🚨 Major changes are coming to Aave's stablecoin markets As a reminder, on @aave, a stablecoin's borrow rate is never fixed. It follows a curve driven by several parameters, including Slope1, which sets the normal market rate as long as utilization stays below a certain threshold known as Optimal Utilization, often called the kink (denoted U*). In a new governance proposal submitted this week, @Token_Logic proposed raising Slope1 by 50 basis points across 22 stablecoin markets, pushing the target rate from 4.0% to 4.5%. 👉 The logic is fairly simple: if borrowers keep taking on debt even as the market already sits around the target rate, that signals demand is strong enough to absorb a higher cost. Aave can therefore raise its rates and capture more value without necessarily disrupting current momentum. Raising borrow rates would above all improve the yield offered to depositors, strengthening Aave's position against competitors like Morpho or Maple, while also boosting the revenue captured directly by the protocol. At constant volumes, this change alone would add roughly $2.55 million in annualized revenue to the DAO. In practice, however, the increase won't be applied all at once. It will be rolled out gradually, in 10 basis point increments, generally on a weekly basis. This way, the rate can keep climbing as long as borrowing demand stays solid or keeps growing, while a significant enough contraction in debt would halt the increases. The main appeal of this approach lies precisely in its gradual nature. Rather than imposing a full 50 basis point hike immediately and risking a drop in demand, Aave can observe how the market reacts at each step and gauge how far borrowers are willing to follow. We break it all down in our full analysis on the Alpha Feed 👇

🫡 We are proud to announce that OAK Research has been elected to serve on the @ethena Risk Committee. We would like to thank everyone who supported our application and placed their trust in us. This election represents an important milestone for OAK Research and a new responsibility toward $ENA holders. Our work will from now on be divided into two distinct areas: our ongoing research and coverage of Ethena, and our Risk Committee work on risk parameters and protocol improvements. These activities will remain separate and be conducted independently of one another. Through both, we aim to improve transparency, broaden coverage of the protocol’s evolution, and clearly explain the rationale behind our decisions. We look forward to working closely with the Ethena team and the other newly elected committee members @Kairos_Res and @BlockworksAdv. Our goal is, and always has been, to support Ethena in the best way possible. We will continue doing so throughout our mandate. Thank you once again to the Ethena community for its trust. Let’s ride.

There is one truth about L2s that Robinhood Chain reminds us of once again: they bring very little value back to Ethereum. Over the past 7 days, @RobinhoodApp generated $832,000 in gross revenue, or around $180,000 per day. Robinhood Chain is built on the @arbitrum stack (Nitro/Orbit), which processes transactions and publishes data to @ethereum for final settlement. Arbitrum captures 10% of Robinhood’s revenue, or $83,200. Ethereum ultimately receives only $4,340 in revenue through compute, blob fees, and calldata fees paid by Arbitrum on behalf of Robinhood. In other words, out of the $832,000 in gross revenue generated by Robinhood Chain: ▫️ $744,500 goes to Robinhood (89.5%) ▫️ $83,200 goes to Arbitrum (10%) ▫️ $4,340 goes to Ethereum (0.5%) This is not a new observation, and we have been repeating it for years. Ethereum’s latest upgrades, especially EIP-4844, were designed to reduce costs for users on L2s. But in practice, Ethereum also encouraged the migration of its users toward infrastructures that now capture the vast majority of the value created.

🔴 After the Aavethena success, a new contender enters the @ethena lending loop. @JupiterExchange just announced the launch of the Ethena market curated by @Bitwise. The strategy uses $USDe as collateral that loops into $USDG to provide an increased yield for the loopers. Users can use up to 12.3x leverage with a potential final APY of 43.8% with a 91.87% LTV. This is an isolated market that does not affect the rest of the Jupiter Lend product. $USDe supply is sitting near its cycle low at $3.97B, down from $14.8B at peak. But top-tier protocols on both EVM and Solana keep choosing it as the premier loop asset. Aavethena, now Jupiter. Each new integration is a reason for that supply to climb again. With new strategies expanding USDe's utility and the broader market recovering, we expect $USDe's supply to rise again and provide a more interesting yield to holders and loopers.

🔴 HIP-3 markets just hit a new all-time high with $2.7B in Open Interest As the AI equity mania continues, @HyperliquidX remains the only high-quality platform to gain exposure to these markets on-chain. And the numbers clearly reflect it: HIP-3 markets are now posting record Open Interest levels. On its own, HIP-3 would already rank as the second-largest DEX by volume in the entire market, behind Hyperliquid itself and far ahead of the competition. The dominance is undeniable. Hyperliquid. P.S.: This is another reason why we decided to list TradFi and Hyperliquid data on OAK Research.

🔴 Circle's $USYC just crossed $3 billion in AUM. But almost all of its growth comes from a single source: Binance. USYC is a tokenized money market fund backed by short-term U.S. Treasuries. After Circle acquired Hashnote in January 2025, USYC's supply fell from $1.7 B to $200 M in 7 months. Then Binance stepped in. In August 2025, USYC was deployed natively on BNB Chain as off-exchange collateral for Binance's institutional clients. Over $320 M was minted in a single day on its launch. Since then, the supply has only grown on BNB Chain. Binance holds 100% of USYC deployed on BNB chain, representing over 96% of the total supply. This is a partnership that works for both entities. Binance gets a RWA product to showcase on BNB Chain. Circle gets a product that was dying and is now crossing $3 billion. Without Binance, $USYC would have remained a marginal product for Circle, but instead it has become the largest tokenized money market fund in the world, surpassing Blackrock's $BUIDL, Ondo's $USDY, and Franklin Templeton's $BENJI.

🔴 Circle's $USYC just crossed $3 billion in AUM. But almost all of its growth comes from a single source: Binance. USYC is a tokenized money market fund backed by short-term U.S. Treasuries. After Circle acquired Hashnote in January 2025, USYC's supply fell from $1.7 B to $200 M in 7 months. Then Binance stepped in. In August 2025, USYC was deployed natively on BNB Chain as off-exchange collateral for Binance's institutional clients. Over $320 M was minted in a single day on its launch. Since then, the supply has only grown on BNB Chain. Binance holds 100% of USYC deployed on BNB chain, representing over 96% of the total supply. This is a partnership that works for both entities. Binance gets a RWA product to showcase on BNB Chain. Circle gets a product that was dying and is now crossing $3 billion. Without Binance, $USYC would have remained a marginal product for Circle, but instead it has become the largest tokenized money market fund in the world, surpassing Blackrock's $BUIDL, Ondo's $USDY, and Franklin Templeton's $BENJI.

OAK Research just received a spontaneous donation from @bailsecurity to support our work. This gesture came with no strings attached, as a sign of appreciation for the quality of the content we provide. We are grateful for the support and the trust. We keep building.🫡