GM, and happy Wednesday! 

Crypto equities are quietly leading the bounce over spot tokens, with miners and listed companies outpacing L1s, DeFi and AI tokens by a wide margin. The shift toward regulated, higher-beta wrappers over long-tail token exposure says something about where risk appetite sits right now. 

We also revisit Aave, where the Aave Will Win Framework has formalized a $50.7 million ask from Labs to the DAO, bundling revenue alignment, V4 ratification, and brand transfer into a single vote with several unresolved enforceability questions still on the table.

Crypto equities are quietly outperforming spot tokens in the latest bounce, even as both sectors remain firmly negative YTD. This divergence is notable. Cross-sector data shows Crypto Miners (+9.6%) and Crypto Equities (+4.8%) leading daily performance, well ahead of L1s, DeFi and AI tokens. The equity bid suggests positioning is in higher-beta, regulated wrappers rather than long-tail token risk.

The 2025 Crypto Equity Cohort Index showed a full boom-bust in just two months: FIGR and GLXY ripped +40−70% into mid-January, only to mean-revert hard and now sit roughly −15% to −35% YTD. Similarly, GEMI went from +13% to the worst performance, at −42% over that same time period.  

The January spike tracked the BTC breakout + ETF flow narrative, while the February unwind coincided with BTC stalling and perp OI compressing. Now we’re seeing stabilization as lower lows have stopped printing, and some components are grinding higher despite spot being rangebound. 

Only Galaxy has reported so far, showing a January trading surge with some February normalization. Circle, Figure, Bullish and Gemini have yet to print. For Circle, focus is on USDC supply growth and net interest income. Figure needs to show continued tokenization and loan momentum, while Bullish must prove derivatives volume durability, and Gemini is expected to show improved retail activity and operating leverage. With the cohort still about 20−40% off highs, forward volume guidance matters more than EPS.

— Marc

Aave Might Win

Two weeks after the Aave Will Win Framework landed, and with the formal governance vote still ahead, it’s worth stepping back to understand what led to this moment, what the proposal actually contains, and where the unresolved risks sit.

Aave Labs published the framework on Feb. 12, 2026. It offers to route 100% of Aave-branded product revenue to the DAO treasury, ratify Aave V4 as the canonical protocol, and transfer brand IP to a new foundation. In exchange, Labs is requesting $42.5 million in stablecoins and 75,000 AAVE tokens (~$8.2 million), totaling roughly $50.7 million, or 31.5% of the DAO’s entire treasury. 

The offer follows three months of escalating conflict over fee routing, brand ownership and governance transparency, and the market impact is already visible. According to onchain data compiled from DeFiLlama, Token Terminal, Dune Analytics and Artemis, Aave’s TVL has grown only 3.8% over the past six months despite sitting at ~$42.8 billion, and experienced a −5.2% net capital outflow over the last 30 days as the crisis deepened. Meanwhile, competitors have absorbed the outflows: Morpho (+12.4% in 30 days, +45% over six months), Fluid (+10.2%), Spark (+8.1%), and Maple (+6.5%) have all gained significant momentum.

Aave operates as two entities. The DAO, governed by token holders, controls the core lending contracts and accumulates protocol revenue into its treasury (currently ~$160.9 million). Aave Labs, a private company founded by Stani Kulechov, controls the website, mobile app and infrastructure, as well as the Aave brand and all associated domains. As the interface layer began generating an estimated ~$90 million annually, the question — who owns revenue produced by a DAO-governed protocol but monetized through a privately controlled frontend? — became urgent.

In early December 2025, Labs replaced the ParaSwap swap integration on aave.com with CoW Swap, redirecting swap fees previously flowing to the DAO treasury (~$10 million+ annualized) to Labs-controlled wallets without a governance vote. In mid-December, Labs escalated a brand-ownership proposal to a Snapshot vote without the original author’s consent; the vote closed with 55% opposed and 41% abstaining, but record turnout of 1.8 million AAVE suggested the community rejected the rushed process more than the underlying idea.

In January 2026, BGD Labs, the DAO’s most experienced independent technical contributor since 2022, announced it was leaving Aave.

