Uniswap v4 hooks are quietly becoming one of the most interesting shifts in onchain markets. @BlockworksData data shows it’s real volume now: hooked pools were ~1.5% of v4 spot volume at the start of summer, then ~40% by September. In dollars, that’s from well under $1B to roughly $14B/month. What I like most is the shape of it. Total v4 volume dipped in July and August, but hooked volume still climbed every month. And imo that looks more like sticky usage than a one-month spike. Three things are driving it: 🔸 @Uniswap own hooks, built for LP returns. StablePair adjusts fees for assets that should trade near a fixed rate. VolatilePair (now live on ETH/USDC) sets separate buy and sell fees based on recent price moves, so LPs keep more of the value they provide instead of leaking it to informed flow. 🔸 Launchpad + community hooks, built for fee capture and specialized markets, w/ @ponsdotfamily -style platforms as the obvious examples. 🔸 Independent builders putting hooks at the center of what they ship, so the AMM works as a flexible primitive, not a fixed product. Zoom out and the real story is expressivity: the pool becomes the programmable venue. That means more efficient markets for pairs that already exist and over time room for new categories of assets. Tbh we’re still early and the surface area has barely been scratched. But you’ve got official, launchpad, and independent builders all shipping on the same primitive. To me that already says hooks are a core building block. Permissioned pools are the next test. Hooks can enforce issuer-controlled allowlists right at the protocol level, w/ teams like Superstate and Securitize building in that direction. So more real-world + regulated value can come onchain while settlement stays on v4. If regulated assets settle on v4 through hooks the pool can act as the compliance layer too.

Aerodrome Slipstream has established itself as the clear liquidity hub for tokenized equities on Base. It's processing $1.9 billion of the $2.3 billion in total DEX trading volume for these assets over the past 90 days, roughly 83% market share. That's inside a category up 2,652% versus the prior period. Honestly, it makes sense once you look at how the product works. 🔸 Coinbase's equities went live on Base on Aug 24, with day-one pools on @aeroxyz 🔸 Each token is backed by shares held in custody and issued natively on Base under the B20 standard 🔸 Eligible holders outside the US can trade 24/7, weekends and market holidays included, from a self-custody wallet Stocks that trade around the clock need a venue that's always liquid too. Slipstream's concentrated liquidity lets LPs pick their price ranges so a modest amount of funded inventory can handle a lot of flow Uniswap V4 ($195.4M) and a few other venues add real volume, but Aerodrome carries most of it. Here's how that volume turns into protocol economics: → equity trading volume → swap fees → veAERO voters → AERO emissions → LPs, who earn mostly this way Composability is the next layer, and it's already showing up: → @aave accepts 7 of these equities (AAPLc, AMZNc, GOOGLc, METAc, MSFTc, NVDAc, TSLAc) as collateral for USDC borrowing → Base's asset directory now lists 10 symbols, up from 4 at launch → more tickers means more pairs for Slipstream to deepen Base wanted proof that real assets can live onchain and stay liquid. One venue, 83% of the volume, and a lineup that grew from 4 to 10 symbols in two months is a pretty direct answer imo. h/t @tokenterminal

I think one of the areas Hyperliquid still has a lot of room to develop is how larger traders access liquidity without giving away too much of their position before execution Deep order books are useful, but moving $1M+ in size introduces a different set of challenges. splitting orders, managing slippage and having the market react before the full position is filled can make execution expensive. And this is where @silhouette_ex comes into the picture The RFQ model allows traders to get competing quotes on their full order size before committing to a trade, with the agreed price acting as an execution limit. For HyperCore perps, the structure is especially useful because the order still goes through Hyperliquid's existing book, allowing traders to benefit from better available prices while retaining the protection of their agreed quote. Imo this has broader implications for how institutional-sized flow develops on @HyperliquidX Hyperliquid already has the trading infra, liquidity and margin engine. so adding a dedicated block execution layer gives funds, market makers and trading desks another way to access that liquidity without having to work large orders manually And with Silhouette already supporting tokenized stocks on HyperEVM, the same RFQ approach can serve different asset classes as the ecosystem expands The opportunity here is in making existing liquidity more accessible to participants who trade size, which could help hyperliquid accommodate a broader range of financial activity over time

