1. What Is the OTHERS Index?

The top 10 crypto assets tend to dominate major headlines and drive most of the market cap. But the long tail of mid and small caps beyond them tells a different story.

OTHERS tracks the combined market cap of the top 125 crypto assets outside the top 10. It covers the long tail of the market: small caps, mid caps, memecoins, alternative Layer 1s, AI tokens, and other smaller names that collectively move billions of dollars.

The math is straightforward: take the combined market cap of the top 125 crypto assets and subtract the top 10.

OTHERS = Top 125 Crypto Assets Market Cap − Top 10 Crypto Assets Market Cap

Unlike BTC Dominance, OTHERS is denominated in dollars, not as a percentage. It measures how much capital is allocated to the long tail at any given moment. Where BTC Dominance shows whether capital is concentrated in Bitcoin, OTHERS shows whether it is reaching the riskiest part of the market, the part that historically moves last and moves fastest.

2. Why Does the OTHERS Index Move?

OTHERS is driven by dynamics that play out differently from Bitcoin and the majors.

Risk appetite at its extreme. Small caps sit at the far end of the risk curve. OTHERS expands when speculation is running hot and traders start reaching further down the curve beyond the major cryptocurrencies in search of higher returns.

Narrative-driven rotations. The long tail is where new themes are born. AI tokens, memecoins, RWA tokens, DePIN. Each new narrative spawns dozens or hundreds of small projects. When a theme catches fire, capital flows into the OTHERS bucket faster than it does into Bitcoin or established large caps.

Liquidity conditions. Small caps need loose money to thrive. When there is plenty of money flowing through the market, capital reaches further down the risk curve and OTHERS expands. When money tightens and investors turn cautious, the long tail bleeds first. Traders sell their riskiest positions before anything else.

3. OTHERS Across Market Cycles

OTHERS has expanded during every major altcoin cycle, but the trigger has been different each time.

2017 ICO boom. OTHERS had its first real moment. The ICO wave produced thousands of new tokens, most sitting well outside the top 10. The index expanded from under $1 billion in early 2017 to roughly $68 billion at its January 2018 peak. When the bubble collapsed, it gave back nearly all of those gains.

2021 altcoin supercycle. OTHERS reached its all-time high in late 2021 as DeFi protocols, NFTs, and alternative Layer 1s pulled capital deep into the long tail. The index peaked at roughly $415 billion, more than five times its 2018 high. It was the broadest capital rotation the long tail had seen to that point.

2024 memecoin and AI rotation. In the earlier part of the cycle, memecoins on Solana and Base and AI tokens drove a sharp expansion in OTHERS even as Bitcoin set new highs on its own track. For the first time, the long tail moved primarily on narrative momentum rather than infrastructure buildouts.

2024 institutional era. As the cycle matured, the historical pattern broke. ETF inflows and corporate treasury purchases concentrated capital in Bitcoin, with secondary flows into Ethereum. The long tail did not benefit proportionally from the bull market. OTHERS lagged the majors, marking a structural shift in how capital enters crypto.

4. How to Read the OTHERS Index

OTHERS is often paired with Bitcoin's price to understand whether capital is flowing all the way down to the long tail or staying concentrated in the majors.

5. Trading the OTHERS Index

OTHERS gives traders a way to take a directional view on the small-cap segment of the market without assembling dozens of individual positions. The strategies below are setups commonly used to express views on altcoin indices. They are included here for educational purposes only. None of this is financial advice. Always do your own research before making any trading decisions.

Trend Setup: 50-Day and 200-Day Moving Average Cross

The 50-day and 200-day moving averages are used to define the broader trend for OTHERS. When the 50-day SMA crosses above the 200-day SMA on the weekly chart, historically known as a golden cross, it has marked the start of multi-quarter expansions in the long tail. The inverse cross has signaled prolonged contractions.

How traders approach it: go long OTHERS on a confirmed weekly close after the 50-day SMA crosses above the 200-day SMA on the weekly chart. Exit or short on the reverse cross.

Relative Strength: OTHERS / BTC Ratio

The OTHERS/BTC ratio strips out the overall direction of crypto and isolates one question: is the long tail gaining or losing ground against Bitcoin? When the ratio breaks out of a sustained base, capital is starting to favor small caps. When it breaks down, the long tail is losing ground relative to the safest crypto holding.

How traders approach it: watch the OTHERS/BTC ratio chart. When the ratio starts climbing after a long flat period, capital is rotating into small caps. Go long OTHERS. When the ratio starts dropping after a sustained uptrend, the long tail is losing ground relative to Bitcoin. Short OTHERS.

Cycle Positioning: Late Bull Long, Early Bear Short

OTHERS has never led a cycle. It lags. Bitcoin moves first, then capital flows into Ethereum and the rest of the top 10, and only after that does it reach the long tail. In bear markets, the reverse is also true. Small caps bleed first because investors exit their riskiest positions before anything else.

How traders approach it: go long OTHERS once BTC Dominance has rolled over from a peak and total crypto market cap is printing new highs. Reduce exposure or short OTHERS at the first signs of broader market weakness, as the long tail tends to sell off before the majors.

6. Trading the OTHERS Index Onchain

Until now, getting concentrated exposure to the small-cap segment of the crypto market meant assembling and rebalancing a basket of dozens of individual tokens. Gas fees, slippage on illiquid pairs, and projects rotating in and out of relevance added up quickly. The position traders ended up with rarely reflected the original thesis.

Paragon (@tradeparagon) addresses this directly. It lists an OTHERS perpetual contract on Hyperliquid, letting traders express a view on the entire long tail of the market through a single instrument without managing multiple positions.

Beyond OTHERS, Paragon also lists BTC.D, which measures Bitcoin’s share of the total crypto market, and TOTAL2, which tracks the altcoin market excluding Bitcoin. Together, the three indices cover the major segments of crypto market structure, whether that is hedging an altcoin portfolio, positioning for rotation between majors and small caps, or trading the long tail as a standalone market.

Learn more at Paragon.

Disclaimer

This article was produced in partnership with Paragon. The content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice. Nothing in this article should be relied on as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any digital asset. Do your own research before making any trading decisions.

1. What Is BTC Dominance (BTC.D)?

Picture the entire crypto market as a pie. Every coin, token, and digital asset takes a slice. BTC Dominance (BTC.D) measures how large Bitcoin’s slice is relative to the whole pie.

The math is straightforward: take Bitcoin’s market cap, divide it by the combined market cap of the top 125 crypto assets, and express it as a percentage.

BTC Dominance = (Bitcoin Market Cap ÷ Top 125 Crypto Assets Market Cap)

Think of it this way: if the entire crypto market is worth $3 trillion and Bitcoin accounts for $1.8 trillion of that, BTC.D is 60%.

In simple terms, BTC.D tells you where capital is concentrated. When BTC.D is high, above 60%, most of the money in crypto is sitting in Bitcoin. When it drops toward 40% or lower, that capital is spreading into altcoins. BTC.D does not tell you whether Bitcoin’s price is going up or down. It tells you where investors are choosing to allocate their money in the crypto market.

While the formula is simple, it reveals far more than the math suggests. BTC.D acts as a real-time indicator of market sentiment, showing whether the market is consolidating around Bitcoin or expanding into riskier assets.

2. Why Does BTC Dominance Move?

BTC.D shifts when the balance between Bitcoin and the rest of the market changes.

Market sentiment and risk appetite. When traders are willing to take on risk, capital rotates out of Bitcoin into smaller, more volatile assets in search of higher returns. This pushes BTC.D lower. When fear takes over, the opposite happens. Capital consolidates back into Bitcoin.

Altcoin innovation cycles. New narratives consistently pull capital away from Bitcoin. DeFi Summer in 2020, NFTs in 2021, and AI tokens in 2024 each triggered sharp drops in dominance as money rotated into the latest theme. Bitcoin did not necessarily fall in price; it simply grew more slowly than the rest of the market.

Institutional adoption. Large institutions mostly buy Bitcoin, not altcoins. The approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs in January 2024 marked a structural shift. Billions flowed into BTC through regulated products, pushing BTC.D from 52% in early 2024 to over 58% within a year, as institutional inflows concentrated specifically in Bitcoin rather than spreading across the market.

Stablecoin distortion. Stablecoins like USDT and USDC are included in the total market cap calculation. With stablecoins now accounting for over $300B of the total crypto market, their growth can push BTC.D lower even when nothing has actually changed in how investors feel about Bitcoin versus altcoins. This is worth keeping in mind when dominance moves without an obvious reason.

3. BTC Dominance Across Market Cycles

BTC.D follows recognizable patterns across bull and bear markets. Here is what history shows:

2017 ICO boom. BTC.D collapsed from ~95% to ~39% as thousands of new tokens launched and absorbed capital. Bitcoin was hitting all-time highs in dollar terms, but everything else was growing faster.

2018 bear market. When the bubble burst, altcoins fell harder than Bitcoin. Investors retreated to BTC as the least-bad option, and dominance climbed back toward 70% by late 2019.

2020 DeFi and NFT bull market. BTC.D dropped from ~70% in January 2021 to ~40% by May 2021 as DeFi protocols, NFTs, and alternative Layer 1 blockchains pulled massive capital away from Bitcoin.

