Token Terminal

1) Executive summary
CoW Protocol $COW is an intent-based trading layer where users sign orders describing the outcome they want and professional solvers compete in batch auctions to deliver the best possible execution. Instead of routing each trade through a fixed path, the project turns every order into a competition across nearly every major public and private liquidity source, with MEV protection built into the settlement design.
The problem it addresses is structural: onchain traders face MEV extraction, fragmented liquidity across a growing number of chains and venues, and execution complexity that ordinary users should not have to manage. As trading spreads across more networks, wallets, and applications, the gap between the price a user expects and the price they receive becomes a product surface of its own.
CoW Protocol's answer is delegated execution. Users sign intents; solvers calculate gas, manage price risk, and submit transactions on their behalf, absorbing execution failures. The business model follows the same flow: users pay fees collected on trade surplus and volume, through integration partners and as network fees covering gas. CoW DAO retains a portion of those fees as revenue, and what remains after solver incentives is gross profit.
The opportunity is to be the execution layer behind other products rather than a single venue. In Q1 '26 that positioning was visible across the stack: CoW Swap launched as the first aggregator on Plasma, Tydro brought CoW Protocol-powered swaps to Ink, Bitget Wallet integrated CoW Protocol to execute swaps for its users while also joining as a solver and connecting its liquidity network, and new waves of tokenized stocks and ETFs from Ondo Finance became tradable through the project. CoW DAO, formed in 2022, continued to expand its core team across research, smart contract engineering, and design.
The quarter itself paired a cooling market with rising usage. Trading volume roughly halved from Q4 '25 while monthly active users rose to their highest level in over a year on a more diversified chain mix, and fees grew strongly year over year on fee policies introduced over the past year. Governance was active, with an RFP for a value distribution mechanism and votes on an affiliate program (CIP-84) and solver rewards (CIP-85).
🔑 Key metrics (Q1 2026)
Trading volume: $13.9 B (-48.2% QoQ, -42.9% YoY)Fees: $9.6 M (-10.2% QoQ, +54.1% YoY)Revenue: $6.8 M (-36.6% QoQ, +23.1% YoY)Gross profit: $3.4 M (-56.7% QoQ, +30.9% YoY)Treasury: $110.0 M (-0.2% QoQ, -49.8% YoY)Monthly active users: 64.5 K (+5.9% QoQ, +71.1% YoY)Fully diluted market cap: $213.5 M (-0.8% QoQ, -54.4% YoY)
👥 CoW DAO team commentary
"Q1 2026 is best read as the first full quarter of a deliberate shift the team made at the end of 2025: choosing to prioritize profitability over raw volume, with the implementation of modest volume fees. As a direct consequence, non-economically viable flow churned, and volume dropped at the same time that revenue grew YoY. The Core Team regards that trade-off as healthy, given CoW Protocol’s price offerings, measured by markouts, continue to improve.
Against that backdrop, CoW Protocol continued to invest in its core engine in Q1, became the first DEX aggregator to launch on Plasma, and added integrations with Tydro, Arcadia, and Bitget Wallet. In parallel, CoW DAO began an initiative with Aragon to research an evolution of the protocol's value distribution and tokenomics.
In Q2, the team will stay focused on the same priorities: deepening high-value partnerships and improving the DAO's capacity to serve them, with a particular emphasis on quality of service on the B2B side."
2) Trading volume
Trading volume measures the total value of trades executed through CoW Protocol, where signed orders are settled by solvers competing in batch auctions. Volume totaled $13.9 B in Q1 '26, down 48.2% QoQ and 42.9% YoY, its lowest level in the past five quarters and roughly half the level of Q4 '25.
The pullback follows two strong quarters, with $34.4 B in Q3 '25 and $26.7 B in Q4 '25, and coincides with the highest user counts in over a year, so the decline reads as smaller average trade values rather than fewer traders. The pullback was largely market-driven, with DEX aggregator volume down 33.1% QoQ sector-wide and total DEX volume down 38.6% over the same period, confirming the contraction was largely an industry-wide condition.
The chain mix remains Ethereum-centric. Ethereum settled 90.2% of Q1 '26 volume (+0.6 pp QoQ, -4.3 pp YoY), with Base at 4.1% and Arbitrum One at 4.0%. The long tail is broadening: BNB Chain reached 0.7%, Polygon 0.4%, Avalanche 0.3%, and Gnosis 0.3%, while Linea and Plasma registered their first volume. Large trades still concentrate where liquidity is deepest, even as deployments multiply.
The top 10 asset pairs accounted for $7.7 B, or 55.7% of Q1 '26 volume. USDC-WETH led at $2.0 B, followed by USDC-USDT at $1.6 B and USDT-WETH at $1.3 B. The list is dominated by majors: stablecoin pairs (USDC-USDT, PYUSD-USDC), ETH liquid staking pairs (WETH-wstETH, WETH-stETH), and BTC pairs (USDC-WBTC, USDT-WBTC, WBTC-WETH, USDC-cbBTC). The weight of correlated and stable pairs is notable given the February reduction of fees on those trades to 0.3 bps.
👥 CoW DAO team commentary
"The bulk of the decline in volume is the result of an industry-wide pullback in DEX trading volume. The remainder is the direct, intended result of our profitability shift: the implementation of volume fees and corresponding purge of toxic flow.
There was also the research and initial discussions of the solver rewards mechanism, aimed at re-introducing consistency rewards to keep competition efficient and to ensure CoW Protocol serves a broad and diverse set of orders rather than only the largest trades. This initiative moves to voting by governance at the end of Q1 and it’s expected to have effects in Q2.
Looking ahead, we will continue to focus on the quality of the volume we attract and pursue strategies that emphasize profitability – for example, nurturing the integration pipeline and unlocking volume from partners over time."
3) Fees
Fees measure the total value paid by users to trade through CoW Protocol, spanning fees on trade surplus and volume, integration partner fees, network fees covering gas, and MEV Blocker fees. Fees totaled $9.6 M in Q1 '26, down 10.2% QoQ but up 54.1% YoY.
Fees held up far better than volume: Q1 '26 fees equal roughly 7.0 bps of trading volume, up from 4.0 bps in Q4 '25 and 2.6 bps in Q1 '25. The data reflects fee policies introduced over the past year and a mix shift in flow, with monetization per dollar traded rising even as volume fell.
Ethereum generated 82.9% of Q1 '26 fees, a smaller share than its 90.2% of volume, and its fee share has declined for three consecutive quarters from a Q2 '25 peak of 88.2%. Base contributed 6.7%, Arbitrum One 6.5%, Polygon 1.4%, BNB Chain 1.2%, and Avalanche 1.0%. Smaller chains contribute proportionally more fees than volume, consistent with smaller, retail-sized trades carrying higher fee intensity.
👥 CoW DAO team commentary
"Fees per unit of volume rose to roughly 7.0 bps, up from about 4.0 bps in Q4 2025 and 2.6 bps in Q1 2025, as the fee policies introduced over the past year took full effect and the flow mix tilted toward higher-quality, monetizable trades.
In Q1 we also experimented with differentiated fee rates by asset class, including a February reduction on correlated and stable pairs, which helped retain stablecoin volume that would otherwise have churned. We expect fee intensity to remain structurally higher than 2025 levels as these policies mature."
4) Revenue
Revenue measures the portion of fees retained by CoW DAO, derived from trade-level fees, partner revenue sharing, RPC rebates, and MEV-related activities. Revenue totaled $6.8 M in Q1 '26, down 36.6% QoQ against an elevated Q4 '25 base of $10.7 M, but up 23.1% YoY.
Q4 '25 was the strongest revenue quarter of the past five, lifted in part by one-time proceeds from the sale of MEV Blocker RPC to Consensys, so the sequential decline partly reflects an elevated comparison base.
Ethereum produced 87.2% of Q1 '26 revenue, with Base at 5.9% and Arbitrum One at 4.5%. The distribution sits between the volume mix (Ethereum at 90.2%) and the fee mix (Ethereum at 82.9%), as retention varies by fee type and chain. BNB Chain, Polygon, and Avalanche each contributed about 1% or less.
Gross profit measures what CoW Protocol retains after solver incentives, the COW rewards paid to solvers for executing orders. Gross profit totaled $3.4 M in Q1 '26, down 56.7% QoQ from an exceptional Q4 '25 but up 30.9% YoY.
Gross profit is the report's bottom-line view of onchain unit economics: of the $9.6 M users paid in fees, $6.8 M was retained as revenue and $3.4 M remained after compensating the solver network.
Treasury measures the value of assets held in onchain addresses controlled by CoW DAO, including the main safe and the Managed Treasury. The treasury averaged $110.0 M in Q1 '26, essentially flat QoQ (-0.2%) and down 49.8% YoY.
The YoY decline is consistent with the repricing of the native token, given the treasury's heavy COW weighting, rather than spending; quarter on quarter the position held steady. Treasury resources fund operations, contributor incentives, and ecosystem growth, the same economics the value distribution RFP addresses.
COW dominated the treasury at $88.6 M, or 80.5% of the Q1 '26 average. The non-COW balance of roughly $21.5 M sits largely in stablecoin and yield-bearing positions: sDAI at $8.2 M, syrupUSDC at $4.1 M, kpk-managed USDC and EURC vaults at about $5.0 M combined, osETH at $878.3 K, and aEthEURC at $874.1 K. This diversified sleeve represents the DAO's spending power independent of COW's market price.
👥 CoW DAO team commentary
"The year-over-year growth is the more representative comparison and reflects the same dynamic seen in fees: revenue per unit of volume improved materially even as volume fell, so the protocol earned more from a smaller, higher-quality flow than it would have a year ago.
CoW Protocol’s increasing focus on integrations is increasingly visible on the revenue side, where partner-attributed revenue grew and now represents a relevant part of protocol revenue. As we close and ramp new partners, we expect that our revenue base will broaden further."
5) Monthly active users
Monthly active users measures unique addresses that execute revenue-generating trades through CoW Protocol over a 30-day window, averaged across the quarter. MAU averaged 64.5 K in Q1 '26, up 5.9% QoQ and 71.1% YoY, a fourth consecutive quarterly increase and the highest level in over a year.
Users and volume moved in opposite directions this quarter. The highest participation in over a year alongside halved volume implies a smaller average trade size and a more retail-weighted user base, the same pattern visible in the fee data.
The user base is far less Ethereum-concentrated than the volume base. Ethereum's MAU share fell to 35.3% (-8.8 pp QoQ, -31.6 pp YoY), with Base at 21.4%, Arbitrum One at 19.1%, Polygon at 8.2%, BNB Chain at 6.7%, and Gnosis at 6.2%. Plasma registered its first users at 0.1% following the January launch. Nearly two thirds of users now trade on chains other than Ethereum, while Ethereum still settles nine tenths of volume: breadth in users, depth in value.
👥 CoW DAO team commentary
"Monthly active users are at an all time high, with Q1 representing a fourth consecutive quarterly increase. This is thanks to a marketing engine that is succeeding in attracting new users to CoW Swap, particularly across newer chains, with meaningful upticks from networks such as Polygon and BNB Chain.
Because CoW Protocol has historically attracted larger, whale-sized traders, it is natural that a broader and more retail-weighted user base trades at a smaller average ticket size.We view this diversification as net positive: a wider, less concentrated user base strengthens the protocol, and more users means more opportunities to match Coincidences of Wants directly – translating directly into better prices for traders. Serving a broader share of the market is central to CoW Protocol’s mission of making DeFi safe and secure for all by becoming the price-finding layer for onchain trading."
6) Fully diluted market cap
Fully diluted market cap measures the project's valuation assuming full dilution, calculated as the COW price multiplied by total supply under current token economics. FDV averaged $213.5 M in Q1 '26, nearly flat QoQ (-0.8%) and down 54.4% YoY.
Valuation stabilized over the past two quarters after a sharp 2025 decline, while fees, revenue, and users all grew YoY, leaving the project's usage and its market pricing pointing in different directions over the year.
👥 CoW DAO team commentary
"The more important observation is the divergence between CoW Protocol’s fundamentals and its market pricing: over the past year fees, revenue, monthly active users, and gross profit all grew year over year, while FDV fell.
Our view is that this gap reflects a market that has not yet repriced the CoW DAO’simproving fundamentals rather than a deterioration in the business. The value distribution initiative now underway with Aragon, together with the protocol's growing free-cash-flow generation, is intended to give the market a clearer mechanism through which the value generated by CoW Protocol reaches the COW token over time."
7) Outlook
CoW Protocol enters Q2 2026 with a growing and increasingly multichain user base, a fee base growing strongly YoY, and a deliberate tilt toward profitable volume over raw throughput. The team's stated Q2 priority is continuity: deepening high-value partnerships and improving the DAO's capacity to serve them, with particular emphasis on quality of service on the B2B side.
The data points to watch follow from that focus. First, whether the integration pipeline, from Plasma and Linea to the Bitget Wallet solver integration, converts into volume and fees rather than users alone, and whether partner-attributed revenue keeps broadening the revenue base beyond trade-level fees. Second, whether the February fee reduction on correlated pairs translates into durable stablecoin volume share. Third, whether volume stabilizes on a quality-adjusted basis as conditions normalize, recognizing that part of the Q1 decline was the intended purge of non-economic flow rather than lost demand. The through-line is the divergence between rising fundamentals and a flat-to-lower FDV, and whether the value distribution work begins to close it.
On the governance side, the value distribution mechanism RFP, the CIP-84 affiliate program, and CIP-85 solver rewards each touch the economics presented in this report: how fees are shared, how solvers are compensated, and how profits may reach token holders. All three have advanced since quarter-end: the affiliate program went live in April as a six-month pilot, CIP-85's consistency rewards moved to a governance vote at the end of Q1 with effects expected in Q2, and the RFP work fed into a core team value distribution proposal, developed with Aragon, now under DAO discussion.
8) Definitions
Metrics:
Trading volume: measures the total value of trades executed through CoW Protocol's batch auctions, quarterly total.Fees: measures the total value paid by users to trade through CoW Protocol, including fees on trade surplus and volume, integration partner fees, network fees covering gas, and MEV Blocker fees, quarterly total.Revenue: measures the portion of fees retained by CoW DAO, from trade-level fees, partner revenue sharing, RPC rebates, and MEV-related activities, quarterly total.Gross profit: measures what CoW Protocol retains after solver incentives (the COW rewards paid to solvers for execution), calculated as revenue minus solver incentives, quarterly total.Treasury: measures the value of assets held in onchain addresses controlled by CoW DAO, including the main safe and the Managed Treasury, quarterly average.Monthly active users: measures the number of unique addresses executing revenue-generating trades through CoW Protocol over a 30-day window, quarterly average.Fully diluted market cap: measures the project's valuation assuming full dilution, calculated as the COW price multiplied by total supply under current token economics, quarterly average.
9) About this report
This report is published quarterly and produced leveraging Token Terminal's end-to-end onchain data infrastructure. All metrics are sourced directly from blockchain data. Charts and datasets referenced in this report can be viewed on the corresponding CoW Protocol Q1 2026 Report dashboard on Token Terminal.

