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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
7. DeFi Category analysis
Key Takeaways
Stablecoin inflows held at +$2.541B (+0.8%)— but the rotation is the story. USDC swung from -$163M to +$2.19B (+2.83%) in a single week, with Solana absorbing 1.5B of it (+10% stablecoin supply growth) through 20%+ looping APRs on Loopscale, Kamino, and xStocks.
Base just structurally displaced BSC as the #3 DEX chain. Aerodrome’s ve(3,3) model routes 100% of DEX revenue to token holders — with the Velodrome merger closing in Q2, AERO is the clearest pre-merger positioning play right now.
Hyperliquid is winning perps in every market condition. $40–50B weekly volume, 29.7% TradFi perp market share, Bitwise ETF filing live, and a growing HyperEVM ecosystem underneath it.
Broader Market Outlook:
Trading Calendar 🗓️
Geopolitical risk has been the dominant market force recently, and this week was no different.
Last week brought some relief as ceasefire talks finally got underway, giving markets room to breathe. That optimism didn’t last long. Sunday saw a sharp reversal when Vance publicly stated no deal was in sight, and by Sunday evening US time, Trump announced a blockade — sending crypto back into risk-off territory briefly.
The situation shifted again quickly. A second round of talks has since been announced, and markets are cautiously pricing in the possibility that this doesn’t escalate further. It’s a classic geopolitical whipsaw — fear, relief, fear, relief — and crypto is moving tick-for-tick with every headline given its 24/7 liquidity and high-beta nature.
On the macro calendar, there’s little to worry about this week. No major economic prints — just token unlocks from Arbitrum and LayerZero, neither of which carries a significant market impact. The geopolitical situation remains the only real variable worth watching closely.
Highest Weekly ETF Flows Since January
This week recorded the highest Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF inflows after Morgan Stanley launches their Bitcoin ETF last week, +$833M. Major inflows are still sourced from BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF. Institutional floor stayed intact: ETF inflows, corporate buying.
2. Stablecoin Flows
Total stablecoin inflows for the week of April 8–13 came in at +$2.541B — essentially identical to last week’s +$2.534B, both at +0.8% growth. On the surface, this looks like stable, sideways flow. But what’s happening underneath is more interesting.
Unlike the previous few weeks — where yield-bearing, RWA-backed stablecoins led supply increases — this week saw a rotation back to fiat-backed stablecoins —potentially a risk-on shift. USDT & USDC led the charge, USDC turned around from a -$163M contraction in the first week of April to a +$1B (+1.35%) expansion in the second. The main driver sits on Etehereum and Solana, which we cover in the next section.
USDT’s market share is gradually sliding below 58% as USDC absorbs most of the inflows — though overall USDT supply continues to expand.
USDG, the Global Dollar Network backed by Paxos, is also gaining meaningful supply momentum. Incentives on Kamino(Solana) for both supplying and borrowing are encouraging traders to either supply for 7%+ APR or take advantage of low borrowing rates — pushing USDG flows higher.
USD1 had a rougher week. The sharpest contraction on the board. USD1 shed over $322M in market cap directly from the Dolomite borrowing controversy — WLFI used its own governance token as collateral to borrow its own stablecoin, pushing the USD1 pool to 100% utilization and temporarily locking depositors out. Justin Sun publicly broke with WLFI on April 12.
3. Stablecoin Flows Per Chain✅
Although Ethereum absorbed the highest stablecoin inflows as usual, Solana stood out in terms of % increase, adding 3.67% from their stablecoin supply, amounting to $545M last week. Other than Solana, Arbitrum finally ended the weekly outflow streak, gaining ($203M), 5.5% increase.
Solana’s stablecoin inflows were primarily driven by incentivized markets on Loopscale, Kamino, and xStocks. Borrowing rates on Solana remain significantly lower than on Ethereum, and combined with cheaper fees, the chain is pulling in fresh capital at a pace.
Jupiter Lend’s integration with Loopscale is a notable new primitive — users can now loop jupUSD through positions called JUICED, borrowing USDC against it for 20%+ APR. More broadly, stablecoins unaffected by Drift’s ongoing exploit are gaining ground, and while the unresolved Drift incident may itself be suppressing borrowing yields, traders with fresh capital have been actively farming through the uncertainty.
⚠️ Leveraged looping carries liquidation risk if positions drop below LTV ratio or borrowing yields spike unexpectedly.
Loopscale’s borrow lock feature adds another layer — traders can lock USDC or USDG borrows for three months against PT collaterals, effectively locking in a 20% looped APY for the duration. A clean risk-defined farming structure for those comfortable with the PT exposure.
A notable tailwind this week came from equity markets, the de-escalation of geopolitical tensions drove strong equity performance, which directly benefited xStocks, Solana’s biggest RWA project. xStocks has been incentivizing users to borrow against their equity positions while also supporting passive lending strategies through USDC rewards on simple lending — giving both active and passive participants a reason to bring capital onto Solana. That dual incentive structure further boosted stablecoin inflows into the chain this week.
4. Perps and DEX Volumes Analysis
Base's DEX volume surpassed BSC this week — the second time this year, but the first time it means something structurally. The January instance was a single-event spike driven by the FootballFun TGE that collapsed immediately after. This time, it's a convergence from multiple directions: Base has been consistently growing since March, driven by Aerodrome's deepening dominance (~63–80% of Base volume), accelerating USDC inflows (+$65M this week vs. +$30M prior), and the Uniswap/Privy integration announced April 7 routing new app-level swap volume directly onto Base.
