Hi everyone. Ahead of today's FOMC decision, markets remain in wait-and-see mode as rate hike expectations continue to weigh on risk assets. We also take a closer look at one of the biggest structural shifts in onchain markets: the rapid rise of RFQ trading in tokenized equities. While the data suggests RFQs are taking the lead, the reality is more nuanced than the headline numbers imply.

Across the majors, this is a de-risking week with nothing green. BTC leads the drawdown, down -4.2%, followed by the Nasdaq at -4.1% and gold at -1.9%. The S&P 500 has held up best, falling just -0.7%. The cause is this afternoon's FOMC decision: hike odds have climbed back to roughly 35% from 10.7% on July 15, undoing the relief the softest consumer price index (CPI) print of 2026 delivered two weeks ago. BTC is still up 7.1% on the month compared with a -4.8% decline for the Nasdaq, so this is a give-back inside a larger move rather than a new leg lower.

Tuesday itself was mixed, with DEXs the clear standout at 4.2% while BTC was little changed, gaining 0.2%. AI followed at 3.7%, crypto equities 3.4%, and Ethereum Eco 3.0%; Solana Eco was the worst of the tape at -3.5%.

Four sectors are green on the week and three of them are Ethereum-related: Ethereum Eco (+5.7%), Lending (+5.7%), and DEXs (+3.5%) were positive, with Bittensor Eco (+0.9%) the outlier against AI at -3.6%. The listed-crypto complex took the worst of it as crypto miners fell -13.2%, crypto equities -8.2%, and the 2025 equity cohort -8.1%, all trading as high-beta equity against the NASDAQ's -4.1%. Privacy unwound its upgrade trade at -9.1% as ZEC fell -12.0% once Ironwood activated Tuesday at block 3,428,143, though it holds +24.3% on the month.

Inside the DEXs index, UNI, with a 52.8% weight did the work at 4.9% on the day and 4.5% on the week. MET added 5.1% and FLUID leads weekly at 9.7%, while RAY lagged at -14.9%. AAVE (+6.1%) and MORPHO carried the lending side.

UNI's bid could be related to the fee switch for Uniswap V4. Proposal 100 was executed on July 27 with 46.6M UNI in favor and 1.27M against, activating the V4 fee controller across seven chains, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, and BNB Chain, and routing collected fees into a mechanism through which collected fees can only be claimed by burning UNI. Uniswap has also seen a boost in activity from Robinhood Chain, where it has done nearly $12.5B in volume since launch in early July (the second-highest volume among all its deployments after Ethereum).

—  AJC

Roughly 68% of SOL is staked, a figure that has barely moved in five years. Solana’s staking economy is shifting from issuance toward fees, but staker returns remain tied primarily to declining emissions.

In this report, Blockworks Research examines how that transition is making validator selection and fee sharing more consequential, and how Marinade’s Stake Auction Marketplace routes validator revenue back to stakers while positioning Marinade for growing institutional demand.

Find out more about Solana’s staking economy at Blockworks Research.

RFQs appear to take the lead

The market structure of tokenized-equity trading appears to be changing. Early trading was dominated by concentrated-liquidity pools before PropAMMs briefly reached roughly half of weekly volume. Most recently, request-for-quote (RFQ) venues surged to approximately 75% of reported volume.

The initial explanation seemed straightforward. Unlike crypto assets, tokenized equities derive their price from traditional exchanges rather than onchain markets. RFQ systems allow market makers to quote directly against offchain liquidity, hedge positions in the underlying stock immediately, and avoid pre-funding liquidity across hundreds of relatively illiquid stock-USDC pools. In contrast, PropAMMs require committed inventory for every trading pair regardless of demand.

However, a closer look at the underlying data suggests the latest spike may not reflect a market-wide transition. Nearly $1 billion of daily volume came from QQQB, a tokenized Nasdaq-100 ETF issued on BNB Chain, where virtually all activity occurred on a single venue, Native. That single product continues to account for the overwhelming majority of reported tokenized-equity trading. As a result, the sharp increase in RFQ market share overstates the degree to which trading across the broader tokenized-equity ecosystem has migrated toward RFQs. 

That said, the trend raises an important question about the best exchange model for tokenized equities. Rather than RFQs being inherently better suited to tokenized equities, their primary advantage may simply be inventory depth. RFQ market makers can leverage substantially larger offchain balance sheets and liquidity facilities than capital locked inside onchain AMMs. This enables tighter spreads, larger trade sizes, and more efficient hedging, reinforcing a feedback loop where more order flow attracts even more liquidity providers behind the same RFQ infrastructure.

The longer-term competitive dynamic may therefore depend less on trading mechanics than on where order flow originates. If tokenized equities are primarily bought and sold as representations of offchain assets, RFQs are likely to retain an advantage. If, instead, they become deeply integrated into DeFi (as collateral, components of structured products, or building blocks for permissionless applications), then PropAMMs and CLMMs could regain relevance through atomic composability that offchain RFQ systems cannot easily replicate. As liquidity deepens and native price discovery improves, onchain order books could also become increasingly competitive. Ultimately, each market structure is likely to excel in different environments, rather than one universally replacing the others. The table below summarizes where each market structure is likely to dominate.

— Marc

BNB Chain Q2 Token Holder Report

Blockworks Advisory concludes that BNB Chain's strategy of diversifying beyond speculative trading gained meaningful validation in Q2, driven by strong growth in tokenized equities, institutional products, and AI infrastructure despite continued weakness in memecoin activity. Looking ahead, it identifies sustained tokenized-asset liquidity, higher fee monetization as subsidy programs taper, and institutional inflows into regulated BNB products as the key drivers that could translate growing network usage into stronger tokenholder economics. 

Onchain Sybil Resistance

Base has introduced Base Verify Onchain to combat Sybil attacks and industrial airdrop farmers who drain community rewards using thousands of wallets. The tool allows developers to enforce strict "one real person, one claim" rules directly within smart contracts by linking wallets to verified offchain accounts (such as Coinbase, X, or Instagram) via a secure, anonymous identity hash. This system ensures individuals can only claim rewards, participate in token sales, or vote once, regardless of how many wallets they hold, all without exposing sensitive personal data. While the upgrade promises significantly fairer distribution models, some community members remain skeptical, noting that farmers may simply adapt by purchasing multiple social media identities.