1) Executive summary
Ethereum $ETH is a public, permissionless blockchain that provides global settlement and computation for an open economy of financial applications. It runs a single shared ledger that anyone can build on and that no single party can switch off, and it uses its native asset, ETH, both to pay for transactions and, through staking, to secure the network.
The activity it hosts has historically been constrained by the cost and throughput of legacy financial infrastructure: settlement that takes days, layers of intermediaries, and counterparty risk at each hop. Tokenization and stablecoins have emerged as the onchain answer to those frictions, and as regulatory frameworks for both matured through 2025 and into 2026, the conditions for institutional onchain activity moved from theoretical to practical.
Ethereum's role in that shift is the base settlement layer. Stablecoins, tokenized funds, tokenized commodities, and a growing set of tokenized stocks are issued and settled on it, while a network of layer-2s extends throughput and settles back to the layer-1. Value accrues to ETH as the asset that secures and pays for this settlement, and the staking market reflects the share of supply committed to that role.
On market positioning, Ethereum remains the leading venue for tokenized assets by market cap, holding the majority share of stablecoins, tokenized funds, commodities, and stocks measured across chains. Ethereum is stewarded by the Ethereum Foundation alongside a broad, independent community of client teams and researchers, with institution-facing groups such as Etherealize working to make the network legible to traditional finance.
Q1 2026 split cleanly into two stories. Usage reached record levels: monthly active users, transaction count, and throughput all set record highs. At the same time, dollar-denominated value and fee metrics compressed, with the fully diluted market cap, total value locked, trading volume, and both fee measures all lower quarter over quarter. The period's shaping events sat behind both halves: the Fusaka upgrade cycle's second Blob Parameters Only (BPO #2) fork raised data capacity in January, ERC-8004 went live on mainnet in February as a standard for AI-agent identity and reputation, the Ethereum Foundation set its 2026 Protocol Cluster priorities (Scale, Improve UX, Harden the L1), and institutional engagement was visible through events such as the Institutional Ethereum Forum in March.
🔑 Key metrics (Q1 2026)
Ecosystem total value locked: $316.2 B (-11.0% QoQ, +22.8% YoY)Ecosystem active loans: $21.8 B (-16.6% QoQ, +39.0% YoY)Ecosystem trading volume: $134.5 B (-24.0% QoQ, -31.2% YoY)Ecosystem fees: $2.0 B (-16.9% QoQ, -7.8% YoY)Tokenized asset market cap: $203.4 B (-0.7% QoQ, +42.9% YoY)Stablecoins: $178.9 B (-2.3% QoQ, +37.6% YoY)Tokenized funds: $19.4 B (+4.9% QoQ, +73.1% YoY)Tokenized commodities: $4.7 B (+60.0% QoQ, +325.9% YoY)Tokenized stocks: $365.1 M (+16.5% QoQ)Monthly active users: 13.2 M (+53.5% QoQ, +85.9% YoY)Transaction count: 200.4 M (+38.0% QoQ, +81.5% YoY)Transactions per second: 25.78 (+41.2% QoQ, +81.7% YoY)Fees: $39.9 M (-47.9% QoQ, -81.9% YoY)Fully diluted market cap: $290.0 B (-30.3% QoQ, -9.9% YoY)Staking ratio: 0.31x (+0.03x QoQ, +0.03x YoY)Token holders: 292.8 M (+8.1% QoQ, +24.9% YoY)
This report covers Ethereum's layer-1 (mainnet). Layer-2 networks are treated as separate chains and are not included in Ethereum's figures.
2) Ecosystem
Total value locked measures the value of onchain deposits across a project's applications and acts as a leading indicator of revenue-generating activity such as borrowing, trading, and staking; here it captures capital deposited across Ethereum's ecosystem, which depositors can typically withdraw at any time.
On that basis, ecosystem total value locked averaged $316.2 B in Q1 '26, down 11.0% QoQ but up 22.8% YoY. The quarterly decline tracks the broad pullback in asset prices, while the annual gain shows the ecosystem is still materially larger than a year ago.
Ethereum is by far the largest of the top five chains, at $316.2 B, more than Tron ($84.5 B), Solana ($28.8 B), BNB Chain ($10.3 B), and Plasma ($5.7 B) combined, and 71.0% of their total. The biggest pools of that capital sit in liquid staking, led by Lido, and lending, led by Aave, with restaking (EigenLayer and ether.fi) and the synthetic-dollar issuers (Ethena and Sky) also among the largest. Capital concentration remains Ethereum's clearest structural lead.
Active loans measures the portion of deposits that is lent out to borrowers and therefore paying interest, which tends to track lending revenue; on Ethereum it reflects outstanding borrows across the ecosystem's lending applications.
Ecosystem active loans averaged $21.8 B in Q1 '26, down 16.6% QoQ and up 39.0% YoY. Lending balances contracted alongside total value locked, consistent with reduced risk appetite, but remain well above year-ago levels.
Lending on Ethereum is concentrated in a handful of money markets, and one dominates: Aave held about $13.5 B in active loans at quarter-end, the majority of the ecosystem total, followed by Morpho (around $1.9 B), Sky's Spark (around $1.0 B), and Maple (around $840 M). The quarter's contraction was led by Aave, whose loan book shrank roughly 24% over the period as borrowing demand cooled with prices. Across the top five chains, Ethereum's $21.8 B far exceeded Solana ($2.5 B), Plasma ($2.1 B), BNB Chain ($760.8 M), and Avalanche ($392.4 M), giving it 79.2% of the top five, its highest share of any metric in this section.
Trading volume measures the total value of trades executed on decentralized spot exchanges, and because traders pay fees it tends to correlate with the fees those venues generate; here it aggregates DEX trading across Ethereum's ecosystem.
Ecosystem trading volume totaled $134.5 B in Q1 '26, down 24.0% QoQ and 31.2% YoY. Trading fell more sharply than capital locked, consistent with reduced risk appetite through the quarter's drawdown.
DEX activity on Ethereum is concentrated in a few deep venues: Uniswap handled about $85.5 B in Q1, roughly two-thirds of ecosystem volume, with Curve (around $22.1 B) and CoW Swap (around $12.4 B) next. Trading volume is also the one metric in this section where Ethereum does not lead across chains: BNB Chain handled $162.5 B against Ethereum's $134.5 B, with Solana close behind at $104.9 B, then Avalanche ($14.5 B) and Polygon ($10.7 B). Ethereum's 31.5% of the top five chains' volume sat second to BNB Chain's 38.0%.
Fees measure the total value users pay to use a project's applications, such as interest paid by borrowers and trading fees paid by traders, and show how much economic value is generated; this figure sums fees across Ethereum's ecosystem applications.
Ecosystem fees totaled $2.0 B in Q1 '26, down 16.9% QoQ and 7.8% YoY, softening in line with lower trading and lending activity.
Ethereum generated $2.0 B of fees, well ahead of Tron ($599.3 M), Solana ($532.5 M), BNB Chain ($231.9 M), and Polygon ($38.8 M), for 58.4% of the top five chains, the largest single source of application fees despite the decline. Across this section, Ethereum leads on locked capital, credit, and fees, and trails only in trading volume.
3) Tokenized assets
Circulating asset market cap measures the total value tokenized onchain for an asset, calculated as circulating supply times end-of-day price; for stablecoins it is the outstanding supply, for tokenized funds the onchain assets under management, and for tokenized stocks the value of shares issued onchain, measured here for assets issued on Ethereum.
Tokenized asset market cap on Ethereum averaged $203.4 B in Q1 '26, essentially flat QoQ (-0.7%) and up 42.9% YoY. Stablecoins led at 87.9% of the total, with funds, commodities, and stocks making up the remainder.
Stablecoins averaged $178.9 B on Ethereum in Q1 '26, down 2.3% QoQ but up 37.6% YoY, the only sub-sector to dip over the quarter. Two issuers dominate: Tether's USDT ($94.1 B) and Circle's USDC ($54.5 B) at quarter-end together account for the bulk of the network's stablecoin market cap, with Sky's USDS ($12.4 B), Ethena's USDe ($5.9 B), and PayPal's PYUSD ($2.9 B) the next largest and newer regulated entrants such as Ripple's RLUSD ($1.1 B) also live. Across the top five chains, Ethereum's $178.9 B led, ahead of Tron ($84.5 B), Solana ($14.5 B), Arbitrum One ($6.8 B), and Base ($4.7 B), for 61.8% of the top five.
Tokenized funds averaged $19.4 B on Ethereum in Q1 '26, up 4.9% QoQ and 73.1% YoY. The sector splits in two: yield-bearing onchain dollars lead by size, with Sky's sUSDS (around $6.4 B) and Ethena's sUSDe (around $3.5 B) the largest, while the regulated funds that anchor the institutional story have scaled up, led by BlackRock's BUIDL (issued via Securitize, around $1.0 B), WisdomTree's government money market fund (around $815 M), and Superstate's USTB (around $620 M), with Ondo's OUSG (around $320 M) close behind. Across the top five chains, Ethereum's $19.4 B led, ahead of zkSync Era ($2.5 B), BNB Chain ($2.3 B), Solana ($1.3 B), and Stellar ($1.1 B), for 73.0% of the top five, the second-highest concentration of any asset class here.
Tokenized commodities averaged $4.7 B on Ethereum in Q1 '26, up 60.0% QoQ and 325.9% YoY, the fastest-growing tokenized class. It is almost entirely gold: Tether Gold (XAUT, around $2.6 B) and Paxos's PAX Gold (PAXG, around $2.4 B) together make up nearly the whole sector. Across the top five chains, Ethereum's $4.7 B dwarfed XRP Ledger ($736.6 M), Arbitrum One ($95.9 M), BNB Chain ($38.4 M), and Solana ($29.8 M), for 84.0% of the top five, its strongest lead in this section.
Tokenized stocks remain the smallest class, averaging $365.1 M on Ethereum in Q1 '26, up from a negligible base a year earlier and 16.5% higher QoQ. The category is led almost entirely by Ondo Finance, whose onchain equities and ETFs, spanning broad index funds like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 as well as dozens of individual stocks, make up most of Ethereum's tokenized-stock market cap. Across the top five chains, Ethereum's $365.1 M led, ahead of Solana ($249.0 M), BNB Chain ($150.5 M), Arbitrum One ($29.0 M), and Stellar ($4.2 M), but at 45.8% of the top five it is its narrowest position, the one tokenized category where it does not hold a clear majority.
Taken together, the quarter shows Ethereum's tokenization lead in funds and commodities even as stablecoin balances paused.
4) Usage
Monthly active users measures the number of unique addresses that make a revenue-generating transaction with the network over a monthly window; on Ethereum it counts distinct addresses transacting on the layer-1.
Monthly active users averaged 13.2 M in Q1 '26, up 53.5% QoQ and 85.9% YoY, an all-time high. User growth accelerated sharply after several quarters of more gradual gains.
Transaction count measures the number of confirmed transactions added to the blockchain and reflects how actively users engage with it; transactions per second is the average rate of those confirmed transactions, capturing throughput and real-time usage. Both are measured here on Ethereum's layer-1.
Transaction count totaled 200.4 M in Q1 '26, up 38.0% QoQ and 81.5% YoY, while throughput rose to 25.78 transactions per second, up 41.2% QoQ. Both set all-time highs, confirming the jump in users translated into materially more onchain activity.
Fees here measure the transaction fees users pay to transact on Ethereum's layer-1, the base-layer cost of using the network, as distinct from the ecosystem-wide application fees in Section 2.
On that basis, fees totaled $39.9 M in Q1 '26, down 47.9% QoQ and 81.9% YoY. The contrast with usage is the quarter's defining data point: transaction count rose 38.0% while total fees fell 47.9%, meaning the average cost per transaction dropped sharply as added data capacity made blockspace cheaper.
The section reads as a scaling story: more users and more transactions at a lower total cost. Rising activity and falling fees are consistent in a period where throughput expanded faster than demand.
5) ETH
Fully diluted market cap measures ETH's valuation assuming full dilution, calculated as token price times total supply per the current token economics, including circulating, locked, unvested, and to-be-issued tokens.
Fully diluted market cap averaged $290.0 B in Q1 '26, down 30.3% QoQ and 9.9% YoY. The quarterly drop was the steepest among the report's valuation metrics and a driver behind the dollar-denominated declines elsewhere.
Staking ratio measures the value of ETH staked to help secure the proof-of-stake network relative to ETH's total market value; a reading of 0.31x means roughly 31% of that value is committed to staking.
The staking ratio averaged 0.31x in Q1 '26, up from 0.28x in both the prior quarter and a year earlier. The share of ETH committed to securing the network rose even as the asset's market cap fell, indicating staking participation held firm through the price drawdown.
Token holders measures the number of distinct addresses holding the network's native token; on Ethereum it counts addresses that hold ETH.
Token holders averaged 292.8 M in Q1 '26, up 8.1% QoQ and 24.9% YoY, extending a steady climb across all five quarters. The holder base widened even as the fully diluted market cap fell, a sign that ownership of ETH continued to broaden through the price drawdown.
6) Etherealize team commentary
"The headline tension this quarter was Ethereum mainnet hitting record usage levels while transaction fees fell. Ethereum is deliberately scaling the network at the expense of near-term fee capture, betting that cheaper blockspace unlocks far more demand (and eventually network revenue) in the long run.
Token Terminal's Ethereum Q1 2026 Report shows that bet is working. On a year-over-year basis, monthly active users rose 85.9%, transaction count is up 81.5%, and throughput climbed 81.7%. This is Jevon's paradox at work, and we expect the increase in total network demand to more than make up for lower fees, similar to how the semiconductor industry generates several orders of magnitude more revenue today than it did in 1975, when Intel co-founder Gordon Moore observed that the number of transistors on a microchip doubled roughly every two years. Furthermore, the scaling payoff is still ahead of us with the Glamsterdam upgrade targeting a more than 3x increase in the gas limit in Q3 and Ethereum's roadmap guiding to 10,000 TPS and a "fast L1" with finality in seconds by 2029.
We agree with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink who wrote in December that "tokenisation today is roughly where the internet was in 1996—when Amazon had sold just $16m-worth of books." The consensus at the time was that Amazon was a money-losing online bookseller propped up by an internet bubble. However, Jeff Bezos saw that the internet was going to transform retail and optimized for network effects and economies of scale, rather than near term profits. Ethereum is making a similar tradeoff to cement its position as the settlement layer for global finance.
The other lesson worth drawing from the Internet is that open, permissionless networks tend to beat closed ones. In 1995, Bill Gates published The Road Ahead predicting digital commerce would run on proprietary corporate networks he called the "Information Superhighway" rather than the open internet. Microsoft was building MSN. AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy ran walled gardens with millions of paying subscribers. France's Minitel had more users than the entire web until late 1996. They all lost. No serious company would build on top of a network controlled by a competitor, and perhaps more importantly, no corporation could keep pace with permissionless innovation indefinitely. We have seen this play out again and again: Linux out-built proprietary Unix, the open web displaced corporate walled gardens; Wikipedia displaced Britannica. Each time, the proprietary alternative had the early lead — a more focused product, more marketing, business development teams — and each time that lead eroded after the open system crossed a threshold of accumulated contribution, tooling, and credible neutrality.
We are now seeing this theme play out in financial infrastructure, and this report's data is evidence that Ethereum has crossed the threshold with dominant market share in every metric that matters. The institutions building tokenized finance are choosing Ethereum not out of ideology but because the liquidity, composability, and institutional precedent are already there. As this report highlights, Ethereum holds 79.2% of active DeFi loans across the top five chains, 61.8% of stablecoins, 73.0% of tokenized funds, and 84.0% of tokenized commodities. Every new tokenized asset deepens the liquidity that pulls in the next one, and a neutral substrate is the only equilibrium that holds because large players will never agree to settle on a competitor's infrastructure. Furthermore, institutions are realizing that privacy, permissioning, KYC, and transfer restrictions can all be implemented on Ethereum through privacy-preserving environments and permissioned token standards without surrendering access to public liquidity; the reverse (bolting public liquidity and an open application ecosystem onto a closed chain) is not possible.
The institutional momentum, if anything, has accelerated since quarter-end. In May alone, BlackRock filed for two more tokenized funds, JPMorgan launched JLTXX as its second tokenized money-market fund on Ethereum, and Fidelity International launched FILQ, a Moody's AAA-rated dollar liquidity fund, as an ERC-20. In the world of stablecoins, the Japan Blockchain Foundation's yen stablecoin EJPY will launch on Ethereum, and a twelve-bank European consortium (including BNP Paribas, ING, UniCredit, and BBVA) is preparing a regulated euro stablecoin.
The internet looked impossible in 1990 and inevitable by 2005. If Fink is right about where tokenization sits on that curve, the next few years could be some of the most exciting in Ethereum's history. And as we argued in our Productive Money report, network fees give ETH an intrinsic value floor, while the bull case is ETH absorbing the ~$30+ trillion monetary premium held by gold and Bitcoin given its superior monetary attributes. ETH doesn't need exorbitant fees to win."
7) Definitions
Metrics:
Ecosystem total value locked: the dollar value of assets deposited across the applications in a chain's ecosystem, reported as a period average.Ecosystem active loans: the dollar value of outstanding borrows in lending applications across the ecosystem, reported as a period average.Ecosystem trading volume: the dollar value of trades executed on decentralized exchanges across the ecosystem, reported as a period total.Ecosystem fees: total fees paid by users to applications across the ecosystem, reported as a period total.Circulating asset market cap: the dollar value of a tokenized asset class in circulation, calculated as circulating supply times end-of-day price, reported as a period average.Monthly active users: distinct addresses that make a revenue-generating transaction with Ethereum, reported as a period average of the monthly figure.Transaction count: the number of confirmed transactions settled on Ethereum's layer-1, reported as a period total.Transactions per second: the average rate of confirmed transactions on Ethereum's layer-1 over the period.Fees: total transaction fees paid on Ethereum's layer-1, reported as a period total.Fully diluted market cap: ETH price multiplied by total supply per the current token economics, reported as a period average.Staking ratio: the value of ETH staked to secure the network relative to ETH's total market value, reported as a period average.Token holders: distinct addresses holding ETH, reported as a period average.
8) About this report
This report is published quarterly and produced leveraging Token Terminal's end-to-end onchain data infrastructure. All metrics are sourced directly from blockchain data. Charts and datasets referenced in this report can be viewed on the corresponding Ethereum Q1 2026 Report dashboard on Token Terminal.

