Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) ended a nine-day inflow streak as Bitcoin fell below $78,000, while several altcoin ETF categories continued to see inflows.

Bitcoin ETFs recorded $201.8 million in net outflows on Friday, ending nine consecutive trading sessions of inflows, according to SoSoValue data.

The reversal followed more than $3 billion of net inflows during the nine-session run, while August flows remained positive at $3.3 billion with one US trading session left in the month. Total net assets fell to $97.6 billion after topping $100 billion on Thursday.

Daily flows into US spot Bitcoin ETFs since Aug. 14, in USD. Source: SoSoValue

The Bitcoin ETF reversal contrasts with continued inflows into Ether and XRP funds, while Solana ETFs have reached new asset milestones.

ARK 21Shares leads Bitcoin ETF outflowsThe ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) led Friday’s withdrawals with $114.9 million in net outflows, followed by the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB) with $49.7 million, according to Farside Investors data.

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT), the largest US spot Bitcoin ETF by assets, recorded $33.4 million in outflows.

US spot Bitcoin ETF flows on Friday. Source: Farside Investors

Morgan Stanley’s Bitcoin Trust (MSBT) was the only fund to record inflows Friday, adding $9.3 million.

Ether, XRP ETFs buck Bitcoin outflowsEther and XRP ETFs continued to see inflows Friday despite the reversal in Bitcoin funds, adding $102.2 million and $26.2 million, respectively, according to SoSoValue data. The funds last recorded net outflows on Aug. 11 and Aug. 5, respectively.

Solana ETFs have also maintained positive momentum. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said Friday that the category had attracted $1.7 billion in cumulative flows without a sustained stretch of outflows.

Bitwise’s Solana ETF also became the first fund in the category to cross the $1 billion mark, according to the analyst.

Balchunas called the performance “impressive” despite what he described as a “nightmare downturn” in the first half of the year.

Magazine: Bitget CEO isn’t buying the Bitcoin rally — She’s waiting for $50K

This article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph's Editorial Policy and is intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice or recommendations. All investments and trades carry risk; readers are encouraged to conduct independent research.

A tokenized stock can now remain part of a trader’s market exposure while funding a leveraged position. Selling it for USDC first is no longer required. Ondo Perps has added tokenized Circle (CRCLon), SpaceX (SPCXon) and SanDisk (SNDKon) as eligible collateral. Traders can retain exposure to those assets while using them to support perpetual futures trades. 

The addition arrives during a strong year for onchain equities. Tokenized stocks reached roughly $1.8 billion in market capitalization in August and accounted for about 15% of the tracked real-world asset market, three times their share at the start of 2026. 

Ondo held the largest slice at roughly $957 million on August 17.

New Ondo Stocks collateral just went live:

▸ $CRCLon (Tokenized Circle)
▸ $SPCXon (Tokenized SpaceX)
▸ $SNDKon (Tokenized SanDisk)

This unlocks the basis trade for these assets: holding spot & shorting the perp to capture funding when rates are positive.

Ondo Perps has… pic.twitter.com/AU8mz2aW52

— Ondo Perps (@OndoPerps) August 20, 2026

Collateral Changes Things
Spot tokenization gives investors blockchain-based exposure to equities. Collateral lets the same capital support another trade while the investor retains market exposure.

Ondo designed Perps so that traders can use tokenized securities alongside stablecoins as multi-asset collateral, including an equity token linked to one company to support a perpetual contract linked to another. The company also pitches the combination of spot assets and perps as an early form of onchain prime brokerage.

The immediate use case is hedging. A trader holding a tokenized equity can open an offsetting perpetual trade on the same venue. Basis strategies add another use, where investors can hold the spot token, short its perpetual future and collect funding when rates are positive.

Of course, collateral quality is important. Perpetual markets depend on reliable pricing and enough liquidity to manage liquidations during volatile periods. Equities also bring dividends, stock splits and other corporate actions into the risk model.

Ondo says its tokenized stocks and ETFs are backed by corresponding securities and cash in transit, with underlying holdings kept at US-registered broker-dealers or US-chartered national trust companies. An independent verification agent reviews the backing each business day.

Ondo Stocks are being put to work.

Nearly $20M in Ondo Stocks serves as productive collateral on @OndoPerps, backing positions and unlocking the basis trade.

Hold the asset, trade the move. All made possible by Ondo Finance technology. https://t.co/rnNLP0OeYW

— Ondo Finance (@Ondo) August 25, 2026

Tokenized Equities are Already Entering Credit Markets
In February, Ondo brought SPYon and QQQon into Morpho lending markets, allowing the tokenized S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 ETF products to serve as collateral for borrowing. Gauntlet provides risk management for the markets. 

Chainlink data feeds for Ondo assets including SPYon, QQQon and TSLAon also went live earlier this year, supporting collateral valuation across DeFi applications.

 Euler was among the first integrations, allowing users to borrow stablecoins against eligible tokenized stocks and ETFs. 

So, a tokenized security can begin as market exposure to a stock, then become lending collateral and support derivatives trading. Each additional use gives holders more ways to deploy the same asset across onchain finance.

A $2.8 Billion Market Finds More Uses
Ondo Stocks now offers more than 440 tokenized stocks and ETFs across Ethereum, BNB Chain and Solana. The platform has also passed $1 billion in TVL, according to Ondo and comments from managing director John Hoffman. 

Usage is certainly becoming more sophisticated. The tokenized equity market now spans spot trading, credit and leveraged derivatives, giving issuers a larger arena in which to compete.

Here’s a shift worth watching 👀

Tokenized stocks have grown from $329 million to $1.7 billion in just one year.

But crypto-linked stocks are losing ground, whereas AI and chip stocks are growing fastest.

And surprisingly, tokenized Micron and SanDisk each top Nvidia in… pic.twitter.com/zzY0UxXmUp

— BeInCrypto (@beincrypto) July 21, 2026

The addition of Circle, SpaceX and SanDisk means each asset can serve as market exposure and trading collateral inside the same system.

Collateral gives tokenized assets financial utility after issuance, turning equities into components of onchain portfolio management.

Bitwise’s Solana Staking ETF (BSOL) has become the first exchange-traded fund tracking Solana to surpass $1 billion in assets under management, less than a year after its launch.

The milestone comes amid a sharp increase in activity across both the Solana ETF market and the underlying token. 

BSOL recorded more than $126 million in trading volume on Friday, its strongest single-day performance to date. Trading volume also exceeded $500 million across the seven sessions preceding the latest record.

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The fund has attracted inflows for seven consecutive trading days, bringing cumulative ETF inflows into Solana products to approximately $1.26 billion. That figure represents roughly 2.2% of SOL's current market capitalization, highlighting the growing scale of exchange-traded demand relative to the underlying market.

Institutional accumulation has also continued outside the ETF market. DeFi Dev Corp purchased another 19,000 SOL for approximately $1.86 million, taking its holdings to around 2.33 million SOL, worth approximately $182 million based on the figures provided.

Bitwise's XRP ETF has also continued to attract capital. The product recorded an inflow of $15.40 million, while its assets under management stood at approximately $603 million at the time of writing.

Together, the figures point to increasing institutional participation across crypto assets beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum, with Solana emerging as one of the main beneficiaries of the shift.

Leverage adds momentum to SOL's moveThe ETF activity has coincided with a strong move in SOL. The token gained roughly 19% over the past week, although the rally has subsequently encountered some selling pressure.

Futures activity has been particularly pronounced. Futures trading volume reached approximately $14.6 billion, compared with around $1.7 billion in spot volume. The large difference suggests that derivatives and leveraged positioning have played an important role in amplifying SOL's recent price movement.

At the latest reading, SOL was trading at $103.43, down 2.25% over 24 hours. Its market capitalization stood at approximately $60.42 billion, representing a 2.23% daily decline.

Trading activity remained elevated despite the pullback. Daily volume fell 16.15% to $4.94 billion, leaving the volume-to-market-capitalization ratio at approximately 8.17%.

The combination of rising ETF demand and elevated derivatives activity creates a more complex picture for SOL. Institutional inflows can provide sustained buying pressure, while heavy futures activity can accelerate both upward and downward moves as leveraged positions are opened or closed.

Another factor investors are watching is Solana's changing monetary policy.

Faster disinflation changes SOL's supply outlookSolana validators recently approved a proposal to accelerate the network's disinflation schedule. The vote was the first proposal to pass under Solana's new on-chain governance system.

Known as SGP-0002, or "Double Disinflation," the proposal increases the annual disinflation rate from 15% to 30%. Importantly, it does not alter Solana's long-term inflation target, which remains at 1.5%.

Final voting results showed 67% support for the proposal, compared with 25.16% opposed and 7.84% abstaining. Participation represented 60.7% of eligible stake.

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The accelerated schedule means Solana could reach its terminal 1.5% inflation rate considerably sooner. Solana Compass estimates that the target could now be reached in approximately 2.8 years, compared with around 5.7 years under the previous schedule.

The change is expected to reduce the number of new SOL entering circulation. Estimates indicate that approximately 18.9 million fewer SOL could be issued over the next six years under the revised schedule.

For existing SOL holders, lower issuance could reduce dilution over time. The trade-off is that the faster reduction in inflation also means lower staking rewards for validators and delegators.

The monetary-policy change therefore adds another variable to the investment case for SOL. While ETF demand and institutional accumulation are increasing access to the asset, the network itself is simultaneously moving toward a lower rate of new-token issuance.

For now, the combination of stronger exchange-traded demand, substantial derivatives activity and a tightening issuance trajectory is putting Solana at the center of renewed institutional interest. 

