defi

According to The Defiant, the decentralized lending protocol Morpho deployed its fixed-term, fixed-rate lending agreement Midnight to Ethereum on September 8, expanding the product from the Base network to Ethereum, allowing Ethereum users to access USDC loans collateralized by WBTC or cbBTC. Morpho co-founder Merlin Egalite stated that the Ethereum launch will start with the "USDC | cbBTC and USDC | WBTC markets" and will gradually expand.The core difference between Midnight and Morpho Blue lies in interest rate certainty. Blue uses open loans where interest rates fluctuate according to a formula; Midnight, on the other hand, trades credit units at market-priced rates with fixed terms, allowing borrowers to determine financing costs in advance, and lenders can lock in returns instead of bearing interest rate changes with each block. Midnight lenders purchase credit units at prices below the one-to-one redemption value at maturity.However, the largest potential source of funds for Midnight remains constrained. The Morpho Vaults, holding approximately $5 billion in deposits, can only allocate to the Morpho Blue market until the DAO enables the Midnight configuration. Morpho co-founder and CEO Paul Frambot stated that enabling the Vault configuration requires just one DAO transaction, but Vault activation is expected to be achieved in the fourth quarter. At launch, the total deposits in the Ethereum Midnight market were approximately $7.41 million, with outstanding loans of about $2.63 million.

NASDAQ-listed company Hyperion DeFi (NASDAQ: HYPD) announced on September 8, 2026, an upward revision of its full-year guidance for 2026 and initiated a common stock repurchase plan of up to $20 million. The company claims to be the first publicly listed DeFi company in the U.S. built on Hyperliquid. The full-year adjusted gross profit guidance has been raised from the previous $5 million to $7 million to $7 million to $8 million.The company expects adjusted net operating cash flow to turn positive in the third quarter of 2026, earlier than the previous expectation of "turning positive by the end of 2026"; and it anticipates that core operating income will turn positive in the third quarter, with adjusted gross profit from the core DeFi business expected to exceed operating expenses after excluding equity incentives for the first time. The adjusted gross profit guidance for the third quarter is $2 million to $2.5 million, with operating expenses after excluding equity incentives at $2 million to $2.25 million, and core operating income at $0 to $500,000.The board has authorized the repurchase of up to $20 million of common stock in circulation within a maximum of 12 months, which can be conducted through open market purchases, private negotiations, block trades, and other methods, with no specific quantity guaranteed. The plan may be extended, suspended, or terminated at any time. CEO Hyunsu Jung stated that the DeFi business has accelerated recently, and the core business in the third quarter is expected to achieve breakeven in terms of profit and cash flow, noting that HYPD common stock is currently trading at a discount of about 20% to 30% relative to net assets.

According to CoinDesk, data from Curve Finance shows that its lending market has recorded a total of 704 "soft liquidation" events, involving 602 borrower addresses, with a median duration of 14.5 days, of which a quarter lasted at least 38.9 days, and some positions remained within the liquidation range for several months. Of these soft liquidations, 476 began in the first half of 2026. Unlike traditional lending protocols such as Aave and Compound, Curve's LLAMMA system does not sell off collateral all at once after the price drops below a threshold, but gradually converts collateral into borrowed assets within a price range. If the price rebounds before the loan completely fails, some or all of the conversions may be reversed. This means that borrowers are not in a grace period; their collateral has been partially liquidated during the loan's duration, but they still have the opportunity to restore their positions if the price reverses. However, soft liquidations are not without costs. Data shows that borrowers may still incur losses due to transaction fees, conversions, rebalancing, interest, and bid-ask price fluctuations, and if the market remains unfavorable, positions may still fall into hard liquidation. Curve Finance is a mainstream DeFi protocol focused on stablecoin exchanges and crvUSD lending, currently holding approximately $1.35 billion in deposits, with a DEX trading volume of about $3.4 billion over the past 30 days and active loans of about $46 million.

According to DefiLlama data, the DeFi TVL of the Robinhood chain is currently reported at 908.6 million USD, with a growth of 29.62% over the past week, ranking first among leading blockchains in growth rate.In terms of DEX trading volume, the network achieved 1.613 billion USD in transactions in the past 24 hours, ranking third across the network. The Robinhood chain went live in early July, and within just two months, it has become a mainstream blockchain in crypto in terms of TVL and trading activity.

