Capy Research

Stablecoins are a $305.6B market. Four projects offer very different ways to capture that growth. Here is how I would map Sky, Ethena, Aave and Pendle as of September 7, 2026. 1. @SkyEcosystem: earn the spread Sky earns interest and income from the assets and credit supporting its dollar system. The economic opportunity is to grow USDS while keeping asset income ahead of savings payouts and other costs. DefiLlama tracks $13.51M in protocol revenue and $2.91M in holder revenue over 30 days. Protocol surplus already supports SKY buybacks and staking rewards. Watch USDS growth alongside the surplus retained per dollar. Expensive deposits can grow a stablecoin without improving its economics. 2. @ethena : scale the yield engine Ethena generates income through USDe's backing assets and hedging strategy. That income also funds sUSDe returns and distribution, so the amount available for ENA depends on how revenue is allocated. USDe currently has roughly $4.37B in circulation. The August 27 fee-switch proposal places the first buyback threshold at $7.5B, with 95% of net revenue paid to the Foundation from its core business lines earmarked for buybacks once activated. The opportunity is conditional: grow USDe, preserve competitive yields and turn the fee framework into executed token purchases. 3. @Aave: monetize borrowing demand Aave earns a share of the interest borrowers pay. More stablecoins become economically useful when borrowers actually draw on that liquidity. It recorded $4.57M in 30-day protocol revenue. AAVE buybacks were paused in April, and DefiLlama records zero holder revenue for the current 30-day window. The business can keep earning while token purchases pause. Watch stablecoin borrowing, utilization and confirmed buyback resumption. 4. @pendle_fi : build markets around yield Pendle lets holders separate principal from future yield, creating markets for fixed returns and changing yield expectations across different issuers. Pendle V2 allocates 80% of protocol fees after the LP allocation to PENDLE buybacks, with repurchased tokens supporting eligible sPENDLE holders. DefiLlama tracks approximately $521K in holder revenue over 30 days. Its opportunity grows when more yield-bearing assets find active markets on Pendle. The relevant signals are yield fees, trading activity and recurring demand across maturities. The financial figures above cover whole protocols under DefiLlama's definitions. They are not a measure of stablecoin-only profit. My research priority would be SKY and PENDLE for cash flow already reaching tokens, AAVE for borrowing demand, and ENA for conditional fee activation. A growing market creates opportunity. The token thesis depends on how much of that opportunity it can actually retain.

Papertrade traders now have another way to trade and mine PAPER, including on Android. @ManicTrade has launched PaperManiac, a new frontend for the same Papertrade markets, contracts and liquidity. Alongside existing PAPER mining, it adds: - 50% Lossback: eligible realized trading losses earn Manic Bonus Credits. - A $2,000 USDC prize pool in November’s trading tournament. - Mining analytics to track mint rates, estimated rewards and mining costs. The important detail is how Lossback works. Lose $20 on an eligible position and receive $10 in Bonus Credits. These are promotional credits, with USDC unlocked through further real-money trading on Manic: every $50 in volume unlocks $1. Credits cannot be withdrawn directly or used to trade Papertrade. For existing Papertrade users, the useful additions are mobile access, mining visibility and extra reward campaigns in one interface. Trading still carries the risk of losing your full position. app.manic.trade/papertrade I quite like Manic’s interface. It feels smooth to use.

Who controls your liquidity after you automate it? Steer Smart Pools and Arrakis Pro both manage concentrated liquidity. Their control models show what users actually delegate. @steerprotocol / Smart Pools Depositors choose a vault and receive shares representing its assets. Strategy code determines liquidity placement. Steer nodes run that logic offchain and reach agreement before execution. The documented ALM engines support safeguards such as slippage limits and maximum range changes. Depositors redeem shares to exit, subject to the vault’s withdrawal and staking conditions. @arrakisfinance / Arrakis Pro Built primarily for token issuers managing treasury-owned liquidity. The team owns the vault through an NFT, while Arrakis operates the market-making strategy within the agreed parameters. The NFT holder can pause, reconfigure or withdraw. Changes to core vault parameters carry a two-day timelock; routine rebalancing happens through Arrakis’s offchain system, constrained by onchain checks. The practical difference: Steer depositors select a shared strategy. Arrakis Pro clients own a dedicated vault and delegate its operation. In both cases, withdrawal rights and trading authority are separate things. Keeping control of the assets still leaves strategy decisions that affect your returns. Fees earned, inventory exposure and rebalancing costs determine the outcome.