1) Executive summary
Aave $AAVE is the largest lending project in decentralized finance: a set of onchain money markets where users supply assets to earn yield and borrowers take overcollateralized loans, with exposure governed by asset-specific collateral, borrowing, and liquidation parameters. It is the venue where a large share of onchain credit is priced and settled.
Onchain credit needs markets that price risk transparently, settle without intermediaries, and remain solvent under stress. Aave provides that infrastructure at a scale no other lending project matches, and its v4 architecture, which positions it to add fixed-rate lending alongside its existing tokenized real-world assets and native stablecoin, lands as institutional and regulated capital begins to move onchain in earnest.
Value accrues through the spread between what suppliers earn and what borrowers pay. Borrowers pay interest, a share of which is retained by the Aave DAO as revenue, alongside liquidation fees, flash-loan fees, and oracle-related recapture routed through Chainlink SVR. The product surface spans Aave v3, the multichain core; Aave v4, launched on Ethereum in late March 2026 with a hub-and-spoke architecture that connects shared liquidity hubs to modular borrowing spokes; Aave Horizon, the permissioned market for tokenized real-world assets; GHO, Aave's native decentralized stablecoin; and AAVE, the governance token that secures the system through the Safety Module.
Aave is the single largest lending project, and its deposit base, loan book, and fee generation remain the sector's largest even after a month of contraction. The project is built by Aave Labs, the team behind every major version of the project, whose stated 2026 priorities are to scale v4, grow the Horizon real-world-asset market, and bring DeFi to retail users through a mobile-first Aave App.
May was a month of stabilization after stress. A late-April cross-chain bridge exploit affecting rsETH collateral propagated into Aave's WETH markets, and the coordinated DeFi United recovery effort restored rsETH backing and normalized WETH borrowing limits over the course of the month. The data reflects the aftermath: total value locked and active loans fell sharply as collateral was withdrawn and leverage was unwound, while fees and revenue dropped back from an April lifted by the elevated borrow rates around the incident. Against that, Aave v4, Aave Horizon, and GHO each continued to grow. Two threads run through the report: a security-first normalization across the core v3 markets, and continued expansion in the newer surfaces that sit beyond crypto-native lending.
🔑 Key metrics (May 2026)
Total value locked: $25.2 B (-31.2% MoM, -33.8% YoY)Aave v4 TVL: $68.2 M (+168.3% MoM)Aave Horizon TVL: $673.5 M (+30.7% MoM)Active loans: $10.7 B (-30.5% MoM, -27.3% YoY)Fees: $33.1 M (-41.4% MoM, -22.3% YoY)Revenue: $4.9 M (-37.0% MoM, -23.9% YoY)Monthly active users: 100.8 K (-13.6% MoM, +21.9% YoY)Market share: 46.7% (-11.2 pp MoM, -15.0 pp YoY)AAVE market cap: $1.4 B (-6.3% MoM, -60.2% YoY)GHO market cap: $539.7 M (+1.4% MoM, +99.8% YoY)
Metrics exclude Aave deployments and products not yet tracked by Token Terminal, including Mantle and MegaETH.
👥 Aave Labs team commentary
"The rsETH recovery reached a good spot in May. Aave's markets are operating as normal and rsETH’s backing is fully restored. The recovery, coordinated under the DeFi United effort, extended beyond Aave and benefitted several other affected protocols and communities across DeFi.
May also brought steady progress across the Aave ecosystem. The MegaETH market reached $1 billion in deposits, the Aave DAO doubled its bug bounties for Aave V4 and Aave V3 Core, Savings GHO received a technical upgrade, the first incentive programs for frxUSD and USDG began on Aave V4, and Aave Labs published a Technical Asset Listing Framework for Aave V3, V4, and Aave Horizon.
Aave V4 will soon expand its multi-chain presence. Two proposals went live in May to deploy on Avalanche and on Arc, Circle's new Layer 1 blockchain. V4 deposits continued to grow and crossed $100 million in May while the protocol still operates under its security-first growth strategy.
Lastly, Aave Labs’ UK subsidiaries Push Labs Ltd. and Push Virtual Assets Ltd. (together “Push”) have received approval from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to register as a cryptoasset exchange provider in the UK. These permissions allow Push by Aave Labs to operate regulated cryptoasset activities and payments infrastructure in the UK. Aave Labs is building for the next million users, and regulated products with zero-fee stablecoin on/off-ramping are necessary to do it."
2) Total value locked
Total value locked measures the total USD value of collateral deposited into Aave and outstanding loans. May '26 TVL averaged $25.2 B, down 31.2% month-over-month and 33.8% year-over-year, the lowest monthly average in the trailing year.
TVL had been easing since January, and the late-April rsETH incident steepened the decline. April's $36.6 B average still spanned higher pre-incident balances, so May, the first full month after the exploit and the DeFi United recovery, posted the largest monthly drop of the trailing year as collateral was withdrawn. The peak near $70 B in September 2025 frames how far balances have retraced.
Ethereum remained the center of gravity, accounting for 81.4% of May '26 TVL. Plasma was the second-largest chain at 7.3%, a share that did not exist a year earlier, while Arbitrum, Base, and Avalanche each contributed low single digits. Capital remains concentrated on Ethereum even as newer chains add incremental share.
By asset, WETH was the single largest collateral at 19.2%, ahead of weETH (11.3%), WBTC (10.9%), and USDC (10.0%), with USDT, wstETH, cbBTC, and rsETH filling out the next tier. ETH-correlated assets, including liquid staking and restaking tokens, dominate the collateral base, which is what transmitted the rsETH stress into the wider WETH market in April.
Aave v4 TVL averaged $68.2 M, up 168.3% month-over-month in its second full month since the late-March launch. The hub-and-spoke deployment continued to onboard liquidity through the recovery, an early signal that capital is willing to migrate to the new architecture.
Aave Horizon TVL averaged $673.5 M, up 30.7% month-over-month, rebuilding toward the highs it set in late 2025 and early 2026 and extending the institutional real-world-asset market's growth since its August 2025 launch. Aave v4 and Horizon were the month's clearest growth, both expanding while the core v3 markets contracted.
3) Active loans
Active loans measures the total USD value of outstanding borrows across all Aave lending markets, the core usage metric from which fees and revenue are generated. May '26 active loans averaged $10.7 B, down 30.5% month-over-month and 27.3% year-over-year.
Borrowing contracted in step with collateral. Active loans had been easing since January, and the late-April incident accelerated the deleveraging as positions were unwound and WETH borrowing limits were temporarily reduced during the recovery. The loan book peaked near $29 B in September 2025 before retracing to $10.7 B.
Ethereum accounted for 80.7% of May '26 active loans, with Plasma at 8.8%. Borrowing is even more concentrated on Ethereum than collateral, reflecting the depth of its money markets.
By borrowed asset, WETH was the most-borrowed at 39.5%, followed by the major stablecoins USDC (21.7%) and USDT (19.0%). The prominence of borrowed WETH is consistent with looping and staking strategies that recycle ETH-correlated collateral.
Within Aave Horizon, RLUSD accounted for 79.3% of May '26 active loans, ahead of GHO and USDC. Institutional borrowers in the real-world-asset market draw predominantly on RLUSD, underscoring how the Horizon book is composed differently from the crypto-native core.
Aave accounted for 46.7% of May '26 active loans across the onchain lending market, down 11.2 pp month-over-month and 15.0 pp year-over-year. Aave remained the single largest lending project, with a $10.7 B loan book against $12.3 B for all other tracked lenders combined, but its share slipped below half: the April unwind hit Aave's book harder than its peers, and competing markets have gained ground over the year.
4) Fees
Fees measures the total USD value of fees paid by users across all of Aave's lending markets, aggregated across all income types, and represents the total yield the project generates. May '26 fees totaled $33.1 M, down 41.4% month-over-month and 22.3% year-over-year.
Fees fell more steeply than loan balances, down 41.4% against a 30.5% drop in active loans. April's $56.5 M reflected a larger average loan book and the elevated borrow rates around the late-April incident, when drained liquidity pushed utilization higher; May reflects both the smaller book and normalized rates.
Ethereum generated 79.7% of May '26 fees, in line with its share of the loan book. Plasma was the second-largest fee source at 9.3%, mirroring its rising share of balances.
By income type, interest accounted for 98.7% of May fees, with liquidation, treasury, SVR, and flash-loan income making up the small remainder. Fee generation is almost entirely recurring interest, the signature of a book built on overcollateralized borrowing.
By borrowed asset, WETH (29.3%), USDC (28.1%), and USDT (21.4%) together produced roughly four-fifths of fees, splitting fee generation between ETH-correlated borrowing and stablecoin demand.
Asset APY captures the yield accrued by holding Aave's aTokens, the receipt tokens minted to suppliers. Stablecoin supply yields were still elevated entering May, with aEthUSDT at 5.89% and aEthUSDC at 4.78% on May 1 after the late-April incident drained liquidity and pushed utilization higher, then normalized toward the 2.5% to 3.7% range by May 31 as liquidity returned. The Horizon RWA aTokens moved within a tighter band.
5) Revenue
Revenue measures the total USD value of fees retained by the Aave DAO, aggregated across all income types, the portion of yield that accrues to the project rather than to suppliers. May '26 revenue totaled $4.9 M, down 37.0% month-over-month and 23.9% year-over-year.
Ethereum contributed 83.9% of May '26 revenue, an even higher share than its fee contribution, reflecting the mix of markets and income types that flow to the treasury on mainnet.
Interest accounted for 97.2% of May revenue, with treasury, SVR, and liquidation income comprising the small remainder. As with fees, retained income is overwhelmingly recurring interest.
By borrowed asset, WETH (30.6%) and USDC (21.1%) led, with GHO contributing 14.5% of revenue, a larger share of revenue than of fees, reflecting how interest on Aave's native stablecoin accrues to the DAO.
6) Monthly active users
Monthly active users measures the number of unique wallet addresses that have interacted with Aave over a rolling 30-day period, a gauge of how many distinct users the project reaches. May '26 MAU averaged 100.8 K, down 13.6% month-over-month but up 21.9% year-over-year.
Users proved more durable than capital. While balances fell by roughly a third month-over-month, the active-user base contracted only modestly and remained well above its year-ago level, a divergence between where value sits and how many addresses transact.
Base accounted for 25.8% of May '26 MAU, the largest single chain by users, ahead of Ethereum at 23.0%, with BNB Chain, Arbitrum, and Polygon each in double digits. The contrast with the TVL and loan books, where Ethereum holds more than 80% of value, captures a recurring pattern: activity is broadly distributed across lower-cost chains while capital concentrates on Ethereum.
7) AAVE
AAVE market cap measures the fully diluted valuation of the AAVE token, the project's native governance asset. May '26 AAVE market cap averaged $1.4 B, down 6.3% month-over-month and 60.2% year-over-year.
The token's valuation compressed over the year, declining from an average above $4.8 B in August 2025 as broader market conditions and the April incident weighed on price. The month-over-month move was modest by comparison, suggesting the token had largely repriced ahead of May.
8) GHO
GHO market cap measures the fully diluted valuation of GHO, Aave's native decentralized stablecoin minted by borrowers against Aave collateral. May '26 GHO market cap averaged $539.7 M, up 1.4% month-over-month and 99.8% year-over-year.
GHO transfer volume totaled $2.9 B in May '26, down 16.7% month-over-month but up 35.4% year-over-year. Onchain usage of GHO has expanded markedly over the year, with the month-over-month dip consistent with the lower overall activity that followed April's spike.
9) Outlook
May's data sets up a clean test of resilience versus growth. The core v3 markets enter June from a normalized base after the rsETH incident and the DeFi United recovery, with TVL, active loans, fees, and revenue all reset to post-incident levels and rates back in their normal range. Whether those balances rebuild from here is the cleaner read on underlying demand.
The newer surfaces moved in the opposite direction and bear watching. Aave v4 TVL more than doubled month-over-month off a small base, Aave Horizon rebuilt to roughly $673.5 M, and GHO nearly doubled year-over-year while holding steady through the stress. If the v3 normalization holds, these three surfaces are where incremental growth is most likely to show up first.
Two structural threads carry into June. First, the contrast between where capital sits and where users are: Ethereum holds more than 80% of value while Base leads on users, a distribution that shapes how fees and growth accrue across chains. Second, Aave's lending market share has slipped below half to 46.7% as competing markets grow, so the trajectory of the loan book is the metric to watch as the recovery completes. These are observations the data supports, not directional calls.
10) Definitions
Products:
Aave v3: the current major version, launched in March 2022, enabling multichain deployment and features such as e-mode for improved capital efficiency.Aave v4: launched on Ethereum in late March 2026. Introduces a hub-and-spoke architecture where shared liquidity pools (hubs) connect to modular borrowing strategies (spokes).Aave Horizon: a permissioned lending market for tokenized real-world assets, launched in August 2025. Stablecoin supply is permissionless; collateral onboarding is managed by tokenization issuers.Aave App: Aave's upcoming mobile app for retail users to access fixed income savings powered by Aave markets.GHO: Aave's native decentralized stablecoin, launched in 2023. Borrowers mint GHO using their Aave collateral.AAVE: the project's native governance token. AAVE holders govern the Aave DAO, and the token can be staked in the Safety Module, which backstops the project against shortfall events.
Metrics:
Total value locked: measures the total USD value of collateral deposited into Aave and outstanding loans.Active loans: measures the total USD value of outstanding borrows across all Aave lending markets.Fees: measures the total USD value of fees paid by users across all of Aave's lending markets, aggregated across all income types (see below).Revenue: measures the total USD value of fees retained by the Aave DAO, aggregated across all income types (see below).Asset APY: measures the annualized yield accrued by holding a yield-bearing token, calculated from a standardized onchain yield index over a 7-day trailing window; for Aave, it is applied to aTokens and reflects the supply yield earned across Aave's markets.Monthly active users: measures the number of unique wallet addresses that have interacted with Aave over a rolling 30-day period.Market share: measures Aave's share of active loans relative to other lending projects.AAVE market cap: measures the fully diluted valuation of the AAVE token.GHO market cap: measures the fully diluted valuation of GHO, Aave's native decentralized stablecoin.GHO transfer volume: measures the total USD value of GHO transferred onchain over a given period.
Income types:
Interest: fees paid by borrowers on outstanding loans. A share of interest flows to the DAO treasury as revenue.Liquidation: fees collected when undercollateralized positions are liquidated.SVR: revenue recaptured from oracle-related MEV during liquidations via Chainlink SVR.Flash loan: fees charged on uncollateralized loans that are borrowed and repaid within a single transaction.Treasury: fees from Aave DAO treasury management activities.GHO stability module: fees charged on swaps between GHO and other stablecoins through the GHO Stability Module.
11) About this report
This report is published monthly and produced leveraging Token Terminal's end-to-end onchain data infrastructure. All metrics are sourced directly from blockchain data. Charts and datasets referenced in this report can be viewed on the corresponding Aave May 2026 Report dashboard on Token Terminal.