The sustainability of the move, however, will depend on whether ETF inflows continue and whether the current futures-driven momentum can translate into lasting spot demand.

XRP whales made an unusually large move off Binance as accumulation accelerated alongside the token's powerful weekly rally above 40%.

XRP briefly surged past $1.7 before stabilizing near $1.4. While the token appears to have hit a wall after a massive rally, whale withdrawals from Binance have surged to their highest level in six months.

According to the latest findings by CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost, more than 231 million XRP have moved off the exchange by large holders.

Whale Accumulation The withdrawals totaled more than $335 million in a single day, far above the 90-day average of roughly $40 million. Darkfost described the move as both sudden and powerful compared with the recent trend, while pointing to a significant change in behavior among large XRP holders.

The surge in whale outflows comes as the crypto asset’s market capitalization increased by $25 billion over the past week, during which the token gained more than 40%.

According to the analyst, this trend has potentially helped fuel XRP’s strong market performance and renewed attention. If this accumulation trend continues, Darkfost said the asset could potentially test the $2 level within a relatively short period.

This week, Ali Martinez flagged a major jump in XRP network activity, after active addresses rose to 356,070 from 47,180. That represents a surge of well over 654%, a level of activity that typically suggests increased participation and can coincide with sharper price swings.

Trouble Ahead? But the derivatives market showed short-term pressure for XRP after the token cleared liquidity around resistance and moved back toward a major support zone. Long liquidations were recorded at approximately $4.66 million, a 31.82% daily increase, while short liquidations stood near $1.13 million after rising 61.61%.

You may also like: Ripple’s (XRP) Sharpe Ratio Just Did Something It Hasn’t Done In a Year Ripple (XRP) ETFs Smash 2026 Inflow Record as Total Flows Hit New ATH XRP’s Crazy August Is Almost Over – September Could Be Even Bigger Despite the stronger percentage increase in short liquidations, the total volume of long liquidations is nearly four times larger. This indicates that the pullback following the recent rally forced a significant number of leveraged long positions out of the market, meaning that the sell-off was driven by both spot selling and the liquidation of leveraged positions.

While this confirms the current bearish pressure, the clearing of leveraged positions could eventually provide room for a healthier rebound, CryptoQuant explained.

Meanwhile, XRP’s Money Flow Index (MFI) has fallen to 35.89 from around 60, which points to a significant weakening in the buying pressure that supported the earlier price move. However, the MFI remains above 20, which means that the crypto asset has not yet entered technically oversold territory and could still face further downside.

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BONK Moves Beyond Meme Coin StatusBonk is pushing further into utility territory with the launch of officially branded games on Betmode, an onchain casino platform. The new offering adds BONK-themed gaming experiences to Betmode's existing casino library, giving $BONK holders a branded entry point into crypto gambling on Solana.

The move marks a notable step for the project, which has spent much of its existence as a community-driven meme token. It now seeks a more defined role within the broader Web3 gaming ecosystem, following a pattern of attaching itself to real product verticals to sustain community interest and generate ongoing token demand beyond speculation.

Onchain Transparency and a Token Burn MechanismA key element of the partnership is how wagers and payouts are handled. Betmode records game activity directly on the blockchain, meaning players can independently verify results without relying on the platform's word.

Beyond the gaming experience, the partnership includes a deflationary component for the token. This mechanism is designed to reduce circulating supply over time and align platform activity with token demand.

For Bonk, the expansion into gaming continues a broader trend of meme coins building out real product use cases to sustain ecosystems long after the initial hype cycle fades.

Sources:
Coinfomania: Bonk Launches BONKplay Casino, Offering Up to $1M in Rewards
GottaGamble: Betmode Casino Review

At 23:36:14 UTC on Sunday, August 30, 2026, tokenized Hims & Hers stock printed $61.15 in its main dollar pool on Robinhood Chain. The real share had closed Friday on the NYSE at $28.84. Nothing had happened to the company. The wrapper was trading at more than double its net asset value because a memecoin called BONER had spent the evening pulling most of the token’s onchain float into its own liquidity pool, and the only entity able to mint more was not minting on a Sunday.

At 00:43:30 UTC on Monday, in block 50,444,949, the first new supply arrived: a round 1,000-token mint, five seconds after the pool printed $54.50. Within 12 minutes the premium fell from 93% to 12%. Within two hours it was gone. All of it, the squeeze and the unwind, ran inside Robinhood’s overnight equity session, before the NYSE opened.

This piece reflects the chain as of block 50,772,447, 09:54 UTC on Monday, August 31. The supply figures, pool prices, and mint events below are read directly from Robinhood Chain contracts at pinned blocks, with addresses cited so you can check them. The trigger for looking was a thread by @0xSammy that circulated overnight; where a figure comes from his snapshot rather than our own reads, it is attributed.

The Setup Robinhood Built We covered Robinhood Chain at launch in July: an Arbitrum Orbit L2 settling to Ethereum, built for tokenized stocks, with Uniswap v4 as its day-one AMM. That piece established two structural facts that matter here.

First, the stock tokens are not shares. They are tokenized debt securities issued by a Robinhood subsidiary, redeemable for cash through authorized participants, tracking the stock’s price. The HIMS token on Robinhood Chain (0xCceE82fE…3D09, deployed August 10) calls itself “Hims & Hers Health • Robinhood Token.” Supply is elastic: an issuer address mints tokens when its broker acquires shares and burns them on redemption. That elasticity is the token’s peg mechanism, and it only operates when there is a stock market to hedge against.

Second, the tokens are freely transferable. There is no allowlist on the ERC-20 itself; a transfer to an arbitrary address succeeds. That is the composability Robinhood advertised, and it means anyone can pool the token on Uniswap against anything, without asking. Someone did.

The July piece ended on what we called the liquidity question nobody had answered: whether equities can trade well on an AMM against a reference price that updates only during market hours. The answer arrived two months later, delivered by a memecoin.

The Pair BONER (0x98096d17…1E18) deployed on August 20 with a supply of one billion. The joke writes itself: Hims & Hers sells erectile dysfunction treatment, so the memecoin attached to its stock is called BONER. The joke is also the market structure, because BONER’s canonical pool is not BONER/USDG or BONER/ETH. It is BONER/HIMS, pool 0x9c89b043…640d, created in the same minute as the token, and it is where nearly all of the liquidity sits: roughly $1.2M at the time of writing, against about $160K in the largest BONER/USDG pool.

That routing choice is the whole mechanism. A trader entering BONER with dollars or ETH gets routed through HIMS for any meaningful size, because that is where the depth is: buy HIMS first, then swap HIMS into the BONER pool. Every net dollar of memecoin demand becomes a buy order for the stock token, and the HIMS ends up locked in the pool as the other side of BONER’s liquidity. The memecoin is a machine that converts degenerate flow into inventory pressure on a tokenized equity.

This was a known pattern, not an accident. A GME-themed memecoin ran the same structure against tokenized GameStop in July, pitched explicitly on the idea that memecoin buying forces stock-token buying, before fading roughly 99% from its peak. @0xSammy ran the numbers on an NVDA-paired memecoin called AI two days before the HIMS event, noting its ecosystem already touched about 17% of the chain’s tokenized NVIDIA supply and that weekends expose the fault line most clearly. He then watched the fault line fail in real time on a smaller stock.

Because that is the other ingredient: HIMS was small. Total onchain supply going into the weekend was 15,226.8 tokens, worth about $440K at Friday’s close, against roughly 225 million real shares outstanding. The float was a rounding error on the equity and a feast for a memecoin.

The Float Going Into the Weekend The supply and pool state below are read from the token contract and the Uniswap v4 singleton (PoolManager 0x8366a39c…0951) at pinned blocks. The onchain HIMS price is the main HIMS/USDG pool’s spot price; the premium is measured against Friday’s $28.84 NYSE close.

Time (UTC) Block HIMS supply In Uniswap v4 pools Onchain price vs. close Fri 19:40 48,555,213 16,126.8 12,689.1 (78.7%) $28.17 -2.3% Sat 11:40 49,125,754 15,226.8 12,085.3 (79.4%) $30.36 +5.3% Sun 11:40 49,980,825 15,226.8 12,424.2 (81.6%) $29.68 +2.9% Sun 19:40 50,265,277 15,226.8 11,964.4 (78.6%) $29.38 +1.9% Sun 23:53 50,415,299 15,226.8 13,883.2 (91.2%) $43.27 +50.0% Mon 09:54 50,772,447 33,977.3 32,086.5 (94.4%) $29.48 +2.2% The first rows carry two details worth pausing on. The float shrank going into the weekend: two burns, of 500 and 400 tokens, executed at 20:37 and 21:21 UTC on Friday, within 90 minutes of the NYSE close, from a redemption wallet (0xa8553db0…3c74). Someone redeemed 900 HIMS for cash right before the two-day window in which no more could be created, cutting the float by 5.6% at the worst possible moment.

And the market-making wallets carried nothing across the weekend. The address that receives all newly minted HIMS (0xcfaece21…0a94) and the wallet it forwards to (0x1a18a8b9…a4e7) both held zero HIMS at every snapshot from Friday through the squeeze. Inventory management here is just-in-time: mint, forward, sell. Which works until the mint switch is off and the float you would normally replenish is being eaten by a token named after an erection.

Sunday Night BONER had actually drifted down through the weekend, from about $0.0036 on Friday to $0.0024 by Sunday evening, priced through its HIMS pool. Then, at around 22:00 UTC on Sunday, the buying started.

