a Polygon story. Base is becoming a natural home for smaller, faster, cheaper onchain trading experiences, and prediction markets fit that well.

The caveat is that prediction market volume can be very event-driven. A spike in fees does not automatically mean durable adoption. It can come from one hot market, one news cycle, or one temporary burst of speculation.

Still, this is worth tracking. If Limitless keeps generating fees after the current event cycle fades, then the signal becomes much stronger.

DEX Volume Is Spreading Across More Venues

The DEX market is still active, but it is becoming more fragmented.

DeFiLlama shows roughly $41B in 7-day DEX volume across all chains. The total is only slightly higher week-over-week, but the interesting part is where the activity is showing up.

Manifest Trade did around $844M in 7-day volume. Metric did around $543M. SUNSwap V3 did around $336M.

None of these are Uniswap-sized alone, but that is the point. DEX activity is no longer only about one dominant venue. Liquidity is spreading across Solana, Tron, Base, Hyperliquid, and newer app-specific trading venues.

For Uniswap, I would not overstate the bearish read this week. The live fee data I checked does not confirm a major collapse in V4 fees. The better takeaway is broader: DEX volume is still there, but the market is becoming more multipolar.

That matters for investors because the next winner may not be “the biggest DEX.” It may be the venue that owns a specific flow: meme trading, perps, prediction markets, stablecoin swaps, or chain-native liquidity.

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This Week’s Intel 📚

Here’s what was actually worth reading this week.

1. ERC-7943 Reaches Final Stage For RWA Tokenization

ERC-7943, a new Ethereum standard for real-world asset tokenization, has reached the final stage of the EIP process.

This is not the kind of headline that pumps immediately, but it matters.

If institutions are going to bring regulated assets onchain, they need more than a token contract. They need identity, transfer rules, compliance hooks, and standards that work across different systems. ERC-7943 is trying to create that baseline.

The bigger point is simple: RWA tokenization is moving from “cool narrative” to actual infrastructure. Standards are boring until they become the thing everyone builds on.

The caveat is adoption. A finalized standard does not mean instant institutional TVL. It just makes the path cleaner.

Source: Cointelegraph

2. Base Launches MCP Gateway For AI Agents

Base launched an MCP gateway that lets AI agents connect to user Base accounts and execute onchain actions like swaps, trades, and portfolio management.

This fits directly into the agent-payment / agent-finance theme.

The important part is not just “AI agents are coming.” It is that Base is building the rails for agents to actually do things onchain. The gateway already mentions integrations with protocols like Morpho, Moonwell, Bankr, Avantis, Virtuals, Uniswap, and Aerodrome.

That makes Base one of the clearer venues for AI x DeFi experiments.

The risk is obvious: giving agents wallet permissions is still early and will need strong UX, limits, and security assumptions. But directionally, this is exactly the kind of infrastructure to watch.

Source: The Defiant

3. Aave Proposes Native BTC Borrowing Through Babylon

Aave has a governance temp check to integrate Babylon into Aave V4, allowing users to borrow against native BTC collateral without relying on wrapped BTC or centralized custody.

This is one of the more interesting DeFi proposals right now.

Bitcoin is still the largest pool of dormant collateral in crypto, but most BTC-backed DeFi depends on wrappers, bridges, or custodians. If Aave V4 can support native BTC collateral through a dedicated spoke, it could make Bitcoin borrowing feel much cleaner.

This is still early. It is a temp check, not a live product. Babylon integration adds new risk, and native BTC collateral brings different liquidation and operational assumptions.

But if this moves forward, it is a real DeFi primitive, not just another incentive campaign.

Source: The Defiant

Podcast Picks 🎧

Podcasts worth your time this week.

How To Trade The AI Productivity Boom | Forward Guidance
A macro discussion on whether the AI boom is a real productivity shock or just a market narrative being pulled forward.
They connect AI capex, equity concentration, Fed policy, labor pressure, and the K-shaped economy.
The most useful part is how markets price productivity before it fully shows up in the real economy.
Good listen if you want a macro lens on AI, rates, and risk assets.

Is Crypto Broken? | Bell Curve
This episode asks whether crypto has lost its ability to create real apps beyond Bitcoin, Ethereum, and stablecoins.
They discuss why many tokens launched too early, before product-market fit or real value capture existed.
Stablecoins come through as one of the few obvious crypto winners, while consumer apps still feel weak.
Good listen for a sober take on what crypto needs next: products people actually use, not just narratives.

Why Hyperliquid Is Still Undervalued | The Rollup
This one focuses on Hyperliquid and why Bitwise sees HYPE as more than just another perp DEX token.
They cover ETF demand, fee generation, buybacks, and the structural demand this could create for HYPE.
The episode also touches on HyperEVM, spot markets, prediction markets, and Hyperliquid’s broader ecosystem.
Good listen if you want to understand why institutions are starting to look at Hyperliquid seriously.

That’s it for this week.

If you found this useful, share it with someone who is trying to make sense of this market.

You can also follow me on X and Farcaster for more frequent updates.

Leave a comment

Nothing in this newsletter is financial advice.

I personally use many of the protocols I write about, but that does not make them safe. Crypto is risky, DeFi is risky, and things can break quickly.

Do your own research, size positions carefully, and never invest more than you can afford to lose.

Venice: Private AI With a Product Behind It

The reason Venice caught my attention is simple: people want AI tools, but they do not necessarily want to hand over all their data to use them.

I’ve been using AI a lot, whether it is Cursor, Codex, Claude, or other tools for research and my work as a developer. The more I use them, the more obvious the privacy tradeoff becomes.

These tools are useful, but I still catch myself thinking twice before pasting in research notes, wallet activity, strategy ideas, or client work.

Local models are getting better, and I like the direction. But right now, they still do not feel as strong as the best hosted models for many workflows. That is where Venice becomes interesting: it tries to give users access to strong AI models without making them hand over everything in the process.

I had tried Venice before, but for a while it did not really stick in my workflow. It was interesting, but not good enough to replace the tools I was already using.

That has started to change. Over time, I’ve found myself using it more naturally, not because I forced myself to, but because the product has improved enough to earn more of my attention.

The founder matters too. Venice was started by Erik Voorhees, someone I’ve followed in crypto for a long time. He has been around since the early Bitcoin days, and I tend to pay attention when builders with that kind of history are working on something new.

That does not remove the risk, of course. Founder reputation is not a thesis by itself. But in a space full of thin AI wrappers and short-lived narratives, it does make Venice more interesting to me.

None of this automatically makes VVV a winner, but it does make the narrative easier to understand.

Tokenomics: What Actually Matters

The interesting part about VVV is not just that it is an AI token. There are plenty of those.

The more important part is how quickly the tokenomics have changed. Venice started with a fairly standard setup: a 100M genesis supply, a large airdrop, and high emissions for stakers.

The Supply Reset

Since launch, the direction has been clear: less loose supply, lower emissions, more staking, and a stronger link between VVV and actual Venice usage.

VVV launched with a 100M supply, and 50M VVV, or 50%, was allocated to the airdrop. The claim window lasted 45 days and included Venice users, AERO holders, and several AI-related communities.

There was one allocation issue: vAERO holders were excluded. I was one of them. I asked Erik Voorhees about it on X, and he told me it was a mistake. Annoying for me, but the more important part came after the claim window closed.

By the end of the window, around 17.4M VVV had been claimed by more than 40k wallets. That left roughly 32.6M VVV unclaimed, about 65% of the airdrop allocation and close to one-third of the original supply.

Instead of leaving those tokens sitting in the treasury, Venice burned them in one event.

That matters because airdropped tokens often struggle with loose supply and constant sell pressure. Burning the unclaimed allocation did not magically create demand, but it did remove a meaningful overhang early in the token’s life.

Venice also sold 1M VVV from the team’s unlocked allocation on launch day, then bought it back and burned it after community pushback. That shows the team was responsive, but it also reminds you that execution risk is real.

The important point: VVV did not keep the full 100M launch supply floating around. A meaningful part of the original allocation was removed early, which made the supply side cleaner than it looked at launch.

Emissions cuts

Tokenomics matter a lot for this kind of project. The product can technically run without the token, but the token is what connects usage, staking, emissions, and supply. That makes the emission schedule worth paying attention to.

Venice has cut emissions four times in under a year, from 14M VVV annually down to 5M today, with 3M targeted by July 2026, a 79% reduction in roughly 18 months.

Less new supply hitting the market each month means less structural sell pressure, which is good for existing holders. The schedule is public and credible, which is why some early positioning has already happened.

But it’s still a speculative bet. Emission cuts reduce inflation but don’t guarantee price. VVV’s value over the next year depends on product adoption, trading volume, and how the broader market treats the sector. A token with falling supply but stagnating usage doesn’t pump. And right now it’s genuinely hard to know whether the current price already prices in the full cut schedule or not.

Having some exposure here is probably reasonable. Treating the emission schedule as a guaranteed price catalyst is not.

Staking: Why The Float Matters

The next important piece is staking.

With VVV, staking is not just about earning yield. When you stake VVV, you receive sVVV, which gives you access to a share of Venice’s API capacity. So stakers are not only farming emissions. They are also reserving part of the network’s private AI compute.

That is where the model gets more interesting.

If you simply stake VVV, you keep exposure to the token, earn emissions, and get access to Venice compute through your staked position. At current parameters, the yield is around the mid-teens, although that can change over time.

DIEM adds another layer.

By locking sVVV, users can mint DIEM, a tokenized form of AI credit. Each DIEM represents ongoing API credit inside Venice. So VVV starts to look less like a normal speculative token and more like a capital asset: you lock it, and it gives you access to compute.

There is a tradeoff. If you mint DIEM, your sVVV is locked, and you receive a lower share of the normal staking yield. The rest goes back to Venice as compensation for providing the compute behind DIEM.

DIEM can then be used for API access or traded, which gives users a way to monetize compute without selling their original VVV.

The important point is that staking reduces liquid supply, but it also gives people a reason to hold the token beyond price speculation. Large stakers are not just betting on the chart. They are reserving a slice of Venice’s AI capacity.

There is still liquidity risk. Unstaking takes seven days, and during that period users do not earn yield, cannot mint DIEM, and lose staking-based API access. So staking creates real lock-in. That can be powerful when demand is rising, but painful if people want to exit quickly.

Buybacks & Burns: The Usage Link

The last piece is the buyback and burn mechanism.

This matters because it connects Venice usage back to VVV. If more people pay for Venice, part of that revenue can be used to buy VVV on the market and send those tokens to a burn address.

Venice started monthly revenue-funded burns in late 2025. The first one, in December, burned about 57k VVV using revenue from the previous month.

Then in April 2026, Venice added a more automatic version of the same idea. Every new paid subscription now triggers a VVV buyback and burn, with the amount depending on the plan: $2 for Pro, $5 for Pro+, and $10 for Max.