Figure co-founder and Executive Chairman Mike Cagney tweeted that DeFi is more suitable for asset-backed finance (ABF), which can avoid double pledging, directly improve collateral, self-custody or autonomous venues, and liquidity collateral. He believes that Figure has brought ABF on-chain, but overall it is still in the early stages, with approximately $60 trillion of the market yet to migrate on a large scale.He also listed five reasons why traditional finance has been slow to enter on-chain applications: poor interface experience, which has allowed applications like Robinhood and SoFi to win on the retail side; the long-term difficulty of achieving qualified custody and recoverable self-custody; hedge funds and others requiring multiple wallets, multiple users, tiered permissions, and complete audits to be exported to fund administration and accounting; regulation is being streamlined, and the precedent for on-chain native securities is becoming clearer, with hopes for the CLARITY Act and guidelines; and KYC issues are easier to resolve than the outside world thinks, as on-chain programmatic screening and wallet-level permissions can be implemented.

Router Protocol, a cross-chain infrastructure project supported by Coinbase Ventures, announced that it will cease all operations by September 30 and plans to permanently destroy 303,333,198 ROUTE tokens held in its treasury, accounting for about 30% of the total supply of nearly 1 billion tokens. The team released a statement on X, stating that over the past year, they attempted commercialization, licensing, and acquisition negotiations, but failed to achieve sustainable operational results.Router identified the flow of funds from the cryptocurrency sector to artificial intelligence and the decline in cross-chain asset transfer fees as core challenges facing its operations. As activities concentrated on fewer networks and standardized infrastructure, the demand for its services has decreased. The team noted that bridging economic profits are thin, fees have been compressed, and costs have never stopped. As part of the closure, Router will negotiate with centralized exchanges to stop supporting ROUTE tokens, and the delisting arrangements and withdrawal processes may vary across exchanges.Router raised $4.1 million from investors including Coinbase Ventures and Polygon in 2021 and launched the proof-of-stake Layer 1 blockchain Router Chain in July 2024, but it was shut down in September 2025 due to infrastructure costs, validator expansion, and security risks. The team also disclosed two security incidents in 2025: in February, approximately 80% of the value was recovered through negotiations after a vulnerability incident, while losses from a chain-level vulnerability in July could not be recovered.

According to Bloomberg Intelligence's compilation of the first quarterly 13F holdings report for Hyperliquid ETF, a total of 30 institutions disclosed their holdings in Hyperliquid ETF, with a total amount of approximately 74.9 million USD. Brazilian institution Wealth High Governance Asset Management ranks first with nearly 24 million USD in holdings, owning 632,614 shares of the 21Shares HYPE fund (THYP), valued at 23,948,236 USD as of June 30.This list was published by Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst James Seyffart on the X platform. OLP Capital Management ranks second with 10.5 million USD, UBS ranks third with 7.5 million USD, Bank of Montreal ranks fourth with 6.7 million USD, and Jane Street ranks fifth with 4.4 million USD. Other listed institutions include Discovery Capital, Brevan Howard, Balyasny, and Boothbay. The top five institutions hold a total of approximately 53 million USD, accounting for 70.8% of the total disclosed amount.

According to GMGN data, the market capitalization of the Robinhood ecosystem Meme coin SHROOM has surpassed 30 million USD, with a 24H increase of over 330%. It is reported that SHROOM is a DeFi project on the Robinhood Chain focused on liquidity around stock tokens, with the core idea of using SHROOM as a liquidity connecting layer between different stock tokens.The project forms a trading pool by combining SHROOM with stock tokens such as NVDA, MSFT, GOOGL, SPY, AMD, and TSLA through its own LP protocol, and earns fees from the trading and price fluctuations of the related assets. The generated fees will be reinvested into the LP to deepen liquidity. According to market news, Meme coin prices are highly volatile and easily influenced by market sentiment and hot events, so please be aware of trading risks.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong and State Banking Commissioner Jorge Perez issued a consumer alert: a resident lost $200,000 after depositing it into an unregulated DeFi crypto trading platform, and is currently unable to recover the funds. The alert lists seven offshore DeFi platforms: GMX, Gains Network, dYdX, Aevo, Drift Protocol, Vertex Protocol, and Hyperliquid, but does not state that the affected resident used any of them.Connecticut officials pointed out that some platforms offer leverage of 50x, 100x, and up to 250x; the related perpetual contracts also involve risks of liquidation, funding rates, smart contracts, and oracle risks. The alert also mentions perpetual contracts related to Apple, Tesla, Nvidia, and SpaceX, stating that they correspond to synthetic prices rather than actual stocks. Officials remind residents to verify the registration status of crypto services, keep records of transactions and communications, and report suspected fraud in a timely manner.

