Stablecoins are a $305.6B market. Four projects offer very different ways to capture that growth. Here is how I would map Sky, Ethena, Aave and Pendle as of September 7, 2026. 1. @SkyEcosystem: earn the spread Sky earns interest and income from the assets and credit supporting its dollar system. The economic opportunity is to grow USDS while keeping asset income ahead of savings payouts and other costs. DefiLlama tracks $13.51M in protocol revenue and $2.91M in holder revenue over 30 days. Protocol surplus already supports SKY buybacks and staking rewards. Watch USDS growth alongside the surplus retained per dollar. Expensive deposits can grow a stablecoin without improving its economics. 2. @ethena : scale the yield engine Ethena generates income through USDe's backing assets and hedging strategy. That income also funds sUSDe returns and distribution, so the amount available for ENA depends on how revenue is allocated. USDe currently has roughly $4.37B in circulation. The August 27 fee-switch proposal places the first buyback threshold at $7.5B, with 95% of net revenue paid to the Foundation from its core business lines earmarked for buybacks once activated. The opportunity is conditional: grow USDe, preserve competitive yields and turn the fee framework into executed token purchases. 3. @Aave: monetize borrowing demand Aave earns a share of the interest borrowers pay. More stablecoins become economically useful when borrowers actually draw on that liquidity. It recorded $4.57M in 30-day protocol revenue. AAVE buybacks were paused in April, and DefiLlama records zero holder revenue for the current 30-day window. The business can keep earning while token purchases pause. Watch stablecoin borrowing, utilization and confirmed buyback resumption. 4. @pendle_fi : build markets around yield Pendle lets holders separate principal from future yield, creating markets for fixed returns and changing yield expectations across different issuers. Pendle V2 allocates 80% of protocol fees after the LP allocation to PENDLE buybacks, with repurchased tokens supporting eligible sPENDLE holders. DefiLlama tracks approximately $521K in holder revenue over 30 days. Its opportunity grows when more yield-bearing assets find active markets on Pendle. The relevant signals are yield fees, trading activity and recurring demand across maturities. The financial figures above cover whole protocols under DefiLlama's definitions. They are not a measure of stablecoin-only profit. My research priority would be SKY and PENDLE for cash flow already reaching tokens, AAVE for borrowing demand, and ENA for conditional fee activation. A growing market creates opportunity. The token thesis depends on how much of that opportunity it can actually retain.

Some of crypto’s strangest hacks ended with the money coming back. Four cases worth remembering: 1. Poly Network (2021) Over $600M stolen, then returned. The attacker communicated through onchain messages and even refused the bounty offered by the team. A very unusual ending to one of DeFi’s biggest exploits. 2. Euler Finance (2023) A roughly $197M exploit turned into weeks of negotiations and an apology from the attacker. Euler eventually announced that all recoverable funds had been returned. This involved Euler V1, before today’s V2 architecture. 3. Munchables (2024) Around $62.5M was taken from the Blast-based game. The developer responsible subsequently handed over the keys controlling the funds, allowing their recovery without a ransom. 4. ZKsync (2025) Around $5M in unclaimed airdrop tokens was affected by a compromised admin key. The Security Council offered a 10% bounty for returning 90% within 72 hours. The attacker complied, and the case was closed. Sometimes the most important transaction comes after the exploit.

Growing an audience on CT is harder than ever because content has become a commodity. A lot of people are confused by this, but it's basically impossible to grow off content alone anymore, because even the biggest ret*rds can use AI to write research threads now, it requires no skill whatsoever. Look at how many people posted reports on the Binance hack yesterday, majority of them doesn't even know what Binance is. So what's left? Personality. That's what is very hard to imitate and the only avenue you have left to grow on CT in 2026 and beyond

What have @Aave’s challengers actually built? Each takes a different approach to organizing lending markets and putting capital to work. 1. @Morpho: isolated markets and curated vaults Morpho Blue pairs one collateral asset with one loan asset per market. Anyone can create a market, while curated vaults allocate deposits across selected markets. Depositors get access through one vault, but their exposure depends on which markets that vault funds. 2. @eulerfinance: configurable lending infrastructure Euler’s Vault Kit lets builders create lending vaults with their own collateral relationships, oracles and borrowing limits. Vaults can connect into isolated pairs or broader markets. This gives asset issuers and curators more control. Users inherit the risks of the vault’s configuration and connected collateral. 3. @0xfluid: lending meets trading liquidity Fluid connects lending and its DEX through a shared liquidity layer. Smart Collateral and Smart Debt let eligible positions also generate swap fees. Those fees can offset borrowing costs, while positions remain exposed to changing asset composition and liquidation. For depositors and borrowers, the specific market or vault can matter as much as the protocol name.

