defi

According to RootData, among 3,244 cryptocurrency projects with financing records spanning no more than four years and amounts that can be accounted for, 1,617 have a cumulative financing amount of no more than $5 million, accounting for 49.8%. The median financing for this batch of projects is $2.5 million, with about 96% recording only one round of financing.In terms of sectors, DeFi, infrastructure, and gaming projects together account for 59.2%, with small-scale financing mainly flowing to protocol development, underlying technology, and consumer applications. However, a quarter of the projects in the sample have already ceased operations, indicating that while lower regulatory thresholds can improve financing efficiency, they cannot replace product demand and sustainable operational capability.Institutional participation is also higher than the market's usual perception of "small projects": 92.9% of the sample has identifiable investor records, and 83.5% disclosed at least two investors. Among them, Animoca Brands, Shima Capital, and Big Brain Holdings participated in 84, 69, and 67 projects, respectively.It is reported that the U.S. SEC officially proposed the "Regulation Crypto Assets" on August 18. The proposal aims to set up two tiers of issuance exemptions: projects can raise no more than $5 million in a single instance within four years; projects with greater financing needs can raise up to $75 million within each 12-month period, but must submit financial statements and fulfill ongoing reporting obligations. The proposal is currently in a 60-day public comment period and has not yet officially taken effect.

Institutional-level on-chain financial infrastructure developer Blueprint Finance announced the completion of strategic financing, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Bullish, Keyrock, BitGo, FalconX, G-20, Flowdesk, JPEG Trading, Sentient Capital, Andes, and 2Square. Blueprint Finance is the core developer of Concrete, a full-stack treasury infrastructure aimed at institutions, protocols, and asset managers, used to launch, manage, and allocate capital through complex on-chain strategy configurations, integrating execution, accounting, risk control, rebalancing, and protocols into a unified treasury system.This round of financing will support its continued expansion of Concrete and promote collaboration with protocols, asset issuers, networks, and institutional allocators to build a treasury that supports on-chain yield products and acts as core liquidity infrastructure. In addition to treasury infrastructure, Blueprint Finance is also expanding the Concrete ecosystem, launching on-chain financial primitives such as AssetCX and concUSD.Blueprint Finance CEO and co-founder Nic Roberts-Huntley stated that DeFi is moving beyond merely chasing the highest advertised yields; the next phase concerns infrastructure, providing professional allocators with control, transparency, automation, and risk management while retaining on-chain market advantages.

According to a report by Token Terminal, the DeFi protocol Fluid, developed by the Instadapp team, released data for the second quarter of 2026. The average TVL for the quarter was $3.4 billion, a decrease of 21.1% quarter-on-quarter, but an increase of 84.9% year-on-year; active loans were $1.5 billion, down 15.1% quarter-on-quarter, but up 92.9% year-on-year; trading volume was $18.1 billion, down 37.3% quarter-on-quarter; fees were $9.5 million, down 21.5% quarter-on-quarter; protocol revenue was $1.8 million, down 29.3% quarter-on-quarter, but up 9.8% year-on-year; monthly active users were 70.7 thousand, down 43.8% quarter-on-quarter.The capital structure continues to lean towards Jupiter Lend, which collaborates with Solana, with an average TVL of about $1.7 billion, accounting for nearly half and achieving quarter-on-quarter growth, becoming the largest lending deployment. At the beginning of the quarter, there was an outflow influenced by third-party events such as Resolv, but the Fluid contract was not attacked, and related bad debts were covered by the treasury and others, with no loss of user funds. During this period, Bitwise began managing the USDe market on Jupiter Lend, Liquidity-as-a-Service was launched with approximately $100 million in sUSDai liquidity facilities, and RWA-related assets such as Huma PST were also integrated into Fluid.The team stated that they will continue to promote institutional-level deployments, Jupiter DEX, and Sui expansion, introducing incremental capital and improving revenue efficiency through vertical products and institutional collaborations.