Those buys happen on-chain through USDC to VVV swaps, and the tokens are sent directly to the burn address. There is also a public burn tracker, so you can follow the transactions.

Put simply, more paying users means more revenue, more VVV bought from the market, and more VVV removed from supply.

A lot of tokens talk about usage, but the token itself never really captures it. With VVV, the mechanism is clearer. If Venice grows as a product, the burn program gives that growth a direct path back into the token.

So far, the numbers are already meaningful. Including the large airdrop burn and the revenue-funded burns, Venice reports that more than 33.7M VVV has been burned. Depending on whether you measure against genesis supply or adjusted circulating supply, that is roughly one-third of the original token supply and a much larger share of the current float.

That does not mean VVV only goes up. Burns are not magic. If demand falls, if emissions stay too high, or if the product stops growing, the token can still struggle.

But this is what you want to see: emissions coming down, supply being locked through staking, and real product revenue being used to remove tokens from circulation.

That is a cleaner setup than most AI tokens have.

Conclusion

Venice is one of my favorite projects to follow right now, which is why I wanted to spend time going through the mechanics instead of only talking about the narrative.

I like the founder. I like the team’s direction. More importantly, I like that the product is improving while the tokenomics are becoming more holder-friendly. That combination is rare enough to pay attention to.

My plan is simple: keep using Venice, keep tracking the numbers, and DCA over time if the thesis continues to hold.

The product itself matters here. When I first tried Venice, it felt interesting but still rough. The models were not good enough for me to use it regularly. That has changed. The experience is much better now, and I find myself using it more naturally, especially when privacy matters.

That is the bigger opportunity. Venice is not only a crypto product. It can also speak to people who care about private AI for work, research, personal use, or simply saying what they think without feeding everything into a closed system.

The bet is not just that AI stays hot. The bet is that private AI becomes useful enough for people to pay for it.

VVV is still a high-risk token, and nothing here is guaranteed. But if Venice keeps improving the product, growing revenue, reducing emissions, and burning supply, I think it has a real shot at becoming one of the stronger AI trades of the next cycle.

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Onchain Analytics 🧐

This is where I share what I’ve actually been looking at onchain. The stuff that shapes how I’m positioning, not just what I’m buying.

Hyperliquid: Fees Keep Climbing

As you probably know, Hyperliquid has been on a strong run lately, with HYPE

recently pushing to a new all-time high. But the more important part is that the protocol is still generating a lot of fees, and those fees matter because they feed back into HYPE through the Assistance Fund.

The first chart I’m watching is Hyperliquid trading fees.

According to HypurrScan, Hyperliquid has now generated roughly $1.2B in cumulative trading fees, with spot fees representing only around $35M of that total.

That tells you two things.

First, Hyperliquid is still mainly a perp machine. Spot exists, but the core business is still leveraged trading. Most of the fee growth is coming from traders using the perpetuals exchange, not from spot activity.

Second, the fee curve is still moving up. This is not a vanity metric like TVL that can sit still and look impressive. Fees require activity. Traders have to show up, place orders, take risk, and pay for execution.

That is why this chart matters. Even in a consolidating market, Hyperliquid continues to generate real trading fees at scale. For HYPE, that keeps the thesis alive: the network is not just attracting attention, it is producing measurable onchain activity.

The caveat is that this is cumulative data, so the line will almost always go up. What matters from here is the slope. If the curve keeps steepening, activity is accelerating. If it flattens, volume is slowing down.

Ethereum: The Validator Queue Is Telling A Different Story

3.46M ETH is sitting in the validator entry queue. The exit queue is at zero.

That is not a trivial gap.

Validators are not trapped. The exit queue is empty, with only the sweep delay before funds clear after exit. So this is not a case where everyone wants out but cannot leave.

According to ValidatorQueue, the estimated wait to enter staking is around 60 days. That is a meaningful commitment. Anyone joining that queue anyway is making a deliberate long-term bet on Ethereum security, yield, and settlement demand. Not a reactive one.

The asset price is not reflecting this. ETH has been quiet while other things run. The market can ignore on-chain fundamentals for long stretches, and this is not an argument that price has to move immediately.

But it does push back against the “Ethereum is dead” read. Dead protocols do not usually have 60-day validator wait lists with empty exits.

The chart worth tracking is simple: if the entry queue stays elevated and exits stay near zero, this signal holds. If entries start draining and exits pick up, the read changes. Until then, the queue is telling a different story than the price.

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This Week’s Intel 📚

Here’s what was actually worth reading this week.

• Bitcoin Billionaire Books First SpaceX Mars Mission - read

• Kalshi, Polymarket lose bids to halt Nevada and Washington gambling cases - read

• NEAR token jumps 30% amid AI hype, Arthur Hayes endorsement and scaling plans - read

• DeFi hacks shake institutional confidence as risks outpace yields - read

• Polymarket Hit By ‘Internal Top-Up’ Wallet Exploit, $700K Drained - read

• Ethereum is still a good long-term buy, according data: Analyst - read

Podcast Picks 🎧

Podcasts worth your time this week.

That’s it for this week.

If you found this useful, share it with someone who is trying to make sense of this market.

You can also follow me on X and Farcaster for more frequent updates.

Leave a comment

Nothing in this newsletter is financial advice.

I personally use many of the protocols I write about, but that does not make them safe. Crypto is risky, DeFi is risky, and things can break quickly.

Do your own research, size positions carefully, and never invest more than you can afford to lose.

In this edition of The Weekly Alpha:

🧑‍🌾 The MegaETH Edge

🧐 Onchain Analytics

📚 This Week's Intel

🎧 Podcast Picks

The MegaETH Edge

Three hacks in four months. Less protocol innovation than we’ve seen in years. If you’ve been watching TVL charts lately, you already know the vibe. DeFi is quiet right now, and most people have moved on to the next narrative.

That’s usually when I get more interested, not less.

Bear markets are when the real positioning happens. Builders who stay focused on fundamentals, investors who put capital to work before the crowd comes back. I’ve been restructuring my portfolio over the past few weeks with exactly that mindset. No chasing yield that disappears in 48 hours. Set and forget, a few months of patience, calculated risk.

DeFi isn’t going anywhere either. It’s quietly becoming the backend of internet finance, getting absorbed into fintech infrastructure, integrating with RWA. The protocols that survive this period are the ones that will define the next cycle.

Right now my attention is on MegaETH. The farming opportunities are solid, and there’s an extra layer worth knowing about: MegaETH just launched Terminal, their official points campaign. 2.5% of total MEGA supply is being distributed over 8 weeks to users active in the ecosystem. The farms I’m covering today all count toward it, so you’re earning yield and stacking points toward that pool at the same time.

Let’s get into the best plays on MegaETH right now.

USDM on Gains Network

Gains Network’s gUSDM vault is currently offering a solid 10.33% APY. The mechanic is simple: deposit USDM, receive gUSDC in return. Clean, straightforward yield.

But the real kicker is that you’re also stacking points from the MegaETH Terminal campaign on top of that. So you’re not just earning yield, you’re positioning yourself early in the MegaETH ecosystem at the same time.

TVL is still low, which might give some people pause, but Gains Network has a proven track record across multiple chains. The reputation is there. For me, this is one of the cleaner ways to get exposure to MegaETH right now without overcomplicating things.

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USDm on AAVE V3

Yes, things got a bit messy with AAVE in April, but it remains one of the most battle-tested protocols in DeFi. They recently deployed a USDm market on MegaETH offering a 5.12% APY. Not as eye-catching as Gains Network, but you're getting more robust smart contracts and arguably a safer setup in return. That tradeoff is worth something, especially in a market where we've been reminded more than once that nothing in DeFi is truly risk-free.

If you’re bullish on MEGA itself, there’s also a MEGA(+) pool sitting at 3.58% APY, which makes this a decent spot to start accumulating while getting paid to wait.

Overall, AAVE V3 on MegaETH is the more conservative play here. If you’re just getting started in the ecosystem and want to keep things simple, this is probably where you begin.

MEGA/USDm Pool on Prism

This one is for the degens. The MEGA/USDm pool on Prism is currently pulling an estimated 70.57% APR, which is the kind of number that gets your attention fast. Liquidity is thin and volume is still finding its footing, but that’s kind of the point. You’re early.

What makes this interesting beyond the raw APR is that it’s part of the MegaETH Terminal incentive program, so you’re stacking points on top of an already attractive yield. If both MEGA and USDm continue gaining traction, this pool grows with them.

High risk, high upside. If you have conviction on the MegaETH ecosystem long term, this is one of the more aggressive ways to express that view while getting paid along the way.

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Conclusion

MegaETH hasn’t seen a real bull market yet. TVL is sitting at $707.63M, the protocol count is still thin, and MEGA’s price since launch has been ugly. I’m not going to dress that up.

But that’s also kind of the point. You’re not buying the finished product here, you’re betting on what it becomes. And the foundation is more solid than the price action suggests.

Farming MEGA rather than buying it spot is how I'm approaching it. You build exposure over time, collect yield while you wait, and avoid the timing risk of swapping stablecoins into a token that's still finding its floor. If the chain grows into its potential, the farming position starts to look smart. If it doesn't, you didn't go all in.

Is this my highest conviction position right now? No. But I don’t need it to be. A small allocation to something early, with yield on top and Terminal points stacking in the background, is exactly the kind of asymmetric setup worth having in a bear market.

The best entries rarely feel comfortable at the time.

Onchain Analytics 🧐

This is where I share what I've actually been looking at onchain. The stuff that shapes how I'm positioning, not just what I'm buying.

Bitcoin held on exchanges

This week I was looking at Bitcoin exchange balances, and the chart tells an interesting story. BTC sitting on exchanges has dropped from around 2.9 million coins in early 2025 to 2.44 million today. That’s a significant drawdown in available supply on exchanges, even as price has been struggling to hold above $80K. Less BTC on exchanges generally means less immediate selling pressure, people are moving coins off platforms and into cold storage. Historically that’s been a bullish signal.

That said, Bitcoin isn’t a clean play right now and I want to be honest about the risks. Institutions treat it as a risk-on asset, which means it’s often one of the first things they trim when macro gets shaky. Strategy is also worth watching closely here. They now hold over 818,000 BTC, roughly 3.9% of the total supply, acquired at an average cost of around $75,500 per coin. With BTC currently trading near that same level, they’re sitting close to breakeven. Saylor has been vocal that there’s no forced sell scenario, but a sustained move lower would put real pressure on that narrative.

Then there’s quantum risk, a longer term concern but one the market is starting to price in. My read is that part of Zcash’s recent momentum comes from exactly this: privacy-focused, not held by institutions, and with a different cryptographic profile than Bitcoin. Worth keeping an eye on.

Long term I’m still bullish on Bitcoin. But right now the risk/reward for a short term trade feels messy. The exchange balance data is genuinely encouraging though, and it’s the kind of signal I pay attention to when positioning for the next leg up.