2022 LUNA and FTX collapses. Two of the biggest failures in crypto history triggered panic across the market. Even as everything fell, Bitcoin fell less. BTC.D climbed from ~40% to ~47% as traders parked in Bitcoin relative to everything else.

2024 institutional era. ETF inflows and corporate Bitcoin treasury purchases pushed BTC.D back above 65%. Unlike previous cycles, dominance rose during a bull market, driven by institutional money that specifically favored Bitcoin.

4. How to Read BTC Dominance

BTC.D is most useful when read alongside Bitcoin’s price. Together, the two tell you how capital is actually moving across the market:

5. Trading BTC Dominance

BTC.D can be traded as a direct expression of where the market is headed. The setups below are strategies traders have historically used to position around dominance shifts. They are included here for educational purposes only. None of this is financial advice. Always do your own research before making any trading decisions.

Altseason Signal (BTC.D below 54%)

When BTC.D closes below 54% on the weekly chart, it has historically signaled that capital is starting to rotate into altcoins.

How traders approach it: wait for a confirmed weekly close below 54%, then short BTC.D, betting that dominance will continue to fall as altcoins pick up momentum.

BTC Strength Signal (BTC.D above 60%)

When BTC.D pushes above 60%, it has historically meant Bitcoin is outperforming the broader market. Institutional buyers tend to favor BTC at these levels, and the trend can persist.

How traders approach it: wait for a confirmed weekly close above 60%, then go long BTC.D, betting that Bitcoin continues to outperform.

100-Week Moving Average Rejection

The 100-week moving average represents the average of BTC.D’s weekly closes over the past two years. Think of it as the market’s baseline for normal dominance.

When BTC.D rallies back to that level from below and fails to break through, traders interpret it as a sign that the move is losing strength, and dominance is likely to fall again.

How traders approach it: monitor the 100-week SMA on the BTC.D chart, wait for BTC.D to tag the line and fail to break above it, then short BTC.D, expecting a move lower.

6. Trading BTC Dominance Onchain

Historically, taking a position on BTC Dominance required managing multiple trades at once. Traders would long Bitcoin and short a basket of altcoins, then constantly rebalance as prices moved. It was messy and expensive, and introduced execution complexity and rebalancing risk that made the final position a rough approximation of the original thesis at best.

Paragon (@tradeparagon) was built to solve that. It offers a BTC Dominance perpetual contract on Hyperliquid, giving traders direct exposure to BTC.D in a single position.

Beyond BTC.D, Paragon offers two additional index perpetuals: OTHERS, tracking the total crypto market cap excluding the top 10 assets, and TOTAL2, covering the broader altcoin market excluding Bitcoin. Together, the three products give traders a toolkit for expressing macro views on crypto market structure, whether that is hedging an altcoin portfolio, positioning for rotation, or trading dominance as its own market.

Learn more at Paragon.

Disclaimer

This article was produced in partnership with Paragon. The content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice. Nothing in this article should be relied on as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any digital asset. Do your own research before making any trading decisions.

Intro

Welcome to the eighth edition of Nexus Data Labs. We are here to tell stories about onchain data. Our aim is to alert you to what really matters in the fast-developing world of onchain finance.

Thank you to Borja and Tom for contributing to this issue.

Setting the Scene

Yield-bearing tokens have drawn increasing attention across DeFi. As onchain treasuries and DAOs grow, so does the need to deploy idle capital productively. Holding stablecoins without yield is an opportunity cost that protocol treasuries can no longer justify at scale.

But yield alone is not enough. The source of that yield matters. A token backed by short-term US Treasuries carries a fundamentally different risk profile than one backed by perpetual futures funding rates or private credit. The convergence between TradFi yield sources and onchain distribution is no longer theoretical. It is happening at scale, with money market funds, government securities, and institutional lending all serving as backing for tokens that sit natively in DeFi.

The question is no longer whether yield should be tokenized, but which structures generate it, where the risk actually sits, and who captures the return.

This week, we break down three yield-bearing tokens: USYC, sUSDe, and BUIDL. Each takes a distinct approach to generating yield onchain.

USYC by Circle

Borja Neira | Website | Dashboard

USYC surges to $2.9B with 96% of supply concentrated on BNB Chain

USYC is a tokenized money market fund issued by Hashnote, a Circle subsidiary, backed by short-term US Treasury bills and reverse repo agreements. As of April 2026, USYC reached $2.90B in AUM, up 460% YoY and 91% YTD, overtaking BUIDL to become the largest tokenized Treasury product.

The growth is concentrated on a single chain and a single use case. 96% of supply ($2.79B) sits on BNB Chain as off-exchange collateral for Binance’s institutional derivatives business since its launch in July 2025. Ethereum supply, which peaked at $1.68B in January 2025, has since compressed to $110M.

sUSDe by Ethena

Tom Wan | Website | Dashboard

sUSDe staking ratio climbs to 60% as Ethena diversifies beyond funding rates

USDe is Ethena’s synthetic dollar, primarily backed by a delta-neutral strategy that pairs long spot positions in ETH and BTC with corresponding short perpetual futures to generate yield for sUSDe holders (Staked version of USDe).

While staked USDe supply has contracted from its $14B peak, the staking ratio climbed from 39% to 60%. Holders are increasingly locking up USDe for yield rather than holding it idle.

Yield has been modest, sitting in the 3.3-5.5% APY range since October 2025 as Q1 2026 average crypto perp funding fell to 1.74%. Ethena has been diversifying away from pure funding rate dependence by building USDtb to capture T-bill yield, but a prolonged bear market still makes sUSDe uncompetitive against direct T-bill rates and yield-bearing stablecoin alternatives like sUSDS.

A recent proposal from the Ethena Risk Committee expands yield sources to CeFi institutional lending, liquid RWAs beyond T-bills, equity and commodity basis exposure, and prime lending. Perpetual futures, once the primary return engine, now account for just 11% of backing.

If executed well, these new sources would decorrelate Ethena's yield from crypto cycles and provide a higher baseline yield for sUSDe. However, each new category introduces counterparty and credit exposures the pure delta-neutral model never had. In this case, the Risk Committee's sizing and monitoring become the load-bearing element of the new architecture.

BUIDL by Blackrock

Borja Neira | Website | Dashboard

BUIDL holds $2.5B as chain distribution shifts from Ethereum to Solana and BNB Chain

BUIDL is BlackRock's tokenized money market fund, offering institutional investors exposure to short-term US Treasuries through an onchain wrapper. It recently lost its lead position by market cap to USYC. BUIDL’s market cap peaked at $2.92B in May 2025 before drawing down to $1.74B by year-end. As of April 2026, market cap has recovered to $2.47B, roughly flat YoY but up $730M (+42%) YTD.

The recovery was not driven by Ethereum, where supply contracted from $2.25B to $1.24B over the past year. Instead, growth came from new chain deployments. Solana ($527M, 21%) and BNB Chain ($508M, 21%) now account for 42% of outstanding supply, up from zero 12 months ago. What was once a single-chain product now spans eight networks. The flat YoY growth headline obscures a meaningful structural shift in chain distribution underneath.

Closing Thoughts

Yield-bearing tokens are scaling fast. USYC crossed $2.9B in under a year, BUIDL now spans eight chains, and sUSDe's staking ratio climbed to 60% even as USDe supply contracted. Capital is not just moving onchain. It is increasingly being allocated toward productive yield once it arrives.

But AUM only tells part of the story. The next phase hinges on whether these tokens integrate into onchain liquidity, credit, and collateral layers. The tokens that earn their place in DeFi will be the ones that become more capital efficient and composable across lending, borrowing, and settlement.

As these tokens scale, the frameworks used to evaluate them must also evolve. A Treasury bill wrapped in a token, held on a specific chain, and managed by a specific issuer carries risks that traditional asset labels do not capture. Blockchain infrastructure risk and issuer risk are real. Ignoring either leads to an incomplete picture of what these tokens actually represent.

What We're Watching

• sUSDe APY and staking ratio

• Ethena Reserve Proposal

• DeFiLlama’s Aave TVL Methodology

Web3 Data Jobs

Nexus is partnering with Unchain Data to highlight opportunities across the onchain data ecosystem. This week’s featured openings:

• Stablecoin Research Analyst at Tether

• Senior Data Scientist at Phantom

• Senior Data Scientist at Mysten Labs

By J.W.

The article is also available on X.

Nexus is building Non-USD Stablecoin Dashboard, powered by Token Terminal, tracking issuance and activity across non-USD denominated stablecoins. The dashboard is a work in progress, and we welcome feedback as we continue to refine it.

The Gap: Non-USD Stablecoins vs. FX Reality

The stablecoin market surpassed $319 billion in April 2026, yet less than 0.3% of that supply is denominated in currencies other than the U.S. dollar. In traditional foreign exchange markets, non-USD currency pairs account for approximately 11% of the roughly $9.6 trillion traded each day. This divergence reflects both market dynamics and an infrastructure gap that has yet to be addressed at scale. The question is whether onchain DEXs, centralized exchanges, or a hybrid architecture of both will emerge as the primary venue for non-USD stablecoin trading.

The momentum behind non-USD stablecoins is clear:

• Circle’s EURC became the first MiCA-licensed euro stablecoin in July 2024. Post-MiCA, EURC volumes increased 1,139% and Societe Generale’s EURCV volumes rose 343%. Building on that momentum, a consortium of 12 European banks, including ING, UniCredit, BNP Paribas, and BBVA, formed Qivalis to launch a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin in H2 2026.

