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Ripple Raise - Ripple raises $500 million at $40 billion valuation following XRP's historic surge.
Prediction Preparation - Gemini prepares to offer prediction market contracts.
Celebrity Coin - Iggy Azalea joins new Solana-based ‘celebrity coin’ launchpad Thrust as creative director, plans to migrate MOTHER token.
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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.
Solana’s DeFi TVL increased 32.7% QoQ to $11.5 billion
The Application Revenue Capture Ratio (Chain GDP divided by Real Economic Value) grew from 222.8% to 262.8%
Stablecoin market cap on Solana grew 36.5% QoQ to an all-time high of $14.1 billion
SOL finished Q3 2025 with a market cap of $113.5 billion, a 37% QoQ increase
Decentralized lending & borrowing protocol
TVL rose 24.4% QoQ to $2.8B, driven by growth in BNB and BTC-backed collateral (notably xSolvBTC and SolvBTC)
Total value borrowed (TVB) surged 45.7% QoQ to $958.3M, reflecting renewed leverage appetite and higher capital efficiency
Partnerships with SafeBlock and RedStone Atom improved accessibility and risk control
XRP ended Q3 at $2.85 (+27% QoQ), with $170.3B circulating market cap (+29% QoQ)
XRP futures listed (Apr–May ’25), positioning XRP for potential U.S. spot ETF approval in Q4–Q1
Ripple’s RLUSD reached $88.8M on XRPL (+34.7% QoQ), the network’s largest stablecoin
XRPL hit an all-time-high RWA cap of $364.2M (+215% QoQ), led by tokenized treasuries, commercial paper, and real estate
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The hype behind HyperEVM and the speculation around its airdrop opportunities has not played out. The launch of HyperEVM on Feb. 18, 2025, to serve as the general-purpose DeFi complement to HyperCore, was met with excitement amongst the Hyperliquid community. Many exclaimed the potential for outsized returns for those active on the chain, speculating that HyperEVM protocols would be aligned with the Hyperliquid ethos of community-alignment, meaning high airdrop allocations.
While HyperEVM protocols have had outsized airdrop allocations, token prices have not followed. To date, there have been approximately seven HyperEVM-native DeFi protocols to airdrop tokens to users, including KittenSwap, Upheaval, HyperSwap, Hyperstable, Looping Collective, Hyperwave, and HyBridge. Every single one of these tokens has fallen in price post-TGE. While Hyperwave and HyperSwap only launched their tokens in the last two weeks, the other token’s prices fell by more than 60% after 20 days had lapsed post-TGE, with KittenSwap’s KITTEN being down 90.8% since TGE.
The silver lining is that the most anticipated tokens are yet to TGE. Recent hype has been around Kinetiq, which has been the fastest-growing protocol on HyperEVM, achieving significant liquid staking adoption with a TVL of $1.88 billion. Many are projecting significant revenue potential from Launch, Kinetiq’s Exchange-as-a-Service (EaaS) product that will allow prospective HIP-3 protocols to bootstrap the 500,000 HYPE required to launch an exchange.
The probability of Kinetiq launching at over a $500 million valuation has cratered from 91% to 27%. The primary reason for this drop is the underperformance of HyperEVM tokens to date, and a subsequent tempering of expectations for HyperEVM’s leading protocols that have yet to TGE, like Kinetiq, Hyperbeat, Felix, and Hyperlend. For more on some of those, see my recent report, Hyperliquid: Stablecoin Wars. The outlook is grim, but Hyperliquid remains one of the most relevant protocols in the cryptosphere, and the narrative could shift in an instant if one of these projects sees positive price action post-TGE. All eyes are on Kinetiq, which is likely to be the first to drop a token (KNTQ) amongst the aforementioned group.