The main HIMS/USDG pool never had the depth to absorb what came next. At our 23:53 UTC reference block, mid-squeeze, its in-range reserves were on the order of a few hundred HIMS; @0xSammy’s snapshot during the event put it at roughly 92 HIMS against $135K of USDG. Almost all of the actual HIMS inventory sat inside BONER/HIMS instead: our estimate from the pool’s live liquidity at 23:53 UTC puts about 13,100 of the 15,227 tokens there, assuming full-range positions (his earlier snapshot: 12,284, or 81%). Inside that pool the HIMS was the denominator of a memecoin pump, not an offer waiting to be lifted.

So the dollar pool’s price did what a nearly empty pool does. Sampled at roughly eight-minute intervals from the HIMS/USDG pool’s slot0:

Time (UTC) Onchain HIMS vs. $28.84 close Sun 21:46 $29.73 +3.1% Sun 22:28 $36.22 +25.6% Sun 23:02 $39.94 +38.5% Sun 23:36 $61.15 +112.0% Sun 23:53 $43.27 +50.0% Mon 00:13 $34.33 +19.0% Mon 00:43 $54.50 +89.0% Mon 00:47 $55.61 +92.8% Mon 00:55 $32.37 +12.3% Mon 01:59 $29.31 +1.6%

These are spot samples, so prints between them may be higher; the pool crossed 2x NAV at least once. The swings of 30% or more between adjacent samples are the point: with a few hundred tokens of depth at best, individual swaps were repricing the “stock” by more than the stock moves in a bad quarter. @0xSammy’s thread quoted about $39 and a 37% premium; that was a real print from the calmer part of the window, and understated the extreme.

The premium also fed back into how big the memecoin looked. BONER’s displayed market cap is its HIMS-pool price times a dollar mark for HIMS, so with the wrapper at $43 instead of $28.84, a screenshot showed $9.4M where Friday’s marks implied about $6.9M. His arithmetic on that point checks out against the pool ratios at our reference block. Roughly a quarter of the memecoin’s headline valuation was the premium on its quote currency.

Nothing happened to Hims & Hers in any of this. No shares traded, and nobody’s short position was touched. The company has around 225 million shares outstanding; the entire squeezed float was 15,227 wrapper tokens. This was a corner in a warehouse receipt, not in the commodity.

The Mint Response Robinhood’s 24/5 equity session reopens at 8:00 pm Eastern on Sunday, which is 00:00 UTC Monday. The first HIMS mint since Friday landed at 00:43:30 UTC, 43 minutes into that session: 1,000 tokens to the issuer’s distribution wallet, in tx 0x459aee54…066b, called directly on the token contract by an issuer signer (0x2b94105f…3a87). The next three 1,000-token clips followed within 25 minutes.

The timing tells you what gates issuance. Monday’s opening bell had nothing to do with it. Mints resumed once a venue existed where the issuer’s broker could buy the underlying, plus the operational lag of acting on it; whether the viral post 30 minutes earlier hurried the desk along is unknowable from the chain, but nothing could have minted before the venue opened either way. From Friday’s burns at 21:21 UTC until 00:43:30 UTC Monday, a span covering the entire weekend, the mint function was silent. Then, in the nine hours between the first mint and our final snapshot, the issuer minted 294 times for a total of 18,750.5 new HIMS, every event a transfer from the zero address to the same distribution wallet, more than doubling the token’s supply. Half of that volume had landed by 01:56 UTC. There were no burns.

The distribution wallet forwarded the tokens to the market-making wallet, which sold them into the pools as they arrived (it ended the morning holding under 25 HIMS), which is why the premium died the way it did: $55.61 at 00:47, $32.37 at 00:55, back inside 2% of Friday’s close by 02:00 UTC. The economics of that trade are the disciplining force in this design. Whoever mints at NAV and sells into a 90% premium keeps the difference, and the flip side is that everyone who paid $40 or $55 for a $28.84 wrapper on Sunday night handed that difference over. There was no short seller on the other side of this squeeze, only future supply.

A final number from the aftermath: the mints did not kill the memecoin. BONER’s HIMS-denominated price kept climbing through the unwind, and at our 09:54 UTC snapshot it stood at roughly $0.0147, about 4x its Friday level, an implied cap around $14.7M on the fixed billion-token supply, with about $4.9M of 24-hour volume through the HIMS pair per DexScreener. The squeeze resolved; the flow that caused it did not.

What This Mechanic Actually Is Calling it a short squeeze, as half of crypto Twitter did overnight, gets the flavor right and the mechanism wrong. Nobody was forced to buy. The accurate frame, and the one @0xSammy himself used, is a float squeeze: demand absorbed a fixed float faster than the issuer could expand it, during a window in which the issuer could not expand it at all.

The general rule: any wrapper whose supply elasticity follows the underlying market’s calendar will trade like a closed-end fund whenever that market is closed. Premiums and discounts to NAV are then set entirely by the wrapper’s own float and flow. Tokenized equities on a 24/7 AMM have this property for the 48 hours between Robinhood’s Friday-evening close and its Sunday-evening reopen, and the float side is not hypothetical: on this chain, a memecoin can be deliberately plumbed into a stock token’s routing so that its demand lands on a four-hundred-thousand-dollar float. In the Distributed vs. Represented framing we use for RWAs, the token is Distributed enough to be composable into anything, while the thing that keeps it honest, issuance against the real asset, stays Represented, permissioned, and on a Monday-to-Friday schedule. The squeeze lived exactly in that gap.

Who bears the risk deserves precision. The issuer’s mint-at-NAV arbitrage is riskless in direction; it earned the premium. The company’s stock never traded. The loss concentrates on whoever bought the wrapper above NAV without understanding that the ceiling was two days of market closure, and the depth of that loss was set by a dollar pool holding a few hundred tokens at best. The July launch piece flagged thin AMM books against an external reference price as the structural worry; a memecoin turned out to be the stress test, and the books were thinner than even the bears assumed.

The audience is split oddly, too. Robinhood’s stock tokens are blocked for US retail, the exact crowd that made GameStop a phenomenon. The memecoins paired against them carry no such gate. The practical effect is a two-tier market in which the people barred from the wrapper can still trade the memecoin whose only pricing leg runs through it.

What to Watch @0xSammy’s follow-up pointed at the most-shorted-stocks list as a target menu for the next iteration, and replies flagged a memecoin already paired against tokenized Lockheed Martin. The playbook is public now, and it is cheap: pick a stock token with a small float, launch the joke, pool it against the stock, and let weekend routing do the work. Larger floats resist the corner better; by @0xSammy’s own accounting two days earlier, the AI memecoin’s ecosystem had absorbed about 17% of tokenized NVDA’s 42,664-token supply without a comparable dislocation. The candidates are the small, freshly listed wrappers.

For the issuer, the fixes are mundane and all cost money: carry standing inventory across weekends, pre-mint against Friday buying pressure, or accept that the wrapper trades at whatever its float trades at for two days a week. For everyone else, the practical takeaways are narrower. A tokenized stock’s onchain price is only NAV while the mint window is open; check the supply and where it sits before treating the print as the stock. And a memecoin’s market cap, when its quote currency is a wrapper trading above NAV, is marked against a number that a few swaps can manufacture.

The whole episode, corner, premium, mint, collapse, ran in under five hours on a Sunday night, and the second-order effects landed nowhere: the NYSE opened Monday to a stock that never knew anything happened. That is either the system working, an arbitrage closing exactly as designed the moment it could, or a small-scale rehearsal of what happens when the float is bigger, the memecoin is angrier, and the weekend is longer. On the evidence of the last two months of Robinhood Chain, we will not have to wait long to find out which.

Jupiter’s Degen Markets just crossed a line that crypto-native traders have been waiting for: stocks. The platform, which has built a following around ultra-short crypto prediction markets, is now offering binary contracts on tokenized equities, starting with $SPCX, the tokenized representation of SpaceX shares.

How the new stock markets work The $SPCX trading feature launched on August 26 through Jupiter Predict’s Degen Markets, which now includes a dedicated Stocks tab alongside its existing crypto offerings. Users can place Up/Down binary contracts in 5-minute and 15-minute intervals during standard US stock market hours.

Binary contracts are about as simple as trading gets. You pick a direction, you pick a timeframe, and you either win or lose based on whether the final price lands above or below a reference price at the time of entry.

The underlying asset, $SPCX, comes from Backpack Securities, which has been carving out a niche in the tokenized equities space. Settlement leans on Chainlink price feeds for the reference data, while Jupiter Forecast’s automated market maker handles routing and execution. The platform’s documentation notes that these binary markets settle with no trading fees.

From crypto bets to equity predictions Until now, Degen Markets has been a crypto-only playground. The platform supported short-duration prediction contracts on Bitcoin, Solana, Ethereum, and XRP.

Jupiter Forecast, the underlying infrastructure powering these markets, launched in beta in June 2026. Jupiter integrated with Kalshi in October 2025 and Polymarket in February 2026, building out the prediction market toolkit before rolling its own product.

Jupiter Forecast differentiates itself from earlier prediction market designs by using competitive AMM structures rather than relying on a single liquidity pool, enabling better price discovery and tighter spreads for traders.

Why tokenized stock predictions matter Degen Markets is taking a different approach by not trying to replicate stock ownership. Instead, it offers pure price speculation through binary contracts. Users aren’t buying or holding equity — they’re making time-limited predictions on price direction.

The no-fee structure on these binary markets sets up an interesting competitive dynamic. Traditional platforms offering similar short-duration options or binary contracts, regulated entities like Kalshi among them, typically charge fees per contract.