  

  

• Japan’s JPYC launched as the country’s first regulated yen-backed stablecoin in October 2025, registered under Japan’s Financial Services Agency. Japan’s megabanks (MUFG, SMBC, and Mizuho) launched pilots for stablecoins and tokenized deposits in payments and interbank settlement.

  

• South Korea saw KRW1 launch on Avalanche in September 2025 and KRWQ debut on Coinbase’s Base in October 2025. KakaoBank advanced its won-pegged stablecoin preparations ahead of pending legislation.

• Singapore’s XSGD processed over $3.8B in cumulative onchain volume, expanding into cross-border settlement across ASEAN through partnerships with Grab and Ripple.

The pattern is clear: this is a wave of sovereign stablecoin issuance. Each jurisdiction is effectively betting that its currency deserves a position in the onchain settlement layer. If that bet pays off at scale, one piece of infrastructure becomes essential: the exchange layer between these currencies. The way this layer is designed and governed will determine how deep non-USD liquidity can become, how efficiently flows are routed, and where custodial, credit, and regulatory risks ultimately concentrate.

The FX Architecture Problem

A holder of EURC looking to pay a counterparty in KRW1 faces a structural problem. Today, no direct EURC/KRW1 market offers meaningful liquidity. The practical path requires two legs: EURC to USDC, then USDC to KRW1. Each step incurs costs and routes through the dollar as a pivot currency. This mirrors the pre-digital FX market, where emerging market pairs settled through dollar intermediation and correspondent banks captured spreads at every conversion.

The question is whether onchain infrastructure can compress or eliminate that two-leg structure, and whether DEXs, CEXs, or a hybrid model is best positioned to do so.

The Case for a DEX

Decentralized exchanges enable stablecoin-to-stablecoin swaps without requiring custody, counterparty onboarding, or time zone constraints. Beyond access, composability adds another layer of structural advantage. A DEX-native FX layer can integrate directly with lending protocols, payroll applications, and treasury management tools without bilateral agreements or KYC gatekeeping.

Geographic reach extends that utility further. A DEX deployed on a low-cost L2 can serve a user in Lagos, Bogota, or Manila with identical access and pricing. No correspondent banking relationship required. For emerging markets, this is not a marginal improvement. It is access to a functioning FX market where the local banking system does not provide one.

That model already exists in early form. Mento’s Fixed-Price Market Maker (FPMM) prices swaps against oracle-fed real-world FX reference rates rather than pool dynamics, eliminating the impermanent loss problem that makes traditional AMMs uneconomical for stablecoin LPs. Mento has processed $31B in cumulative DEX volume across 15 currency pairs, according to Artemis.

Where the DEX model breaks down: liquidity. A EURC/KRW1 pool on Uniswap will have far less liquidity than a USDC/KRW1 pool, and far less than either has against the actual Korean won interbank market. Thin liquidity leads to high slippage, and high slippage is a structural tax on every trade. The FPMM oracle approach mitigates pricing instability, but it introduces oracle risk. If the price feed is manipulated or delayed, the pool misprices the swap.

The Case for a CEX / Institutional RFQ Model

Institutional Request for Quote (RFQ) platforms offer a fundamentally different approach to onchain FX. Rather than relying on permissionless liquidity pools, they route price discovery through established market makers and settle onchain, combining the efficiency of traditional FX infrastructure with the speed and finality of blockchain settlement.

The model is already live at institutional scale. Kinexys Digital Payments by JP Morgan enables 24/7 onchain FX settlement across USD, EUR, and GBP for clients including Siemens, Ant International, and B2C2. Circle's StableFX, built on its Arc Layer 1 chain currently in testnet, follows a similar RFQ structure: multiple liquidity providers compete for each trade off-chain, with settlement onchain via smart contract escrow.

Centralized exchanges bring a different but complementary advantage. As more sovereign stablecoins are issued under frameworks like MiCA and the GENIUS Act, Binance, Coinbase, and OKX are well positioned to serve as early liquidity venues for new non-USD pairs, given their existing regulatory relationships and user bases.

The core value of this model is not better pricing. Interbank FX markets are already highly efficient. What the RFQ model offers is faster settlement, reduced counterparty risk, and 24/7 availability. A treasury team managing multicurrency operations does not need tighter spreads. They need to move euros into won at 11pm on a Sunday without waiting for a bank to open.

Where the institutional model breaks down: access. The RFQ model requires bilateral relationships with licensed counterparties. It works for the banks and institutions with Kinexys access. It does nothing for the logistics company in Bangkok that wants to pay a supplier in Mexico City, at least not yet. For businesses and individuals outside institutional onboarding pipelines, that gap is not a minor friction. It is a structural exclusion.

DEX vs. CEX: A Framework

The DEX and CEX models are not competing for the same market. They solve different parts of the FX stack, with structurally distinct addressable markets:

• Liquidity depth: CEX dominates major currency pairs. DEX has developed liquidity for established crypto-native pairs but remains structurally thin for emerging market pairs.

• Settlement risk: DEX eliminates counterparty exposure. Smart contract escrow ensures both sides settle simultaneously or not at all. CEX achieves equivalent outcomes through RFQ but relies on contractual rather than programmatic guarantees.

• Access: DEX is permissionless by design, requiring only a wallet. CEX demands bilateral agreements, KYC onboarding, and licensing, gating institutional quality behind institutional friction.

• Composability: DEX can integrate natively with DeFi lending, payroll, and treasury protocols. CEX settlement requires additional steps to deploy in DeFi.

• Regulatory posture: CEX operates within familiar banking frameworks. DEX regulatory treatment remains unsettled in most jurisdictions. MiCA’s permissionless DeFi carve-out is provisional.

• Geography: DEX is globally accessible and most useful in markets with weak correspondent banking. CEX excels in corridors where both counterparties sit within regulated financial systems.

The most probable outcome is not binary. It is hybrid architecture. Institutional RFQ rails handle wholesale flows between regulated entities. Onchain AMM and FPMM liquidity serves retail, DeFi, and emerging market corridors. The layers are complementary, not competing. The question is which player captures which layer.

Closing Thoughts

Closing the gap between traditional FX markets and non-USD stablecoin pairs will not happen through a single model. In the near term, institutions will gravitate toward centralized venues for the liquidity depth and settlement guarantees they already understand. DEXs are better positioned to start narrow, building liquidity in a few high-volume cross-currency pairs and expanding from there as liquidity deepens and oracle infrastructure matures. The transition will be gradual.

Over time, the DEX model wins on access, composability, and reach, which matters most in emerging markets where correspondent banking is weak and routing through the dollar adds unnecessary friction. The CEX and RFQ model wins on liquidity depth, settlement guarantees, and institutional trust for large wholesale flows. Neither solves the full stack alone. The architecture that ultimately scales will be hybrid.

The most likely path forward mirrors what happened in perpetual DEX markets. Small protocols will launch as experiments, prove product-market fit in specific corridors, and gradually scale into infrastructure. The window to capture that layer is open. But it will not remain so indefinitely.

Sources & Data References

• BIS Triennial Central Bank Survey 2025

• Token Terminal — Non-USD stablecoin supply, April 2026

• Circle — MiCA licensing announcement, July 2024

• BBVA — European bank consortium announcement, Feb 2026

• Decta — Euro Stablecoin Trends Report 2025

• Tiger Research — 2026 Asia Stablecoin Market Overview

• The Block — KRW1 on Avalanche, September 2025

• The Block — KRWQ on Base, October 2025

• CoinDesk — Ripple partnership, May 2025

• GeckoTerminal — EURC/USDC pool on Uniswap V3

• Artemis — Mento Cumulative DEX volume, April 2026

• JP Morgan — Kinexys Digital Payments

• Arc Network / Circle — StableFX on Arc testnet, December 2025

Welcome to the seventh edition of Nexus Data Labs, where we highlight what matters most in the fast-developing world of onchain finance.

Thank you to Filippo, J.W., Owen, and Diego for contributing to this issue.

What We're Building

Over the past few weeks, Nexus has been working with Token Terminal to build a local stablecoins dashboard. That work became the spark for this issue. The further we went into the data, the clearer it became that non-USD stablecoins deserve dedicated analysis. The dashboard is still a work in progress, and we welcome feedback as we continue to refine it.

Setting the Scene

Stablecoins have found one of the clearest product-market fits in crypto. Total supply has crossed $294B, with USDT and USDC accounting for ~85% of the market. But that dominance obscures a structural gap.

In global FX markets, the US dollar is involved in 89% of transactions. Every one of those trades has a second currency on the other side. Onchain, that second half barely exists. Non-USD stablecoins represent just 0.33% of total stablecoin supply. The global economy is multi-currency, but onchain finance is not.

That gap is a product of how the market was built. Early stablecoins were designed for traders, and dollar-denominated liquidity became the default unit of account, collateral, and settlement layer across crypto. That works for a fraction of the world. For most of the world, transacting in USD stablecoins introduces constant FX exposure into everyday financial activity. Local stablecoins flip that equation. The rails stay global, but the unit of account becomes local.

This week, we cover the leading stablecoins across three non-USD currency segments: $EURC for euros, $ZCHF for the Swiss franc, and $BRZ for the Brazilian real.