The shift to onchain trading is slowly coming together, and spot is the latest place it appears. DEX spot volume just reached ~25% of CEX spot volume in September 2026, up from roughly 18% a year earlier. On a broader tracker, September was roughly $279B of DEX spot volume against $1.13T on CEXs. The ratio rose even as CEX spot volume grew 27% month over month. The chart shows how it played out: 🔸 Sep 2025 to Jun 2026: the ratio sat in a tight ~17% to 19% band 🔸 Jul 2026: jumped higher 🔸 Aug 2026: kept climbing 🔸 Sep 2026: printed ~25% On this chart, three straight months of higher readings after a full year in a range looks like the first sustained breakout, imo. The more telling number is in RWA perps, where onchain is already the default venue. By August 2026, 86% of tracked real-world asset perp volume was trading onchain. A year earlier that category barely existed at scale, and onchain venues handled about a third or less of it. So the onchain share went from roughly a third to 86% in twelve months. What pulled activity over: 🔸 @HyperliquidX 's infrastructure upgrades 🔸 Better oracle pricing 🔸 Equities, commodities and indices tradable 24/7 with self-custody The infrastructure gap between onchain and centralized venues has narrowed sharply. On spot, the drivers are familiar but now compounding: ➢ Aggregators and routers improved execution ➢ Chains got faster and cheaper ➢ Market makers are more willing to provide liquidity onchain ➢ New tokens and tokenized assets list permissionlessly in minutes instead of weeks ➢ Self-custody matters for a real slice of volume, especially outside the largest pairs Spot and RWA perps are moving at different speeds, in the same direction. If the ratio holds or expands as overall spot volumes keep growing, the structural case gets a lot stronger. The next test, imo, is whether onchain venues keep capturing new flow in core crypto pairs, beyond new tokens and tokenized assets. If they do, the gap between "CEX for size" and "DEX for everything else" keeps closing. h/t @TheBlockCo , @DefiLlama , @a16zcrypto for the data

Aave V4 deposits hit $1.08B with $417M in active loans, up 68% over the past 30 days, and utilization sits around 39%. The curve has steepened since September, and I think the reason is the design, since hub-and-spoke lets specialized markets spin up without fragmenting core liquidity. 🔸 @arc (Circle's chain): $294.2M of deposits, 26.7% of core V4 🔸 @ether_fi Cash on Optimism: $340.8M of deposits and $42.0M of loans, running as its own market 🔸 @base with tokenized stocks: $14.3M of deposits, live since 25 September → Each is a partner-shaped hub with its own users and collateral, drawing on the same shared liquidity, with Arc as the largest contributor inside the $1.08B, Etherfi adding a large market alongside it, and Base small today but strategically notable for bringing tokenized stocks onto Aave. For context V4 is still only ~3-4% of total Aave deposits while V3 remains the ~$30B workhorse, which makes these early-stage traction numbers. The more useful read is that V4 is proving Aave can expand into new chains, assets and use cases without rebuilding the core. Etherfi is the clearest example of a new use case, since it brings real-world card spending onto Aave while the DAO keeps a revenue share, which makes distribution part of the product. Utilization in the high 30s is healthy for a growing protocol. What stands out to me is that borrowing has kept up with the inflows, w/ loans up 63.3% against deposits up 66.5% from 15 September to 15 October. And Etherfi Cash loans up 27.3% against deposits up 14.7% over the same window, which says the new capital is finding real lending demand. Imo the modular setup is doing what it was designed to do, and the next few months will show how utilization and revenue build on top of a growing deposit base.

We’ve gone past the phase where putting an asset onchain is enough to make the RWA thesis interesting Issuance has proven that treasuries, private credit and funds can live onchain. The work now is making those assets usable once they get there, and building markets that can support borrowing, leverage and redemptions without treating every RWA like a liquid crypto token Listening to @MarcinRedStone on the @Cointelegraph stream, this is where @redstone_defi position in the stack becomes clearer A tokenized T-bill sitting in a wallet is representation. Getting a lending protocol comfortable enough to accept it as collateral brings pricing, liquidity, redemption windows and collateral parameters into the equation And different RWAs create different constraints: 🔸 MMFs yielding ~4.5% are difficult to loop when borrowing costs sit closer to 5%. The asset is onchain, but the economics limit its use as collateral. 🔸 Private credit yielding 11–12% can support that loop, but 180-day to one-year redemption periods create a tenor mismatch. That’s part of the problem redstone is addressing through Settle 🔸 New markets also need reliable pricing before deep liquidity exists. @entropyIO on hyperliquid is pricing pre-IPO exposure like Anthropic and OpenAI using RedStone feeds As collateral gets thinner, the risk framework has to tighten too. Supply caps, circuit breakers and parameters need to reflect the actual liquidity and exit conditions of the asset So imo the next RWA phase looks closer to: legal clarity → tokenize → price → add the function → manage risk → scale Imo that also explains where redstone fits. It isn't the issuer or the money market. It sits between the asset and the protocols trying to use it, providing the pricing and risk infrastructure that allows a T-bill, private credit position or another less-liquid asset to become collateral a protocol can actually manage And this distinction will matter more as institutional issuance scales The RWA decade probably won't be decided by how many tickers make it onchain. It'll be decided by how much financial activity those assets can support once they get there