.@Binance’s next test is showing that customer balances are fully backed after the incident. The exchange estimates the impact at around $6.3 billion, with approximately $3 billion frozen. It says SAFU and company funds will cover all losses, followed by an updated Proof of Reserves after remediation. I’d look for three things: 1. Recovery status Separate assets actually returned from assets still frozen. Frozen funds are not yet recovered funds. 2. Funding the shortfall Show how much SAFU and company capital have actually contributed toward replacing the missing assets. 3. A fresh reserve snapshot Publish post-remediation reserves against account balances, with a clear timestamp, asset coverage and a way for users to verify their inclusion. Proof of Reserves helps answer whether the reported balances are backed at that moment. It does not, by itself, reveal every off-chain liability or guarantee withdrawals will function normally. The reimbursement pledge matters. The stronger evidence will be a reconciliation showing what was lost, what came back and how the remaining gap was filled.

will @Enter_Elysium become the next Robinhood Chain, or lose momentum after launch like Arc? frankly to say i lean closer to Robinhood but i’d put the chance of comparable success at 30-40% that’s my subjective estimate for sustained liquidity, trading volume and fees a smaller, useful chain is also a credible outcome here’s why i’m paying attention 👇 1) start with demand: who needs this chain, and why would they keep using it? Robinhood has a direct route to users through its app and wallet its chain currently holds around $1.13B in DeFi TVL - $4.59B in DEX volume over seven days - that gives Elysium a demanding benchmark i’d strongly disagree if someone calls Arc a dead chain - it still has ~$617M TVL and $1.1B in stablecoins - its 7-day DEX volume is ~$210M 2) that raises a more useful question: how much deposited capital becomes recurring activity? Elysium has a specific reason to exist - built by @Kinetiq_xyz - an Arbitrum Orbit L2 that settles to HyperEVM + uses $HYPE for gas - the advertised targets are 100ms blocks + 300 Mgas/s its intended users include MMs, spot trading apps & token launch platforms that need more execution capacity i see a credible opportunity here because @HyperliquidX already attracts traders Elysium needs to give those traders useful products and better execution Kinetiq’s existing kHYPE business gives it relationships and an established presence in the eco i still wouldn’t assume staking deposits will turn into active trading liquidity 3) the token launch design the plan lets projects launch and build liquidity on Elysium then potentially establish HyperCore spot markets and HIP-3 perps if that works, Elysium could create additional trading activity across Hyperliquid the planned economics also matter: → 50% of sequencer fees for kinetiq:native buybacks and burns → 25% for builders → 25% for operations i’ll judge the buybacks by their actual dollar value a large allocation means little if fee revenue stays small 4) why only 30-40%? Elysium still needs to prove demand on mainnet its audience is narrower than Robinhood’s, and more blockspace alone won’t make users move there’s also an important timing detail: mainnet is scheduled for November 9 while native HyperCore market-data reads and trading access are planned for an upgrade about 4 weeks later part of the core thesis will remain untested at launch after launch, i’ll watch: → traders returning week after week → liquidity and volume across several apps → projects establishing viable HyperCore markets → sequencer revenue and executed KNTQ buybacks i’m cautiously optimistic Elysium addresses a clear need within an existing trading eco expect there will be i) those degens who flood in just to exploit early trends ii) and those bad devs who come to farm degens my conviction goes higher when users consistently pay to use it

Papertrade traders now have another way to trade and mine PAPER, including on Android. @ManicTrade has launched PaperManiac, a new frontend for the same Papertrade markets, contracts and liquidity. Alongside existing PAPER mining, it adds: - 50% Lossback: eligible realized trading losses earn Manic Bonus Credits. - A $2,000 USDC prize pool in November’s trading tournament. - Mining analytics to track mint rates, estimated rewards and mining costs. The important detail is how Lossback works. Lose $20 on an eligible position and receive $10 in Bonus Credits. These are promotional credits, with USDC unlocked through further real-money trading on Manic: every $50 in volume unlocks $1. Credits cannot be withdrawn directly or used to trade Papertrade. For existing Papertrade users, the useful additions are mobile access, mining visibility and extra reward campaigns in one interface. Trading still carries the risk of losing your full position. app.manic.trade/papertrade I quite like Manic’s interface. It feels smooth to use.

BREAKING: World's largest crypto exchange Binance hacked with over $5.6 billion stolen: • $1.45 billion $BTC • $875 million $ETH • $234 million $TRX • $50 million $XAUT • $1.57 billion $USDT • $823 million $USDC • $75 million $WBETH • $88.5 million $RLUSD + $447.5 million additional cryptocurrencies This is the largest hack in crypto history.

