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DeFi📈

• Hyperliquid announced USDC will replace USDH as its primary margin and quote asset via AQAv2, with Coinbase as treasury deployer and Circle handling cross-chain infrastructure. Additionally, Coinbase significantly increased its existing staked HYPE position. USDH markets will sunset over time with feeless conversions to USDC available during transition.

• Euler Finance is taking over HypurrFi’s Mewler markets on HyperEVM, with HypurrFi winding down its Pooled and Scale markets by July 15. All positions remain safe with no security breach. Pooled borrowers should migrate to Euler Prime or Yield markets via the built-in migration tool sooner rather than later as rates will rise during the wind-down.

• Aave has restored WETH LTVs to pre-incident levels across Ethereum Core, Ethereum Prime, Arbitrum, Base, Mantle, and Linea, marking another completed step in the rsETH technical recovery plan. Users can now borrow against WETH normally across all affected V3 deployments.

• Uniswap is expanding protocol fee collection to three additional blockchain networks following successful implementation on Ethereum mainnet in December, using an expedited governance process that bypasses standard review stages.

• 21Shares launched the Hyperliquid ETF (THYP) on May 12, offering US investors exposure to HYPE without direct token ownership.

• Tydro has completed its oracle migration from Chaos Labs to Chainlink Data Feeds, with every market now reading from decentralized price data. Ink Points distribution on a weekly basis, with 218,000 points available this week across USDT0, WETH, kBTC, USDC, USDG, and GHO markets.

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Issues⚠️

• Ranger Finance is winding down after a delayed MetaDAO raise, accumulated bills, and the Drift exploit drained remaining capital, with the co-founder acknowledging employees and vendors were left unpaid despite founders injecting personal funds. Vault users affected by the Drift exploit will receive Drift recovery tokens when distributed.

• Resolv has reached a recovery agreement with Fluid, with pre-incident positions made whole by Resolv and post-incident bad debt split equally between both protocols. Settlement completes May 11. This is a developing story.

• Stream Finance has announced it is exploring strategic alternatives to consolidate, liquidate, and distribute assets to customers and creditors, with legal counsel from Cooley LLP advising on the process. Further details are expected within the next few weeks. This is a developing story.

• Adshares lost approximately $628K after an attacker used the bridge-minter EOA to mint approximately 1.2M wADS via fake native chain transaction IDs, dumping the tokens through Uniswap V4 for ~148.5 ETH and ~$305K USDC. This is a developing story.

• Aurellion Labs was exploited for approximately $455,000 in USDC after an unprotected initializer in its SafeOwnable Facet allowed an attacker to reinitialize the contract, overwrite ownership, inject a malicious facet, and drain approved USDC from victim addresses.

• Transit Finance appears to have been exploited for approximately $1.88M in DAI on Ethereum, with funds reportedly originating from Tron. The root cause remains unclear. Transit has sent an on-chain message offering a bounty for the return of funds within 48 hours. This is a developing story.

• SQ Protocol on BNB Chain was exploited for approximately $346,000 after an attacker abused a hardcoded owner backdoor in the staking contract, minting fake staking claims and draining USDT through repeated unstake calls before dumping SQi tokens into the PancakeSwap liquidity pool.

Stablecoins/RWA🪙

• 3F, a leveraged RWA marketplace built on Morpho, launched private phase with features including exclusive borrow markets, pre-liquidation with custom liquidation premiums, and fixed rate borrowing coming soon.

• Upshift launches Upshift Clear, instant redemption infrastructure for tokenized RWAs, fronting USDC instantly via Chainlink oracles. Liquidity providers deposit USDC, receive clrRWA, and earn fees with no underlying strategy exposure.

• RISE, a perps focused chain, launched USDR, a T-bill-backed yield-bearing stablecoin built on M0, routing yield back to the ecosystem rather than the issuer to serve as the primary asset for trading, lending, and liquidity on the network.

• Hastra, a RWA protocol originally launched on Solana, has expanded to Ethereum with its wYLDS and PRIME tokens now live. PRIME is available as collateral on Morpho Vaults curated by Sentora.

• trade.xyz has launched a Pre-IPO Perpetual (IPOP) market for SpaceX (SPCX), launching at $150 per share with an implied reference market cap of $1.78T based on a fully diluted share count of 11.87B shares.

Privacy🔓

• Arcane launched as a decentralized privacy layer on Solana, using zk technology to remove visible links between wallets and enable private onchain payments.

Prediction Markets🔮

• Kalshi partnered with Interactive Brokers, to enable broker’s clients trade prediction markets directly within their existing trading environment alongside traditional portfolios. Initial markets will cover election outcomes, climate events, and economic indicators.

Perps DEX📉📈

• Sushi has launched Perps v2, powered by Hyperliquid, with points earned on every trade.

• Hotstuff has launched Hotstuff Invest, a 24/7 spot trading platform for tokenized stocks, ETFs, and crypto powered by xStocks, operating on a hybrid RFQ and order book model with Bebop as the first RFQ venue. Airdrops🪂

• PancakeSwap launched a new perps platform powered by Aster DEX, featuring a full order book, one-tap Simple Mode, and up to 200x leverage, fully onchain.

Airdrops

• Zest Protocol announced the upcoming ZEST token with a fixed supply of 1 billion, allocated 27.83% to community, 25% to team, 24.82% to ecosystem development, and 22.35% to investors. Season 1 airdrop recipients receive 2% of supply with 0.1% unlocking at TGE and the remainder vesting over six months. The token launches on Stacks and BNB Chain, with team and investor allocations subject to a one-year lock and three-year linear vesting.

Raises💰:

• Saturn, a digital credit protocol layer built on STRC, has raised $2M led by Spartan Group with participation from Anchorage and Susquehanna Crypto. The protocol has grown to $125M in TVL since launch, offering USDat (T-bill-backed stablecoin) and sUSDat (STRC-backed RWA) across Morpho, Pendle, and Strata Markets.

• a16z has announced a $75M investment in ARC, Circle’s native token for its Arc Layer-1 blockchain, describing Arc as an institutional-grade economic operating system built around USDC with sub-second settlement, configurable privacy, and known institutional validators.

• Osero, a stablecoin savings protocol, has raised $13.5M led by Sky Ecosystem and Plasma to build embeddable savings accounts on top of Sky Protocol, allowing wallets, exchanges, and neobanks to offer stablecoin yield without becoming DeFi asset managers themselves.

• Boundary has raised $2M in a pre-seed round led by Galaxy Ventures to build USBD, an overcollateralized institutional stablecoin on Ethereum with real-time onchain reserve verification and no yield, paired with a separate sUSBD token earning yield for eligible institutions. Launch is targeted for summer 2026 with a $100M TVL goal by year-end.

News🗞️

• The Senate Banking Committee advanced the CLARITY Act in a bipartisan 15-9 vote on May 14, moving the crypto market-structure bill closer to a full Senate vote. The legislation would clarify SEC and CFTC jurisdiction over digital assets, while the announcement generated broad market and social-media attention across the crypto sector.

• Kevin Warsh has been confirmed as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

• Strategy has acquired an additional 535 BTC for approximately $43M at ~$80,340 per coin, bringing total holdings to 818,869 BTC acquired at an average price of ~$75,540 per bitcoin (~$61.86B total). BTC Yield stands at 9.4% YTD 2026.

• JPMorgan has filed to launch the JPMorgan OnChain Liquidity-Token Money Market Fund (JLTXX) on Ethereum, investing exclusively in short-term US Treasuries, cash, and overnight repo agreements.

• The US Senate has released an updated CLARITY Act draft permitting activity-based stablecoin rewards, with members filing over 100 amendments ahead of Thursday’s markup session.

• Fidelity has endorsed the CLARITY Act following its Senate Banking Committee advancement, calling it a balanced framework that would provide statutory clarity for digital asset markets and strengthen US leadership in the sector.

For sponsorships, questions, or news tips, reach us at: support@todayindefi.com

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Today’s News Headlines:

- CLARITY Act passed Senate committee vote
- Bitwise launches Hyperliquid spot ETF
- Upshift launches instant RWA redemption infra
- Hyperliquid transitions primary margin asset to USDC
- Lido resumes EarnETH with full protection
- Kelp reopens rsETH withdrawals and bridging
- Zest Protocol reveals ZEST tokenomics and airdrop
- Euler integrates CoW Protocol execution routing
- Hyperbridge patches forged proof exploit vulnerability
- RISE launches Treasury-backed USDR stablecoin
- Kalshi integrates with Interactive Brokers platform
- Yuzu launches leveraged YZM looping market

In the traditional finance world, when a company’s stock trades below the liquidation value of its assets, activist investors swoop in. They buy up shares, stage a boardroom coup, and force a payout. That playbook has now been ported to DeFi, where it goes by a different name: the Risk-Free Value, or RFV, event.

To understand the stakes, look at what just happened to Gnosis DAO.

The Siege of Gnosis DAO

In early May 2026, activist investors set their sights on Gnosis DAO. The premise was straightforward arithmetic: Gnosis sat on a treasury of roughly $223M, but its native token, GNO, was trading at a 24% discount to its underlying net asset value. The DAO had recently fired its long-time treasury manager Karpatkey (GIP-143, November 2025), and was funneling tens of millions of dollars annually into Gnosis Ltd, the operating company behind Safe, CoW Swap, Gnosis Chain, and Gnosis Pay — with limited revenue to show for it.

A community member known as Wismerhill submitted GIP-150, calling for a “one-time, opt-in pro-rata treasury redemption.” The argument: GNO trades at a persistent and widening discount, Gnosis Ltd has become a structural cash sink, and holders deserve the option to exit at NAV. The proposal sparked the same philosophical battle every RFV event sparks — is this a vital accountability mechanism, or an opportunistic attack on long-term builders?

The vote closed on May 13, 2026. The headline result: rejected, 71.87% Against to 27.86% For, with 601,800 GNO cast (over 8x the quorum threshold).

But that headline obscures what actually happened.

What Is Risk-Free Value?

In crypto, RFV refers to the baseline, liquid value of a protocol’s treasury divided by the eligible supply of its governance token. When a token’s market capitalization falls below the dollar value of the assets it backs, the token trades at a discount. An RFV event is triggered when investors attempt to force the DAO to open its treasury and allow holders to burn their tokens for a pro-rata share of the underlying assets — capturing the spread, eliminating the discount, and disciplining whatever spending pattern created the gap in the first place.

The mechanism only works if the math is honest. Three valuation traps recur:

• Circulating vs. fully diluted supply. Treasury divided by circulating market cap will almost always look like a discount; treasury divided by FDV is the only honest comparison, because unvested tokens have equal claim on the treasury once they unlock.

• The DAO’s own token as treasury. Many DAO treasuries are dominated by holdings of the DAO’s own governance token. Counting those as backing creates a circular reference — the token is partially backed by itself.

• Illiquid venture marks. Off-chain venture positions are typically marked at the operator’s internal valuation, which is unverifiable and often stale.

The cleanest RFV signal is treasury excluding the DAO’s own token, valued at on-chain liquid prices, compared against fully diluted valuation. Anything else either flatters the discount or hides it.

The Gnosis Blueprint

Looking under the hood of GIP-150 shows how a sophisticated RFV mechanism is actually designed. The Gnosis DAO treasury targeted by the activists comprised:

Liquid Positions (~$190.5M): $100M ETH, $1.5M BTC, $50M stablecoins, $35M altcoins, $4M RWA tokens.

Illiquid Positions (~$25M): Venture investments, marked at internal valuations.

The redemption math: 1,304,047 GNO eligible (excluding Gnosis Ltd’s holdings, on the grounds that Ltd already receives DAO funding directly), $190.5M of liquid value, $146 implied liquid redemption value per share. GNO traded at $132 during the vote, creating a clear arbitrage spread. For illiquid positions, redeeming holders would receive a gLTD-CLAIM token representing a future claim on venture realizations — a structurally elegant way to give exiting holders proportional exposure to assets that can’t be liquidated on-chain.

The opt-in design is what made the proposal distinct from earlier RFV plays. Non-participants keep their GNO and retain full economic exposure to whatever Gnosis Ltd builds going forward. Participants get out at NAV. The redemption isn’t a wind-down — it’s a release valve.

That design didn’t survive contact with the founders.

The Founder Vote

The clean 28/72 rejection looks decisive until you look at where the “Against” votes came from. Per Wismerhill’s post-vote analysis, the 432.5k GNO Against tally included roughly 385k GNO controlled by Gnosis Ltd cofounders — votes cast by the same individuals who serve as Ltd executives and whose operational latitude the proposal was designed to constrain.

The arithmetic, attributed to Wismerhill: subtract that 385k from the Against side, and the result among non-Ltd-affiliated holders flips to roughly 78% in favor. The founder GNO is held in personal wallets and is mechanically eligible to vote; nobody disputes that. The question is what conclusion to draw when the entire margin of defeat — and then some — comes from the votes of the people the proposal would have placed limits on.

DeFi analyst Ignas, who voted Against despite acknowledging the underlying logic, captured the steelman of the opposition: “In this case almost every DAO and projects beyond Hyperliquid and Tron should be shut down and Treasuries returned to token holders.” His concern was contagion — if Gnosis’s redemption passes, every DAO trading below NAV becomes a target, and protocols with real users like Gnosis Pay and Circles get defunded as collateral damage. That’s a defensible position from someone holding the token through the next cycle.

What’s harder to defend is what came next.

In the days following the vote, Gnosis leadership signaled a higher operational spending envelope for the next funding cycle, while rebuffing engagement on exit mechanisms or NAV-floor protections. The framing was that defeat of GIP-150 represented a mandate to continue current operations unchanged. Reading a result in which 78% of non-team holders signaled they want a path to realize NAV as authorization to increase spending is, charitably, a creative interpretation. Wismerhill has publicly given leadership one week to engage before filing a follow-up proposal.

A History of RFV Battles

Gnosis isn’t the first DAO to face this dynamic. Outcomes range from massive activist paydays to scorched-earth defenses.

Rook DAO (2023): The Raid

DeFi analyst Ignas famously labeled Rook’s situation a “slow rug” — $6.1M in annual spending on 22 contributors (nearly $300k each) while protocol volume collapsed 78%. Holders revolted, forced a shutdown, and unlocked the treasury for distribution. ROOK rallied 5x as holders claimed their payouts. The protocol died; the holders won.

FEI / Tribe (2022): The Graceful Exit

After a devastating hack and regulatory pressure, Tribe DAO chose pragmatic dissolution. The vote returned $220M to token holders. At the time of the vote, TRIBE traded at a $66M market cap; the decision to dissolve revalued the token to $128M. Holders trading well below book value were made whole almost overnight.

Aragon (2023): The Nuclear Option

Aragon — ironically, a protocol that built DAO infrastructure — bypassed its own decentralization to fend off a coordinated activist push led by Arca. Rather than letting holders capture funds through on-chain governance, the team unilaterally repurposed the treasury into a grants program and transferred funds to a centralized Swiss association. The defense worked tactically and failed strategically: the project shut down by late 2024, and ANT holders ultimately redeemed for ETH anyway. Aragon destroyed its own DAO to ensure the raiders lost, then died.

Beefy Finance (2026): The Proactive Shield

Facing a Binance delisting in April 2026 that pushed BIFI below intrinsic NAV, Beefy DAO acted before a vote was even needed. Through Snapshot, the DAO authorized its Treasury Council to conduct discretionary BIFI buybacks whenever the token traded below calculated fair value, funded by protocol revenue.

By repurchasing discounted tokens and holding them as non-circulating supply, Beefy closes the NAV gap continuously, on its own terms. The mechanism removes the economic incentive for an RFV raid by structurally preventing the discount from widening.

Beefy’s response is instructive because it’s the holder-friendly answer Gnosis leadership chose not to give. Activate a buyback program funded by protocol revenue. Commit to closing the NAV gap. Show holders that operational spending and value accrual aren’t in zero-sum tension. That response defuses an RFV raid because it removes the discount that creates the arbitrage. Gnosis’s response — more spending, no exit, no buyback floor — leaves the discount in place and the structural setup unchanged.

The Take-Home for Token Holders

RFV events function as DeFi’s immune system. Project teams understandably hate them — these proposals constrain operational discretion and put builders’ jobs at risk. From the team’s perspective, they look like raids.

From the token holder’s perspective, the calculus is different. An RFV proposal has two possible outcomes, both of which leave the holder structurally better off:

• The proposal succeeds: holders capture the discount directly through redemption.

• The proposal fails: a credible threat has been established, and serious teams respond with buybacks, dividends, or other NAV-closing mechanisms (the Beefy response). Teams that refuse to respond face follow-on proposals and ongoing accountability pressure.

The losing outcome for holders is when teams respond like Aragon — destroying the DAO to ensure the activists lose — or like Gnosis appears to be responding, by interpreting a 28/72 defeat as a mandate to spend more. In both cases, the underlying problem (capital trapped at a discount, controlled by entities that don’t credibly answer to holders) doesn’t get resolved.

Where the Next Raids Land

Per current DefiLlama data, several protocols sit clearly in RFV territory — treasury (excluding their own token) exceeds fully diluted valuation, meaning the non-own-token assets alone are worth more than the entire diluted market cap.

The standout candidates as of May 2026:

Balancer is the standout. With $112M TVL, $547k in 30-day fees, and a long-running governance discussion around fee switches and BAL buybacks, the catalyst is identifiable and the discount is modest enough that a credible buyback program could close it cleanly.

Hegic is the most extreme at 2.8x, but options-protocol opacity and modest fee run-rate make it deep value or value trap depending on whether options volume recovers.

SideShift is the cleanest profile of the group: working business, clean treasury, durable revenue, no token inflation.

Usual is the most dynamic entry — the RFV gap is small enough that it could close in either direction quickly.

Watch list — approaching the threshold rather than across it: Overtime (0.72x) and Badger DAO (0.57x).

The pattern that makes an RFV trade actionable rather than just a sitting discount: governance discussions around fee switches, buyback programs, or revenue distribution. The protocols above with active fee accrual and live governance debate (Balancer, Usual, SideShift) carry better risk/reward than the zombies (QiDao at 5.3x but zero fees, ETH Strategy at 1.3x but no fee accrual).

The threat of an RFV raid keeps the industry honest. It reminds teams that operational discretion isn’t unlimited, that builders ultimately work for holders, and that capital trapped at a discount belongs to the people who funded it. Gnosis just demonstrated what happens when a DAO with concentrated founder voting power tries to interpret a clear holder signal as endorsement of the status quo. The next move belongs to Wismerhill & Chud — and the holders they’re organizing.

For sponsorships, questions, or news tips, reach us at: support@todayindefi.com

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This letter is dedicated to curated Stablecoins and ETH farms this week. We’ll be covering:

1. Up To 15% APY on USD Stablecoins

2. Up To 7% APY on ETH

3. Advanced Farms For up to 25% ETH APY and 25% Stable APY

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Today’s News Headlines:

- Jupiter Lend Onboards Bitwise as First Institutional Curator
- Ethena Launches Dedicated USDe Market on Jupiter Lend
- Kamino Launches 20%+ APY USDe Multiply Vault
- Hastra Expands RWA Yield Products to Ethereum
- Fidelity Investments Endorses CLARITY Act Framework
- Fluid Launches New GHO Lending Incentives
- Tydro Completes Chainlink Oracle Migration
- Kevin Warsh Confirmed as Federal Reserve Chairman
- Transit Finance Suffers Suspected $1.88M Exploit
- SQ Protocol Exploited for $346K via Owner Backdoor
- Royco Dawn Opens sUSDai Senior and Junior Tranches
- Hotstuff Launches Spot Tokenized Stock Trading

1. Earn Up to 10% on USD Stablecoin Farms:

StakeDAO Curve USD3/sUSDS - 15% APY (Ethereum · Boosted LP)

Curve stable pool pairing USD3 (Reserve Protocol’s diversified stablecoin, backed by a basket of blue-chip stables) with sUSDS (Sky Protocol’s yield-bearing USDS — the rebrand of DAI). StakeDAO contributes its collective veCRV lock to boost rewards 2–3x, so you get the full CRV emissions without locking CRV yourself. Both assets are decentralized and battle-tested.

⚠️10% of yield is in CRV tokens — price exposure on that portion, and rewards can taper if gauge voting shifts. USD3’s peg depends on its basket of underlying stables. sUSDS carries Sky Protocol smart contract risk. Impermanent loss is minimal on a stable/stable pool. StakeDAO adds a thin extra contract layer.

Morpho Sentora PYUSD Main V2 - 4.6% APY (Ethereum · Lending)

Lend PYUSD — PayPal’s stablecoin, issued by Paxos under NYDFS regulation and backed 100% by cash and short-duration US Treasuries — into Sentora’s curated Morpho vault. You earn interest from borrowers plus a 5% PYUSD bonus. Sentora sets the collateral parameters; borrowers post sUSDe, weETH, and cbBTC.

4.6% yield might seem low, but this is decent for on-chain USDC lending. For comparison, Aave USDT and USDC lending is only 3%, and the collateral makes this a relatively lower-risk position.

⚠️PYUSD itself is one of the safest stables available. Risk sits in the collateral: sUSDe exposure means any Ethena peg stress tightens borrower ratios and increases bad debt risk in the vault. Sentora curator risk (parameter misconfiguration) and standard Morpho smart contract risk also apply.

reUSD PT · Jun 25 2026 - 9% APY - (Ethereum · Fixed yield)

Pendle Principal Token on reUSD. reUSD earns the greater of risk-free rate +250 bps or Ethena basis yield +250 bps, and deploys capital off-chain to reinsurance surplus notes. The PT lets you lock in a fixed 9% APY to June 25, buying at a discount and redeeming at face value. Redemption from reUSD is instant, which is a meaningful advantage for a PT position.

