Why has BNB Chain become the second-largest network by total RWA value, surpassing even Solana?

In Q4, total RWA value on the chain reached $2B, up 228% QoQ. The majority of that is concentrated in USYC ($1.4B) and BUIDL ($503M), both effectively functioning as yield-bearing funds plugged directly into Binance’s distribution engine.

There isn’t much diversification, but there is strong concentration paired with distribution. BNB Chain has merged cash-like RWAs with exchange-level liquidity and access, so capital flows there by default. This cycle, platforms + distribution > fragmentation.

Aave’s profit picture looks much clearer when viewed over a longer time horizon.

2023–2024 were volatile and messy, but by 2025 things stabilized, with weekly revenue climbing above $3 million. Over the three-year span, Aave generated a combined $98 million in profit. The reminder that DeFi is very much alive.

Stablecoins aren’t crypto cash anymore — they’re basically short-term U.S. Treasury funds wrapped in tokens.

Recent report from IMF showed that USDT and USDC control ~90% of the market, and ~97% of all stablecoins are USD-denominated. In 2024 alone, they processed $23T in volume (+90% YoY), while backing shifted heavily into short-term Treasuries and reverse repos — with USDC’s reserves averaging just 14 days in maturity and yielding ~4%. A money-market fund running on-chain rails.

Stablecoin growth now directly feeds Treasury demand, and crypto liquidity is increasingly tied to U.S. monetary conditions. The more stables scale, the more crypto becomes a distribution layer for the dollar.

Tokenized gold (XAUT, PAXG) still sits at the top by total value — the classic hedge trade.

But right behind it, Treasury-backed products like BUIDL, USYC, USDY, and BENJI are accumulating billions. That’s institutional capital allocating directly on-chain.

What drove this? High interest rates + macro risk-off positioning + confidence in short-term U.S. paper. Put simply, RWAs are turning into the on-chain money market.

Active perp traders on Hyperliquid are creeping back toward record territory — just a few steps from November’s 215K peak.

Hyperliquid keeps going brrr every single day.

The last three months have been rough for crypto, but AI agents are the only sector still green.

There were quite a few reasons for this ↓

Inference costs collapsed ~99.7% in two years, x402 cleared 100M+ transactions in six months, and agent infra is scaling fast — from ERC-8004 live on Ethereum to Moltbook registering 1.2M agent IDs in week one. Add a $300B+ stablecoin base and payment giants orbiting AP2, and you start to see why this isn’t hype.

If you’re watching execution, Base and Solana are clearly ahead here. Agents are turning into economic actors.

I’ve seen fat-finger errors before, but this one is wild.

Bithumb meant to credit users ~$1.36 in promo rewards and accidentally credited 2,000 BTC each — briefly showing ~620,000 BTC inside its internal system. Not real on-chain coins, but still enough to trigger ~3,875 BTC in withdrawals while the exchange only holds ~41,798 BTC in reserves.

They say 99.7% was reversed, with ~1,788 BTC still unresolved.
Whether it was pure accounting noise or something deeper, this is a reminder: trust can move faster than coins.

Have you heard about Aave's pivot to InfraFi? This choice is no accident.

Focusing on solar energy and real infrastructure financing will propel Aave into a potential $30-50 trillion market, not the $50 billion DeFi sandbox.

Messari wrote about this in their State of DePIN 2025 report: the real return here lies not in fixed assets, but in financing under-collateralized physical infrastructure.

If InfraFi gains momentum, DeFi will stop competing for on-chain liquidity and begin leveraging off-chain money flows.

This is a completely different growth curve.

The trend toward secure pools is hard to ignore.

A year ago, only ~11% of the Zcash supply was secure. Now, it's ~30%. Higher anonymity enhances privacy, which attracts more capital, which in turn enhances privacy again. The flywheel is truly turning.

If this rate continues, 50% of pools being secure in the next 12-18 months is a realistic idea. Add to this a post-halving inflation trend of ~1% by 2028 and a decade of widespread PoW adoption, and you get something rare: a shrinking supply + long-term holders + increased utility.

Bitcoin's second halving preceded its breakout. Zcash has already surpassed its second halving.

I keep seeing TPS leaderboards flying around, and yes, some of these numbers look insane.

Somnia at 134K, Fogo near 100K, Redbelly above 70K… on paper it reads like Web2 scale already landed.

But TPS is the easiest metric to game. Spam a block, count internal messages, measure peak bursts instead of sustained throughput, ignore finality, and suddenly you’re “fast.” What actually matters is sustained load + real user activity + credible finality. Everything else is marketing.

There's no new liquidity influx in the market.

