Kraken Parent Company, Payward, Acquires Derivatives Exchange - Kraken's parent company, Payward, will acquire digital asset derivatives platform Bitnomial for up to $550 million in a cash-and-stock transaction.
French Finance Minister Calls for More Euro Stablecoins - French Finance Minister Roland Lescure stated Europe needs more euro-issued stablecoins and encouraged EU banks to explore tokenized deposits.
Citadel Securities President States Firm May Enter Prediction Markets - Citadel Securities President Jim Esposito indicated the market maker is "certainly possible" to enter the prediction market sector amid growth from platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi.
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.
By: Matt Kreiser · @KreiserMatt · Research Analysts
Grvt is a perp DEX where users can earn up to 11% APY interest on margin deposited to trade. Interest currently comes from protocol trading fees, with rehypothecation of most user deposits to external DeFi protocols coming soon as a second source of interest. Grvt announced Aave will be its first external yield source in February.
Grvt's Yield Layer is the earn infrastructure built on top of Grvt's unified margin system, routing idle collateral into onchain yield integrations such as Aave, so that the same balance backing a trader's open positions is simultaneously generating yield.
Grvt decouples where collateral deposited earns yield (Ethereum L1) from where user activity is tracked (Grvt private L2), ensuring composability with external DeFi without compromising the privacy guarantees of its Validium-based appchain.
Grvt total value locked (TVL) has increased 36.8% year-to-date (YTD) from $58.8 million to $80.4 million, while open interest has increased 53.4% to $451 million, as of March 23, 2026. Daily perp volume has held steady thus far in 2026, ranging from $650 million to $2.6 billion ($1.5 billion on March 26).
GRVT, the protocol’s upcoming token, will provide benefits to stakers, including reduced trading fees, higher GLP vault allocation and APY on margin, lockup rewards, principal insurance, better foreign exchange and on/off ramp fees, and cashback in GRVT on payments with Grvt card. TGE is intended for the end of June 2026.
By: Austin Freimuth, Matt Kreiser · @oztxn
@KreiserMatt · Research Analysts
Ymax is Agoric’s non-custodial, cross-chain capital management application. It is not a vault and does not pool user funds. Users retain ownership of capital deployed across protocols and chains, with every action visible prior to authorization and revocable at the permission layer. A single signature initiates complex, multi-step allocation workflows that would otherwise require multiple manual transactions across fragmented interfaces and protocols.
The coordination problem Ymax addresses extends beyond interface complexity. As automated execution tools become more common in DeFi, users increasingly face a trade-off between convenience and control: do everything manually, or hand over broad control (wallet keys, broad permissions), and trust the tool behaves as intended. There is no middle ground. Ymax addresses both dimensions of the coordination problem by combining multi-step orchestration with scoped execution. Users can automate complex, multi-step portfolio strategies across chains and protocols while defining exactly where capital can go and what actions are permitted. Those boundaries are enforced onchain rather than promised in a terms-of-service.
Agoric's object-capability (Ocap) security model provides the architectural foundation for this approach. Under this model, an agent authorized to optimize or rebalance within approved protocols cannot withdraw to an unapproved address or act outside its defined scope. The enforcement mechanism operates at the execution layer rather than relying on external policy or monitoring.
Early user research and beta testing point to a real and repeatable behavioral signal: when execution complexity is reduced, and workflow visibility is preserved, users become significantly more willing to keep capital actively allocated. The primary barrier to yield optimization does not appear to be a lack of awareness of opportunities, but rather the operational cost of acting on them.
Ymax's development roadmap moves from yield orchestration to the capital execution layer supporting user-configured automation and agent-driven capital allocation. Planned extensions include rule-based optimizations and rebalancing, hosted agent interfaces, and Bring Your Own Agent (BYOA) integrations. Initial experiments, including work with Sommelier, illustrate how external strategy systems may interact with orchestration infrastructure without requiring custody transfer.