⚠️reUSD has off-chain exposure to licensed reinsurers — not something you can monitor on-chain in real time. Partial Ethena basis exposure means peg conditions affect the underlying yield. Pendle smart contract risk applies. At 9% fixed with instant redemption, risk/reward is reasonable.

2. Farm To 8% ETH APY

Balancer WETH/rETH LP - 6.89% APY (Ethereum · ETH LST LP)

Balancer pool pairing WETH with rETH — Rocket Pool’s liquid staking token. Both assets track ETH closely, so impermanent loss is minimal. You earn trading fees from swaps between the two, plus 6% in RPL (Rocket Pool’s governance token) as an incentive reward.

⚠️ 6% of yield is in RPL tokens — price exposure on that portion. rETH carries Rocket Pool smart contract risk. Impermanent loss is minimal but not zero, as rETH trades at a slight premium from staking yield accrual. One of the cleaner ETH yield positions available.

3. Higher Risk/Comlex Farms Up To 20% Stablecoin APY & 8% ETH APY

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Today’s News Headlines:

- Royco launches Senior apyUSD tranche
- Pendle lists protected srRoyAPYUSD yield
- Ether.fi launches institutional EURC vault
- Pendle lists xStocks STRCx markets
- Aurellion Labs exploited for $455K
- Kelp and Aave burn exploiter rsETH
- JPMorgan files money market funds on Ethereum
- US Senate filed amendments to the CLARITY Act draft
- World Liberty activates WLFI token unlocks

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<Discover Yields on DeFi Saver> | Today in DeFi is Supported by DeFi Saverr

Airdrop Claims

1. Based ($BASED) — Season 3

Based is a Hyperliquid-native trading super app covering perps, prediction markets, and spending cards with a multi-season points system (Diamonds/Gold/XP) that converts directly into $BASED tokens.

• Season 3 distribution is now live — tokens are being credited directly to staking accounts for all participants who signed the Genesis Terms.

• About 60% of the distributed amount has already been sent, with the remainder arriving in June.

• If you participated in Season 3, check your staking dashboard at based.app now — tokens may already be there. If you haven't signed the Genesis Terms yet, you have until June 4, 2026 to do so, with tokens arriving June 7 for late signers. Full details at basedfoundation.com/s3.

⚠️ June 4 is a hard deadline — missing it means forfeiting your Season 3 allocation entirely. No Season 4 announced yet. Sybil slashing was aggressive this round (up to 80%) — genuine traders were rewarded, volume farmers were cut. Only use the official based.app and basedfoundation.com domains.

2. Superform ($UP)

Superform is a cross-chain yield and vault aggregation platform (SuperVaults) that launched $UP in February 2026.

• The full airdrop has been distributed across multiple seasons — Safari Season 1 (XP), Exploration Season 2 (CRED), and Rewards Epochs + Guild contributions (POINTS).

• If you interacted with SuperVaults at any point during those seasons, your full previously vested allocation is sitting unclaimed.

• Claim now at superformfoundation.org/airdrop — connect your eligible wallet on Base network and claim your $UP directly.

⚠️ Hard deadline August 10, 2026 — unclaimed tokens get redistributed after that date. No new farming season announced post-launch. Only use the official superformfoundation.org/airdrop link.

Plume Nest PNP ($PLUME)

Nest is Plume Network’s flagship RWA yield protocol — non-custodial vaults giving access to institutional-grade yields from tokenized U.S. Treasuries, private credit, and receivables via nTOKENS (nBASIS, nTBILL, nALPHA, nWISDOM).

• Season 1 ran from November 2025 to March 2026, generated ~$20M in new TVL, attracted 85K+ wallets, and allocated 1% of total $PLUME supply to participants — distributed as immediate full claim with no vesting.

• The claim portal is live now at claim-pnp.nest.credit. Connect the exact wallet you registered with and claim your full PLUME allocation immediately.

• To be eligible you must have: earned PNP points during Season 1 by depositing/holding nTOKENS, completed the mandatory pre-registration via the Tally form before April 22, and be outside the United States and OFAC-sanctioned jurisdictions.

⚠️ Registration was mandatory and the deadline was firm — wallets that skipped pre-registration cannot claim regardless of points earned. No recovery for lost or compromised wallets. US users are blocked by the claim page. PLUME price volatility post-claim is real. Only use the official claim-pnp.nest.credit domain.

Checkers & Registration:

Solstice ($SLX)

Solstice is a Solana-native delta-neutral yield protocol that issued USX stablecoin and ran one of the cleaner Season 1 point programs — fully recoverable USDC deposits with a paid registration system (≈$7.50) that converted Flares points directly into SLX allocation.

• Season 1 is now over and the allocation checker is live. Many users are seeing 3k–6k+ SLX (≈$300–$600 at $100M FDV).

• Check your SLX allocation now at app.solstice.finance/earn-flares — connect your wallet and scroll to “My Contribution” to see your exact amount. TGE is expected by end of May 2026, with the claim window opening post-TGE. No Season 2 details announced yet.

⚠️ Registration window already closed — checker is view-only at this stage. Allocation gaps were significant between cohorts. No claim live yet — only use the official app.solstice.finance domain.

Citrea ($CTR) — ⚠️ May 17 Deadline

Citrea is Bitcoin’s first ZK Rollup secured directly by Bitcoin via the Clementine trust-minimized bridge — meaning you get Ethereum-style smart contract capability without leaving Bitcoin’s security model. The CTR coordination asset and xCTR vote-escrow staking give users direct governance over dual treasury and gauge systems. 12% of total CTR supply is allocated to the genesis airdrop.

• Registration is open now at citrea.xyz/airdrop and closes May 17, 2026 at 2:00 PM UTC — connect your wallet and check eligibility immediately.

• Priority goes to mainnet campaign participants, with +20% boost for Testnet ₿apper NFT holders, +10% for Devnet Expert NFTs and key Discord roles.

• Important caveat: pure testnet grinding alone did not guarantee allocation for many users — mainnet activity and community participation carried more weight.

⚠️ Hard May 17 deadline — no extensions expected. Many testnet-only users received zero allocation. Claim distribution timeline announced after registration closes. Only use the official citrea.xyz/airdrop link.

Airdrop Updates From On-Going Points Program

Arc Network ($ARC)

Arc is a stablecoin-native L1 developed by the team behind USDC and Circle — described as the “Economic OS for the internet” with a focus on payments and AI agent coordination.

• No confirmed retail airdrop yet, but the Architect program and Genesis Eco Forum participation are the clearest paths to enhanced Q2 allocations for early contributors.

• Use the public testnet now at arc.network — genuine transactions, building, and participation in the Architect/Genesis Eco Forum programs are the highest-signal activities.

• No snapshot or claim announced, but Circle’s track record and the 60% community allocation make this a high-conviction early positioning play.

⚠️ No airdrop or snapshot confirmed — pure speculative positioning. Focus is explicitly on genuine usage vs. sybil farming. Token launch expected via ICO or direct distribution with no guaranteed community airdrop.

Avant Protocol — ⚠️ Points Freeze May 15

Avant Protocol offers avUSD, avBTC, and avETH powered by adaptive DeFi strategies for highest risk-adjusted on-chain yield.

• TGE has been officially delayed to mid-September 2026 due to current DeFi market conditions — but all previously earned Avant Rewards points are fully protected and locked in.

• The important news: points stop accruing on May 15, 2026 — giving you roughly 48 hours to complete any remaining tasks before the freeze.

Everything earned after that date is forfeited, but everything already accrued is safe. The team is hosting a public Space on Thursday at 2 PM ET for Q&A on the delay and TGE timeline.

⚠️ 48-hour window — act now or lose any remaining uncompleted task points. Mid-September TGE means capital and points sit idle for ~4 months. Delay is positioned as market-driven but TGE timelines in DeFi can extend further. Claim details not announced yet — watch official @avantprotocol channels only.

New Airdrops

Phoenix Trade

Solana’s on-chain perps exchange just launched 24/7 commodities trading — Crude Oil (WTIOIL) and Gold (XAU) fully on-chain, gasless, crankless, with TradingView integration and cross/isolated margin support. Use code GOLD for 24-hour access at phoenix.trade.

• No public points or airdrop program confirmed yet, but perps DEX reward programs almost universally prioritize early high-volume traders when they do launch.

• Trading the new commodities markets (WTIOIL and GOLD) now while volume is low and competition is minimal is the highest-signal activity for any future retroactive distribution.

⚠️ Private beta means potential bugs and limited liquidity. Commodity perps carry additional oracle and real-world event risk on top of standard perp liquidation risk. No confirmed rewards — pure early positioning. Invite code valid for 24 hours only.

NEW Promising and Curated Airdrops :

🔥 MegaETH Terminal — Wave 4 Update

Terminal Season 1 is the official mainnet points campaign — 2.5% of total $MEGA supply (250,000,000 tokens) distributed to genuine ecosystem users over 8 weeks (April 28 → June 23, 2026). With ~7 weeks remaining, you still have the majority of the season ahead of you.

Wave 4 just went live with seven new apps added to the Terminal: RockSolid, Cap, LeverageSir, Canonic, FerdyBet, SectorOneDEX, and Beefy Finance. Each wave adds fresh apps with boosted point multipliers for early adopters — being active in Wave 4 from day one puts you ahead of the crowd that waits for later waves.

Cap (cUSD) — MegaETH Wave 4

Cap is the blue-chip conservative pick for MegaETH Terminal Season 1 — a covered credit protocol with $400M TVL, $11M+ raised, and principal protection backed by EigenLayer/Symbiotic-style restaker guarantees. cUSD is the yield-bearing dollar, stcUSD is the staked version that earns real yield.

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<Discover Yields on DeFi Saver> | Today in DeFi is Supported by DeFi Saver

In this letter, we bring you the best bottom-up analysis of onchain trends, along with top-down market analysis, helping you find top yield opportunities and position for trends before they happen

1. Upcoming DeFi Events and Catalysts

2. Stablecoin Flows

4. Chain Comparison

5. DeFi Token Movers

6. TVL Gainers + Interesting Protocols Worth Farming

Today’s News Headline:

- Anthropic warned pre-IPO trades might be scams.
- CoW DAO approves DNS hijack reimbursements
- Circle unveils ARC Layer-1 tokenomics
- Royco Dawn opens sNUSD tranche vaults
- Strategy buys additional 535 ($43M) Bitcoin
- Sushi launches Hyperliquid-powered Perps v2
- Resolv finalizes recovery agreement with Fluid
- Stream Finance provides update on reimbursement process
- US court approves Arbitrum ETH transfer
- 21Shares launches Hyperliquid ETF THYP

Outlook Key Takeaways

• DeFi capital is rotating back, USDC's reversal is the supporting evidence.
  After three straight weeks of contraction, USDC swung +$1.6B this week — the single biggest weekly inflow of 2026. The broader read isn't about USDC itself, it's about DeFi-native capital flowing back into deployable, dollar-denominated liquidity for stablecoin yield, curated lending, and onchain activity.

• Ethena is recovering from the Kelp shock.
  After USDe lost a third of its supply (-$1.59B, -32%) as the Aave WETH freeze forced leveraged USDe positions to unwind. This week confirms the recovery is complete: USDe supply is back to ~$3.96B after three straight weeks of inflows (+$151M, +$151M, +$62M), and ENA token rallied +30% this week.

• Lending liquidity continues migrating away from Aave to Morpho and Euler.

  Most new DeFi TVL this week flowed into Morpho curators, Euler vaults, and isolated lending structures like Steakhouse, RockawayX, and Sentora. Capital is increasingly favoring curated risk-managed vaults over traditional pooled lending markets.

1. Upcoming DeFi Events and Catalysts

DeFi Catalysts & Launches for the Week Ahead (May 12–18, 2026)Here’s a fresh scan of upcoming DeFi-specific events, upgrades, DAO votes, and infrastructure moves for this week:

• Starknet will launch strkBTC, a Bitcoin asset with built-in privacy features, on May 12.

• Base network: Azul upgrade (first major independent upgrade) launches on May 13.

• Balancer DAO: Voting ends May 12 on a one-time $500K USDC airdrop to veBAL holders.

• Stable Network: v1.3.0 mainnet upgrade deploys on May 13 (focuses on safety and reliability).

• Flare Networks: Community vote on revenue sharing and $FLR emissions scheduled for May 13 (direct DeFi yield implications).

• Euphoria: Mainnet launch expected May 14 (DeFi-focused protocol).

• Bitcoin Cash : “Layla” network upgrade on May 15 — adds full smart contract support, opening the door to new DeFi apps on the chain.

Token Unlocks

• Avalanche (AVAX): ~$16.5M unlock on May 12.

• Arbitrum (ARB): ~$13M unlock on May 16.

• Starknet (STRK): Large unlock also on May 15 (adds to original Starknet item).

Events & Broader Catalysts

• The macro week is dominated by the Trump-Xi summit in Beijing on May 14-15 — Trump's first visit to China since 2017, with the agenda covering trade, AI, export controls, Taiwan, and the Iran war.

• Digital Assets Week USA (New York, May 13–14): Institutional-focused conference with heavy DeFi panels and potential yield/RWA announcements.

This week is lighter on brand-new product launches and heavier on upgrades, DAO governance, and token supply events.

ETF Flows:

BTC ETFs recorded $631M inflows this week, the fifth consecutive week of net inflows — and ETH ETFs flipped positive at +$70M after going negative last week. Combined ~$701M vs $80M last week is a meaningful recovery in the institutional bid. Sources: Yahoo Finance, Spotted Crypto (May 5-11).

2. Stablecoin Flows

Weekly flow: +$2.019B (0.61%). A clean recovery from two weeks of near-zero growth (+$57M, +$158M). Net stablecoin demand is back, and the composition matters — capital didn’t flow into USDT for parking, it flowed into USDC for deployment.

USDC +$1.608B (+2.08%) — the move of the week. After three straight weeks of contraction, USDC swung to the single biggest weekly inflow of 2026. The signal isn’t about USDC itself — it’s about what USDC enables. USDC is the dominant collateral and deployable asset across Ethereum DeFi: it gets supplied to Morpho/Euler vaults, used as borrow asset for ETH-collateralized loans, and routed into curated lending strategies.

• A USDC inflow this size means deployable capital has returned On-Chsin. We flagged USDC last week as the marker to watch for broad recovery. It turned this week.

USDS -$534M (-6.37%) — biggest weekly loser, but for a different reason. USDS reversed from last week’s +$444M inflow with a sharp -6.37% drop in supply. The Sky Savings Rate sits at 3.75% (after the January Fed cut), while curated stablecoin vaults on Morpho and Euler are paying 5-6% with isolated risk. This looks like yield rotation, not loss of confidence — USDS holders are exiting toward higher-paying venues now that USDC is flowing back into DeFi.

USDe +$62M (+1.60%) — third straight week of stabilization. USDe supply is now back to ~$3.96B (after dropping to a multi-month low of $3.8B post-Kelp). The Ethena unwind is firmly over. ENA token rallied +30% this week as investor confidence in the basis trade returned. Watch for whether USDe growth accelerates as the MegaETH–Ethena flywheel continues — Ethena is one of the largest USDM suppliers on Aave MegaETH, so the loop directly impacts USDe supply.

Other movers (briefly): USDS -$534M and USD1 -$96M contracted as yield seekers rotated into higher-paying curated vaults. USDG +$278M, BUIDL +$163M, USDtb +$49M added to the regulated/RWA-backed tier (these are growing on institutional channels, less tradeable for retail). USDT +$94.8M was modest — not where the action was.

3. Chain Comparisons

Trend 1: Ethereum is healing — but the lending migration to alternative venues continues

Ethereum’s stablecoin supply stagnates since October Market peak. Stablecoin outflow slowed from -$1.58B last week to -$345M this week — a 78% reduction in outflow pace. Combined with USDC’s +$1.6B reversal (USDC is mostly on Ethereum), Ethereum DeFi liquidity is stabilizing.

Solana flipped positive (+$301M) after three straight weeks of outflows. The breakdown: USDC contributed +$600M (+7.63%) and USDG contributed +$133M (+20%) on Solana — signaling stablecoin farming incentives on Kamino, Loopscale(leverage Looping), and Jupiter are pulling capital onto the chain.

Stablecoin with structural RWA infrastructure are attracting concentrated capital:

• Plume +$302M (+141% 7d) — the standout sustained-growth story. RWA-focused L1 with ~$645M tokenized assets and 280K+ holders. Ondo’s USDY deposits are scaling materially, plus partnerships with Apollo, WisdomTree, EY, and Securitize. Plume’s purpose-built RWA architecture (compliance, custody, distribution baked into the chain) is attracting issuers and capital that need regulated infrastructure. Sources: Messari, RWA.xyz.

• Avalanche +$133M (+9.32%) — driven largely by RWA flows. BlackRock’s Securitize-tokenized BUIDL Fund continues to scale on Avalanche.

Arbitrum is the loser on this metric — bleeding -$203M (-5.30%) this week, and -8.9% over 30 days. Capital is rotating away from the leading L2 across every window.

TVL Growth — Curated lending venues are the structural winner

The TVL leaderboard tells a different story from stablecoin flows. The chains showing the biggest TVL gains aren’t necessarily the same chains attracting stablecoin liquidity — TVL captures protocol-level deposits and is also sensitive to underlying token price moves:

• Monad +22.75% 7d TVL — most of Monad’s stablecoin TVL is sitting in Morpho vaults curated by Sentora. That maps directly to the broader thesis we’ve been tracking: capital migrating into curated isolated lending venues. Monad has become one of the chains where that migration is happening at scale.

• Sonic +40% 7d TVL — the driver is VGUSDC on Beets. VGUSDC is the receipt token for Varlamore Capital’s USDC Growth vault, which deposits into curated lending markets on Silo Finance. Beets (Sonic’s main DEX) integrates VGUSDC into boosted V3 liquidity pools where LPs stack vault lending yield, swap fees, Beets incentives, Sonic Points (10x multiplier for whitelisted yield-bearing stables), and additional yield layers. Real borrow demand on Silo + Beets composability.

• Sui +20.98% 7d TVL reflects SUI price appreciation more than fundamental adoption. Worth flagging⚠️: Sui has seen 7 protocol exploits in the last month (Cetus -$223M, Nemo, Typus, Volo, Scallop, Aftermath Perps, and now DeepBook May 9). The pattern suggests a systemic security weakness at the network level that hasn’t yet been priced into chain token prices — but it should factor into any sizing decisions for Sui-based DeFi positions.

• MegaETH +8.19% 7d TVL vs +618% 30d — the gap shows the inflow wave is mostly over. The Aavethena loop is still spinning (USDe cap raised again May 9, $400M → $800M proposed), but the marginal capital pace is slowing as supply caps fill faster than they can be raised.

DEX Volumes: Base is structurally overtaking BSC

Looking at DEX volumes across the past 5 weeks (per DefiLlama), Base has consistently posted higher weekly DEX volumes than BSC. This week: Base $4.81B vs BSC $4.59B. The week before: similar relative positioning. The pattern has held for ~5 weeks straight.

This is a structural signal. BSC has been a top-3 chain by DEX activity for years on the back of retail trading and PancakeSwap. An L2 (Base) consistently outpacing BSC week-over-week suggests:

The Centrifuge tokenization partnership — Coinbase announced May 5 it had taken a strategic equity stake in Centrifuge and named it the default tokenization layer for assets on Base. First wave of institutional ETFs, credit products, and structured products launching on Base "in the coming weeks." The precedent already exists with deSPXA (compliant onchain S&P 500 fund).

4. DeFi token price gainers & their catalysts

Context for the week’s moves — observations, not trade ideas. Many have already run.

$ONDO +38.6% — Follow-through from last week’s DTCC Industry Working Group selection. Additional catalysts this week: 260+ Ondo tokenized stocks and ETFs went live on KuCoin Web3 Wallet, and the Broadridge partnership brings proxy voting capabilities to tokenized stock holders. Ondo reports ~70% market share in tokenized stocks.

$JUP +41.2% — Securitize + Jump Trading + Jupiter announced May 5 the launch of fully regulated tokenized equities on Solana, positioning Jupiter as the distribution layer for institutional-grade onchain equity trading. Other Solana developments landed the same day: Anchorage Digital + JPMorgan announcement and Firedancer 1.0 milestone.

$DEEP (DeepBook) +31.0% — Notably, DeepBook itself was hacked on May 9 — an undercollateralization vulnerability resulted in $239,700 of bad debt in the USDC margin pool.

• The DeepBook Insurance Fund absorbed the loss and trading resumed within hours. This was Sui’s 7th exploit in 12 months (after Cetus -$223M, Nemo, Typus, Volo, Scallop, Aftermath Perps).

• Despite the hack, DEEP token outperforms after introducing Predict, a new financial primitive for building onchain options, binary markets, and structured products integrated with Spot and Margin. Predict is live on testnet, with mainnet launch planned soon.

$ENA +20.2% — Moving with the MegaETH–Ethena loop continuation. USDe supply caps on Aave MegaETH were raised again May 9 ($400M → $800M proposed), and ENA captures fees from both USDe issuance and the MEGA rewards paid for USDM supplying.

