News linked to both this project and an event.
Odaily News: ether.fi announced that EtherFi Cash's existing lending infrastructure can no longer meet development demands. It is currently deploying a dedicated Aave V4 instance on the Optimism chain to support its credit card backend. EtherFi Cash currently has $22 million in active borrowings, and its lending capacity is expected to reach $500 million by 2027. Already, 70,000 cardholders are using cryptocurrency for spending without needing to sell their crypto holdings.
Decentralized finance platform Ether.fi announced that its self-custody app has added trading for tokenized stocks, metals, and crypto assets, along with the ability to borrow against multiple holdings as collateral. Users can lend assets or borrow against a portfolio through the integrated Aave market on Optimism, allowing them to transfer or spend borrowed funds without selling their positions. Ether.fi stated that its fiat accounts support global deposits and withdrawals across more than 30 currencies and payment methods. However, tokenized stock and metal trading is not available to users in the United States and certain other markets. Fiat accounts are only open to users who have completed payment card identity verification, and deposit and withdrawal speeds may vary. Ether.fi will also introduce automatic ETHFI buybacks and offer 3% cashback on card spending. Ether.fi founder and CEO Mike Silagadze said that initial support will cover Ethereum, Bitcoin, Hyperliquid, ETHFI, and select tokenized stocks and gold, with additional collateral assets to be added later. (Decrypt)
Odaily News: Andre Cronje, founder of DeFi platform Flying Tulip and creator of Fantom Network, stated that most DeFi protocols are no longer truly decentralized, with only a few niche areas still qualifying as DeFi. He believes DeFi has evolved into "on-chain finance" or "open finance." He pointed out that true DeFi should possess characteristics such as decentralization, immutability, and the absence of intermediaries, whereas the intermediaries in most current protocols have become corporations, taking on traditional financial institution roles such as decision-makers and risk committees. Cronje noted that this does not mean true DeFi has completely disappeared, as some protocols are still innovating. Data from DefiLlama shows that the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi has dropped from $167 billion in early October 2025 to $75 billion at the time of the original report over the past 10 months, a decline of more than half. In a working paper published in March, the European Central Bank (ECB) analyzed Aave, MakerDAO, Ampleforth, and Uniswap, finding that based on holding snapshots from November 2022 and May 2023, the top 100 addresses holding governance tokens in these protocols each controlled over 80% of the token supply. The ECB consequently questioned the level of decentralization of these DAOs and whether they should continue to be regarded as "fully decentralized" services exempt from the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA). (Cointelegraph)
Odaily News: Pendle announced on X that Aave V4 has added support for PT Looping on Pendle. Users can participate in the PT-USDG loop lending strategy from the Global Dollar Network. Aave V4's interest rates are priced based on aggregate utilization across the entire hub, so looping operations will not drive up its own rates.
Odaily News: Standard Chartered initiated coverage on Monday of blockchain oracle project Chainlink, projecting LINK to reach $200 by the end of 2030 — roughly 25 times its current price of around $8. The bank's phased targets are $13 by the end of this year, followed by $41, $82, and $133. Standard Chartered estimates that the on-chain tokenized asset market will reach $4 trillion by the end of 2028, with DeFi-deployed assets hitting $2.7 trillion by 2030 — a 37-fold increase from current levels. The bank expects Chainlink fees to grow approximately 25-fold over the same period, assuming token prices track fee growth. Chainlink secures over $110 billion in total value, covering approximately 70% of the value that global DeFi relies on from oracles, with a share exceeding 80% on Ethereum; Aave V3 accounts for 44% of that. Swift, DTCC, Euroclear, JPMorgan, Mastercard, UBS, Fidelity, and S&P Global are all listed as institutions using its services. Chainlink still lags behind LayerZero in cross-chain interoperability. Following the $292 million attack in April, over $7 billion in token value has migrated to Chainlink CCIP, with second-quarter transaction volume reaching $4.9 billion — up 353% year-over-year. Risks include slowing institutional tokenization, pilots not converting to production processes, and technical failures impacting confidence. (Decrypt)