Overview

Filippo | Website | Dataset

Non-USD stablecoin supply crosses $2.3B, but growth and adoption tell different stories

According to Dune, non-USD stablecoin supply has crossed $2.3B, expanding 2.3x in 12 months. But the distribution behind that number is uneven, and the headline figure obscures a fragmented picture beneath it.

A7A5, a ruble-pegged stablecoin, accounts for the largest share of that growth, expanding 8.4x to $1.17B across 36K wallets. EURC reached $476M, up 1.8x, with 203K holders and the widest retail distribution among large non-USD stablecoins. JPYC went from a single holder to 45K in under a year, the fastest onboarding ramp in the category. EURA still reports roughly 797K holders against only $4M in supply, and with Angle Protocol announcing its discontinuation in March 2026, that holder base is winding down.

Euro-pegged stablecoins remain the most diverse category by both supply and holder count. But across the broader non-USD landscape, supply growth and holder growth are moving at different speeds and in different directions.

Euro Stablecoins ($EURC)

Owen Fernau | Website | Dashboard

EURC holder count grows 2.2x faster than supply

EURC, a euro-pegged stablecoin issued by Circle, is the largest non-USD stablecoin by market cap at $476M, representing just over half of all non-USD stablecoin supply combined. This excludes A7A5, a ruble-pegged stablecoin that, due to international sanctions on Russia, is not tracked by most data providers.

Since January 2025, supply has grown 286% while holder count climbed 633%, with holders growing 2.2x faster than supply. One interpretation is that EURC is becoming diluted as new holders enter. Each holder represents a proportionally smaller share of total supply than 16 months ago, even as overall supply has expanded. That pattern is consistent with organic adoption rather than concentration.

EURC's growth story points toward broader distribution. The question now is whether Circle can convert that expanding base into an actively transacting network, or whether EURC settles into a compliance-driven store of value rather than a functioning payments rail.

Frankencoin ($ZCHF)

J.W. | Website | Dashboard

ZCHF market cap reaches $38M with 89% growth in 2026

Frankencoin (ZCHF) is the largest CHF stablecoin onchain, pegged 1:1 to the Swiss franc. Unlike USDT or USDC, no company holds reserves in a bank account to back it. ZCHF is minted by users who lock up crypto as collateral directly onchain, and if that collateral loses value, it is liquidated automatically to protect the peg.

The mechanism is deliberately different from most collateralized stablecoins. Rather than relying on external price feeds to trigger liquidations, ZCHF uses an auction process. When a position is challenged, the market bids on the collateral over a period of days rather than minutes. The architecture makes it slower, but removes a vulnerability that has cost DeFi protocols hundreds of millions in oracle manipulation attacks. A set of economic constraints pushes the market toward parity from two sides, incentivizing arbitrage whenever ZCHF deviates.

The protocol runs on two tokens. ZCHF is the stablecoin. Frankencoin Pool Shares (FPS) represent ownership in the protocol. FPS holders earn protocol fees and liquidation proceeds, but they are also the first to absorb losses if the system becomes undercollateralized.

ZCHF's market cap reached $38M while average wallet balance declined from roughly $90K to under $25K. Early data suggests organic adoption may be broadening beyond the protocol's early users, though it is too soon to draw firm conclusions. Average balance alone captures only one dimension of that distribution. Growing market cap paired with an expanding holder base will determine whether ZCHF's trajectory reflects structural demand or remains a niche footnote in the stablecoin market. Until that scale is reached, ZCHF remains a proof of concept rather than a functioning alternative to dollar-based stablecoins.

Brazilian Digital ($BRZ)

Diego Cabral | Website | Dashboard

BRZ has processed $980M in volume in 2026 on $44.8M circulating supply

Transfero’s BRZ is the largest BRL-pegged stablecoin onchain, with $44.8M in circulating supply and $980M in transfer volume year to date. That is roughly a 20x supply turnover, a ratio more consistent with an active payment rail than a parked store of value.

Since early December 2025, circulating supply expanded rapidly from $19.7M to $44.8M, a 127% increase in under four months. Weekly transfer volume has held in the $30M to $70M range throughout.

On average, BRZ transfer volume drops 84% on weekends compared to weekdays. The average weekday sits around $14.7M while weekends come in at $3.4M. That pattern is a direct signal of payment orientation, consistent with payroll and B2B settlement cycles rather than speculative trading. Usage is leading supply growth, not the other way around. That is what a local-currency stablecoin functioning as a real payment tool looks like.

Editor's Note

The following two transactions are excluded from this analysis. The mint and burn activity appears to artificially inflate transfer volume:

• 0xca380e327a8c45c47624f55f8bf1d12c1c1c596ec84199e080d04e910e10b8e0

• 0x07697bc316c89a8134e98eddf1076a88260e8c02d77e70cbdbdca14f707109e4

Closing Thoughts

The US dollar is the world's reserve currency, and dollar-denominated liquidity was the natural starting point for a market built on global, permissionless rails. Dollar stablecoins won because they arrived first and solved the right problem for the right users at the right time. That progression made sense.

Local stablecoins represent the next phase. Not as competitors to USDT or USDC, but as missing infrastructure. As adoption moves from trading to payments, payroll, and treasury flows, the demand for onchain money that matches real-world liabilities becomes unavoidable. A business paying suppliers in euros, a freelancer receiving income in Japanese yen, a Swiss firm settling invoices in francs. None of them are naturally dollar users. Onchain rails that ignore that reality will remain incomplete.

What EURC, ZCHF, and BRZ each show, at different stages of maturity, is that local demand exists and is measurable onchain. The growth is uneven and liquidity remains thin relative to USD pairs, but the foundation is being laid. The next stage of stablecoin growth will not be won by one currency. It will be built currency by currency.

What We’re Watching

• Swiss banks to test CHF stablecoin

• DeFi Llama partners with Spark to launch an investor relations portal

• x402 vs MPP

• Dune x Visa report: “Beyond Dollarization”

Web3 Data Jobs

Nexus is partnering with Unchain Data to highlight opportunities across the onchain data ecosystem. This week’s featured openings:

• Data Scientist at Jito Foundation

• Data Analytics Engineer at Alchemy

• Data Analyst at Xapo

By J.W.

The article is also available on X

Setting the Scene

Polygon has evolved through several distinct strategic phases since its launch. What began as a scaling solution for Ethereum evolved into a gaming and NFT hub, then a DeFi settlement layer, and most recently a stablecoin and payment network. Across each phase, the underlying message has remained consistent: Polygon is built for broad, real-world adoption at scale.

The data, however, tells a different story.

In March 2026, a single application dominated Polygon’s network activity across various measurable dimensions, including transactions and gas fees, according to the Dune Dashboard. That application isn’t a stablecoin issuer or a payment provider. It’s Polymarket. By any infrastructure measure, Polygon’s blockspace economy is not a diverse ecosystem. It is, functionally, a prediction market chain with residual activity surrounding it.

The chain’s stablecoin data reinforces that point. According to RWA.xyz, Polygon hosts approximately $3.6B in stablecoins, a figure central to its payment settlement narrative. However, roughly $1.26B, nearly one in every three dollars, sits inside Polymarket alone: $413M in open interest across markets and $845M in user proxy wallets, according to @datadashboards on Dune. At a time when stablecoin infrastructure is one of the most closely watched growth vectors in crypto, a substantial portion of Polygon’s stablecoin supply belongs to a prediction market, not a payment protocol.

The Bear Case: Polygon's Single-App Problem

Polygon markets itself as "the go-to blockchain for global payments," positioning its chain as infrastructure for payments and stablecoins. In traditional financial infrastructure, settlement layers derive their resilience from diversity of demand. The more independent sources of fee revenue a settlement layer has, the more resilient its economic foundation becomes. This is not a crypto-native concept. It is the same logic that underpins payment rails and correspondent banking networks.

By that standard, the data presents a challenge for Polygon’s current positioning. A network where one application accounts for the majority of gas fees and compute load does not reflect the profile of a settlement layer. As of March 2026, Polymarket’s share of Polygon’s network activity tells that story plainly:

• Gas fees: 67.3%

• Compute units: 77.0%

• Transactions: 54.4%

It reflects a network where one protocol drives the majority of demand and everything else is residual. That concentration creates a structural dependency. Polygon’s fee revenue, throughput economics, and network utilization are substantially driven by a single protocol’s activity. At this scale, that concentration could pose a systemic risk to the network itself.

The Dependency Risk: What Happens If Polymarket Leaves?

This is not a hypothetical. Application-specific chains have become a trend with dYdX and Uniswap launching their own execution environments rather than remaining deployed as apps on shared networks. Polymarket has equal incentive to pursue its own chain as well. As the platform scales, the case for Polymarket controlling its own execution environment strengthens. A Polymarket L2 would preserve settlement flexibility while capturing fee revenue that currently accrues to Polygon validators.

If Polymarket migrates, Polygon does not gradually lose activity. It loses it overnight. Fee revenue collapses. Transaction volume craters. There is no second application waiting to absorb the load, at least not yet. What remains is a chain that once hosted the world's largest prediction market, now competing for relevance with a significantly thinner demand base, unless another Polymarket comes along.