Tokenized Stocks

This is probably the most underrated narrative in DeFi right now, and the numbers are starting to show it. There are now 2,246 tokenized stocks onchain, $1.43B in distributed value, up 27% in the last 30 days, and $3.11B in monthly transfer volume. Holders crossed 265,000, also up 25% in a month. The market is moving.

The core case is straightforward. You can fractionally own stocks rather than buying a full share. You can trade them 24/7 without waiting for markets to open. And instead of letting them sit idle in a brokerage account, you can put them to work in DeFi protocols, generating yield against USDC or other assets. That’s a genuinely different value proposition than what TradFi offers.

Ondo is leading this space and the backing behind them matters. Founders Fund and Pantera Capital led their Series A, with Coinbase Ventures and Tiger Global also in the cap table. They’ve since partnered with State Street, Galaxy, Fidelity, and Chainlink, and the SEC closed a two-year investigation into their tokenized equity platform in late 2025 without charges. That kind of regulatory clarity is rare and worth paying attention to. Their OUSG fund alone crossed $1.1B in TVL, and the broader RWA tokenization market they’re operating in is now sitting above $27B.

What’s also interesting is what’s happening on the perps side. Hyperliquid now has pre-IPO perpetuals for companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. That’s a different type of product but it points in the same direction: people want onchain exposure to assets they can’t easily access in traditional markets, and the infrastructure to give it to them is quietly being built.

Tokenized stocks are still early in terms of adoption, but the direction is clear. This is one of the few DeFi narratives with genuine institutional tailwinds behind it.

This Week's Intel 📚

Here’s what was actually worth reading this week.

• Bitwise Hyperliquid ETF to start trading on NYSE this Friday - read

• Kraken to Migrate Wrapped Bitcoin Tech to Chainlink as LayerZero Exodus Expands - read

• ZachXBT alleges 95% insider control of LAB token in investigation into AI terminal’s $6 billion FDV project - read

• Strive shares jump on ‘daily dividend company’ strategy as firm goes debt free - read

• Lombard Finance Dumps LayerZero, Will Use Chainlink to Power $1 Billion in Bitcoin Assets - read

• Drake Calls for Sam Bankman-Fried’s Release in New, Critically Panned Album - read

• OpenSea CMO sees tokenized Pokémon cards, Rolexes and tickets driving next NFT wave - read

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Podcast Picks 🎧

Podcasts worth your time this week.

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That’s it for this week.

If you found this edition valuable, please consider sharing it with your network — it helps grow our community and keeps the alpha flowing.

Follow me on X and Farcaster

Leave a comment

None of the information in this newsletter constitutes financial advice. While I personally use most of the protocols that I discuss, it's important to understand that they involve substantial risk. Don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose

In this edition of The Weekly Alpha:

📚 This Week's Intel

🎧 Podcast Picks

🧑‍🌾 How RWA Is Rebuilding Global Finance Onchain

🧐 Onchain Analytics

This Week's Intel 📚

The signal from the noise, this week's developments that actually matter for your DeFi positioning.

I've filtered through the endless stream of headlines, hot takes, and crypto Twitter drama to bring you the stories moving the ecosystem forward. These aren't just news updates; they're intelligence briefings on where capital is flowing, which narratives are gaining traction, and what regulatory shifts could reshape your strategy.

Skip the timeline doom-scrolling. This is your weekly intel drop.

• Espresso Token Launches at $275 Million Valuation - read

• Vitalik Buterin: Hedging on Prediction Markets Could ‘Replace Fiat Currency’ - read

• Ether steadies after $540 million sell wave to outperform wider crypto market - read

• Onchain analytics tool Parsec winding down operations - read

• Crypto markets feel the chill, Base, ether.fi reorganize layer-2 landscape - read

• How Ethereum devs will use AI to boost blockchain’s development - read

• ZeroLend Latest DeFi Platform to Shut Down Amid Liquidity, Revenue Pressures - read

• Hyperliquid-Based Ventuals’ Trading Volume Surges 100% in 17 Days - read

• deBridge launches MCP, enabling AI agents to execute non-custodial cross-chain transactions - read

• Aave price tumbles as ‘most productive’ contractor leaves DAO - read

• BNP Paribas taps Ethereum for new money market fund tokenization pilot - read

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Podcast Picks 🎧

This week’s audio alpha: handpicked conversations that shaped my thinking and could shift yours too.

I sift through hours of DeFi content so you don't have to. These are the episodes worth your commute, the insights that made me pause and rewind, and the perspectives that are moving markets before they hit mainstream media.

Queue these up and stay ahead of the narrative.

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How RWA Is Rebuilding Global Finance Onchain

While crypto markets have been taking a beating, RWA has been telling a different story. Sure, tokens like ONDO are down significantly, but the underlying fundamentals have remained largely intact. Adoption is growing, TVL is holding, and institutional interest isn't going anywhere. That disconnect between price action and real-world metrics is hard to ignore, and it points to something worth paying attention to: RWA might be one of the better ways to diversify right now without ever leaving the chain.

Tokenized stocks

Tokenized stocks are playing an increasingly significant role in the onchain RWA economy, and protocols like Ondo Finance are leading the charge. The core value proposition is simple but powerful: you can trade 24/7 and plug directly into DeFi protocols like Uniswap. Want exposure to the S&P 500 ETF, Tesla, or Google? You can find them on Ondo Finance and put them to work like any other onchain asset.

Take tokenized NVIDIA as a concrete example. It may not be the largest holding by TVL, but its holder count and transfer volume have both climbed meaningfully over the last 30 days — a signal that Ondo is gaining momentum and, more importantly, filling a real gap for investors.

Getting in is straightforward: head to Ondo Finance, buy directly with USDC, no intermediaries, on Ethereum mainnet. Trades settle instantly — no waiting for market open, no cut-off times, no Monday morning scramble if something moves over the weekend.

That last point is where tokenized stocks genuinely outshine their Web2 counterparts. Traditional brokerages lock you into fixed hours, leaving you watching prices move without being able to act. Onchain markets don't care what day it is. It's worth noting that BlackRock clearly sees this too — their growing commitment to tokenized assets through the BUIDL fund isn't a side bet, it's a strategic signal about where capital markets are heading.

Stablecoins

Stablecoins are the backbone of Ethereum and decentralized finance, and I don’t think that point gets made enough. Whether you’re parking liquidity during a bear market, chasing yield across DeFi protocols, or simply moving value across borders without friction, stablecoins are the infrastructure everything else runs on. But not all of them are built equal.

The market is massive, $295.76B in total market cap, and right now it’s heavily concentrated. Tether and Circle’s USDC dominate the lion’s share, which raises legitimate questions about decentralization. That concentration is exactly why new entrants like Polaris are worth watching. They’re positioning themselves as a more decentralized alternative, and I’m genuinely curious to see what they bring to the table.

What’s also worth highlighting is how broad the demand actually is. Stablecoins aren’t just a tool for DeFi natives. Startups are using them to pay developers across the globe, institutions are quietly increasing their exposure, and the on-chain metrics reflect that growing appetite across the board.

On the DeFi side specifically, a few smaller players are making serious moves. USDS from the Sky ecosystem and Ethena’s USDe are emerging as strong alternatives, purpose-built for DeFi and gaining traction fast. These are the projects worth keeping an eye on as the stablecoin landscape continues to mature.

Share

Stablecoins deserve a place in every portfolio, not just for DeFi natives but for anyone who understands what’s at stake. Internet money is freedom. You can deploy capital across protocols like AAVE or Pendle, generate yields that most traditional banks simply can’t compete with, and maintain full control over your assets around the clock.

The utility here is hard to overstate. Stablecoins act as a hedge against a banking system that has repeatedly shown its limitations, offering an alternative layer of financial infrastructure that doesn’t ask for permission. The centralization concern is real and worth acknowledging, most of the dominant stablecoins today carry meaningful counterparty risk. But the direction of travel is encouraging. Demand for censorship-resistant money is growing globally, and that pressure will keep pushing the ecosystem toward more decentralized solutions over time.

Commodities

Commodities represent one of the most underrated opportunities in the onchain RWA space. At $7.03B in market cap, the category is still small relative to stablecoins, but the growth trajectory is hard to ignore. Over the last few months, as crypto markets pulled back, tokenized commodities quietly gained momentum, a sign that investors are looking for onchain assets that move independently from the broader market.

The space is still early and concentrated, with Tether and Paxos leading the pack. Gold dominates by a wide margin, but Oil, Silver, and even Diamond are carving out meaningful presence and growing fast.

From a portfolio perspective, tokenized gold makes a compelling case for itself. It gives you exposure to one of the oldest stores of value in history while keeping you fully onchain, no custodians, no brokerage accounts, no friction. In the context of a new financial system being built in real time, that matters. I expect the commodity market to roughly triple over the coming year, closing the gap with stablecoins enough that it starts commanding serious attention from both DeFi natives and traditional investors alike.

My take on RWA

The world is moving onchain, and the momentum behind RWA makes that clearer than ever. Tokenized stocks, stablecoins, commodities, and real estate are all growing in adoption for the same fundamental reason: you get access to global markets around the clock, and you can put those assets to work across any protocol you choose. This is what money legos actually looks like in practice.

The opportunity for builders here is enormous. Open protocols mean anyone can come and create on top of these assets without asking for permission, something the traditional banking system has never been willing to offer. Decades in, that system has grown increasingly closed and innovation has stalled. The new generation has a real chance to rewire that, connecting global markets and building products that would have been unimaginable a few years ago.

The democratization angle is just as significant. Buying a single share of Apple was out of reach for most people in developing countries, let alone real estate or gold. Fractional ownership changes that equation entirely, opening up investment access to anyone with an internet connection and a wallet.

From a portfolio standpoint, RWA brings something crypto has always struggled to offer: stability and diversification without having to step offchain. It hedges against volatility while keeping you inside a composable, permissionless financial system.

The infrastructure of global finance is being rebuilt in the open. RWA is not a niche, it is the backend of what comes next.

Onchain Analytics 🧐

This section is usually where I share my own onchain investigations, the kind of digging that helps me position myself better in DeFi. It keeps me sharp, and sharing the process openly is part of what keeps me motivated to go deeper. Today though, I’m taking a different approach. Instead of an investigation, I want to walk you through the analytics tools I rely on for my research.

Subscribe now

#1 Growthepie

Growthepie is my go-to for fundamental metrics across Ethereum and L2s. When it comes to positioning yourself for the medium to long term, fundamentals matter more than most people admit. Is a chain actually gaining momentum? Are wallets genuinely active, or just inflated by incentives? What does the revenue picture look like?

I’ll be honest, I’m not particularly bullish on L2 governance tokens as investments right now. But that’s not why I use Growthepie. I use it to track where liquidity is moving, so I can follow it early rather than show up late to a narrative that’s already played out.