$JTO +28.8% — The catalyst continues from last week’s announcement on JTX, a self-custody trading app for Solana targeting serious traders, consolidating charts, execution, portfolio tracking, and capital management into a single interface. Key features include dependable on-chain limit orders and self-custody by default, with early access available at jtx.trade.

$SEI +28.0% — No specific catalyst identified beyond broader L1 narrative continuation. Market cap: $503M.

5. TVL gainers - for protocols above $100M

This week’s leaderboard has a concentration of Risk Curators (Steakhouse, RockawayX, AlphaPing, Euler DAO) and Onchain Capital Allocators (Mellow Protocol). Combined with USDC’s return to DeFi, the data suggests capital is rotating back into stablecoin yield through curated vault architecture rather than direct lending markets.

#1 Steakhouse Financial — $1.834B TVL, +$352M weekly (+23.82%, +5.91% monthly)

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DeFi📈

• Aave’s Phase II recovery plan is underway following the liquidation of the attacker’s eight Aave V3 positions on May 6, with both Mantle DAO and Arbitrum DAO governance proposals supporting DeFi United passing with overwhelming approval.

  • A US judge has authorized an on-chain Arbitrum DAO vote to transfer the immobilized 30,766 ETH (~$71M) to Aave LLC, with the North Korea creditors’ restraining order transferring alongside it and separate funds to be borrowed as a contingency in the interim.

  • Remaining steps include burning recovered rsETH on Arbitrum, retiring the corresponding LayerZero packet on Ethereum to neutralize the inflated supply, and restoring the rsETH lockbox backing to reopen withdrawals and normalize affected markets. This is a developing story.

• Tydro, the largest lending protocol on Ink, paused all markets on May 4 after Chaos Labs flagged a suspected nation-state attack on its oracle provider. No user funds were impacted. Markets resumed on May 10 at 00:00 UTC following a migration to Chainlink price feeds, with a 4-hour liquidation grace period for borrowers to manage positions. Borrowers with a Health Factor near 1 should act accordingly.

• Lido’s EarnETH vault will resume once Kelp is unpaused, with all user losses fully covered by its first-loss mechanism following a successful governance vote. Lido’s 2,500 stETH contribution to DeFi United has been transferred and the attacker’s Aave positions have been liquidated.

• Zest Protocol launches Bitcoin Collateral Vaults, letting users borrow stablecoins on EVM chains using BTC that remains self-custodied on Bitcoin with no wrapping or bridging. The product launches in two phases, starting with pre-signed transaction constraints before transitioning to full BitVM verification.

• MegaETH completed its first MEGA token buyback on May 7, using all net rewards accrued from the USDm stablecoin issuer through end of April,

• OpenCover, a vault risk insurance protocol, has cut the premium on its Covered yoUSD vault by over 50%, dropping from 3.96% to 1.75%, bringing the current covered yield to 9.8% APY.

Stablecoins/RWA🪙

• Liminal has launched limUSD, a yield-bearing stablecoin that automatically allocates across Hyperliquid’s native yield sources for 8% APY. Which includes funding rates, staking, and money markets.

• Yuzu Money launches Yuzu Prime on Monad, a fixed-income structured product combining tokenized T-bills, AAA-rated CLOs, and overcollateralized lending with on-chain leverage. Restricted to accredited and institutional investors.

Prediction Markets🔮

• Predictefy has integrated Hyperliquid’s HIP-4 outcome markets into its prediction market trading terminal, now live for trading.

• Arkham launched a prediction markets analytics tool on its Intel platform, offering live market data and trader profiles including profit-loss records and win rates, drawing from a database of over 3.5 billion labeled on-chain addresses.

Airdrops🪂

• Saturn is allocating 5% of their initial token supply may be allocated to Season 1 Gravity Points participants, distributed pro rata at season close on August 8 or when program capacity is reached.

• Spark has updated its Season 4 points program, reducing the rate for holding Savings ETH from 50,000 to 11,500 points per ETH, with the adjustment made to reflect current ETH prices and maintain a consistent effective boost rate.

• Hibachi has concluded its Regular Season points program after 28 weeks, distributing 18.5M points across 12,000+ traders and vault depositors. The Playoffs phase is up next.

• Lombard has replaced its Lux points system with BARD tokens, now distributed via Merkl and claimable every 8 hours with no lock-up.

Issues⚠️

• TrustedVolumes, An independent 1inch market maker was exploited for $5.8M via flaws in its RFQ implementation, draining WETH, USDT, WBTC, and USDC. 1inch confirmed no impact on its own systems or user funds. This is a developing story.

• Renegade Finance, a dark pool protocol on Arbitrum, was exploited for approximately $209K, after an attacker to inject malicious logic and drain 27 ERC-20 tokens. The whitehat has already returned ~$190k, and all affected users will be made whole.

• DeepBook Protocol on Sui accrued $239,700 in bad debt from an undercollateralization vulnerability in DeepBook's USDC margin pool, fully covered by its Insurance Fund. Deposits and withdrawals have resumed though margin trading remains paused.

• Ekubo Protocol has confirmed an active security incident on its swap router contracts on EVM chains draining $1.4M so far, affecting Ethereum and Arbitrum deployments. Users are urged to immediately revoke approvals for the affected contract addresses via revoke.cash. Liquidity providers and Starknet are unaffected. The team then executed a complex whitehat to prevent further losses from users, up to $284,000.

• RAAC’s pmUSD stablecoin, backed by Gold and other RWA assets, temporarily depegged to $0.4 following social media posts questioning its collateral. RAAC confirmed the protocol is solvent with a reported 15.7x net coverage ratio, though community members have flagged the illiquidity of its mineral title lien collateral as a legitimate concern. This is a developing story.

• Origin Protocol reported a flash loan attack on the OETH Morpho market, where the attacker captured about 0.148 OETH in yield; no user funds were lost.

• Drift Protocol will issue recovery tokens at a 1:1 ratio to verified losses following the April 1 exploit, redeemable from a pool seeded with $3.8M in remaining assets and supplemented by quarterly revenue and up to $127.5M in matched Tether capital. Redemption opens once the pool exceeds $5M, but early redeemers forfeit their remaining claim.

  • Community members have criticized the timeline, noting full recovery could take approximately eight years based on 2025 revenue figures.

  • The exchange relaunches in Q2 2026 with new contracts and rotated keys. This is a developing story.

Farms👩‍🌾

• Saturn’s srUSDat and jrUSDat tranches, backed by STRC, are now live on Pendle, offering 16% and 10% implied APY respectively, maturing on August 26, 2026. Pendle LP and YT positions also earn Saturn Season 1 Gravity Points.

• Royco’s jrRoyAPYUSD from Apyx is now live on Pendle at 19.35% implied APY, maturing on November 5, 2026.

• Citrea’s ctUSD Pre-Deposit Vault is now open for public deposits. Users deposit USDC on Ethereum with a two-month lock-up and receive 0.6% of CTR token supply at unlock, curated by Rockaway X on Upshift Finance.

Raises 💰:

• Kalshi has raised $1B in a Series F at a $22B valuation, led by Coatue with participation from Sequoia, a16z, Paradigm, IVP, Morgan Stanley, and ARK Invest.

• OnRe, an onchain reinsurance protocol, has raised $5M in a Series A co-led by Forward and Rockaway X, with up to $25M in additional deployment capital from Forward as the protocol enters its scaling phase.

• Exponent, a Solana-based interest rate swap exchange and yield portfolio platform, has raised $5M in a seed round led by Multicoin Capital, bringing total funding to $7M. The round supports the public rollout of Exponent v2 in May.

• Coinbase has made a strategic investment in Centrifuge, a real-world asset tokenization protocol, and designated it as a Preferred Tokenization Infrastructure, bringing institutional tokenized assets to Base.

• Ekiden, an on-chain high-frequency trading infrastructure protocol, has raised $2M in a seed round backed by Aptos, Pyth, GSR, Keyrock, Flowdesk, and others, with angel investors including CEOs from LayerZero, EigenLayer, and Kronos Research.

• Elastics, an AI agent platform for prediction markets, has raised $2M in a pre-seed round led by FRST VC, with angels from ElevenLabs, XBTO, RedStone, and a16z. The protocol is building an AI-native trading interface where users trade with natural language and agents automate execution.

News🗞️

• Strategy’s Michael Saylor has indicated the firm may sell a portion of its Bitcoin holdings to meet dividend obligations, framing the move as a market signal rather than a shift in conviction. The firm holds over 818,000 BTC acquired at an average price above $75,000, reported a $12.54 billion net loss in Q1 2026, and faces approximately $1.5 billion in dividend obligations with limited reserve coverage.

• BlackRock has filed to launch two tokenized money-market funds on Ethereum, including a digital share class for its $6.1 billion Select Treasury Based Liquidity Fund and a second fund targeting stablecoin users. Shares would be issued as permissioned ERC-20 tokens with wallet whitelisting controls.

For sponsorships, questions, or news tips, reach us at: support@todayindefi.com

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In this article, we break down how risk tranching works, why Royco Dawn matters, and how DeFi users can choose between safer yield and higher-risk, higher-return exposure.

Intro to Risk Tranching
Royco Dawn Overview
Senior and Junior Tranches

Key Concepts and Variables
- Risk Premium
- Coverage Ratio
- Junior Leverage Ratio
- How Yields are Distributed
- What happens When Things Go Wrong
- Withdrawal Rules

Live Markets and Farming Opportunities
General Risk Notice
Royco Dawn vs. Strata Comparison

Imagine you and a friend put money into the same savings jar. It earns interest, but it can also lose money if something goes wrong. Risk tranching changes how that profit and loss is shared.

One person takes the safer “senior” side: lower yield, but more protection. The other takes the riskier “junior” side: higher potential yield, but they absorb losses first.

That’s the basic idea. One pool of capital, in this case a yield-bearing stablecoin strategy, is split into two layers with different risk and return rules.

This structure has existed in traditional finance for decades across mortgages, loans, and bonds. Royco Dawn and Strata bring the same concept on-chain, where smart contracts automatically enforce who earns first, who takes losses first, and how yield is distributed.

Protocol Deep-Dive: Royco Dawn

Royco Dawn launched in April 2026. It is designed as a permissionless tranching infrastructure — meaning any yield source (a lending market, staking deposit, RWA fund, or off-chain strategy) can be structured into Senior and Junior tranches. Each market on Royco has its own independently configured parameters.

SENIOR TRANCHE — The Safer Layer

The Senior earns a steady yield. If anything goes wrong with the strategy, Junior money takes the hit first. Senior is only ever touched once every single dollar of Junior capital has been used up. In exchange for this safety, Senior gives up some yield to Junior.

Suited for: Anyone who wants to earn yield but wants a clear buffer protecting their money — conservative savers, institutions, or anyone who cannot afford to take a big loss.

JUNIOR TRANCHE — The Riskier Layer

This is the front row — louder, more exciting, but you’re the first one in the mosh pit. Junior earns more yield than Senior, but Junior money is the first to be used up if anything goes wrong. In exchange for taking on that risk, Junior gets paid a bonus on top of the base yield — called the risk premium — as compensation. More reward, but real exposure.

Suited for: Yield-seekers who are comfortable with higher risk in exchange for higher returns, and who understand they could lose a significant portion of their deposit.

Key Concepts and Variables:

1. Risk Premium: What Junior Gets Paid for Taking Risk

The risk premium is the extra yield that Senior pays to Junior as a reward for agreeing to take losses first. Think of it like an insurance payment. Senior is effectively buying protection from Junior, and the risk premium is the price of that insurance.

The premium is not fixed. It moves automatically with utilization:

• When there is not much Junior money in the pool relative to Senior money > the premium goes up to attract more Junior depositors.

• When there is plenty of Junior money > the premium goes down.

In this case, risk premium on the junior tranche page is 27%(with the 7-day average: 11.18%). This means Senior is paying 27.76% of its yield over to Junior as compensation. The current utilization is 96% (derived from 15/15.68%), meaning Junior capital is almost fully stretched backing Senior deposits. That is why the premium is elevated compared to the 7-day average: Junior is scarce, so it is being paid more to stay.

Why the Risk Premium Looks Different for Senior vs Junior

The risk premium is the same number — it’s just being expressed from two different angles.

Think of it like a salary and a bonus at a small company:

• The company (Senior pool, $1.84M) pays out a $82,000 bonus pot (4.46% of its value)

• The bonus recipient (Junior pool, $342K) receives that same $82,000 — but because their “salary base” is only $342K, the $82,000 represents a 27%+ boost to their earnings

Same dollar amount flowing. Totally different percentages depending on which side of the pool you’re measuring from.

In the apyUSD market concretely:

• Senior pays ~4.46% of $1.84M = ~$82K per year flowing to Junior

• Junior receives that ~$82K on top of its own $342K base = ~27% additional yield on their capital

• Junior’s total APY = base yield (~8%) + that ~27% bonus = ~32–40%+ depending on the day

Coverage Ratio — The Safety Buffer

The coverage ratio tells you how much of a loss the strategy can take before Senior depositors are affected at all. It is calculated as the percentage of the total pool that Junior capital represents.

Coverage = Junior Capital ÷ Total Pool Assets × 100

If the strategy loses money — say a hack, bad debt, or a sustained drop in the asset — that loss comes out of Junior’s pocket first. Senior only starts losing money once Junior has been completely wiped out. The higher the coverage ratio, the bigger the safety buffer for Senior.

From the apyUSD market right now (May 2026):

Junior capital = $342,890. Senior capital = $1,840,000.

Total pool = ~$2,182,890.

Coverage = 342,890 ÷ 2,182,890 = 15.68%

Right above the required minimum of 15%. This means the strategy would need to lose 15.7% of its total value before any Senior depositor is affected. The protocol enforces this minimum by smart contract: if coverage ever dips below 15%, no new Senior deposits are accepted until Junior capital refills the buffer, and withdrawal is paused will utilization is >100% or coverage below 15%

Junior’s Leverage — Why Junior Wins Big and Loses Big

Because Junior is only a fraction of the total pool but absorbs 100% of the losses, even a modest loss on the overall pool translates to a much larger loss for Junior specifically. This is automatic leverage — Junior did not borrow anything, but the math of absorbing losses for a pool much larger than itself creates the same effect.

Junior Leverage = 1 ÷ Coverage Ratio

From the apyUSD market right now (May 2026):

Coverage is 15.68%, so Junior leverage = 1 ÷ 0.1568 = 6.38x.

If the underlying strategy(APYX’s apyUSD) drops 2% in total value, Junior capital drops by 2% × 6.38 = roughly 12.75%. That same 2% loss does not touch Senior at all.

This leverage works in both directions — when the strategy performs well, Junior earns a disproportionately large share of the upside too. This is why the Junior tranche on this market is currently offering 40.61% APY while Senior is at 8.31%.

How Yield Is Shared — When Things Go Well

Both Senior and Junior put their money into the same underlying strategy — in this case, apyUSD, which generates yield from preferred equity dividends. The yield is then split between them by the protocol automatically.

Senior gets the base yield minus the risk premium it pays to Junior. Junior gets the base yield plus the risk premium it receives from Senior. Because Junior’s share of the premium is earned on a much smaller pot of money, the percentage return for Junior ends up much higher.

What Happens When Things Go Wrong — The Loss Waterfall

If the underlying strategy loses money through a hack, bad debt, or a sustained decline in asset value, the loss is absorbed in a strict order. Junior takes every dollar of loss first. Senior sits untouched until Junior is fully gone.

The table below shows how this plays out at different loss levels using a simple $10M pool example with 20% Junior coverage ($2M Junior, $8M Senior):

The Observation Period — a cooling-off window (Royco Dawn):

Markets can have temporary dips that recover on their own — a price blip, a brief liquidity crunch. Royco Dawn has a built-in waiting period before it finalizes any loss.

For the apyUSD market, this window is 30 days. If the strategy recovers within 30 days, no loss is recorded — it was just noise. During this window, Senior withdrawals are paused and all yield is redirected to Junior to help refill the buffer. If the drawdown does not recover within 30 days, Junior absorbs the loss permanently.

This protects Junior depositors from being penalized for temporary volatility that would have resolved itself.

When Can You Withdraw?

Withdrawal depends on your tranche and current utilization. For apyUSD, the pool must always keep at least 15% junior coverage, so no withdrawal can happen if it pushes coverage below that floor.

Senior withdrawals are usually available immediately, but pause during an Observation Period when a drawdown is being monitored. The exception is the Protected Exit Threshold: if utilization reaches 185%, senior can exit even during the Observation Period. However, apxUSD itself has a 20-day unstaking window, so converting back to USDC may still take time.

Junior withdrawals are only available when there is excess junior capital above the 15% coverage minimum. If utilization is too high, junior capital is fully backing senior depositors and cannot leave until senior exits or new junior capital enters. New junior deposits are also blocked during an Observation Period.

Right now, apyUSD utilization is around 96%, with coverage at 15.68%. That means junior liquidity is tight, and junior depositors may face restricted withdrawals until the pool has more breathing room.

What’s Live Right Now:

srRoyUSDC (Senior Vault)

Deposit USDC, receive a yield-bearing ERC-4626 token. Capital is allocated exclusively to Senior tranches across multiple yield sources. Protected yield, diversified across markets by Dialectic.

One of Royco’s recent developments is that srRoyUSDC is now composable, meaning you can use it inside other DeFi protocols to earn additional yield on top of what the vault already earns. These integrations are live as of the time of writing:

• Borrow USDC on Morpho at 33.94% APY
  Deposit srRoyUSDC as collateral, borrow USDC against it, and redeploy that USDC elsewhere. The effective yield on your original deposit can significantly exceed the vault’s base 4.64%.

• Borrow pmUSD on Morpho at 4.47% APY
  A lower-cost borrowing option against the same collateral, useful if you want stable USDC-equivalent debt.

• Provide Liquidity on Curve for 23.20% APY
  Pair srRoyUSDC with frxUSD in a Curve liquidity pool to earn trading fees and liquidity incentives.

• Stake Curve LP on Convex for 42.35% vAPR
  Take the Curve LP token and stake it on Convex for boosted yield rewards on top of the Curve fees.

Risk stacking warning: Each additional protocol layer in a composability strategy adds its own smart contract risk, liquidation risk, and liquidity risk. A position that is simultaneously exposed to Royco (tranche mechanics) and Morpho (lending) carries more independent failure surfaces. Looping on Morpho, for example, can be liquidated if the strategies under srRoyUSDC price deviates from expected value.

Individual Markets on Royco(per May 2026)

The apyUSD market at 96% utilization means Junior capital is almost fully stretched. This is why its current Senior APY (8.31%) is above its 7-day average (9.01% — yes, it was higher last week) and why the Junior APY (40.23%) is well above its 7-day average (26.44%).

The Oracle Chain — How apyUSD Is Priced

apyUSD is not priced directly against USDC. Royco Dawn uses a two-step oracle chain:

Key Risks From The apyUSD Market

apyUSD is priced through apxUSD, so any discount in apxUSD’s market price, or any loss in Apyx’s underlying collateral such as STRC or SATA, can lower apyUSD’s NAV and trigger Royco Dawn’s loss mechanism.

If apxUSD trades below $1, the Chainlink oracle reflects that discount and apyUSD is marked lower, even if the underlying assets are still healthy. If Apyx’s collateral value falls below 100%, the risk is more direct: apxUSD may no longer be fully backed, causing apyUSD to depeg.

Junior depositors absorb these losses first. If the loss persists beyond the 30-day Observation Period, the writedown becomes permanent. At current conditions, with 96% utilization and only 15.68% coverage, Junior has very little buffer before Senior capital becomes exposed.

Risks Associated with Royco Dawn:

• Smart contract risk — bugs or exploits in Royco Dawn’s infrastructure. Mitigated by audits from Hexens, Certora, and Cantina, plus a $250K Immunefi bug bounty.

• Underlying strategy risk — if the yield source (e.g., apyUSD/apxUSD) suffers a hack, bad debt, or default, the Dawn market is affected. Junior absorbs first.

• Junior exhaustion — if losses exceed Junior’s buffer and persist beyond the Observation Period, Senior capital is exposed to the remainder.

• Oracle risk — the protocol relies on Chainlink and ERC-4626 share price oracles. Manipulation or failure could cause incorrect valuations.

• Liquidity risk — underlying asset illiquidity (e.g., 20-day unstaking for apxUSD) can delay withdrawals even when the tranche protocol itself would allow them immediately.

• Curator risk — Dialectic, as vault curator for srRoyUSDC, has operational control over which markets to allocate to. Poor decisions or delayed responses to risk events could affect vault performance.

Comparing Royco Dawn vs. Strata

Both protocols implement senior/junior risk tranching on DeFi yield strategies. Their mechanics are similar in concept but meaningfully different in architecture, asset breadth, and maturity. The table below highlights the most important distinctions.

Royco Dawn is designed as a permissionless tranching launchpad, any yield source can be structured as a Dawn market, with each market having its own independently configured coverage ratio, observation period, and yield curve.

Strata is an opinionated tranching protocol built around specific yield assets (initially sUSDe), with a unified DYS mechanism. Royco’s broader asset scope and institutional-grade curator model give it a larger addressable market.

Since Strata launched earlier, it has deeper DeFi composability (Pendle, Morpho, Aave integrations already live) gives it a head start in the DeFi-native ecosystem.