Who actually benefits when a crypto protocol earns fees? Six examples of how product activity connects to token economics: 1. Hyperliquid / HYPE Trading fees allocated to the Assistance Fund are converted into HYPE and burned. 2. Uniswap / UNI Activated protocol fees flow through a mechanism that burns UNI. Holding UNI does not give you a direct revenue payout. 3. Raydium / RAY 12% of pool swap fees fund RAY buybacks. Repurchased tokens are held in a public protocol wallet. 4. Pendle / PENDLE 80% of Pendle V2 yield and swap fees fund PENDLE buybacks. Repurchased-token rewards go to eligible active sPENDLE holders. 5. Curve / CRV Lock CRV for veCRV to receive a share of trading fees and crvUSD interest, distributed weekly in crvUSD. 6. Sky / SKY Protocol surplus funds SKY buybacks. Under governance-set rules, repurchased tokens can be burned or distributed to SKY stakers. These flows have different outcomes: Buyback: the protocol purchases tokens. Burn: tokens leave supply permanently. Distribution: eligible holders receive rewards. The useful question is where the money ends up, and whether you need to stake or lock to receive it.

Starknet, RAILGUN and Aztec take three different routes to private DeFi. The differences matter when you ask where your assets sit, what becomes public and who can inspect your records. @Starknet / STRK20 Adds shielded balances, private transfers and supported private swaps to the Starknet ecosystem, using existing liquidity. Its disclosure model is built in: deposits are screened, viewing keys are mandatory, and Financial Privacy Inc operates infrastructure for targeted disclosure under lawful requests. @RAILGUN_Project Adds a private-wallet layer to existing EVM chains. Users shield assets into 0zk balances and access supported DeFi integrations without moving to a separate privacy chain. Private Proofs of Innocence checks funds against known bad-activity lists without giving list providers access to private records. Users can separately share viewing keys for audits. @aztecnetwork Builds privacy into smart-contract execution. Developers combine private state and functions, executed on users’ devices, with public state and functions. Privacy therefore depends on application design. Public calls and transaction metadata can remain visible. Its mainnet Alpha is live, but the official docs describe it as early, unaudited software. For users, the choice depends on the workflow: which assets and apps are supported, what leaks at public boundaries, and who holds the power to disclose the rest.

Crypto is already inside apps people use every day. Seven examples, and what users can actually do: 1. Shopify → Base + Stripe Pay with USDC at eligible checkouts. Merchants can receive settlement in their local currency. 2. MoneyGram → Stellar + Crossmint Receive money into a USDC-backed balance, hold digital dollars and cash out locally. Available in Colombia and El Salvador. 3. Revolut → Polygon Send and receive supported stablecoins through the Revolut app using Polygon. 4. Venmo → Paxos Buy, hold and send PYUSD, including transfers between Venmo and PayPal and to supported external wallets. 5. Nubank → Circle Buy, sell and transfer USDC through Nubank Cripto in Brazil. 6. Mercado Pago → Meli Dólar Buy, hold and sell a dollar-linked stablecoin inside the Brazilian app. External wallet transfers are currently unavailable. 7. Telegram → TON Send onchain payments to Telegram users through its native Telegram Money wallet. The distribution is already there: shopping, remittances, banking and messaging. The interesting part is what each integration enables. A checkout payment, an in-app dollar balance and an external wallet transfer serve different needs.

How much does a private wallet actually hide? @0xMiden opened its partner mainnet on October 26, bringing real assets to invited users through @joinbread. The useful part is keeping a payment from exposing the rest of your finances. For private accounts, Miden keeps balances and activity off the public ledger. Your device executes transactions and generates proofs; the network verifies them without publishing the underlying account state. But visibility depends on who is looking: • Public observers cannot inspect your private account’s full balance and history. A counterparty still knows its own transaction. • A Guardian operator can currently see the account state it backs up for recovery, but cannot move funds alone. • Validators receive encrypted transaction data during partner mainnet. Decryption requires a threshold of validators. • Swaps are currently public. Bridges and external providers receive information needed to process transfers. This remains an invite-only, temporary phase. Users must withdraw funds before the reset for public mainnet. The practical value is making payments without exposing an entire treasury or personal balance. The trade-off is understanding which services still see data while helping the account work.

Grvt’s next chapter is getting more concrete 👀 @grvt_io has subscribed to tokenised funding notes arranged by Mirae Asset Securities (HK), with plans to use the exposure in Grvt Earn, subject to applicable requirements. The two are also exploring tokenised Treasuries, corporate bonds and ETFs. Mirae’s wider financial group oversees US$1T+ in worldwide client assets. What interests me is where this could lead: institutional investment products alongside crypto trading and Earn in one account. ETFs are still exploratory, but the first subscription gives the collaboration a concrete starting point.