#2 DeFiLlama

DeFiLlama is one of the most well-known open source analytics tools in the space, but most people only scratch the surface with it. Beyond TVL and general DeFi metrics, I use it heavily for airdrop research. Their dashboard for protocols without a token yet is genuinely underrated. Filter by TVL, focus on the mid to high range, and you start uncovering real opportunities to position yourself before a token even exists.

It sits firmly in my top three analytics tools for that reason alone

What I don’t see talked about enough is the API. I’m currently building my own app to streamline research for this newsletter, and the DeFiLlama API has been central to that workflow, pulling exactly the metrics I need directly into my own ecosystem, completely free. That kind of open, accessible infrastructure is exactly what public goods for Ethereum should look like, and DeFiLlama is one of the best examples of it.

If you're serious about DeFi research and not yet using DeFiLlama, start there. It's free, open source, and deep enough to support everything from casual portfolio tracking to the kind of systematic research that gives you a real edge.

#3 Token Terminal

Token Terminal is where I go when I want to go deep. It's less of a quick-check tool and more of a research environment, covering everything from RWA to lending, derivatives, and well beyond. If you learn how to read what it's telling you, it gives you a genuine edge over most market participants.

The reports are another highlight. Well-written, thorough, and particularly valuable if you're investing in DAOs or want a clearer picture of protocol fundamentals. I tend to read them on a quiet Sunday after publishing the newsletter, and they consistently spark ideas for the week ahead.

These three tools are a strong foundation for anyone looking to get serious about onchain analytics. I rely on other, more technical resources too, Dune Analytics and some of the Blockworks data among them, but those deserve their own dedicated breakdown. Let me know in the comments if that's something you'd want to see in a future edition.

That’s it for this week.

If you found this edition valuable, please consider sharing it with your network — it helps grow our community and keeps the alpha flowing.

Follow me on X and Farcaster

Leave a comment

None of the information in this newsletter constitutes financial advice. While I personally use most of the protocols that I discuss, it's important to understand that they involve substantial risk. Don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose

In this edition of The Weekly Alpha:

📚 This Week's Intel

🎧 Podcast Picks

🧑‍🌾 Where to Deploy Stablecoins: 4 Yield Strategies Compared

🧐 Onchain Analytics

This Week's Intel 📚

The signal from the noise, this week's developments that actually matter for your DeFi positioning.

I've filtered through the endless stream of headlines, hot takes, and crypto Twitter drama to bring you the stories moving the ecosystem forward. These aren't just news updates; they're intelligence briefings on where capital is flowing, which narratives are gaining traction, and what regulatory shifts could reshape your strategy.

Skip the timeline doom-scrolling. This is your weekly intel drop.

Citadel and Ark Invest back LayerZero as it launches blockchain, partners with Google Cloud and DTCC

LayerZero launches 'Zero' Layer 1 blockchain with backing from Citadel Securities, Ark Invest, Google Cloud, and DTCC. Claims 2M TPS (~100,000x faster than Ethereum, ~500x faster than Solana). CEO: "We can bring the entire global economy onchain.".

Read the full article

Robinhood Launches Public Testnet for Ethereum Layer 2 Blockchain

Robinhood launched its public testnet for Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum L2 built on Arbitrum with $2.3B TVL. The testnet lets developers build apps for tokenized real-world assets, lending, and perpetual futures - first step toward moving all Robinhood infrastructure on-chain.

Read the full article

Other news

• Vitalik draws line between ‘real DeFi’ and centralized yield stablecoins - read

• Trend Research cuts ETH exposure by over 400K as liquidation risk rises - read

• MegaETH Unveils Token Buyback and TGE Plan - read

• Uniswap ETF enters the chat: Bitwise files a registration statement with the SEC - read

• Robinhood shares fall after earnings as crypto revenue slides 38% in Q4 - read

• BlackRock enters DeFi as institutional crypto push accelerates: Finance Redefined - read

• Binance France CEO Targeted in Home Invasion Attempt - read

• Aave Labs seeks $50M grant to redirect product revenue to DAO - read

• Ethereum Foundation co-director resigns to focus on AI - read

• Tether invests in Hyperliquid frontend Dreamcash, offering perps markets for TSLA, gold and more using USDT0 collateral - read

Subscribe now

Podcast Picks 🎧

This week’s audio alpha: handpicked conversations that shaped my thinking and could shift yours too.

I sift through hours of DeFi content so you don't have to. These are the episodes worth your commute, the insights that made me pause and rewind, and the perspectives that are moving markets before they hit mainstream media.

Queue these up and stay ahead of the narrative.

Subscribe now

Where to Deploy Stablecoins: 4 Yield Strategies Compared

Sky Lending SUSDS - The New 4% Standard

Sky Lending’s SUSDS pool is offering a steady 4.00% APY with nearly $5B in TVL, making it the largest stablecoin yield opportunity in DeFi right now. This represents a consistent yield that’s been stable at 4% over the past 30 days, suggesting strong demand and sustainable economics.

How it works

• Deposit stablecoins into Sky’s SUSDS savings rate mechanism

• Earn yield from Sky’s lending protocol revenue and DSR mechanics

• Benefit from MakerDAO’s rebrand momentum and institutional adoption

Current Yields: On-chain: 4.00%, 30-day average: 4.00%

Key details

• $4.87B TVL

• Ethereum mainnet

• Sky protocol smart contract risk

• Direct deposit access

My take

With $4.87B TVL and rock-solid 4% yields, Sky is becoming the new benchmark for risk-free stablecoin returns. The consistency here is impressive.

Maple USDC - Premium Institutional Yields

Maple’s USDC pool is delivering 4.4% APY with $3.71B TVL, representing one of the highest yields for traditional stablecoins. The 30-day average of 5.14% shows this pool has been even more attractive recently, though yields have compressed slightly.

How it works

• Lend USDC to institutional borrowers through Maple’s credit-based system

• Earn yield from loan interest paid by verified institutional counterparties

• Benefit from Maple’s underwriting and risk assessment framework

Current Yields: On-chain: 4.5%, 30-day average: 5.14%

Key details

• $3.71B TVL

• Ethereum mainnet

• Credit risk from institutional borrowers

• Pool delegate screening required

My take

Maple continues to offer premium yields for those willing to take credit risk. The slight yield compression from 5.14% to 4.5% suggests strong demand, but still beats most alternatives.

Ethena sUSDe - Synthetic Dollar Powerhouse

Ethena’s sUSDe is pulling in $3.63B TVL while offering 3.30% APY, down from a 30-day average of 4.35%. This synthetic dollar strategy remains one of the largest stablecoin plays, though yields have compressed as the protocol matures.

How it works

• Stake USDe tokens to earn yield from Ethena’s delta-neutral trading strategy

• Benefit from funding rate arbitrage and staking rewards

• Participate in Ethena’s synthetic dollar ecosystem growth

Current Yields: On-chain: 3.30%, 30-day average: 4.35%

Key details

• $3.63B TVL

• Ethereum mainnet

• Synthetic asset and funding rate risks

• Direct staking interface

My take

The yield drop from 4.35% to 3.30% reflects Ethena’s growing maturity and competition. Still solid for a synthetic dollar play, but the premium is shrinking.

Merkl RLUSD - Riding the Ripple Wave

Merkl’s RLUSD pool is offering 4.15% APY purely through rewards with $619M TVL, though down from a 30-day average of 4.71%. This newly launched Ripple stablecoin is seeing significant incentive programs to bootstrap liquidity.

How it works

• Provide RLUSD liquidity to earn Merkl protocol rewards

• Benefit from early adopter incentives for Ripple’s new stablecoin

• Participate in cross-protocol reward distribution mechanisms

Current Yields: Rewards: 4.15%, 30-day average: 4.71%

Key details

• $619M TVL

• Ethereum mainnet

• New stablecoin adoption risk

• Merkl rewards interface

My take

RLUSD incentives are generous but fading from 4.71% to 4.15%. Early stage stablecoin with solid backing, but rewards dependency is high.

Onchain Analytics 🧐

MegaETH Metrics: Early Growth Signals

Recently launched, MegaETH is steadily growing in terms of TVL. Performance has been solid given current market conditions, not exactly the ideal time for a launch, but builders remain undeterred by macro headwinds.

The chain currently holds $66.85M in TVL with a limited number of dApps deployed.

MegaETH recorded 149.99K active addresses yesterday, representing a 439.67% increase over the last 7 days.

On the dApp front, the ecosystem remains sparse. Kumbaya dominates the protocol rankings by a significant margin with $51.88M TVL and over 30% TVL growth in the last 30 days.

There is currently no MegaETH token, though one is expected to launch soon. This could drive a spike in activity in the mid-term, assuming the protocol finds product-market fit.

My Take

MegaETH has enormous potential, but success hinges on attracting builders and executing a strong TGE. As Vitalik has noted, the current state of L2s doesn’t make much sense; they’re not paying enough rent to Ethereum mainnet. We haven’t yet seen a real-time blockchain handle substantial user activity, so it’s difficult to predict how MegaETH will perform under load or how the token will fare post-launch.

That said, I believe there could be compelling opportunities with asymmetric risk/reward for those positioned early in the MegaETH ecosystem.

That’s it for this week.

If you found this edition valuable, please consider sharing it with your network — it helps grow our community and keeps the alpha flowing.

Follow me on X and Farcaster

Leave a comment

None of the information in this newsletter constitutes financial advice. While I personally use most of the protocols that I discuss, it's important to understand that they involve substantial risk. Don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose

In this edition of The Weekly Alpha:

📚 This Week's Intel

🎧 Podcast Picks

🧑‍🌾 3 DeFi Yield Strategies While Markets Consolidate

🧐 Onchain Analytics

This Week's Intel 📚

The signal from the noise, this week's developments that actually matter for your DeFi positioning.

I've filtered through the endless stream of headlines, hot takes, and crypto Twitter drama to bring you the stories moving the ecosystem forward. These aren't just news updates; they're intelligence briefings on where capital is flowing, which narratives are gaining traction, and what regulatory shifts could reshape your strategy.

Skip the timeline doom-scrolling. This is your weekly intel drop.

• Bitcoin Faces Renewed Scrutiny Over Quantum Computing Threat - read

• MetaMask Adds Tokenized US Stocks, ETFs via Ondo Global Markets - read

• Zama launches token, debuts privacy metric after more than $121 million shielded on Ethereum - read

• Aave winds down Avara, phases out Family wallet in DeFi refocus - read

• Vitalik Says Ethereum’s Layer 2 Vision ‘No Longer Makes Sense’ - read

• RNBW Tanks 65% Below ICO Price on First Day of Trading - read

• Vitalik Buterin offloads nearly $6.6m in ETH amid price decline - read

• Bithumb Mistakenly Airdrops $30 Billion of Bitcoin - read

Subscribe now

Podcast Picks 🎧

This week’s audio alpha: handpicked conversations that shaped my thinking and could shift yours too.

I sift through hours of DeFi content so you don't have to. These are the episodes worth your commute, the insights that made me pause and rewind, and the perspectives that are moving markets before they hit mainstream media.