Who controls your liquidity after you automate it? Steer Smart Pools and Arrakis Pro both manage concentrated liquidity. Their control models show what users actually delegate. @steerprotocol / Smart Pools Depositors choose a vault and receive shares representing its assets. Strategy code determines liquidity placement. Steer nodes run that logic offchain and reach agreement before execution. The documented ALM engines support safeguards such as slippage limits and maximum range changes. Depositors redeem shares to exit, subject to the vault’s withdrawal and staking conditions. @arrakisfinance / Arrakis Pro Built primarily for token issuers managing treasury-owned liquidity. The team owns the vault through an NFT, while Arrakis operates the market-making strategy within the agreed parameters. The NFT holder can pause, reconfigure or withdraw. Changes to core vault parameters carry a two-day timelock; routine rebalancing happens through Arrakis’s offchain system, constrained by onchain checks. The practical difference: Steer depositors select a shared strategy. Arrakis Pro clients own a dedicated vault and delegate its operation. In both cases, withdrawal rights and trading authority are separate things. Keeping control of the assets still leaves strategy decisions that affect your returns. Fees earned, inventory exposure and rebalancing costs determine the outcome.

Who actually benefits when a crypto protocol earns fees? Six examples of how product activity connects to token economics: 1. Hyperliquid / HYPE Trading fees allocated to the Assistance Fund are converted into HYPE and burned. 2. Uniswap / UNI Activated protocol fees flow through a mechanism that burns UNI. Holding UNI does not give you a direct revenue payout. 3. Raydium / RAY 12% of pool swap fees fund RAY buybacks. Repurchased tokens are held in a public protocol wallet. 4. Pendle / PENDLE 80% of Pendle V2 yield and swap fees fund PENDLE buybacks. Repurchased-token rewards go to eligible active sPENDLE holders. 5. Curve / CRV Lock CRV for veCRV to receive a share of trading fees and crvUSD interest, distributed weekly in crvUSD. 6. Sky / SKY Protocol surplus funds SKY buybacks. Under governance-set rules, repurchased tokens can be burned or distributed to SKY stakers. These flows have different outcomes: Buyback: the protocol purchases tokens. Burn: tokens leave supply permanently. Distribution: eligible holders receive rewards. The useful question is where the money ends up, and whether you need to stake or lock to receive it.

Starknet, RAILGUN and Aztec take three different routes to private DeFi. The differences matter when you ask where your assets sit, what becomes public and who can inspect your records. @Starknet / STRK20 Adds shielded balances, private transfers and supported private swaps to the Starknet ecosystem, using existing liquidity. Its disclosure model is built in: deposits are screened, viewing keys are mandatory, and Financial Privacy Inc operates infrastructure for targeted disclosure under lawful requests. @RAILGUN_Project Adds a private-wallet layer to existing EVM chains. Users shield assets into 0zk balances and access supported DeFi integrations without moving to a separate privacy chain. Private Proofs of Innocence checks funds against known bad-activity lists without giving list providers access to private records. Users can separately share viewing keys for audits. @aztecnetwork Builds privacy into smart-contract execution. Developers combine private state and functions, executed on users’ devices, with public state and functions. Privacy therefore depends on application design. Public calls and transaction metadata can remain visible. Its mainnet Alpha is live, but the official docs describe it as early, unaudited software. For users, the choice depends on the workflow: which assets and apps are supported, what leaks at public boundaries, and who holds the power to disclose the rest.

Crypto is already inside apps people use every day. Seven examples, and what users can actually do: 1. Shopify → Base + Stripe Pay with USDC at eligible checkouts. Merchants can receive settlement in their local currency. 2. MoneyGram → Stellar + Crossmint Receive money into a USDC-backed balance, hold digital dollars and cash out locally. Available in Colombia and El Salvador. 3. Revolut → Polygon Send and receive supported stablecoins through the Revolut app using Polygon. 4. Venmo → Paxos Buy, hold and send PYUSD, including transfers between Venmo and PayPal and to supported external wallets. 5. Nubank → Circle Buy, sell and transfer USDC through Nubank Cripto in Brazil. 6. Mercado Pago → Meli Dólar Buy, hold and sell a dollar-linked stablecoin inside the Brazilian app. External wallet transfers are currently unavailable. 7. Telegram → TON Send onchain payments to Telegram users through its native Telegram Money wallet. The distribution is already there: shopping, remittances, banking and messaging. The interesting part is what each integration enables. A checkout payment, an in-app dollar balance and an external wallet transfer serve different needs.