The Bull Case: Polygon’s Memecoin Moment

Despite the bear case built around Polymarket’s concentration, there is a credible counterargument. Polygon’s relationship with Polymarket mirrors Solana’s rise in 2024. As memecoin trading volumes exploded, a single sector dominated blockspace demand and fee generation, ultimately driving $SOL’s price appreciation alongside it. So far, however, $POL has not reflected that dynamic in its price performance, despite the structural parallels.

There may be another catalyst on the horizon. In October 2025, Polymarket CMO Matthew Modabber confirmed that a $POLY token and airdrop are coming, stating “There will be a token, there will be an airdrop.” For Polygon, that confirmation carries implications that extend beyond Polymarket’s own token economy. When $POLY launches, the airdrop creates an entirely new class of economically motivated participants. Recipients will claim tokens, trade them, speculate on price, and rotate into and out of Polymarket to farm further rewards or express views on $POLY itself. Each of those actions generates a transaction that settles on Polygon. A $POLY launch does not just benefit Polymarket in isolation. It would hand Polygon a demand spike, layering a second catalyst on top of a network already running at concentrated capacity. Fee revenue climbs, compute utilization rises, and the network metrics that currently reflect one dominant application compound further, assuming Polymarket stays.

Closing Thoughts

Whether Polymarket ultimately migrates or Polygon captures the $POLY airdrop tailwind remains an open question. Polygon’s relationship with Polymarket is symbiotic, for now. Polymarket gets reliable, low-cost settlement infrastructure. Polygon gets sustained, organic blockspace demand. The arrangement has worked.

In the near term, the arrangement will likely hold. Polymarket’s immediate priority is market share, not chain migration. The fight with Kalshi is accelerating, and building a new execution environment requires resources, engineering time, and operational risk that no platform mid-battle can easily justify. As long as the current infrastructure holds, there is no obvious trigger to move.

But that stability may not last forever. One application controls 77% of Polygon’s compute and holds nearly one in every three dollars of its stablecoin supply. That is a single-app concentration risk embedded in Polygon’s market position, and one the data surfaces whether the narrative acknowledges it or not.

Welcome to the sixth edition of Nexus Data Labs, where we highlight what matters most in the fast-developing world of onchain finance.

Thank you to J.W., Owen, and Diego for contributing to this issue.

Setting the Scene

The last edition opened the door on AI x blockchain infrastructure. This week we go deeper on two of the most active developments in that space: x402, an emerging payment framework enabling AI agents to transact autonomously onchain; and Bittensor, a decentralized network turning artificial intelligence into an open market. One is building the payment rails while the other is building the marketplace where AI models compete to produce intelligence. Both are early and moving fast.

x402

Owen Fernau & J.W. | Website | Dashboard

Approximately 38% of x402 cumulative transactions appear inorganic

x402 is a payment protocol built for the internet’s next layer: machine-to-machine transactions. The name comes from HTTP status code 402, “Payment Required”, a code that has existed in web standards since 1991 but was never formally implemented. x402 activates it. The core idea is simple. Rather than a human logging in, entering card details, or approving a transaction, x402 allows AI agents and software programs to pay for data, APIs, and services autonomously. For developers building AI agents that need to consume external data or services, x402 offers a standardized way to handle payments onchain without custom billing integrations.

Since launching in May 2025, x402 has processed over 166M cumulative transactions across $47M in total volume. But not all of that activity reflects genuine economic demand.

Artemis identifies two forms of artificial activity on x402: self-dealing, where the same wallet acts as both buyer and seller; and wash trading, where a seller wallet funds a buyer wallet that immediately returns the funds. Together, these two patterns account for approximately 38% of cumulative transactions.

The infrastructure is being built. Developers are integrating x402 into agent frameworks, standardizing payment flows, and shipping tooling. What has not yet materialized is sustained organic usage at scale. The protocol has a foundation. The next phase depends on whether genuine commercial demand grows into it.

Bittensor ($TAO)

J.W. | Website | Dashboard

$TAO rallied 88% in March 2026 as Covenant-72B validated decentralized AI training at scale

Bittensor is a decentralized network designed to transform artificial intelligence into an open market. Rather than concentrating AI development within a handful of large organizations, it enables anyone to build, contribute, and earn from machine intelligence at a global scale.

The network is organized around subnets, each an independent AI marketplace dedicated to a specific task. A subnet can focus on anything from large-scale model training and decentralized inference to GPU compute and financial prediction. Within each subnet, two classes of participants interact:

• Miners supply the intelligence. They run models, process data, and produce outputs.

• Validators measure quality. They assess each miner's contribution and determine who performed best.

Every day, a fixed pool of $TAO is distributed across the network. Subnets compete for their share by producing verifiable AI work. Those delivering the strongest results attract the most participants and capture the largest share of daily emissions.

In March 2026, $TAO moved from $177 to $333, an 88% gain that outpaced a broader market deep in the red. Subnet market cap climbed to $1.38B over the same period, with individual tokens ranging from $1M to $126M and several subnet tokens posting 200–400% monthly gains.

Two catalysts drove the move:

• Covenant-72B: Subnet 3 (Templar) completed the largest decentralized AI model training run across more than 70 contributors worldwide using ordinary consumer hardware. The model performed on par with one of Meta's most capable open-source models, Llama 2 70B. Before Covenant-72B, decentralized AI training at this scale was theoretical, but the model made it real.

• Jensen Huang: On Mar 20, 2026, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang endorsed Bittensor’s decentralized training model on the All-In Podcast, framing it as complementary to proprietary AI development. Coming from one of the most influential voices in AI infrastructure, the endorsement carried weight far beyond the usual crypto audience.

AI narratives are moving fast, and $TAO is riding that wave. The real test is whether subnets can sustain organic demand. Bittensor is among the most serious decentralized AI infrastructure experiments running today. Whether that translates into durable product market fit remains an open question, but the network is no longer just making promises.

Closing Thoughts

Bittensor and x402 represent two distinct but converging bets on where AI infrastructure is heading. Bittensor treats intelligence itself as a commodity, routing capital toward the subnets producing the most verifiable AI work. x402 removes the human from the payment loop entirely, letting agents pay for data and services autonomously. Together they sketch an early picture of what AI-native infrastructure looks like in practice.

Both protocols remain in a phase where narrative still runs ahead of usage data. Bittensor's subnet economy runs on daily emissions. x402's transaction base is roughly 38% inorganic. The infrastructure is being built and the direction is clear. What's still missing is real, sustained demand.

The protocols that close that gap will define which parts of the AI x blockchain stack actually matter. Everything else is infrastructure waiting for a use case.

What We’re Watching

• The Bear Case for Bittensor (TAO)

• Covenant-72B on Templar

• x402’s Wash Trading Problem

• Introducing x402 Foundation

Web3 Data Jobs

Nexus is partnering with Unchain Data to highlight opportunities across the onchain data ecosystem. This week’s featured openings:

• Data Analyst at Kraken

• Head of Data at Solana Foundation

• Senior Data Scientist at Coinbase

Welcome to the fifth edition of Nexus Data Labs. Our aim is to highlight what matters most in the fast-developing world of onchain finance.

Thank you to J.W. and Diego for contributing to this issue.

Setting the Scene

The intersection of AI and blockchain is rapidly evolving from concept to infrastructure. Over the past year, autonomous agents, payment rails, and specialized data layers have begun operating directly within onchain systems, not as experiments, but as functional components of an emerging tech stack.

This shift raises an important question for the onchain economy: what happens when AI agents, rather than humans, become its primary users? For onchain analysts, the question is more immediate: how is AI changing the research toolkit?

This week's edition explores how the transition is beginning to take shape, through a key development at the frontier: a new generation of Large Language Models (LLMs), Model Context Protocols (MCPs), and Command Line Interfaces (CLIs) tools allowing AI systems to interface directly with structured data providers.

Across all the offerings, a common thread is emerging: the tools used to analyze the onchain economy are evolving alongside the economy itself.

The Agent Interface Layer

Diego Cabral

How data providers are opening their datasets to AI agents, through LLMs, MCPs and CLIs

Over the past few weeks, a growing number of data providers have started experimenting with interfaces designed specifically for AI agents. By exposing their datasets and analytics tools through LLMs, MCPs, and CLIs, these teams are shifting agents’ role from passive assistants to active research operators, capable of querying, analyzing, and synthesizing information directly from the source.

In the section below, a few of the teams at the frontier of onchain data share how they see analysis evolving in the age of AI agents.

Note: The tools featured here were chosen for relevance, not commercial relationships.

Allium

AI agents in crypto can already transact and make decisions without human intervention. What they cannot do reliably is verify the state of the blockchain they are operating on.

Two recent standards address parts of this problem. ERC-8004 gives agents a way to identify and establish trust with each other. The x402 payment protocol lets them transact autonomously per request. Taken together, they remove two significant constraints on autonomous agent activity in crypto.

But neither standard solves the data layer. Agents need to read protocol state, validate outcomes, and act on what is actually happening onchain. Raw blockchain data does not support this. It is fragmented across chains, encoded in low-level formats, and inconsistent without significant preprocessing. An agent operating on that layer does not fail immediately. It keeps executing on incorrect data, at machine speed, until enough errors accumulate to surface.

The bottleneck for agentic economies is not model capability or transaction infrastructure. It is whether agents have access to structured, accurate onchain data. Without it, AI applications, MCPs, and agent skills cannot operate reliably regardless of how sophisticated the models above them are.