In February, a mandatory-disclosure proposal that would have required Labs to reveal its AAVE holdings and abstain from conflicted votes was defeated, with onchain analysis showing Labs-connected wallets voting against it. Forum contributors have also flagged a suspicious ~2 million AAVE whale accumulation appearing onchain shortly before the vote, alongside concerns about newly created accounts promoting the Labs position across governance forums and social media.

The Aave Will Win Framework bundles four components into a single vote: revenue alignment (100% of product revenue to the DAO), V4 ratification, foundation creation, and the $50.7 million funding ask.

Several enforceability gaps remain. The revenue commitment defines revenue as gross product revenue minus deductions for partner sharing, rebates, subsidies, and user incentives, all at Labs' sole discretion with no independent audit or DAO-approved caps. The stablecoin ask alone represents 42% of the DAO's non-AAVE reserves.

Bundling four decisions with very different levels of community support into one vote forces an all-or-nothing choice; revenue alignment appears to have broad consensus, while the funding terms do not. V4 is currently on testnet with zero mainnet revenue, yet the proposal suggests pausing V3 feature development, which currently generates over $100 million in annualized revenue. The 75,000 AAVE token transfer carries voting power, and no mechanism exists to require Labs to disclose its total governance holdings or abstain from votes on its own funding.

Six months ago, Labs was routing interface fees to its own wallets without governance approval. Today it is offering to send all product revenue to the DAO and transfer brand IP to a foundation. That shift came after delegates published onchain fee-flow analysis, proposed brand asset transfers, and pushed disclosure norms to a vote. The governance process produced a response that would not have existed without it.

The open question is whether the DAO can convert that response into enforceable terms. Some forum participants have begun framing the situation more starkly, arguing that if no resolution is reached, the DAO’s remaining options narrow to either a full buyout of the Aave brand and IP or a fork of the V3 codebase, migrating the treasury and liquidity to a new protocol.

The key catalysts in the nearer term are whether the community succeeds in unbundling the vote into separate proposals, whether an independent revenue audit is formalized before funds are transferred, what governance structure the proposed foundation takes, whether replacement technical capacity is onboarded after BGD’s departure, and whether the formal vote sees participation levels comparable to December's record turnout. AAVE declined ~22% during the December governance crisis, while broader markets were flat and continued to trade at a discount to protocol fundamentals ($53 billion net deposits, $100 million+ annualized revenue, dominant DeFi lending market share).

If the enforceability gaps are closed, the governance risk premium compresses. If they are not, the protocol continues operating as the dominant onchain lending market with a persistent discount reflecting the unresolved ownership question. The “Temp Check” is expected to move through formal governance over the next 60 to 90 days.

— Boccaccio

1. 2026 Asia Stablecoin Market Overview

Tiger Research’s 2026 Asia Stablecoin Overview finds that despite rapid growth to a roughly $300 billion market, 99% of stablecoins remain dollar-pegged, reinforcing US financial dominance as reserves flow into Treasuries. 

Asian economies are pushing local-currency stablecoins to protect monetary sovereignty and modernize payments, but strategies diverge: Singapore is attracting global issuers, Japan has legalized issuance within a bank-led framework, Hong Kong has passed a standalone law, South Korea is finalizing rules, and China has banned private stablecoins in favor of the digital yuan. 

The key risk: If Asia moves too slowly, digital payment infrastructure will solidify around the dollar.

2. Perp DEX Wars

Onchain perpetuals went from a ~$1.5 trillion annual niche in 2024 to a ~$7.9 trillion market by late 2025, forcing institutions to decide which perp DEX infrastructure can absorb the next wave of flow. An institutionally weighted scorecard puts Hyperliquid first (67/80) on liquidity and ecosystem depth, but its October 10 stress test revealed real tail-risk limits as $2.1 billion was closed via ADL in 12 minutes and open interest fell sharply afterward. Paradex ranks second (57/80) with the strongest institutional unlock, production-grade position confidentiality, zero-fee execution, and measurable retail price improvement. However, its ~0.99% share underscores the adoption gap. 

Across venues, capital stickiness (OI-to-30d volume), fee-adjusted execution costs, and privacy are emerging as the decisive battlegrounds, with no single platform yet combining extensible infrastructure, confidentiality, best-in-class execution, and durable economics.

DAS NYC's lineup is bringing the biggest names in finance to the stage.

Don't miss the institutional gathering of the year — this March 24−26.