Elysium just went live on mainnet. One of its key offerings is enabling the Hyperliquid ecosystem to capture more of the general-purpose activity (DeFi apps, meme coins, onchain spot, tokenised stocks) that leaks to Robinhood, Solana, and Base. The leak runs both ways. Those chains dominate spot and meme coin trading, but almost all of their perps volume goes to Hyperliquid. Elysium, from @kinetiq_xyz, is built so no activity has to leave the Hyperliquid ecosystem. “How do you create an environment that basically doesn’t leak value to the other side? This is what Elysium is.” (@0xOmnia, founder of Kinetiq and Elysium) How it works: Elysium is an @arbitrum Orbit Chain that settles to HyperEVM and uses $HYPE as gas, and it: ✦ Taps into Hyperliquid’s order books natively (coming soon). ✦ Gives you a fast, cheap place for everything perps can’t cover: spot, meme coins, tokenised stocks, apps. ✦ 50% of Sequencer fees go to buying back $KNTQ, 25% to the apps that use the blockspace, and 25% to Kinetiq's treasury. It essentially enables DeFi at low and high frequency, automated trading strategies, and consumer apps. In other words, anything that benefits from sitting next to the largest onchain source of perps liquidity. Additionally, it helps Hyperliquid attract more flow. For example, propAMMs on Elysium can hedge on Hyperliquid. Also, as some tokens grow on Elysium, they would end up listed on HyperCore too, while being traded on AMMs.

Ethena Pay launched Earn+ yesterday, with current deposits at $3.58m, ~80% of the $4.5m initial cap. Earn+ routes deposits into an @upshift_fi vault curated by @SteakhouseFi, which loops USDe on @aave V4 to achieve 12% APY, helping Ethena Pay stand out as a product. This also attracts more users to the platform, further accelerating the flywheel by increasing demand for USDe, pushing supply toward the fee switch threshold, and enabling $ENA buybacks.

Re is bringing an interesting alternative to RWA yield, one that is less correlated to markets and instead is based on real reinsurance activity. We sat down with @karnsaroya to discuss reinsurance as an alternative to current RWA yield and @re's role. 📆 Wed 04 Nov 3 pm UTC

Re is bringing an interesting alternative to RWA yield, one that is less correlated to markets and instead is based on real reinsurance activity. We sat down with @karnsaroya to discuss reinsurance as an alternative to current RWA yield and @re's role. 📆 Wed 04 Nov 3 pm UTC

Weekly newsletter out, packed with alpha: ✦ AI Exposure Onchain - $PRL $VVV ✦ @metricxyz Airdrop Positioning ✦ Tokenised Stocks Carry Trade - @aave x @coinbase ✦ Perp Narrative - $VAR $XTEN

Weekly newsletter out, packed with alpha: ✦ AI Exposure Onchain - $PRL $VVV ✦ @metricxyz Airdrop Positioning ✦ Tokenised Stocks Carry Trade - @aave x @coinbase ✦ Perp Narrative - $VAR $XTEN

Consistent yield by design. The strategy behind reUSD and reUSDe prioritizes steadier, lower-volatility returns. The book behind them is spread across six distinct lines. Unexpectedly high losses in any one are unlikely to carry over into the others. This approach has been profitable every year to date. @castle_labs breaks down the data ↓

Aerodrome and Velodrome merged to form Aero. With this merge, the product is now live across 7 chains, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Robinhood Chain, increasing its addressable market by 3-4x. To better understand this upgrade, we interviewed @wagmiAlexander, CEO of @DromosLabs, and core contributor Aero. Aerodrome leads in bitcoin-dollar pairs and onchain FX, and is becoming a core venue for tokenised stocks too. Hence, "the intention for Aero is to continue growing across all these different assets, leveraging greater liquidity and larger market sizes to build on this success." Aerodrome's share of tokenised-stock trading rose from around 2% in early September to ~55% by October across Ethereum and its L2s, while running only on Base. How does Aero plan to build on this? "New issuers will need liquidity from day one. Our model is built around a flywheel. An issuer pays incentives to attract stakers’ allocations to its market. That draws in liquidity, deeper liquidity brings in trading, and the fees captured as revenue from that trading go back to staked AERO holders, who then have a reason to keep backing the markets that perform." Expanding to new chains means bootstrapping liquidity from scratch. On Aero, Metaswaps handle this: "a trade on one network can be filled by Aero liquidity on another, so new pools strengthen the whole network, and new deployments can draw on liquidity we already have instead of starting from nothing." The design also keeps the growth of AI agents in mind: "We designed Aero expecting AI agents to become a meaningful part of its user base. Predictive Allocation gives them a natural role: read market data, allocate toward the markets they expect to generate revenue, and earn a share of that revenue in real time." Additionally, the sources of revenue expand with "trading fees across seven networks, liquidity payments from issuers, expanded dynamic fees, and MEV capture on supported L2 networks through Slipstream V3." sAERO holders receive the pool revenue, and "at today's reward targets and staking levels, the revenue it earns exceeds the dilution it absorbs."