Without writing a single line of code, the Allium MCP and Claude Cowork enabled us to produce a working x402 data dashboard.

More on Allium

Dune

Historically, extracting value from onchain data required SQL fluency, Dune’s schema knowledge, and an account. Dune’s recent AI developments and features remove that barrier.

Over the past two weeks, Dune shipped the access layer.

The Dune MCP Server gives GUI-based AI apps like Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini structured access to the full Dune workflow: discover tables, write DuneSQL, execute queries, and generate visualizations in a single conversation.

The Dune CLI & Skills extends that same access to terminal-native agents such as Claude Code, Cursor, OpenCode, via a Go-based CLI and a bundled Skills.md file that lets any agent understand Dune’s full toolset with no custom integration required.

MPP (Machine-Protocol-Payments built by Stripe & Tempo) completes the stack. Agents can now discover tables, write DuneSQL, execute queries, and pay for results with no account, no API key, and no human in the loop.

The pattern is simple: agents should query data the way analysts think about it. Dune is building the infrastructure layer to make that real.

We used Dune’s MCP and Claude to build a prediction markets dashboard that pulls data directly from community queries on the platform with no coding involved.

More on Dune

Surf

Although crypto is one of the most data-rich industries, analysis across sources remains a challenge even with AI.

In most industries, data is accessible enough that AI can work with it effectively. In crypto, data is fragmented, and connecting the dots requires context that cuts across sources.

The industry’s attempt to solve this led to over-applying AI vertically. AI was layered onto existing data products, making individual platforms easier to use. Understanding one source at a time became simpler, but synthesis did not.

Comprehensive analysis requires orchestrating multiple data sources, agents, and models around a single objective. Optimizing for one piece of the puzzle adds to the fragmentation rather than resolving it.

As this trend of verticalization accelerates, so will demand for products that take a different approach. Surf is building AI designed for crypto and capable of reasoning across all of its data.

Using Surf Studio, a chatbot-style interface, we built a Hyperliquid dashboard highlighting HIP-3 and HIP-4 testnet data with only language prompts.

More on Surf

Token Terminal

AI assistants make it possible to query onchain data by chatting, removing the need for manual workflows such as navigating dashboards, exporting data, or writing queries.

However, this introduces a constraint: human queries are ambiguous, while data systems require precise definitions. Without a mechanism to translate intent into machine-readable instructions, the model cannot reliably map questions to data, resulting in inconsistent outputs.

This limitation is compounded by context constraints in the underlying language models, which cannot reason over a complex data system’s full structure in a single pass.

Token Terminal MCP addresses this through an intermediate reasoning layer. User queries are first processed by an offline discovery system that maps intent to a structured taxonomy spanning market sectors, projects, metrics, and methodologies. This resolves ambiguity before any query is executed.

The result is a deterministic interface between natural language and structured data. The model operates within the constraints of a system of record, enabling reliable access to standardized onchain data.

We explored Token Terminal’s MCP and produced a comprehensive non-USD stablecoins dashboard. Although the project is still experimental, it is already one of the most extensive dashboards tracking local stablecoins available today.

More on Token Terminal

Closing Thoughts

The infrastructure connecting AI agents to onchain systems is still early, but the direction is clear. Payment rails, data access layers, and agent-native protocols are moving from whitepaper concepts to functional deployments.

Unlike traditional tools built around human workflows, this new layer is optimized for machine consumption. Data providers across the ecosystem are actively experimenting with these integrations.

At the same time, the role of human analysts remains central. AI can accelerate research workflows, assist with data exploration, and automate parts of the analytical process. But effective research still depends on asking the right questions and interpreting results within the right context.

The opportunity ahead is not replacing analysts, but expanding what they can do. As these tools mature, the bottleneck shifts from data access to problem framing. Researchers who use that leverage well will move faster, cover more ground, and extract clearer signal from the onchain economy.

What We're Watching

• Open Agentic Commerce

• MPP vs. x402

• Is Crypto Even Necessary for Agentic Commerce?

• DeFi Llama introduced its MCP

Welcome to the fourth edition of Nexus Data Labs. Our aim is to highlight what matters most in the fast-developing world of onchain finance.

Thank you to Filippo, Peter, J.W., and Diego for contributing to this issue.

Setting the Scene

Prediction markets entered the spotlight during the 2024 U.S. Presidential election. What had been considered a niche corner of the onchain economy became part of the mainstream conversation overnight. The question that followed was simple: would prediction markets survive once the election hype faded?

The 2025 data delivered a resounding answer: yes. Starting in September 2025, the sector began posting volumes that matched and then exceeded previous cycle highs. October 2025 marked a new all-time high for notional volume, followed by consecutive monthly records through January 2026. That growth has since drawn a new wave of prediction markets into the space.

It is worth noting that while Polymarket and Kalshi currently dominate the space by volume, Nexus focuses exclusively on blockchain-based activity. Coverage is scoped to Kalshi's onchain activity and its partnership with DFlow, which provides tokenization infra for prediction markets.

Overview

Filippo | Dashboard

Prediction markets grew 225x in two years — Sports now lead

The prediction market sector grew 225x in two years, from $103M to $23.2B in monthly volume.

Polymarket rebounded after the 2024 election to reach $7.9B in monthly volume in February 2026 —nearly twice its prior peak— but lost share as rivals scaled faster. Kalshi climbed from $1.2B to $10.4B in monthly volume, rising from under 3% share to 45%, while Opinion reached 30% share within months.

Across Polymarket and Kalshi, sports led category share at 64.4%, followed by crypto at 18.1% and politics at 10.6% as of February 2026. This is largely driven by Kalshi's aggressive expansion into sports event contracts. Polymarket's mix is more balanced across crypto, politics, and entertainment.

Polymarket

Peter | Website | Dashboard

Polymarket posts $7.94B in February 2026 volume as bet activity surges 55% month-over-month

Polymarket continues to see accelerating growth across trading activity and trader capital. The platform has generated over $61B in cumulative trading volume. In February 2026, $7.94B was traded, up 3.7% from January's $7.66B. Participation is also rising, with 80.7M bets placed in February, up 55% from 52M in January.

Trader capital has expanded alongside activity. As of February 2026, approximately $336M is held across Polymarket proxy wallets, up from $37M in October 2024, representing over 9x growth in 16 months.

Taken together, rising volumes, bet activity, and trader capital highlight the maturation of onchain prediction markets.

Polymarket vs. Polygon

J.W. | Website | Dashboard

Polymarket is Polygon's biggest tenant, consuming 77% of its blockspace

Polymarket isn't just the dominant prediction market. It is now the dominant application on Polygon itself. In March 2026, the platform consumed 77% of all compute units on the network, generated 67.6% of gas fees, and accounted for 54.4% of total transactions. By any infrastructure measure, one application has effectively become the chain's anchor tenant.

While network usage exceeds 50% of Polygon, Polymarket traders represent only 19.7% of daily active users on Polygon. That asymmetry raises a question worth examining: is this healthy concentration or structural dependency? The bull case is straightforward: Polymarket is a world-class application generating sustained, organic demand for Polygon blockspace. The bear case is equally clear. A single application generating the majority of network gas means Polygon's throughput economics are effectively tied to one protocol's growth trajectory. If Polymarket migrates, scales to its own chain, or slows down, the network metrics will follow.

For now, the numbers reflect a symbiotic relationship that has worked. Polygon provides the settlement layer; Polymarket provides the demand. Whether that concentration becomes a liability depends on what Polygon builds next.

Kalshi Onchain Activity

Diego Cabral | Website

Kalshi's onchain weekly volume peaks at $10M - Under 0.3% of total activity

While Kalshi has been experimenting with integrations across major Solana distribution channels, including DFlow, Phantom, and Jupiter, to make its markets accessible onchain, the strategy has yet to generate meaningful volume.

At its highest point, onchain notional weekly volume reached roughly $10M. To put that in context, Kalshi processed $1.9B in total notional volume during the week of Jan. 1 2026, making the onchain $10M peak just 0.53% of total activity. By the week of Feb. 1 2026, total weekly volume had risen to $2.19B, pushing that same $10M peak down to 0.46%. Onchain flow remains well under 1% of Kalshi's total trading volume, suggesting that the current distribution strategy has yet to materially expand market access or user interest.

Closing Thoughts

Prediction markets have proven they can grow beyond election cycles. Sports and politics have always been the two headline themes, and 2026 brings one of the largest global sporting events, the FIFA World Cup, which is likely to drive a fresh wave of users to the sector.

High-profile events have historically served as a natural entry point for new participants, many of whom go on to explore other categories. Whether those users remain active beyond event-driven speculation, however, remains the sector's defining open question.

On the regulatory front, clarity may also play an increasingly important role. Early steps toward clearer frameworks, such as the recent CFTC proposal, could reduce uncertainty and broaden institutional participation, creating a more stable foundation for long-term adoption.

What We're Watching

• 564 Unusual Wallets Betting $2.9M on the Iran War

• The Call for Standardizing Stablecoin Volume Metrics

Next Week

Next week, we turn to the intersection between AI and the onchain economy, covering x402, the TAO ecosystem and how different data provider are approaching the use of AI for data analysis.

Intro

Welcome to the third edition of Nexus Data Labs. Our aim is to alert you to what really matters in the fast-developing world of onchain finance.