‼️Disclaimer

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Participation in DeFi protocols involves risk, including the potential loss of all capital deployed. Protocol mechanics, APYs, TVL figures, and fee structures are subject to change. Always conduct independent due diligence and consult qualified legal, financial, and tax advisors before making any investment decisions.

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This letter is dedicated to curated Stablecoins and ETH farms this week.
We’ll be covering:

1. Up To 10% APY on USD Stablecoins

2. Up To 8% APY on ETH

3. Farm Safer and Better Post Kelp

4. Advanced Farms For up to 25% ETH APY and 25% Stable APY

1. Earn Up to 10% on USD Stablecoin Farms:

Morpho Sentora PYUSD - 5% APY (Ethereum · Lending)

Lend PYUSD (Paxos-issued, NYDFS-regulated, T-bill-backed) into Sentora’s curated Morpho vault. Earn borrower interest plus a 5% PYUSD bonus. Collateral includes sUSDe, weETH, and cbBTC.

⚠️PYUSD is one of the safest stables available. The risk is the sUSDe collateral under current peg pressure — if it depegs, borrower ratios tighten and the vault faces bad debt risk. Sentora curator risk and standard Morpho smart contract risk also apply.

Superform USDC Vault - 9% APY (Ethereum · Vault)

Aggregator vault routing USDC into Morpho Steakhouse Prime and Gauntlet Prime. Instant mint and redemption.

The 9% headline breaks down as roughly 3% base lending yield + 6% in sUP (Superform’s native token), distributed once per month. That means your actual cash yield is lower — you’re partly betting that sUP holds value.

⚠️Most yield is in sUP tokens — if sUP price falls, real returns shrink. Morpho smart contract risk applies, plus a thin Superform contract layer on top. Base USDC lending exposure is conservative.

Auto Finance monUSD 10% APY (Monad · Vault)

One-click vault routing into Morpho Steakhouse Prime on Monad, with a 6% WMON incentive on top. Instant mint and redemption. Straightforward passive position with no lock-up.

⚠️Steakhouse is a conservative curator. Primary risk is WMON token price exposure on 6% of the yield, plus a thin Auto Finance contract layer. Monad network risk exists as a newer chain.

Euler Prime USDtb Vault - 6% APY (Ethereum · Lending)

Lend USDtb — Ethena’s T-bill-backed stablecoin (BlackRock BUIDL reserves) — into Euler’s lending vault. Earn interest from borrowers plus a 3% USDtb bonus. Borrowers post sUSDe as collateral.

⚠️USDtb itself is clean. The risk is the sUSDe collateral borrowers post — under peg pressure this week. If sUSDe depegs, collateral ratios tighten and the vault faces potential bad debt. Monitor the vault’s health factor on Euler.

apxUSD PT · Jun 18 2026 - 14% APY (Ethereum · Fixed yield)

Pendle Principal Token backed by apxUSD, which is collateralized by Strategy’s STRC preferred equity (~11.5% monthly dividends). Buy at a discount today, redeem at face value on Jun 18 — locking in a fixed 14% APY.

⚠️STRC is volatile preferred equity — it fell to $90–93 twice in the past six months. A STRC discount weakens apxUSD’s backing and the PT may not redeem at full value. Corporate credit exposure to Strategy, not smart contract risk. Size conservatively.

Lists of Up To 8% ETH APY

Balancer WETH/rETH LP - 8% APY (Ethereum · ETH LST LP)

Balancer pool pairing WETH with rETH (Rocket Pool’s LST). Both assets track ETH closely, keeping impermanent loss low. Earn trading fees plus 6% in RPL rewards by Merkl.xyz.

⚠️6% of yield is in RPL tokens — price exposure on that portion. rETH carries Rocket Pool smart contract risk. Impermanent loss is minimal but not zero, as rETH trades at a slight premium to WETH from staking yield accrual.

StakeDAO Curve WETH/ETHx LP - 7% APY

Curve pool pairing WETH with ETHx (Stader Labs’ LST), boosted via StakeDAO’s collective veCRV lock for 2–3x CRV rewards without personal lockup. Earn trading fees plus boosted CRV that auto-compounds.

⚠️CRV rewards can drop if gauge voting shifts. ETHx carries Stader smart contract risk. Impermanent loss is low given ETH-correlation. CRV and StakeDAO each add a thin extra contract layer.

Morpho Steakhouse Prime ETH - 4.6% APY (Monad · Lending)

Lend ETH into Steakhouse’s curated Morpho vault on Monad. Borrowers post wstETH as collateral. Earn borrower interest plus a 3% WMON bonus. No lock-up, passive position.

⚠️wstETH collateral is battle-tested — risk is a Lido slashing event tightening collateral ratios. WMON token exposure on 3% of yield. Morpho smart contract risk. Monad network risk as a newer chain.

Farming Safer and Better Post-KelpDAO

After the rsETH incident, a lot of capital fled DeFi — some of it rightly so, some of it pure panic. Protocols with zero rsETH exposure saw liquidity leave anyway, leaving behind better yields for farmers who actually understand the risk. This guide breaks down what happened, what’s actually safe, and where the opportunities are right now.

The rsETH incident, and why it spread so far

On April 18, KelpDAO’s cross-chain bridge was exploited for $292 million in rsETH. The contagion spread much further than the actual damage. Protocols with zero rsETH exposure also saw capital leave simply because the whole ecosystem felt unsafe. That’s the overreaction and the opportunity.

If you’re still stuck in an affected position

DeFi Saver’s Collateral Switch lets you move out of frozen ETH markets even at 100% utilization by operating on aWETH directly.

What’s actually affected

Not every protocol took damage — the structure matters

Avoid for now:

1. Aave - Pooled design meant rsETH collateral directly impacted ETH suppliers. ETH markets frozen, bad debt ongoing. Markets are unfreezing and recovery is progressing — but conservative farmers should wait for full normalization.

2. Compound - Multiple WETH, USDC and wstETH markets paused across mainnet and L2s. Recovery is underway and markets are reopening — worth monitoring, but exercise caution for now.

Unaffected

1. Spark Had proactively removed rsETH as accepted collateral before the exploit. Zero direct exposure. Absorbed over $2.4B in inflows from Aave in the aftermath — a direct signal of where risk-aware capital moved.

2. Morpho Isolated market design meant bad debt in one vault literally cannot touch another. Only $1M affected across 2 of 500+ vaults — a rounding error. The architecture did exactly what it was designed to do.

3. Liquity V2 No rsETH exposure. ETH-native, no cross-chain bridged collateral in its design. BOLD staking continues normally.

Specific markets only

1. Fluid Protocol had some rsETH exposure in certain markets. However, GHO and USDT lending markets on Fluid had zero rsETH exposure and remain fully operational. Stick to these specific markets.

Spark and Morpho coming through clean wasn’t luck. Spark had pre-emptively removed rsETH, and Morpho’s isolated architecture was built for exactly this kind of failure. These are reusable principles, not one-time outcomes.

What’s available on Discover — filtered to unaffected protocols and yield opportunities

The Yield tab on DeFi Saver’s Discover page is where lending and staking opportunities are surfaced. It lets you filter by protocol, collateral token, and chain, and shows you:

• Supply APY

• Estimated annual profit on a given amount

• Market size, and withdrawable liquidity all in one place

From Discover to open position, here’s what the flow looks like:

Step 1: Filter to unaffected protocols

Open the Yield tab. The first thing you’ll want to do is filter down to protocols that had no rsETH exposure.

Hit the protocol dropdown and select: Spark, Fluid, Morpho, Liquity V2, LlamaLend, and Yearn. Deselect everything else. This immediately cuts the noise from 240+ options down to only the markets worth looking at right now.

Deselect everything else. This immediately cuts the noise from 240+ options down to only the markets worth looking at right now.

Step 02 — Check Withdrawable and utilization first, APY second

With the filter applied, you’ll see a table of opportunities sorted by Supply APY. Before you look at any rate, check these two columns first:

This is where most farmers go wrong. They sort by APY and click the highest number. The Withdrawable column tells you whether you can actually exit, and you can use this to make sure that the withdrawable liquidity is much more than your deposit. The orange circle next to it signals high utilization, meaning most of the supplied assets are currently borrowed. 90%+ utilization means you can supply, but exiting may be slow or impossible until borrowers repay.

Below 85% is comfortable, 85-95% is the caution zone.

Market size is the second filter. The USDA market at 162% APY on $20K of supply is real, but a single position can move the rate fast and the exit liquidity is thin. Bigger markets offer rate stability. Use both columns to size your position before you ever look at the rate.

Note on ETH markets: most are at 90-95% utilization right now. This is NOT ALWAYS a protocol risk; in this case, it’s a temporary squeeze from the 20-day unstaking queue for wstETH and weETH. Fundamentals are solid, but treat it as a market to monitor rather than enter blindly.

Step 3 — Pay attention to or filter through the Strategy column too

The Strategy column tells you what you’re actually doing with your money. Three main types appear in the Discover Yield tab:

This matters for risk assessment.

• Lending exposes you to whoever is borrowing against your supply.

• Staking exposes you to the protocol’s mechanics and reward source.

• Savings vault adds curator risk on top — someone is making allocation decisions for you, so you need to trust their decisions.

There’s also the swap option for yield-bearing stables

One thing the Discover page doesn’t surface but is worth knowing: DeFi Saver’s Exchange feature lets you swap directly into yield-bearing stablecoins like syrupUSDC.

Step 04 — Click into the farm to see what’s underneath

The Discover row shows you the headline numbers. The detail page shows you what’s actually backing the yield. Always click through before supplying. Take Steakhouse PYUSD on Morpho at 7.5% APY:

The vault description states it lends PYUSD against blue-chip crypto and RWA collateral including Lido’s wstETH, blending traditional yields with on-chain rewards, curated by Steakhouse Financial. That single paragraph tells you four things: what you’re supplying, what it’s lent against (your real exposure), where yield comes from, and who’s making allocation decisions. wstETH-backed lending on Morpho is structurally clean — wstETH wasn’t affected by rsETH, the market is isolated, and the curator has a track record. The Protocol column tells you where the market lives. The detail page tells you what it actually is.

Where to farm now

Here’s what’s worth looking at right now across the unaffected protocols. Note that yields have normalized somewhat from the post-incident spike, and these are current live rates, not the elevated rates seen immediately after April 18.

Stable lending on Fluid (~5-6% APY)

Fluid’s GHO market sits at 6.40% with $3.42M withdrawable on an $18.5M market — comfortable exit liquidity. USDC and USDT lend at 5.78% and 4.95% respectively, both clean of rsETH exposure. There’s also syrupUSDC at 4.94% accessible via the Exchange tab — passive yield-bearing stable, no managing positions, no exposure to the incident. Together, these are the conservative floor for stablecoin farmers. Boring, but actually working.

Morpho lending — bigger size, higher yields (4.5-7.5% APY)

Morpho’s isolated markets stack a lot of clean opportunities. cbBTC/USDC at 4.05% on a $1.28B market with $139M withdrawable is the deepest. wstETH/USDT at 5.50% offers higher yield against blue-chip LST collateral. sUSDS/USDT at 3.29%, WBTC/USDC at 3.74% — all sit on $100M+ market sizes with healthy withdrawable amounts.

Some of these markets show high utilization rings, but the underlying market size is large enough that withdrawable still runs into the millions — a different situation from a small market locked at 95%.

Curated vaults — passive exposure, no babysitting

For hands-off farmers, curated vaults handle allocation for you. Steakhouse PYUSD leads at 7.5%, lending against blue-chip crypto and RWA collateral. Smokehouse DAI at 6.4% is fully liquid. Yearn V3 DAI (5.0%) and USDT (4.9%) spread capital across Fluid, Morpho, Spark, and similar venues.

The Yearn vaults had brief Aave exposure during the incident, but the curators withdrew fast, and withdrawable is now 100%. That’s the value of paid management: someone’s watching for you.

BOLD staking on Liquity V2 (11.08% APY)

yBOLD Staking runs at 11.08% APY, with the vault managed by Yearn’s auto-compounder reallocating across Liquity V2 stability pools. ETH-native, no bridged collateral, no rsETH connection. Yield comes from Liquity’s borrowing fees and liquidation penalties.

The principle across all of these is the same: clean structure, real liquidity, transparent exposure. Post-incident, the market is rewarding farmers who look at what’s underneath rather than chase the biggest number.

Even the unaffected protocols carry risk

“Unaffected by the rsETH incident” doesn’t mean risk-free. Every farm in this guide carries some combination of the following, and you should size positions accordingly.

Smart contract risk
All DeFi positions depend on code working as intended. Audits reduce this risk but don’t eliminate it. Morpho, Spark, Liquity, and Fluid are all audited and battle-tested, but a previously unknown bug or exploit can surface at any time. The longer code has been live with significant TVL, the more comfort you can take — but never zero.

Curator and management risk
For Savings vaults like Steakhouse PYUSD or Yearn V3, you’re trusting a curator to make allocation decisions. The Yearn Aave situation during the incident is the cleanest example — the curators reacted fast and withdrew, but the speed of that decision is the variable. A slower curator on a future incident could leave you exposed.

Oracle and depeg risk
Lending markets depend on price oracles. If an oracle feeds a wrong price, even briefly, liquidations can cascade. Stablecoin farms also carry depeg risk — sUSDe, USDA, GHO, BOLD, crvUSD all rely on different stability mechanisms. Understand which one backs the asset you’re holding.

Withdrawable can change fast
Today’s healthy withdrawable can become tomorrow’s locked liquidity if borrow demand spikes. Markets at 70% utilization can hit 95% in days. Check before entering, and check periodically while positioned. The Portfolio tab makes this easy.

Yields are not promises
Every APY shown — including in this guide — is a snapshot. Reward incentives end. Borrow demand fluctuates. A 7% vault today might be 4% next month or jump to 10%. Plan for variability, not for the headline number to hold.

<Discover, analyze and execute on DeFi Saver>
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More Advanced Farms With Up to 25% APY:

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Airdrop Claims

1. Ethena Season 5

• Ethena’s Season 5 claim is live now. If you’ve been staking sENA or holding USDe across the qualifying period, your allocation is ready.

• Top 2k wallets by points receive weekly vesting schedules, while everyone else gets 100% of their allocation unlocked immediately — no waiting, no lockup.

• Season 6 is already accruing in the background, so staying active on the protocol right now is double-productive: you’re claiming Season 5 while simultaneously building your Season 6 position.

Head to the official Ethena app(www.claim.ethena.fi) to claim — connect the wallet you used for staking/holding and your allocation shows immediately.

⚠️ $ENA price volatility post-claim is real. Only use official ethena.fi — phishing sites spike around every Ethena claim event.

2. Billions Network ($BILL)

• Billions is a human + AI identity and verification network backed by Polychain Capital and Coinbase Ventures — the thesis being that on-chain identity verification becomes a foundational layer as AI agents proliferate and distinguishing humans from bots becomes increasingly valuable.

• The claim is live now at community.billions.network, but the site was getting hammered at launch so expect some retry attempts before it loads cleanly.

⚠️ Site congestion is real — keep retrying on official domain only. Ineligibility can’t be appealed for sybil-flagged wallets. Never use any claim link from DMs or unofficial sources.

Airdrop Updates From On-Going Points Program

Polymarket ($POLY)

The leading decentralized prediction market platform is moving faster toward TGE than most people realize.

No confirmed snapshot criteria yet, but the pattern from similar high-volume prediction platforms strongly suggests that trading volume, consistency of activity, diversity of markets traded.

• The April Sports Liquidity Incentive Program ($5M+ in rewards) is still running — place competitive limit orders in sports and esports markets at polymarket.com (orders must stay active ≥3.5 seconds to qualify).

• Every week you stay active between now and the snapshot is meaningful.

⚠️ No snapshot date or eligibility criteria officially confirmed — this is speculative positioning. Limit order farming requires active management; neglected orders get canceled. Never use anything other than polymarket.com.

Markets.xyz

Markets.xyz by Kinetiq, just launched their Mobile-first 24/7 trading app for equities, commodities, and crypto with after-hours and weekend trading sessions that traditional brokerages can’t offer.

• No formal points program announced yet, but the Hyperliquid integration means trading activity here likely contributes to broader Hyperliquid ecosystem positioning.

• Referrals are active — share your referral code for additional multipliers once you’re in. Download on iOS at the App Store (search “Markets - Stocks & Crypto”) and get on the Android beta waitlist for when it opens.

⚠️ No confirmed airdrop or points program — early ecosystem positioning only. Social trading signals are not financial advice and can be wrong. Hyperliquid execution still carries perp liquidation risk if you’re using leverage.

New Airdrops

Outcome.xyz

Prediction markets built natively on Hyperliquid — not bridged, not wrapped, genuinely native. The first live market is a recurring daily BTC event, which gives you a repeatable daily farming loop rather than one-off event bets.

• The Hyperliquid ecosystem has been extraordinarily generous to early native app users historically (see: early Pear, early HyENA), and Outcome fits the exact pattern of a HIP-4 native app that rewards genuine early volume with retroactive distributions.

• No points program announced yet, but the absence of a formal program is actually an opportunity — it means competition is minimal right now while the farming signal is still very high.

• Trade the live BTC daily event and any upcoming markets at outcome.xyz/crypto/event/recurring-btc-1d using your HyperEVM wallet. Vary your position sizes and timing to build a genuine-looking trading history rather than identical daily bets that pattern-match as farming.

⚠️ No confirmed points program or airdrop — pure early positioning. Prediction market outcomes are binary — you can lose your entire position on wrong calls. Size bets as farming cost, not as directional trades.

🔥 MegaETH Ecosystem — Weekly Terminal Update

MegaETH’s Terminal dashboard (terminal.megaeth.com) is now running live weekly tasks and boosted protocols — meaning active usage across the ecosystem is directly feeding into point accumulation on an ongoing basis.

There are new tasks and boosted apps rotate weekly, so consistent engagement compounds your position over time. The three protocols to focus on right now are World Markets, Aave, and Blackhaven.

World Markets (wcm.inc)

The most technically ambitious native app on MegaETH — three CLOBs (spot, perps, and lending) all cross-margined under a single risk engine.

• World Markets closes that gap by letting traders borrow undercollateralized directly into basis trades, creating an internal arbitrage flywheel that attracts external liquidity as it compounds.

• In practice for farmers: deposit USDm to earn yield, borrow against your portfolio for leverage, and trade perps across major crypto pairs — all from the same margin account at world.inc. Note that the platform is currently in beta/testing mode per their own terms, so treat this as early-stage positioning accordingly.

Aave on MegaETH

(app.aave.com — select MegaETH network) is the blue-chip anchor of the ecosystem. Terminal points and incentives aren’t enabled for Aave yet — the team has explicitly noted that Aave users currently qualify for DeFi incentives, not Terminal points.

• However, Aave’s $600M+ TVL on MegaETH makes it the deepest liquidity pool on the chain, and the USDm lending market at 5% APY with $76.25K in daily rewards ($88.67K total daily across MegaETH) is the safest yield available.

• The USDe looping strategy (2.27% APR including 2.27% Merkl) has 3 days left on the current epoch — act fast if you want the looping rewards before they reset. Lend USDm at app.aave.com for straightforward yield while maintaining positioning for when Terminal points eventually activate on Aave.

Blackhaven (MegaETH)

Blackhaven is MegaETH’s reserve and liquidity backbone — user deposits become protocol-owned reserves that power the ecosystem via RBT (Reserve Backed Token), a composable token backed 1:1 by on-chain reserves.

• Reserves grow through bond issuance, deposits, forfeitures, and MegaETH ecosystem points.

• A Backing Arbitrage Module (BAM) is planned to stabilize RBT price against NAV — buying and burning when below, selling when above.

• Boost Blackhaven now at terminal.megaeth.com to establish early history before full launch. Trade Bonds here https://app.blackhaven.xyz/bonds

⚠️ BAM is explicitly “not guaranteed to be live at launch” — meaning the core stabilization mechanism may not exist when you deposit. Early-exit forfeits punish users who need liquidity before term ends. Strategy returns are non-guaranteed. The protocol retains all MEGA ecosystem points from your deposited capital — you farm for the protocol, not yourself. Novel complex design on a new chain — only use what you can fully afford to lo

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<Discover Yields on DeFi Saver> | Today in DeFi is Supported by DeFi Saver

In this letter, we bring you the best bottom-up analysis of onchain trends, along with top-down market analysis, helping you find top yield opportunities and position for trends before they happen

1. Broader Market Outlook

2. Stablecoin flows per chain

3. DeFi token price gainers & their catalysts

4. TVL gainers - for protocols above $50M

Key Takeaways

• Lending liquidity is migrating away from Aave. Aave’s TVL is recovering slowly but remains far below pre-Kelp levels. Meanwhile, Morpho and Euler are absorbing the flow.

• Stablecoin growth remains stalled but USDe stabilized — credit crunch healing. Total flow at +$158M (+0.05%), second straight week of near-zero net growth. The big signal: USDe rebounded +$151M after losing -$1.59B last week, confirming the credit crunch is easing.

• MegaETH grew 800% in stablecoin supply, and the driver is a symbiotic Ethena loop, not just TGE hype. The "Megaavethena" loop on Aave MegaETH (deposit USDe → borrow USDm → swap for USDe → repeat) offers ~25% max ROE, materially higher than liquid leverage elsewhere.

Trading Calendar 🗓️

This week’s macro is the NFP announcement on Friday, May 9 — the first major US labor print after FOMC, and the data Powell flagged as input for the next rate decision. A hot print reinforces the “no rush to cut” stance; a soft print reopens the cut conversation.