According to SoSoValue data, the total net inflow for Bitcoin spot ETFs is $189 million. The Bitcoin spot ETF with the highest single-day net inflow yesterday was BlackRock ETF IBIT, with a single-day net inflow of $144 million, bringing IBIT's historical total net inflow to $61.4 billion. Following that is Fidelity ETF FBTC, with a single-day net inflow of $23.92 million, and FBTC's historical total net inflow currently stands at $10.02 billion.The Bitcoin spot ETF with the highest single-day net outflow yesterday was VanEck ETF HODL, with a single-day net outflow of $16.92 million, and HODL's historical total net inflow currently stands at $1.07 billion. Additionally, Hashdex's Bitcoin spot ETF DEFI has initiated a liquidation process due to factors such as asset size, trading liquidity, and operating costs, having ended trading on NYSE Arca on August 17 and will subsequently delist; the fund will begin liquidating its remaining Bitcoin holdings on August 18, with cash liquidation payments to be made to holders around August 24.Bloomberg data shows that as of July 30, DEFI's assets under management were approximately $7.28 million. As of the time of writing, the total net asset value of Bitcoin spot ETFs is $79.3 billion, with an ETF net asset ratio (market value relative to total Bitcoin market value) reaching 6.12%, and the historical cumulative net inflow has reached $52.28 billion.

According to DeFiLlama data, the top three centralized exchange (CEX) net inflows in the past 24 hours are: Binance ($234 million), Bybit ($51.55 million), and Bitget ($17.56 million).

According to The Block, Curve founder Michael Egorov stated that the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) regulatory pressure on decentralized finance (DeFi) may prompt protocols to remove privileged access, upgrade risks, and the ability to intervene in user funds, thereby enhancing DeFi security and increasing decentralization.

According to DefiLlama data, the total value of RWA (real-world assets) deposited in DeFi protocols has increased from 12 million dollars three years ago to nearly 4 billion dollars today, an increase of more than 300 times.

According to SoSoValue data, the cryptocurrency market sector showed mixed results, with Bitcoin (BTC) rising 1.57%, surpassing $64,000; Ethereum (ETH) increased by 0.42%, breaking through $1,900. The DeFi sector performed outstandingly, rising 1.06% in 24 hours, with Compound (COMP) up 8.92%, Morpho Token (MORPHO) up 5.30%, and Hyperliquid (HYPE) up 1.41%.In other sectors, the Layer1 sector rose 0.47% in 24 hours, with Zcash (ZEC) up 4.15%; the Layer2 sector increased by 0.46%, with Polygon (ex-MATIC) (POL) up 6.29%; the Meme sector rose 0.18%, with PIPPIN (PIPPIN) significantly up 16.38%; the PayFi sector increased by 0.01%, with SafePal (SFP) up 2.45%.Additionally, the CeFi sector fell by 0.13%, with OKB down 5.06%; the AI sector decreased by 3.42%, with Worldcoin (WLD) down 7.54%, and Velvet (VELVET) significantly down 43.90%.The cryptocurrency sector indices reflecting historical market trends show that the ssiMAG7, ssiDeFi, and ssiNFT indices rose by 1.43%, 1.06%, and 0.96%, respectively.

Galaxy Research released the Q2 2026 Crypto Leverage Market Report, showing that the total amount of crypto collateralized lending decreased by 16.78% month-on-month to $56.16 billion, down 40.13% from the Q3 2025 peak of $78.69 billion. Among them, DeFi lending shrank by 27.61% month-on-month to $20.43 billion, while CeFi borrowing decreased by 9.62% month-on-month to $22.98 billion, marking the first time since Q3 2023 that CeFi volume has surpassed DeFi. Tether continues to dominate the CeFi market with a 58.54% share.The report points out that the current deleveraging differs from previous bear markets in its "orderly and moderate" pace: with consecutive quarterly declines of only 10%, 5%, and 17%, rather than the cliff-like collapse of over 55% in a single quarter as seen in 2022. In the futures market, open interest in Q2 slightly decreased by 3.08% month-on-month to $103.2 billion, but rebounded to about $114 billion in July. Regarding institutional corporate debt, Strategy completed a $1.5 billion debt buyback in May, reducing the total outstanding debt in the DAT industry to $16.1 billion. The report believes that if the market does not experience severe liquidations or counterparty defaults, deleveraging is expected to continue in a gradual step-down pattern.

Yield Guild Games (YGG) announced the official launch of YGG 3.0, transforming from a Web3 gaming pioneer into a cross-domain infrastructure layer, providing a platform for various communities to organize manpower, skills, and capital, covering digital economy collaboration.The core of YGG 3.0 includes the Guild Protocol open framework, composed of three main components: Guilds (social), Assets (capital), and Activities (operations), promoting decentralized networks to become productive economic engines; in terms of World Model Training, the guild collects human spatial data to serve physical AI and robotics, and distributes collection tasks through the @yggalerts task platform.In addition, YGG provides a human coordination layer for AI-assisted game development for @vibecode_game, responsible for playtesting, curation, and ranking; Institutional DeFi supports professional independent guilds in managing idle capital through automated, risk-controlled yield strategies.