Thank you to Diego, and Owen, and J.W. for contributing to this issue.

Setting the Scene

Over the past two years, perpetual DEXs have evolved from a DeFi experiment into one of the most competitive frontiers in onchain trading — pulling derivatives trading that once belonged almost exclusively to centralized exchanges into a trustless, self-custodial environment.

As scaling solutions mature and liquidity deepens across L2s and high-performance chains, the performance gap between onchain venues and centralized exchanges, once thought to be out of reach, has narrowed dramatically.

Perpetual futures, derivatives with no expiry date that allow traders to go long or short with leverage, require no custody of the underlying asset and no rolling of contracts. What began as an attempt to replicate centralized markets onchain has since evolved into a diverse and highly competitive ecosystem.

This week’s edition highlights four platforms leading that next phase of perp DEXs: Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 Deployers, Lighter, Aster, and GRVT.

Perp DEXs Overview

Diego Cabral | Dashboard

Perp DEX sector daily volume is up 35% from 2025, annualizing to $11.17T

Growth in the perp DEX sector is accelerating: daily average trading volume jumped from $7.5B (2024) to $22.7B (2025) and $30.6B (2026 YTD). That is a 35% increase from the previous year's average, which was approximately 3x higher than the year before.

With $2.08T volume in just 69 days this year, the sector is on pace for $11.17T annually, representing a 34% increase from 2025's full-year total. Hyperliquid maintains sector dominance at 22.4% of volume, while Aster and Lighter account for roughly 31% combined.

The numbers suggest 2025 was the adoption phase; 2026 is the growth phase, an era of higher capital efficiency, and intensifying institutional participation driving volume to record levels.

HIP-3 Perp DEX

J.W. | Website | Dashboard

HIP-3 tops $98B in cumulative volume amid weak market sentiment

Hyperliquid Improvement Proposal 3 (HIP-3) is a significant protocol upgrade enabling permissionless, decentralized creation of perpetual markets. Any user can now deploy a perp market by staking 1M $HYPE. This removes gatekeepers from market creation entirely.

Since deployment, cumulative trading volume has surpassed $98B. TradeXYZ, a perp market deployer, has emerged as the dominant venue, capturing 83.9% of volume and 87.6% of open interest. Dreamcash and Felix round out the early competitive set. As of March 2026, total daily open interest holds above $1.2B — a signal that the upgrade is generating sustained activity, not just initial noise.

Perhaps the more consequential story is what HIP-3 enables beyond crypto-native assets. Builders are already deploying markets for TradFi instruments — Nvidia, Anthropic, and uranium among them — effectively using Hyperliquid as infrastructure to bring traditional asset classes onchain. If that trend continues, HIP-3 could represent something larger than a protocol upgrade: a meaningful step toward converging onchain and TradFi markets.

Lighter

J.W. | Website | Dashboard

Lighter’s TVL plummet by 54% post airdrop

Lighter is a perpetuals DEX built as a ZK-rollup on Ethereum. At its peak, daily perp volume surpassed $18.9B with TVL exceeding $1.4B. These metrics spiked sharply in Q4 2025 as anticipation around an airdrop built.

On Dec. 30, 2025, that speculation was confirmed: Lighter distributed 25% of its native token, $LIT, in one of the more closely watched token launches of the year. However, post-airdrop data has since answered the underlying question. As of March 2026, TVL has fallen to ~$600M and daily perp volume has retreated to the low single-digit billions, marking a significant drawdown from peak levels.

Aster

Owen Fernau | Website | Dashboard

Aster perp volume and token price both down over 60% from late 2025 highs

Aster is a perp DEX that consistently ranks in the top 5 by volume according to DefiLlama. As of March 2026, Aster ranks second among perp DEXs with $78.6B in volume over the past 30 days.

The $ASTER token is down 67% to $0.69 from its $2.07 October 2025 peak. At $18.1B, perp volume is down 76% from its mid-October weekly peak of $76.6B. Volume exploded when the $ASTER airdrop hit in late September 2025. It remains to be seen whether the token can sustain itself as incentives taper off.

Only 35.1% of $ASTER tokens are unlocked as of March 2026, meaning the market will eventually need to absorb the remaining 63.9% of the token supply to even maintain its price level of $0.70.

GRVT

Diego Cabral | Website | Dashboard

GRVT grows 340% year-over-year: weekly volume surges from $2.2B in 2025 to $9.7B in 2026

GRVT is experiencing fast growth in a competitive sector, with 2026 YTD weekly volume averaging $9.7B, a 377% increase from 2025's $2.19B weekly average. The protocol has accumulated $104B in 2026 YTD, annualizing to a $540B run rate versus $113.70B for full-year 2025 — signaling a potential 4.8x expansion trajectory.

While still trading at 21% of Hyperliquid’s 2026 volume, GRVT has captured significant market share. Its $470M open interest reflects a growing user base. Weekly volumes peaked in late January 2026 at $14.47B before moderating to $10.27B in early March 2026, consistent with sector activity but at dramatically higher absolute levels than the previous year. GRVT's momentum suggests emerging product-market fit and/or user migration after Lighter’s airdrop.

Closing Thoughts

This week’s insights highlight that perpetual DEXs are clearly past the “experiment” phase. Sector-wide volumes are compounding, new architectures like HIP-3 are onboarding non-crypto assets, and challengers such as Lighter, Aster, and GRVT have shown they can briefly rival incumbents.

However, the data also makes one point clear: initial spikes driven by incentives and airdrops are not enough. What ultimately matters is how much volume, open interest, and liquidity remain once the rewards fade.

The protocols that maintain depth and activity after incentives fade — through better execution, differentiated markets, and credible paths to real economic use — are the ones most likely to shape the next generation of onchain derivatives infrastructure.

What We're Watching

• The Stablecoin Data Gap

• Status of HIP-3 Market

Next Week

Next week, we turn to prediction markets, to analyze the growth and usage of one of the hottest sectors of the onchain economy.

Intro

Welcome to the second edition of Nexus Data Labs. We’re here to tell stories about onchain data. Our aim is to alert you to what really matters in the fast-developing world of onchain finance.

Thank you to Borja Neira, Frederick Hopkins, Diego Cabral, and Meta for contributing to this issue.

Setting the Scene

Real-World Assets (RWAs) continue to transform from a niche crypto experiment to a key area of focus for traditional finance.

With institutions deepening their RWA offerings — from asset managers tokenizing treasuries to investment banks exploring private credit rails — tokenized assets have become a barometer for traditional finance’s adoption of blockchains.

The direction is clear: the question is no longer if assets will move onchain, but which assets, when, and, subtly, what the underlying ownership and legal architecture actually looks like.

This week’s edition highlights three dimensions of the RWA landscape making headlines: the growing adoption of Tokenized Gold, the expanding market for Tokenized Stocks and US Treasuries, and the challenging integration of RWAs within DeFi protocols.

RWA Overview

Borja Neira | Website | Dashboard

Tokenized assets hit $24.9B, up 289% year-over-year, as six sectors cross $1B

Tokenized assets (excluding stablecoins) reached $24.9B as of Feb. 19, 2026 — nearly 4x from $6.4B a year prior (+$18.5B, +289%). U.S. Treasuries and commodities drove 58% of year-over-year growth, adding $6.8B and $4.0B respectively.

The defining shift was breadth: asset classes exceeding $1B grew from two to six, with private credit ($2.9B), institutional funds ($2.0B), corporate bonds ($1.7B), and non-U.S. government debt ($1.0B) all crossing the threshold — collectively contributing 37% of total growth. Treasury market share declined from 59% to 43%, signaling a more diversified market.

Tokenized US Treasuries

Borja Neira | Website | Dashboard

Tokenized U.S. Treasuries reach $10.8B, up 183% year-over-year, as offerings grow from 35 to 53 and top-3 concentration falls from 61% to 48%

Tokenized U.S. Treasuries nearly tripled to $10.8B from $3.8B a year ago (+$7.0B, +183%), with active products growing from 35 to 53 as new funds from Fidelity, ChinaAMC, and VanEck entered the market.

BlackRock's BUIDL rose from $0.6B to $2.2B (+239%), overtaking Hashnote's USYC to become the largest tokenized Treasury product at 20% market share. Ondo's combined exposure — OUSG ($0.7B) and USDY ($1.3B) — reached $2.0B, while newer entrants scaled rapidly: Superstate's USTB ($0.8B, +499%), WisdomTree's WTGXX ($0.7B, +759%), and ChinaAMC ($0.6B, from $0). Together, these dynamics pushed top-3 concentration down from 61% to 48%, reflecting a more fragmented and competitive market.

Tokenized Stocks

Frederick Hopkins | Website | Dashboard

Tokenized stocks grew from near-zero to $786M since mid-2025, making them the newest yet fastest-growing category of tokenized assets

Since mid-2025, tokenized stocks have scaled from near-zero to $786M — driven by a expanding roster of issuers including Ondo Finance, Backed Finance, Spiko, Robinhood, Dinari, Remora Markets, and Superstate. These platforms tokenize both individual equities — NVDA, GOOGL, and TSLA — and ETFs like SPY and QQQ, which track the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100, enabling 24/7 trading with near-instant settlement.

Market cap growth accelerated even as Bitcoin dropped below $70K — a sign that onchain demand for equity exposure may be developing independently of broader crypto market sentiment.