A quieter week for macro after FOMC, but token unlocks dominate.

BTC ETFs absorbed $824M on the last week of April and another $163M this week, the inflow streak ran 9 days through April 27 before pausing on April 29. ETH ETFs went slightly negative this week (-$83M after +$155M last week).

Combined inflows of ~$80M this week vs ~$979M last week show institutions pulled back the aggressive accumulation

1. Stablecoin Flows

Weekly flow: +$158M (+0.05%). Second straight week of near-zero net growth. After two consecutive +$2.5B weeks in early April, stablecoin growth has effectively stalled.

The strongest inflows came from USDS, RLUSD, USDe, and USD1. USDS added $444M, confirming a second week of recovery as capital continues rotating into Sky’s cleaner collateral profile. USDe added $151M after last week’s sharp contraction, which is one of the more important healing signals: Ethena’s basis trade is no longer seeing the same level of forced redemption pressure.

The weakest flows remain in USDC, USYC, USDtb, and USDT. USDC lost another $522M, marking continued contraction and reinforcing the view that DeFi-native capital is still being withdrawn or redeployed cautiously. USDT’s $209M outflow looks less significant after the prior week’s large inflow, while USYC and USDtb weakness shows that regulated/RWA stablecoin rotation has paused for now.

USDC -$521.8M (-0.67%) — third straight week of contraction, making it one of the clearest DeFi risk-off signals. Because USDC is heavily used across Ethereum DeFi lending markets, continued USDC contraction suggests capital is still being pulled from core DeFi venues or redeployed into safer yield structures.

USDT -$208.7M (-0.11%). Big swing from last week’s +$2.53B inflow. Worth noting given the magnitude, but a single weekly print after a record inflow likely reflects normal redemption cycles rather than a structural shift.

Other movers: RLUSD +$170.7M (+12.23%, growing fast), USD1 +$126.2M (+2.87%), USDD +$55.8M (+4%). USDtb -$269M continued bleeding identical to last week. PYUSD -$47.5M, USYC -$314M — the regulated tier rotation thesis remains paused.

2. Stablecoin Flows Per Chain✅

Ethereum lost another $1.58B in stablecoin supply this week. Combined with last week’s -$167M, that’s nearly $1.75B of stablecoin contraction on Ethereum in two weeks. This is the second-largest move in the dataset and it’s directly tied to USDC’s three-week bleed (USDC is mostly on Ethereum).

Tron absorbed $1.6B alone — the USDT emerging-markets payment rail keeps doing its job.

MegaETH’s Stablecoin Supply Grew 824%

MegaETH +$651M (+824%) is the standout new-chain story, but the mechanism deserves attention. The growth is concentrated almost entirely on Aave, which now hosts the bulk of MegaETH’s TVL ($575M+ on Aave by May 2, per The Defiant).

The driver is a stablecoin loop that’s drawing capital because of unusually high incentives:

• The “Megaavethena” loop: Deposit USDe → borrow USDm → swap for USDe → repeat. USDe on MegaETH’s Aave has a unique yield pass-through (~3% base, similar to sUSDe) plus ~3% Ethena Merkl rewards. USDm borrowing has its own incentives that keep borrow costs low. Reported max ROE on the loop is around 25% — materially higher than liquid leverage on other chains.

• Why caps keep getting raised: USDe supply cap on Aave MegaETH was filled, and a proposal on May 3 raised it from $100M → $200M. USDm cap is also at limit. These caps will keep getting raised because USDm supply is one of MegaETH’s most important KPIs for unlocking MEGA token rewards.

• The flywheel: USDm yield flows to the MegaETH Foundation, which uses it to buy back MEGA. Higher TVL = more KPI progress = more MEGA unlocks = more incentives to keep TVL flowing in.

Why does this matter? And where is the risk:
Over 70% of MegaETH’s TVL is Ethena-related (USDe, USDm backed by USDtb). Ethena itself is one of the largest USDm suppliers and earns 5% MEGA rewards on the position. The structure is effectively MegaETH paying Ethena to speed-run KPIs while Ethena rebuilds USDe TVL after last week’s -32% contraction. It works as long as MEGA emissions last. Once incentives compress, expect the loop to unwind.

Hyperliquid’s TVL reversed from last week’s outflow thanks to their new HIP-4 prediction markets platform launch by Outcome.xyz, which now enables binary bets on Bitcoin’s price, and will launch more markets across crypto events, sports, politics, and others. You can trade it on the “outcome” tab on the main Hypercore interface.

3. DeFi token price gainers & their catalysts

$ORCA +58.5% — Continuation of last week’s network-wide Solana DEX volume surge. Both ORCA and Raydium spiked together (RAY +11.5%), suggesting an ecosystem demand event rather than token-specific catalyst. The 24-month Orca DAO buyback program (approved 2025) provides structural tailwind.

$PENDLE +27.8% — Pendle’s RWA market is becoming the dominant on-chain venue for fixed-rate yield (see TVL section). PT-USDG went live on Aave at 20%+ APY, STRC ecosystem crossed $265M tokenized on Ethereum, new RWA pools from Ember/Midas/Ethena launched. The token is moving with real product velocity, not just narrative. ($285M cap, real signal.)

$ONDO +18.1% — Three concrete catalysts this week, all institutional. Ondo was selected for DTCC’s Industry Working Group to advance tokenization in the U.S., alongside BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Franklin Templeton, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citadel Securities, NYSE Group, Circle, Robinhood and others.

• The DTCC custodies $114T+ in assets and clears $3.7Q+ annually — having Ondo at the design table is a serious signal for tokenized US capital markets. Also this week: 260+ Ondo tokenized stocks and ETFs went live on KuCoin Web3 Wallet (Apr 30), and Ondo announced a partnership with Broadridge to bring proxy voting and investor communications to tokenized stock holders.

• Ondo is now the largest platform for tokenized stocks at ~70% market share, with $825M+ TVL across 250+ tokenized assets. Sources: Ondo Finance X (Apr 30-May 4).

$JTO +14.5%, $RAY +11.5% — Solana DEX/staking continuation. Both move with broader Solana DeFi sentiment, supported by the network-wide volume surge.

4. TVL gainers - for protocols above $50M

Lending liquidity is migrating away from Aave

The TVL data suggests the Aave shock is no longer just a temporary event. Aave TVL is slowly recovering, but it remains far below pre-incident levels, while alternative venues like Morpho and Euler are seeing more interesting growth.

Capital still wants yield, but it wants isolated risk, cleaner collateral, and clearer market structure. The protocols below sort into four buckets: alternative lending venues, RWA-backed yield, non-crypto-correlated yield, and new-chain incentive farming.

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Prediction Markets🔮

• Outcome Markets, the first prediction market platform native to Hyperliquid, launches mainnet, enabling traders to bet on crypto, sports, and political events through the same CLOB used for Hyperliquid perps.

  • Contracts are fully collateralized with no leverage or liquidations, settle at 0 or 1 in USDH, and can be cross-margined alongside existing Hyperliquid positions.

  • Live BTC daily binary contracts are available now.

• Polymarket is pushing several fixes after its April 28 upgrade. A Deposit Wallet update launching May 4 at 12:30 UTC will fix ghost fills, with up to 30 minutes of downtime. Liquidity rewards from migration day have been sent out, a brief rewards outage earlier today is resolved, and fixes for balance errors and PnL display bugs are expected by Wednesday.

DeFi📈

• Arbitrum’s Snapshot temperature check to release 30,765.67 ETH frozen from the April 18 rsETH exploit is live and running until May 7, with early voting overwhelmingly in favor, but according to a forum post on Arbitrum DAO, a restraining order has been served by Gerstein Harrow LLP and Berkman Law Office, which may complicate the recovery timeline.

  • The order stems from creditors pursuing (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) DPRK-linked funds tied to a 2015 North Korea-related terror judgment, potentially blocking the DAO's authorization to route the ETH to a 3-of-4 DeFi United recovery multisig

• Royco Dawn has added seven tranched yield-bearing stablecoins ahead of launch: sNUSD (Neutrl), savUSD (Avant Protocol), apyUSD (Apyx), autoUSD (Auto Finance), syrupUSDC (Maple Finance), sUSDai (USD.AI), and liUSD-4w (infiniFi), spanning strategies from market-neutral trading and institutional lending to AI compute infrastructure and fixed-duration basis positions.

• Circle Ventures purchased AAVE tokens in a show of support for the DeFi United recovery effort.

Perps📉📈

• TradeXYZ launches pre-IPO perpetuals that reference anticipated public equity offerings and convert to standard perps once shares list.

List of Hacks/Exploits⚠️

• Wasabi Protocol’s EVM deployments across Ethereum, Base, Blast, and Berachain were compromised for $5M+ on April 30, with the breach now contained. Users with funds in the affected vaults should not interact with their positions, while unaffected vault holders can withdraw normally.

  • Solana deployments and the Prop AMM are unaffected. A full postmortem is pending. This is a developing story.

• Aftermath Finance’s perpetuals market on Sui lost approximately $1.1M USDC across 11 transactions in 36 minutes after an attacker exploited a fee accounting bug to inflate synthetic collateral and drain protocol vaults. Only the perps market was affected. Blockaid detected the exploit and is supporting the investigation alongside Mysten Labs.

  • This is a developing story.

• Sweat Foundation lost approximately 13.71B SWEAT tokens — roughly 65% of total supply — in a 30-second window on April 29, with funds routed via Ref Finance and Wormhole. The attacker, running a custom drainer contract, controls approximately 17.71B SWEAT (~$3.46M) across multiple staging wallets, with a small portion already swapped to NEAR and USDC.

  • This is a developing story.

• Syndicate's Commons Bridge on Base was exploited for 18.5M SYND tokens, which were swapped for approximately $330K and triggered a 36% flash crash. Syndicate has since confirmed that the affected customer has been made whole, with a snapshot of pre-compromise SYND balances taken for remaining Commons holders.

  • The team has indicated users will be compensated 1:1 or better, with full recovery details to follow.

• JuDAO, a deflationary token on BNB Chain, lost approximately $464K after an attacker exploited two built-in drain a bug in JUDAO’s sell-transfer hook, draining the JUDAO-USDT/BNB PancakeSwap liquidity pool.

  • Users providing liquidity to that pair lost funds proportionally. Token holders without LP positions were unaffected.

Farms🧑‍🌾

• Strata launched the Saturn Credit market, offering senior (srUSDat) and junior (jrUSDat) tranches of USDat for 7 and 13% APY, a yield-bearing stablecoin backed by Strategy’s Bitcoin treasury (STRC).

• Pendle distributed $430K in USDG incentive rewards for YT and LP holders in March and April 2026, alongside PENDLE token rewards.

For sponsorships, questions, or news tips, reach us at: support@todayindefi.com

Earn ~7% APY on ETH

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-Danger, Today in DeFi founder

April 2026 logged 29 DeFi exploits and $635M in losses. That’s about a hack a day. The frequency of attacks has roughly doubled in the last six months — from ~7.8 incidents per month last summer to ~15.2 per month through this spring. By the time you finish reading this, several smaller protocols will likely be getting drained somewhere on chain.

This is not a normal cyclical security wobble. The economics of attacking DeFi have structurally shifted, and the high-APY-sketchy-protocol meta — DegenFi — is over. Not because regulators killed it. Because the math stopped working for users.

What’s coming next is the version of this industry that was always supposed to be here: actually decentralized, deliberately constrained, architected to survive an adversarial environment. In Tradfi, centralization is a coordination mechanism that institutions can be held accountable for. On an immutable ledger, where there is no rollback, every centralized control point is something else entirely. It’s an attack surface.

Two Vectors, both AI-accelerated

The acceleration is happening because attacker costs collapsed on two fronts at once.

The Long Tail.

AI agents now scan smart contracts for vulnerabilities at roughly $1.22 per contract, with capability reportedly doubling every 1.3 months. April had 23 protocol-logic exploits — oracle misconfigurations, fee accounting flaws, first-depositor attacks, signature replay, refund logic bugs, fake collateral exploits. These are the kinds of bugs human auditors would catch *if they had time to read every contract on every chain*. They never did. AI agents do. The long tail of DeFi — every small protocol on DeFiLlama — is now under continuous, automated review by attackers. Bugs that survived in obscurity are getting found.

The High End

Nation-state actors, Lazarus most prominently, run months-long social-engineering operations against privileged humans and the infrastructure they control. AI helps here too — better phishing, better impersonation, faster reconnaissance — but the bottleneck remains human patience and access. April delivered Drift ($285M, admin key compromise plus price manipulation), Kelp ($293M, LayerZero OFT bridge exploit), Wasabi Perps ($5.5M, admin key), Grinex ($15M, hot wallet). Five infrastructure failures, $593M.

The split inside April’s data is the cleanest expression of where DeFi’s losses actually come from:

• Infrastructure (admin keys, hot wallets, bridges)

  • 5 incidents

  • $593M lost (93.4% of value lost)

• Protocol logic (code bugs, oracles, flash loans)

  • 23 incidents

  • $42M (6.6% of value lost)

Five infrastructure failures caused 93% of the dollar losses. Twenty-three smart-contract bugs — the things audits are designed to catch — accounted for less than 7%. The frequency story lives at the bottom of the table; the dollars story lives at the top. Neither is going away. Both are accelerating.

The middle of the market — small-but-flush protocols with weak operational security — is the worst place to be. Big enough to be a target, not hardened enough to survive being one.

Centralization as Attack Surface

The reason these attacks succeed at scale is not that any single team is incompetent. The teams being targeted include some of the most capable operators in the space. The reason is structural: in a system without rollback, every privileged control point is a permanent liability — and the more capital sitting behind that control point, the higher the EV for an attacker willing to be patient.

The actual condition that makes a protocol a Lazarus-grade target is the pairing of three things: Centralized control, Centralized liquidity, and Weak guardrails.

Centralized control without much liquidity behind it is a nuisance, not a payday. Centralized liquidity without privileged control points (think a Uniswap pool) has no compromise vector. Either condition with hard guardrails — rate limits, mint caps, timelocks, pause guardians — caps the blast radius. Combine all three, and the math works: a single compromise unlocks a 9-figure prize, with no way to undo it.

April’s losses fit this template precisely. Drift’s price oracle had centralized authority over a large pool. Kelp’s bridge architecture concentrated trust in a small set of validators sitting between meaningful TVL and its mint authority. The protocols weren’t beaten by smart contract bugs; they were beaten by the structural pairing that makes such targets worth six months of nation-state effort in the first place.

This is where DeFi’s relationship with centralization diverges sharply from tradfi’s. Banks can centralize trust because regulators, courts, and FDIC insurance create a rollback mechanism. The system is designed to absorb the inevitable failures of concentrated trust. DeFi has none of that. Every centralized component must be evaluated as a potential point of permanent, irreversible failure. Decentralization isn’t an ideology in DeFi. It’s a security property — and it has to be evaluated alongside liquidity concentration and guardrails to mean anything.

What Survives

Look at what didn’t show up in April’s list. No successful exploits on Uniswap v2 or v3 pools. None on Morpho Blue’s isolated markets. None on Liquity-style minimal-governance designs. The protocols that survive in this environment share a structural pattern, and it’s worth being precise about what that pattern is.

Lindy primitives, not Lindy brands. Age and TVL alone don’t protect anything. Mutable proxy contracts with active governance get re-tested every time governance touches them; the security clock effectively resets with each upgrade. Immutable primitives that have been live for years without changes have been continuously battle-tested against every incentive an attacker has. Uniswap v2 cannot be upgraded, governance cannot list new assets in existing pools, and the risk profile is bounded by construction. That is a fundamentally different security posture than a protocol whose admin keys can change asset listings, risk parameters, or core logic at any time.

Isolated risk, not pooled risk.

Pooled lending designs inherit the security of every asset listed against them, including the full upstream dependency chain of those assets — the bridges they cross, the validators they trust, the off-chain components that mint them. A bad listing affects the entire protocol. Isolated markets, like Morpho Blue’s per-market structure, contain the failure to the specific market that took the bad listing. The same money is doing the same work, but the blast radius of any single failure is dramatically smaller.

Minimal off-chain dependencies. Every off-chain signer, every centralized oracle, every privileged keeper bot is a Lazarus target. Protocols that minimize these — even at the cost of capital efficiency or feature richness — survive the security environment that 2026 has actually delivered.

The bullish read of all this: the environment isn’t killing DeFi. It’s killing the architectures that were always going to fail eventually. What remains is what was supposed to be there from the start.

What to Do about it

The center of gravity for users in this environment is no longer “find the highest APY.” It’s “evaluate the architecture, then size positions to actually-priced tail risk.” Every recommendation below maps to a failure mode the data has already named.

Project selection — architecture beats brand. Investigate admin key setup directly: multisig threshold, signer identities, timelock duration, whether there’s a pause-only guardian, and what powers the keys actually have. Prefer immutable primitives over mutable front-ends with broad asset listings. Look for visible bounty programs, recent audits from reputable firms, and decentralized control. AI tools can help skim docs and audit reports for warning signs — use them.

If you’re building: multisig with pause-only guardians, timelocked admin actions, and minimized privileged off-chain components are table stakes now. The April list is a list of teams that thought their opsec was good enough.*

Risk/reward — make sure the reward is actually compensating you for the risk you take. The implicit tail risk in complex DeFi protocols has risen as base-rate exploit frequency goes up and AI industrializes the attacker side. That doesn’t mean DeFi yields aren’t worth taking — for users who can run good opsec, do real diligence, and monitor positions, the risk-adjusted returns can still be good. It does mean the reward needs to actually price the risk. Use treasury-yield products like Ondo USDY or sUSDS as your reference rate. If a complex protocol is paying you less than treasury yield, you are taking smart-contract risk for negative expected value — exit or rotate. Higher APYs (15%+) can be appropriate for sized positions in protocols that pass real diligence, but the position sizing has to reflect actual survivability, not historical TVL.

Position construction — isolate your exposure. When lending, prefer protocols built on isolated-liquidity architectures over pooled lending. The fully isolated form — a single collateral against a single borrowed asset, as in raw Morpho Blue or Euler v2 markets — is the safest design but typically illiquid and poorly-yielding for retail users, who often can’t realistically navigate them directly. The practical sweet spot is well-curated vaults sitting on top of those primitives: vaults that allocate across multiple isolated markets, lending only against collateral you understand, run by curators with a track record of navigating crisis well. Steakhouse Financial’s vaults on Morpho are a reference point here; Euler’s own DAO-managed vaults often hit a similar balance.

Pooled-lending designs aren’t categorically disqualified — Spark, for instance, runs tight risk tolerances and conservative listings that make its risk-adjusted profile reasonable despite the larger attack surface a pooled model creates — but the bar for trusting a pooled protocol is now meaningfully higher than for an isolated one.

LP positions often have better risk geometry than lending overall: exposure is bounded to the assets you chose, and the payoff for exploiting an LP position is typically lower than draining a money market, which means LPs attract less attacker attention per dollar.

Tranched products can absorb contagion: Yuzu Money’s senior tranche stayed whole when Aave borrow-rate spikes during the Kelp incident pushed underlying strategies into negative carry, with the junior tranche absorbing roughly $170K of drawdown by design. But tranching transfers risk between users; it does not eliminate protocol-level exploit risk. The underlying still has to be sound.

Advanced: borrowing against risky collateral can reduce your exposure to the collateral itself, but adds liquidation and rate risk — only for farmers actively monitoring positions.

If you’re building: isolate liquidity where the design allows, and impose hard guardrails — rate limits, mint caps, timelocks — wherever centralized control exists.*

Diversify out, not just within. If you don’t have time to due diligence and monitor positions, the answer isn’t to hold more DeFi positions. It’s to hold less. Spot, LSDs, Polymarket, RWA exposure — these don’t share the smart-contract-and-key-compromise risk surface that’s currently being industrialized. Treat DeFi exposure as a deliberate allocation to a high-tail-risk asset class, not as a default home for stablecoins.

Opsec — assume you are a target. Hardware wallet minimum. Dedicated signing device for large positions, ideally separate from your daily-driver computer. Tools that show what you’re actually signing — Rabby, GridPlus Lattice. Revoke unused approvals regularly. The same Lazarus operators going after protocol teams are going after individual whales.

If you’re building: make security disclosure cheap. Active bounty programs, clear contact paths, no legal threats against white-hats. The cheapest exploit is the one a researcher reports before the attacker finds it.

DeFi - Only Finance that Survives Onchain

As more tradfi assets come onchain — Treasuries, equities, RWA wrappers — they will inherit the same adversarial environment that DeFi-native protocols are now learning to survive. Tokenized doesn’t mean safe. The wrapper has to be genuinely decentralized in control, isolated in liquidity, and hard-bounded in privilege, or it becomes the next entry on next April’s list.

This is what 2026 is teaching anyone willing to read the data. The era of farming high APY on architectures that never made structural sense is over because the architectures don’t survive the security environment anymore. What remains is real.

Decentralized Finance isn’t a meme. Onchain, it’s the only finance that survives.

-Danger

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<Discover Yields on DeFi Saver> | Today in DeFi is Supported by DeFi Saver

Early DeFi relied on variable-rate, pool-based models like Aave to bootstrap liquidity. These protocols often suffer from “rate shock”—unpredictable interest spikes that erode profit margins and trigger sudden liquidations.

As the ecosystem matures toward institutional-grade infrastructure, a new generation of protocols—Morpho Midnight, Loopscale, and TermMax—is replacing algorithmic volatility with fixed-rate certainty.

