Weekly Alpha: Your edge in DeFi before everyone else figures it out.

📚 This Week's Intel

🎧 Podcast Picks

🧑‍🌾 3 DeFi Yield Strategies While Markets Consolidate

🧐 Onchain Analytics

The signal from the noise, this week's developments that actually matter for your DeFi positioning.

I've filtered through the endless stream of headlines, hot takes, and crypto Twitter drama to bring you the stories moving the ecosystem forward. These aren't just news updates; they're intelligence briefings on where capital is flowing, which narratives are gaining traction, and what regulatory shifts could reshape your strategy.

Skip the timeline doom-scrolling. This is your weekly intel drop.

• Bitcoin Faces Renewed Scrutiny Over Quantum Computing Threat - read

• MetaMask Adds Tokenized US Stocks, ETFs via Ondo Global Markets - read

• Zama launches token, debuts privacy metric after more than $121 million shielded on Ethereum - read

• Aave winds down Avara, phases out Family wallet in DeFi refocus - read

• Vitalik Says Ethereum’s Layer 2 Vision ‘No Longer Makes Sense’ - read

• RNBW Tanks 65% Below ICO Price on First Day of Trading - read

• Vitalik Buterin offloads nearly $6.6m in ETH amid price decline - read

• Bithumb Mistakenly Airdrops $30 Billion of Bitcoin - read

Subscribe

This week’s audio alpha: handpicked conversations that shaped my thinking and could shift yours too.

I sift through hours of DeFi content so you don't have to. These are the episodes worth your commute, the insights that made me pause and rewind, and the perspectives that are moving markets before they hit mainstream media.

Queue these up and stay ahead of the narrative.

• The Daily Gwei: The Future of Ethereum's Layer 2 Ecosystem - listen

• Empire: Why Is Crypto Crashing? - listen

• Unchained: 'No More Dry Powder to Come Into Tokens': Why Crypto Is Down - listen

• The Rollup: How Codex Cracked Stablecoin FX - listen

• Empire: Are L1s Still Overvalued, Hyperliquid’s End Game & State of The Market - listen

• Bell Curve: Crypto’s Reality Check - listen

Subscribe

ETH at around $2k and Bitcoin at around $60k is not good news if you were expecting a super cycle, but it is a good moment to consolidate and build future-proof positions within DeFi. Whether with stablecoins or not, you can still put your crypto to work and earn a solid yield regardless of the market, you just need to be more strategic and more careful with your investments.

Message Yannis | DeFi insights

Strategy #1: sUSDC on Wasabi (Base)

This first strategy is very straightforward. It’s actually a protocol I discovered on the Base app called Wasabi.xyz. You can supply assets to power the leveraged market and generate auto-compounding yield on your assets.

• Supply assets to power the leverage market. Traders borrow your liquidity to execute trades, paying you interest that accrues every second.

• Yield comes from borrow interest, not trader PnL. Benefit from zero counterparty risk, full self-custody, and no lock-ups.

• Experience single-sided yields with no impermanent loss, zero fees on deposits/withdrawals, and total flexibility.

The current APY on sUSDC on Base is 8.17%. Is it worth the risk? It’s up to you, but I wouldn’t trust the protocol as much as I trust AAVE or a Uniswap pool that has been battle-tested over years.

The thing for farmers is that with the Wasabi vaults, you're accumulating points for a potential future airdrop. But as always, don't invest what you can't afford to lose.

The protocol has a TVL of $18.17m across 5 chains including Base and Ethereum. It's very low if you compare this to Hyperliquid or other leveraged protocols, so for me, I wouldn't risk too big a sum of money on this protocol. But for experimentation purposes and being an early adopter, why not?

Overall I give it a 3/5 stars. The yield on USDC is solid, there's some activity, but I'm still unsure of the sustainability of the protocol. It didn't take traction like Hyperliquid or other protocols.

Leave a comment

Strategy #2: Ethena sUSDe on Pendle (Plasma)

The second strategy is happening on Plasma with Pendle. This one is offering 4.59% fixed APY at the time of writing this article with the PT sUSDe token.

sUSDe is the yield-bearing synthetic dollar from Ethena, a protocol that combines yield from staked ETH and basis spread from perps and futures to create an on-chain money solution.

