was doing some reflection on @base and @virtuals_io Virtuals and its Ecosystem tokens has: > 9.89% of trading volume of all Based tokens (on CEX's and DEX's) > 9.45% of trading volume on Base chain (excl. stables and majors) > brought 53,554 new unique users to Base (of the 164k total users in our eco) > 30% of x402 volumes > 22% of unique users on x402, all-time > 26% of mcap of all AI projects in crypto, where most liquidity has been housed on Base > brought 120+ doxxed founding teams to Base (way more undoxxed) DeFi brought liquidity NFTs brought culture Virtuals brings repeat economic actors (agents + humans) i think we've helped a lot of base folks get their xmas bonus this year ;)

🚨 A typical AI Agent security incident recently occurred on the Base chain. An attacker sent a carefully crafted Morse code message to @grok, inducing it to output transfer instructions. @bankrbot then directly parsed and executed those instructions, ultimately leading to the transfer of real on-chain assets. Our analysis found that the core issue was NOT that Grok held private keys. Instead, the real problem was: • Untrusted #AI# natural language outputs were treated as executable financial commands • Permission isolation was insufficient • Trust boundaries between AI output and execution systems were poorly defined This incident highlights the growing security risks at the intersection of AI + Crypto Agents.⚠️ Full analysis 👇

Tl;dr: We’re focusing the Base app to be trading-first to drive demand and distribution for every asset and to be the best app for whatever you do in the onchain economy. Since announcing the Base app in July, hundreds of thousands of you have used the app to create, trade, save, spend, and build. Seeing the adoption has been incredible. We've also heard clear feedback about what's landing and isn't. Three themes stand out: - The app felt overly focused on social. It came across as too close to web2, and didn’t show support for the full breadth of assets that people want to trade. - Everyone wants more high quality assets. In general there is a desire to engage with and trade high quality assets. This is the most important opportunity as we bring capital markets onchain. - The feed needs to surface everything: Having a feed of what's happening onchain is a good idea, but it needs to surface apps, stocks, predictions, and every asset class (with social tokens are just one of many). In a world where everything is tokenized and tradeable, the single most valuable thing we can do is drive demand and distribution to everyone. That’s exactly what the Base app is going to do. We’re going to make the Base app the best place to trade and use every asset. Concretely this means: 1. We’re going to build for trading first. Having trading as our primary focus will help us bring demand and capital for all rapidly growing asset classes in the economy. 2. We’re going to bring more high quality assets onchain. To best serve the trading use case, we’re going to make it so everything is tradable in the app — protocols, apps, stocks, predictions, memes, and yes creators too. We’re going to lean into a finance-first UX. We be 3. We’re going to lean into a finance-first UX. We believe it makes more sense to layer social features on top of finance, than the other way around. This means we'll continue to experiment with features like copy-trading, feed-trading, and leaderboards. This is going to be hugely additive to the Base economy because it's going to drive more capital and users to every asset and app. Base app will be the best self-custodial wallet to trade and use every asset, globally accessible, with fast, simple onboarding for everyone, everywhere. Base chain will continue to be the best chain to build anything, now supercharged with even more distribution. We’re building this together, in the open, and seeing how people use the app keeps teaching us what matters most. Thank you for the continued feedback. Stay based.

Royals DeFi Investigation - @AerodromeFi / $AERO in 2026 - The Protocol That's Printing Cash Flow Regardless If you caught my video on Aerodrome earlier this year, where I spoke about some core fundamentals like liquidity providing on the platform, I want to take it a step further today & keep it very similar to my recent @pendle_fi recap, as this is also an analysis of what actually happened in Q1 and Q2 2026 for the leading DEX on Base. The year started weak on paper. Q1 2026 came in at around $18.3M in protocol revenue, down 46% from $34.5M in Q4 2025 & Q2 followed with ~$16.1M, a further 12% decline quarter over quarter. While that looks significant, it definitely reflects broader market conditions rather than structural weakness within the protocol. TVL followed a similar trend, sitting around $345M in Q1 and declining to roughly $310M in Q2, but besides that, activity remained strong, with monthly volumes consistently above $9B showing that underlying demand for liquidity on Base held up most of the time. On the token side of things, AERO is currently trading around $0.51 with a market cap of $484M, but price action across Q1 and Q2 saw two notable drawdowns. The first occurred at the start of the year, the second in early June, where AERO dropped from around ~$0.45 to ~$0.30. Both moves looked very similar & were followed by relatively fast recoveries, with the token pushing back toward $0.50, which is roughly where it trades now. Structurally, Aerodrome’s position has not weakened, more the opposite, as it continues to dominate Base DEX liquidity in a way comparable to how durable Uniswap controlled Ethereum mainnet in earlier cycles. What is changing, are slowly the tokenomics & as well the expansion of the system is an ongoing priority. Especially the @VelodromeFi merge, which was announced in late 2025, seems to be part of this upcoming change. For now the legacy ve33 model remains fully active for now, with AERO locking for veAERO, weekly gauge voting, emissions distributed accordingly, with fee accrual and bribes continuing to flow to veAERO holders, but the already announced switch to sAERO, in relation to the merge with Velodrome, could very likely be implemented this month, so definitely something to look forward to & be excited about. On top of that, more than 190M AERO, which is more than 20% of the circulating supply, has already been bought back and locked through programs funded by protocol revenue such as the Public Goods Fund, Flight School, and Relay, which introduces not only a strong narrative for potential future investors, but as well establishes consistent mechanisms that remove supply directly from the market. The result is a shift away from purely emission driven tokenomics toward supply reduction backed by real cash flow, a narrative which @HyperliquidX definitely made big in the last months. Looking ahead to Q3 and Q4, there are some things which could push the needle much further for Aerodrome, as the mainnet expansion, which will test cross chain liquidity at scale, particularly with MEV internalization live and also very much the upcoming expansions to Circle’s Arc environment puts Aerodrome again into direct competition with Uniswap, that’s why I am personally excited to see how this will play out for them. But as mentioned, most importantly is the adoption of sAERO imo, which will determine whether the token fully transitions into a more active instrument or if the veAERO will be more sustainable in the end. As a frequent user of the Base chain, it is even more exciting to see, Aerodrome expanding beyond base & positioning itself as a unified liquidity layer across major chains, with clear mechanisms to capture and retain value at the token level. What do you think & are you bullish on $AERO further going into the future? Aerodrome.