Odaily News: Ethereum developers have proposed a "Tapered Issuance Burn" mechanism, which plans to gradually burn a portion of validators' idealized duty rewards as the ETH staking ratio rises; when the staked amount approaches 50% of the total supply, ETH net issuance will drop to 0%. The proposal's author stated that the ETH staking ratio has already exceeded one-third of the total supply as of April; without adjustments, Jerome de Tychey noted that by January 2028, the staked amount could exceed 70 million ETH, representing over 55% of the supply. Supporters argue that excessive staking could first render small independent validators economically unviable, leading to staking concentration among custodians and large service providers; the proposal is planned to be implemented over an 18-month period, with an additional preparation window of approximately 6 months reserved before any potential network upgrade. Stani Kulechov, founder of lending protocol Aave, stated that once the staking ratio exceeds 50% and rewards drop to 0%, yield uncertainty could weaken institutional staking and DeFi demand. He noted that ETH lending strategies may be affected, and the proposal remains in its early stages. (Bitcoin.com News)
Odaily News – Grayscale withdrew three ETF registration applications for Cardano (ADA), Hedera (HBAR), and Polkadot (DOT) in succession on August 7, with the three withdrawal filings submitted approximately 190 seconds apart.All three withdrawal filings indicate that Grayscale no longer plans to proceed with the issuance of shares for the related ETFs. The filings also note that the registration statements had not yet taken effect, no securities were issued or sold, and no preliminary prospectus was published. These withdrawals do not represent rejections by the SEC of the related ETF applications, and the filings do not disclose the reasons behind them.As of August 8, Grayscale's altcoin ETF applications for Bittensor, Aave, BNB, NEAR, and Zcash remain in the preliminary stage. Previously, Grayscale's Avalanche Staking ETF and Hyperliquid Staking ETF registration statements took effect in March and June of this year, respectively. However, the effectiveness of a registration statement does not mean the product has begun trading. (cryptoslate)
Odaily News On August 6, at the "All Core Devs consensus call" held by the Ethereum community (a biweekly meeting to discuss consensus layer changes), Jerome introduced EIP-8363, a proposal aimed at introducing a decreasing burn mechanism for Ethereum. Once the staking ratio exceeds 50%, the staking incentive for validators would drop to zero.However, other participants expressed concerns about the potential negative impact on small validator nodes and the risk of centralization, and also questioned the actual returns for stakers and the complexity of implementation. As a result, the proposal was ultimately recommended for removal from consideration for inclusion in the Hegota upgrade. Jerome and the other authors of the proposal were also advised to respond to all comments on the EIP thread on the Eth Magicians forum.It is reported that EIP-8363 was submitted as a draft on August 4, in an attempt to meet the non-core EIP submission window for the Hegota upgrade (deadline August 6), but it triggered extensive controversy within the community regarding timing, impact on staking/DeFi, and centralization risks. Executives from Ethereum ecosystem companies, including SharpLink CEO Joseph Chalom, Aave founder Stani Kulechov, and Ether.fi founder Mike Silagadze, all publicly opposed the proposal.
According to BeInCrypto, a latest report jointly released by CoinShares and Token Terminal shows that over the past year (Q2 2025 to Q2 2026), the deposit volume of tokenized real-world assets (RWA) in the DeFi sector increased from $2.3 billion to $7.4 billion, a year-on-year increase of more than twofold, while total DeFi deposits declined by approximately 15% during the same period. The growth was primarily concentrated in yield-bearing products, including tokenized treasury bonds and multi-strategy funds (such as JTRSY, BUIDL, sUSDS), with Aave, Morpho, and Kamino providing the deepest liquidity. Meanwhile, on-chain RWA spot trading volume increased by approximately 220% year-on-year, while native crypto spot trading volume on decentralized exchanges fell by approximately 70%.
