DeFi

Robinhood chose to roll out its global crypto services on Ethereum via Arbitrum rather than Solana. The decision highlights that institutions prioritize ecosystem maturity and security, not just low costs. Solana recently saw a validator-offline incident affecting 29% of staked SOL that was not recorded on its status page, while its H1 2025 revenue was 95% tied to priority fees and Jito tips and its H1 2026 network revenue fell 87% year over year. By contrast, Arbitrum surpassed 10M daily transactions within two weeks of mainnet and launched with tokenized U.S. equities, Uniswap and Chainlink, underscoring the scaling capacity of Ethereum’s L2s.

Solana has launched a five-stage rent reduction program on its mainnet that lowers the minimum SOL required to keep token accounts open. As the threshold drops, users can reclaim excess SOL previously locked in those accounts. Estimates suggest that by the end of stage five, up to 3.06M SOL could be available to claim, worth about $319M at current prices and viewed by some community members as a surprise “airdrop.”

USDD’s weekly update reported net TVL gains across TRON, Ethereum and BNB Chain, including a $17.41M increase on TRON and $10.56M combined growth on Ethereum and BNB Chain. USDD Vault added ETH and WBTC collateral support, allowing users to mint Ethereum-based USDD. SaveWallet integrated USDD PSM with JustLend DAO yield strategies. Pendle began Phase 2 of its sUSDD incentive program with $600K in incentives, while Gate DEX launched a USDD Bonus campaign.

Morpho’s outstanding loans climbed to a record $5 billion on Sept. 1, according to crypto analytics firm Messari. The milestone brings the decentralized lending protocol closer in scale to longtime market leader Aave. It also lifts Morpho’s visibility among fintechs and stablecoin issuers that route credit through the protocol.

Linea said its Yield Boost program is entering a new phase, gradually increasing the share of funds allocated to ETH staking from 10% toward 60%. Starting today, related ETH deposits are expected to begin entering Ethereum’s validator activation queue. The move marks a broader shift by the protocol toward ETH staking.

UNI rose 3.16% in 24 hours as USD 831.55 million turnover and recent permissioned-pool progress kept DeFi attention elevated.

Charles Schwab said it plans to add SOL to Schwab Crypto Direct, while Bitwise’s Solana Staking ETF surpassed $1B in AUM in 10 months. Solana also closed its first binding on-chain governance vote, alongside a 25% network speed increase. The network additionally rolled out fixed-rate credit and a tokenization project tied to a graded 1997 manga magazine featuring Luffy’s debut.

USDD has launched an Ethereum-based USDD Vault that lets users mint the stablecoin using ETH and WBTC as collateral. The vault sets a minimum collateral ratio of 130% and a stability fee of 4%, operating via an on-chain CDP mechanism without intermediaries. The setup offers ETH and WBTC holders a way to unlock liquidity while maintaining exposure, and deploy minted USDD across more DeFi use cases to expand USDD’s multi-chain ecosystem and user reach.

MoonPay has integrated Solana-based lending protocol Kamino into its AI payments vault, PayBox. Eligible users can now lend and borrow on Solana directly through AI interfaces such as ChatGPT or Claude. The integration embeds DeFi functions into mainstream AI assistants, aiming to lower the barrier to using on-chain finance and broaden crypto payment use cases.

Ethereum staking has climbed to a new all-time high, with 42.40M ETH now staked, representing 34.77% of the total supply. Both the amount staked and its share of supply have set fresh records. More than one third of ETH is being used to help secure the network and earn yield, and the share continues to rise.