DeFi & L1L2 Weekly — 📈 The number of stablecoin active addresses surged 53%; Pump.fun launched its own DEX while Radium responded with its own launchpad

The number of stablecoin active addresses surged by 53%; Evmos was open-sourced as a native EVM for Cosmos; pump.fun launched its own DEX, and Raydium responded with its own launchpad.

Weekly DeFi Index

This week, the market capitalisation and volatility indices rose by +12.77% and +4.71%, respectively, while the volume index dropped by -17.85%.

• DeFi lending platform Abracadabra.Money‘s GMX-linked pools were hacked, resulting in a loss of 6,262 ETH, worth approximately US$13 million. The hack targeted the protocol’s pools using GMX tokens, but GMX denied claims that its smart contracts were involved in the vulnerability. 

Chart of the Week

A collaborative report from Artemis and Dune revealed substantial growth in the number of stablecoin active addresses over the past year. Between February 2024 and February 2025, the total address count surged by 53%, surpassing 30 million addresses, while the overall supply of stablecoins increased by 63% to $225 billion. The growth is primarily driven by greater user participation, enhanced institutional adoption, and increased usage of stablecoins for payments and decentralised finance (DeFi) activities.

News Highlights

• Cosmos’s Interchain Foundation open-sourced Evmos as Cosmos EVM, providing the native Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) framework for the ecosystem. This development enables Cosmos blockchains to integrate Cosmos EVM for EVM compatibility, including the support for Ethereum wallets and native ERC-20 tokens.
• Berachain activated its Proof of Liquidity (PoL) system, a new incentive framework for block reward distribution and user engagement. The system introduced 37 reward vaults, allowing protocols to distribute rewards to users while incentivising validators to direct emissions efficiently.
• Meme coin launchpad pump.fun launched its own decentralised exchange (DEX) called PumpSwap, which replaces Raydium as the primary trading venue for Solana meme coins. 
• Raydium is set to launch its own token launchpad called LaunchLab after pump.fun announced plans to develop its own DEX, which is expected to impact Raydium’s revenue. LaunchLab will feature various bonding curves and allow third-party user interfaces to set their own fees.
• World Liberty Financial, a DeFi venture backed by President Donald Trump and his family, launched a stablecoin called USD1. The stablecoin is pegged to the US dollar and backed by short-term US government treasuries, US dollar deposits, and other cash equivalents.
• Sonic Labs, the team supporting the Sonic blockchain development, unveiled a yield-generating, algorithmic stablecoin with an alleged annual percentage rate (APR) of up to 23%. This move sparked concerns about another potential collapse that mirrors Terra-Luna’s. 
• Germany’s finance regulator BaFin halted Ethena Labs’s subsidiary, Ethena GmbH, from offering the USDe stablecoin because of “serious deficiencies” that contradicted the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA). Ethena Labs asserted that no assets were frozen, and BaFin’s move would not impact USDe listings, token minting, or redemptions.
• The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) lifted sanctions on Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency mixer that was previously indicted multiple times for allegedly assisting with fund laundering. 
• Zoth, an Ethereum-based real-world assets platform, suffered a security breach that resulted in a loss of $8.85 million. The hack is believed to have occurred when an attacker gained access to a private key controlling a proxy contract, allowing funds to be transferred out of the system.
• AIXBT, a market commentary AI agent, lost approximately 55 ETH (around $100,000) worth of ETH after a hacker gained unauthorised “dashboard access”. The attacker coaxed AIXBT into sending ETH through a series of social media posts, possibly by injecting faulty commands or data.

Recent Research Reports

• Research Roundup Newsletter [February 2025]: We present to you our latest issue of Research Roundup, featuring our deep dives into ‘Will Be Another Asset’ and ‘Institutional Crypto Market: From Liquidity to Global Adoption’.

• Wall Street On-Chain Part 1 – Will Bitcoin be Another Asset?: Bitcoin has made a solid run in the past year to widen the gap between its performance against altcoins. It is also often described as ‘digital gold’ for being seen as a store of value and potential hedge against inflation. Based on its recent developments and adoption in institutions, this report explores if BTC could become another new asset and examines potential contenders to bitcoin.

• The Evolution of the Institutional Crypto Market: From Liquidity to Global Adoption: This article presents the institutional crypto market, focusing on liquidity and global adoption.