alpha: these DeFi protocols help you make more trades and more LP profit from the same $1,000 a DEX can grow volume while its LPs lose money then i found better measures of DeFi efficiency than TVL » @1inch aqua is trying to increase the utilization of liquidity » @Uniswap v4 hooks are increasingly trying to improve the economics of liquidity those are different optimization problems, and several other projects add useful approaches → @0xfluid: combine lending and trading smart collateral + smart debt let collateral & debt positions serve as DEX liquidity trading fees can add income or offset borrowing costs → @CurveFinance: optimize for the assets being traded stableswap concentrates depth around the expected relationship between correlated assets → @BreederDodo: adjust pricing around inventory its PMM model concentrates liquidity around a reference price & changes quotes as inventory moves away from its target this makes inventory management another part of the efficiency question → @CoWSwap AMM: address arbitrage losses through batch trading its design uses solver competition to capture surplus for the pool the relevant test is whether that improves LP returns after accounting for execution and costs execution quality means the price users receive, gas costs and whether trades successfully fill adverse selection means the losses LPs take when better-informed traders trade against outdated prices i’d start with Aqua, Uniswap v3/v4, Curve and Fluid, comparing matched assets over the same period these DeFi convince me better execution for traders and better returns for LPs from the same underlying capital » $UNI $1INCH $FLUID $CRV $DODO $COW

Linn's Leverage #1139 is out: (Link in tweet below) @boros_fi @pendle_fi @Chainflip @mezzanine_fi @Mantle_Official @StaticsProtocol @GammaSwapLabs Like/Repost to support:

How much does a private wallet actually hide? @0xMiden opened its partner mainnet on October 26, bringing real assets to invited users through @joinbread. The useful part is keeping a payment from exposing the rest of your finances. For private accounts, Miden keeps balances and activity off the public ledger. Your device executes transactions and generates proofs; the network verifies them without publishing the underlying account state. But visibility depends on who is looking: • Public observers cannot inspect your private account’s full balance and history. A counterparty still knows its own transaction. • A Guardian operator can currently see the account state it backs up for recovery, but cannot move funds alone. • Validators receive encrypted transaction data during partner mainnet. Decryption requires a threshold of validators. • Swaps are currently public. Bridges and external providers receive information needed to process transfers. This remains an invite-only, temporary phase. Users must withdraw funds before the reset for public mainnet. The practical value is making payments without exposing an entire treasury or personal balance. The trade-off is understanding which services still see data while helping the account work.

TxFlow is Hyperliquid from Temu They forked Hyperliquid's Arbitrum bridge and changed the name. They copied HyperUnit too and forgot to change the name: txrelay[.]com literally says "Unit is the asset tokenization layer on TxRelay". The frontend, the API and the fees are Hyperliquid's. Even the slogan. The L1 is closed source, with Hyperliquid's naming on everything: TxCore, Tx-BFT, TIPs Hyperliquid is closed source too, but it has 27 validators that each post prices, and anyone can run a node to check them. TxFlow has 5 validators, all its own, nothing you can run, and one key that acts as the entire oracle. The same key sits on the bridge multisig So it's a centralized exchange secured by a 3/4 multisig. Their own audit says those keys "can propose arbitrary withdrawals" And the growth plan is KOLs shilling ref codes

Grvt’s next chapter is getting more concrete 👀 @grvt_io has subscribed to tokenised funding notes arranged by Mirae Asset Securities (HK), with plans to use the exposure in Grvt Earn, subject to applicable requirements. The two are also exploring tokenised Treasuries, corporate bonds and ETFs. Mirae’s wider financial group oversees US$1T+ in worldwide client assets. What interests me is where this could lead: institutional investment products alongside crypto trading and Earn in one account. ETFs are still exploratory, but the first subscription gives the collaboration a concrete starting point.

Why does @infinifi offer higher yield to users willing to wait? The mechanism combines income from underlying strategies with a larger share of returns for committed capital. The basic flow: • Deposit USDC to mint iUSD, the non-interest-bearing receipt. • Stake iUSD into siUSD for liquid yield. • Choose a locked position for higher-weighted returns and a slower exit. infiniFi allocates capital across liquid and longer-duration strategies. Depositors’ withdrawal commitments help it match those investments to expected outflows. Some capital backing liquid positions can also enter longer-duration strategies. An important detail: the unbonding period starts when you request to unwind, rather than counting down automatically from your deposit. But the locked position also carries first-loss exposure. According to its slashing docs, realized portfolio losses hit Locked-iUSD before senior positions. Starting to unwind does not remove that exposure. If the junior capital is exhausted, losses can reach senior depositors too. And liquid positions still depend on available reserves; direct redemptions can queue during liquidity stress. The extra yield therefore compensates for both reduced exit flexibility and a different place in the loss hierarchy.