Gm, and happy Thursday!

Risk assets traded lower during Wednesday's session, with equities trading down and crypto indices trading even worse. As BTC teases a breakdown, STRC trades to fresh lows, showing that credit spreads continue to widen. Meanwhile, equities onchain are the prettiest charts on the board; weekly spot and futures volumes are at all-time highs. 

Grove launched GROVE yesterday, its native governance token, nearly a year into a 30% income penalty from Sky for missing its July 2025 TGE deadline. Below, we break down the allocation structure, the Grove Points farming mechanics, and why Grove's balance sheet sets the distribution timeline more than any announced roadmap does.

As equities traded red on Wednesday, BTC teased a breakdown to new lows, reaching $59,062. Amidst the bearish backdrop and trend, the majority of crypto indices are registering negative returns on the weekly, with outperformance to the downside. Even gold is a notable loser on the week, trading down 7%. 

The only sectors of strength on the weekly are Lending and the Ethereum Ecosystem, up 7.7% and 6.7%, respectively. The outperformance is attributable to KMNO (up 21.7%) and AAVE (up 8.83%).

As BTC continues its drawdown, STRC has traded to fresh lows of $80, opening Thursday at $82. The discount to par shows credit spreads continuing to widen and the market requiring a 14% effective yield to hold the paper. With limited cash and a shrinking balance sheet of BTC in dollar terms, the viability of the instrument is being questioned. Despite this, MSTR continues to tap the ATM, using proceeds to buy more BTC and raise the cash reserve.

While token prices may look bleak, onchain equities are the prettiest charts on the board. Weekly volumes for equities across both spot and perps are at all-time highs. SPCX, for example, cleared $4.8B in futures volume, accounting for 44% of the weekly $10.88B total.

Similarly, tokenized equity volumes on Solana are at all-time highs, settling over $1B in volume over the past week. Solana holds 98% market share in trading volumes of onchain equities. Yesterday, tokenized assets accounted for 19% of Solana’s spot DEX volumes, flipping memecoins at only 9%. Perhaps nature is healing?

— Luke

Blockworks is now tracking BNB Chain, one of the largest blockchain ecosystems in crypto with over $18.5 billion in stablecoins and other RWAs.

Since launching in 2020, the EVM-compatible L1 has delivered consistent upgrades and rock-bottom fees, while staying one of the most used blockchains in crypto.

The new dashboard offers 14 pages of data, allowing users to explore the most in-depth BNB Chain dashboard in the industry. With more than 100+ charts, we cover activity, burns, fees, TPS, TVL, stablecoins, DeFi leaders, and more.

GROVE launches with a penalty clock

Grove announced GROVE today, a 10B supply ERC-20 on Ethereum with 70% of the supply designated for the Sky Ecosystem. The token has no trading or claiming mechanics at launch, and staking and voting mechanics will be introduced progressively as governance documentation is finalized. A 30% income penalty from Sky has been running since Grove missed its July 2025 TGE deadline, and the penalty continues accruing until the token reaches distribution.

At $2.66B in USDS drawn from Sky at the Base Rate, the haircut is significant. Grove deploys the bulk of its capital into tokenized US Treasuries and AAA corporate credit, earning the spread between its strategy yield and the wholesale funding rate. A 30% cut to that spread, running for nearly a year, represents a significant drag on a balance sheet of this size. The penalty is applied via the monthly settlement cycle and codified in the Atlas, and Sky's April disbursement of Genesis Capital to Grove confirmed the mechanism onchain. The ~$25M allocation settled as ~$20.8M after deducting ~$3.6M in pre-TGE expenses and ~$565K in accumulated token launch penalties. Grove's portfolio is currently yielding 4.23% on a 30-day basis against a Base Rate cost of 3.90%.

Grove's Points program, launched May 21, allows users to deposit USDS or USDC through Grove Savings to receive sUSDS accruing the Sky Savings Rate (currently 3.60%) and begin accumulating points toward a future GROVE allocation. Points accrue proportionally on wallet-held sUSDS on Ethereum only. Balances deployed as collateral, bridged to another chain, or minted through a competing Sky Prime Agent exit the program. 10M points are distributed per day in 15-minute intervals.

The leaderboard puts the program's current scale in perspective. As of June 24, 237 wallets have enrolled. The distribution is heavily concentrated, with the top wallet holding 154.9M points, ~2.5x the second-ranked wallet at 61.0M, and points drop off steeply through the top ten. At 237 total participants, the program has not drawn meaningful retail depth yet.

Of the 10B total supply, 7B goes to the Sky Ecosystem. Our earlier Sky coverage noted a pending 7B GROVE allocation at the Sky protocol level tied to Grove's TGE. The distribution of that allocation across channels, including Grove Points participants, is unspecified. The program is the primary onchain mechanism for accruing exposure ahead of the event.

For existing USDS holders, the carry cost is zero. sUSDS yields 3.65% SSR regardless of the points program. Grove sets no announced end date on the window. Grove's incentive to eliminate the income penalty and close out its TGE determines the timeline.

— Nick

Ethena Dynamic Cooldown: Three Months In, One Exploit Later

Blockworks Advisory published a post-launch performance review of Ethena's sUSDe dynamic cooldown framework, covering 89 days since the March 16 go-live, including the rsETH exploit in late April that produced $1.97B in cumulative sUSDe redemptions over six consecutive days. Tier 1 coverage held at a minimum of 5.47x on a one-day basis throughout the episode, with $1.08B in headroom above the required buffer floor at the tightest point on April 22, and the one-day operational cooldown was maintained throughout. Post-stress, Tier 1 troughed at 71% below pre-stress levels on May 8 and has recovered 23% of that drawdown as of June 17, with $500M in tokenized RWAs (JAAA and STAC) added to Tier 2 since mid-June lifting three-day coverage to 4.88x.

Solana: Beyond Total Value Locked

Blockworks Research published a report arguing that TVL mismeasures productive capital in opposite directions: lending TVL omits the loan book entirely while AMM TVL includes idle out-of-range liquidity, and neither distortion resolves once incentive programs lapse and mercenary capital exits. Capital efficiency and revenue are proposed as the more relevant valuation inputs, with Solana turning over 0.2 to 1.0 times its TVL daily versus Ethereum's 0.03x, implying roughly 10x more capital turnover per dollar locked. On REV per unit of TVL, Solana generates between 3% and 50% of its TVL annually, consistently leading peer chains on both measures.