How it works:

• 1 PT sUSDe (USDe) earns you 4.59% fixed APY, equal to 1 USDe staked in Ethena at maturity

• 1 YT sUSDe (USDe) gives you the yield and points of 1 USDe staked in Ethena until maturity

Current Yields:

• On-chain Yield: 4.31% APY (USDe)

• Off-chain Yield: 0.12% APR (XPL)

• Plasma Rewards: 0.12% APR (XPL)

• Points: 20x Sats

Key Details:

• Conversion Rate: 1 sUSDe = 1.21964 USDe staked in Ethena

• Deposit and withdraw through Pendle Router (automatically finds best route between native minting and DEX swapping)

• Minimal risk of generating negative yield

• Built on Ethena protocol

• Initiated by Pendle Team

My take:

Unlike Wasabi, Pendle is a battle-tested protocol that’s been around for years. The fixed APY gives you certainty, and you’re not exposed to the same smart contract risks as newer protocols. The yield is lower than Wasabi (4.59% vs 8.17%), but you’re getting significantly more security and predictability. Ethena’s sUSDe has proven to be stable, and the Pendle mechanism is well understood by the DeFi community.

Overall I give this a 4/5 stars. It’s a safer play for conservative farmers who want reliable yields without taking excessive risks. The only downside is the lower APY compared to riskier alternatives.

Strategy #3: cbBTC / LBTC on Aerodrome Finance (Base)

The third strategy is also a very interesting one. For this play, you need to lock some AERO tokens to be able to vote on the pool and earn incentives with a current voting APR of 110.39%.

Pool Details:

• Pool Type: Concentrated Stable Pool (cbBTC/LBTC)

• TVL: ~$3,808,306.67

• Current Voting APR: 110.39%

• Fees: ~$967.13

• Pool Fee: 0.02%

How it works:

You lock AERO tokens (veAERO) and use your voting power to direct emissions to this pool. In return, you earn:

• Rebase APR from your locked AERO

• Trading fees from the pool

• Incentives/bribes from votes

Key Details:

• The APR on this pool is very volatile and changes based on voting dynamics

• No available incentives currently shown (could change)

• This is a concentrated stable pool between two Bitcoin-pegged assets (Coinbase BTC and Lombard BTC)

My take:

If you’re bullish on both AERO and BTC, this is a great play. I personally locked my AERO for 4 years and keep voting for pools including BTC. This one is particularly attractive because it’s a stable pool (minimal impermanent loss risk since both assets track BTC), and you’re earning the rebase APR, fees, and incentives all at once.

The 110% APR is eye-catching, but remember it’s highly dependent on voting participation and can fluctuate significantly. The longer you lock AERO, the more voting power you get, which means higher returns.

Overall I give this a 4/5 stars. Great for AERO believers and BTC holders, but requires a longer-term commitment with your AERO lock. Not suitable if you want liquidity or short-term plays.

The crypto market faced significant headwinds this week, with most assets experiencing sharp declines. Ethereum broke below the psychologically important $2,000 level, while the top five cryptocurrencies saw average losses of approximately 20% over the past seven days.

These sustained downward moves suggest we may be entering bear market territory.

While BTC and ETH have faced significant selling pressure, Hyperliquid (HYPE) has demonstrated clear "risk-off" decoupling, gaining 24% over the last 30 days. This idiosyncratic price action is underpinned by robust protocol fundamentals rather than speculation alone. As a vertically integrated Layer 1, Hyperliquid is capturing an increasing share of the PerpDEX market, recently hitting a record 24-hour volume of $5.45 billion.

The current momentum is driven by three core pillars:

• Aggressive Token Value Accrual: Unlike protocols with inflationary emissions, Hyperliquid’s buyback-and-burn mechanism directly ties HYPE’s value to exchange throughput. With daily revenues consistently crossing $4M, the protocol is recycling organic demand into token scarcity.

• The Launch of HIP-4 (Outcome Trading): Hyperliquid is evolving beyond perpetuals with HIP-4, introducing fully collateralized, binary-settlement contracts that allow users to trade on real-world events—similar to prediction markets like Polymarket.

• Capital Efficiency: By integrating Outcome Trading into the existing HyperEVM and cross-margin framework, traders can hedge or speculate on event outcomes using the same collateral as their perpetual positions. This creates a unified liquidity hub that competitors currently lack.

The Analytic Take: While market irrationality remains a factor, HYPE’s growth reflects a shift from platform speculation to utility-driven demand. If the protocol successfully captures prediction market volume via HIP-4, it could establish a non-correlated revenue stream that sustains this trajectory regardless of BTC’s price action.

That’s it for this week.

If you found this edition valuable, please consider sharing it with your network — it helps grow our community and keeps the alpha flowing.

Follow me on X and Farcaster

Leave a comment

None of the information in this newsletter constitutes financial advice. While I personally use most of the protocols that I discuss, it's important to understand that they involve substantial risk. Don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose

Thanks for reading Yannis' DeFi Digest! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Subscribe

Weekly Alpha: Your edge in DeFi before everyone else figures it out.

