[███░░░░]: All Roads Lead to DeFi

Welcome to the TAC's Progress Bar, where we combed through 212 relevant tokenization news stories from the week, analyzed the key stories on our weekly podcast, then distilled what you need to know into a few hundred words in this newsletter. Delivered to your inbox in time for Friday happy hour in NYC (usually).

Crypto-native protocols are going institutional. Institutional players are going DeFi. And this week, the two lanes merged into one highway. From Citadel backing a crypto-native blockchain to BlackRock trading on Uniswap, the convergence everyone's been talking about just showed up with receipts.

📈 RWA market cap: Just $200M away from the $25B milestone
🏆 Biggest RWA winner: BUIDL added $400M on Solana, reaching $2.2B
🏆 Biggest network winner: Solana added $400M in RWA supply

📈 Stablecoin market cap: ~$295B (flat WoW)
🏆 Biggest stablecoin winner: USDC added $3B, reaching $73B
🏆 Biggest network winner: Solana added $2.7B, reaching $16.2B

📈 Onchain risk-free rates:

• Short-term treasuries (1m): 3.68%
• Aave / DeFi: 2.5%

Stories we're tracking this week

• LayerZero launched its own blockchain, Zero, backed by Citadel Securities and ARK Invest with launch partners including the DTCC, ICE, and Google Cloud. The chain uses a zone-based system where institutions get their own controlled environments with custom permissioning while maintaining cross-chain interoperability. When one of TradFi's most vocal advocates for the intermediary model backs a crypto-native protocol, the convergence signal is hard to miss.
• BlackRock made two moves that tell one story. First, they signaled intent to tokenize all iShares ETFs for 24/7 trading and fractional ownership. Then BUIDL landed on Uniswap X, bringing BlackRock's tokenized money market fund to DeFi's most iconic protocol. Securitize also quietly dropped their Vault Registrar product, solving the critical legal question of asset ownership inside DeFi pools under the Uniform Commercial Code.
• Franklin Templeton's Benji became collateral on Binance, joining BUIDL and USYC in a growing list of yield-bearing assets that work as margin on the world's largest exchange. Props to Franklin Templeton for building all of this technology entirely in-house.
• Sentora, formed from the merger of Trident Digital and IntoTheBlock, announced their DeFi lending vault on Euler now supports tokenized stocks as collateral, starting with Ondo GM assets including Tesla, SPY, and QQQ.
• MultiLiquid announced a redemption facility for tokenized assets on Solana, supporting VanEck, Janus Henderson, Fasanara, and more. Instant redemption infrastructure is critical for DeFi composability.
• In quick hits: Robinhood's Layer 2 chain went live on public testnet, Stripe launched USDC payments on Base via X402, and Mr. Beast acquired Gen Z neobank Step and its 7 million users (we're calling Q4 for the stablecoin launch).

All Roads Lead to DeFi

Want more analysis? We go through each story in more depth on our weekly podcast, now called The First Trillion. A discussion between Johnny and Charlie about the news highlights from the week, and sometimes some alpha that's never investment advice (we can't stress that enough).

The convergence episode. Johnny and Charlie walk through LayerZero's Citadel-backed blockchain launch, what it actually took to get BlackRock comfortable deploying on Uniswap (hint: hundreds of compliance line items and a year of biweekly meetings), and why the stablecoin yield debate is a red herring distracting from the real threat to banks.

The episode is available below and we've summarized it for you here.

Stay ahead of the curve

Be sure to follow us on X, LinkedIn, and Spotify for real-time updates, behind-the-scenes insights, and the occasional hot take that didn't make it into the Progress Bar or the TACo Time episode or summary.

Until next time,

The TAC Team