Crypto started the week strong, with BTC +2.25% and risk-on flows lifting DeFi, L2 and Ethereum-Eco. Plasma’s mainnet launch fueled a $5.55 billion TVL surge, already overtaking every chain but Ethereum by Aave TVL. Our latest 0xResearch episode covered MetaDAO fundraising mechanics, Plasma’s yield engine and Solana’s prop AMM dominance.

BTC gained 2.25% today, while traditional markets remained relatively flat, with the Nasdaq 100 at +0.12% and S&P 500 at +0.07%. The move felt broad and beta-led, with most crypto sectors lifting together. Notable outperformers included DeFi (+3.26%), L2 (+3.20%) and Ethereum-Eco (+3.19%), while Modular (+1.85%) and Gaming (+1.37%) lagged — showing dispersion but nothing dramatic.

Looking at the weekly picture, we're still seeing mostly light red across the board with a few rebound attempts. The AI basket remains the trouble spot, down 8.90% over seven days, driven primarily by IP's price action: down 32.78% for the week despite today's 12.55% bounce.

Other notable weekly decliners include Modular (-14.54%) and Launchpad (-11.24%), while DeFi, L2 and Ethereum-Eco (each around -6.8%) led today's recovery. BTC sits at -2.85% for the week, holding up better than most sector baskets and setting the tone as higher-beta assets attempt to recover.

— Shaunda 

On Friday’s 0xResearch episode, we covered:

This summary was generated with assistance from AI tooling.

• MetaDAO’s futarchy-governed fundraising: proposals and conditional markets enforced token holder rights in practice, exemplified by Mountain Capital’s $5.7 million raise where only buybacks to NAV cleared and a full redemption later returned about $0.57 to $0.60 per token, preventing capital flight and automating the unwind.
  

• MetaDAO AMM design and revenue: a pass/fail conditional-markets AMM self-arbitraged to spot; fee schedule was 25 bps to MetaDAO and 25 bps to LPs; roughly $60 million of cumulative volume since April would have implied about $150K to the DAO under that structure, dependent on proposal cadence and liquidity depth.
  

• Plasma incentives and Aave flows: Aave on Plasma became the top venue outside Ethereum mainnet by deposits and borrows, reaching about 4% share in a day; USDT0 net lending printed near 11% with heavy XPL incentives; Plasma USD yielded near 20% on about $2.7 billion TVL with roughly $1.4 million per day in rewards, and looping debt on Aave disqualified users from incentives.
  

• Solana prop AMMs vs price discovery: Prop AMMs scaled from about 2-5% of DEX volume a year ago to roughly 41% monthly and 58% daily; many updated quotes off CEX oracles which improved onchain execution but limited primary price discovery versus CLOBs; listings and true order books remained necessary for first-trade pricing and potential perp market viability.

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Charts of the week

Following Plasma's mainnet launch, TVL has exploded to $5.55 billion as of Sept. 29. The past four days have seen average daily increases of approximately $1.39 billion, with Plasma reaching $2.32 billion TVL on launch day alone. Plasma is now the sixth largest chain by DeFi TVL, sitting just below Tron ($5.544 billion vs $6.11 billion). 

On Aave specifically, Plasma accounts for $4.54 billion, representing 46.5% of all non-ETH Aave V3 TVL. This is 3.84x larger than the next biggest chain, Arbitrum ($1.18 billion), and roughly equals the combined TVL of Arbitrum, Base, Linea, and Avalanche. Growth continues, with Plasma adding approximately $514 million in Aave TVL compared to the previous day.

This explosive growth is largely driven by aggressive XPL incentives. PlasmaUSD vault shares yield approximately 19.7% APY, while USDT0 lending on Aave offers 6.3% APY, the Fluid fUSDT0 vault provides 12% APY, and smaller positions average around 20% APY. This structure attracts stablecoins to Plasma, then channels them into Aave and other yield-generating opportunities. With rewards currently running at $2.8 million daily at current prices, the sustainability of these incentives remains an open question.

Overall, this represents a significant positive development for USDT growth, which now boasts 183 billion in supply (69% market dominance) and continues expanding through Plasma distributions and upcoming stablechains like Stable and Tempo.

— Shaunda 

Institutional staking has rapidly matured into a sophisticated global market.

While early adopters were primarily retail users and crypto-native funds, the past three years have seen an influx of institutional players, drawn by the potential for predictable yield, low operational friction, and growing onchain governance influence.

Today, institutional staking spans a wide range of providers, each with distinct risk and operational profiles, as well as differentiated regulatory and technical considerations.

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