Queue these up and stay ahead of the narrative.

• The Daily Gwei: The Future of Ethereum's Layer 2 Ecosystem - listen

• Empire: Why Is Crypto Crashing? - listen

• Unchained: 'No More Dry Powder to Come Into Tokens': Why Crypto Is Down - listen

• The Rollup: How Codex Cracked Stablecoin FX - listen

• Empire: Are L1s Still Overvalued, Hyperliquid’s End Game & State of The Market - listen

• Bell Curve: Crypto’s Reality Check - listen

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3 DeFi Yield Strategies While Markets Consolidate

ETH at around $2k and Bitcoin at around $60k is not good news if you were expecting a super cycle, but it is a good moment to consolidate and build future-proof positions within DeFi. Whether with stablecoins or not, you can still put your crypto to work and earn a solid yield regardless of the market, you just need to be more strategic and more careful with your investments.

Strategy #1: sUSDC on Wasabi (Base)

This first strategy is very straightforward. It’s actually a protocol I discovered on the Base app called Wasabi.xyz. You can supply assets to power the leveraged market and generate auto-compounding yield on your assets.

• Supply assets to power the leverage market. Traders borrow your liquidity to execute trades, paying you interest that accrues every second.

• Yield comes from borrow interest, not trader PnL. Benefit from zero counterparty risk, full self-custody, and no lock-ups.

• Experience single-sided yields with no impermanent loss, zero fees on deposits/withdrawals, and total flexibility.

The current APY on sUSDC on Base is 8.17%. Is it worth the risk? It’s up to you, but I wouldn’t trust the protocol as much as I trust AAVE or a Uniswap pool that has been battle-tested over years.

The thing for farmers is that with the Wasabi vaults, you're accumulating points for a potential future airdrop. But as always, don't invest what you can't afford to lose.

The protocol has a TVL of $18.17m across 5 chains including Base and Ethereum. It's very low if you compare this to Hyperliquid or other leveraged protocols, so for me, I wouldn't risk too big a sum of money on this protocol. But for experimentation purposes and being an early adopter, why not?

Overall I give it a 3/5 stars. The yield on USDC is solid, there's some activity, but I'm still unsure of the sustainability of the protocol. It didn't take traction like Hyperliquid or other protocols.

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Strategy #2: Ethena sUSDe on Pendle (Plasma)

The second strategy is happening on Plasma with Pendle. This one is offering 4.59% fixed APY at the time of writing this article with the PT sUSDe token.

sUSDe is the yield-bearing synthetic dollar from Ethena, a protocol that combines yield from staked ETH and basis spread from perps and futures to create an on-chain money solution.

How it works:

• 1 PT sUSDe (USDe) earns you 4.59% fixed APY, equal to 1 USDe staked in Ethena at maturity

• 1 YT sUSDe (USDe) gives you the yield and points of 1 USDe staked in Ethena until maturity

Current Yields:

• On-chain Yield: 4.31% APY (USDe)

• Off-chain Yield: 0.12% APR (XPL)

• Plasma Rewards: 0.12% APR (XPL)

• Points: 20x Sats

Key Details:

• Conversion Rate: 1 sUSDe = 1.21964 USDe staked in Ethena

• Deposit and withdraw through Pendle Router (automatically finds best route between native minting and DEX swapping)

• Minimal risk of generating negative yield

• Built on Ethena protocol

• Initiated by Pendle Team

My take:

Unlike Wasabi, Pendle is a battle-tested protocol that’s been around for years. The fixed APY gives you certainty, and you’re not exposed to the same smart contract risks as newer protocols. The yield is lower than Wasabi (4.59% vs 8.17%), but you’re getting significantly more security and predictability. Ethena’s sUSDe has proven to be stable, and the Pendle mechanism is well understood by the DeFi community.

Overall I give this a 4/5 stars. It’s a safer play for conservative farmers who want reliable yields without taking excessive risks. The only downside is the lower APY compared to riskier alternatives.

Strategy #3: cbBTC / LBTC on Aerodrome Finance (Base)

The third strategy is also a very interesting one. For this play, you need to lock some AERO tokens to be able to vote on the pool and earn incentives with a current voting APR of 110.39%.

Pool Details:

• Pool Type: Concentrated Stable Pool (cbBTC/LBTC)

• TVL: ~$3,808,306.67

• Current Voting APR: 110.39%

• Fees: ~$967.13

• Pool Fee: 0.02%

How it works:

You lock AERO tokens (veAERO) and use your voting power to direct emissions to this pool. In return, you earn:

• Rebase APR from your locked AERO

• Trading fees from the pool

• Incentives/bribes from votes

Key Details:

• The APR on this pool is very volatile and changes based on voting dynamics

• No available incentives currently shown (could change)

• This is a concentrated stable pool between two Bitcoin-pegged assets (Coinbase BTC and Lombard BTC)

My take:

If you’re bullish on both AERO and BTC, this is a great play. I personally locked my AERO for 4 years and keep voting for pools including BTC. This one is particularly attractive because it’s a stable pool (minimal impermanent loss risk since both assets track BTC), and you’re earning the rebase APR, fees, and incentives all at once.

The 110% APR is eye-catching, but remember it’s highly dependent on voting participation and can fluctuate significantly. The longer you lock AERO, the more voting power you get, which means higher returns.

Overall I give this a 4/5 stars. Great for AERO believers and BTC holders, but requires a longer-term commitment with your AERO lock. Not suitable if you want liquidity or short-term plays.

Onchain Analytics 🧐

State of the market

The crypto market faced significant headwinds this week, with most assets experiencing sharp declines. Ethereum broke below the psychologically important $2,000 level, while the top five cryptocurrencies saw average losses of approximately 20% over the past seven days.

These sustained downward moves suggest we may be entering bear market territory.

Hyperliquid Decouples: How HIP-4 and Record Volumes are Driving HYPE’s Independent Rally

While BTC and ETH have faced significant selling pressure, Hyperliquid (HYPE) has demonstrated clear "risk-off" decoupling, gaining 24% over the last 30 days. This idiosyncratic price action is underpinned by robust protocol fundamentals rather than speculation alone. As a vertically integrated Layer 1, Hyperliquid is capturing an increasing share of the PerpDEX market, recently hitting a record 24-hour volume of $5.45 billion.

The current momentum is driven by three core pillars:

• Aggressive Token Value Accrual: Unlike protocols with inflationary emissions, Hyperliquid’s buyback-and-burn mechanism directly ties HYPE’s value to exchange throughput. With daily revenues consistently crossing $4M, the protocol is recycling organic demand into token scarcity.

• The Launch of HIP-4 (Outcome Trading): Hyperliquid is evolving beyond perpetuals with HIP-4, introducing fully collateralized, binary-settlement contracts that allow users to trade on real-world events—similar to prediction markets like Polymarket.

• Capital Efficiency: By integrating Outcome Trading into the existing HyperEVM and cross-margin framework, traders can hedge or speculate on event outcomes using the same collateral as their perpetual positions. This creates a unified liquidity hub that competitors currently lack.

The Analytic Take: While market irrationality remains a factor, HYPE’s growth reflects a shift from platform speculation to utility-driven demand. If the protocol successfully captures prediction market volume via HIP-4, it could establish a non-correlated revenue stream that sustains this trajectory regardless of BTC’s price action.

That’s it for this week.

If you found this edition valuable, please consider sharing it with your network — it helps grow our community and keeps the alpha flowing.

Follow me on X and Farcaster

Leave a comment

None of the information in this newsletter constitutes financial advice. While I personally use most of the protocols that I discuss, it's important to understand that they involve substantial risk. Don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose

In this edition of The Weekly Alpha:

📚 This Week's Intel

🎧 Podcast Picks

🧑‍🌾 Building a Resilient DeFi Portfolio

🧐 Onchain Analytics

This Week's Intel 📚

The signal from the noise, this week's developments that actually matter for your DeFi positioning.

I've filtered through the endless stream of headlines, hot takes, and crypto Twitter drama to bring you the stories moving the ecosystem forward. These aren't just news updates; they're intelligence briefings on where capital is flowing, which narratives are gaining traction, and what regulatory shifts could reshape your strategy.

Skip the timeline doom-scrolling. This is your weekly intel drop.

• Bitcoin Slips Under $88K as Markets Await Fed Decision - read

• Bitwise to launch onchain vaults via Morpho - read

• Tokenized Gold Capitalization Tops $4 Billion as Spot Approaches $5,000 - read

• Theo Launches Yield-Bearing Tokenized Gold as Price Tops $5,100 - read

• Macro fears mask Ethereum’s momentum, SharpLink CEO says - read

• Ethereum treasury firm buys jet engines amid tokenization push after selling ETH - read

• Ethereum OGs Bring The DAO back in $220 Million Security Initiative - read

• Lido’s new stVaults will let L2s create their own rules for Ethereum staking - read

• Step Finance treasury wallets breached, $27M in SOL drained as STEP crashes 90% - read

• HYPE rallies 60% on staking flows and balance-sheet buying - read

• Infinex Token Launches at $300 Million Valuation - read

• Ethereum Supply Tightens With 45% of ETH Locked: Sygnum - read

• MEGA Premarket Plummets Ahead of Mainnet Launch - read

Subscribe now

Podcast Picks 🎧

This week’s audio alpha: handpicked conversations that shaped my thinking and could shift yours too.

I sift through hours of DeFi content so you don't have to. These are the episodes worth your commute, the insights that made me pause and rewind, and the perspectives that are moving markets before they hit mainstream media.

Queue these up and stay ahead of the narrative.

• Bits + Bips: Why Gold Still Leads — And How Bitcoin Could Close the Gap - listen

• Forward Guidance: The Generational Metal Squeeze Exposing Broken Sovereign Debt - listen

• The Chopping Block: Crypto Is Boring… So Everyone’s Levering Silver Now - listen

• When Shift Happens: Why Bitcoin Will Hit $6.5 Million (and is better than Gold) - listen

• Empire: The Bull Case For DePIN, RWAs on Hyperliquid & The Onchain Endgame - listen

• The Chopping Block: Monad Madness: Hype, Hate, Tokenomics & the New Crypto Meta - listen

• Bell Curve: The Infrastructure Behind Agentic Finance - listen

Subscribe now

Building a Resilient DeFi Portfolio (Not Just a Profitable One)

The hardest thing in DeFi, or crypto in general, isn’t making money. It’s staying in the game long enough to actually keep it.

Over the years, I’ve watched countless friends, influencers, and people I know burn out way too early. And it’s almost always the same story: they ape first, think later. Look, I get it, sometimes you gotta send it. But when you’re doing that with your entire portfolio? That’s how you last exactly one cycle.

There’s no get-rich-quick in crypto. It’s more about not getting poor slowly.