The primary protocol expression of this thesis is Aerodrome, with its MetaDEX03 merger with Velodrome targeting a Q2 2026 launch. A sustained Base > BSC regime directly re-rates Aerodrome’s revenue and TVL trajectory ahead of that event.
The chart tells a clean story. Hyperliquid (blue) has been the undisputed leader in perps volume every single week since January 2026 — and the gap isn’t closing. Across low-volume weeks and high-volume spikes alike, Hyperliquid consistently prints $40–50B in weekly volume, with two notable spikes in late January and early February pushing toward $75–85B during peak volatility periods.
Hyperliquid isn't just winning on volume — it's winning consistently across all market conditions. Bull weeks, fear weeks, geopolitical shock weeks — the blue bar stays tall. That kind of structural dominance in a winner-takes-most market is exactly what's been driving HYPE's price performance. We'll go deeper on Hyperliquid's specific token catalysts in the sections ahead.
5. TVL gainers - for protocols above $100M
Strata Markets — Strata is a risk tranching protocol. Last week’s catalyst was the integration of mHYPER, Hyperion’s managed strategy vault, split into two risk categories — srmHYPER and jrmHYPER — both now listed on Pendle.
Separately, srUSDe(senior tranche for USDe), the most traded asset on Strata, received a cap increase on Aave, opening looping opportunities above 15% APR.
⚠️ Leveraged looping carries liquidation risk if positions drop below LTV ratio or borrowing yields spike unexpectedly.
Reservoir Protocol & Liquid Collective — Both are sustaining inflows from last week’s catalysts. Reservoir continues to benefit from looping opportunities on srUSD following its Morpho market incentive additions. Liquid Collective is seeing sustained institutional demand for staked ETH and SOL ETF products from major issuers, including Galaxy, Bitwise, and other SOL and ETH ETF issuers.
⚠️leveraged looping carries liquidation risk if positions drop below LTV ratio or borrowing yields spike unexpectedly.
Hyperliquid’s resilience performance drove HyperEVM’s TVL.
HyperEVM-native protocols are gaining traction amidst' Hyperliquid’s exceptional performance, but the winners are the ones launching new products and updates last week
Valantis, a HYPE staking protocol - stHYPE, launched Prime DCA on April 1, an automated DCA execution layer built natively on Hyperliquid that lets traders set a scaling plan once on HyperEVM and have it execute automatically on HyperCore, with idle stablecoins earning yield between entries and full custody maintained throughout. Beta access is limited and rolling out gradually. The early-access waitlist at valantis.xyz
⚠️ Early beta stage — TVL is announcement-driven, not yet proven at scale.
Hyperlend’s catalyst this week is the newly launched HyperLend 2.0 — a full protocol rebuild launching now with a unified dashboard merging lending, borrowing, spot trading, and real-time analytics into one interface, deeper HyperCore integration for faster liquidations and tighter perp composability, and one-click looping for supported pairs on Hyperlend.
⚠️ TVL remains reflexive to HYPE price. V2 is a full rebuild — smart contract risk resets with a new codebase regardless of v1’s track record.
Kinetiq - the main staking protocol on HyperEVM -kHYPE. Catalyst is kHYPE v2 (KIP-2), launched April 6–8. Stakers can now select their own validator from a curated Active Set, and a new fee model routes ~70% of staking reward fees to KNTQ buybacks distributed to sKNTQ holders — creating a direct flywheel between kHYPE TVL growth and KNTQ token value.
⚠️ Base staking APY is ~2% — the real yield thesis is KNTQ buyback upside, not the staking yield itself. Fully reflexive to HYPE price.
6. DeFi token price gainers & their catalysts
COMP (+21.5% weekly) is riding a 12-month Growth Program targeting $500M in new TVL and expansion to 4–6 new chains, with Gauntlet risk management renewed through September 2026.
AERO/Aerodrome (+22.2% weekly) The purest expression of the Base DEX volume breakout thesis covered above. MetaDEX03 and the Velodrome merger targeting Q2 launch is the primary catalyst, but what's really driving the conversation around Aerodrome goes beyond the merger and Ethereum expansion.
Aerodrome runs on the ve(3,3) voting incentives model, meaning 100% of the DEX's revenue flows directly to ve lockers and voters — something Uniswap simply doesn't offer.
That revenue-sharing structure becomes significantly more valuable as Base volume grows, making AERO one of the cleaner ways to get paid to hold exposure to the Base ecosystem.
HYPE/Hyperliquid (+22.9% weekly) Consolidating after its ATH run, but the catalysts keep stacking.
Oil price volatility over the weekend — driven by escalating geopolitical tensions — pushed traders toward Hyperliquid as one of the best venues to trade it around the clock, contributing to its 29.7% TradFi perp market share.
Beyond that, the Bitwise BHYP spot ETF filing is now live
HIP-4 prediction markets are incoming, which will revolutionize how people trade prediction markets, with faster speed and real-time odds updates.
The 24/7 access to macro trades that traditional venues can’t offer remains Hyperliquid’s sharpest edge.
MORPHO (+11.4% monthly) The strongest institutional DeFi fundamental story in the group. Apollo's 9% token stake, Coinbase's $1.2B+ lending book running on Morpho rails, and the upcoming V2 fixed-rate launch builds an interesting narrative.
Token utility is still an open question and the protocol hasn't accrued revenue to date — but Aave's ongoing governance drama has become an unexpected tailwind.
Frustration with Aave's internal tensions is pushing users and developers toward Morpho, where the governance structure is seen as more credible and the product usage more straightforward. Sometimes the best catalyst is your competitor making noise for the wrong reasons.
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