According to The Wall Street Journal, DeFi Development Corp. (NASDAQ: DFDV) announced that its variable rate C series perpetual preferred stock "CHAD Stock" has been priced for its initial public offering on September 3, with a total of 1.375 million shares issued at a price of $8 per share; the underwriters also received an option to purchase an additional 206,250 shares within 30 days.The company expects the gross proceeds from this offering to be approximately $11 million (before deducting underwriting discounts, commissions, and offering expenses), with the transaction scheduled to settle on September 8. The net proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes, including the purchase of Solana (SOL) and other digital assets, strategic transactions, and growth plans.

The blockchain verification and auditing platform Assure DeFi announced that it will cease operations and will no longer accept new business. The company stated that it has completed verification for over 1,500 projects, involving a total project value of over $2 billion.Existing KYC and audit records will remain valid and will continue to be publicly accessible after the closure. The team stated that in the future, they will focus their main efforts on their artificial intelligence agent team business, Brainverse.

On September 2, Curve DAO approved proposal 1492, appointing yRisk as the risk provider for crvUSD and Llamalend, concluding the selection process that began in July. The proposal passed with 621 million veCRV votes in favor, with only 5.33 votes against, and was executed 87 minutes after the voting ended. yRisk will receive a one-year revocable grant, including a principal of 125,000 frxUSD (held in sfrxUSD) and 568,000 CRV, while their previously requested annual funding amount was $250,000.yRisk consists of two members, who claim to be the main developers of Resupply, as well as core developers for Yearn and Resupply. Resupply is a stablecoin and lending protocol built on crvUSD and CurveLend, which lost $9.6 million in June 2025 due to a donation attack vulnerability, although this incident was not mentioned in the proposal. The reviewer, Swiss Stake, confirmed yRisk's experience with Curve but expressed concerns about their limited two-member team and the workload required to cover multiple Llamalend market monitoring scopes.LlamaRisk, which previously held the position, announced the early termination of its cooperation with Curve on May 29, ceased related work on June 30, and returned approximately 270,000 crvUSD of unallocated funds to the treasury. Curve founder Michael Egorov initiated a proposal solicitation on July 7.

Uniswap founder Hayden posted on the X platform, stating that correlated trading pairs are forming. The top five tokenized SPY trading pairs by trading volume serve as "bridge" trading pairs connecting other common underlying trading pairs, primarily linking to tokenized stocks with higher correlations. This type of market is characterized by globalization, programmability, low costs, and 24/7 operation.Hayden stated that he has been working on the forefront of DeFi for 9 years and believes that AMM has enormous potential. After years of evolution and development, the path for AMM to achieve global dominance is becoming increasingly clear. Tokenization has changed the existence of markets, market makers, and the objects of market trading. Since its launch, Uniswap has been operating autonomously, with a cumulative trading volume exceeding $4.6 trillion, and has increased the share of spot trading volume on decentralized exchanges from less than 1% to over 20%.As AMMs like Uniswap continue to evolve, their liquidity has formed a pattern that most financial markets have yet to notice: correlated trading pairs. AMMs have found a product-market fit in long-tail markets, as most assets previously could not attract the attention of professional market makers. DeFi and AMM have lowered the barriers to market making, opening the market to more participants. Liquidity will concentrate in the places with the lowest risk, rather than being forced to remain in places constrained by traditional infrastructure.

Morpho co-founder and CEO Paul Frambot stated in a post on X that over the past six months, the team has received many opportunities to acquire cryptocurrency companies.He mentioned that Morpho rarely acquires companies for intellectual property or technology. If they want to build a certain capability, they prefer to hire the right talent and develop it end-to-end themselves, following their own engineering, auditing, and formal verification processes. Talent acquisition may be attractive, but the valuation will be purely based on a comparison of the cost of the talent acquired versus hiring an equivalent team.

Nomura Securities' digital asset subsidiary Laser Digital announced a partnership with Keyring Network to serve as the risk governance entity for the institutional lending market, with the first market set to launch on Euler Finance. The parties did not disclose committed capital, fee terms, or launch dates.According to the cooperation framework, Keyring provides infrastructure and tools, including access verification, quantitative risk parameter setting, and clearing framework design; Laser Digital's asset management department contributes governance standards, portfolio structure, and market practices. Both parties pointed out that institutional participation in DeFi lending faces four major obstacles: licensing, vulnerability risks, governance, and settlement. The solution combines zero-knowledge licensing, quantitative risk modeling, network insurance, and Keyring's settlement technology.According to DefiLlama data, Euler has a total value locked of $368.8 million across 17 chains, with outstanding loans of $555.4 million. Laser Digital previously supported ZIGChain's emerging market private credit in August, while Keyring introduced a zero-knowledge identity layer for the DeFi vault on Avalanche in August 2025. Nomura established Laser Digital in 2022, with operational headquarters in Dubai and Switzerland.