Odaily News: Aave founder Stani Kulechov published a lengthy post stating that Ethereum's EIP-8361 progressive issuance burn proposal has systemic issues. The proposal aims to gradually burn consensus layer issuance rewards, reducing the net staking yield to zero when the total amount of staked ETH reaches 60.25 million, approximately 50% of the total supply. Stani Kulechov believes that the second-order ripple effects of this proposal have not been fully modeled and could damage the foundations of the Ethereum ecosystem across multiple dimensions. He stated that a zero-yield mechanism may exacerbate staking centralization, with home validators being the first to exit due to fixed costs such as hardware and electricity, while non-yield-driven entities like ETF issuers, exchanges, and corporate treasury funds will remain. MEV rewards, which are unaffected by the proposal, would also expand the advantages of top professional operators. He also noted that individual stakers could face tax and operational risks. If tax authorities calculate taxes based on the full issuance amount and classify the burned portion as a capital loss, home node operators could experience after-tax losses. With penalty standards for faults remaining unchanged, the node recovery period after a fault could be extended by up to 14 times as net yields decline. Stani Kulechov stated that staking yields serve as the pricing benchmark for on-chain ETH interest rates. A decline in yields could cause DeFi lending and fixed-income markets to lose their pricing anchor, potentially driving on-chain capital toward stablecoins offering 4% to 5% annual returns. For institutional investors, predictable yields are a core competitive advantage of ETH relative to BTC. If yields fall to zero while volatility increases, ETH's differentiation in the store-of-value track would diminish. He also pointed out that after the proposal is implemented, MEV's share of total validator revenue could rise from the current 7% to nearly 30%, potentially incentivizing operators to prioritize relay nodes that support censorship, thereby weakening Ethereum's credible neutrality. If an MEV burn mechanism is subsequently added, validator revenue could be nearly eliminated. Stani Kulechov suggested that the proposal's authors release after-tax yield assessments for individual node operators, tax opinions from major jurisdictions, and cascade risk models for the DeFi ecosystem, while setting a non-zero net yield floor. He believes that staking centralization should be addressed directly with targeted measures, rather than by suppressing validator yields across the board.
Odaily News, Ground COO Stephanie Vaughan stated that the current DeFi industry is陷入 a "yield war," but market participants are more focused on securing distribution access to fintech platforms, overlooking the real problems users need to solve.She pointed out that Robinhood, Coinbase, Revolut, and Kraken are competing for user funds, while protocols such as Aave, Morpho, and Ethena are competing to become the infrastructure for lending strategies. Vault service providers and risk management institutions are also competing around fintech platforms. However, this model does not establish DeFi's own user relationships—it merely fights for the opportunity to be selected by platforms.Stephanie believes that the current market is signaling that DeFi products have near-zero pricing power. Much of the yield comes from subsidies provided by platforms, Vault service providers, strategy providers, or underlying protocols, rather than genuine demand created by the products themselves. This is more like paying "shelf fees" than achieving true distribution capabilities.She further noted that some multi-strategy Vaults suffer from issues such as idle capital, deployment delays, and slow governance processes, resulting in a gap between the actual returns users receive and the advertised APY. In contrast, traditional financial products like money market funds can put capital to work immediately.Stephanie stated that with declining L2 costs and maturing cross-chain infrastructure, the chain itself is no longer a core competitive advantage. In the future, DeFi should build products closer to personal execution environments, driven by user needs. She believes the competitive focus should shift from shared Vaults to infrastructure like MPC wallets, allowing users to retain control over strategies while platforms handle execution and streamline processes.
According to The Block, Aave founder Stani Kulechov announced on July 30, 2026, that Aave proposed to delist 50 low-adoption asset reserves and 21 expired Pendle PTs, and completely shut down six small deployments: Sonic, Scroll, zkSync, Metis, Soneium, and Aptos, involving a total of approximately $98.1 million in supplied assets and $15.6 million in outstanding debt. The proposal was drafted by risk service provider LlamaRisk and executed under Aave's new risk framework, aimed at streamlining operational overhead and reducing maintenance costs for oracle and liquidation infrastructure. Affected reserves will have new activities frozen and supply and borrow caps reduced, while reserve factors for deployments pending closure will be increased to 99% to encourage users to actively close positions.
Ethena announced on the X platform its official launch on the Monad blockchain. USDe and sUSDe are now available across the entire Monad ecosystem, including integration with Monad's Aave instance, enabling Ethena users to borrow stablecoin liquidity at scale. Additionally, parallelized EVM USDe is now live.