For me, aside from a small DCA, I haven’t thrown much fresh cash in over the years. But I’ve still managed to grow my portfolio exponentially. How? Consistency. Sticking with solid protocols that actually rewarded users with meaningful airdrops. Not chasing whatever shitcoin was being shilled in the group chat. Yeah, I’m looking at you, SafeMoon and all those other tokens people were hyping at my old workplace.

The portfolios that survive aren’t the flashiest. They’re the ones built to last.

Bitcoin and Ethereum: The Anchors

These are the pillars of my portfolio. This is how I’ve survived multiple bear markets without burning out. For me, blue chips are the assets I have high conviction could stand the test of time. In my case, that’s Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Both networks are decentralized enough that they won’t get shut down by some coordinated regulation, and they’ve got proven track records. I hold Ethereum because it’s a network I actually use, not just to speculate but for real stuff. Social media with Farcaster, hanging out at community events like ETH Denver and EthCC. It’s part of my life, not just my portfolio.

Bitcoin? That’s my savings account. My biggest hedge against the dollar. Those two together make up over 70% of my portfolio. That might be too much for some people, but that’s how I stay sane during bear markets.

Take right now, for example. Bitcoin’s sitting around $78k. The reason I’m not shaken up? Conviction. I’m convinced that over a medium to long term period, it’ll get back to all-time highs. Every cycle is the same: we dump, some people panic sell, some hold. And usually, the ones who panic sell end up regretting it. That’s not a position you want to be in.

Stablecoins: The Working Capital

As a DeFi power user in both bear and bull markets, stablecoins make up a big chunk of my portfolio, roughly 15% depending on where we are in the cycle. More in bear markets when other assets dump, less in bull runs when everything’s pumping.

I usually accumulate stablecoins by taking profits from airdrops or exiting assets I’ve lost conviction in. Here’s the key though: 90% of those stablecoins are not just sitting there. They’re working. From AAVE to Euler to more complex protocols like Pendle, I make sure they’re always generating yield. Sometimes I’m farming governance tokens that I’ll either hold or dump immediately, depending on my conviction.

This is a crucial part of my strategy. Outside of depeg risk and smart contract risk, I know I have this cushion if I need quick cash and don’t want to sell other assets at the bottom. Having that stable position matters.

One other option, depending on your jurisdiction, is taking loans against your crypto. But in my case, that’s a taxable event, so I can’t leverage it without getting hit with taxes. Basically the same as selling for me.

DAO Tokens: The Governance Plays

Most of these I’ve accumulated either with stablecoins from what I mentioned earlier or through airdrops. I rarely buy them outright, but I try to stay active in governance. Some examples: a bit of UNI from the airdrop, TIA, ENS, OP, ARB, and others.

I’ll be honest, I’m rekt on most of these positions. But here’s why I keep holding them. First, I didn’t invest direct cash to buy them, so it doesn’t sting as much. Second, I don’t think the airdrop meta is dead. I think it’s coming back in a different form, and it’s going to reward DeFi power users. The ones who actually participate in protocol governance, vote, hold the tokens, and use the apps. All of that is easily traceable onchain.

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I think the era of farm and dump is ending. Or at least, it’s becoming way more important to have one or two wallets with solid track records. And like I said, even though I don’t have strong conviction in all these DAO tokens, they weren’t cash investments. I have no problem selling if I need liquidity for something else.

NFTs and Low Caps: The Speculative Edge

Let’s start with NFTs. Honestly, I don’t recommend heavy investment in NFTs right now. I think they’ll come back eventually, but even the blue chips are way too volatile at the moment.

The reason I keep my Pudgy Penguin? I got an excellent entry at a very low price, and now it’s become part of my personal brand. I have no intention of selling short to medium term. It’s opened up amazing opportunities and connected me with great people in the community. I don’t see my Pudgy as an investment anymore, it’s more like a networking tool.

If you’re planning to invest in NFTs right now, NFA, but it might not be a great play. Even for blue chips. And the liquidity sucks.

For low cap crypto, I keep very few of them. I’m not into the moonshot, get-rich-quick mentality. If I hold a low cap, it’s because I have conviction in the project or there’s a solid team with a proven track record behind it. I’m not the guy buying the next cat or dog coin. Those are a tiny part of my portfolio.

The few times I tried to gamble on shitcoins? Got absolutely rekt. And we all know where those go in a bear market. Zero.

Final Thoughts 🧠

I think I’m ready for whatever bear market is coming. My strategy hasn’t changed since the last cycles, and I can sleep at night. Being heavy in blue chips, holding some stablecoins, and having a bit of mid to low caps keeps me sane. I’m not stressing because I know my blue chips will eventually recover after a few months or years. As long as I don’t need immediate cash, I’m good. And if I do? I can tap into my stablecoins without selling at the bottom and touching my core positions.

The shitcoins I have are basically already at zero, so I don’t even think about them. My Pudgy NFT? Not selling. I’ll keep going to community events, networking, and building my brand around it.

Drop a comment with your strategy for the upcoming bear market. What did you think of this approach? Let’s discuss.

Leave a comment

Onchain Analytics 🧐

While Price Drops, Validators Queue Up

Here's a metric worth watching: while ETH price is struggling, the validator entry queue has ballooned to 70 days, compared to just 3 minutes to exit. This massive imbalance suggests deep conviction among large holders, likely institutions and treasuries moving to stake their ETH positions.

The chart tells the story clearly: entry queue at all-time highs, exit queue at all-time lows. Price and fundamentals are telling two different stories right now.

Lido’s Dominance: A Double-Edged Sword

Lido Finance controls roughly half of all liquid staking assets ($26.8B), more than double its nearest competitor EigenCloud ($12.1B). While this dominance reflects Lido's product-market fit and user trust, it poses a long-term centralization risk for Ethereum. A healthier liquid staking ecosystem would see capital more evenly distributed across Lido, EigenCloud, Ether.fi, and emerging alternatives.

As the sector matures, watch for whether market forces naturally diversify this concentration or if protocol-level solutions become necessary.

That’s it for this week.

If you found this edition valuable, please consider sharing it with your network

Leave a comment

None of the information in this newsletter constitutes financial advice. While I personally use most of the protocols that I discuss, it's important to understand that they involve substantial risk. Don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose

In this edition of The Weekly Alpha:

📚 This Week's Intel

🎧 Podcast Picks

🧑‍🌾 Ethereum Stablecoin Yields in a Bleeding Market

🧐 Onchain Analytics

This Week's Intel 📚

The signal from the noise, this week's developments that actually matter for your DeFi positioning.

I've filtered through the endless stream of headlines, hot takes, and crypto Twitter drama to bring you the stories moving the ecosystem forward. These aren't just news updates; they're intelligence briefings on where capital is flowing, which narratives are gaining traction, and what regulatory shifts could reshape your strategy.

Skip the timeline doom-scrolling. This is your weekly intel drop.

Vitalik Buterin calls for a new DAO design for onchain disputes and governance

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is pushing for a major redesign of DAOs, arguing that current token-voting treasury models are inefficient and vulnerable to capture. He's calling for purpose-built DAOs that tackle specific infrastructure needs like oracles, onchain dispute resolution, and anti-scam registries. Buterin suggests different governance approaches for different problems: robust consensus for matters requiring compromise, and decisive leadership for high-stakes bets. With DAO tokens valued at $17.5 billion, he warns that projects building on Ethereum should treat DAO design as half their work, not an afterthought.

read the full cointelegraph article

Base App Pivots to ‘Trading-First’ Six Months After SocialFi Rebrand

Coinbase's Base App is pivoting back to a "trading-first" approach just six months after rebranding as a SocialFi-focused super app. Base lead Jesse Pollak says hundreds of thousands tried the social features, but user feedback was mixed, with many finding it "too close to web2" and overly social-heavy. The app will now prioritize finance and trading functionality, layering social features on top rather than the reverse. The move mirrors Farcaster's recent shift away from social-first and reinforces the view that blockchains work best for moving money, with Base potentially being the last major holdout of the social-first web3 approach.

read the full The Defiant article

Other news

• ZachXBT Highlights $282M Theft of Bitcoin and Litecoin in Hardware Wallet Scam - read

• Ethereum validator exit queue falls to zero as staking demand soars - read

• ETH derivatives reset and the next retail trade - read

• Paradex refunds $650K to 200 users after maintenance bug triggers liquidations - read

• Ethereum L1 Activity Exceeds L2s, But Researchers Point to ‘Address Poisoning’ - read

• Bitcoin Hovers Around $90,000 As Dollar Drops, Gold Surges - read

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Podcast Picks 🎧

This week’s audio alpha: handpicked conversations that shaped my thinking and could shift yours too.

I sift through hours of DeFi content so you don't have to. These are the episodes worth your commute, the insights that made me pause and rewind, and the perspectives that are moving markets before they hit mainstream media.

Queue these up and stay ahead of the narrative.

• Bell Curve: The Intersection of AI and Crypto: What Worked, What Didn’t, and What’s Next - listen

• The Chopping Block: Banks vs. Crypto: The $1T Yield Fight - listen

• Empire: AI Breaking Software Economics, CLARITY Bill, & Debating BitGo’s IPO - listen

• All-In Podcast: Coinbase CEO's Top 3 Crypto Trends for 2026 - listen

• Forward Guidance: Markets Are Entering A Wartime Economy - listen

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Ethereum Stablecoin Yields in a Bleeding Market

As markets bleed and volatility dominates price action, strategic positioning into solid stablecoin yields becomes essential for preserving capital while maintaining productive deployment. I've consistently chosen Ethereum as my settlement layer for stablecoin strategies due to its unmatched economic security and battle-tested infrastructure. With recent market conditions prompting a reassessment of my positions, I'm evaluating three stable lending markets that prioritize security over flashy APYs. These protocols offer moderate but sustainable returns, backed by substantial TVL and smart contracts that have withstood years of real-world stress testing.

syrupUSDC/USDT Pool on Maple Finance

Risk: Low to Medium 🟡
APY: 5.1%

Total Supply: $3.90B

The syrupUSDC/USDT pool offers a competitive 5.1% APY on Ethereum, translating to approximately $5,282 in annual yield on a $100K position. This represents solid returns for stablecoin strategies, particularly during bear market conditions when preserving capital while earning sustainable yield becomes paramount. Maple Finance’s institutional-grade underwriting and multi-year track record provide additional comfort for those seeking a reliable parking spot for Ethereum-based stablecoins without chasing unsustainable rates.

RLUSD on Euler Finance

Risk: Medium 🟡
APY: 7.62%
Total Supply: $189.96M

RLUSD on Euler Finance

Euler Finance has been my go-to protocol for stablecoin positions on Arbitrum, and this RLUSD pool on Ethereum has caught my attention with its attractive 7.62% APY. The yield is currently boosted by a rewards mechanism running until January 29th, likely incentivized by Ripple to drive adoption of their stablecoin on Ethereum. While an extension of the program isn’t guaranteed, the base rate remains compelling even without additional incentives.