1) Executive summary
Avalanche $AVAX is a Layer 1 blockchain ecosystem built around fast settlement, EVM-compatible smart contracts, and customizable Avalanche L1s. The network's Primary Network includes the C-Chain, where most EVM activity occurs, and its broader architecture lets applications and institutions launch dedicated blockchains with configurable validators, execution environments, gas tokens, and compliance controls.
Avalanche is associated with Ava Labs, a blockchain technology company founded in 2018 by Emin Gun Sirer, Kevin Sekniqi, and Maofan Yin. Emin Gun Sirer serves as CEO, and Ava Labs lists offices in New York City and Miami. Avalanche and its ecosystem have been supported by a mix of venture financing, AVAX token sales, and Foundation-led ecosystem funding, giving the project institutional backing while keeping the public report focused on the network's development, adoption, and operating metrics.
Q1 2026 was a mixed quarter for Avalanche. Ecosystem TVL, stablecoin supply, trading volume, active loans, fees, and FDV declined sequentially, while transaction count, transactions per second, and monthly active users increased. The strategic narrative was stronger than the market backdrop: Avalanche continued to position itself as infrastructure for purpose-built L1s and institutional tokenization, with Q1 developments spanning tokenized assets, gaming L1 infrastructure, and usage-based builder incentives.
🔑 Key metrics (Q1 2026)
Ecosystem total value locked: $3.7 B (-25.0% QoQ, +17.1% YoY)Ecosystem stablecoin supply: $1.5 B (-5.1% QoQ, -9.1% YoY)Ecosystem trading volume: $14.5 B (-44.5% QoQ, +7.9% YoY)Ecosystem active loans: $392.4 M (-35.7% QoQ, +18.8% YoY)Fees: $680.7 K (-72.4% QoQ, -54.6% YoY)Transaction count: 229.5 M (+16.5% QoQ, +612.7% YoY)Transactions per second: 29.51 (+19.0% QoQ, +612.8% YoY)Monthly active users: 1.4 M (+131.1% QoQ, +55.1% YoY)Fully diluted valuation: $4.9 B (-38.4% QoQ, -60.6% YoY)
Metrics include only Avalanche's C-Chain and exclude activity on Avalanche Subnets.
👥 Ava Labs team commentary
"Q1 2026 was the quarter where Avalanche's institutional thesis moved from pipeline to production at scale. Network activity set new records across the board, with total network transactions hitting an all-time high, C-Chain transactions reaching their sixth consecutive quarter of growth, and $164.0 B in stablecoin transfer volume processed in the quarter alone. The story behind those numbers is technology built for business: blockchain rails for payments, lending, savings, and investing embedded behind the scenes into the fintechs, neobanks, brokerages, and asset managers that already have distribution, giving them new revenue streams while Avalanche runs quietly as the settlement layer.
The quarter's key developments reflect that thesis playing out in practice. In payments, Axiym settled $467.0 M on Avalanche through infrastructure running across 140 countries with stablecoins handling settlement in the background for major MSBs. In institutional finance, Progmat announced a $2.0 B migration of tokenized securities to an Avalanche L1, VanEck and Grayscale launched the first US-listed AVAX ETFs, and a growing private credit ecosystem including Valinor, Apollo, Janus Henderson, and OpenTrade pushed tokenized assets on-chain past $1.3 B, with OpenTrade surpassing $110.0 M powering savings products for retail users across Latin America and Asia with no blockchain interaction required from the end user. In consumer, FIFA Collect opened a new primitive for sports ticketing through right-to-buy ticket tokens, and Uptop brought on-chain fan loyalty rewards to the Cleveland Cavaliers, Detroit Pistons, and LSU Athletics, reaching 3,700 unique fan wallets in Q1, with its acquisition by Rain positioning stablecoin rails to come to those venues through the same infrastructure. Heading into Q2, Asia partnerships are moving into production, the private credit pipeline continues to scale, and the share of on-chain capital anchored by real cash flows rather than sentiment keeps growing."
2) Ecosystem total value locked
Ecosystem total value locked (TVL) measures the total USD value of user deposits into applications on Avalanche. Q1 ecosystem TVL averaged $3.7 B, down 25.0% from $5.0 B in Q4 but up 17.1% from $3.2 B in Q1 2025.
The sequential decline followed two quarters of expansion, with TVL rising from $3.4 B in Q2 to $4.6 B in Q3 and $5.0 B in Q4 before retracing in Q1. Despite the Q1 contraction, average ecosystem TVL remained above every quarter in the first half of 2025, indicating that the ecosystem retained a larger capital base than it had a year earlier.
Stablecoin issuers accounted for 39.9% of Q1 ecosystem TVL, up from 31.1% in Q4 but below 52.1% in Q1 2025. Lending accounted for 24.3%, down from 29.8% in Q4. Real-world asset issuers accounted for 15.4%, down from 18.6% in Q4 but well above their 6.3% share a year earlier. Asset management increased to 6.9%, while liquid staking, exchanges, and other sectors accounted for 6.9%, 6.2%, and 0.4%, respectively.
The market-sector mix supports Avalanche's broader institutional narrative. RWA issuers and asset management together accounted for 22.3% of Q1 ecosystem TVL, compared with 6.3% in Q1 2025. That shift aligns with continued RWA-focused deployment activity on Avalanche.
👥 Ava Labs team commentary
"The sequential decline in Q1 TVL was driven by external market conditions rather than anything specific to Avalanche. As risk appetite softened broadly across crypto, leveraged positioning pulled back across DeFi, compressing lending TVL on Avalanche in line with what played out across every major chain globally. AVAX's 29.0% price decline over the quarter added a mechanical headwind, reducing the dollar value of AVAX-denominated positions; BENQI Liquid Staking's sequential decline was driven almost entirely by price rather than actual withdrawals, with staked supply roughly flat in token terms. Year over year the picture looks different, with the ecosystem TVL base larger and supported by institutional products that barely existed twelve months ago, including Avant Protocol's avUSD scaling from $13.0 M to $121.0 M and BlackRock's BUIDL growing from $53.0 M to $92.0 M.
The growing share of stablecoins and real-world assets in the mix reflects a meaningful shift in the kind of capital Avalanche is attracting, and the right frame for interpreting it is not just what is on-chain today but what is coming behind it. Avalanche ranks seventh among all chains by non-stablecoin distributed RWA value as of Q1 2026, and that share should grow meaningfully as fintechs, brokerages, and consumer platforms continue embedding on-chain products into their existing applications, bringing tokenized funds and yield-bearing instruments to users who will never interact directly with a blockchain. This is already playing out on Avalanche, with partners like OpenTrade providing retail users across Latin America and Asia access to tokenized US Treasury exposure through consumer fintech interfaces, $117.0 M in RWAs on-chain as proof. As lending protocol partners bring dedicated RWA markets to Avalanche in the coming quarters, those same institutional assets will begin functioning as productive, composable collateral across the ecosystem, and the TVL that comes with fintech-scale distribution is structurally more durable than anything sentiment-driven positioning produces."
3) Ecosystem stablecoin supply
Ecosystem stablecoin supply measures the total USD value of outstanding stablecoins issued on Avalanche. Q1 ecosystem stablecoin supply averaged $1.5 B, down 5.1% from $1.6 B in Q4 and down 9.1% from $1.7 B in Q1 2025.
Stablecoin supply was relatively more resilient than ecosystem TVL and active loans during Q1. The metric was flat versus Q2 2025, below the Q3 and Q4 levels, and still below the year-ago quarter. This makes stablecoins a stabilizing but not yet accelerating part of the Avalanche ecosystem in the current dashboard data.
Tether accounted for 51.2% of Q1 ecosystem stablecoin supply, up from 48.3% in Q4. Circle accounted for 38.0%, down from 39.5%. Avant Protocol increased to 7.4%, up from 6.5% in Q4 and 0.6% in Q1 2025. XSY and Tron USDD accounted for 1.4% and 0.7%, respectively, while Other accounted for 1.4%.
The stablecoin mix became less Tether-dominated over the year, even though Tether regained share sequentially in Q1. The most notable year-over-year change was Avant Protocol's rise from 0.6% to 7.4% of supply. FUSD's Q1 launch adds another RWA-backed stablecoin angle to the ecosystem, though Q1's stablecoin supply remained concentrated in Tether and Circle.
👥 Ava Labs team commentary
"Tether and Circle's dominance on Avalanche reflects their position across crypto broadly, and the more interesting story is what is happening beneath them. Adjusted non-USD stablecoin transfer volume nearly doubled from Q4 2025 to Q1 2026, reaching over $1.0 B in the quarter, with EURC growing from $76.0 M in adjusted volume in September 2025 to $308.0 M by March and MXNB reaching $46.4 M as Nonco's FX settlement corridor scaled, average swap size growing from $40,500 in January to $92,200 by March as institutional flow picked up. More than 60 distinct stablecoins are now live on Avalanche, with Singapore dollar, Japanese yen, Turkish lira, and Brazilian real each reflecting real user demand in their respective markets. The stablecoin mix is diversifying organically, driven by use cases rather than design, and that is the healthier outcome.
The user segments driving stablecoin activity on Avalanche are broadening in ways that matter. The base of DEX trading, lending markets, and on-chain transactions remains, but what is being added on top is different in character. Avant Protocol's avUSD has scaled past $100.0 M as a DeFi-native yield-bearing primitive, BlackRock's BUIDL and OpenTrade's vaults serve the institutional and fintech-distributed end of the market, and Sky's native deployment of USDS and sUSDS via Skylink brings one of DeFi's most established stablecoin ecosystems on-chain through a burn-and-mint framework requiring no bridge liquidity. Wyoming's FRNT as the first US state-issued stablecoin and Fosun's RWA-backed stablecoin with Avalanche as its primary liquidity hub add further depth, and Axiym's payment infrastructure is settling cross-border MSB flows at scale through the same rails. The direction is toward a stablecoin ecosystem on Avalanche that serves institutional settlement, DeFi composability, and fintech-distributed retail simultaneously, with liquidity building around each use case on its own terms."
4) Ecosystem trading volume
Ecosystem trading volume measures the total USD value of DEX trades executed by applications on Avalanche. Q1 ecosystem trading volume totaled $14.5 B, down 44.5% from $26.2 B in Q4 but up 7.9% from $13.5 B in Q1 2025.
Trading volume fell sharply from the Q3 and Q4 2025 levels, when Avalanche DEX activity totaled $34.5 B and $26.2 B, respectively. Even after the sequential contraction, Q1 trading volume remained above the year-ago period and above Q2 2025, indicating that DEX throughput was lower than the late-2025 peak but not back to early-2025 levels.
Blackhole accounted for 36.4% of Q1 ecosystem trading volume, roughly flat from 36.5% in Q4. Pharaoh accounted for 29.6%, up from 23.0%, while LFJ accounted for 27.7%, down from 34.3%. Uniswap and DODO accounted for 4.0% and 2.3%, respectively, while Other accounted for 0.1%.
The trading-volume mix remained concentrated among three venues: Blackhole, Pharaoh, and LFJ together accounted for 93.7% of Q1 volume. The year-over-year change was more pronounced: LFJ accounted for 59.1% of trading volume in Q1 2025, while Blackhole was not present in the Q1 2025 tooltip breakdown and became the largest contributor by Q1 2026.
👥 Ava Labs team commentary
"Q1 was a quieter quarter across crypto broadly, and Avalanche DEX volume reflected that. The broader DEX market was down roughly 33.0% quarter over quarter in the same period, so Avalanche at -44.5% underperformed somewhat, though Q4 was an unusually high baseline. Blackhole launched in July 2025 and Pharaoh V3 in September, both pulling in a wave of exploratory volume that normalized once the new venue launches settled and volatility came down. Year over year, volume was up 7.9% versus Q1 2025, with a more competitive DEX landscape than existed then.
The 93.7% volume share looks like concentration until you consider how recently two of those three venues showed up. A couple years ago LFJ was carrying the vast majority of Avalanche DEX volume by itself. Now that share is split across three venues genuinely competing, with Blackhole and Pharaoh not existing in their current form 18 months ago. Pharaoh grew from $281.0 M in Q1 2024 to $4.3 B in Q1 2026 built natively on Avalanche with a ve(3,3) model, declining only 16.6% quarter over quarter against a broader ecosystem down 44.5%. Blackhole launched in July 2025 and by Q1 2026 was the highest volume venue on the chain at $5.3 B."
5) Ecosystem active loans
Ecosystem active loans measures the total USD value of outstanding loans issued by lending applications on Avalanche. Q1 ecosystem active loans averaged $392.4 M, down 35.7% from $609.9 M in Q4 but up 18.8% from $330.2 M in Q1 2025.
Active loans declined more sharply than ecosystem TVL, indicating that borrowing demand weakened during Q1 relative to deposited capital. The metric remained above the year-ago period, but the sequential decline brought active loans below Q2, Q3, and Q4 2025 levels.
Aave accounted for 69.2% of Q1 ecosystem active loans, up from 64.3% in Q4 and 62.4% in Q1 2025. BENQI accounted for 15.9%, Euler accounted for 12.2%, and Silo Finance accounted for 2.8%. Aave gained share sequentially as Euler and Silo Finance lost share, while BENQI was broadly stable.
The active-loan mix shows that Avalanche lending remained concentrated in Aave during the quarter. This concentration can be constructive for liquidity depth, but it also means ecosystem borrowing trends are highly sensitive to Aave market conditions, risk parameters, and borrower demand.
👥 Ava Labs team commentary
"The decline in active loans in Q1 reflects the same dynamic that compressed DeFi TVL broadly: as crypto markets softened and speculative positioning pulled back, demand for leveraged exposure fell across every major chain simultaneously. The year-over-year growth of 18.8% is the more meaningful number, reflecting a lending base that is larger and more diversified than it was twelve months ago even after the sequential contraction. Aave's 69.2% share reflects a pattern that plays out across DeFi broadly: in the absence of significant emissions-driven incentives elsewhere, users gravitate toward the most battle-tested protocols with the deepest liquidity, and that is a market outcome rather than a structural concern specific to Avalanche.