For existing Jupiter users, the Stocks tab transforms Degen Markets from a crypto speculation tool into something closer to a unified short-term trading terminal. The ability to toggle between 5-minute Bitcoin predictions and 15-minute SpaceX bets on the same interface, settled on the same chain, with the same wallet, is a UX advantage that fragmented competitors can’t easily match.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Ethena’s foundation just dangled a carrot in front of ENA holders: automated buybacks funded by nearly all of the protocol’s net revenue. The catch is that USDe, Ethena’s synthetic dollar, needs to roughly double its circulating supply first.

The proposal, put to a governance vote that closes September 2, would activate a “fee switch” once USDe reaches $7.5 billion in circulation. At that point, 95% of net revenue from Ethena’s operations would flow into automated ENA purchases on the open market. Current USDe supply sits somewhere around $4 billion to $4.6 billion, meaning the trigger requires approximately 85% growth from where things stand today.

Markets responded before the ink was dry. ENA surged roughly 16-23% intraday to around $0.17, capping off a broader rally that saw the token climb more than 70% over the preceding week.

The full restructuring package The buyback proposal is the flashiest piece, but it sits inside a larger restructuring effort the Foundation unveiled on August 27. The package addresses three distinct pressure points that have weighed on ENA’s price trajectory.

First, the Foundation is conducting OTC buyouts of locked ENA from seed investors who hold allocations greater than 0.25% of total supply. These are investors who had already sold their stakes after ENA hit a peak on October 10, 2025. Buying out their locked positions removes a known overhang of future selling pressure.

Second, upcoming investor token unlocks are being consolidated and accelerated into a single phase on October 5, 2026. Rather than letting unlocks drip out over multiple months, the Foundation is compressing the pain into one event. Team tokens, notably, remain locked.

Third, an in-principle agreement expected in October 2026 would secure Ethena’s protocol intellectual property and economic benefits primarily for the Foundation itself, creating separation from Ethena Labs’ equity holders.

The math behind the fee switch The fee switch operates on an incremental model. At the $7.5 billion USDe threshold, the Foundation estimates approximately $22.5 million in annualized revenue would be available for buybacks, assuming a 6% APY on the protocol’s underlying positions. Higher USDe supply milestones would unlock progressively larger buyback allocations.

There is a trade-off baked into this structure. Routing 95% of net revenue toward ENA buybacks means reducing USDe distributions, the yield payments that have been one of the protocol’s primary draws for stablecoin holders.

USDe’s circulating supply peaked at around $15 billion in October 2025, roughly three times higher than where it sits now. The subsequent contraction, losing more than two-thirds of its supply, is a reminder that synthetic dollar demand can evaporate quickly when market conditions shift. Getting back to $7.5 billion would still represent just half of that prior peak.

What this means for ENA holders and DeFi broadly The conditional nature of the buyback is worth sitting with. Unlike protocols that simply announce buybacks and execute them regardless of conditions, Ethena is making its token holders root for the underlying product’s growth. If USDe doesn’t expand, the buyback never activates.

The OTC buyout of seed investors addresses one of the most reliable sources of selling pressure in crypto markets. By proactively purchasing locked allocations from investors who have already demonstrated willingness to sell — they offloaded positions after the October 2025 peak — the Foundation is trying to remove the most motivated sellers from the equation before they ever hit the open market.

The consolidation of remaining unlocks into a single October 2026 event eliminates months of drip-feed uncertainty but concentrates potential selling pressure into one window.

One risk worth flagging: the entire buyback mechanism depends on Ethena’s revenue, which itself depends on the basis trade that underpins USDe’s yield. In periods where funding rates compress or turn negative, that revenue shrinks. A scenario where USDe reaches $7.5 billion but funding rates have collapsed would produce buybacks too small to meaningfully support ENA’s price — a possibility the annualized $22.5 million estimate doesn’t fully capture since it assumes a steady 6% APY.

The governance vote concludes September 2. For a protocol that once commanded $15 billion in synthetic dollar circulation, reaching half that number would still require approximately 85% growth from current supply levels.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Ethena’s yield product, USDe, will receive another expanded collateral backing from basis on equity perpetuals (perps). 

According to the project, equity perps, also known as RWA (real-world asset) tokenization perps, have grown 10x to $6B in Open Interest since March. 

The project added that the RWA perps market could grow 100x bigger, offering scalable basis yield opportunity that’s not tied to the cyclical crypto market. 

The underlying asset base is >$150 trillion compared to ~$2.5 trillion of crypto, making this the most scalable extension of the basis allocation to date. We expect RWA perpetuals to eclipse crypto allocations in USDe’s backing within 12-24 months.

The protocol expects its RWA perps backing to outpace crypto basis in a year or two. Currently, most of the collateral backing (32%) is in liquid stablecoins (e.g USDT, USDC). DeFi lending is the second largest reserve category with a 31% share across Aave and Morpho. 

Source: Ethena Ethena’s aggressive USDe diversification Basis trade involves locking a spread between the spot price of an asset and its futures contract (in this case, perps).

But the strategy only works during the bull market. At the height of the 2024-2025 bull run, USDe market supply peaked at nearly $15B with over 80% in yield. But the supply contracted to $4B and yield slipped below 0% in the crypto winter. 

Source: USDe market supply (Ethena)  To diversify away from the cyclical crypto market, the project started with traditional credit (powered by Janus Henderson). Currently, this category accounts for 12% of the USDe backing. 

The latest RWA perps plan, set to be deployed in the next few weeks, would mark the second wave of diversification. 

Speaking on why it delayed USDe expansion in RWA perps, Ethena founder Guy Young said, 

We took a cautious approach to what was a nascent market and waited until we saw deep, liquid markets with a data history we could study before moving into the opportunity at scale.

Source: X Guy added that the segment is “one of the very few 100x left” and could surpass global crypto’s volume and Open Interest (OI) in 24 months. 

Compared to its main yield rival, the short-term U.S Treasury bond, USDe offered a 1.6% spread. In short, one would expect more yield from USDe than U.S T-bills, before factoring DeFi security risks. 

Source: Ethena  Ethena has been aggressively upgrading its ecosystem ahead of the next bull run. Whether this round of yield diversification will boost demand for USDe remains to be seen. 

Final Summary After expanding USDe yield backing into traditional credit, Ethena now eyes a 100x basis trade opportunity in equity perps  Ethena founder said that they delayed the RWA perps expansion to allow the nascent market to develop deeper liquidity 

Mantle has accumulated about $880 million in stablecoins and tokenized assets as its onchain product range has expanded across equities, Treasuries, funds and yield-bearing assets.

Summary

Mantle holds about $550 million in stablecoins and $330 million in tokenized assets. USDT0 accounts for approximately $440 million, or nearly 80% of the network’s stablecoin supply. The network supports 985 distinct tokenized assets across six product categories. Mantle increased its tokenized equity selection from 10 products in April to 155 by late June. Mantle’s asset base approaches $880 million Blockworks Research data shows that Mantle’s stablecoin circulating supply has reached approximately $550 million, while tokenized assets on the network account for another $330 million. The two categories place the combined value at about $880 million.

Source: Mantle/Blockworks Unlike networks built mainly around one class of real-world assets, Mantle’s tokenized supply covers commodities, stocks, U.S. Treasuries, yield-bearing stablecoins, a pre-IPO vault and the MI4 tokenized fund. Blockworks counts 985 distinct tokenized assets across the network.

Andrew Forson, president of DeFi Technologies, told crypto.news that regulated tokenization systems could help jurisdictions retain investment activity rather than allowing capital to move elsewhere. He cited the UAE as one market that could benefit from bringing more assets onto regulated local infrastructure.

“By bringing liquidity into a range of assets via regulated rails, you prevent leakage of capital outside the region.”

Sovereign debt could also attract traditional capital through stablecoin inflows, electronic products and regulated investment wrappers, according to Forson. Tokenization provides another route into existing markets rather than taking capital away from conventional assets, he added.

“Whenever you are dealing with digital assets and tokenised instruments, it does not take away from traditional assets, it provides another vector for traditional capital to flow into these assets.”

Stablecoins provide most of the liquid capital available within the two categories. Based on the dashboard’s latest asset-level readings, their combined circulating supply stands at approximately $553.7 million, with USDT0 accounting for $440.03 million.

USDe ranks second with $57.93 million, followed by USDC at $34.15 million and conventional USDT at $12.96 million. AUSD contributes $5.15 million, while World Liberty Financial’s USD1 and Aave’s GHO account for $2.29 million and $1.23 million, respectively.

Calculated from the displayed figures, USDT0 represents close to 80% of Mantle’s stablecoin supply. The concentration means that most of the network’s dollar-linked liquidity comes from one asset, even though Mantle supports seven stablecoins.

Recent flows have added to the two largest positive movers. The dashboard recorded a daily USDT0 net inflow of $18.42 million and a USDC inflow of $9.94 million when the data was checked. Over 30 days, USDC supply increased 33.93%, while USDT0 rose 9.51%.

Smaller tokens posted faster percentage growth from lower starting levels. GHO supply climbed 203.5% during the same period, while USD1 rose 190.89%. In contrast, USDe fell 9.09%, standard USDT declined 2.28%, and AUSD slipped 0.09%, according to Blockworks.

Tokenized equities have expanded to 155 products Equities have become a larger part of Mantle’s tokenized-asset catalog. Nansen counted 155 tokenized equities on the network at the end of June, up from only 10 in April, according to an Aug. 25 report.

The selection includes instruments tied to public companies, private businesses, and exchange-traded funds. Nansen identified products linked to SpaceX and Franklin Templeton’s U.S. Equity Index ETF among the available assets.

In November 2025, Mantle integrated Backed’s xStocks through an arrangement involving Bybit. The rollout brought tokens linked to Apple, Nvidia and Strategy shares onto Mantle, while Bybit supported direct deposits and withdrawals between its centralized exchange and the network.