Bitwise released a report stating that while crypto asset prices fell by approximately 36% in the first half of 2026, crypto-related stocks rose by 23%. This performance trailed only emerging market stocks, outpacing all other major asset classes. Bitwise Head of Research Ryan Rasmussen noted that the 30 crypto-related publicly listed companies in the Bitwise Crypto Innovators 30 Index outperformed the U.S. stock market by a factor of two, driven by factors including AI computing demand benefiting mining companies, stablecoin issuers, and asset tokenization platforms.Furthermore, according to Token Terminal data, the top ten crypto applications generated cumulative revenue of $5.9 billion over the past 12 months. PancakeSwap, Hyperliquid, and Aave ranked in the top three, with cumulative revenues of $923 million, $912 million, and $877 million, respectively.During the same period, the scale of tokenized real-world assets reached $33 billion in the second quarter, an increase of 45% from the beginning of the year; open interest in prediction markets hit an all-time high of $1.8 billion, with quarterly trading volume reaching $43 billion. (The Block)
Decentralized lending protocol Aave has deployed V4 on the Avalanche network, extending the latest lending architecture beyond Ethereum for the first time and laying the foundation for the tokenized real-world asset lending market.
Aave has announced the selection of Chainlink CCIP as its cross-chain infrastructure standard. CCIP is currently handling cross-chain GHO transfers and multi-chain governance execution through Aave's delivery infrastructure, a.DI. Going forward, it will also support the cross-chain logic of the Aave App via Stable Vaults, covering scenarios such as vault rebalancing, yield optimization, deposits, and transfers. These cross-chain operations will occur between Ethereum, Base, and Arbitrum.
Interactive Brokers announced on Tuesday an expansion of its digital asset business, adding trading tokens such as Aave, Aptos, Canton, Lido DAO, Monad, NEAR Protocol, Plasma, Pax Gold, and Uniswap, and supporting 24/7 stablecoin wallet transfers via USDC, PYUSD, and RLUSD. As of mid-2026, Interactive Brokers manages approximately $930.3 billion in client assets. Crypto trading commissions start at 0.12% to 0.18% of the total transaction amount, with a minimum of $1.75 per order, and no additional spreads, markups, or custody fees are charged. The company stated that two-way stablecoin deposits are not available for UK and Irish accounts, and clients of the Irish affiliate company will not have access to the newly listed crypto assets. (Bitcoin.com News).
: The UK's HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has confirmed that depositing crypto assets into DeFi lending protocols and liquidity pools will no longer be treated as a taxable disposal, and capital gains tax will be deferred until the investor makes an actual economic disposal of the assets. Announced on Monday, this measure will take effect on April 6, 2027, and will amend the Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992. HMRC estimates that the measure will affect approximately 700,000 individuals and trustees using crypto loans and liquidity pools. Aave founder Stani Kulechov stated that this move is a "step in the right direction." (Decrypt).
Aave Labs announces the launch of Stable Vaults, opening them to third-party developers and enterprises. Stable Vaults convert on-chain floating lending yields into fixed yields, and automate cross-chain liquidity management, asset rebalancing, and yield distribution, enabling enterprises to rapidly build stablecoin yield products. Aave Labs stated that this solution has been deployed on the Aave App and is now available for integration by wallets, exchanges, neobanks (Neobank), payment companies, and fintech enterprises, and also supports access to any ERC-4626 yield strategy.
DeSci protocol Bio Protocol has announced the launch of OpenLabs, positioning it as a coordination layer for human-agent collaboration in scientific research, aimed at transforming scientific ideas into funded execution projects. OpenLabs comprises five interconnected layers: Posts & Discovery, Projects, Agent Collaboration, Web3 Incentive Layer, and a Bounty System. Regarding incentives, OpenLabs plans to adopt a USDC yield-based funding mechanism to finance agent reasoning and tool usage. Users can deposit USDC and select projects to support; funds are allocated to audited yield vaults such as Morpho and Aave. The generated yield flows to projects for computation, queries, and simulations, while the principal assumes no risk. When a project reaches the stage requiring real capital, it can issue tokens via the Bio launchpad or pursue private fundraising and follow the traditional biotech path.