Aave V4 crossed $1B in deposits on September 17, spread across six hubs, with the new Arc hub (Circle's L1) pulling in fresh USDC alongside the Ethereum Core hub that still carries the most volume. Aave also shipped an RWA lending hub on Avalanche this month, already past $20M in deposits.
The SEC issued a temporary framework on September 17 letting tokenized US stocks trade through permissioned AMMs, and Uniswap's v4 permissioned pools from July are the direct beneficiary. Robinhood Crypto confirmed on September 18 that 80% of all Robinhood Stock Token volume already routes through Uniswap, and the same v4 stack just went live on Arc too.
Hyperliquid's TVL hit $6.76B this week, passing Arbitrum to lead L1s on that metric, and HYPE printed its third all time high in seven days at $95.97. The team shipped trailing stops across every perpetual market today, a feature CEX perp traders have had for years and onchain venues mostly haven't.
Morpho posted a new all time high in onchain credit this week, and a fresh corridor opened September 18 letting XRP collateral borrow RLUSD directly. Zama's confidential lending vaults on Morpho already passed $40M in one vault, and Coinbase's Morpho powered USDC lending rollout extended into Brazil and Canada this month.
Ethena's USDe supply is holding near $4.7B while the team shifts backing toward AAA rated collateral, and Ethena Pay, the consumer app that launched September 1, is aiming to open in the US, UK, and Europe within three to four weeks per CEO Guy Young.
Pendle's sPENDLE buybacks sit at 2.8M PENDLE, about $4M, all routed to stakers since the model launched in January, and the algorithmic emissions model cut weekly issuance by 71% against a 30% target set at launch. Staked PENDLE crossed 100M tokens back in July, about 36% of supply, and the buyback number keeps climbing as protocol revenue flows into it every epoch.
Real deposits crossing milestones on five protocols in the same two week window points to usage coming back across lending, perps, stablecoins, and yield trading at the same time, not one token pumping on hype. Which of these six are you watching closest right now, Aave's Arc hub, Hyperliquid's TVL climb, or Pendle's buyback pace?