Backed said at the time that its xStocks platform had processed more than $1.6 billion in tokenized equity volume. According to the company, each token was backed one-to-one by an underlying security held through licensed custodians in Switzerland.

Product structures remain important for investors because tokenized equities do not always provide the same legal rights. As crypto.news reported in August, some products deliver only synthetic price exposure and do not give holders ownership, voting rights, or other shareholder protections. Access can also depend on the issuer, distributor, and user’s jurisdiction.

Mantle’s products, therefore, need to be assessed according to their individual terms rather than grouped under a single ownership model. Backed’s one-to-one structure, for example, differs from tokenized derivatives that track a share price without transferring a claim on the underlying stock.

Mantle has added RWA yield through DeFi Stablecoin liquidity on Mantle is also being used in yield products. On Aug. 25, the network opened its RWA vault to DeFi users after an earlier version distributed through Bybit passed $200 million in assets under management.

The DeFi vault accepts USDC and USDT0 through Fluxion, according to Mantle’s announcement. CIAN designed the non-leveraged strategy, Grove connects deposits to yield from the Sky ecosystem, and Fluxion provides the user interface.

Deposited assets gain exposure to returns from sUSDS, the savings version of Sky’s USDS stablecoin. Sky governance sets the applicable savings rate, so the return can change rather than remaining fixed throughout a deposit.

Mantle’s launch materials listed a target annual percentage yield of up to 6.5%, including campaign incentives. The offer also included Fluxion Points and an allocation of 5.14 million GROVE tokens, although the value received by each depositor depends on participation rules and token prices.

Without leverage, the vault removes one source of liquidation risk, according to Mantle’s product description. Users still face smart-contract failures, stablecoin price changes, liquidity conditions, and adjustments to Sky’s governance-set savings rate.

The self-custodial version also changes who controls the deposited assets. Bybit users previously entered the strategy through an exchange account, while Fluxion users approve transactions from their own wallets and remain responsible for managing their private keys.

Other network figures provide additional scale. Blockworks places Mantle’s treasury value at about $1.8 billion, cumulative spot decentralized exchange volume at $20 billion, and deployed decentralized applications above 150.

U.S. investors face access and ownership limits For U.S. users, the presence of tokenized American equities on a public blockchain does not establish that the products are legally available in every state or to every investor. Eligibility depends on the issuer’s terms, distribution controls and applicable federal and state securities rules.

Stablecoin yield carries a separate regulatory question. The GENIUS Act prevents payment stablecoin issuers from paying interest or yield directly to holders, while rewards generated through exchanges, brokers, and DeFi protocols have remained part of congressional discussions.

Mantle and its partners describe the DeFi vault’s return as strategy-generated yield from sUSDS rather than a direct payment from a stablecoin issuer. Fluxion Points and GROVE incentives are provided separately from the underlying Sky savings return.

Tokenized-stock models also differ in how they treat U.S. securities. In August, Crypto.com introduced tokenized derivatives tied to 1,500 U.S. equities and ETFs for eligible users in the European Economic Area and other approved markets. Crypto.com said buyers receive price exposure but do not gain legal ownership or shareholder rights.

Regulated U.S. market operators are developing another model. The Depository Trust Company received a Securities and Exchange Commission no-action letter in December 2025 allowing a defined tokenization service for three years, covering eligible assets held in DTC custody.

Under DTC’s stated plan, potential assets include Russell 1000 stocks, major index ETFs, U.S. Treasuries and certain corporate bonds. The company selected Stellar for part of its multi-chain strategy and targeted the first half of 2027 for deployment.

Ondo Finance’s tokenized version of the iShares China Large-Cap ETF has crossed 59,000 holders spread across Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Solana. For a token with an on-chain market cap of roughly $290K, that’s an eyebrow-raising ratio of wallets to actual capital deployed.

FXIon, which trades at around $35-$36 per token with a circulating supply of approximately 8,000 tokens, represents Ondo’s push to bring traditional equity exposure on-chain for non-US investors. The token launched in late July 2025 and has seen its holder count surge more than 9,000% within its first 30 days of existence.

The numbers tell a strange story Let’s do some quick math. With 59,000 holders and a market cap near $290K, the average holder is sitting on about $4.90 worth of FXIon.

The token itself is backed 1:1 by underlying ETF shares held in custody, meaning each FXIon token corresponds to an actual share of BlackRock’s iShares China Large-Cap ETF (ticker: FXI). This structure gives non-US investors a way to gain exposure to major Chinese equities without navigating the traditional brokerage infrastructure that often excludes them.

FXIon was created by Ondo Global Markets (BVI) Limited and lives on the Ondo Stocks platform, which has enabled tokenization of numerous US stocks and ETFs since its September 2025 launch. The dividends from the underlying ETF are reinvested, so holders benefit from the same compounding they’d get through a traditional brokerage account.

Ondo’s broader ecosystem is the real story While FXIon’s individual market cap is modest, the platform powering it tells a more compelling narrative. Ondo Stocks has surpassed $1 billion in total value locked and accumulated $27 billion in cumulative trading volume.

The broader Ondo ecosystem has crossed 200,000 total holders as of mid-August 2026. That figure grew roughly 20% in just 30 days, suggesting accelerating adoption rather than a plateau.

Founded in 2021, Ondo Finance has positioned itself at the intersection of the tokenization of real-world assets and the demand from global investors for access to US-listed securities.

No major regulatory developments or new partnerships have been announced specifically around FXIon recently. The token’s growth appears to be riding the broader momentum of the Ondo platform and the general appetite for tokenized financial products among crypto-native users exploring traditional asset exposure.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Treasury Yield Meets Stablecoin Payments Infrastructure@OndoFinance has deployed its U.S. Dollar Yield token ($USDY) on the @Tempo blockchain, opening a new avenue for payment networks to put idle settlement funds to work. The integration means corporations processing payments through Tempo can now earn yield on funds held during the settlement window, rather than leaving that capital dormant.

$USDY is backed by short-term U.S. Treasuries and cash instruments, making it a yield-bearing alternative to a standard stablecoin. The token has been steadily expanding across multiple blockchains as part of Ondo's broader push to establish it as a building block for real-world asset use cases in decentralized finance.

Why Tempo Is a Natural FitTempo is not a general-purpose chain. It is a payments-first Layer 1 blockchain incubated by Stripe and Paradigm, built specifically for stablecoin settlement at enterprise scale. Blocks finalize in roughly 0.6 seconds with no reorganizations, and the network is designed to handle high transaction volumes without congestion slowing things down.

Critically for corporate users, Tempo has no volatile native gas token. Fees are paid in stablecoins through a built-in Fee AMM, removing the need to hold or manage speculative crypto assets simply to execute transactions. That design makes the network far more practical for treasury and payments teams operating under traditional financial controls.

Bringing $USDY into this environment gives payment operators a straightforward option: funds sitting in the settlement layer can accrue yield from Treasury-backed assets while transfers are in flight, then be redeployed the moment settlement is confirmed. It is a small but meaningful efficiency gain for businesses running high volumes of stablecoin payments.

The move continues Ondo's multi-chain expansion strategy. The firm has rolled out $USDY across several networks in 2026, reflecting growing institutional appetite for yield-bearing, liquid alternatives to idle dollar holdings on-chain.

Sources:
Everstake: What Is Tempo Blockchain?
Tempo official website
Yahoo Finance: Ondo's USDY goes live on BNB Chain

Two decades of financial policy leadership, from the U.S. Senate to the Bank of England to the world's largest capital markets trade association, now focused on shaping the regulatory foundation for onchain capital markets.

Ondo Finance today announced the appointment of Allison Parent as Chief Policy Officer. Parent has spent her career at the intersection of financial markets and global policy, advising governments, market regulators, central bankers, as well as global financial institutions on some of the most consequential regulatory frameworks of the past two decades.

Parent joins from the Global Financial Markets Association (GFMA), where she served as Executive Director since 2017, representing the world's largest financial and capital markets firms on cross-border regulatory and market structure issues. Before GFMA, she was Head of Global Policy and Strategy at Barclays in London. She previously served as Senior Policy Advisor and Counsel for Markets at the Bank of England, and as Director for Government Policy and Finance with Barclays in Washington, DC. Earlier in her career, Parent was General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget, where she advised on key financial services legislation, including the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (aka TARP).

Allison has also served on a number of public sector advisory roles, including as member of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) Advisory Forum on Format for Cyber Incident Reporting, the Associate Members Consultative Committee of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), and the Digital Markets Subcommittee of the Global Markets Advisory Committee at the U.S. Commodity Futures and Trading Commission (CFTC).

Ondo has spent years building the tokenization infrastructure for onchain capital markets. We believe as markets modernize the institutions and the jurisdictions that establish the necessary legal certainty, demonstrate market integrity in the underlying infrastructure, and transparency first will deliver the capital markets of the future.

Parent's appointment reflects the next phase of our work: industry collaboration with policymakers and regulators worldwide as tokenized assets move into the financial mainstream is integral to establishing clear, credible market standards that institutional adoption requires on a cross-border basis.

"Throughout my career, I've seen how global alignment of regulatory outcomes can unlock new distribution channels and accessibility rather than constrain it. Tokenization is the most significant advancement in market infrastructure in a generation, and getting the regulatory foundation and necessary industry standards right will determine how quickly its benefits reach investors and institutions globally. Balanced regulatory policy involves weighing growth and innovation with market integrity, consumer protection, and overall financial stability. Ondo Finance has the infrastructure in place and I’m excited to support unlocking the full potential of onchain markets." — Allison Parent, Chief Policy Officer, Ondo Finance

Parent’s invaluable experience in the regulatory, infrastructure and governance conditions that underpin trust in capital markets reflects our commitment to developing global industry standards that reward on-chain markets to provide new distribution channels for investors and clients globally.