Stablecoin supply has remained flat since October, ETF inflows have turned negative, DAT inflows have stalled, and the volume of funds raised has returned to bear market levels. When inflows from all major sources slow simultaneously, price movement typically follows.

The only real factors I see are the accumulation of RWAs, the gradual return of major players to DeFi, and the potential positive impact of the CLARITY Act.

If these three factors don't lead to real capital inflows, the situation will remain devoid of liquidity.

Let's see how interesting this week was for the industry ↓

General
➖ CoinShares: Digital asset fund manager survey - February 2026
➖ The Defiant: Crypto Flows Tied to Suspected Human Trafficking Reached ‘Hundreds of Millions’ in 2025: Chainalysis
➖ Galaxy: Weekly Top Stories - 02/13/26

Market
➖ CoinShares: Market update - February 13th, 2026
➖ CoinShares: Equities update | February 13th 2026
➖ CoinShares: Digital asset fund flows | February 16th, 2026
➖ Binance: Weekly: Finding Optimism in a Market Reset
➖ The Defiant: After the Shock: What This Market Reset Means for Crypto in 2026
➖ Glassnode: BTC Market Pulse: Week 8
➖ Glassnode: Structural Weakness

DeFi
➖ DL Research: Curation as an Infrastructure Layer - kpk’s Design Philosophy

Blockchains & networks
➖ 4pillars: Agentic x402, A to Z
➖ Galaxy: Raising for Robots: Developing Agentic Capital Markets

Polygon has surpassed Ethereum in daily transaction fees several times this week.

It appears we've reached the point where Ethereum is becoming a settlement layer, and economic intensity is shifting to rollups.

Block time wars are heating up again.

Aptos still leads with ~54ms, but the interesting part is Monad entering the leaderboard around ~400ms alongside Solana and BNB Chain. New infra players are benchmarking into the top tier from day one.

Everyone is focused on price, but it's worth keeping an eye on macro factors as well.

The GENIUS Act has already been passed, and full-scale stablecoin adoption is likely to occur 12-24 months after the midterm elections. Given that prediction markets view a divided Congress as the baseline scenario, we'll likely see a slow regulatory clarification rather than a policy shock. Markets prefer that.

Meanwhile, the supply of ERC-20 stablecoins has once again exceeded $150 billion and continues to grow – historically, this has been the clearest indicator of liquidity before major cycles. Right now, the liquidity base appears structurally sound.

Here’s a harsh reality: Most RWA chains have pivoted to being ghost chains in the last year.

I saw @ZIGChainAnnouncements positioning as THE L1 for RWA yield and TradFi, so I did a quick sanity check.

The essential thing is a working ecosystem of apps like Valdora Finance, Oroswap, MemesDotFun, PermaPod, NawaFinance, already building yield, trading, and structured products on-chain.

Its ecosystem also leads in Shariah-compliant tokenization for Islamic finance. A huge potential adoption opportunity IMO.

$ZIG has also been an RWA bet by major institutions like SEGG Media, BTCS SA, and Apex Group, with commitments of accumulating $75M in ZIG.

By the way, ZIGChain is built by zignaly, an OG wealth management project with millions of users and capital, giving them a huge distribution advantage.
I think it's worth putting this on your watchlist.

PYUSD's market cap on Arbitrum surpassed $221 million, making it the fourth-largest stablecoin on the network.

This growth was driven by USDai integrating PYUSD (along with M0's wM) as collateral, with plans to use the collateral as GPU-based loans. Add in the over $480 million already staked on Aave and over $210 million in Morpho vaults, and you can see how PayPal's channels are directly connected to DeFi liquidity layers.

Corporate stablecoin distribution, when it actually works.

Silver just pushed $11B on Hyperliquid in two weeks, more than gold, indices, and equities combined.

At one point it made up 71% of all tokenized commodity volume. In TradFi, gold usually trades ~4× silver. On-chain? It’s flipped.

That tells you who’s trading here. Tokenized perps are attracting volatility hunters chasing beta and narrative momentum. Сrypto-native flow redefining what commodities trading looks like.

Looking at the top 3 fastest-growing fintech equities, you'll see a difference in valuation.

Circle is growing the fastest, at 59%, and trades at a P/S multiple of approximately 7.3. Robinhood is growing at 52% but trades at a multiple of 15. A company with 50% growth has a multiple above 20. They have the same growth rate, but a completely different price.

So it's not about revenue growth, but about how the multiple is justified.

2025 was brutal for new tokens.

Bitcoin printed fresh ATHs, but the rest of the market didn’t follow — altcoin market cap (ex-BTC/ETH) dropped ~30% from $1.2T to ~$825B while BTC dominance stayed glued around 58–62%. A lot of projects raised big, but once the narrative cooled, there wasn’t much underneath.