[███░░░░]: The Day DeFi Won

Welcome to the TAC's Progress Bar, where we combed through 262 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).

The SEC's Division of Trading and Markets just released guidance that may mark the moment the disintermediated financial system overtook the intermediated one. It's time to be bullish on DeFi again. We covered this in depth on the First Trillion Podcast today (condensed summary below). Tons of announcements from across the ecosystem and a free webinar from our friends at S&P Dow Jones Indices, Centrifuge, and Janus Henderson (link below).

Market KPIs (brought to you by RWA.xyz):
📈 RWA market cap was up 2% WoW to $29.8 billion
🏆 Biggest RWA winner: Syrup USDT added 20% to $1.2 billion
🏆 Biggest network winner: Ethereum added $300M to $16.6 billion

📈 Stablecoin market cap was up 1% WoW to $303.2 billion
🏆 Biggest stablecoin winner: Tether added $1.5 billion in a single week
🏆 Biggest network winner: Solana added 15% to its stablecoin supply

📈 Onchain risk free rates:
Short term treasuries (1m): 3.17%
Aave / DeFi: Flat at 50 bips below treasury rate

A complimentary webinar for investment professionals:

Hosted by Janus Henderson, Centrifuge, and S&P DJI.

As tokenization evolves, firms are weighing how and when to act. What does a robust tokenization strategy actually look like? How can it align with established product standards and be effectively communicated to investors? Join this practical discussion on how institutional investors are bringing products onchain while maintaining strong governance and data integrity.

Key areas of discussion:

• What's required to move from exploration to execution?
• How can governance and data integrity be ensured, and communicated, in onchain products?
• Is product design more important than distribution right now?

You can sign up here.

Stories we're tracking this week

The regulators delivered this week with guidance that could reshape capital markets forever.

• The SEC's Division of Trading and Markets released guidance on protocol trading interfaces, establishing 12 conditions under which trading UIs like Uniswap can operate without broker-dealer registration. The safe harbor requires fee neutrality, counterparty agnosticism, transparency about execution, and MEV disclosures while prohibiting solicitation, recommendations, and custody services.
• Tether launched their own self-custodial wallet, positioning the stablecoin issuer as a potential neo-bank. The move makes strategic sense as crypto protocols recognize the enterprise value in wallet share and customer retention, especially in developing markets.
• Fireblocks launched their earn program for MPC wallet customers, allowing users to deposit USDC and other stablecoins into Aave and Morpho to earn yield. TAC member Fireblocks continues expanding their institutional crypto infrastructure offerings.
• Deutsche Börse invested $200 million directly into Kraken, the biggest traditional finance investment into a crypto exchange by a major European infrastructure player. The move signals serious institutional commitment to crypto trading infrastructure.
• Figure expanded their tokenized lending platform beyond HELOCs to include auto loans, diversifying their $16 billion onchain credit book into new asset classes. The expansion required significant capital markets infrastructure development including ratings and placement mechanisms.
• Securitize partnered with Tron to expand their tokenized funds onto the blockchain, an interesting strategic move given Tron's reputation as more retail-focused versus Securitize's traditional institutional client base.
• SuperState announced that Invesco Private Capital invested in their Series B round, following Invesco's takeover as asset manager of SuperState's USTB treasury product. Having Invesco on both sides of the relationship strengthens the partnership significantly.

Tweet of the week

The Day DeFi Won

The SEC's Division of Trading and Markets released long-awaited guidance establishing a safe harbor for protocol trading interfaces. Meet 12 conditions, and you don't need broker-dealer registration to let users trade tokenized securities through your software. Think Uniswap, MetaMask swaps, Jupiter, or any wallet offering native swaps — but now extended to tokenized Nvidia stock, not just ETH.

Full episode summary is available here (condensed takeaways for you below).

The conditions, boiled down:

• Fee neutrality: no payment for preferential routing
• Counterparty agnosticism: you can't favor specific venues
• Full transparency: execution logic must be visible to users
• MEV disclosure: explicit warnings required (see the recent $50M Aave slippage incident)
• No solicitation, recommendations, custody, or personalized execution

If you're pure software and the user is doing everything themselves, you're in.

Why this is HUGE:

• Until now, there was no legal path to offer tokenized securities trading without a full broker-dealer build-out, which runs into the millions in compliance costs and requires staff with series licenses
• This opens native trading of tokenized equities to protocols and wallets globally
• Someone in Argentina who wants Nvidia exposure now has a safer, more reliable path than most current alternatives
• Our take: this could be the moment the disintermediated financial system started overtaking the intermediated one. Hundreds of trillions vs. under a trillion today, but imagine AI agents routing trades. Why would they pay a broker-dealer when DeFi settles instantly for a fraction of the cost?

Very important caveats:

• This is guidance, not rulemaking. It's in effect for five years, with a "trust me, bro" element until Congress or formal SEC rulemaking codifies it
• Most existing interfaces are probably non-compliant today. MetaMask charges nearly 1% and markets "best price." 1inch, Jupiter, Cowswap, and even UniswapX likely have routing-optimization issues. Rabby Wallet and core Uniswap appear to comply
• Citadel and SIFMA are going to hate this. Expect fierce pushback on fragmentation and market integrity grounds, echoing the Reg ATS fights of the late '80s
• Transfer-agent-level whitelists still fragment liquidity asset-by-asset. That's the problem TAC is focused on solving next, and the relief we're exploring with the SEC

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 First Trillion podcast episode or summary.

Until next week,

The TAC Team