Tokenized Gold

Diego Cabral | Dashboard

Tokenized gold circulating supply nearly doubled from 687K to 1.3M troy oz over the past 12 months, as gold spot price surged 80% from $2,963 to $5,327

Onchain tokenized gold (PAXG, XAUT, CACHE, AWG, PMGT on Ethereum) grew its combined circulating supply from ~687K troy oz in March 2025 to over 1.3M troy oz by March 2026, a ~90% increase over 12 months. Over the same period, the gold spot price rose from $2,963 to $5,327 (+80%), with a clear supply acceleration starting in August 2025 as gold broke new highs.

Notably, supply growth outpaced price appreciation, suggesting investors were actively minting new tokenized gold rather than simply riding the price rally. Tokenized gold appears to be evolving from a niche wrapper into a blockchain-integrated store of value and macro hedge.

RWA Use in DeFi

Meta | Website | Dashboard

Only 11.8% of RWA-Backed Stablecoins are Actually Used in DeFi

According to DeFiLlama, there is $8.49B in active RWA-backed stablecoin supply, but only $1B (11.8%) is deployed across DeFi protocols.

By RWA-backed stablecoin market cap, DAI dominates with 53% ($4.48B), followed by Ondo’s USDY (15%, $1.26B) and YLDS (7%, $598M). Yet when filtering for RWA-backed stablecoins actively used in DeFi, the picture flips. USDY collapses to just 1.99% of RWA-backed stablecoin usage in DeFi and YLDS vanishes entirely. Meanwhile, USDtb and reUSD surge to 24.6% and 10.85%, respectively.

The reason is straightforward: access restrictions. Permissioned tokens that require KYC, whitelisting, or holder limitations cannot integrate seamlessly with permissionless DeFi contracts, so their onchain utilization can drop to zero. As a result, USDY and YLDS, worth a combined $1.86B, virtually disappear from the active DeFi TVL view. In contrast, permissionless assets show meaningful DeFi utilization: 96.7% of reUSD, 39.1% of USDai, 29.5% of USDtb, and 28.0% of legacy FRAX.

Zooming out, the picture is clear: $7.49B, roughly 88% of RWA-backed stablecoin supply, remains outside DeFi. Composability is limited when access restrictions meet permissionless infrastructure.

Closing Thoughts

Institutional capital is putting assets onchain, and DeFi protocols are developing ways to put those assets to work, but the real challenge lies in creating true capital efficiency once those assets land onchain.

Without active integration with DeFi, RWAs risk becoming little more than mirrored ledgers; transparent, but idle. The next phase of growth will hinge on designing mechanisms that connect these tokenized assets to onchain liquidity, credit, and governance layers.

Further, as RWA markets mature, so must the frameworks used to analyze them. Traditional asset labels, while widely used, can be incomplete. Once tokenized, these assets carry two additional layers of risk beyond simple exposure: the risk of the digital asset issuer, and the risk of the blockchain infrastructure. Ignoring these layers can lead to an incomplete assessment of a tokenized asset’s true risk profile.

What We're Watching

• Allocation Vaults: Primer for Institutional Asset Managers

• The tokenized gold market when the US-Iran war broke out

• Long Live RWA. RWA is dead.

• New DeFi Llama dashboard tracking RWAs actively deployed in DeFi

• Dune MCP

Next Week

For Nexus’ next issue, we turn to Perpetual DEXs, exploring how decentralized derivatives infrastructure is maturing and what that means for onchain market structure.

Intro

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Nexus Data Labs. We’re here to tell stories about onchain data.

JW, Diego, and Owen, compose our core team. Combined, we have deep experience across data, communications, and journalism, and are excited to employ that experience to provide the best newsletter possible.

We’re even more lucky to have some of the brightest minds in the onchain data space as contributors to this newsletter. We’ll publish once a week, editing deeply to save you time. Our aim is to alert you to what really matters in the fast-developing world of onchain finance.

Ideally, we give you “lightbulb moments,” when you understand a topic on a level you hadn’t before.

If you want to contribute, contact us hello@nexusdatalabs.xyz.

Setting the Scene

Stablecoins are no longer a side narrative in crypto, they've become the core plumbing of the onchain economy. The asset class has been through a multi-year expansion to reach around $300B today.

This week’s edition highlights three layers of the stablecoin stack: market concentration at the top, accelerating non-USD usage globally, and the demand dynamics of protocol-native issuance.

Stablecoin Overview

Analyst: Bryan Choe | Website | Dashboard

Stablecoins hit $296B as fundamentals hold through crypto winter

Stablecoin market cap reached $296B as of Feb 19, 2026, up $75B (34%) year-over-year, though down 2% from the $302B peak in December 2025. Fundamentals remain strong with the following metrics:

• $9.5T+ monthly transfer volume

• 52M+ monthly active addresses

• 235M+ unique holders (ATH)

The Big 2 (USDT and USDC) hold 87% market share and drove 59% of year-over-year growth. Notable movers by market cap include World Liberty Financial’s USD1 (#5, +$5.1B), PayPal’s PYUSD (#6, +$3.3B), and Sky’s USDS (#3, +$3.1B), while Ethena’s USDe saw the sharpest rise and decline, falling 58% from its $14.9B ATH after the October 10 tariff-driven crash accelerated a flight from synthetic to fiat-backed stablecoins.

Despite the crypto winter, we expect stablecoin markets to continue growing as regulatory clarity for tokenized assets and institutional onchain adoption advance.

Non-USD Stablecoins

Analyst: Filippo | Dataset

From 2023 to 2026, monthly transfer volume of tracked local currency stablecoins on EVM and Solana rose 18x from ~$600M to ~$11B, far outpacing market cap growth

Local currency stablecoins are not merely accumulating balances; they are turning over more frequently in payments, FX, and treasury flows. Rising velocity alongside a 20x increase in monthly senders indicates structural adoption as settlement infrastructure. In short, usage is scaling faster than supply.

Hyperliquid’s $USDH

Analyst: Brandyn Hamilton | Website | Dashboard

USDH issuance demand has softened. Net weekly supply swung from a peak of +29.7 million on November 24 to flat or slightly negative over the past month

USDH is a USD stablecoin natively issued on the Hyperliquid network. Mints and burns occur on HyperEVM, the canonical deployment, and can be bridged to HyperCore, the ledger network used by the protocol. USDH serves as the quote asset for the Hyperliquid network. Supply has plateaued at roughly 83 million in mid-February.

The majority of the growth has been driven by spikes, with September 22, 2025 (+24M), November 24, 2025 (+29.7M), and January 12, 2026 (+19M) responsible for most gains. Each spike was smaller than the last, with the January 2026 spike 36% below the November 2025 spike. Over the past four weeks, net supply fell 1.8M, sitting 5.6% below the January 2026 ATH of 88M. Without new demand catalysts, the trend is contraction.

Closing Thoughts

Taken together, this week’s insights highlight three key dynamics:

1. Dollar-backed giants USDT and USDC still dominate market share and growth

2. Non-USD stablecoins are scaling in usage faster than supply, signaling real transactional demand

3. Protocol-native stablecoins face clear demand cycles, where sustainability depends on continued catalysts.

We are closely watching the institutional expansion to blockchains through stablecoins since this sector remains one of the cleanest signals of where real economic activity is happening onchain.

Next week, Nexus Data turns to Real World Assets, examining how tokenized RWAs are teasing a reshape of capital markets.

We’ll end with a few items we’re noticed in the stablecoins space. See you next week.

What we're watching

• Latin America local stablecoins as a glimmering map

• Dune has released their stablecoin datasets

Mission

Nexus Data Labs was founded to carry forward OurNetwork’s mission of enabling credible, data-driven storytelling in the blockchain ecosystem. We believe blockchain-enabled transparency deserves equally transparent research, rooted in neutrality, and community-driven collaboration.

Problem

The current blockchain “content” landscape is increasingly defined by “narratives,” where marketing outweighs data integrity. Analysts who prioritize objectivity struggle to find sustainable platforms that reward evidence-based insights without bias. This gap limits the growth of the next generation of onchain thinkers and builders.

Solution

Nexus Data Labs bridges this divide through a neutral, data-first publication model. Our content is guided by verified analytics rather than sponsorships. Each piece aims to highlight key onchain activity, protocol dynamics, and macro trends sourced directly from blockchain data platforms.

We strive to standardize and elevate the way people do blockchain analysis. This means we think through which metrics matter in a given context and also establish the fidelity of the data itself. Because numbers do in fact, lie.

Decentralized Contribution Model

We adopt a decentralized contribution model, where contributors retain ownership and recognition for their work. Over time, our goal is to develop a reward system that compensates analysts, writers, and researchers directly for their contributions, which aligns incentives with transparency and quality rather than sponsorships.

Growth & Education

Beyond research, Nexus Data Labs will serve as a hub for onchain analyst development. We provide mentorship, collaborative opportunities, and frameworks for building strong public portfolios. Educational resources will help emerging analysts refine their technical, analytical, and storytelling capabilities to thrive in a data-native future.

Vision

By uniting decentralized collaboration with verifiable insights, Nexus Data Labs aims to set a new standard for independent blockchain analysis.

If you would like to collaborate, reach out at hello@nexusdatalabs.xyz

Co-founders:

@ofernau | @JW_Seoul | @0xTakeProfits