📚 This Week's Intel

🎧 Podcast Picks

🧑‍🌾 3 DeFi Yield Strategies While Markets Consolidate

🧐 Onchain Analytics

The signal from the noise, this week's developments that actually matter for your DeFi positioning.

I've filtered through the endless stream of headlines, hot takes, and crypto Twitter drama to bring you the stories moving the ecosystem forward. These aren't just news updates; they're intelligence briefings on where capital is flowing, which narratives are gaining traction, and what regulatory shifts could reshape your strategy.

Skip the timeline doom-scrolling. This is your weekly intel drop.

• Bitcoin Faces Renewed Scrutiny Over Quantum Computing Threat - read

• MetaMask Adds Tokenized US Stocks, ETFs via Ondo Global Markets - read

• Zama launches token, debuts privacy metric after more than $121 million shielded on Ethereum - read

• Aave winds down Avara, phases out Family wallet in DeFi refocus - read

• Vitalik Says Ethereum’s Layer 2 Vision ‘No Longer Makes Sense’ - read

• RNBW Tanks 65% Below ICO Price on First Day of Trading - read

• Vitalik Buterin offloads nearly $6.6m in ETH amid price decline - read

• Bithumb Mistakenly Airdrops $30 Billion of Bitcoin - read

Subscribe

This week’s audio alpha: handpicked conversations that shaped my thinking and could shift yours too.

I sift through hours of DeFi content so you don't have to. These are the episodes worth your commute, the insights that made me pause and rewind, and the perspectives that are moving markets before they hit mainstream media.

Queue these up and stay ahead of the narrative.

• The Daily Gwei: The Future of Ethereum's Layer 2 Ecosystem - listen

• Empire: Why Is Crypto Crashing? - listen

• Unchained: 'No More Dry Powder to Come Into Tokens': Why Crypto Is Down - listen

• The Rollup: How Codex Cracked Stablecoin FX - listen

• Empire: Are L1s Still Overvalued, Hyperliquid’s End Game & State of The Market - listen

• Bell Curve: Crypto’s Reality Check - listen

Subscribe

ETH at around $2k and Bitcoin at around $60k is not good news if you were expecting a super cycle, but it is a good moment to consolidate and build future-proof positions within DeFi. Whether with stablecoins or not, you can still put your crypto to work and earn a solid yield regardless of the market, you just need to be more strategic and more careful with your investments.

Message Yannis | DeFi insights

Strategy #1: sUSDC on Wasabi (Base)

This first strategy is very straightforward. It’s actually a protocol I discovered on the Base app called Wasabi.xyz. You can supply assets to power the leveraged market and generate auto-compounding yield on your assets.

• Supply assets to power the leverage market. Traders borrow your liquidity to execute trades, paying you interest that accrues every second.

• Yield comes from borrow interest, not trader PnL. Benefit from zero counterparty risk, full self-custody, and no lock-ups.

• Experience single-sided yields with no impermanent loss, zero fees on deposits/withdrawals, and total flexibility.

The current APY on sUSDC on Base is 8.17%. Is it worth the risk? It’s up to you, but I wouldn’t trust the protocol as much as I trust AAVE or a Uniswap pool that has been battle-tested over years.

The thing for farmers is that with the Wasabi vaults, you're accumulating points for a potential future airdrop. But as always, don't invest what you can't afford to lose.

The protocol has a TVL of $18.17m across 5 chains including Base and Ethereum. It's very low if you compare this to Hyperliquid or other leveraged protocols, so for me, I wouldn't risk too big a sum of money on this protocol. But for experimentation purposes and being an early adopter, why not?

Overall I give it a 3/5 stars. The yield on USDC is solid, there's some activity, but I'm still unsure of the sustainability of the protocol. It didn't take traction like Hyperliquid or other protocols.

Leave a comment

Strategy #2: Ethena sUSDe on Pendle (Plasma)

The second strategy is happening on Plasma with Pendle. This one is offering 4.59% fixed APY at the time of writing this article with the PT sUSDe token.

sUSDe is the yield-bearing synthetic dollar from Ethena, a protocol that combines yield from staked ETH and basis spread from perps and futures to create an on-chain money solution.