By utilising intent-based matching, credit order books, and hybrid AMMs, these platforms provide the predictable cost of capital necessary for sophisticated financial planning and long-term credit expansion.

From Algorithmic Pools to Fixed-Rate Markets

DeFi lending’s “Martian casino” era relied on monolithic pools with socialised risk, exposing lenders to every asset’s vulnerability and subjecting borrowers to unpredictable rate spikes governed by utilisation curves.

Fixed-rate protocols address these inefficiencies by offering a deterministic cost of capital. Morpho Midnight, an evolution of the modular Morpho Blue architecture, shifts the paradigm toward intent-based, fixed-term lending.

Unlike its predecessor, Midnight externalises both risk and rate management to market participants, enabling granular credit pricing and bespoke loan agreements that bypass restrictive, protocol-wide formulas.

Credit Model Comparison

Why Fixed Rates Matter for DeFi Users

The primary appeal of fixed-rate protocols lies in shifting the DeFi experience from speculative volatility to reliable financial planning. For the average user and sophisticated trader alike, these protocols solve three fundamental issues:

1. Eliminating “Rate Shock” and Liquidation Risk

In traditional variable-rate protocols, borrowing costs can spike from 5% to 50% in a single day if demand for an asset surges. For users utilizing leverage, these spikes can instantly turn a profitable strategy into a loss or trigger unexpected liquidations.

Fixed-rate protocols lock in the borrowing cost for the duration of the loan, ensuring that users are insulated from market panic and interest rate volatility.

2. Guaranteed Passive Yield

Lenders in variable-rate pools often see their APY dwindle as more liquidity enters the pool. Fixed-rate protocols allow lenders to secure a “guaranteed” return for a set period.

This is particularly attractive for users seeking predictable income to fund real-world expenses, such as mortgage payments or business operations, where knowing the exact cash flow is essential.

3. Advanced Use Cases

Leverage Amplification via “PT Looping”

Principal Tokens (PT) from protocols like Pendle act as zero-coupon bonds, trading at a discount until they redeem 1:1 at maturity . Users can now provide PT tokens as collateral to borrow at a fixed cost.

By recursively borrowing and buying more PTs—a strategy known as “looping”—users amplify their fixed yield with absolute certainty that their debt interest won’t spike and flip the trade into a loss .

Tenor Matching for RWAs and Private Credit

Tokenized Real-World Assets (RWAs), including treasury bonds and private credit, typically offer fixed returns over defined durations (tenors) . Fixed-rate protocols allow users to borrow against these assets using a matching tenor.

This “locks in” a guaranteed net spread between the RWA’s yield (e.g., 10%) and the fixed borrowing cost (e.g., 6%), insulating the user from the volatility of traditional DeFi money markets.

Corporate Treasury and the Term Structure Curve

Enterprises and protocols increasingly require predictable funding for operations like GPU clusters or trade finance . These entities prioritize risk profiles that match their real-world liabilities. By establishing market-driven yield benchmarks across different durations (e.g., 1-month or 3-month), these protocols are building an on-chain “term structure curve.”

This curve is the essential foundation for pricing future financial derivatives and institutional hedging tools.

Risk Isolation and Liquidation Framework

Morpho Midnight and Loopscale utilize an isolated risk management structure. Each loan is a self-contained agreement, meaning that the failure of a specific collateral type or a default by a particular borrower cannot cause contagion across the protocol. This is particularly relevant for “long-tail” assets and niche LP tokens that may have higher volatility profiles.

The liquidation process on Loopscale is designed to maintain protocol solvency by allowing liquidators to seize collateral at a discount when a borrower’s Loan-to-Value ratio exceeds a defined threshold.

Morpho Midnight: The Mechanics of Offered Liquidity and Intent Settlement

Morpho Midnight represents a fundamental shift away from the pre-allocated capital model that has defined DeFi for years. Midnight introduces the concept of “offered liquidity,” where users broadcast their lending or borrowing intents to a global market without necessarily locking capital into a specific vault until a match occurs.

Intent-Based Matching and Bespoke Terms

Lenders can express complex intents that specify multiple conditions simultaneously. For instance, a single lender can offer USDC liquidity against a variety of collateral assets—ranging from blue-chip tokens like ETH to niche liquid staking tokens (LSTs) or even tokenized real-world assets (RWAs)—while specifying different interest rates and Loan-to-Value (LLTV) ratios for each.

This flexibility is achieved through externalized management of both risk and rates. Curators and sophisticated allocators can actively price risk and set competitive rates, ensuring that the cost of borrowing accurately reflects real-time supply and demand rather than an arbitrary mathematical curve. Furthermore, Midnight supports cross-chain settlement, where the chain on which the loan is settled becomes a parameter of the offer. A lender could offer USDC liquidity across Ethereum, Base, and OP Mainnet simultaneously, and the borrower determines the final settlement chain.

Synergistic Utility with Morpho Blue

The relationship between Morpho Blue and Morpho Midnight is complementary rather than competitive. Morpho Blue provides the immutable, permissionless infrastructure for variable-rate markets, while Midnight offers the tools for fixed-term predictability. Users can leverage Morpho Vaults (MetaMorpho) to earn variable yields while their “intents” are waiting to be matched in the Midnight fixed-rate market, ensuring that their capital remains productive at all times.

Loopscale: High-Performance Credit Order Books on Solana

Loopscale’s Credit Order Book (COB) replaces the traditional AMM-based liquidity pools with a direct market-matching system akin to centralized exchanges.

The Zero-Spread Efficiency Model

One of the primary innovations of Loopscale is the elimination of the interest rate spread. In pooled models, the rate paid by borrowers is always significantly higher than the rate received by lenders to account for idle capital and protocol fees. Because Loopscale uses an order book to match individual lenders and borrowers directly, the lend rate is equal to the borrow rate. This creates a more equitable environment for both participants: lenders achieve higher yields because their capital is fully utilized, and borrowers benefit from lower costs.

Product Stack and User Flows

Loopscale partitions its offerings into three distinct categories to serve different user personas and intents:

1. Loopscale Vaults: Designed for passive lenders, these vaults are managed by curators who allocate capital across the protocol’s fixed-rate markets. The vaults utilize an “Optimized Liquidity” feature, where any capital not currently matched in a fixed-term loan is deployed to external variable-rate protocols like MarginFi to maintain yield continuity.

2. Advanced Lending: This interface provides power users with the ability to set granular terms for their loans. Lenders can specify the exact asset, interest rate, duration, and collateral types they are willing to accept. This peer-to-peer approach allows for the dynamic pricing of idiosyncratic risks.

3. Loops (One-Click Leverage): Leveraging the fixed-rate nature of the protocol, Loopscale offers “Loops,” which allow users to amplify their exposure to yield-bearing assets. A user can deposit stSOL, borrow more stSOL at a fixed rate, and redeposit it to multiply their staking rewards. Because the borrowing cost is fixed for the duration of the loop, the user is insulated from the risk of a rate spike that could render the strategy unprofitable.

TermMax: Hybrid AMM Models and Yield Token Integration

TermMax introduces a specialized architecture that blends fixed-rate lending with automated leveraged strategies. The protocol is designed to simplify complex yield operations and establish a standardized yield curve for on-chain assets.

Customized AMM Interest Rate Order Book

The core of TermMax is a hybrid matching engine that utilizes a modified version of the Uniswap V3 concentrated liquidity model. Instead of providing liquidity across a price range, market makers on TermMax provide “range interest rate quotes”. This allows them to concentrate their capital at specific interest rate levels for different durations, providing deeper liquidity and more accurate pricing for fixed-term debt.

Strategic Use of Yield-Bearing Tokens

TermMax distinguishes itself by its deep integration with yield-bearing assets, specifically Principal Tokens (PT) from Pendle. By allowing these tokens to be used as collateral for fixed-rate loans, TermMax enables “Return Amplification”. Users can borrow against their PT tokens at a fixed cost that is lower than the inherent yield of the token, creating a risk-defined leveraged yield position.

Risks and Structural Disadvantages

While fixed rates provide predictability, they introduce specific trade-offs and risks not found in variable-rate “on-demand” money markets:

• Opportunity Cost and “Maturity Lock”: Locking in a fixed rate is a double-edged sword. If a borrower locks in a 10% rate and market interest rates subsequently fall to 5%, the borrower is stuck paying significantly more than the current market value. Conversely, lenders might miss out on yield spikes if they lock funds at a low rate before a market surge.

• Liquidity Fragmentation: In variable protocols like Aave, all liquidity is concentrated in a single pool. Fixed-rate protocols create separate “term segments”—each maturity date is effectively a different financial instrument. This can lead to fragmented liquidity where certain dates have thin depth, making it difficult for large traders to enter or exit without significant slippage.

• Early Exit Penalties: Unlike variable pools that allow instant withdrawals, fixed-rate protocols usually require lenders to wait until maturity. Exiting early often requires selling the loan position on a secondary market; if liquidity is low, the seller may be forced to accept a steep discount that consumes their expected returns.

• Curator and Management Risk: Modular protocols like Morpho or Loopscale rely on external curators to set risk parameters (LTVs, oracles, etc.). Users are exposed to “curator risk,” where poor management decisions or a lack of technical oversight can lead to bad debt or protocol revenue loss.

• Negative Carry Mismatch: For looping strategies, if the cost of the fixed borrowing rate exceeds the underlying asset’s yield (e.g., if an LST’s rewards drop unexpectedly), the position becomes a “negative carry” trade, losing money every day it remains open.

Future Outlook: The Maturation of On-chain Credit

As the DeFi ecosystem evolves, the boundary between money markets and interest rate markets will continue to blur. Interest rate markets, led by protocols like Pendle and the fixed-rate architectures discussed in this report, will become as fundamental as spot exchanges.

The ability for lenders and borrowers to set their own terms, externalize risk management, and access fixed-rate financing for bespoke durations will unlock trillions in volume. Morpho Midnight’s vision of becoming the “financial infrastructure for enterprises” suggests a future where DeFi protocols are the backbone of global debt markets, offering transparency, efficiency, and predictability that traditional banking systems cannot match.

For users, the primary utility of these features lies in the transformation of “idle holdings into productive assets” with defined risk profiles. Whether through the passive yield of Loopscale Vaults, the strategic leverage of TermMax, or the institutional-grade compliance of Morpho Midnight, the tools for sophisticated on-chain capital management have arrived, marking the transition from speculative experiment to a durable, recognisable financial system.

Loopscale & Termmax Farming Opportunities

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Airdrop Claims

• Fluent ($BLEND)

  Blended VM chain (EVM + SVM + Wasm) for next-gen composability, currently trading ~$0.18 on Kraken/Bybit.

  • If you were a core contributor, early Fluent Connect user, or participated in NFT/Echo/event sales, your $BLEND allocation is claimable now at claim.fluent.xyz.

  • Connect the exact wallet you used for any of those activities — the dashboard shows your allocation immediately.

⚠️ Blended VM introduces smart-contract complexity that single-VM chains don't have — cross-VM interaction bugs are a novel attack surface. Only use the official claim.fluent.xyz and verify the URL from the @fluentxyz bio directly.

• Pharos ($PROS)

  Pharos is a RealFi-focused L1 positioning itself as the fastest EVM-compatible chain built specifically for institutional RWAs — on-chain T-bills, credit instruments, tokenized bonds, and compliant DeFi products.

  • Claims live now at claim.pharos.xyz until October 25. Four options: instant claim or lock 30/60/90 days for 1.05x–1.20x multiplier.

  • Eligible if you did testnet, OKX Wallet participation, Discord roles, or “Stake Before the Stake.”

⚠️ New L1 smart-contract risk + regulatory RWA exposure. Locking multiplier means illiquid tokens for up to 90 days.

Airdrop Updates & Opportunities

• Zest Protocol

  Bitcoin-native lending protocol built on Stacks (the Bitcoin L2 that enables smart contracts anchored to Bitcoin’s security). The core proposition is simple and compelling: supply your BTC as collateral, borrow against it, and earn up to 5% APY paid directly in BTC

  • Supply BTC now to establish position history and earn real yield while you wait for any token announcement.

  • The Stacks ecosystem is relatively uncrowded compared to Ethereum or Solana, meaning early Zest activity stands out more prominently in any retroactive distribution.

⚠️ BTC collateral volatility + liquidation risk. Stacks L2 bridge risk. New protocol — start small.

• Forte Protocol

  $910M-backed (a16z + Solana) high-performance trading chain with Season 0 XP program live on testnet. Season 0 XP program is live on testnet with 10k testnet USDC given to participants — zero capital risk since it's all test funds.

  • Trade with 10k testnet USDC for zero capital risk.

  • Waitlist currently paused for email fix — check @ForteProtocol regularly and reserve your spot as soon as it reopens.

⚠️ Waitlist access issues ongoing. Zero capital risk on testnet but time investment required.

• SoSoValue (Season 2)

  SoDEX perp DEX platform with heavy anti-bot focus.

  • Three random snapshots in May with no advance notice — you must stay consistently active.

  • Trade $20k+ volume on SoDEX for 100% RUV eligibility, $100k+ for 120% bonus. Season 3 already confirmed, making this a multi-season play.

⚠️ Random snapshots punish inactive wallets. Perp trading carries liquidation risk. Bot-detection can flag low-volume legitimate users.

• Decibel Trade

  Composable on-chain trading engine (spot + perps + yield) now live on Aptos mainnet.

  • Unique model: new usDCBL protocol-native stablecoin keeps yield inside the protocol instead of leaking to third parties.

  • Trade or use yield vaults for lower fees + retained protocol economics and potential future token incentives.

⚠️ Perp liquidation risk. New stablecoin smart-contract risk. Early Aptos mainnet liquidity can be thin — watch slippage.

• Arcadia Finance ($OP Rewards)

  Automated liquidity management layer on Base (expanding to Optimism + Unichain) that turns manual Uniswap/Aerodrome LP positions into one-click automated strategies with built-in leverage and rebalancing.

  • 350k $OP rewards are currently streaming live via Merkl across key pools: wBTC/ETH, wBTC/USDC, ETH/USDC, wstETH/ETH and more.

  • Deploy automated LP positions at arcadia.finance and claim OP rewards directly on the Merkl dashboard.

⚠️ Automated LP strategies still carry impermanent loss risk — leverage amplifies this. Smart-contract risk on automated rebalancing logic. Merkl reward rates can change with each epoch.

• Strata Markets + Saturn Credit

  Saturn Credit turns MicroStrategy preferred share dividends ($STRC) into USDat, a real Bitcoin-backed yield stablecoin delivering 11%+ APY.

  • Strata then splits it into two tranches: Senior USDat (~7.5% fixed, protected) and Junior USDat (leveraged STRC dividend upside, higher risk).

  • Both launching April 30 — deposit via app.strata.markets at launch for early points positioning. Strata Season 0 Points + Saturn Gravity Points are already live, and Saturn’s Season 2 rewards vote is open now at saturn.credit — voters get a bonus allocation.

  ⚠️ Junior tranche carries real principal loss risk tied to MSTR/BTC performance. New tranching smart-contract risk. sUSDat restricted to non-US users.

NEW Promising Airdrops

MegaETH TGE (April 30)

MegaETH, the real-time Ethereum L2 built for CEX-level performance, hits TGE on April 30 after officially achieving its 11/10 MegaMafia KPI — all 11 incubated apps now live on mainnet with 100k+ verified transactions each.

$MEGA pre-market is trading at ~$0.16 on Hyperliquid (~$1.6B FDV), roughly 60% upside for ICO buyers if price holds.

Important: there is no community airdrop for $MEGA itself — TGE is ICO + KPI-staked supply only (7%+ circulating at launch).

The real opportunity is the 11 MegaMafia apps. Post-TGE capital and attention floods directly into these — and most are still in early mainnet/beta phase, meaning right now is the prime window to farm genuine activity before competition ramps up. Bridge via rabbithole.megaeth.com with a fresh wallet and prioritize these:

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In this letter, we bring you the best bottom-up analysis of onchain trends, along with top-down market analysis, helping you find top yield opportunities and position for trends before they happen

1. Broader Market Outlook

2. Stablecoin flows per chain

3. Perps Volumes Analysis

4. DeFi token price gainers & their catalysts

5. TVL gainers - for protocols above $50M

Key Takeaways

1. The post-Kelp DeFi rotation is taking shape: clean-collateral protocols winning, affected protocols recovering.

Capital is rotating into protocols whose collateral isn’t tied to rsETH/Aave contagion — Spark, Re, Euler/Sentora’s clean vaults, Superstate, fx Protocol. Meanwhile, Aave’s “DeFi United” initiative has raised ~$305M of the ~$230M needed to backstop the rsETH bad debt.

2. Stablecoin rotation has a mixed signal, risk-on for crypto prices, but people are leaving DeFi

Flows nearly stopped at +$57M (+0.02%), lowest since February. USDT absorbed +$2.53B (risk-on for trading and CEX activity), but USDC contracted -$407M and has stopped growing since the Resolv hack — capital is pulling out of DeFi.

3. ETF flows held strong despite geopolitical stress and DeFi turmoil

BTC +$824M (9-day inflow streak), ETH +$155M. Combined $979M — fourth straight week of strong inflows, with $2.44B absorbed in April alone (highest since October 2025). Institutions are stacking exposure ahead of Wednesday's FOMC, even with Kelp aftermath and geopolitical tensions remains unresolved.

Broader Market Outlook:

Both BTC and ETH showed modest recovery momentum amidst this year's DeFi’s biggest hack. BTC traded as high as ~$79,500 (+6% weekly), repeatedly testing but failing to break $80K. ETH gained 4% last week despite heavy DeFi stress.

A heavy macro week ahead. Tue Apr 28 — US Consumer Confidence. Wed Apr 29 — FOMC decision + Powell press conference (98% probability of a hold at 3.50-3.75%, possibly Powell’s last meeting before Warsh transition May 15). Thu Apr 30 — US Q1 GDP + March PCE inflation. Apr 27-29 — Bitcoin Conference Las Vegas, historically market-moving.

ETF Flows: The Institutional Counter-Narrative

Weekly spot ETF flows: BTC +$824M, ETH +$155M. Combined $979M — fourth straight week of strong inflows for BTC. The streak isn’t slowing; it’s slightly cooling but staying decisively positive while DeFi is bleeding.

This is the dominant macro signal for the week ahead: institutions are adding exposure to Wednesday’s FOMC. The divergence has been running for 4 weeks now and shows no sign of breaking — and it’s the cleanest case for “buy what institutions are buying” we’ve had this year.

1. Stablecoin Flows: Lowest Weekly Inflows This Month

Weekly flow: +$57M (+0.02%). This is the lowest weekly print since the contractions in early February. Net stablecoin growth has effectively stopped.

USDT +$2.53B (+1.35%). Another huge week. USDT inflows usually read as risk-on — but this week's print looks more like a defensive parking move.

USDC - $407M (-0.52%) contracting for two weeks running confirms broader DeFi deleveraging. The likely driver is USDC leaving DeFi positions. USDC growth used to outpace USDT, but ever since the resolv hack, USDC growth has stagnated and reverse

USDe -$1.59B (-32%) — the move of the week. Ethena’s synthetic dollar lost a third of its supply in a single week. The mechanism: most USDe was used as liquid leverage on Aave (farmers borrow USDC and USDT against sUSDe to amplify Ethena’s basis yield). When the Kelp DAO exploit froze Aave’s WETH markets and pushed stablecoin borrow rates to extremes, those leverage strategies flipped to negative carry — forcing widespread unwinds. Each unwind redeems USDe.

USDtb (-32%, -$269M) tells the same story. Ethena’s RWA-backed stablecoin contracted by exactly the same percentage as USDe, on the same mechanism — leveraged farmers unwinding Ethena positions across the board.

USDS +$357M — full reversal from last week. Last week USDS was the biggest loser at -$797M (mostly internal sUSDS → stUSDS rotation). This week the flow flipped, with capital coming back in as stUSDS yields stabilized and SKY price held through the Aave fallout. The “Sky vindication” trade is real — they didn’t break.

USDD +$56M, RLUSD +$171M (+12.23%), USD1 +$174M. RLUSD (Ripple’s stablecoin) growing 12% in a week is one of the few quiet bright spots.

2. Stablecoin Flows Per Chain✅

The “DeFi blue chip” chains all contracted this week. Ethereum, Solana, and HyperEVM — the three biggest hubs for active DeFi yield strategies — all bled stablecoin supply.

While HyperEVM’s 3% outflow is primarily caused by Purrlend’s $1.5M exploit, the chains absorbing capital are the ones that act primarily as USDT payment rails: Tron, BNB Chain, and Aptos (the +8.87% on Aptos is the biggest % gain on the board).

When capital pulls out of DeFi because of sentiment or unnattractive yields (negative carry on basis trades, frozen lending markets), capital sits on the chains where stablecoins move and earn nothing, not the chains where they’re deployed for yield.

3. DEX Volumes — Ethereum Reclaims Dominance

Ethereum is back at #1 in weekly DEX volume (~$13.5B) — the first time since early February. Solana, which has led most weeks of 2026, dropped to roughly $8B and continues its deceleration from the $25-30B February peaks.

Base continues to outpace BSC’s DEX volume in the last 3 weeks. The chain hierarchy in DEX activity now reads: Ethereum > Solana > Base > BSC, a meaningful change from the Solana-led pattern that defined Q1.