Why does @infinifi offer higher yield to users willing to wait? The mechanism combines income from underlying strategies with a larger share of returns for committed capital. The basic flow: • Deposit USDC to mint iUSD, the non-interest-bearing receipt. • Stake iUSD into siUSD for liquid yield. • Choose a locked position for higher-weighted returns and a slower exit. infiniFi allocates capital across liquid and longer-duration strategies. Depositors’ withdrawal commitments help it match those investments to expected outflows. Some capital backing liquid positions can also enter longer-duration strategies. An important detail: the unbonding period starts when you request to unwind, rather than counting down automatically from your deposit. But the locked position also carries first-loss exposure. According to its slashing docs, realized portfolio losses hit Locked-iUSD before senior positions. Starting to unwind does not remove that exposure. If the junior capital is exhausted, losses can reach senior depositors too. And liquid positions still depend on available reserves; direct redemptions can queue during liquidity stress. The extra yield therefore compensates for both reduced exit flexibility and a different place in the loss hierarchy.

When crypto projects merge, what do existing token holders actually receive? Aerodrome and Velodrome’s merger into @aeroxyz is a useful case study. Three things matter beyond the new brand. 1. Your share of the combined supply The published conversion terms are: • 1 AERO → 1 new AERO • 1 VELO → 0.044 new AERO • Locked balances convert into sAERO at the corresponding rates. The initial upgraded supply is allocated 94.5% to the Aerodrome community and 5.5% to Velodrome. A 1:1 conversion preserves your token count. It does not necessarily preserve your percentage ownership. 2. Your ability to exit Existing locks carry their remaining duration into sAERO, rounded up to the next full week. Permanent locks become maximum-duration stakes. The merger does not unlock your principal. 3. How you earn revenue sAERO holders direct AERO rewards toward pools and receive a proportional share of those pools’ revenue while their allocation is active. Simply holding liquid AERO does not provide that direct distribution. Pool revenue also includes liquidity incentive payments, so it should not all be treated as trading fees. For holders, the useful comparison is ownership share, exit terms and revenue per token before and after the deal. A bigger platform still has to earn enough to justify the dilution required to fund its liquidity.

Aptos, Sui, Sei: what have @Solana’s challengers actually built? The speed comparison only tells part of the story. Each has taken a different route toward attracting users and capital. 1. @Aptos: stablecoins and payments Aptos supports native USDT and USDC, with payment integrations including Bitso and Yellow Card. These give users routes between local currencies and onchain dollars. Distribution matters here: cheap transfers become useful when people can actually access them. 2. @SuiNetwork : shared trading infrastructure DeepBook provides an onchain order book that applications can integrate, rather than each building liquidity infrastructure from scratch. That gives Sui a concrete product beyond faster execution. Its usefulness still depends on market depth and trading activity. 3. @SeiNetwork : access for Ethereum developers Sei’s parallelized EVM lets developers reuse familiar contracts and tools. Its first Eidos storage upgrades reached mainnet in August 2026, while further components remain planned. Easier deployment lowers the barrier to building. It doesn’t automatically bring users or liquidity. The capital gap remains substantial. DefiLlama’s tracked stablecoin supply, October 26: • Solana: $15.6B • Aptos: $867M • Sui: $431M • Sei: $43M These balances measure capital present, not payment volume or user retention. All three have built beyond the speed pitch. The harder task is making their applications useful enough for capital to stay.

Nillion’s move to Ethereum L1 brings encrypted instructions closer to the applications that can use them. The trade-off is operating cost. Following my earlier @nillion breakdown, this is a second migration: Nillion moved from Cosmos to an Ethereum L2 earlier this year. Blacklight is now moving from that L2 directly onto Ethereum mainnet. The practical benefit is composability. Once a Covenant’s instruction is reconstructed, an Ethereum contract can act on it in the same transaction. Registration, staking, fee accounting and reconstruction also sit on L1. What has actually been delivered? Dusk was announced live on October 6. Mainnet contracts are published, and onchain activity includes trigger posting, share publication and successful result posting. At my October 26 check, the docs-listed TriggerMarket showed 74 transactions. That establishes activity at this deployment, but does not identify independent customers or prove substantial commercial demand. The costs remain meaningful. Operators need NIL stake, ETH for gas and supporting infrastructure. Small, frequent triggers may be harder to justify economically. Ethereum also doesn’t replace the privacy assumptions: enough colluding committee nodes can reveal a payload early, and its contents become public after release. The economic distinction matters: NIL emissions support availability; customer-funded ETH fees pay for work. The business case depends on paid workloads covering operating costs, beyond the incentives used to keep nodes available.