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Today's News Recap
Trust Transition - Grayscale moves to convert Avalanche Trust into spot ETF.
Flash Crash - Bitcoin reverses Powell spike with a flash crash as options market signals jitters ahead.
ETH Action - As ETH breaks above $4,900, analyst sums up crypto market: ‘BTC is exhausted, ETH isn’t’.
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Messari's protocol reports give you a deep dive on the foundation and state of top crypto protocols, including key metrics and notable events. See the complete list of protocol reports here and get a preview of our latest report below.
BNB Smart Chain – Main EVM-compatible L1 for smart contracts, DeFi, and governance
Market cap rose 7.5% QoQ to $92.6B
Daily transactions more than doubled to 9.9M, while daily active addresses rose 33.2%
DeFi TVL grew 14% to $9.9B. PancakeSwap dominated DEX volumes (85% share)
FuelVM: Custom virtual machine for parallelized execution on a UTXO model with state access lists & high throughput
Introduced The Rig, its first liquid staking protocol, letting users earn sequencer rewards via stFUEL while retaining liquidity.
Quickly captured 9.5% DeFi TVL
June upgrades cut costs: average daily onchain costs fell 89.7% to $17.9
Fuel announced Fuel Forge I, a sponsored residency in Costa Rica to accelerate high-performance dApp development
Layer-1 blockchain built by Dapper Labs (2018), optimized for consumer-scale apps like gaming, sports, and collectibles
TVL grew 46.3% QoQ to $68M, led by KittyPunch, MORE Markets, and Increment Finance
Smart contract deployments surged 473% QoQ, with April marking Flow’s busiest month ever (45,239 contracts)
Flow introduced tools (AgentKit, Eliza, MCP) enabling AI-powered dApps, embedding AI into developer workflows
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Two Bits
Ethena’s Perfect Storm: Rising Rates, Growing Share, and DAT on the Horizon
By: Qorban Ferrell
The reflexive nature of Ethena's business model makes it an attractive hold in bull markets. Rising perpetual funding rates and declining treasury yields, combined with the upcoming DAT launch, create a compelling bullish setup.
Perpetual funding rates have more than doubled since Q2, rising from an average of 3.94% to 9.21% currently. As a result, USDe's market cap has grown to $12 billion and captured over 4% of the global stablecoin market. These metrics gained even more relevance after Jerome Powell's hawkish Jackson Hole speech.
Declining interest rates could negatively impact revenue generation for treasury-backed stablecoins like Circle and Tether. In Q2, Circle earned $634 million in reserve income on its $60.9 billion USDC supply. Since treasuries contribute to the majority of Circle's revenue, rate cuts would impact their earnings.
Conversely, lower interest rates typically boost risk assets, which could drive perp funding rates even higher. This dynamic would further increase USDe's appeal as Ethena’s yields climb.
If these trends persist through Ethena's Q4 DAT launch, the token could attract significant interest from traditional finance.