The connecting thread: Ethereum lost stablecoin supply this week but gained DEX volume. That’s not a contradiction — that’s existing capital being put to active use rather than new capital being parked. The active traders left on Ethereum are working harder. Solana saw the opposite pattern: stablecoin outflow and DEX deceleration.

4. DeFi token price gainers & their catalysts

Context for the week’s moves — observations, not trade ideas. Many of these have already run.

$ORCA +34.4% — Solana DEX activity + Orca joined the major US crypto legislation advocacy push on Apr 24. Regulatory advocacy by a top Solana DEX positions ORCA on the right side of the legislative tailwind.

$SPK (Spark) +31.4% —The clearest Aave → Spark capital rotation story.
Following the Kelp DAO exploit, over $1B-$1.7B rotated from Aave into SparkLend in 4-5 days, with Spark's TVL jumping 28% to $4.78B. Justin Sun moved $174M to Spark, becoming the focal point. Plus: Upbit (Korea) listed SPK on Apr 23 adding KRW retail liquidity

$OHM (Olympus) +28.6% — The main reason for Cooler Loans’ TVL surge. OIP-194A governance proposal is accelerating Cooler V2 (perpetual fixed-rate loans, no price-based liquidations, treasury-backed). This is a fundamentally different lending model, and during a week when liquidations on Aave/Compound destroyed billions, “no liquidations” became a real product feature.

$AERO +19.1% — Whale accumulation + cross-chain merger anticipation. Hypersphere Ventures deployed ~$680K into AERO in late April, coinciding with a 50.77% surge in Smart Money balances and tokens leaving exchanges. The structural catalyst is the Aerodrome-Velodrome merger ("Aero") targeting Q2 2026 — bringing Slipstream V3 with MEV auction capture, expanding to Ethereum mainnet.

5. TVL gainers, and their catalysts

The macro theme this week is sharper than just “flight to RWA.” Capital is rotating specifically into assets that aren’t exposed to the rsETH/Aave contagion — protocols whose collateral, yield source, or borrowing markets sit outside the credit crunch.

The protocols absorbing capital share three traits: collateral that isn’t tied to rsETH or stressed lending pools, yield sources independent of DeFi credit markets, or alternative venues for leveraged exposure that don’t depend on Aave/Compound liquidity.

#1 Superstate — $1.17B TVL, +$163M weekly (+16.17%, +43% monthly)

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Aave’s Bailout Fund Nears Full Coverage

Aave-led “DeFi United” coalition has assembled approximately 102,115 ETH (~$245M) in combined firm and pending commitments to cover the 75,081 ETH(~$180M) residual gap left by the April 18 rsETH exploit, with Aave and Kelp confirming a clear recovery path for affected rsETH holders. This is a developing story; read the full details here.

DeFi📈

• MegaETH has set its MEGA token launch for April 30 after the project hit KPI-2, which required 10 incubated applications fully live on mainnet with over 100,000 cumulative transactions across 25,000 unique wallets, triggering a 3-day countdown to TGE.

• Solana Foundation lent USDT to Aave for the first time to support its recovery efforts, framing the move as backing the broader DeFi ecosystem beyond Solana. Following the move, the AAVE token is now live on Solana via Sunrise DeFi and is available across major Solana apps, including Jupiter, Phantom, and Titan Exchange.

• Arkham launched decentralized trading on its platform, enabling users to track and trade recently launched Solana tokens alongside real-time trader activity data.

• Upshift, a vault platform, partnered with Securitize Fund Services to deliver institutional-grade reporting to onchain vaults, including auditable NAV, allocation transparency, and audit-ready data.

• Ether.fi’s Liquid ETH vault is now accepting aWETH deposits to help users exit stuck Aave WETH positions, with the vault itself carrying no Aave WETH exposure.

• Zest Protocol, a BTC lending protocol built on the Stacks Layer 2 blockchain, is launching mainnet soon, enabling users to earn BTC-denominated yield and borrow against Bitcoin without giving up custody.

• Catalysis, an onchain risk underwriting protocol, launched on mainnet with a $1.5M wstETH delegation from EigenYields on EigenLayer, providing coverage for up to $10M in deposits on Gauntlet’s WETH Prime vault on Morpho.

• Base announced its first independent network upgrade, Azul, targeting the mainnet on May 13, introducing multiproof security that combines TEE and ZK provers for faster withdrawals and improved performance.

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Issues⚠️

• Purrlend, a lending protocol on MegaETH and HyperEVM, lost approximately $1.5 million after an attacker was granted a “bridge” role through the protocol’s 2-of-3 admin multisig with no timelock, allowing them to mint unbacked tokens and drain the protocol. Community members have flagged the incident as a potential insider rug, though this remains unconfirmed. This is a developing story.

• Scallop, a Sui-based lending protocol, lost 150K SUI after an attacker exploited a deprecated V2 package from November 2023 that allowed them to claim 20 months of accumulated rewards instantly. Users should note the rewards pool was fully drained.

• A zero-day bug in Litecoin’s MWEB privacy layer let attackers push invalid transactions through non-updated nodes, briefly enabling unauthorized withdrawals to third-party DEXs before a 13-block reorganization — lasting over three hours — reversed them.

• Volo Protocol, a liquid staking and automated yield platform on Sui, lost $3.5M across three vaults holding WBTC, XAUm, and USDC following a private key compromise, with approximately $2M frozen in coordination with the Sui Foundation and the protocol pledging to cover the remaining $1.5M to make affected users whole. The remaining $28M in TVL across other Volo vaults is unaffected. This is a developing story.

• Yuzu Money, a stablecoin yield protocol (syzUSD), confirmed a $169,693 drawdown on its yzPP junior tranche from indirect exposure to the LayerZero/rsETH exploit, representing a 4.22% slash to its junior tranche. Senior tranche holders are unaffected, and redemptions resume immediately following the slashing event, with the portfolio returning to approximately 7% APY.

Stablecoins/RWA🪙

• Apyx tokenized $50M of STRC into STRCx on xStocks, a platform for tokenized equities, bringing its balance sheet onchain for public verification while accruing future points rewards from the position.

Prediction Markets🔮

• Polymarket is rolling out its CTF Exchange V2 upgrade on April 28 at 11:00 UTC, with roughly one hour of paused trading and all open limit orders cleared. The upgrade also migrates collateral from USDC.e to Polymarket USD (pUSD), an ERC-20 token on Polygon backed 1:1 by USDC

• Jupiter, a Solana-based DEX aggregator, launched a Telegram-based prediction market bot with no platform fees for the first month for waitlist signups.

Perps DEX📉📈

• Decibel, a perp DEX on Aptos, launched its native stablecoin usDCBL to keep trading value within the protocol rather than flowing to third-party stablecoin issuers, reducing fee reliance for traders.

• Ostium, a perp DEX on Arbitrum, added HYG and TLT as tradeable assets, allowing users to trade exposure to high-yield corporate bonds and long-term US Treasury bonds directly onchain.

Farms 🧑🏻‍🌾

• Hastra’s PRIME token, a liquid staking token backed by real-world home equity lending that earns up to 8% APY, is now usable as margin collateral on Project 0, a unified margin layer for deploying stablecoins across DeFi strategies.

• RAAC and Euler launched a new vault on Ethereum where users can deposit pmUSD, RAAC’s RWA-backed stablecoin, as collateral to borrow USDC at up to 87% LTV, offering >25% leveraged APR.

• Lista DAO launched a Rockaway X PT Yield Vault on BNB Chain, letting users deposit USDT against Pendle PT collaterals including PT-reUSD, PT-USDG, and PT-sUSDE.

• Midas partnered with Re7 Labs to launch mRe7ETH, a tokenized market-neutral ETH yield strategy on Optimism, offering 6% ETH APR.

News🗞️

• Justin Sun filed a federal lawsuit in California against World Liberty Financial, alleging the project wrongfully froze his WLFI tokens, stripped his governance rights, and threatened to burn them amid a disputed proposal that would impose a 10% advisor token burn and a two-year cliff on early purchasers. This is a developing story.

• The Ethereum Foundation sold 10,000 ETH at an average price of $2,387 on 24 April via an OTC transaction with BitMNR, raising approximately $23.87 million to fund core operations including protocol R&D, ecosystem development, and community grants.

• The Ethereum Foundation has also initiated the unstaking of $48.9M in ETH by depositing wstETH into Lido's unstETH contract, with proceeds pending once the unlocking process completes. Whether the foundation intends to sell the ETH remains unclear. This is a developing story.

For sponsorships, questions, or news tips, reach us at: support@todayindefi.com

Capitalizing on Airdrop Hype

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🚨Breaking News:

DeFi Industry Unites to Bail Out Aave

April 24, 2026 — Aave, Lido, EtherFi, Mantle and others coordinate crypto’s first industry-wide bailout as $13B flees DeFi.

Read the full news on our website

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<Discover Yields on DeFi Saver> | Today in DeFi is Supported by DeFi Saver

The decentralized finance landscape has historically relied on cyclical yield sources—primarily inflationary protocol emissions, funding rate arbitrage, and on-chain basis trading. As capital pivots toward RWAs for sustainable returns, the sector has encountered a structural dichotomy.

Tokenized U.S. Treasuries offer high liquidity and absolute transparency, yet their yields consistently underperform the DeFi average. Conversely, tokenized private credit delivers superior yields but introduces severe illiquidity, opaque risk profiles, and elevated default probabilities.

The introduction of protocols like Saturn and Apyx establishes a distinct asset class that strikes a balance between these extremes: Bitcoin-Backed Corporate Credit. By tokenizing preferred equity and digital credit instruments issued by off-chain entities—specifically Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs)—these protocols channel sustainable, fiat-denominated dividend cash flows directly into DeFi.

Because the underlying corporate debt is collateralized by Bitcoin, which is liquid and verifiable in real-time, this architecture mitigates the opacity and default risk of traditional private credit while sustaining double-digit, institutional-grade yields that operate independently of on-chain leverage cycles.

The Underlying Engine: STRC Mechanics & Risk Profile

To understand the sustainability of the double-digit yields offered by Saturn and Apyx, it is necessary to examine the foundational collateral asset: STRC. While protocols maintain minor allocations to alternative digital assets (like SATA, which serves as a marginal diversification instrument within Apyx’s treasury), STRC is the dominant yield engine powering these ecosystems.

STRC Structure and Mechanics

STRC functions as the first short-term, high-yield credit instrument built directly on a Bitcoin standard. Issued by “Strategy”—the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin—STRC is structured as perpetual preferred equity rather than traditional corporate debt.

• Dividend Rate & Adjustments: STRC pays a variable monthly dividend benchmarked against the one-month SOFR rate and the 30-day Volume-Weighted Average Price (VWAP) of the STRC asset itself. To keep the instrument trading near its $100 par value, the issuer utilizes a dynamic dividend adjustment matrix:

  • If VWAP < $95: Dividend increases by 50 bps or more.

  • If VWAP $95 – $98.99: Dividend increases by 25 bps or more.

  • If VWAP $99 – $100.99: Discretionary ±25 bps adjustment.

  • If VWAP ≥ $101: Dividend decreases by 25 bps or more.

• Liquidation Preference: The instrument carries a liquidation preference of $100 per share plus any accrued and unpaid dividends, providing downside structural protection in the event of issuer liquidation.

• SATA (Strategic Asset Allocation): In contrast to STRC, assets like SATA (which comprises ~3.97% of Apyx’s treasury) are utilized as secondary strategic holding instruments. While details are less standardized than STRC, they serve to slightly diversify the protocol’s digital credit exposure away from a single issuer.

⚠️Risks Associated with STRC (The Underlying Asset)

While STRC mitigates many of the opacity issues of traditional private credit, the architecture introduces severe, specific risk vectors that extend beyond the underlying asset and into the wrapper protocols (Saturn and Apyx) themselves. Market participants must underwrite the following:

• Bitcoin Performance and Principal Loss: The underlying corporate issuer (Strategy) relies heavily on a balance sheet concentrated in Bitcoin. Because Bitcoin does not naturally generate a yield, the issuer depends on Bitcoin’s price appreciation and treasury maneuvering to fund STRC’s double-digit dividends.

  • The “Flat Market” Risk: Even if Bitcoin doesn’t crash, a prolonged period of flat price action will inevitably bleed the treasury. Without price appreciation, dividend payouts become unsustainable, leading to severe yield impairment.

  • The Drawdown Risk: A severe macroeconomic drawdown in Bitcoin’s price would aggressively deteriorate the issuer’s collateralization. Simply put: if the corporate treasury is depleted, they will not be able to return your initial $100 per share investment. You could lose some or all of your principal.

• Interest Rate (SOFR) Exposure: Because the STRC dividend rate is benchmarked against SOFR, a macro environment involving aggressive central bank rate cuts would compress the baseline yield of STRC, subsequently dragging down the floating APY of sUSDat and apyUSD.

• Secondary Market Liquidity for STRC: While the instrument aims to maintain a $100 par value, it is traded on secondary markets (like the Nasdaq). During periods of extreme macroeconomic stress or institutional panic, buyers for STRC could disappear. This lack of liquidity would cause the asset to trade at a steep discount to its par value, meaning anyone forced to sell during this window would realize a loss.

Protocol Mechanics & Collateral Architecture: The Dual-Token Model

Both Saturn and Apyx utilize a bifurcated token model to solve the fundamental tension between liquidity provision and yield accrual. By separating the monetary layer from the yield layer, the base stablecoin can achieve deeper integration across centralized and decentralized venues, while the yield-bearing variant functions as an efficient value-accrual vault. Their respective yield profiles are directly derived from how they structure the underlying collateral for these two layers.

Saturn: Dynamic Compartmentalization

Saturn bridges the emerging Bitcoin credit market into a composable DeFi format, employing a strict compartmentalization of its collateral to manage the distinct objectives of its two tokens.

• The Monetary Base (USDat): Designed strictly for settlement and liquidity, USDat is minted at a 1:1 ratio. To maximize stability and insulate the primary settlement layer from credit market volatility, the USDat reserve ($39.6M) is currently allocated 100.0% to US T-bills, which generate a conservative baseline yield of 3.3%.

• The Yield Vault (sUSDat): When USDat is staked, users receive sUSDat, an ERC-4626 standard yield-bearing vault token. The underlying collateral is reallocated into STRC—a perpetual preferred equity instrument collateralized by corporate Bitcoin balance sheets. To optimize returns while maintaining operational liquidity, the sUSDat vault ($17.3M total) utilizes a blended allocation:

  • 88.5% STRC ($15.3M): The core yield engine, capturing the 11.5% dividend rate generated by the Bitcoin-backed corporate credit.

  • 11.5% USDat ($2.0M): A cash-equivalent buffer (yielding 3.3%) to service standard unstaking requests without forcing the premature sale of the underlying STRC on secondary markets.

• Mechanic: As STRC dividends accrue, they are captured within the vault, steadily increasing the sUSDat-to-USDat exchange rate without the need for manual compounding.

Apyx: High-Conviction Credit Exposure

Apyx operates as a dividend-backed stablecoin protocol designed to route off-chain digital credit yields on-chain. It demonstrates a more aggressive, concentrated exposure to the digital credit sector to maximize the yield passed through to its users.

• The Liquidity Layer (apxUSD): A synthetic dollar functioning as the primary liquidity layer. It is backed by preferred shares issued by DATs, but the token itself does not accrue yield. This non-rebasing structure ensures frictionless integration into AMMs and lending protocols.

• The Yield Layer (apyUSD) & Treasury Composition: Market participants holding apyUSD capture the dividend streams generated by the underlying DAT shares, with apyUSD systematically appreciating against apxUSD as off-chain cash flows are realized. To fuel this, Apyx maintains a highly concentrated treasury. Current data shows a total collateral balance of $110.93M against a circulating supply of $109.58M (approx. 101.2% overcollateralization), composed of:

  • 90.14% STRC: The vast majority of the treasury is deployed directly into the primary digital credit instrument, maximizing dividend cash flows.

  • 5.89% Cash, Stables, and Equivalents: A necessary but minimized liquidity buffer used to facilitate standard redemption and swap mechanics.

  • 3.97% SATA: A minor allocation to an alternative strategic asset, providing slight diversification within the broader digital asset treasury framework.

Comparative Yield Profile & Ex-Dividend Mechanics

Both protocols effectively solve the “RWA Yield Divide” by utilizing STRC as a highly verifiable, Bitcoin-collateralized middle ground. However, their structural differences result in distinct behaviors during dividend cycles:

• Saturn’s Volatility Pass-Through: Because sUSDat is directly backed by its proportional share of USDat and STRC, its NAV is sensitive to STRC’s secondary market behavior. After a dividend record date, STRC often trades below its $100 par value and can take several days to recover. This temporary ex-dividend discount directly impacts the sUSDat vault valuation, causing short-term pricing volatility for sUSDat holders.

• Apyx’s Overcollateralization Buffer: Apyx’s treasury model fundamentally insulates apyUSD from this specific mechanic. Because the protocol is systematically overcollateralized ($110.93M in assets vs. $109.58M in circulating supply), the short-term STRC discount following a record date is absorbed by the protocol’s equity buffer. As long as the treasury remains overcollateralized, the apyUSD price remains unaffected by STRC’s temporary ex-dividend dips.

Current Yield Opportunities

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Euler - Sentora Managed Lending Vaults (Ethereum)

• Deposit Yield: ~6–7%

• Assets: PYUSD, USDC, RLUSD

• Link: app.euler.finance/lend?network=1

• What is it: Sentora-curated Euler vaults with tight collateral exposure (Maple + Ethena). Lenders earn yield from interest paid by borrowers, who deposit collateral assets into Euler’s credit markets.

• Potential Concerns: Curator risk — Sentora sets parameters. Ethena collateral (sUSDe/USDe) is under peg pressure this week from the broader Aave unwind. If USDe drops significantly, collateral ratios tighten. Watch collateral composition of the vault.

Curve LP, Amplified on StakeDAO (Ethereum)

What is Curve + StakeDAO? Curve is the deepest stablecoin DEX, built specifically for stable-to-stable trading so impermanent loss on stable pairs is near zero. To earn max CRV rewards you'd normally need to lock CRV for up to 4 years yourself.

StakeDAO and Convex do that locking for you collectively — deposit your Curve LP tokens into their vaults and you get the full veCRV boost (2–3x rewards) plus auto-compounding, without locking anything.

USDT/USDe (Curve, via StakeDAO)

• Current APR: 9.37% total

• Breakdown: 6.67% trading fees + 2.70% CRV APR (2.10x boost)

• What it is: Stable pool pairing Tether’s USDT with Ethena’s USDe.

• Potential Concerns: Ethena peg pressure right now from the KelpDAO unwind cascade. USDe has held $1.00 historically, but monitor this week. Minimal IL in normal conditions.

GHO/crvUSD

• Current APR: 8.41% total

• Breakdown: 3.77% trading fees + 4.64% CRV APR (2.24x boost)

• What it is: Two of the cleanest decentralized stables in DeFi. GHO is Aave’s native stablecoin (overcollateralized by crypto you lock in Aave). crvUSD is Curve’s own stablecoin (also overcollateralized, mostly by ETH and LSTs). Neither has Ethena exposure.

• Potential Concerns: No Ethena exposure, both stables are overcollateralized and battle-tested, and the CRV boost is strong. Standard Curve smart contract risk.

PYUSD/crvUSD

• Current APR: 8.21% total

• Breakdown: 0.30% trading fees + 0.94% CRV APR (1.58x boost) + 6.97% YB APR from Votemarket Liquidity Mining

• What it is: PayPal’s PYUSD (issued by Paxos, fully regulated under NYDFS, backed 100% by cash and short-duration US Treasuries) paired with crvUSD.

• Potential Concerns: Lower CRV boost means most of the yield is coming from Votemarket bribes — these are incentives paid by other protocols to direct CRV emissions here, and they can dry up any week. PYUSD itself is one of the safest stables in DeFi.

USDT/crvUSD

• Current APR: 7.90% total

• Breakdown: 1.46% trading fees + 6.44% CRV APR (2.36x boost)

• What it is: Tether paired with Curve’s own stable.

• Potential Concerns: Tether counterparty risk (centralized issuer, reserve composition has been debated over the years). The high CRV boost can be temporary and time sensitive.

Kamino Liquidity Providing (Solana)

Kamino has three separate products — K-Lend (lending/borrowing), Multiply (leveraged positions), and Liquidity Vaults (LP). All yields below are from Kamino’s automated concentrated-liquidity LP vaults — they sit on top of Raydium or Orca, manage a tight price range, auto-rebalance, and auto-compound.

These are LP positions, not lending. You earn trading fees + token incentives, with impermanent loss mechanics (minimal on stable-stable, not zero during depegs).

USDS/USDC (Kamino on Raydium)

• Total APY: 8.32%

• Breakdown: 0.25% 7D fees + 8.07% USDS rewards (32.50K weekly)

• TVL: $21M

• What is USDS: Sky Protocol’s stablecoin — the rebrand of DAI. Overcollateralized, decentralized, battle-tested since 2017 (as DAI). One of the most proven stables in DeFi.

• Potential Concerns: Low trading-fee contribution — most yield is USDS incentives, which can taper. Concentrated liquidity can go out-of-range during sharp moves (Kamino auto-rebalances but there’s some drag). Two of the most established stables = very low peg risk. Good base-layer allocation.