Lending markets on C-Chain fit into Avalanche's institutional strategy in a direct way: as tokenized real-world assets become a larger share of what sits on-chain, the lending layer is what makes those assets productive rather than passive. An institution holding a tokenized treasury fund, CLO tranche, or private credit position can borrow stablecoins against it while the underlying continues earning, which changes the economics of being on-chain entirely. That is the direction lending on Avalanche is heading, and the private credit ecosystem already building here reflects the same logic: partners including OatFi, Valinor, Fence, BlackOpal, Bright Funding, and Droplinked are financing B2B receivables, credit-card receivable flows, and other real-world credit instruments on-chain, representing a category of short-duration credit that stablecoin-native settlement makes financeable for the first time."
6) Fees
Fees measure the total USD value paid by users to transact on Avalanche. Q1 fees totaled $680.7 K, down 72.4% from $2.5 M in Q4 and down 54.6% from $1.5 M in Q1 2025.
The fee decline was the sharpest contraction among the core operating metrics in the dashboard. It also diverged from transaction count and transactions per second, both of which increased sequentially and year-over-year. This indicates that higher transaction throughput did not translate into higher fee generation during Q1, likely reflecting lower fee intensity per transaction.
This divergence matters for Avalanche's blockchain-business profile. Q1 showed that the network can process meaningfully more activity while users pay materially less in aggregate fees. That can be positive for user experience and application growth, but it weakens near-term fee capture unless activity density or fee-generating use cases increase.
👥 Ava Labs team commentary
"The fee decline is intentional. Token Terminal ranked Avalanche the lowest-fee major chain in March, with median C-Chain transaction fees down 99.6% year over year to $0.0000137. The goal is for individual user fees to go down while total fee revenue grows, and the path there is expanding block space supply and continuously fine-tuning the fee mechanism. The Octane upgrade gave validators the ability to dynamically signal network capacity without requiring hard forks, and the results showed up quickly in the numbers.
Cheaper fees did surface one issue worth noting. With prices near zero during quiet periods, certain protocols found it profitable to run low-value activity on-chain at scale, consuming network resources without contributing meaningfully to the ecosystem. The team is addressing this through a proposed upgrade that would give validators the ability to collectively set a price floor during low-activity windows, without affecting costs for normal users. The broader philosophy holds: fees should be low enough to unlock real-world use cases, resilient against abuse, and structured to grow aggregate network revenue as activity scales."
7) Transaction count
Transaction count measures the total number of confirmed transactions on Avalanche. Q1 transaction count totaled 229.5 M, up 16.5% from 197.0 M in Q4 and up 612.7% from 32.2 M in Q1 2025.
Transaction count increased for the fourth consecutive quarter in the dashboard period. The year-over-year comparison is especially large, with Q1 activity more than seven times the year-ago level. This makes transaction throughput the strongest growth metric in the report.
The increase coincided with Avalanche's broader push toward measurable usage. Retro9000 C-Chain Round 1, which went live in March, rewards projects based on AVAX burned by real C-Chain activity. Separately, Avalanche Builder Hub's spam-prevention work highlights the need to interpret transaction growth alongside network-quality controls, because low-fee environments can create both legitimate usage growth and operational spam-management requirements.
👥 Ava Labs team commentary
"The 229.5 M transactions in Q1 came from a broad set of sources. Native USDC was present across a meaningful share of activity, moving through DEX swaps, lending markets, payments, and transfers, a reflection of how deeply it has embedded itself as the primary asset across C-Chain. MyPrize generated 44.7 M transactions from 1.2 M monthly active users, accounting for nearly 20.0% of total throughput, while the remainder came from 1.3 M unique contracts spanning Blackhole, Pharaoh, LFJ, cross-chain bridging, and MapleStory Universe's NXPC token economy with nearly 40,000 in-game burn transactions. Bot share was 0.1% and median fees stayed at fractions of a cent.
Retro9000's C-Chain Round 1 ties rewards to AVAX burned through actual usage, and the early rankings show it working as intended. Blackhole, Pharaoh, and LFJ came in first, second, and third, the three dominant DEXes on the chain. Beyond them, AvaxPixel crossed 400,000 transactions from a growing global community, PumpSpace, The Arena, and Festify each drove real activity, and the program is giving emerging builders a path to visibility based on usage rather than fundraising."
8) Transactions per second
Transactions per second (TPS) measures Avalanche's average transaction throughput during the period. Q1 TPS averaged 29.5, up 19.0% from 24.8 in Q4 and up 612.8% from 4.1 in Q1 2025.
TPS followed the same directional pattern as transaction count, increasing sequentially and sharply year-over-year. This confirms that the transaction-count increase was not only a quarterly total effect, but also reflected a higher average rate of network activity.
The TPS increase reinforces Avalanche's positioning around scalable execution. However, the simultaneous fee decline means Q1 throughput growth should be interpreted as a network-usage and capacity story rather than a fee-growth story.
👥 Ava Labs team commentary
"TPS growth in Q1 was driven by a combination of infrastructure improvements and application-level activity. The Granite upgrade, which activated in November 2025, introduced dynamic minimum block times through ACP-226, allowing validators to push toward sub-second confirmations and enabling more transactions to settle in a given period. On the application side, MyPrize's 44.7 M transactions, sustained DEX activity across Blackhole and Pharaoh, and growing cross-chain activity all contributed to the higher baseline throughput across the quarter.
TPS on its own tells you how much the network is processing but not what it is processing. The metrics worth watching alongside it are gas utilization relative to the 4.0 M gas per second target, which shows how much of the available capacity is being used, stablecoin transfer volume as a proxy for real economic activity moving through the chain, and unique contracts called as a signal of application diversity."
9) Monthly active users
Monthly active users (MAU) measures the number of unique addresses that sent at least one transaction on Avalanche within a rolling 30-day window. Q1 MAU averaged 1.4 M, up 131.1% from 605.9 K in Q4 and up 55.1% from 902.6 K in Q1 2025.
MAU was the strongest user-side metric in Q1. The increase reversed declines from Q2 through Q4 2025 and brought active users above every prior quarter in the dashboard period. The divergence between rising MAU and declining fees suggests that the quarter's user growth was broad but relatively low in fee intensity.
Q1 product and ecosystem activity gives several possible sources of user growth, including builder incentives, C-Chain activity programs, gaming-related launches, and stablecoin/RWA distribution. The metric should still be interpreted carefully because wallet-count growth does not necessarily map one-to-one to economic activity, particularly during incentive-driven periods.
👥 Ava Labs team commentary
"MAU more than doubled QoQ to 1.4 M, with MyPrize as the standout contributor, generating 1.2 M monthly active users across all three months of Q1 alongside its 44.7 M transactions. Gaming and consumer applications on both C-Chain and dedicated L1s added further depth, while the continued growth of DeFi and payment activity brought in users through entirely different channels.
Distinguishing durable user acquisition from short-term participation comes down to behavior over time. The industry learned that token emissions and yield incentives attract capital and users that leave the moment a better opportunity appears elsewhere. What matters is where the user is being onboarded, through which distribution partner, and whether they continue to engage after the initial interaction. Returning addresses, sustained transaction activity, and asset retention are the signals that separate structural adoption from a spike, and around 90.0% of active addresses on Avalanche in Q1 were returning addresses.
As for which segments are most important going forward, the lines between them are blurring. We have been building institutional infrastructure since before RWAs were a narrative, and that focus on tokenization, private credit, stablecoins, and payments continues. But Avalanche is a general purpose chain and gaming, consumer applications, and app-specific L1s remain a core part of the strategy. DeFi, institutional finance, payments, and fintech distribution are all converging into the same on-chain stack, and the through line across all of it is the same: providing the technology for businesses to do better business."
10) Fully diluted valuation
Fully diluted valuation (FDV) measures Avalanche's token valuation assuming full dilution, calculated as AVAX price multiplied by total supply. Q1 FDV averaged $4.9 B, down 38.4% from $7.9 B in Q4 and down 60.6% from $12.4 B in Q1 2025.
FDV declined despite higher transaction count, TPS, MAU, and year-over-year ecosystem TVL and active-loan growth. This reflects the broader Q1 crypto market drawdown and the gap between network-usage indicators and token-market performance during the quarter.
The FDV decline was directionally consistent with weaker market conditions across crypto. For Avalanche specifically, the key analytical question is whether continued institutional deployment, L1 adoption, and C-Chain usage can translate into more durable economic activity over time.
👥 Ava Labs team commentary
"Recent token price softness across the digital asset market is best understood as a sector-wide dynamic rather than a signal about Avalanche's underlying trajectory. Bitcoin, the largest and most liquid digital asset in the world, ended 2025 down roughly 30.0% from its peak, and the broader rotation out of risk assets affected the entire crypto market. The market is also working through a rethink of how digital assets should be valued, with the rise of high-revenue app-chains and fee-generating ecosystems pushing investors toward a sharper cash flow and protocol revenue lens, creating near-term headwinds for infrastructure-layer tokens where value capture plays out over a longer time horizon.
The metrics that tell a more complete story are tied to real on-chain GDP signals: consistent application revenue, fee generation as a measure of productive infrastructure use, stickiness of returning users, and capital flows across the ecosystem. Application-level fees reached roughly $20.0 M in Q1, gas used grew 200.0% year-over-year, and 507,000 ICM messages were exchanged across 45 actively interoperating L1s, showing capital moving across DeFi, payments, and tokenization rails. Value accrual to AVAX compounds across multiple layers as the network grows: C-Chain fees are burned in full, and every L1 in the ecosystem contributes ongoing burn streams through continuous P-Chain validator fees under the pay-as-you-go model. These are not settled questions, and we are investing in the rigor to work through them, with an independent research program and committee drawing on leading academics in economics and decentralized network design to inform how value accrual and validator incentives evolve on Avalanche over time."
11) Outlook
Avalanche's next phase will likely be judged by how effectively its L1 and C-Chain infrastructure converts production deployments into durable usage. The Q1 commentary points to a strategy centered on embedded financial rails: payments, stablecoins, tokenized credit, and fintech distribution where Avalanche operates in the background as settlement infrastructure.
Institutional finance remains the clearest near-term opportunity. Progmat, OpenTrade, BlackRock BUIDL, Avant Protocol, FUSD, and private-credit partners all point to demand for tokenized assets that can move beyond passive on-chain holdings and become productive collateral, settlement assets, or consumer-facing financial products.
Usage growth should be evaluated with more nuance going forward. Higher transaction count, TPS, and MAU are encouraging, but the key questions are whether users return, whether activity reflects real economic flows, and whether low fees can remain resilient against spam while still supporting broad application growth.
For AVAX, the important question is whether this activity translates into clearer value accrual over time. C-Chain fee burns, P-Chain validator fees from Avalanche L1s, application-level revenue, stablecoin transfer volume, and cross-L1 activity are likely to be more useful signals than FDV alone.
12) Definitions
Metrics:
Ecosystem total value locked: measures the total USD value of user deposits into applications on Avalanche.Ecosystem stablecoin supply: measures the total USD value of outstanding stablecoins issued on Avalanche.Ecosystem active loans: measures the total USD value of outstanding loans issued by lending applications on Avalanche.Ecosystem trading volume: measures the total USD value of DEX trades executed by applications on Avalanche.Fees: measures the total USD value paid by users to transact on Avalanche.Transaction count: measures the total number of confirmed transactions on Avalanche.Transactions per second: measures the average transaction throughput on Avalanche during the period.Monthly active users: measures the number of unique addresses that sent at least one transaction on Avalanche within a rolling 30-day window.Fully diluted valuation: measures Avalanche's token valuation assuming full dilution, calculated as AVAX price multiplied by total supply.
13) About this report
This report is published quarterly and produced leveraging Token Terminal's end-to-end onchain data infrastructure. All metrics are sourced directly from blockchain data. Charts and datasets referenced in this report can be viewed on the corresponding Avalanche Q1 2026 Report dashboard on Token Terminal.

