Today's News Recap
CBDC Pause - Bank of Korea halts CBDC project amid rising stablecoin adoption, while Bhutan partners with Binance Pay to boost crypto tourism.
Bitcoin Buys - Strategy and Metaplanet buy thousands of Bitcoin, with Saylor predicting $21 million BTC in 21 years; Metaplanet issues bonds for further BTC purchases.
Bhutan Bet - Bhutan invests in Binance Pay to boost crypto-backed tourism economy.
New here? Ask Copilot up to 5 free queries per day with Messari Basic.
Top Assets
Messari Protocol Reporting
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.
Layer-1 modular blockchain to secure a network of interoperable rollups
Built with the Polkadot SDK (Substrate), enabling rapid deployment of customizable rollups for various use cases
Core dev activity rose for the first time in quarters (+1.5% QoQ)
Major UX initiatives and developer tools to improve onboarding and usability
High-performance staking solutions on Solana
Tailored for institutional users through SOC 2 compliance, custodian integrations, and tax tools
Over 5.3M SOL in TVL for Marinade Native and ~840K SOL for Select, with yields between 7–7.9% APY
Point tokenization and pre-TGE liquidity protocol
Offer liquidity for offchain points before token launches, solving airdrop risk and capital lockup issues
Converts offchain loyalty points into tradable ERC-20 tokens (pTokens), redeemable post-TGE via the Rumpel Vault
Live point farming strategies across 12+ partners including Ethena, Pendle, Karak, Zircuit, Symbiotic, and Mellow
Two Bits
When the Foundation Speaks, Listen
By: Matt Kreiser
In crypto, we are often inundated with the prevailing narrative. The X algorithm reinforces what’s hot, leading to the all-too-common scenario of seeing these words at the end of a post for the 20th straight time: Hyperliquid. Then there’s pay-to-play astroturfed marketing. You have an internal filter for it, so you can quickly scroll past it. “X chain is changing the game with its X scaling solution,” or “X protocol is bringing permissionless DeFi to the masses.” Thank you, next.
But lest I get too cynical, I was recently reminded that there’s always alpha to be mined, even if it’s tucked between marketing language we’ve been subconsciously trained to filter out and past. While writing the Stellar Ecosystem Report (published today, check it out), I came across one of those gems.
The Stellar Development Foundation has set two big quantitative goals for Stellar’s ecosystem to reach by the end of 2025:
Become a top-ten chain by DeFi TVL
Reach $3 billion in yield-bearing RWAs onchain
These are big goals. At the end of last month, Stellar had $70.6 million in TVL, while the 10th largest network by TVL was Sui with $2.1 billion. There’s no other way to spin it: for Stellar to more than 30x its TVL to reach the top 10 (in today’s numbers), some serious capital injection is going to be required. Where is that going to come from? Likely, the Stellar Development Foundation. What does that mean? There’s likely going to be incentives to participate in newly launched protocols that will handsomely reward users above the going market rate (say, Sky’s Savings Rate of 4.5%).
It isn’t just Stellar. Many blockchains' foundations or other supporting entities set goals for ecosystem growth, followed by financial incentives to drive user adoption. For example, in May, the DeFi Working Group for Stacks, a Bitcoin Layer-2, set a goal to reach $1 billion in TVL by the end of January 2026. The DeFi working Group notes that chains “like Sonic and Sui have achieved TVLs above $1B by aggressively incentivizing liquidity and supporting new protocol launches.”
When the foundation speaks, listen. Mercenary capital certainly is.