How it works:

• 1 PT sUSDe (USDe) earns you 4.59% fixed APY, equal to 1 USDe staked in Ethena at maturity

• 1 YT sUSDe (USDe) gives you the yield and points of 1 USDe staked in Ethena until maturity

Current Yields:

• On-chain Yield: 4.31% APY (USDe)

• Off-chain Yield: 0.12% APR (XPL)

• Plasma Rewards: 0.12% APR (XPL)

• Points: 20x Sats

Key Details:

• Conversion Rate: 1 sUSDe = 1.21964 USDe staked in Ethena

• Deposit and withdraw through Pendle Router (automatically finds best route between native minting and DEX swapping)

• Minimal risk of generating negative yield

• Built on Ethena protocol

• Initiated by Pendle Team

My take:

Unlike Wasabi, Pendle is a battle-tested protocol that’s been around for years. The fixed APY gives you certainty, and you’re not exposed to the same smart contract risks as newer protocols. The yield is lower than Wasabi (4.59% vs 8.17%), but you’re getting significantly more security and predictability. Ethena’s sUSDe has proven to be stable, and the Pendle mechanism is well understood by the DeFi community.

Overall I give this a 4/5 stars. It’s a safer play for conservative farmers who want reliable yields without taking excessive risks. The only downside is the lower APY compared to riskier alternatives.

Strategy #3: cbBTC / LBTC on Aerodrome Finance (Base)

The third strategy is also a very interesting one. For this play, you need to lock some AERO tokens to be able to vote on the pool and earn incentives with a current voting APR of 110.39%.

Pool Details:

• Pool Type: Concentrated Stable Pool (cbBTC/LBTC)

• TVL: ~$3,808,306.67

• Current Voting APR: 110.39%

• Fees: ~$967.13

• Pool Fee: 0.02%

How it works:

You lock AERO tokens (veAERO) and use your voting power to direct emissions to this pool. In return, you earn:

• Rebase APR from your locked AERO

• Trading fees from the pool

• Incentives/bribes from votes

Key Details:

• The APR on this pool is very volatile and changes based on voting dynamics

• No available incentives currently shown (could change)

• This is a concentrated stable pool between two Bitcoin-pegged assets (Coinbase BTC and Lombard BTC)

My take:

If you’re bullish on both AERO and BTC, this is a great play. I personally locked my AERO for 4 years and keep voting for pools including BTC. This one is particularly attractive because it’s a stable pool (minimal impermanent loss risk since both assets track BTC), and you’re earning the rebase APR, fees, and incentives all at once.

The 110% APR is eye-catching, but remember it’s highly dependent on voting participation and can fluctuate significantly. The longer you lock AERO, the more voting power you get, which means higher returns.

Overall I give this a 4/5 stars. Great for AERO believers and BTC holders, but requires a longer-term commitment with your AERO lock. Not suitable if you want liquidity or short-term plays.

The crypto market faced significant headwinds this week, with most assets experiencing sharp declines. Ethereum broke below the psychologically important $2,000 level, while the top five cryptocurrencies saw average losses of approximately 20% over the past seven days.

These sustained downward moves suggest we may be entering bear market territory.

While BTC and ETH have faced significant selling pressure, Hyperliquid (HYPE) has demonstrated clear "risk-off" decoupling, gaining 24% over the last 30 days. This idiosyncratic price action is underpinned by robust protocol fundamentals rather than speculation alone. As a vertically integrated Layer 1, Hyperliquid is capturing an increasing share of the PerpDEX market, recently hitting a record 24-hour volume of $5.45 billion.

The current momentum is driven by three core pillars:

• Aggressive Token Value Accrual: Unlike protocols with inflationary emissions, Hyperliquid’s buyback-and-burn mechanism directly ties HYPE’s value to exchange throughput. With daily revenues consistently crossing $4M, the protocol is recycling organic demand into token scarcity.

• The Launch of HIP-4 (Outcome Trading): Hyperliquid is evolving beyond perpetuals with HIP-4, introducing fully collateralized, binary-settlement contracts that allow users to trade on real-world events—similar to prediction markets like Polymarket.

• Capital Efficiency: By integrating Outcome Trading into the existing HyperEVM and cross-margin framework, traders can hedge or speculate on event outcomes using the same collateral as their perpetual positions. This creates a unified liquidity hub that competitors currently lack.

The Analytic Take: While market irrationality remains a factor, HYPE’s growth reflects a shift from platform speculation to utility-driven demand. If the protocol successfully captures prediction market volume via HIP-4, it could establish a non-correlated revenue stream that sustains this trajectory regardless of BTC’s price action.

That’s it for this week.

If you found this edition valuable, please consider sharing it with your network — it helps grow our community and keeps the alpha flowing.

Follow me on X and Farcaster

Leave a comment

None of the information in this newsletter constitutes financial advice. While I personally use most of the protocols that I discuss, it's important to understand that they involve substantial risk. Don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose

Thanks for reading Yannis' DeFi Digest! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Subscribe