Weekly Key Metrics

Network Fees

• Bitcoin: $2.62M: the lowest since August besides last week price recovery, spot driven with trading activity happening mostly offchain.

• Ethereum L1: $8.79M: large weekly increase, dominated by rebalancing activities towards Plasma and volatility in stablecoin yields in DeFi.

Exchange Netflows (negative = outflows)

• BTC: ≈ –$3.43B: institutional accumulation prevails.

• ETH: ≈ –$2.21B: bullish sentiment on whales brings exchange reserves to a 9-year low.

A Stablecoin Powerhouse Chain Emerges

Launched on September 25, 2025, Plasma is a Bitfinex-backed Layer 1 optimized for stablecoin payments. It debuted with significant committed liquidity, leveraging its unique architecture for fee-free USDT transfers.

• Explosive Growth: Within its first week, Plasma’s TVL soared to $5.69B, placing it at #6 and surpassing established networks like Arbitrum, Base or Sui. This was driven by over 100 protocol integrations at launch and a $1 billion deposit campaign that was filled in 30 minutes.

• Strong On-Chain Metrics: The network quickly achieved a 24-hour DEX trading volume exceeding $2.15 billion, demonstrating immediate and deep liquidity.

• Token Volatility: Despite the ecosystem’s growth, the native XPL token has shown significant volatility. After launching with a market capitalization of $2.66 billion, the token shed 45% of its value in 5 days amid unsubstantiated selling claims, which were subsequently denied by the project’s CEO.

Plasma Bridging volume. Layerzero Dune

Bridging volumes exceeded $1B at launch and over $2B per day inmediately after. The last days the netflows have been closer to $200M. User activity is remarkable, with 10–15k DAU, many of them still new users:

Plasma Daily Active Users. Seoul Dune

DeFi Protocol Evolutions on Plasma

• Aave: The lending protocol’s integration was a monumental success, attracting over $6.5 billion in deposits and becoming the second-largest Aave market across all chains. An integration with Binance Earn has been a significant catalyst for this growth. Currently, USDT-collateralized loans are yielding 5–6% APY with over $1.2 billion in active borrows.

• Pendle: The yield-trading protocol rolled out yesterday with 4 markets, supported by $900,000 in weekly XPL incentives. Focusing on tokenized fixed-yield products for stablecoins (up to 10% for ~90-day locks), the protocol has already drawn $180 million in TVL, enabling principal-protected strategies for conservative allocators.

• Ethena: Deployed its USDe and sUSDe synthetic dollars at launch, seeding $800 million in liquidity across Pendle, Curve and Balancer. This has boosted sUSDe yields to 8–12%.

• EtherFi: A pre-launch transfer of a $500 million ETH vault went live on day one, integrating ETH restaking for stablecoin-backed eETH. Yields on Aave have hit over 3% in WEETH, with cross-chain bridging available via Stargate.

Historical Supply in Aave Plasma. Sealaunch Dune.

Plasma’s week-one performance underscores its potential as a frictionless stablecoin rail for institutional capital. The concentration of TVL in blue-chip protocols like Aave and foundational assets like sUSDe suggests a flight to quality, even within a new ecosystem.

However, the significant volatility of the native XPL token could compress liquidity mining incentives, which require vigilant risk assessment. The key challenge ahead will be to convert this early speculative interest into sustainable, long-term user activity. We will be monitoring how this transition from incentive-driven demand fades slowly into covering organic usecases such as crypto-backed loans and stablecoin trading volumes.