Welcome to the State of DeFi, our monthly recap of the DeFi ecosystem that brings you the biggest updates in this fast-developing space. All in one place.
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DeFi Stats We’re Watching
Total value locked in DeFi: $87.60 (+18.48%)
Monthly DEX volume: $204.73B (+21.20%)
Monthly perp volume: $548.89B (+2.95%)
Lido: $24.03B (+32.48%)
Aave: $18.26B (+22.81%)
Morpho: $9.66B (+21.53%)
Ethereum: Inflow: $6.0B / Outflow: $5.3B / Netflow: $684.2M
Robinhood Chain: Inflow: $695.1M / Outflow: $84.5M / Netflow: $610.7M
Arbitrum: Inflow: $12.2B / Outflow: $11.7B / Netflow: $530.7M
Solana: $150.71M
Robinhood Chain: $50.81M
BNB: $36.19M
The metrics are accurate at the time of publication. The percentage change is over a 30-day period.
Noteworthy DeFi Developments
Compound Foundation overhauled its leadership team and approved a $52 million development budget in an effort to reposition itself as an institutional settlement layer from a retail yield venue.
New hires include Christopher Donovan, the former COO of the Near Foundation; Steven Liu, the former head of product at Maple Finance; and Aaron Schnarch, the former CEO of Coinbase Custody.
The hires are meant to help the protocol build real-world asset support and credit infrastructure for banks and fintechs.
Robinhood Chain’s ecosystem developers have started pairing memecoins directly with Robinhood's Stock Tokens (Nvidia, Tesla, Hims & Hers, etc.) in DEX liquidity pools.
The trend is turning these equity-linked tokens into speculative trading assets, leading to after-market price fluctuations when the minting and redeeming window is closed.
The token linked to HIMS, for example, jumped 112% above its NYSE reference during weekend memecoin trading, though its price returned to normal once markets opened on Monday.
TRON's flagship tokens, JST, SUN, BTT and WIN, have all rolled out buyback-and-burn programs funded by protocol revenue.
JST leads the pack, having completed its fourth round of token burns (removing over 17% of its supply), while SUN.io has now upgraded its buyback mechanism after 51 consecutive burn rounds.
BTT and WIN launched their own 100%-revenue-funded programs in July, and their burns are set to begin in Q4 2026.
Jupiter has upgraded its lending protocol, Lend, to version 2, adding “smart collateral” and “smart debt” features that let deposited or borrowed funds serve as liquidity for trading.
These features allow capital to earn interest plus a cut of swap fees.
The design is limited to correlated pairs like stablecoins or SOL and its staked variants.
A DeFi App We Tried in September: FOMO
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What it does: Fomo is a social trading app that lets users watch what their friends and top traders are buying and selling. Users can trade memecoins, altcoins, and stablecoins across multiple chains such as Solana, Base and Robinhood. The app tries to simplify crypto UX by offering gasless transactions, one-click buys, and support for Apple Pay to fund wallets.
Fomo’s top feature is its trader feed and leaderboard, where users can follow specific wallets or friends, see their trades in real time, and get push notifications the moment whoever they follow makes a trade. It also offers a copy trading feature that lets users mirror others’ trades directly.
Our thoughts: Fomo feels more like a social feed about trading than a trading venue.
The social feed with its list of friends, their trades, and how much they have gained or lost does exactly what the app’s name suggests: generate FOMO. The constant updates, if not metered, will have you checking your phone every 30 seconds as prices change and your followers buy or sell new tokens.
The interface feels addictive and does a good job of generating a sense of urgency with every trade. It’s fun, interactive, and makes users feel like they are not trading alone.
Stepping away from the app itself, FOMO has rid its website of the traditional documentation pages that are commonly associated with crypto apps. It instead has opted for an extensive FAQ section that covers everything from how to set up a wallet and managing private keys to information on crypto’s top memecoins.
The developers seem to understand how addicting their app can be, which may be why they provide extensive information on how to trade responsibly, how to manage positions, and when to sell.
For first time users, we would highly recommend reading “What is copy trading and is it safe for beginners?”, “How Do I Decide When to Sell a Memecoin?”, and “What If I Lose Everything Trading Memecoins?”.
Regardless of the developers’ intentions, it is important to remember that no matter how you slice it, memecoin trading is risky. FOMO’s leaderboard highlights the app’s most successful traders, showcasing P&Ls of over $2 million, but scroll down far enough and you will see a lot of red as well.
At the end of the day, FOMO is an easy to use, addictive yet fun way to gamble on memecoins. It does a good job of combining trading with social interaction, and introduces a level of competition that hasn’t quite been seen before in crypto.
Stats on the project:
Data as of September 7, 2026
30-day revenue: $18.3M
30-day active addresses: 1.4M
30-day number of transactions: 18.3M
Disclaimer: This section reflects our analysts’ subjective impressions from testing apps and differs from our otherwise fact-driven content. Opinions are based on our evaluation; readers should conduct their own research.
More DeFi Updates
Tokenized stock and metals trading via xStocks;
Full-portfolio borrowing through a new Aave market at rates near 4%;
New fiat on/off-ramps across 30+ currencies; and
Ongoing ETHFI buybacks.
Maple Finance kicked off its first SYRUP token buybacks in August under its newly approved MIP-021 framework.
Hyperliquid saw its daily trading volume triple days after it opened its HIP-4 outcome-market infrastructure to outside venues on August 29.
Third-party platforms Outcome and Skew each posted 500,000 HYPE bonds to deploy prediction-style markets under validator-approved templates.
Raydium has accumulated over 30% of $RAY supply via its buyback program.
Ethena Labs launched Ethena Pay, a self-custodial app on Avalanche
The app lets you do bank transfers, crypto transfers, and use cards via USDe.
The app is rolling out in beta across 48 countries.
Certik, a crypto security firm, found that the ecosystem lost $214.7 million to exploits in August. Notably, $41.5 million of the total was lost due to phishing attacks.
Centrifuge's Tokenization Snapshot 2026 found that only 12% of 542 tokenized assets analyzed under Pantera Capital's Tokenization Progress Index score high enough to count as genuinely integrated into DeFi.
Most (77.6%) function as simple digital wrappers around traditional financial products instead of true onchain assets.
Pendle deployed its first market, sNET (a staked, reserve-backed token from NetNet Capital) on Robinhood Chain.
As with Pendle's other markets, the deployment splits sNET into tradable Principal Tokens (redeemable at maturity), and Yield Tokens (which capture returns until maturity but stop earning after), letting traders bet separately on sNET's future value versus its yield.
DeFi word of the month: Protocol Revenue vs Fees
Definition: Fees are the total amount users pay to use a protocol, while protocol revenue is the slice of those fees the protocol itself keeps. The rest typically goes to liquidity providers, stakers, or other participants.
Used in a sentence: The exchange generated $100 million in fees last quarter, but most of that went to liquidity providers, leaving the protocol with far less in actual revenue.
This is the State of DeFi. September Edition.
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This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.
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