The appointment follows rapid growth and regulatory progress for Ondo tokenized stocks, which have surpassed $1 billion in total value locked in under eight months. Ondo has secured authorization from the Liechtenstein Financial Market Authority, with passporting across the EU and EEA, seen its digital securities become the first admitted for trading under ADGM's FSRA framework via Binance's Multilateral Trading Facility, and received FINRA authorizations through its SEC-registered broker-dealer subsidiary Oasis Pro Markets. Parent will lead Ondo's policy and regulatory engagement as this footprint expands globally.

Tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) on the Stellar network have surged roughly 360% in 2026, reaching approximately $4 billion and underscoring a rapid shift toward institutional adoption of blockchain-based finance.

From $868 Million to $4 Billion in Under a Year The Stellar RWA market stood at just $868.8 million at the end of 2025. By late August 2026, that figure had climbed to $3.996 billion, according to a Dune Analytics dashboard maintained by Stellar. The market briefly crossed $4 billion on Aug. 3, per Stellar's own data. The acceleration was broad-based, driven by institutional issuance across multiple asset classes rather than a single source.

The market remains concentrated among a handful of large players. Spiko leads with $1.55 billion in tokenized assets on Stellar as of Aug. 27. Behind it, Realiz holds $559 million, Tradable $548 million, Franklin Templeton $546 million, and Ondo $535 million. Together, those five issuers account for roughly $3.74 billion of the network total.

Non-US Sovereign Debt and Expanding Asset Classes One of the more notable developments has been Stellar's expansion into non-US government debt. Around $487 million of these assets were held on the network as of Aug. 30, including tokenized Mexican CETES and Brazilian government bonds issued through Etherfuse, a platform specializing in infrastructure for tokenizing local sovereign debt.

Beyond sovereign instruments, Stellar is drawing participation across credit markets, US Treasurys, and equity-linked products, reflecting a broadening of the asset base on the network. Earlier in 2026, the Stellar Development Foundation's Protocol 26 upgrade introduced on-chain compliance features, including a consensus-driven asset-freeze mechanism, which is designed to help attract regulated institutions requiring auditable on-chain transaction records.

Planned connectivity with the DTCC could further deepen institutional ties, with reports suggesting tokenized assets may move to Stellar through that integration in the first half of 2027.

Sources:
CoinTelegraph: Stellar RWA Value Approaches $4B Amid Tokenization Push
Stellar.org: Yardstick, Stellar Protocol 26
Stellar.org: Tokenize Real-World Assets

@overlayerfi is integrating @LayerZero_Core's Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standard to migrate its Overlaid Assets into an omnichain infrastructure, a move designed to remove the liquidity bottlenecks and supply constraints that come with operating across Layer 2 silos.

What the OFT Standard Does The OFT standard works through a burn-and-mint mechanism. This removes the need for wrapped assets or chain-specific liquidity pools, which are common sources of fragmentation in traditional bridging setups.

For Overlayer, the practical effect is straightforward: market participants will be able to issue an asset on @Ethereum and move it to 160+ other supported networks without hitting chain-specific supply limits or managing separate liquidity pools on each chain.

LayerZero's Position in Cross-Chain Infrastructure The choice of LayerZero reflects its growing dominance in the interoperability space.

The standard has attracted a broad range of adopters. For Overlayer, building on an infrastructure of that scale reduces execution risk and opens access to a large existing network of chains and users from day one.

The migration also sidesteps a structural problem that affects many DeFi protocols operating across multiple Layer 2 networks: liquidity fragmentation. When assets are siloed by chain, depth is split across venues, making it harder to execute trades efficiently or maintain consistent pricing. By unifying supply under the OFT model, Overlayer avoids having to manage that complexity independently.

Sources:
LayerZero's OFT Standard Accounts for 87% of Cross-Chain Transfer Volume (Crypto Briefing)
OFT Standard Documentation (LayerZero)
LayerZero OFT Standard Surpasses $290 Billion in Cross-Chain Volume (The Block)

Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan and co-investors are backing a 49% stake in the holding company behind World Liberty Financial’s planned US bank, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Tahnoon, the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser and brother of the country’s president, is part of an investment group that holds the largest stake in the entity created to house World Liberty’s banking venture.

The arrangement expands the relationship between the Abu Dhabi royal and the Trump family-backed crypto company. Tahnoon previously backed a $500 million investment in World Liberty Financial in exchange for a 49% stake in the company, the Journal reported.

The disclosure comes after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted preliminary conditional approval earlier this month for World Liberty Trust Company, National Association. OCC records show the charter application was approved on Aug. 14.

The federally chartered national trust bank is intended to issue, redeem and safeguard USD1, World Liberty’s dollar-backed stablecoin.

Tahnoon oversees an investment network spanning his personal wealth and state-backed entities, with assets exceeding $1.3 trillion, according to the Journal.

The new banking venture further deepens World Liberty’s ties to the UAE as the company expands its stablecoin operations and financial infrastructure in the US.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

TLDR Table of Contents

Mastercard will sponsor the XRP Ledger Hackathon on October 24–25, ahead of Ripple Swell 2026. The hackathon will focus on building payment-related projects using the XRP Ledger network. Mastercard has expanded its crypto partnerships this year, including work involving Ripple, Circle, Binance, Gemini, PayPal, and Paxos. 21Shares changed the pricing benchmark for its XRP ETF, TOXR, from CME Group to the FTSE XRP Index. TOXR’s sponsor fee will now be paid quarterly instead of weekly, with payment made in XRP. Spot XRP ETFs recorded $13.82 million, about $24 million, and more than $28 million in daily inflows this week. The XRP Ledger (XRPL) is gaining fresh attention ahead of Ripple Swell 2026 after Mastercard joined an upcoming developer event. The move comes as 21Shares also changed how its XRP ETF tracks the token.

Both developments arrive as U.S. spot XRP ETFs continue to record new inflows. The activity links payment industry interest with growing demand for regulated XRP investment products.

Mastercard Backs XRP Ledger Hackathon The XRP Ledger Foundation said Mastercard will sponsor the XRP Ledger Hackathon on October 24 and 25. The 36-hour event will take place just before Ripple Swell 2026, which runs from October 27 to October 29.

Developers will build payment-focused projects and meet companies working with the network. The foundation said the XRP Ledger offers a tested structure for payment use cases and invited developers to register for the event.

Mastercard has expanded its work with crypto companies during 2026. In March, the payments company joined a program with Binance, Gemini, PayPal, Paxos, Circle, and Ripple to connect blockchain services with its global payments network.

The company widened that effort in June by adding support for more blockchain-based assets. Those additions included Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin and Circle’s USDC, extending Mastercard’s role across digital payment infrastructure.

21Shares Changes XRP ETF Pricing A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing showed that 21Shares changed the pricing benchmark for its XRP ETF, TOXR. The fund moved from CME Group pricing to the FTSE XRP Index, effective August 27.

21Shares also changed how often it pays the fund sponsor. Payments will now occur every three months instead of weekly, and the sponsor will receive the fee in XRP.

Spot XRP ETFs continued to attract capital this week. The funds recorded $13.82 million on Monday, about $24 million on Tuesday, and more than $28 million on Wednesday.

TOXR remains the only XRP ETF with negative cumulative flows at $20.06 million in net outflows. Bitwise’s XRP ETF leads the group with about $575 million in cumulative net inflows. The latest figures show demand remains concentrated among the larger funds in the market.

Less than two months after its public mainnet launch, Robinhood Chain generated $2.66 million in app revenue over a single 24-hour period on August 30, placing it second only to Solana among decentralized finance platforms. That figure topped both Hyperliquid L1, which brought in $1.7 million, and Ethereum, which managed roughly $1.27 to $1.28 million in the same window.

Where the money came from Three applications accounted for approximately 88% of Robinhood Chain’s daily revenue haul. GMGN led the pack at $1.11 million, followed by Pons at $930,587 and Uniswap at $306,877.

GMGN and Pons are memecoin-focused trading tools. Uniswap’s presence at a distant third suggests that while established DeFi protocols are active on the chain, the real revenue engine right now is meme-driven trading volume. Analysts note the trajectory for RWA engagement is still developing, with current revenue largely driven by memecentric trading activities rather than substantive RWA use cases.

The economics of keeping fees in-house Robinhood Chain retains roughly 89% of the fees generated within its network. About 10% flows to the Arbitrum ecosystem, and less than 2% trickles down to Ethereum for settlement and data availability.

Two months in, early metrics look aggressive Robinhood Chain launched its public mainnet on July 1, 2026, built as an Ethereum Layer 2 using Arbitrum Orbit technology. In the weeks since, the chain has racked up over $3 billion in DEX volume and attracted a rapid inflow of bridged assets.

Robinhood has positioned the network as a home for tokenized stocks, stablecoin products, and onchain lending integrations. Real-world asset engagement remains in its early stages, with current revenue overwhelmingly driven by speculative trading activity rather than those RWA use cases.

What this means for the Layer 2 landscape Ethereum’s daily revenue landing below $1.3 million while one of its own Layer 2s pulled in more than double that amount illustrates one of the most debated dynamics in modular blockchain design. Robinhood Chain retaining nearly 90% of generated fees within 60 days of launch raises direct questions about Ethereum’s economic model, given the base layer captures less than 2% of the value flowing through its ecosystem.