1) Executive summary
Steakhouse Financial is an onchain risk curator for lending vaults. Founded in 2023 by Mark Phillips, Sébastien Derivaux, and Adrian Cachinero Vasiljevic, Steakhouse operates as a lean, globally distributed team with backgrounds across DeFi and traditional finance. Steakhouse helps depositors access lending yield through managed vault products, while the underlying lending infrastructure is provided by protocols such as Morpho and Kamino.
Steakhouse does not custody user funds or operate a standalone lending protocol. In practice, this means evaluating collateral, setting risk parameters, managing allocations, and monitoring liquidity across vault products with different risk profiles. Morpho is the main infrastructure layer in the current data set, while Kamino gives Steakhouse exposure to Solana lending markets. A visible example is Coinbase's USDC lending product on Base, where Coinbase users access Morpho vaults curated by Steakhouse from inside the Coinbase app.
Q1 2026 was a quarter in which Steakhouse grew against a weaker lending backdrop. The October 10, 2025 liquidation cascade marked a sharp break in market risk appetite, and the months that followed brought a broader downtrend across crypto markets and onchain lending activity. By Q1, aggregate lending TVL was down sequentially, but Steakhouse total TVL increased, Morpho vault deposits expanded, and Steakhouse ended the quarter as Morpho's largest curator in the Q1-end data. The quarter was not a simple expansion story: fees and MAU declined from Q4, while TVL and Morpho vault deposits increased. That combination points to stronger capital allocation into Steakhouse-curated vaults, while also raising the question of how that scale translates into borrower demand and retained economics over time.
🔑 Key metrics (Q1 2026)
Total value locked: $1.79 billion (+9.04% QoQ, +348.51% YoY)Fees: $14.41 million (-18.89% QoQ, +131.14% YoY)Revenue: $248.62 thousand (-6.20% QoQ, +1,656.39% YoY)Monthly active users: 36.1 thousand (-30.17% QoQ, +3,637.06% YoY)
👥 Steakhouse Financial team commentary
"The overwhelming story of the quarter was doubtless a renewed focus on security. DeFi, by virtue of operating on uncensorable settlement layers, operates on slightly different laws of physics to the way traditional finance settles. This makes it possible to create systems with extremely hard rules that are difficult to bend or break. But it also means that when these rulesets have gaps, they will be exploited.
We were fortunate to not have exposed our users to any of the risk or security events that careened through the quarter and we continue adding to our track record of no bad debt incidents. We can credit this both to upstream risk mitigation by not wavering from our underwriting standards for new collateral onboarding, and to our monitoring systems that safeguard user liquidity in an automated way. We are taking steps to bolster both of these. Specifically, on underwriting standards, we are going to increase the bar for operational security, the current weak spot that bad actors have been successful in exploiting for some high profile projects. We are not immune to operational security risks ourselves, having faced a near-miss with an attempted domain hijacking in March, that we were fortunate to be able to avert.
Our product release pipeline was not lacking, however. We released the Steakhouse App, the first single point of contact that users can look to if they want to interact with our vaults. Inside the App, we shipped high granularity insights into how our vaults function, our underwriting process and new vault formats (Term and Turbo). On these, we wanted to create a simple and noncustodial mechanism to allow users to gain exposure to term premiums or to leveraged strategies without having to make significant trust assumptions in us as a curator. We also launched the USD Machine on the Makina platform, which aggregates Steakhouse strategies cross-chain into a single deposit experience for users.
Last, but not least, we continued to bolster the general level of security for curators as a whole by open sourcing the Supervisor V2, our onchain module for Morpho Vaults V2 that is designed to minimize counterparty exposure to the curator by adding timelocks and Guardians for critical vault configuration changes.
Coming next, we have more of everything. We will continue to focus on high value integrations where our experience and expertise can help institutional customers provide noncustodial stablecoin products to their users. We look forward to the release of Morpho Midnight and the possibilities that fixed-rate loans will open up to curators. Finally, we look forward to nurturing and developing the Kamino ecosystem on Solana which is showing very promising signs of maturation and adoption, with innovative new markets launching soon.
We’re deeply appreciative of the trust our users place in our vaults and we hope to live up to these lofty expectations as we keep driving to make finance open and transparent."
2) Total value locked
Total value locked (TVL) measures the USD value of assets deposited into a protocol, product, or market. In this section, aggregate lending TVL provides the market backdrop, while Steakhouse TVL measures the capital deposited into Steakhouse-curated vault products across Morpho and Kamino.
Q1 took place after a difficult period for crypto markets. The October 10, 2025 liquidation cascade, commonly referred to as 10/10, forced more than $19 billion of leveraged positions to unwind, and the following months saw a broader market downtrend rather than an immediate recovery. That weaker backdrop showed up in lending markets: aggregate lending TVL averaged $82.47 billion in Q1 '26, down from $100.84 billion in Q4 '25 (-18.21% QoQ), although still up from $56.95 billion in Q1 '25 (+44.80% YoY).
Against that backdrop, Steakhouse total TVL averaged $1.79 billion in Q1 '26, up from $1.64 billion in Q4 '25 (+9.04% QoQ). Vaults on Morpho averaged $1.67 billion of TVL, up 23.22% from Q4, while vaults on Kamino averaged $119.93 million, down 58.08% from Q4. Against a contracting lending market, Steakhouse's tracked deposit base grew, driven by continued scaling in its Morpho vaults.
The product mix makes the Q1 result more specific. Steakhouse did not grow because all markets expanded. Its main growth line was Morpho vault curation, while Kamino declined. Morpho accounted for 93.28% of Steakhouse TVL in Q1, while Kamino accounted for 6.71%. Q1 was therefore a quarter of relative strength in Steakhouse's primary vault-curation market, not a broad increase across every deployment.
👥 Steakhouse Financial team commentary
"For us, TVL is an output value, a result that gives us market feedback on whether we are making the right decisions or not. We have benefited across multiple maturation cycles for the preferences of the median DeFi user, while remaining consistent with our product offering and brand promise.
Kamino faced a number of incentive-driven deposit campaigns that pulled a lot of TVL away on short-term campaigns. We’re looking to a new generation of markets coming online in the next few months to create a deeper curation experience that will differentiate vaults beyond just a headline TVL or an incentive distribution. We’re focused on it because we want to meet users where they are, and there is a burgeoning ecosystem of sophisticated users on Solana that we are excited to cater to.
On TVL being a proxy for confidence, the work is what drives the number. Day-to-day curation discipline, the underwriting bar, the security setups, the product releases, those are what produce the growth. There are layers we know we can improve of course, and we do such in the open. Innovation is core to how we operate, and TVL trends over time will reflect whether we kept doing the work."
3) Morpho vault deposits
Morpho vault deposits measures the total USD value supplied into Morpho vaults. In this section, the metric is used to compare Steakhouse with other Morpho risk curators and to show the size of Steakhouse's Morpho vault base.
Despite the downturn in aggregate lending TVL, Steakhouse continued growing and ended Q1 as Morpho's largest curator by deposits. At quarter-end, Steakhouse had roughly $1.8 billion of Morpho vault deposits, compared with $1.0 billion for Gauntlet, $544.0 million for Sentora, $244.0 million for Other, and $200.5 million for Sky Money. At the end of Q1, Steakhouse's lead over the next largest curator was roughly $0.8 billion.
Steakhouse’s curator lead was built on sustained Morpho vault deposit growth. Average deposits increased from $398.71 million in Q1 ’25 to $1.68 billion in Q1 ’26, even as aggregate lending TVL declined sequentially in Q1.
Within Steakhouse's Morpho vault base, the largest vaults in Q1 were stablecoin-heavy. Steakhouse USDC ended the quarter with $453.22 million in deposits, followed by Steakhouse Prime USDC at $425.39 million, Steakhouse USDT at $128.92 million, Steakhouse Reservoir USDC at $103.55 million, Steakhouse Prime ETH at $85.01 million, and Steakhouse High Yield at $84.92 million. The two largest vaults alone represented approximately $878.61m of deposits at the end of Q1.
Steakhouse USDC is also the vault used in Coinbase's USDC lending integration on Base. That integration shows how Steakhouse's curation can sit behind a consumer-facing distribution layer: Coinbase provides the interface, Morpho provides the lending infrastructure, and Steakhouse curates vault risk and allocation.
The Q1 average vault composition was concentrated in a small set of stablecoin-oriented vaults. Steakhouse USDC accounted for $642.9 million, or 38.1% of average Morpho vault deposits, while Steakhouse Prime USDC accounted for $337.8 million, or 20.0%. Together, the two largest USDC vaults represented 58.1% of the Q1 average. Including Steakhouse USDT, Smokehouse USDC, Vault Bridge USDC, and Steakhouse Reservoir USDC, named USDC and USDT vaults represented 76.3% of the visible Q1 composition. Other vaults accounted for $211.3 million, or 12.5%. The concentration shows that Steakhouse's Q1 Morpho growth was led by core stablecoin lending vaults rather than a broad long-tail of small vault products.
Deposits are only one side of the vault model. The other side is where those deposits are allocated. In the market-allocation view, cbBTC/USDC on Base was the largest destination for Steakhouse-curated Morpho vault liquidity, at $659.8 million, or 36.8% of the allocation mix. cbBTC/USDC on Ethereum accounted for another $261.5 million, or 14.6%, while WBTC/USDC on Ethereum accounted for $93.2 million, or 5.2%. Together, the BTC-collateralized USDC markets accounted for 56.6% of allocations. Other markets accounted for $492.3 million, or 27.4%, indicating that concentration in the largest market sits alongside a broader tail of borrower markets. Coinbase is part of the Base distribution context, but the allocation decision sits with Steakhouse’s curation process. The cbBTC/USDC position reflects where Steakhouse-curated liquidity was deployed against borrower demand during the quarter.
Q1 also included a live stress test for lending-market risk management. Between January 31 and February 6, sharp collateral-price moves triggered a wave of liquidations across onchain lending markets. Steakhouse's public write-up states that $234 million of Steakhouse vault liquidations did not generate bad debt and that every vault remained fully redeemable across nearly $1.7 billion in Steakhouse deposits. That does not make future losses impossible, but it is directly relevant to the business model: a risk curator is judged not only by deposit growth, but by how its vaults behave when collateral values move quickly and borrowers are liquidated.
👥 Steakhouse Financial team commentary
"Trust is the hardest thing to build in this industry and the easiest to lose; every allocation decision we made this quarter was anchored to that.
The concentration in Prime USDC vaults can be read from two angles. The first is a clear user de-risk pattern this quarter, with more capital parked in stables and routed to opportunities with lower counterparty risk on the underlying collateral. The second angle is distribution. The USDC vault on Base is integrated with Coinbase, which makes it the most direct gateway for Coinbase users to tap onchain repo markets, and that surface generates concentrated, sticky deposit flow.
Our processes are all publicly documented in our docs, including which markets we will underwrite and how. Once an asset clears the underwriting bar and is not vetoed by vault depositors, it can be added to one of our strategies, and allocation across markets is then a function of borrower demand, on-venue liquidity, and the yield the market sustains for vault depositors. That is the reason cbBTC sits where it does in our book: it is one of the deepest and highest-demand markets onchain, which lets us size into it without compromising the yield vault depositors see.
Coinbase's market depth is a function of the user base they bring, and that user base is also one of the main reasons cbBTC clears the way it does. Coinbase is one of our most valuable distribution partners, and they are a validation point externally for new partners. Working together, we’ve been able to put together the canonical case study for what is possible with a well integrated ecosystem of borrow and lend products for stablecoin users."
4) Morpho vault APY
Morpho vault APY measures the 7-day net annualized yield shown for selected Steakhouse Morpho vaults. The five largest Steakhouse Morpho vaults in Q1 provide a yield lens on the core deposit base rather than on long-tail vaults.
Displayed rates generally moved in a moderate range during the quarter. On January 1, Smokehouse USDC showed 5.53%, Steakhouse Prime USDC 5.29%, Steakhouse USDC 3.93%, Steakhouse High Yield USDC 3.06%, and Steakhouse USDT 2.12%. By March 31, Smokehouse USDC showed 5.33%, Steakhouse Prime USDC 3.82%, Steakhouse High Yield USDC 3.49%, Steakhouse USDT 2.79%, and Steakhouse USDC 2.81%.
The most notable outlier was Smokehouse USDC, which briefly reached 7.55% on March 28 before moving back to 5.33% by March 31. The broader APY range suggests that Steakhouse's Q1 deposit growth should not be reduced to headline yields alone. Rates mattered, but the larger story is that depositors continued allocating capital to curated vaults during a tougher lending market.
APY also helps interpret fees. If lending rates compress, gross fees can decline even when TVL grows. Steakhouse's capital base expanded in Q1, but the economic activity generated by that capital still depended on rates, utilization, and vault mix.
👥 Steakhouse Financial team commentary
"APY is the output of decisions we have already described: which markets we underwrite, how we size into them, and how we balance utilization against the borrower demand that supports the rate. Repo markets balance supply and demand, and when demand softens, supply-side returns compress with it. Where we can innovate is on product design, building products that cater to different audiences or pull new demand into the market. When rates compress across the market, we do not chase yield by reaching into markets we would not have underwritten at a wider spread. We rebalance toward markets where borrower demand is sticky and the underlying collateral can sustain a heavier allocation without breaking the risk frame.
There is real demand for higher-yield lending products, but it is more capital-concentrated than depositor-count-concentrated, and Term, Turbo and Makina were built exactly for that segment. What keeps depositors on the book is trust earned through curation discipline, of which APY is only the visible output. That is the relationship between APY, risk curation and depositor retention, and it is the same relationship that might explain the Q1 widening between curators mentioned earlier."
5) Fees
Fees measures the total USD value of interest and related fees generated by Steakhouse-curated vault activity. For Steakhouse, fees reflect whether the deposit base is economically active across rates, utilization, and product mix.
Steakhouse fees totaled $14.41 million in Q1 '26, down from $17.76 million in Q4 '25 (-18.89% QoQ) but up from $6.23 million in Q1 '25 (+131.14% YoY). The sequential fee decline occurred despite higher total TVL, which indicates that the quarter's economics were affected by lower rate intensity, lower utilization, a changing mix of vault activity, or some combination of those factors. The year-over-year increase shows that Steakhouse remained much larger economically than it was a year earlier, even after Q1 rate-sensitive activity softened.
Fees shifted back toward Morpho in Q1. Morpho Vault Curation accounted for 94.33% of Q1 fees, up from 82.38% in Q4. Kamino Vault Curation accounted for 5.67%, down from 17.62% in Q4. This mirrors the TVL mix shift, where Morpho became the dominant contributor to Steakhouse's tracked capital base.
The chain mix also changed. Ethereum accounted for 47.39% of Q1 fees, down from 55.07% in Q4. Base increased to 41.58%, up from 26.46% in Q4. Solana fell to 5.67%, while Arbitrum One rose to 5.11%. The fee base is therefore becoming less Ethereum-only, but the quarter still remained concentrated between Ethereum and Base.
Base's rising fee share is especially relevant because Coinbase's USDC lending integration routes users into Steakhouse-curated Morpho vaults on Base. The data does not isolate Coinbase-driven activity from other Base activity, but the integration helps explain why Base is an important distribution surface for Steakhouse.
Higher TVL did not translate into higher fees in Q1. The gap points to a lower-rate environment. In that setting, the economic question is not only whether Steakhouse can attract capital, but whether it can allocate that capital into markets with sufficient risk-adjusted demand.
👥 Steakhouse Financial team commentary
"We do not treat fees as a taboo topic to obfuscate or hide in the fine print. They are part of the business model, and they are what makes the business model sustainable. As we have seen before, our view is that management or performance fees should be applied where there is meaningful value creation.
That framing also answers the lower-rate question. In a tighter spread environment, fee generation tracks where additional curation work can be done credibly: higher-yield strategies, partner-specific structures, product designs that bring new demand into the market. The moment fee pressure starts to shape risk decisions on those vaults, the model is broken.
The relationship between TVL growth, borrower demand, and fee generation is not strictly proportional. A book weighted toward Prime vaults will not drive fee growth at the same rate as TVL. A closer relationship sits between fee generation and customizable solutions, whether built for partners or designed in-house, which require continuous hands-on management and carry the corresponding fee. The qualitative differences that matter for fee generation are mostly on the curation work attached to a given vault, with the collateral being underwritten as the most consistent driver, though it is not a hard rule."
6) Revenue
Revenue measures the total USD value of fees retained by Steakhouse from its curated vault activity. Revenue is distinct from fees: fees capture the gross economic activity generated by users, while revenue captures the portion retained by Steakhouse.
Steakhouse revenue totaled $248.62 thousand in Q1 '26, down from $265.04 thousand in Q4 '25 (-6.20% QoQ) but up from $14.16 thousand in Q1 '25 (+1,656.39% YoY). Revenue declined less than fees sequentially, so retained economics were more resilient than gross fee generation. Q1 revenue represented approximately 1.73% of fees, compared with 1.49% in Q4.
The product mix shifted materially. Morpho Vault Curation accounted for 83.57% of Q1 revenue, up from 40.97% in Q4. Kamino Vault Curation accounted for 16.43%, down from 59.03% in Q4. This is one of the clearest signs that Q1 revenue became more aligned with Steakhouse's Morpho-led TVL and fee base.
Revenue by chain was more distributed than revenue by product. Ethereum accounted for 51.86% of Q1 revenue, Arbitrum One 29.17%, Solana 16.43%, Base 2.06%, and Monad 0.49%. Arbitrum One's revenue share was notably higher than its fee share, suggesting that retained economics can vary materially by chain and product configuration.
👥 Steakhouse Financial team commentary
"Vault economics track the work behind each vault, with no single rate card across our platform. The model is built that way deliberately so that the economics reflect the value created in each setup.
On the balance between monetization and depositor yields, the same logic applies, and we are also deliberately at a point where book quality and distribution come ahead of near-term revenue extraction. Distribution and product adoption are still scaling.
On the forward view: user retention is a direct output of the quality we deliver. We treat users as rational allocators, and we only expect retention to grow if we keep delivering on what they optimize for: risk-adjusted return, transparency on what the vault is doing, and the curation discipline that produces both. If we keep doing the work that justifies our place on a user's allocation map, the revenue side will take care of itself."
7) Monthly active users
Monthly active users (MAU) measures the number of unique wallet addresses that interacted with Steakhouse-curated products over a rolling 30-day period. MAU should be interpreted as wallet activity, not as a count of distinct individuals or institutions.
Steakhouse MAU averaged 36.1 thousand in Q1 '26, down from 51.7 thousand in Q4 '25 (-30.17% QoQ) but up from 966 in Q1 '25 (+3,637.06% YoY). The decline shows that Q1 was not a broad user-growth quarter, even though TVL increased. The year-over-year increase, however, shows how much larger Steakhouse's user footprint had become compared with early 2025.
The product mix of MAU was heavily Morpho-oriented. Morpho Vault Curation accounted for 94.42% of Q1 MAU, up from 90.79% in Q4. Kamino Vault Curation accounted for 5.58%, down from 9.21%. This aligns with the Q1 shift in TVL, fees, and revenue toward Morpho.
MAU was also highly concentrated by chain. Base accounted for 91.08% of Q1 MAU, followed by Solana at 5.57%, Ethereum at 2.31%, Arbitrum One at 0.66%, Polygon at 0.30%, Monad at 0.07%, and Unichain at 0.01%. The contrast with TVL and fee mix is important: Base dominated wallet activity, while Ethereum and Base together dominated fees.
Coinbase's integration also affects how MAU should be interpreted. Some activity may originate from users interacting through Coinbase's front end rather than directly through Morpho or Steakhouse interfaces, making Base activity a distribution signal as much as a direct-user signal.
The user data suggests that Steakhouse's Q1 growth was capital-led rather than user-count-led. That is not necessarily negative for a risk curator serving institutional and higher-capital depositors. A smaller number of active wallets can still represent a large deposit base if vault usage is concentrated among larger depositors or integrations.
👥 Steakhouse Financial team commentary
"The pattern has shifted as distribution has expanded. Early in the Steakhouse lifecycle, a concentrated set of wallets held most of the AUM, with the long tail of users representing a smaller share. As distribution channels grew, with the Coinbase integration through Base contributing the largest portion of that growth, the long tail moved up materially as a share of AUM. The Base wallet activity footprint reflects that: the channel is bringing in users who would not have found the vaults through a direct Steakhouse interface, and they are arriving with real capital. Depositor count, wallet activity, and capital concentration are three signals that move on different cadences.
What MAU does not capture is the dominant behavior on Steakhouse vaults: deposit and hold. Vault strategies are designed for users who do their underwriting at deposit and then leave the position to do its work, and a wallet showing no transaction in a given month is not a disengaged wallet. We also have users who allocate across different strategies and rebalance throughout the market cycle, optimizing for yield. For more active appetites, we built USD Machine, which rebalances between Steakhouse strategies."
8) Outlook
Steakhouse’s next phase will likely be shaped by whether it can keep scaling Morpho vault deposits while maintaining the risk posture that makes those vaults credible to larger depositors. Q1 showed that the market can reward the curation layer even when broader lending TVL is weaker, but it also showed that capital growth, user activity, fees, and revenue do not always move together.
As the deposit base grows, allocation quality becomes more important. Steakhouse needs borrower markets with enough depth to absorb vault liquidity at attractive risk-adjusted rates. Q1 allocations were meaningfully exposed to BTC-collateralized USDC markets, especially on Base, tying the growth story to Coinbase/Base distribution and borrower demand rather than deposits alone.
The economic model is the other area to watch. Fees declined in Q1 despite higher TVL, while vault-level yields stayed in a moderate range. If rates and utilization remain lower, Steakhouse’s performance will depend on how product mix, partner economics, fee settings, and borrower demand translate deposits into retained revenue.
The common thread is risk curation. Steakhouse’s market position depends on collateral selection, allocation, monitoring, product design, and transparent risk communication. For an onchain risk curator, those functions are the product.
9) Definitions
Metrics:
Total value locked: measures the total USD value of assets deposited into Steakhouse-curated vault products.Morpho vault deposits: measures the total USD value of assets deposited into Morpho vaults.Vault APY: measures the 7-day net annualized yield shown for a vault.Fees: measures the total USD value of interest and related fees generated by Steakhouse-curated vault activity.Revenue: measures the total USD value of fees retained by Steakhouse.Monthly active users: measures the number of unique wallet addresses that interacted with Steakhouse-curated products over a rolling 30-day period.
10) About this report
This report is published quarterly and produced leveraging Token Terminal's end-to-end onchain data infrastructure. All metrics are sourced directly from blockchain data. Charts and datasets referenced in this report can be viewed on the corresponding Steakhouse Financial Q1 2026 Report dashboard on Token Terminal.

