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.

RWA collateral on Morpho crossed $400M.

That’s a 40× YoY move, and the market basically went from zero to nine figures in under a year. Real-world yield getting plugged straight into DeFi credit rails.