RLUSD represents Ripple’s entry into the stablecoin market, and despite my general skepticism toward Ripple’s ecosystem, the fact that this deployment sits on Ethereum’s secure settlement layer combined with Euler’s battle-tested infrastructure makes it an attractive opportunity for above-average stablecoin yields.

Beyond the APY, this pool offers valuable diversification away from the USDT/USDC duopoly. With ongoing regulatory uncertainty and periodic FUD surrounding both Tether and Circle, allocating a portion of stablecoin holdings to alternative assets like RLUSD on a smaller scale helps mitigate concentration risk. As the saying goes, never put all your eggs in one basket, especially when those baskets face persistent scrutiny.

GHO on Fluid Lending

Risk: Low 🟢
APY: 5.77%
Vault Total: $24.928M

Fluid Lending has established itself as a solid protocol with substantial TVL, and the GHO pool offers an attractive 5.77% APR, composed of 4.79% in GHO rewards plus 0.98% in Fluid’s native token. As Aave’s native stablecoin, GHO represents an interesting opportunity to gain exposure to the ecosystem that dominates DeFi lending while earning sustainable yields.

I’ve been consistently impressed with Fluid’s execution and innovation, and the protocol continues to present compelling opportunities for strategic positioning. If there’s interest, I’m considering launching a detailed tutorial on maximizing Fluid positions, so leave a comment if you’d like to see that content.

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While I’m not currently allocated to this pool, I’m evaluating GHO as a potential destination for reallocating capital from higher-risk assets during this market downturn. As a long-term Aave bull, gaining exposure to GHO at these levels while earning 5.77% feels like a strategic play, especially for DCA strategies. Yes, GHO is relatively new compared to USDT or USDC, but modest exposure to emerging stablecoins backed by proven protocols can be valuable for diversification. The 5.77% APR isn’t flashy or “degen” by any means, but that’s precisely the point of this analysis: finding sustainable, inflation-beating returns that prioritize capital preservation. In bear markets, we take the small wins.

Onchain Analytics 🧐

Bitcoin Exchange Reserve Dynamics

The chart reveals a compelling inverse relationship between Bitcoin held on exchanges and price action. From February through October 2025, exchange reserves (purple line) declined steadily from approximately 2.85M BTC to 2.45M BTC while price (black line) remained relatively resilient within the $100K-$120K range despite notable volatility. This inverse correlation typically indicates accumulation by long-term holders, reducing available supply on exchanges and alleviating selling pressure.

However, late December 2025 marks a critical inflection point. Exchange reserves have plummeted from ~2.45M BTC to 2.35M BTC as of January 18, 2026, while price simultaneously collapsed to $88.6K. Unlike the earlier period’s gradual reserve reduction, this rapid dual deterioration signals panic-driven behavior. Holders are aggressively withdrawing coins from exchanges, likely to either secure holdings amid uncertainty or realize losses.

The severity and velocity of this movement warrant concern. Such dramatic reserve depletion during a price collapse historically precedes heightened volatility and potential capitulation events, particularly in derivative markets where reserve dynamics often serve as leading indicators of major price swings.

Aave's Market Dominance

The stacked chart illustrates Aave’s commanding position in the DeFi lending sector, where it maintains over 50% market share with the protocol shown in green vastly outpacing competitors such as Morpho, Maple, and Venus. Through late 2025 and into early January 2026, Aave’s active loans have remained steady between $23B and $23.8B, even as the broader crypto market experienced significant stress with Bitcoin falling below $90K amid geopolitical pressures.

The line chart reveals the protocol’s resilience over time, showing only minimal fluctuation from December’s $30B peak to current stable levels. Notably, this stability comes as the total sector has grown to $26.8B in active loans, suggesting that Aave is not only retaining its position but maintaining borrower confidence during uncertain times.

This performance amid early 2026 market headwinds points to the continued maturation and growth potential of DeFi lending as a sector. Aave’s ability to hold steady likely stems from its borrower-friendly features, including flexible collateral options and competitive rates, which have helped the protocol approach nearly $1T in cumulative loan issuance since inception.

The reason for this placement is that you want readers to first see the market share distribution when you introduce Aave’s dominance, then immediately after discussing the dollar amounts and timeframes, you show them the temporal trends that prove the stability you’re describing.

That’s it for this week.

If you found this edition valuable, please consider sharing it with your network.

Leave a comment

None of the information in this newsletter constitutes financial advice. While I personally use most of the protocols that I discuss, it's important to understand that they involve substantial risk. Don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose

In this edition of The Weekly Alpha:

📚 This Week's Intel

🎧 Podcast Picks

🧑‍🌾 Don’t Miss the ETHGAS Airdrop on Ethereum

🧐 Onchain Analytics

This Week's Intel 📚

The signal from the noise, this week's developments that actually matter for your DeFi positioning.

I've filtered through the endless stream of headlines, hot takes, and crypto Twitter drama to bring you the stories moving the ecosystem forward. These aren't just news updates; they're intelligence briefings on where capital is flowing, which narratives are gaining traction, and what regulatory shifts could reshape your strategy.

Skip the timeline doom-scrolling. This is your weekly intel drop.

Lighter Token Struggles as Farmers Transition to Alternative Exchanges

Just two weeks after its TGE, Lighter’s LIT token is down 27% on the week as traders rotate to competitors. Daily volume has crashed from $7-12 billion to $1.73 billion, dropping Lighter to fifth place behind Aster, Hyperliquid, EdgeX, and GRVT.

The rapid decline shows how quickly mercenary liquidity moves in perp DEXs. Weak post-TGE performance from both LIT and Hyperliquid’s HYPE could dampen enthusiasm for future perp airdrops, as traders realize these tokens often peak at launch before bleeding value.

Read the full The Defiant article

Perfect storm of activity sees record surge in new Ethereum wallets

Ethereum is experiencing a user growth surge with 327,000 new wallets created daily over the past week, peaking at a record 393,000 in a single day. Total non-empty wallets now stand at 172.9 million.

The growth is driven by December’s Fusaka upgrade (which lowered fees and improved L2 data handling), renewed DeFi interest, and rising stablecoin activity. With ETH up 7% and over half its supply now staked, fresh users and capital are flowing back into the ecosystem.

Read the full Cointelegraph article

Other news

• Perp DEXs will ‘eat’ expensive TradFi in 2026- read

• Yield Suffers $3.7M Loss Due to ‘Unintended’ Stablecoin Swap - read

• DePIN and crypto gaming led a surprising end-of-year rebound - read

• Euler’s Founding CEO Steps Down as Protocol Refocuses on Institutions - read

• CARDS Token Surges as Gacha Volume Hits All-Time High - read

• Paradigm leads $7.1 million seed round for attention market Noise ahead of Base mainnet launch - read

• DeFi Crypto Mutuum Finance (MUTM) Reports $100K Inflows in 48 Hours Following Halborn Audit Update - read

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Podcast Picks 🎧

This week’s audio alpha: handpicked conversations that shaped my thinking and could shift yours too.

I sift through hours of DeFi content so you don't have to. These are the episodes worth your commute, the insights that made me pause and rewind, and the perspectives that are moving markets before they hit mainstream media.

Queue these up and stay ahead of the narrative.

• The Rollup: The Neo Finance Bull Thesis with Vance Spencer & Michael Anderson - listen

• Forward Guidance: Commodities & Cyclicals Are 2026’s Mega-Cap Tech - listen

• Unchained: Who Actually Owns the Aave Brand -- the DAO or Labs? - listen

• Bell Curve: Why Crypto Still Struggles to Capture the Value It Creates - listen

• 0xResearch: Aerodrome’s Big Upgrade | Alexander Cutler - listen

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Don’t Miss the ETHGAS Airdrop on Ethereum

If you’ve been active on Ethereum, ETHGAS is launching a points program for power users, and the airdrop could be substantial if you’ve spent gas fees since the Beacon Chain launch.

How to participate

Visit the community section on the ETHGAS website to begin completing quests. For example:

• Linking your primary EVM wallet earns 30 beans

• Following ETHGAS on X earns 50 beans

(Beans are points that will likely convert to airdrop tokens.)

Next, generate a gas report by clicking “Gas Report” in the navbar. This awards the most points and will be used for the airdrop snapshot. The more gas you’ve spent on Ethereum, the more points you’ll accumulate.

Across several wallets I’ve connected (including archived ones), I spent $17,595 on gas fees post-Beacon Chain, possibly more.

As a top 5% Ethereum gas spender, I’m hoping for a solid allocation from this airdrop. The process is straightforward, but if privacy concerns you, consider not linking all your wallets to the same account.

Final Thoughts

ETHGAS could be a valuable airdrop for Ethereum power users. If you’ve generated substantial gas fees since the Beacon Chain launch, you could be well-rewarded. This project is directly aligned with Ethereum’s ecosystem.

Onchain Analytics 🧐

Ethereum’s User Base Surge: Active Addresses Hit All-Time Highs

Ethereum has reached a significant milestone with 12.8 million monthly active addresses as of January 2026, marking the highest level of network activity in its history. This represents a dramatic resurgence after years of fluctuation, signaling renewed confidence and utility in the world’s leading smart contract platform.

The Multi-Year Journey

The data reveals a fascinating narrative of Ethereum’s evolution. From early 2022 through mid-2024, monthly active addresses ranged between 5-10 million, showing relatively stable but unremarkable growth. The network experienced periodic dips during crypto winter and bearish sentiment, with activity occasionally falling below 5 million addresses during the deepest troughs of 2022-2023.

However, the inflection point came in late 2024. Starting around Q4 2024, Ethereum saw a consistent upward trend that accelerated dramatically into 2026. The current 12.8M active addresses represents more than a 2x increase from the 5-6M baseline seen during quieter periods, demonstrating genuine user adoption rather than temporary speculation.

What’s Driving the Growth

This surge in active addresses correlates with several key developments: the maturation of Layer 2 ecosystems that make Ethereum more accessible, increased institutional adoption post-ETF approvals, and the continued dominance of Ethereum as the settlement layer for DeFi and NFT activity. Unlike wash trading metrics, active addresses represent real users interacting with the network, making this a fundamental indicator of Ethereum’s health.

The steady climb rather than volatile spikes suggests organic, sustainable growth. Users aren’t just speculating but actually using Ethereum for its intended purposes: DeFi protocols, stablecoin transfers, NFT marketplaces, and emerging onchain applications.

Looking Ahead

With active addresses at all-time highs and maintaining strong momentum, Ethereum appears positioned to continue expanding its user base throughout 2026. This metric validates Ethereum’s position as the dominant smart contract platform and suggests the network effects that made it valuable are only strengthening with time.

Arbitrum’s $8.4B Stablecoin Moat: Why L2 Liquidity Wars Are Already Decided

Arbitrum One dominates Layer 2 stablecoin supply with $8.44 billion as of January 2026, nearly double Base Chain’s $4.65B and 16x larger than OP Mainnet’s $526M. When one L2 holds more stablecoins than its two major competitors combined, that’s a decisive liquidity advantage.