Having a high-profile chain like Robinhood’s built on Orbit technology and sending 10% of fees back to the Arbitrum ecosystem validates the Orbit framework as a viable path for institutions looking to launch their own chains without building from scratch.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Crypto projects spent approximately $638 million repurchasing their native tokens between January and Aug. 31, according to Allium Labs figures cited by the Financial Times.

Summary

Crypto projects spent $638 million on token buybacks this year, exceeding last year’s comparable total. Hyperliquid and Pump.fun represented nearly 90% of tracked repurchases, according to Allium Labs data overall. Hyperliquid directs 99% of eligible trading fees toward automated HYPE purchases and permanent token burns. Sky spent $26 million on 2026 repurchases, while its cumulative program remains considerably larger overall. Lido’s proposed framework activates buybacks only above revenue thresholds and limits annual purchases to $10 million. The total increased 17% from the $545 million recorded during the corresponding period in 2025. Projects spent only $366,000 across all of 2024, showing how quickly revenue-funded token repurchases have become part of decentralized finance.

Hyperliquid and Pump.fun accounted for nearly 90% of the 2026 total. Their dominance means the broader increase does not represent uniform adoption across the crypto market.

The annual figure also differs from cumulative buyback totals. Hyperliquid’s reported $1.3 billion covers purchases since its late-2024 launch, while the $638 million figure counts buybacks completed during 2026 by multiple projects.

Hyperliquid dominates crypto token buybacks Hyperliquid operates the largest revenue-funded repurchase program included in the dataset. The derivatives platform routes 99% of eligible trading fees to its Assistance Fund, according to its protocol documentation.

Crypto Projects Buy Back $638 Million in Native Tokens This Year; Hyperliquid and Pumpfun Account for Nearly 90%

According to the Financial Times, digital asset projects have bought back approximately $638 million worth of their own tokens so far this year, up from $545 million… pic.twitter.com/jTWVduwheh

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) August 31, 2026 The system converts trading fees into HYPE through automated purchases executed as part of Hyperliquid’s layer-1 operations. Purchased tokens are then burned, permanently removing them from supply.

Hyperliquid has reportedly bought and cancelled about $1.3 billion in HYPE since launching in December 2024. That cumulative number should not be added to the $638 million annual total because the two figures cover different measurement periods.

HYPE traded near $63.35 on Aug. 31. The token had gained approximately 70% over the previous year, according to the Financial Times. Buybacks may have supported demand, but they cannot be isolated from trading growth, user activity and broader market sentiment.

An earlier examination of Hyperliquid’s automated fee-funded repurchase system found that the Assistance Fund had accumulated roughly 28.5 million HYPE by May. The analysis placed its annualized buyback rate near 7% of market capitalization at the prevailing revenue level.

Pump.fun supplies the second major buyback engine Pump.fun uses revenue from its token launchpad, PumpSwap exchange and trading products to purchase PUMP. Its current mechanism commits 50% of designated revenue to token buybacks and burns through a locked smart contract.

During the week ending Aug. 9, the platform spent approximately $5.02 million buying and burning 2.15 billion PUMP. Its cumulative program had offset an estimated 15.7% of the token’s original supply by that point.

The purchases have continued alongside scheduled token releases. In July, Pump.fun distributed $86.49 million in vested PUMP to 121 team and investor wallets. Buybacks reduce supply, while unlocks make previously restricted tokens transferable. The two forces therefore work in opposite directions.

PUMP traded near $0.0015 on Aug. 31. Its performance shows why repurchases should not be treated as guaranteed price support. Platform revenue, token unlocks, investor confidence and demand can outweigh the buying program.

Sky and Lido follow different models Sky Protocol bought approximately $26 million of SKY during 2026, according to Allium’s annual dataset. Its cumulative buyback spending is considerably higher because the Smart Burn Engine began operating before this year.

Sky’s official dashboard describes the mechanism as an onchain system that uses protocol surplus to purchase SKY from the open market. Governance reduced the buyback rate in March by lowering individual purchase sizes and lengthening the interval between transactions.

Sky also says staking rewards are financed through open-market purchases rather than new token issuance. That structure connects protocol surplus with token demand without increasing SKY’s maximum supply.

Lido’s proposed NEST framework is more conditional. Buybacks would activate when annualized revenue exceeds $40 million. The original proposal also required ETH to trade above $3,000, although later discussions considered disabling that separate price floor.

The framework would allocate 50% of staking revenue above the $40 million baseline to LDO purchases. It includes a $50,000 daily limit and a $10 million rolling 12-month cap. These are governance parameters rather than guaranteed spending commitments.

Buybacks cannot guarantee higher token prices Token buybacks create a recurring buyer and can reduce circulating supply when purchased assets are burned. Unlike corporate shares, however, governance tokens do not necessarily provide ownership, dividends or legal claims over protocol assets.

The effects also depend on execution. Tokens held in a treasury may eventually return to circulation, while permanently burned tokens cannot. Projects may change or discontinue discretionary programs through governance decisions.

Recent results have been mixed. Hyperliquid has combined strong revenue with positive HYPE performance, while several other tokens remained under pressure despite recurring purchases. Crypto analyst Ansem previously argued that buybacks cannot overcome weak community alignment or declining demand.

The next test is whether fee revenue remains strong enough to fund purchases during weaker trading periods. Investors should also track whether repurchased tokens are burned, held or redistributed and compare annual purchases with new emissions and insider unlocks.

US President Donald Trump’s meme coin just rewarded $1 million worth of tokens to 10 American businesses. It was part of the America First Business Challenge, which ran for nearly 3 months. 

The competition was announced back in April at the President’s Mar-a-Lago crypto conferences. Around 616 businesses applied for it, and 36 were approved. Now, 10 of them are walking away with a million dollars.

This could be the first time a meme coin was used for a business grant at such scale. But there’s a big twist here.

Back in April, the 36 businesses had to buy the TRUMP meme coin before they were eligible for the grant. So, buy TRUMP and then get TRUMP back in rewards?

America First Business Challenge. Source: WebsiteThe pot is split into one award of $250,000, six of $100,000, and three of $50,000. No winner gave up a share of their company.

There was one condition on voting. Participants had to connect a crypto wallet that held TRUMP. That turned the contest into a reason to buy. Ahead of the Mar-a-Lago event that launched it, whale wallets holding TRUMP climbed to a five-month high.

Today, we’re proud to announce that we awarded $1 million in $TRUMP to 10 incredible American businesses through the America First Challenge — all as non-equity grants.

Supporting American businesses doing great things for America. 🇺🇸

Learn more: https://t.co/9foB8YtIiZ

— TrumpMeme (@GetTrumpMemes) August 26, 2026
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The Coin’s Own Website Denies It Has Any UseGetTrumpMemes.com calls TRUMP an expression of support, not an investment. It states the token has no payment function and no commercial integration.

“Trump Memes are intended to function as an expression of support for, and engagement with, the ideals and beliefs embodied by the symbol “$TRUMP” and the associated artwork, and are not intended to be, or to be the subject of, an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type.”

Read plainly, that rules out spending it. A winner cannot pay staff or a supplier in TRUMP. To use the grant, they have to sell it.

Selling means competing with a lot of future supply. Only 250.9 million tokens circulate out of a 1 billion cap, so roughly 75% has yet to arrive.

Two companies control most of it. CIC Digital LLC, a Trump Organization affiliate, and Fight Fight Fight LLC hold 80% on a three-year unlock. Both also collect trading fees.

The Last TRUMP Contest Ended With Holders SellingThis is not the first prize the coin has dangled. In May 2025, the top 220 holders won a dinner with Trump.

Investors spent more than $145 million buying the token to compete. Then 26 members of Congress wrote to the Justice Department.

“After the contest closed, at least 34 of the top 220 investors sold most of their meme coin holdings, further confirming that the $TRUMP meme coin is not a worthwhile investment, but rather a vehicle to buy influence with the Trump Administration,” read the lawmakers’ letter dated May 22, 2025.

Organizers frame the challenge differently. Their launch pitch was money for founders outside venture networks.

The same letter puts insider trading fees above $320 million since launch. The grant pool is worth less than one three-hundredth of that.

Scale tells a similar story. TRUMP turns over about $642 million a day in trading volume, so the entire $1 million fits within roughly two minutes of trading. The price is moving fast, too. TRUMP trades near $2.74, up 25% in the last 24 hours.

Official Trump (TRUMP) Price Performance. Source: BeInCryptoEven so, the TRUMP token’s price chart sits 96.3% below its January 2025 peak. It touched an all-time low of $1.37 on August 13. The rally began before the grants were announced, not after.

A key detail is still missing. Nobody has named the 10 winners, so no transfer on Solana can be matched to any business.

Until those names appear, the case for utility rests on a social media post. The real test is simpler than the debate. Can one of these 10 companies actually spend what it won?

Pudgy Penguins' $PENGU token is now tradable on Robinhood Chain (@RobinhoodCrypto), the Ethereum layer 2, according to an announcement from @pudgypenguins. The project shared the Robinhood Chain contract address (0x74BE72AFFAFbC8de30F0C11247814036314D625f) and urged users to verify any token details exclusively through official channels before transacting. At the time of the announcement, $PENGU was trading roughly 10% higher on the day and 35% higher over the prior week.

A Token With a Growing Multi-Chain Footprint The Robinhood Chain integration adds another venue for retail access alongside those existing deployments.

On the NFT side, the Pudgy Penguins team has used LayerZero's interoperability protocol to extend the Lil Pudgys companion collection across multiple networks. That cross-chain integration covers the NFT layer; the PENGU token's own multi-chain deployments are separate and include Solana, Ethereum, and BNB Smart Chain, among others.

