DeFi & L1L2 Weekly — 📈 Solana’s stablecoin market cap reached a record of US$12.8 billion; Raydium released its own token launch tool, LaunchLab

Solana’s stablecoins market cap reached a record of US$12.8 billion. Raydium released its own token launch tool, LaunchLab. EigenLayer added token slashing to its network.

Quick Take

• Solana’s stablecoin market cap reached a record of US$12.8 billion. Raydium released its own token launch tool, LaunchLab. EigenLayer added token slashing to its network.
• Bitcoin’s TVL dropped by 19%, while Hyperliquid’s TVL grew by 31% week-over-week.
• For DEXes, Aerodrome and GMX led the TVL growth with 10.73% and 10.09%, respectively. 

Weekly DeFi Index

This week, the market capitalisation index increased by +9.77%, while the volume and volatility indices dropped by -20.84% and -55.04%, respectively.

Chart of the Week

The total stablecoin market capitalisation on Solana reached a milestone of US$12.8 billion this month. The surge was fuelled by demand for new stablecoins from increased decentralised finance (DeFi) on-chain activity, as well as the integration of new decentralised applications (dapps) on Solana.

EURC (EURC) and Ondo US Dollar Yield (USDY) led the surge, with the market cap of the former growing by 150% to $38.9 million in the last 30 days and the latter growing by 61% to $176.9 million within the same period. USDC’s market cap also grew by 3%, while USDT held steady at $2.32 billion without significant growth.

News Highlights

• Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed replacing the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) contract language with the RISC-V instruction set architecture to improve the speed and efficiency of Ethereum’s execution layer. His suggestion aims to address scaling issues in the network, including stable data sampling and zero-knowledge EVM (zkEVM) proving.
• Raydium, a Solana-based decentralised exchange (DEX), released its own token launch tool, LaunchLab, to compete with pump.fun. The new platform enables users to launch tokens that tap directly into Raydium’s liquidity pools. 25% of all transaction fees will be allocated to buying RAY, its native token.
• Ethereum restaking protocol EigenLayer has added token slashing into its platform. Slashing is a mechanism that punishes malicious validators by reducing their staked amount, therefore deterring self-serving actions. This feature was missing during EigenLayer’s launch last year, leading to criticism that EigenLayer did not have the capability to carry out its ambitious pitch.
• Ethereum Layer-2 (L2) Arbitrum released the Timeboost upgrade, a novel transaction policy designed to accelerate transactions and improve network efficiency. The upgrade introduced a sealed-bid, on-chain auction that allows Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) searchers to compete for transaction inclusion, reducing latency and congestion.
• Synthetic dollar protocol Ethena and tokenisation firm Securitize are building Converge, an institutional-focused blockchain designed to tokenise real-world assets (RWAs). Converge will tap into Arbitrum’s EVM and Celestia, a data availability layer, for secure, high-speed transactions.
• Eliza Labs, the developer of the AI agent framework ai16z, launched auto.fun, a no-code platform that lets users create and deploy AI agents without programming knowledge. It supports the creation of AI agents that interact with social media, dapps, and other Web3 services, allowing users to automate the execution of tasks and strategies.
• USDC issuer Circle introduced Refund Protocol, a non-custodial smart contract system enabling dispute resolution for stablecoin transactions without centralised intermediaries. This initiative addresses the lack of a built-in mechanism for refunds or chargebacks in stablecoin transactions. The protocol empowers payment arbiters to facilitate refunds while maintaining the decentralised nature of the platform.
• Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin launched on Aave’s V3 Ethereum Core marketplace, attracting over $19 million to its lending pool. Over $4.68 million in loans have been borrowed, and the token’s market capitalisation stands at $300 million.
• Synthetix protocol’s sUSD stablecoin depegged from the US dollar, falling to a new low of $0.66 after a month of instability following the implementation of the SIP-420 upgrade, which restructured debt handling and weakened key incentives.

Recent Research Reports

• Wall Street On-Chain Part 2 – RWA Tokenisation: Real-world asset (RWA) tokenisation is revolutionising traditional finance by bringing liquidity, efficiency, and accessibility. This report explores tokenisation by asset classes, including institutional adoption and regional initiatives, as well as RWAs by chain.

• Alpha Navigator: Quest for Alpha [March 2025]: Asset performance was mixed. Crypto and Equities led the drop, while Real Assets and Fixed Income increased. In March, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to establish a US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and digital asset stockpile.

• 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.

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