RWAs have grown rapidly, and today the value of these assets totals ~$40B. These assets fall into two main categories: permissionless and permissioned, with almost equal market capitalisation. However, they are treated quite differently onchain. Permissionless assets can be traded on any DEX, with multiple DeFi use cases to earn extra yield. However, permissioned assets have fairly limited spot trading due to asset-level constraints. They restrict who can hold or transfer these assets. So, holders can only exit through issuer redemption, which can take days or weeks. @theorem_markets, now live on Ethereum mainnet, is building a trading venue specifically for these assets and features: ✦ Eligibility checks enforced onchain, so permissioned assets can have pools. ✦ Pricing shown against the latest NAV, so traders can evaluate any premiums or discounts. ✦ Limit orders, so you can bid below NAV or offer above it. ✦ Routing between AMM pools and market-maker quotes for the best execution. ✦ Trading pauses when NAV goes stale, the issuer halts, or market hours close. This way, tokenised assets can trade in secondary markets while preserving the controls their issuers require. Additionally, it offers advantages beyond spot trading by helping these assets enter the broader DeFi ecosystem, including lending, collateralised borrowing, and leveraged strategies. Today, permissioned assets represent only ~18% of the DeFi TVL of RWAs ($1.08B), despite having a market cap similar to permissionless assets, largely because of a lack of onchain spot liquidity and instant redemption paths.

Maple Finance closed September with $1.57m in revenue, 20% of which went to buybacks. September was the third month since MIP-021 passed (a buyback program that scales with revenue), and it was the highest buyback month under this MIP. In earlier months, revenue was under $1.5m, and buybacks were limited to 10% of revenue. Based on last month's annualised revenue, the $SYRUP P/S ratio now sits at ~14, well below other lending protocols in the category and awaiting potential repricing.

Maple Finance closed September with $1.57m in revenue, 20% of which went to buybacks. September was the third month since MIP-021 passed (a buyback program that scales with revenue), and it was the highest buyback month under this MIP. In earlier months, revenue was under $1.5m, and buybacks were limited to 10% of revenue. Based on last month's annualised revenue, the $SYRUP P/S ratio now sits at ~14, well below other lending protocols in the category and awaiting potential repricing.

Stablecoins are moving toward app-specific dollars. Apps, wallets, and fintechs are launching their own dollars, taking control over the economics, rewards, and user-retention loops behind their products. In this episode, we discussed this evolution with @laert and how @m0 is helping to drive it. 0:00 - Intro 2:38 - What M0 does 4:28 - USDC/USDT scale vs app-specific dollars 6:25 - Avoiding stablecoin liquidity fragmentation 09:42 - Who M0 is built for? 15:20 - Why should businesses launch with M0? 18:00 - Who should earn stablecoin reserve rewards? 23:25 - Why issuer flexibility matters for stablecoins? 25:00 - The future of money 31:03 - The platformisation of money 32:20 - Machine economy and AI agents 34:21 - Could agents move deposits out of banks?

Stablecoins are moving toward app-specific dollars. Apps, wallets, and fintechs are launching their own dollars, taking control over the economics, rewards, and user-retention loops behind their products. In this episode, we discussed this evolution with @laert and how @m0 is helping to drive it. 0:00 - Intro 2:38 - What M0 does 4:28 - USDC/USDT scale vs app-specific dollars 6:25 - Avoiding stablecoin liquidity fragmentation 09:42 - Who M0 is built for? 15:20 - Why should businesses launch with M0? 18:00 - Who should earn stablecoin reserve rewards? 23:25 - Why issuer flexibility matters for stablecoins? 25:00 - The future of money 31:03 - The platformisation of money 32:20 - Machine economy and AI agents 34:21 - Could agents move deposits out of banks?

Migration to Derive V3 happens today. A few weeks ago, we covered what V3 does in detail in our newsletter at @castle_labs. In short: V3 is the next step to scale further and onboard more “sophisticated users and institutions” to Derive. What's new in V3? - Improved volume throughput - Faster development of products and features - Better wallet support for MPCs and multisigs - Easier integrations for builders, including custom bridge infrastructure - Path to e2e privacy - Risk isolation for RWA markets - Cross-currency margin V3 introduces a zero-knowledge component (ZK). As in v2, order matching happens offchain. However, the fills are handed to a sequencer whose every state transition (margin, risk, settlement) is executed inside a zkVM and verified on L1. Trades settle inside the zkVM, and only their proof is verified on Ethereum (allowing confirmation of multiple trade batches with a flat gas fee). Users’ funds are kept in escrow in L1 contracts and require a proof-committed withdrawal to redeem. Derive v3 uses Celestia for data availability, meaning processed states can be rebuilt and used to prove a batch. If the designated sequencer fails to process a withdrawal for a minimum pre-defined time period (initially set to two weeks), submissions can reopen, and anyone can take over settlement and withdrawals (even without Derive). Eventually, their goal is to reach L2beat stage 1 classification. 3 main roles are envisioned in Derive v3: - Sequencer: ordering in batches, submitting proofs and withdrawal outputs from the zkVM - Guardian: can refresh withdrawal throttles to speed up processing, or trigger a one-way block on withdrawals (only the Owner can unpause). - Owner: can update the state root, setVKey, update proxies and unpause withdrawals. At launch, it's a Derive subsidiary multisig with a timelock. As onchain options grow, we are incredibly excited for Derive v3, and we believe the additional features and role of ZK will help it scale further and become more appealing to institutional investors.

This week we cover: ✦ The DeFi Lending repricing ✦ @ether_fi USD by @ethena ✦ @monad growth ✦ @okx and ICE @Uniswap v4 TSV ✦ AQAv2 first payment, @Polymarket V2, DePIN, @DeriveXYZ V3 migration and buybacks

M0 is building the infrastructure layer for programmable money, enabling apps, wallets, and fintechs to launch their own stablecoins while keeping control of the economics. We sat down with @laert to discuss the future of money and @m0 role in it. 📆 Wed 07 Oct 2:30 pm UTC

Memes and social trading on @fomo are becoming distribution tools for stocks. @ben_ungvari of @Raydium explains, "There is a memeification of finance where memes do really well at getting attention, and your stock will also start doing better if it gets a lot of attention."