Two Taipei Events Planned Around FUTUREMODE Alongside the Robinhood Chain news, @pudgypenguins announced two community events in Taipei timed around the FUTUREMODE festival. On September 5, the team is hosting a pickleball event alongside AvaxTeam1. On September 6, a Pengu Garden holder meetup is planned, co-hosted with Deepcoin and 0G Labs and organised by 0xmedia.

Sources:
FUTUREMODE 2026 Official Site
Pudgy Penguins: Lil Pudgys Are Now Cross-Chain (Official Blog)

TLDR World Liberty Financial says USD1 stablecoin circulation has topped $4 billion, driven by institutional demand. CEO Zach Witkoff denies that political ties to the Trump family fueled the growth. MGX used USD1 for its $2 billion Binance investment in 2025, an early institutional use case. The OCC gave preliminary approval for a related trust bank on August 14. Lawmakers continue to question foreign ownership links tied to the company. World Liberty Financial says its USD1 stablecoin has grown past $4 billion in circulation. The company’s CEO, Zach Witkoff, says the growth reflects real demand rather than political favors.

Witkoff made the comments after CNBC reported on the story on August 25. He said USD1’s growth shows the token is being used regardless of any ties to President Donald Trump’s administration.

The comments came shortly after federal regulators gave early approval for a new trust bank tied to the company.

How USD1 Has Grown Since Launch USD1 launched in March 2025. It is a dollar backed digital token, meaning each coin is supposed to be backed by cash and similar safe assets held at financial institutions.

The token became one of the larger dollar backed cryptocurrencies in the market. Its early growth was tied closely to one large deal.

Abu Dhabi backed investment fund MGX used USD1 to complete a $2 billion investment in the crypto exchange Binance in May 2025. Witkoff announced the deal at a conference in Dubai, calling USD1 the official settlement token for the transaction.

That single deal gave USD1 a boost in credibility. But it also tied much of its supply to one exchange.

A Forbes report from February, based on data from Arkham Intelligence, found that wallets linked to Binance and its customers held close to $4.7 billion in USD1. That made up about 87 percent of the token’s total supply at the time.

Circulation has since dropped below that peak level. World Liberty Financial says it remains above $4 billion today.

The stablecoin is currently available on several exchanges, including Coinbase, Kraken, and Crypto.com.

Regulatory Approval and Political Questions On August 14, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency gave preliminary conditional approval to World Liberty Trust Company. The application had been filed by WLTC Holdings LLC back in January.

Under the proposed structure, the trust would issue and redeem USD1 tokens. It would also manage reserves and provide custody services, work currently handled by BitGo.

The trust would not offer retail banking services. It would not take deposits, offer checking accounts, or issue loans.

Political scrutiny of the company has grown alongside its business. According to Reuters, a firm connected to the Trump family controls 38 percent of World Liberty Financial’s parent company.

Zach Witkoff is the son of Steve Witkoff, who serves as a Trump envoy and is also an emeritus founder of the crypto company.

The White House has said Trump’s business assets are held in a trust controlled by his children. It has also said Trump is not personally managing World Liberty Financial while in office.

Scrutiny increased further after reports that an investment vehicle called Aryam Investment 1 took a 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial for $500 million. That vehicle is backed by UAE National Security Adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who also chairs MGX.

In June, Democratic senators called for hearings into the deal. They want to know whether it played any role in decisions about selling weapons or advanced AI chips to other countries.

The OCC has said foreign investors cannot serve as principal shareholders of the proposed bank. Several investors reportedly signed agreements limiting their control over the bank’s operations to address that requirement.

For now, World Liberty Financial says USD1 remains above the $4 billion mark, and the trust bank application continues moving through the federal approval process.

Pump.fun has fully integrated HyperEVM into its mobile application, making it the first app to offer complete support for Hyperliquid’s EVM-compatible execution layer. The move lets users trade HyperEVM tokens against USDC with near-zero fees, a capability that was only partially available in preceding weeks.

What HyperEVM actually is and why it matters HyperEVM is the smart contract layer of the Hyperliquid L1 blockchain, operating under chain ID 999. It runs alongside HyperCore, Hyperliquid’s native trading infrastructure, with both sharing the same HyperBFT consensus mechanism. HyperCore handles the exchange’s core order book operations, while HyperEVM opens the door to general-purpose smart contracts and ERC-20 tokens.

HyperEVM launched in early 2025, and the HYPE token, which serves as the native gas token for all transactions on HyperEVM, has shown notable price strength in recent weeks. Meme trading activity on the network has also surged. Gas fees on HyperEVM have occasionally exceeded those on Ethereum mainnet.

Pump.fun’s multi-chain evolution Pump.fun’s origin story is straightforward. It burst onto the scene as a Solana-based platform where anyone could launch a meme token with minimal friction. The HyperEVM integration represents the latest chapter in Pump.fun’s strategic expansion beyond Solana, bringing full trading support for HyperEVM tokens into its mobile app.

The rollout followed a phased approach. Partial HyperEVM support was introduced weeks before the full integration, giving the team time to stress-test the infrastructure and iron out edge cases.

What this means for traders and the Hyperliquid ecosystem For active traders, the integration removes a layer of friction that previously existed when accessing HyperEVM tokens. Trading against USDC with near-zero fees on a mobile app is a compelling value proposition, particularly for the high-frequency, small-size trades that characterize meme token markets.

There are risks worth noting. The gas fee spikes that have already surfaced on HyperEVM could worsen as adoption grows, potentially undermining one of the network’s core selling points. And Pump.fun’s expansion into multiple chains means it needs to maintain security and reliability across a broader attack surface.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

When a tenant starts making more money than the landlord, something interesting is happening. Pump.fun, the memecoin launchpad that has become Solana’s most profitable application, now generates more than twice the monthly revenue of Solana itself, a milestone that reframes how the industry thinks about where value actually accrues in a blockchain ecosystem.

As of late August 2026, Pump.fun’s trailing 30-day revenue sits between $42M and $51M, with weekly figures peaking at $14M, the highest weekly number recorded since February 2026. Annualized, that puts the platform on a run rate somewhere between $460M and $500M per year from a single application built on top of someone else’s network.

How a memecoin factory became a billion-dollar business Pump.fun launched on January 19, 2024, with a simple value proposition: make it trivially easy to create and trade memecoins, then take a small cut of every transaction.

Since launch, the platform has crossed $1.259B in cumulative revenue, making it the first application on Solana to clear the $1B mark and one of the highest-earning protocols in all of crypto. That figure, earned across roughly 19 months, reflects consistent, high-volume trading activity over a sustained period.

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Revenue comes from multiple sources. Token creation fees, trading activity routed through PumpSwap, the platform’s native automated market maker, and ancillary service charges all feed into the total.

Roughly half of all fees collected are funneled directly into automated buybacks and burns of the PUMP token. Total buybacks have exceeded $429M, which has eliminated approximately 28.6% of the circulating supply.

Outpacing Hyperliquid and expanding beyond Solana Pump.fun’s revenue lead isn’t limited to Solana comparisons. In certain 7-day and 30-day windows, the platform has also outpaced Hyperliquid, the perpetuals exchange that has itself been celebrated as one of crypto’s most impressive fee-generating protocols.

The platform has also begun reducing its dependence on any single chain. Smaller deployments now operate on Base, Binance Smart Chain, and Ethereum. In August 2026, the platform rolled out a feature called Callout Rewards and cut trading fees, moves designed to deepen user engagement and lower the cost of participating in the ecosystem.

What the revenue gap between app and chain actually means The fact that Pump.fun generates more than twice Solana’s monthly revenue is a reasonable outcome in a maturing ecosystem. Solana collects fees at the base layer, which are structurally lower than application-layer fees because validators compete on cost to attract transactions. Applications, by contrast, can charge whatever the market will bear for their specific product.

The PUMP token buyback program adds another layer to watch. With $429M already burned and the platform still operating at peak revenue, the deflationary pressure on supply is compounding.

Callout Rewards, the new engagement feature introduced in August 2026, also represents a bet on community stickiness. Platforms that tie financial incentives to social participation tend to generate retention loops that are hard to break, even when market conditions cool.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Aster DEX is putting serious money where its mouth is. The decentralized exchange, working alongside World Liberty Financial, has rolled out a Phase 1 rewards campaign designed to jumpstart trading activity across its newly minted USD1-denominated real-world asset perpetual markets.

The campaign runs from August 31 through December 31, 2026, distributing 125 million WLFI tokens based on eligible open interest and an additional 6.25 million USD1 tied to trading volume. The total liquidity backing the program sits at roughly $28 million, pooled from approximately 250 million WLFI and 12.5 million USD1.

What Aster actually built Before the rewards campaign even kicked off, Aster launched five RWA perpetual markets on August 20, 2026. The lineup includes SPCXUSD1, CLUSD1, XAUUSD1, SNDKUSD1, and SKHYNIXUSD1, all settled exclusively in USD1.

The integration between Aster DEX and World Liberty Financial dates back to December 2025. Phase 1 is explicitly positioned as the first in a series of reward programs meant to build out the USD1 RWA ecosystem over time.

How the rewards work The dual reward structure splits incentives across two behaviors Aster wants to encourage: holding positions and actually trading.

The 125 million WLFI tokens are allocated based on eligible open interest. The 6.25 million USD1 component rewards trading volume, giving active traders an additional reason to route their activity through Aster’s RWA markets.

Traders using single-asset mode with USD1 as their sole collateral qualify for a 2X open interest boost. That effectively doubles the weight of their positions when calculating WLFI rewards. Multi-asset traders can still participate, but they need to keep at least 50% of their collateral in USD1 to remain eligible.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.