1) Izpildraksts
Pendle $PENDLE ir ienākumu tirdzniecības projekts, kas ļauj lietotājiem tokenizēt un tirgot on-chain ienākumus, izmantojot pamattokenus (PT) un ienākumu tokenus (YTs). Tas ļauj lietotājiem piekļūt fiksētas procentu likmes ienākumiem caur PT, iegūt ar sviru saistītu ekspozīciju uz nākotnes ienākumiem caur YT, nodrošināt likviditāti un tirgot ienākumus dažādos aktīvos, ķēdēs un termiņos.
Kopš 2021. gada izlaišanas Pendle ir paplašinājies no sava pamatprodukta - ienākumu tokenizācijas - uz plašāku komplektu, kas ietver pasūtījumu grāmatas balstītu Limit Order sistēmu un Boros. Pamat Pendle lietotne ir organizēta ap ienākumu tirgiem, piemēram, stabilajām monētām, sintētiskajiem dolāriem, BTC, ETH, RWAs un ekosistēmas specifiskiem aktīviem, kamēr Boros paplašina modeli, piedāvājot tirdzniecību ar maržām dažādos kripto un ne-kripto aktīvos.

1) Izpildraksts
Ether.fi $ETHFI ir likvīdā stakošanas un DeFi projekts, kas ļauj lietotājiem stakot aktīvus, piekļūt automatizētām ienesīguma stratēģijām un tērēt pret saviem kriptovalūtu turējumiem. Projekts tika dibināts 2022. gadā, un tā vadītājs ir Mike Silagadze. Lietotāji var stakot ETH, BTC vai ETHFI, lai saņemtu likvīdus atvasinātos tokenus, kas gūst stakošanas ienesīgumu, noguldīt likvīdos seifos, kas sadala līdzekļus DeFi protokolos, lai optimizētu ienesīgumu, vai izmantot Ether.fi Cash, lai aizņemtos pret savu kriptovalūtu nodrošinājumu reālām pirkšanām, izmantojot Visa kredītkarti. Ether.fi komanda arvien biežāk raksturo šo produktu komplektu kā "DeFi Banku": nekustamā finanšu konts, kas apvieno ienesīgumu, likviditāti un maksājumus vienā saskarnē.