According to Cointelegraph, DeFiLlama founder 0xngmi stated that the team had delayed the release of the official mobile application due to the long-standing presence of phishing apps impersonating DeFiLlama on the Apple App Store. The team will only release the official mobile application after all counterfeit apps have been removed to reduce the risk of users falling victim to scams.Yesterday, DeFiLlama founder 0xngmi stated, "We have been trying for months to get a fake app impersonating DeFiLlama removed from the Apple App Store and have continuously reported trademark infringement and impersonation of the official app to Apple.Subsequently, we funded a small wallet, downloaded the app, and as expected, all the funds in the wallet were stolen, so we reported this situation to Apple. As a result, the app was removed by Apple within a few days. We hope to inform other cryptocurrency companies about this so they won't waste time like we did."

According to CoinDesk, as Wall Street and global financial institutions accelerate their entry into the digital asset space, the boundaries between traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi) are gradually blurring. Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley stated, "The era of 'going long on Bitcoin and shorting bankers' is over," as financial institutions are turning to the other side of the crypto industry, promoting the adoption of digital assets.Hunter Horsley mentioned that this summer, two financial institutions managing over $1 trillion in assets approved the launch of crypto products in a bear market environment, indicating that large institutions are expanding channels for clients to access digital assets. "This year, everyone is wearing the crypto industry's jersey. Now, everyone is working for the crypto industry," Horsley said. He pointed out that these financial institutions, which manage over a trillion dollars in client assets, previously would not have opened related services during the downturn of the crypto market in 2022, but now they are actively embracing this field.Sygnum Chief Investment Officer Fabian Dori also believes that the relationship between banks and the crypto industry has undergone a structural change. "The past trades of 'going long on Bitcoin and shorting bankers' are over; banks have shifted from resisting digital assets to building, supporting, and distributing digital assets through custody, tokenization, and compliant trading." This change is primarily driven by growing customer demand and gradually clarified regulatory rules, rather than short-term market cycle changes.Anchorage Digital CEO Nathan McCauley stated that over the past two years, its client structure increasingly reflects the trend of integration between traditional finance and crypto finance. Large financial institutions typically choose to collaborate with specialized crypto infrastructure companies rather than building their own technology systems.In recent years, more and more financial institutions have entered the crypto space, including Swissquote, DBS, BBVA, BNY Mellon, Credit Suisse-related institutions, as well as Morgan Stanley and Charles Schwab.

The digital financial platform ABFinance, founded by former Bybit co-CEO Helen Liu, announced on platform X that its original launch plan will not continue, and the project is currently undergoing an orderly shutdown and liquidation arrangement.The team expressed heartfelt gratitude to the participants, community members, and partners who have built together for their trust, support, and recognition, and thanked them for the direction previously pursued together.

According to SoSoValue data, the cryptocurrency market sector showed mixed results, with the DeFi sector performing prominently, rising by 1.04%. Among them, Hyperliquid (HYPE) rose by 1.74%, and Chainlink (LINK) rose by 2.42%. The Meme sector increased by 0.7% in 24 hours, with Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) rising by 9.04% and Pump.fun (PUMP) rising by 8.76%.In other sectors, the PayFi sector rose by 0.4%, with eCash (XEC) increasing by 1.56%. The Layer1 sector rose by 0.2%, with Cosmos Hub (ATOM) increasing by 8.71%. Additionally, the CeFi sector fell by 0.07%, but Cronos (CRO) remained relatively strong, rising by 1.07%. The Layer2 sector decreased by 0.97%, while Optimism (OP) rose by 4.11%. The cryptocurrency sector index reflecting historical market trends shows that the ssiAI, ssiDeFi, and ssiMeme indices rose by 1.93%, 1.29%, and 1.28%, respectively.

Solstice Finance launches strcUSX on Solana, splitting the dividend income and price risk of the Nasdaq-listed company Strategy's Series A perpetual preferred stock STRC into two types of tokens: senior and junior. The annual dividend yield of STRC is 12%.The senior tranche SR-strcUSX targets an annual yield of approximately 7%, with priority for dividend income and principal repayment; the junior tranche JR-strcUSX bears the first loss from market value fluctuations and receives the remaining income after payments to the senior tranche, targeting an annual yield of over 20%. Users can deposit USX into the strcUSX vault to receive tokens corresponding to the risk level. Both types of tokens are native assets on Solana, tradable, usable as collateral, or accessible for DeFi applications.Solstice Finance will also integrate USX into Zebec Network's payroll infrastructure, which processes over $500 million in payroll annually and has over 50,000 monthly active users.