DeFi & L1L2 Weekly — 📈 The weekly trading volume of tokenised gold hit record highs; EigenLayer unveiled EigenCloud to enhance trust and verifiability for on-chain and off-chain apps 

Tokenized gold’s trading volume surged 70% in June; EigenLayer unveiled EigenCloud which onboards applications on-chain; Ethena Labs and Securitize enabled atomic swaps between BUIDL and Ethena’s USDtb.

Quick Take

• The weekly trading volume of tokenised gold hit record highs with Pax Gold (PAXG) and Tether Gold (XAUt) achieving a combined US$895 million in the last week, which is 70% higher than its volume in the first week of June.
• EigenLayer unveiled its new developer platform, EigenCloud, which aims to enhance trust and verifiability for on-chain and off-chain apps.
• Ethena Labs and Securitize enabled 24/7 atomic swaps between BlackRock’s tokenised fund BUIDL and Ethena’s stablecoin USDtb.
• Jupiter will pause governance votes until the end of 2025 because of structural issues and a breakdown in trust.
• The Norwegian government plans to temporarily restrict new data centers for BTC mining to conserve electricity.

Weekly DeFi Index

This week, the market capitalisation and volatility indices increased by +0.37% and +23.84%, respectively, while the volume index dropped by -4.31%.

• Aave (AAVE) is set to expand to Aptos, a non-Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) blockchain. This marks Aave’s first non-EVM integration, leveraging Aptos’s high throughput and low transaction fees to enhance Aave’s protocol performance.

Chart of the Week

The weekly trading volume of tokenised gold reached record highs recently. While the crypto market went through recent fluctuations, trading activity around tokenised gold continued to rise. The combined trading volume of XAUt and PAXG reached around $895 million in the last week, which is 70% higher than its volume in the first week of June. The trend started in April when the price of spot gold increased because of economic uncertainty.

News Highlights

• EigenLayer introduced EigenCloud, a new developer platform designed to enhance trust and verifiability for on-chain and off-chain applications. EigenCloud uses EigenLayer’s Autonomous Verifiable Services (AVS) and aims to empower Web2 applications with blockchain’s trustless features. 
• Ethena Labs and Securitize enabled 24/7 atomic swaps between BlackRock’s tokenised fund BUIDL and Ethena’s stablecoin, USDtb. This integration allows institutions and DeFi users to access on-chain dollars.
• Jupiter, a Solana-based decentralised exchange (DEX), will pause governance voting until the end of 2025 because of structural issues and a breakdown in trust. The team aims to refocus its governance process to empower the community while enabling the decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) to be more productive. While staking rewards will continue at 50 million JUP per quarter, no new work groups will be created. 
• The Norwegian government plans to temporarily restrict new data centers for Bitcoin mining to conserve electricity and address local energy needs. The proposed restrictions are set to take effect in autumn 2025.

Recent Research Reports

• Interest Rate Derivatives and Pendle: Pendle Finance innovates by allowing users to tokenise and trade the yield component of yield-bearing assets separately from the principal, unlocking new liquidity and yield management strategies.
• Crypto Options: Crypto options are similar to traditional finance (TradFi) options, except the underlying assets are crypto or crypto-related contracts. Compared to the crypto spot and futures markets, crypto options still represent a small but growing market.
• Alpha Navigator: Quest for Alpha [May 2025]:The value of most asset classes increased in May with crypto taking the lead. Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade went live on 7 May, and BTC reached an all-time high on 22 May. These coincided with multiple tariffs in the same month.

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