1) Izpildraksts
Aave $AAVE ir DeFi dominējošais aizdevumu projekts, kas darbojas decentralizētos tirgos, kur lietotāji nodrošina aktīvus, lai gūtu peļņu, un aizņēmēji piekļūst pārkollaterizētiem aizdevumiem. Projekts pārvalda riska parametrus caur pārvaldību un specializētiem riska pakalpojumu sniedzējiem, apvienojot atļauto tirgus piekļuvi ar aktīvu specifiskiem nodrošinājumiem, aizņemšanās un likvidācijas kontroles mehānismiem.
Kopš palaišanas 2020. gadā, Aave ir paplašinājies ar V2 un V3 aizdevumu tirgiem, bet Aave V4 tika palaists Ethereum 2026. gada martā ar modulāru centrālo un filiāļu arhitektūru, lai nodrošinātu specializētākas aizņemšanās stratēģijas. Projekts ir arī paplašinājies ārpus saviem pamatā aizdevumu tirgiem, izmantojot GHO, Aave dzīvā pārkollaterizētā stabilā monēta; Aave App, gaidāmais mazumtirdzniecības stila fiksētā ienākuma uzkrājumu produkts, ko nodrošina Aave tirgi; un Aave Horizon, institucionālais tirgus, kas tika palaists 2025. gada augustā, lai aizņemtos stabilās monētas pret tokenizētiem reālās pasaules aktīviem.

1) Izpildraksts
TRON $TRX ir 1. līmeņa blokķēde, kas izstrādāta ātrām, lēzām darījumu izmaksām. Tīklam ir deleģētās pierādījuma par likmi (Delegated Proof-of-Stake) konsensa mehānisms, kur 27 ievēlēti Super Pārstāvji apstiprina darījumus un pārvalda tīkla parametrus, balstoties uz kopienas priekšlikumiem. Lietotāji var likt TRX, TRON pamatā esošo žetonu, lai segtu darījumu izmaksas, nevis maksājot par katru darījumu gāzes maksu, padarot tīklu īpaši piemērotu augstas frekvences, mazas vērtības pārvedumiem. TRON ir viens no lielākajiem stabilo žetonu ekosistēmām kriptovalūtās un ir izveidojis sevi kā nozīmīgu norēķinu slāni USDT pārvedumiem, īpaši mazumtirdzniecības maksājumiem.

1) Izpildes kopsavilkums
Morpho $MORPHO ir atvērta kredīta tīkls onchain aizdevumiem un aizņemšanās. Projekta arhitektūra atdala aizdevumu divās slāņos: Morpho Tirgi, kur tiek izveidoti izolēti aizdevumu tirgi ar neatkarīgi konfigurētiem riska parametriem; un Morpho Seifi, kur trešo pušu riska kuratori veido pārvaldītas stratēģijas uz šo tirgu pamata. Šis dizains ļauj uzņēmumiem, fintech uzņēmumiem un iestādēm iekļaut aizdevumus savos produktos, vienlaikus saglabājot kontroli pār riska konfigurāciju.

1) Izpildraksts
Silo Finance ir decentralizēts aizdevumu projekts, kas balstās uz vienu arhitektūras principu: riska izolācija. Katrs aizdevumu tirgus ("silo") pāro vienu nodrošinājuma aktīvu ar vienu aizdevuma aktīvu, nodrošinot, ka jebkurš uzbrukums vai manipulācija vienā tirgū nevar izplatīties uz pārējo projektu. Kamēr lielākā daļa aizdevumu projektu apvieno aktīvus kopā un pārvalda risku caur valdību un baltās saraksta veidošanu, Silo izolē risku tirgus līmenī pēc dizaina. Projekts darbojas visā Sonic, Avalanche, Arbitrum One, Ethereum, Base un OP Mainnet.

1) Izpildraksts
Raydium
tika palaista 2021. gadā un ir lielākā decentralizētā birža uz Solana, kas darbojas ar automatizētiem tirgus veidotājiem (AMM) likviditātes baseiniem, kas ļauj veikt bezatļautas tokenu apmaiņas, likviditātes nodrošināšanu un tokenu palaišanu. Token Terminal seko Raydium pieciem produktiem: OpenBook (mantojumā esošs AMM), CLMM (koncentrēta likviditāte), CPMM (pārdošanas produkts), Stable Swap un LaunchLab (tokenu palaišanas platforma). Raydium arhitektūra ļauj tai apkalpot gan pasīvos likviditātes nodrošinātājus caur tās mantošanas baseiniem, gan aktīvos tirgotājus, kas meklē kapitāla efektīvu izpildi caur koncentrētu likviditāti, kamēr LaunchLab paplašina projekta sasniedzamību aktīvu izdošanā.

1) Izpildraksts
Aave $AAVE ir DeFi dominējošais aizdevumu projekts, kas darbojas decentralizētās tirgos, kur lietotāji nodrošina aktīvus, lai gūtu ienākumus, un aizņēmēji piekļūst pārmaksātiem aizdevumiem. Projekts tieši pārvalda risku parametrus caur pārvaldību, piedāvājot pārbaudītu pieeju decentralizētai aizdošanai ar vairāk nekā piecu gadu operatīvo pieredzi.
Kopš 2020. gada palaišanas Aave ir attīstījis lielāku kapitāla efektivitāti, riska segmentāciju un multichain paplašināšanos trijās galvenajās versijās. V4, modulāra pārveide, kas ievieš centrā un stieņa arhitektūru, tika laista Ethereum 2026. gada martā ar konservatīvām piegādes un aizņemšanās robežām, ļaujot projektam kontrolētā veidā paplašināties līdzās esošajai V3 izvietošanai.

1) Izpildes kopsavilkums
Sky $SKY ir decentralizēts stabilu monētu izsniedzējs, kas piedāvā divas USD piesaistītas stabilās monētas, USDS un DAI, abas nodrošinātas ar kriptovalūtu nodrošinājumu. Lietotāji var noguldīt USDS Sky Savings Rate (SSR), lai gūtu peļņu, saņemot sUSDS tokenus, kas seko viņu pozīcijai un uzkrātajai vērtībai. DAI turētāji var piekļūt peļņai atsevišķi caur Dai Savings Rate (DSR). Sky radās kā MakerDAO, kas tika uzsākts 2017. gadā un ieviesa decentralizētās stabilās monētas ar DAI. 2024. gada septembrī projekts tika pārzīmēts par Sky kā daļa no tā Endgame ceļveža, ieviešot USDS kā uzlabotu DAI versiju un SKY kā jauno pārvaldības tokenu. Abas mantojuma tokeni paliek apgrozībā kopā ar to uzlabotajiem kolēģiem.

1) Izpildraksts
Aerodrome $AERO ir decentralizēta apmaiņa (DEX), kas darbojas uz Base tīkla, kalpojot kā tā centrālā tirdzniecības un likviditātes tirgus. Balstoties uz ve(3,3) modeli, Aerodrome apvieno automatizētu tirgus veidotāju (AMM) ar balsu bloķēšanas pārvaldības sistēmu: likviditātes sniedzēji saņem AERO emisijas kā stimulu, kamēr veAERO turētāji (tie, kas bloķē AERO žetonus) balso par emisiju sadalījumu un saņem 100% tirdzniecības maksu no savām izvēlētajām grupām. Tas rada lidojošu ratu, kur dziļāka likviditāte piesaista vairāk apjoma, kas ģenerē vairāk maksu, kas piesaista vairāk balsu bloķēšanas. Aerodrome darbojas ekskluzīvi uz Base, Coinbase inkubētā Layer 2 tīkla.

1) Izpildes kopsavilkums
GMX $GMX ir decentralizēta mūžīga apmaiņa, kas uzsāka darbību Arbitrum. GMX vēlāk paplašinājās uz Avalanche un uzsāka V2, ieviešot izolētus GM baseinus, lai nodrošinātu efektīvāku kapitāla pieejamību. V2 arī integrēja Chainlink datu straumes augstas precizitātes orakulu cenām. GMX likviditātes vāki (GLV) ļauj automatizētu pārbalansēšanu starp GM baseiniem, kamēr Chaos Labs riska orakuli nodrošina reāllaika riska parametru pielāgojumus. GMX darbojas pēc līdzdalības modeļa, kur likviditātes nodrošinātāji nogulda aktīvus tirgos un gūst peļņu no tirdzniecības aktivitātes. Projekts veic vietējo izvietojumu uz Arbitrum, Avalanche un Solana, un 2025. gadā uzsāka savu daudzsānu funkcionalitāti, paplašinot piekļuvi krustsānu tirdzniecībai no Base, BNB Chain un Ethereum Mainnet.

1) Izpildes kopsavilkums
LayerZero $ZRO ļauj drošu, atļautu ziņojumapmaiņu starp blokķēdēm. Tas nodrošina nemainīgus gala punktu līgumus, kas izvietoti vairāk nekā 160 tīklos, ļaujot lietotnēm sūtīt datus un pārskaitīt vērtību starp ķēdēm, nepaļaujoties uz vienu uzticamu starpnieku. Izstrādātāji konfigurē savu drošību, izvēloties no neatkarīgām decentralizētām verifikatoru tīkliem (DVN) un izpildītājiem, kuri attiecīgi verificē un piegādā krustķēdes ziņojumus. LayerZero infrastruktūra ir pamats tādiem produktiem kā Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standarts, kas ļauj vietējām tokenu pārsūtīšanām bez iepakotiem aktīviem, un Stargate, krustķēdes tilts, ko LayerZero fonds iegādājās 2025. gada augustā. Saskaņā ar šo ziņojumu OFT standarta nodrošinātā vērtība ir $87b un vēsturiskā vērtības pārsūtīšana ir pārsniegusi $175b.

1) Izpildraksts
Aave $AAVE ir DeFi dominējošais aizdevumu projekts, kas darbojas decentralizētās tirgus vietās, kur lietotāji nodrošina aktīvus, lai gūtu peļņu, un aizņēmējiem ir pieejami pārmērīgi nodrošināti aizdevumi. Projekts tieši pārvalda riska parametrus caur pārvaldi, piedāvājot pārbaudītu pieeju decentralizētai aizdošanai ar vairāk nekā piecu gadu darbības vēsturi. Kopš palaišanas 2020. gadā Aave ir virzījies uz lielāku kapitāla efektivitāti, riska segmentāciju un multivides paplašināšanos trīs galvenajās versijās, ar V4 gaidāmu vēlāk 2026. gadā.

1) Izpildes kopsavilkums
TRON $TRX ir Layer 1 blokķēde, kas izstrādāta ātrām, zemas izmaksas darījumiem. Tīkls izmanto deleģētās pierādījuma par likmi konsensa mehānismu, kur 27 ievēlēti Super Pārstāvji validē darījumus un pārvalda tīkla parametrus, izmantojot kopienas priekšlikumus. Lietotāji var likt TRX (TRON vietējā tokena) darījumu izmaksu segšanai, nevis maksājot par katru darījumu gāzes maksu, padarot tīklu īpaši piemērotu augstas frekvences, maza apjoma pārvedumiem. TRON uztur vienu no lielākajām stabilo monētu ekosistēmām kriptovalūtās un ir nostiprinājusi sevi kā galveno norēķinu slāni USDT pārvedumiem, īpaši mazumtirdzniecības maksājumiem.

1) Izpildījuma kopsavilkums
Aethir $ATH ir decentralizēts infrastruktūras projekts, kas darbojas kā GPU pakalpojumu tīkls, savienojot GPU sniedzējus (mākonis mitinātājus) ar uzņēmumu klientiem, kuriem nepieciešama augstas veiktspējas datortehnika mākslīgā intelekta apmācībai, secināšanai, spēlēm un citiem GPU intensīviem darba slodzēm. Tīkla pamatoperācijas darbojas uz Arbitrum, kur mākonis mitinātāji liek ATH tokenus, lai darbinātu GPU konteinerus un iegūtu maksu no uzņēmuma datortehnikas līgumiem, ar ATH, kas pieejams arī Ethereum. Aethir infrastruktūra aptver 440,000+ GPU konteinerus 94 valstīs, tostarp NVIDIA H100, H200 un B200 aparatūru. Atšķirībā no tradicionālajiem mākoņu pakalpojumu sniedzējiem, Aethir modelis ir kopienas īpašums: neatkarīgi mākonis mitinātāji piegādā un apkalpo aparatūru, savukārt projekts koordinē saskaņošanu, kvalitātes nodrošināšanu (caur Checker Nodes) un rēķināšanu.