The Year in Review

Over the past 12 months, Arbitrum grew from $5.5B to $8.4B in stablecoin supply, a $3B net inflow that demonstrates its ability to attract and retain serious capital. The gap with competitors actually widened rather than narrowed.

Base showed steady growth from $3.5B to $4.65B, proving Coinbase’s distribution power can bootstrap meaningful liquidity. However, it hasn’t closed the gap despite aggressive user acquisition.

OP Mainnet tells a different story: declining from $1B to just $526M represents a 47% capital flight, raising serious questions about its competitive position.

Why This Matters

Stablecoin supply is the most important L2 metric because it represents actual working capital. Unlike speculative tokens, stablecoins are the fuel for DeFi protocols, trading, and real economic activity.

Arbitrum’s $8.4B treasury creates powerful advantages: deeper DEX liquidity, more lending capital, lower slippage, and stronger incentives for protocols to deploy. This flywheel effect makes the lead increasingly difficult to challenge.

For DeFi users and builders, the data is clear: the deepest liquidity lives on Arbitrum, and that moat is only getting wider.

That’s it for this week.

If you found this edition valuable, please consider sharing it with your network.

Leave a comment

None of the information in this newsletter constitutes financial advice. While I personally use most of the protocols that I discuss, it's important to understand that they involve substantial risk. Don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose

In this edition of The Weekly Alpha:

📚 This Week's Intel

🎧 Podcast Picks

🔓 Vesting Watch

🧑‍🌾 How to Farm the $Base Airdrop (3 Strategies)

🧐 Onchain Analytics

This Week's Intel 📚

The signal from the noise, this week's developments that actually matter for your DeFi positioning.

I've filtered through the endless stream of headlines, hot takes, and crypto Twitter drama to bring you the stories moving the ecosystem forward. These aren't just news updates; they're intelligence briefings on where capital is flowing, which narratives are gaining traction, and what regulatory shifts could reshape your strategy.

Skip the timeline doom-scrolling. This is your weekly intel drop.

Stablecoins Are Set to Transform Global Payments: EY-Parthenon

A new EY-Parthenon survey reveals stablecoins are rapidly gaining traction in global finance, with 13% of financial institutions and corporations already using them and over half of non-users planning adoption within 6-12 months. The report projects that by 2030, stablecoins will handle 5-10% of cross-border payments—worth $2.1-4.2 trillion. Current users are already seeing tangible benefits, with 41% reporting cost savings of at least 10%. While infrastructure integration remains a challenge (only 8% of corporates currently accept stablecoins), momentum is building with 80% of non-users actively exploring adoption. The recent passage of the GENIUS Act has provided regulatory clarity that's expected to accelerate growth, contributing to the stablecoin market's impressive 69% year-over-year increase to nearly $291 billion in total market cap.

Yala’s YU stablecoin fails to restore peg after ‘attempted attack’

Yala's Bitcoin-collateralized stablecoin YU crashed to as low as $0.2046 following an "attempted protocol attack" on Sunday, failing to recover its $1 peg despite team assurances that all funds remain safe. According to blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain, the attacker exploited the protocol by minting 120 million YU tokens on Polygon, then bridging and selling 7.71 million YU for 7.7 million USDC across Ethereum and Solana networks. The attacker converted the proceeds into 1,501 ETH and still holds significant YU positions across multiple chains. While Yala has paused Convert and Bridge features as a precaution and is investigating with security firm SlowMist, YU continues trading around $0.79—well below its intended dollar peg. The incident highlights ongoing stability challenges for newer stablecoins, even as the broader stablecoin market approaches the $300 billion milestone driven primarily by established players like Tether and USDC.

Read the full Cointelegraph article

Other news

• Bitcoin price $150K target comes as analyst sees weeks to all-time highs- read

• EigenCloud Surges 25% After Partnering with Google to Boost Trust in AI Payments - read

• Ethereum Fusaka upgrade set for December 3 launch - read

• France goes rogue, Bitcoin pumps on Fed rate cut: Global Express - read

• Trump-backed World Liberty votes for token buybacks and burns - read

• TWT Soars Nearly 40% as Trust Wallet Reveals Plans to Add 100X Perps, Prediction Markets - read

• Titan raises $7M seed round alongside public launch of meta-DEX aggregator - read

Subscribe now

Podcast Picks 🎧

This week's audio alpha—handpicked conversations that shaped my thinking and could shift yours too.

I sift through hours of DeFi content so you don't have to. These are the episodes worth your commute, the insights that made me pause and rewind, and the perspectives that are moving markets before they hit mainstream media.

Queue these up and stay ahead of the narrative.

• The Rollup: Pantera, GSR, Pump Science, AI Supercycle EP 1 - listen

• Bankless: FinTech Meets Crypto: The Future of Global Payments - listen

• Forward Guidance: Winners & Losers After The Fed’s Dovish Pivot - listen

• The Chopping Block: Why Every Chain Suddenly Wants Its OWN Stablecoin - listen

• Shawn Ryan Show: Brian Armstrong - Mining 21 Million Bitcoins, Satoshi Nakamoto and Elizabeth Warren - listen

Vesting Watch 🔓

Token unlocks to watch this week. Expect potential volatility around these dates as new supply hits the market.

• Moca (0.06% of released Supply) – September 26

• TRIBL (1.96% of released Supply) – September 26

• FET (1.72% of released Supply) – September 17

• OP (1.74% of released Supply) – September 30

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How to Farm the $Base Airdrop (3 Strategies)

Base creator Jesse Pollak recently revealed the project is "beginning to explore" launching a network token, sparking massive speculation about a potential airdrop. Given Base's position as one of Ethereum's most successful L2s, backed by Coinbase's resources and user base, this could be one of the largest airdrops in crypto history.

With Base hosting major protocols like Aerodrome and Compound, early users are positioning themselves now. Here are 3 strategic moves to maximize your potential allocation without requiring significant capital or complex farming strategies.

Farcaster

Farcaster is a decentralized social network (think X/Twitter) built natively on Base. Every action like posting, using mini-apps, and token swaps generates on-chain transactions that could count toward a Base airdrop. Most interactions are free, making it a low-risk farming opportunity.

The bonus? Farcaster doesn't have its own token yet, meaning active users could potentially qualify for two airdrops: Base and Farcaster.

Strategy: Post consistently (aim for daily), engage with other users, and experiment with Farcaster's built-in features like Frames (interactive posts) and mini-apps. Quality matters more than quantity since authentic engagement typically performs better for airdrops than obvious farming.

Follow me on Farcaster and let's grow together on the platform.

Aerodrome Finance

I discovered Aerodrome Finance through their airdrop to Velodrome (VELO) token holders, and it's become my main Base farming strategy.

Aerodrome serves as Base's primary liquidity hub and ranks among the top 3 DeFi protocols by TVL, alongside Morpho and AAVE. This central position in Base's ecosystem makes it a strategic choice for potential airdrop qualification.

My approach: I've locked my AERO tokens for the maximum 4-year period and vote in every epoch. This demonstrates long-term commitment to the network, which protocols typically reward heavily in airdrops. I focus my votes on high-value pools like cbBTC, earning weekly rewards while staying aligned with Base's growth.

The strategy kills two birds with one stone: generate consistent yield from voting rewards while positioning for both Aerodrome and Base airdrops through active participation.

Morpho Lending

Morpho has become Base's fastest-growing DeFi protocol and maintains deep alignment with the ecosystem. The integration with Coinbase's lending services signals strong institutional backing, making it a prime candidate for Base airdrop eligibility.

Morpho operates as a lending optimizer that enhances yields on platforms like AAVE and Compound, while offering additional reward incentives. On Base, I'm focusing on established vaults like Spark USDC, which provide competitive yields plus potential boost rewards.

My strategy: Deposit stablecoins into high-TVL Morpho vaults on Base and maintain consistent positions. The protocol's rapid growth and Coinbase partnership suggest that early Base users could see significant airdrop allocations.

Risk consideration: Like all DeFi protocols, smart contract risks exist. Always review vault parameters, underlying strategies, and risk factors before depositing. Start small and scale up as you become comfortable with the platform.eFi protocols.

Final Thought: Quality Over Quantity

The key to any successful airdrop strategy is authentic usage. Base, like most modern protocols, employs sophisticated sybil resistance mechanisms that can easily detect and disqualify obvious farming behavior across multiple wallets.

My approach: I concentrate all activity in one primary wallet to demonstrate genuine engagement rather than diluting interactions across multiple addresses. This creates a clear onchain profile of consistent, meaningful usage that airdrop algorithms typically reward.

Remember, airdrops should be a bonus, not the primary goal. I'm focused on long-term DeFi portfolio growth through these protocols, the potential token rewards are just upside. By choosing Base-aligned protocols like Aerodrome and Morpho, you're naturally positioning yourself while building real value.

Bottom line: Use the network genuinely, consolidate your activity, and focus on protocols with strong Base ties. Authentic users with concentrated, consistent activity typically fare much better than scattered farmers when airdrops arrive.

Onchain Analytics 🧐

Base's Transaction Supremacy: The L2 Volume King Eyes Historic Airdrop

Base has achieved something remarkable in the Layer 2 landscape: absolute transaction dominance with 12.5 million daily transactions as of September 20, 2025. This represents a staggering 6.6x advantage over its nearest competitor Arbitrum One (1.9M), and an 11.5x lead over OP Mainnet (1.1M). When a single L2 processes more transactions than the next three competitors combined, we're witnessing network effect acceleration in real-time.

The transaction volume trajectory tells the story of organic adoption rather than artificial incentivization. Base's steady climb from sub-1M daily transactions in late 2024 to current peaks above 12M demonstrates sustainable user behavior patterns. Unlike wash trading or bot-driven volume spikes common across other chains, Base's transaction growth correlates directly with actual utility—stablecoin transfers, DeFi interactions, and onchain commerce.

The $BASE Token Bombshell: September 15th Changes Everything

On September 15, 2025, Jesse Pollak confirmed that a BASE token is under consideration, noting that Coinbase is exploring a network token as a potential tool to help build the next-generation onchain economy. This announcement represents a seismic shift from Coinbase's previous "no token" stance and signals the most anticipated airdrop in crypto history.

At BaseCamp 2025 in Stowe, Vermont, Base creator Jesse Pollak said the project is "beginning to explore" the launch of a network token, marking a reversal from Coinbase's long-held position that no token was planned. The timing isn't coincidental, with Base processing 12.5M daily transactions, a token launch would reward the largest active user base in L2 history.

The potential airdrop scope is unprecedented. While previous L2 airdrops distributed tokens to thousands of users, Base's massive transaction volume suggests hundreds of thousands of eligible addresses. Early estimates indicate this could be the largest crypto airdrop by both recipient count and total value distribution.

That’s it for this week.

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None of the information in this newsletter constitutes financial advice. While I personally use most of the protocols that I discuss, it's important to understand that they involve substantial risk. Don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose