DefiLlama Research

A few weeks ago, we asked whether Hyperliquid's HIP-3 could bring in new RWA traders. The answer was yes: 169K wallets, 31.7% of new Hyperliquid users between January and June '26, made their first trade on an RWA market. But did they stick around? We found that RWA-first traders are ~38% less active than the usual cohort of weekly active wallets; 47.4% traded exactly once and never returned. What's more interesting is that 81% of wallets on either side never cross into the other market. Those that did (Other-first) make up 30%-40% of RWA markets' active wallets across nearly every activity bucket. 🌐 Find out what came next for those new users and what the second half of the story looks like.

The EU's MiCA created demand for euro stablecoins through a two-stage purge. It began with a June 2024 issuer licensing requirement and, more recently, the July 2026 CASP deadline, which concentrated nearly all euro stablecoin activity into 9 regulator-approved tokens. Euro stablecoin growth fired back up following July 2024's Title IV e-money-token issuer regime effective date, effectively growing the market cap by 217% since. It was a bumpy road to 2026, one where Tether discontinued its EURT, and Coinbase restricted all non-compliant stablecoins for its EEA entities. Enter 2026: H1 began showing positive growth but ultimately ended flat. Then the July 1 CASP transitional authorization window closed, which governs which exchanges can operate EU-wide. The regulatory battle was over, mostly, and growth quickly resumed. Since that July 1 deadline, the EUR-pegged stablecoin market cap has already grown 15%. Today, $807M (97.9%) of the $825M EUR-pegged stablecoin market cap is MiCA-authorized. The top two, EURC and EURCV, represent 85.2% of that. Still, this market represents just 0.27% of the global stablecoin market cap: 74% sits on Ethereum, 7.9% on Base, and 7.5% on Solana. The European Central Bank's Christine Lagarde finds that demand for euro stablecoins is "far weaker than it appears," and, so far, the regulator is against granting private euro stablecoin issuers access to ECB liquidity facilities. That hasn't stopped Qivalis and its 37-bank consortium (incl. BNP Paribas, ING, UniCredit, & BBVA) from pursuing its own MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin. Far ahead of the ECB's own digital euro efforts, Qivalis is targeting an H2 2026 launch. The demand is clearly there, and it's in the DefiLlama data. 🌐 Keep a close eye on the euro stablecoin market here.

"Identify sources of growth, protocol-owned liquidity, and ecosystem activity." We did just that by asking LlamaAI to review the new THORChain dashboard. Some highlights: → 30d volume: $761.66M, averaging $25.39M a day → 30d swaps: 1.85M, averaging 61.8K a day → Lifetime: $124.36B across 76.45M swaps and 1.11M wallets → Lifetime fees: $173.39M ($161.66M went out to suppliers, affiliate fees are 28% of lifetime gross protocol revenue) → TVL: $55.18M across 41 pools and 13 chains (BTC and ETH together account for roughly 78% of liquidity by chain) → 95 active nodes run by 51 operators ($38.77M/90.06M RUNE bonded) There is plenty more to uncover, including income statements (table & Sankey flows), tokenomics & unlock schedules, and a direct link to the protocol. 🌐 Find the new THORChain dashboard here.

Introducing a comprehensive, fully integrated dashboard highlighting THORChain fundamentals: revenue engines, liquidity depth, activity and token data. This dashboard can be used to identify sources of growth, protocol-owned liquidity, and ecosystem activity. Find it here.

Money, unfortunately, still moves at the speed of bureaucracy in most of the world. We spoke with Wei Zhou, CEO of Coins.ph, the Philippines' largest regulated crypto exchange, about his "T+0 plus zero" approach to get settlement times & fees as close to zero as they can go. Highlights: → USDT has become a backdoor dollar account for half the world → Capital fleeing a weakening currency doesn't help adoption; volume flow is as critical as the licenses needed → Corridor by corridor, a peso stablecoin is coming, with the exchange now testing in a regulatory sandbox and targeting a year-end launch 🌐 More in this interview.

Where is the best place to trade crypto in 2026? What is onchain gacha? Which launchpad should I use? Who's building privacy for institutions? 🌐 Find these answers and more in the latest edition of Research Notes.

Cash or stock? Unlike other tokenized stock platforms that reinvest eligible dividends into a token's exposure, Bitget's rTokens distribute stablecoins directly to your wallet, just like a traditional brokerage. Five of the top 10 rTokens by trading volume pay dividends this way, just a few of the 500+ rTokens issued through Bitget's regulated RWA issuance platform Reality Protocol. Here's what a payout might look like today: → rCSCO (Cisco): At $121.50/share, $1,000 buys 8.23 rCSCO tokens; Cisco declared a $0.42/share dividend; ex-div/record date July 6, 2026, paid July 22, 2026; 💵 payout = $3.46 USDT → rNVDA (NVIDIA): At $219.22/share, $1,000 buys 4.56 rNVDA tokens; NVIDIA's newly raised dividend is $0.25/share; ex-div/record date June 4, 2026, paid June 26, 2026; 💵 payout = $1.14 → rPFE (Pfizer): At $25.81/share, $1,000 buys 38.74 rPFE tokens; Pfizer declared its Q3 2026 dividend at $0.43/share; ex-div/record date July 24, 2026, paid September 1, 2026; 💵 payout = $16.66 USDT How does Bitget's $2B tokenized-equity stack work? We compare rTokens vs Stock+ on custody, dividends, and liquidity depth here.

Introducing the DefiLlama Market Maker Performance Index Leaderboard, built with Forgd. 40+ institutional liquidity providers graded by: → Depth → Volume → Spread → KPI adherence → Uptime & exchange coverage Traders and token issuers can access transparent data in the most comprehensive dashboard of its kind. Find the new Market Maker Leaderboard here.

Tokenization brings options that didn't exist a year ago. Bitget Stocks 2.0 gives both institutional and retail traders a choice: would you like the classic Stock+ experience, or DeFi with your Reality rToken stock? 🌐 More on Bitget Stocks in this new report.

Introducing the DefiLlama App. LlamaAI is now in your pocket. Create custom financial charts, dashboards, and analysis from a single prompt. App users get extra free queries. iOS + Android out now (beware of fake apps).

The physical collectibles scene is back, and it's all grown up. Analysts value the this market anywhere from $10 billion to $20 billion for the US alone, to $30B globally in 2025, growing toward $54B by 2033. It was only natural that physical collectibles would end up onchain, gamified, gacha-style. Onchain gacha, aka spinning a randomized "pull" for a chance at a valuable asset, with an instant buyback if you don't want it, has become one of the fastest-growing consumer verticals in crypto this year, and has generated a combined $33.95M in fees over the trailing 30 days across two distinct DefiLlama categories. This is not one market, and the nuance between Physical TCG protocols and Gamified Mining is important to clarify. Ultimately, what separates them is how much money they earn and keep. 🌐 Find out more about the onchain gacha landscape here.

Research Notes #2 just went out. Inside: → Testing Hylo's xSOL → Deep Cuts: comparing six tranching protocols vs. 151 exploits. → Notes from the field and this week's news, condensed. → Tools for Llamas: the new RWA dashboard. 🗞 Read it here.

xSOL from Hylo touts 'no liquidation, no funding rate' for 3x SOL exposure. Both are true, but who pays when the pool comes up short? 🌐 New research breaks down how xSOL's supply grew 28x as it lost nearly all its value, and what a recovery would take.

Four of the biggest names in fintech landed on the same playbook. Coinbase, Robinhood, Deel, and Kraken each adopted curated stablecoin vaults, letting users earn yield without touching DeFi directly. Sentora curates two of the four. 🌐 Together, we cover the scale and composition of the vault economy.

Capital that used to churn roughly twice a day is now turning over less than one and a half times. Trading has thinned out considerably, but the size is still there. Perp DEX volume has fallen sharply over the past year, but open interest hasn't. Comparing two back-to-back six-month windows, average daily volume across perp DEXs fell from $32.4B to $21.4B, down to 66% of its prior level. Open interest fell too, but far less, from $16.4B to $14.8B, or 90% of its prior average. Dividing the two, turnover dropped from 1.98x to 1.45x. In the fallout of the 10/10 crash, the scene was shaken up. Aster, Lighter, and edgeX all hit individual peaks just before, but have yet to once again experience those levels of activity. Even Hyperliquid's dominance shrank along with its OI, from $14.6B on July 26, 2025 (89% OI market share), to a $4.77B bottom on Feb 7, 2026 (49% OI market share). Of the six protocols that averaged more than $1B/day in the first half, none held onto that pace in the second: → ApeX Omni came closest at 80.9% of its prior volume, → Hyperliquid next at 79.2%, → then Variational (51.7%), → edgeX (50.7%), → Aster (49.6%), → and Lighter, the steepest drop, at 27.3%. GRVT stands out: it averaged $796M/day in the first half, then grew to $1.32B/day (+166%). On open interest, restricting to protocols still holding more than $100M in Period B, six exceed their own prior-period OI: → Extended (497.7% of prior), → GRVT (161.3%), → ApeX Omni (133.2%), → edgeX (116.4%), → Ostium (111.3%), → and Aster (105.7%). GMTrade and StandX still show the same volume-outlier pattern: GMTrade went from a negligible $2.2M/day to $642.2M/day, and StandX grew from $112.5M/day to $608.3M/day. Charting from DefiLlama's LlamaAI. 🦙

What is today's vault economy? One that redefined DeFi's lending landscape, replacing broad money markets with a new capital allocation model: predefined risk rules set by curators. 🌐 Our latest report with Sentora explores 'vaultification'.

Knowledge is power, and in DeFi, more is better. The llamas now have two newsletters: → DefiLlama Newsletter for market updates, new tools, and fresh datasets. → Research Notes for reports, interviews, and strategic market analysis. Subscribe to both: https://defillama.com/newsletters

MiCA forced a wave of major global exchanges to restrict or shut down service across the EU. Several ranked among the deepest order books in crypto, and EU traders lost access to them overnight. If you've been displaced, DefiLlama built a dashboard to help you find a new home. Here's how to use it: Start by sorting venues by spot markets, perp markets, those with confirmed on/offramp fees, or the entire list. Not every exchange offers all three, so the filter narrows it down to what you need the most. The core comparison of the dashboard is liquidity, measured two ways: → Spot ±2% and Perp ±2% show how much you can trade before the price moves 2% against you → Spot ±0.5% and Perp ±0.5% show the same thing at a tighter band Fees are an important consideration, and they can vary across venues. Spot and perp fees are the standard trading costs, displayed here as regular tier maker/taker fees. Beside it are on/offramp comparisons, measuring what €1K costs to convert into crypto and back. Last is 'Know Your Customer' (KYC), the identity verification required to trade on a venue. This can include government ID, proof of address, or a liveness check. Each exchange badge shows how they gate access, and they all have their distinctions, so take note. 🌐 Compare which exchanges can serve you in the EU, what they offer, and what it costs to use them here.

Ten years ago, centralized exchanges were niche infrastructure for a niche asset class. Today, they process trillions in monthly volume and determine where the price of the world's most traded assets is formed. 🌐 Presenting a condensed version of our recent report, "From Exchange to Infrastructure: How CEXs Are Reshaping Global Market Access".

The first edition of our Research Notes newsletter is here. Find all our recent work, data-driven notes & analysis, and trending news across DeFi. This week: why Hyperliquid's RWA boom hasn't translated into revenue. 🗞 Subscribe to get it weekly.