PYUSD/USDC (Kamino on Orca)

• Total APY: 6.34%

• Breakdown: 0.39% 7D fees + 5.95% PYUSD rewards (20K weekly)

• TVL: $17.52M

• What it is: Paxos’ PYUSD paired with Circle’s USDC on Orca.

• Potential Concerns: This is probably the lowest-risk pool on the entire list — both stables are fully-regulated, T-bill-backed, with deep redemption liquidity. The lower yield reflects the safer profile. Ideal for capital preservation with yield.

USDu/USDC (Kamino on Orca)

• Total APY: 10.02%

• Breakdown: 0.05% 7D fees + 9.96% USDu rewards (7K weekly)

• TVL: $3.71M

• What is USDu: UAE Central Bank’s first approved USD-pegged stablecoin, issued by Universal Digital and regulated by ADGM FSRA, backed 1:1 by reserves CoinGecko. Reserves are held 1:1 in safeguarded onshore accounts at Emirates NBD and Mashreq, with Mbank as strategic banking partner Aquanow. Launched January 2026 — UAE’s answer to USDC.

• Potential Concerns: Newer stablecoin — less than 3 months old, with a smaller $3.71M pool. Structurally sound (1:1 fiat-backed, central-bank approved, UAE bank custody) so the backing quality is high. The risk isn’t the backing — it’s the shorter track record and thinner secondary liquidity. Peg hasn’t been stress-tested in a major market event yet. Size smaller than you would for USDS or PYUSD pools until the track record builds.

Balancer LP Pools

USDp/USDC, Merkl-boosted (HyperEVM)

• Current APR: 11.82% total

• Breakdown: 0.01% swap fees + 1.36% yield-bearing tokens (eUSDC-3 from Euler’s lending) + 10.45% Merkl.xyz incentives

• What is USDp: Parallel Protocol’s decentralized stablecoin — note the lowercase “p” distinguishes it from Paxos’ USDP. USDp is issued via Parallel V3’s Parallelizer module, a Price Stability Module (not a CDP) that lets users mint/burn against a diversified basket of approved reserve stablecoins with dynamic fees Parallel. Think of it as a “basket-backed” decentralized stable with no liquidation risk by design.

• Potential Concerns: USDp is a newer stablecoin (V3 launched on Avalanche late 2025). Parallel’s governance involves centralized multisigs, introducing counterparty risk. Most APR is Merkl bribes which can taper. Thinner liquidity than major stables. Still attractive risk/reward if sized appropriately.

USDC/USDp, Staking incentives variant (Avalanche)

• Current APR: 11.69% total

• Breakdown: 9.89% USDp native staking incentives + 1.80% yield-bearing (Gami-USDC)

• What it is: Same USDp/USDC pair, different reward construction — uses USDp-native emissions instead of Merkl bribes.

• Potential Concerns: Same as above — newer stable, thinner liquidity, incentive-heavy yield.

🚨 RISK REMINDERS

• KelpDAO contagion is still live — expect Aave liquidity stress for another 1–2 weeks. Anything Aave-adjacent has elevated risk right now.

• “Stable” ≠ stable. apxUSD (STRC-volatile around $100), reUSD/reUSDe (redemption queues), jupUSD (short history), USDe (current peg pressure) — all hold 99% of the time.

• Incentive yields compress. Headline 15%+ on a stable is usually points + token subsidies. Model ex-incentive for your real base.

• Off-chain counterparty is real risk. apxUSD = Strategy corporate credit. reUSD = licensed reinsurers + trust accounts. Different from smart contract risk, equally underwriteable.

• Leverage rule: simulate a 1% depeg of your borrow asset. If it liquidates you, reduce leverage.

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Airdrop Claims

USD.AI ($CHIP / Level Up Airdrop participants)

GPU-powered decentralized stablecoin (USDai/sUSDai) that finances AI infra via DePIN collateral and real-world treasuries/loans. Backed by Dragonfly, CB Ventures, etc. Real yield from AI compute + TradFi.

• This was distributed to users who participated in the Allo Game via the airdrop alignment path (primarily by holding/staking sUSDai for teal Allo points, with a 2x multiplier and no KYC/purchase required).

• Total supply: 10 billion CHIP

• Airdrop portion: 300 million CHIP (3%)

• ICO allocation: 7% (700 million $CHIP) at a $300M FDV, sold via CoinList with 100% unlock at TGE (targeted at USDai minters with brown points, 5x multiplier).

• Level Up airdrop or ICO participants (protected $CHIP allocations). Recent buyouts processed—USDC already sent to many eligible wallets.

• Multiple CEXes and DEXes has listed CHIP, so transfers are now possible

• How to claim (trusted links only):

  • Official app: https://app.usd.ai/chip

  • → connect wallet → claim $CHIP (deadline May 30, 2026).

⚠️ Novel GPU-collateral model carries depreciation risk.

Fluent ($BLEND)

• What it is & what’s special: Expressive blockchain with EVM + SVM + Wasm composability for next-gen dApps.

• Eligibility criteria: Core contributors, early Fluent Connect users, event/NFT/Echo sale participants.

• How to claim (trusted links only):

  • Checker + register: https://claim.fluent.xyz (register by April 23). Official X:@fluentxyz

⚠️ April 23 deadline — register now at claim.fluent.xyz if you were a core contributor, early Connect user, or event/NFT/Echo sale participant. ⚠️ Hard deadline — missing it forfeits allocation. New blended VM introduces smart-contract complexity risk.

Airdrop Checkers

OpenGradient ($OPG)

Verifiable AI compute & inference network (on-chain AI execution). 4% supply of OPG is allocated to the community.

Eligibility criteria: Past users/points earners (may need re-registration even if done before).

• How to claim (trusted links only):

  • Registration window closed (Apr 15–20), claims open today: https://portal.opengradient.ai/airdrop/register or main portal.

  • Official X: @OpenGradient

⚠️Re-registration may be required even if done previously. Only use the official portal — scams are circulating.

Billions Network ($BILL)

Human + AI identity/verification network (backed by Polychain, CB Ventures).

• Eligibility criteria: Season 1 Power points earners from doing tasks and activity in the protocol —register to lock them before reset.

• How to claim (trusted links only):

  • Register by April 24: https://community.billions.networkOfficial X:@billions_ntwk

⚠️ April 24 deadline — register at community.billions.network to lock your Season 1 Power points before they reset. ⚠️ Hard deadline with no extensions expected. Only use the official community.billions.network domain.

Airdrop Updates/Opportunities:

Dango ($DNG)

Perps trading focus— High-performance L1 CLOB superapp for spot, perps, derivatives, and RWAs with unified margin. One of the promising farms right now: 50% of the supply is allocated to an airdrop (teased through their latest tweet), with 37 weeks left until the Q4 2026 TGE.

• Weekly points pool of 1M splits 750k to traders by volume and OI and 250k to vault depositors.

• Link EVM wallet for +100% early supporter multiplier.

• Stack referrals up to 5 levels deep.

• Farm consistently at dango.exchange/points.

⚠️Mid April xxploit trained ~$410k via insurance fund logic flaw — patched and funds returned by white-hat, but highlights real smart-contract risk on a new L1. Start with small positions. Leveraged perps trading carries liquidation risk.

Pharos Protocol ($PROS)

Fastest EVM L1 optimized for RWAs/RealFi (on-chain T-bills, credit, etc.). Mainnet just went live.

• What you can do to get yield + maximize points: Bridge USDC, stake/liquidity provide, or run nodes. “Stake before Stake” via OKX Wallet for early airdrop check.

• Current/latest yield: Early mainnet incentives + potential $PROS farming via activity (deflationary tokenomics, 1B supply).

• Risks: New L1 smart-contract risk, low initial liquidity, regulatory RWA exposure.

• Official links & X: Explorer https://www.pharosscan.xyz Follow@pharos_network

⚠️ New L1 smart-contract risk + regulatory RWA exposure. Low initial liquidity — size conservatively.

NEW Promising Airdrops

Ember Protocol (RWA vaults)

“Everything Vaults” platform—single-asset yields, structured products, private credit RWAs. Live on Sui + ETH (TVL growing fast).

• What you can do to get yield + maximize points: Deposit into vaults (eACRED, eEARN, eTHIRD now on Pendle). No points program announced yet but heavy RWA narrative = future airdrop potential.

• Current/latest yield: Vault-specific (stable RWAs ~8-12%+ real yield).

• Risks: Counterparty risk in private credit, smart-contract risk, depeg on structured products.

• Official links & X: App via https://ember.so/earn. Official X: @EmberProtocol

⚠️ Risk: Private credit has counterparty and duration risk that most DeFi users aren’t used to. Read the ACRED fund terms before depositing.

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In this letter, we bring you the best bottom-up analysis of onchain trends, along with top-down market analysis, helping you find top yield opportunities and position for trends before they happen

1. Broader Market Outlook

2. Stablecoin Flows, and stablecoin-specific flows

3. Stablecoin flows per chain

4. Perps and DEX Volumes Analysis

5. TVL gainers - for protocols above $100M

6. DeFi token price gainers & their catalysts

Key Takeaways:

1. The Aave WETH crisis is this week’s dominant event

A $292M Kelp DAO bridge exploit locked Aave’s WETH markets at 100% utilization across 5 chains, triggering $8.45B in outflows over 48 hours and $13.21B in total DeFi TVL drop.

Borrow APYs spiked across every major credit protocol. The actionable insight: Yields are high, but check rsETH first and second order exposure before lending this week - and monitor liquidity.

2. Stablecoin rotation has a mixed signal — RWA-backed stables is winning.

Flows are still decent at +$1.8B (+0.53%), USDT absorbed +$3B, as USDS lost $797.5M). Crypto-native stablecoins (USDC, USDe, USDD) all contracted; regulated/backed tier (USYC, USDG, PYUSD, BUIDL) gained $600M+ combined.

3. ETF flows hit a 13-week high during the chaos — institutions front-running 29 April FOMC?

BTC +$997M, ETH +$276M. Combined $1.27B, second straight week of $1B+ combined inflows. Happening during the Aave crisis and Hormuz tensions.

⚠️Kelp DAO’s rsETH Exploit:

KelpDAO’s rsETH bridge was drained for ~$292M via a LayerZero configuration flaw, allowing an attacker to mint ~116,500 unbacked rsETH (~18% of supply) by forging cross-chain messages with no ETH backing.

The attacker deposited the unbacked rsETH into Aave, Compound, and Euler, borrowing ~$236M in WETH before the protocol paused.

Bad debt:

• Aave: $177M–$196M

• Compound: ~$39M

• Euler: <$1M

Whether bad debt will actually hit depositors is still being worked out.

First order effects

• Aave WETH pool hit 100% utilization → withdrawals halted

• ~$8.45B exited Aave within 48 hours

• Total DeFi TVL fell ~$13.2B

• AAVE dropped 18%

Contagion spread quickly, with 20+ protocols pausing LayerZero bridges as a precaution. Cross-chain impact remains uncertain, as rsETH backing across 20+ networks is now in question, with no confirmed loss distribution plan yet.

Second-order effects:

• Stablecoin borrow rates are surging as users exit Aave WETH positions by borrowing stables, pushing utilization near 100% across markets.

• Leverage strategies have flipped to negative carry, forcing widespread unwinds that further drain liquidity and reinforce the rate spike.

• USDe supply fell ~$600M as high borrow rates make Ethena leverage unprofitable.

The actionable takeaway

⚠️ Liquidity is thin in lending markets this week. High yields on supply are real, but they come with real bad debt risk — you could end up stuck, same as the Aave WETH suppliers. Make sure you know what you’re lending against, or just avoid lending this week until liquidity returns.

The cleanest playbook:

1. Don’t enter new lending positions on any protocol or market with rsETH or second order exposure until there’s a clear reconciliation and bad debt resolution

2. If you’re already stuck in Aave WETH, consider Fluid’s redemption protocol or 1inch’s secondary market exit

3. Watch USDe supply next week as the leading indicator — when that stabilizes, credit markets are healing

4. Spark, LPing, and fully backed RWA plays (regulated stables, T-bill-backed) are safer yield venues this week

Exit options for stuck WETH lenders

If you’re trapped in Aave’s WETH pool, two venues opened up:

• Fluid launched an aWETH Redemption Protocol — lets Aave ETH lenders exit directly into wstETH or weETH. $1B initial capacity, supported by Lido and Ether.fi.

• 1inch enables swapping aEthWETH for WETH on the secondary market at a ~2% discount

Trading Calendar 🗓️

Mon–Tue — Retail Sales (March), rescheduled from April 16. The first demand read covering the period after the oil-price spike. A soft print reinforces the slowdown narrative.

Mon–Tue, Apr 28-29 — FOMC meeting. Markets pricing a 98% probability the Fed holds at 3.50-3.75%. The surprise risk is hawkish language on oil pass-through inflation.

The geopolitical whipsaw, round 2

BTC and risky assets responded positively even though uncertainty looms on Iran-Israel’s ceasefire agreements. The difference this time is that the market has already seen this movie once. Positioning is tighter, leverage is cleaner, and ETF flows are doing heavy lifting on the bid.

Which brings us to the one data point worth flagging:

ETF Flows — Highest Inflows in 13 Weeks.

Weekly spot ETF flows: BTC +$997M, ETH +$276M. Combined $1.27B — second straight week of $1B+ inflows. The narrative “institutions front-run the Fed” is playing out in real time. This is happening during a geopolitical shock. That’s the signal.

1. Stablecoin Flows

Weekly flow: +$1.8B (+0.53%). The third consecutive positive print on April, after April 7 ($2.5B) and March 2 ($2.5B). Broader views are still positive since it’s only a minor step down from two straight $2.5B+ weeks.

The headline number hides a bigger story. Underneath, there’s a large rotation happening:

USDT led with +$3B — its largest weekly print of the year. When the biggest fiat-backed stablecoin absorbs this much flow during a risk-on week, it usually means capital is deploying.

USDS lost $473M. This is the move of the week. Sky went from leading inflows in early April (+$593.9M on April 7) to the largest weekly outflow on the entire chart.

sUSDS supply contracted by almost $700M. Large withdrawals from sUSDS — the standard Sky savings product historically means a risk-on stance, as usually sUSDS becomes the main destination for stable and proven yields

USDe supply is cratering as a direct consequence on KelpDAO’s exploit. Ethena’s synthetic dollar dropped $616M this week — the third-largest stablecoin outflow. Farmers leverage up on sUSDE both for direct yield and for Ethena’s “Liquid leverage” farming program — which is now unprofitable.

2. Stablecoin Flows Per Chain✅

Ethereum led with +$897M. Flat vs last week ($966M). The pattern holds — ETH keeps absorbing institutional flows regardless of market conditions.

Tron +$536M keeps its place as the emerging-markets dollar rail. USDT expansion on Tron explains most of this directly — when USDT grows $2.78B in a week and Ethereum takes a big chunk, Tron naturally takes the second-largest share.

Solana +$385M. Down from $545M last week. Part of this is the Drift exploit still weighing on borrowing yields, part is general risk-off. The xStocks still leads TVL growth on Solana, Loopscale, and Kamino loops are still live, but new capital is coming in more slowly.

Now the negatives worth talking about:

Plasma: -$336M (23.3%). The biggest outflow on the board. Plasma is a newer stablecoin-focused chain that had been pulling in flows on launch incentives. A $336M weekly drop suggests either incentives ran out, a large user withdrew, or early positioners are rotating into more established yield venues.

Source link: [DeFillama]

Important Notes for Chains:

Although some chains are seeing strong stablecoin inflows similar to Ethereum, Arbitrum, Tron, and Solana, significant risks still loom over lending and borrowing markets on Aave, Euler, Compound, and other credit protocols. This includes Fluid, which is also being affected by concerns around rsETH as collateral.

Most credit protocols are facing the same issue: stablecoin liquidity is drying up. Borrow rates have spiked due to high utilization. This is not limited to Aave, Compound, and Euler — borrowing rates on Solana’s largest credit market, Kamino, are also under pressure. USDC borrowing on Kamino has reached a 99.82% utilization rate, pushing borrow APY above 8%.

While high lending or supply rates may appear attractive for >8%, it is important to note the increased risk of bad debt. This means suppliers may not be able to recover their funds if borrowers are unable to repay their loans.

3. DEX Volumes Analysis

DEX volume worth highlighting: Base out-traded BSC for the second straight week ($6.71B vs $6.18B). The Aerodrome-Velodrome merger (Q2 2026) gets more valuable every week Base holds this lead — AERO captures 100% of DEX fees via ve(3,3). [LINK TO AERODROME]

Solana is also worth noting: weekly volume dropped to $10.5B from much higher February highs ($27-33B). Solana DEX volume is still second in absolute terms, but the slowdown is real.

4. DeFi token price gainers & their catalysts

$DYDX (+47.6%) — WTI oil perps listing at the perfect time

The biggest driver: dYdX listed WTI oil perps. Given that the entire week is pricing the Hormuz situation and oil is the dominant global macro trade right now, this is possibly the best-timed product launch in DeFi this quarter. Traders who want 24/7 access to oil exposure — without traditional futures hours — now have an onchain venue. Hyperliquid doesn’t have this yet.

$edgeX (+45.4%) — Token utility expansion via Guardian Committee RFC

The real catalyst this week is the Edge Chain Guardian Committee and $EDGE Staking Framework RFC published April 15. This is a material utility expansion for the token beyond just fee discounts. Key elements:

• DPoS staking + delegation — $EDGE holders can delegate to node operators

• Top operators by stake form the Guardian Committee each epoch — committee handles data guardianship and cross-chain withdrawal approvals

• Protocol revenue share for stakers (proportional to stake, subject to final reward rules)

• Vested tokens can stake immediately — don’t have to wait for unlock, which removes a common reason tokens sit idle

• Onchain governance in Phase 3 — full governance rights come later [LINK]

This matters because it gives $EDGE real economic utility. edgeX was already capturing the “perps DEX that isn’t Hyperliquid” trade on pure volume growth — now the token has staking revenue, committee economics, and a governance roadmap attached. That’s a fundamentally different investment case than just “high-beta to Hyperliquid.”

⚠️ Risk: This is an RFC (request for comment), not final implementation. Timing and final parameters could change based on community feedback.

$SPK (Spark) (+40.2%) — Buyback mechanics + vindication on risk management

Spark is Sky Protocol’s capital allocator. Three drivers this week, and the third is the biggest:

• First buyback cycle completed April 6 — 572K USDS used to repurchase 26.6M SPK, directly cutting circulating supply.

• Binance Wallet Spark Season 2 Vault launched March 26, giving out 7M SPK rewards through May 9 — active promotional pipeline.

• Spark’s conservative risk policy got vindicated during the Aave illiquidity crisis. Following the Kelp DAO rsETH bridge exploit, Aave’s ETH markets locked up at 100% utilization across Mainnet, Arbitrum, Plasma, Mantle, and Base. Spark stayed liquid.

• Their head of risk (Monet Supply) pointed out that Spark deprecated rsETH in January and kept a high max-rate on SparkLend ETH — a choice that cost them significant revenue to Aave over the past year, but means SparkLend has ample liquidity for ETH withdrawals right now, while Aave doesn’t.

⚠️ Risk: SPK has a 10B token max supply with only ~2.5B circulating. Every unlock is dilutive unless the buyback scales with emissions.

Source: Coingecko

5. TVL gainers + Protocols Worth Farming

Ember Protocol — $118.49M TVL, +56.51% weekly (+107% monthly)

Ember doubled in 30 days, and this week’s catalysts explain why. Three product launches stacked on top of each other:

• Ember ACRED launched on April 13. eACRED is onchain access to the ACRED private credit fund, with each eACRED backed 1:1 by underlying ACRED. Live on Ethereum and Sui, with integrations across Pendle.

• Pendle integration for 3 Ember vaults (April 14). Fixed-rate exposure now available on:

  • eACRED — RWA private credit (10% average APY)

  • eEARN — opportunistic stablecoin strategies (6.% avg APY)

  • eTHIRD — Third Eye basis trade vault, delta-neutral, allocating to MON and ENA basis (5% avg APY)

This is the clearest “product-market fit in private credit” story in DeFi right now. Every integration (Pendle, NAVI, Symbiotic) compounds distribution. If RWA private credit continues to grow as a category — and $23.6B in tokenized RWAs says it is — Ember is positioned to capture a disproportionate share.

⚠️ Risk: Private credit has counterparty and duration risk that most DeFi users aren’t used to. Read the ACRED fund terms before depositing.

Superstate — $1.007B TVL, +14.61% weekly

Crossed $1B milestone this week as Superstate launched FundOS, an onchain fund infrastructure enabling asset managers to deploy mutual funds, ETFs, and private funds with real-time settlement, 24/7 flows, and DeFi integrations.

The TVL increase is pushed by institutional adoption for USCC, Superstate’s carry fund that maximizes yields across crypto cash-and-carry trades across the Bitcoin basis, Ether basis (including staking Ether), and U.S. Treasury securities.

Buzz Farming — $308.04M TVL, +13.69% weekly (+14.16% monthly)

Buzz Farming collaborates with well-known BTCFi projects such as Babylon, Lombard, and Bedrock, as well as prominent blockchains, offering users a variety of multifaceted profit strategies. Users can conveniently select and operate investment strategies through Buzz Farming. Pure Bitcoin deposits push the TVL increase into strategies, mainly airdrop farming on other third-party protocols mentioned above.

⚠️ Risk: Farm-category protocols often have TVL that’s highly tied to token emissions. If emissions slow, TVL can drop fast.

Smaller protocols Worth Farming:

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