DeFi Weekly: Wall Street Starts Building on DeFi Rails

1. The Big Picture

Last week, DeFi was dealing with the $387.5 million Bitget hack. Just seven days later, Bitget has fully restored all withdrawals, weekly hack losses have fallen below $5 million, and the main headlines were focused on who is building on DeFi. On October 4th, OKXICE (a joint venture of OKX and ICE, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange) told the US SEC it plans to launch 24/7 trading of tokenized US stocks on Uniswap v4.

Money held steady. The total value locked (TVL) in DeFi, the money deposited in DeFi apps, rose about $670 million in the last nine days to $96.70 billion (≈ ₹9.33 lakh crore).

What it means: About $1.53 billion of new stablecoins, the digital dollars that fuel DeFi, arrived in the last week. While trading slowed slightly, DeFi apps were still earning $81.7 million (approx ₹788 crore) in fees in a single day, showing that users were still paying to transact on these platforms.

2. Five Stories that Shaped the Week

Stocks to trade on Uniswap? OKXICE is planning to trade tokenized US stocks on DeFi through Uniswap v4. The joint venture plans to launch permissioned liquidity pools (covering 60+ stocks, including Nvidia and Apple) that will be open only to verified users and be settled in USDG, USDC and USDT. Holders will retain their voting and dividend rights, and listed companies will have 30 days to object to the listing. There is no set launch date, but if it goes live it will place one of Wall Street's oldest institutions on DeFi infrastructure.

US crypto rules. On 5 October, the CFTC began rulemaking on Regulation CTX and CAM to establish a "crypto asset market" class for regulated exchanges that want to offer retail clients leveraged cryptocurrency trading, meaning trades made with borrowed money. Chairman Mike Selig stated that Americans "deserve clarity, certainty, and consumer protections."

Ethereum's "Glamsterdam" goes live on testnet. On 6 October, the Glamsterdam upgrade passed its first test when it went live on the Sepolia testnet. It speeds up block processing and sets a path to raise the gas limit, the work each block can hold, from 60M to 200M, paving the way for more transactions per block. The mainnet release has not been scheduled.

NEAR Intents gets $3.8M back. On 1 October, an exploit drained $3.8M from Intents, NEAR's cross-chain swap service. NEAR issued a 48-hour ultimatum to the hacker, and the full amount was returned by 4 October.

Balancer hits the exit button, and the UK opens its doors. Over 99% of voters backed the wind-down of the Balancer protocol. Early estimates put the payout at about 16 cents per BAL token. On 30 September, the UK FCA opened applications for crypto business licences, and its new rules come into effect on 25 October 2027.

3. Top 10 DeFi Tokens and the Most Traded

Hyperliquid's HYPE leads at $20.20 billion, about 23% of the whole DeFi category's $87.23 billion value. The list excludes stablecoins and staked or wrapped tokens.

Top 10 DeFi tokens by market value, 7 October 2026

Most traded DeFi tokens by 24-hour volume, 7 October 2026

 What it means: Size and activity tell different stories. UNI traded 13.7% of its entire value in a single day while Rain (the third largest by value) traded only 0.1%. Orca, Numeraire, and Injective made the most traded list, despite being outside the top 10, so the busiest tokens are not always the biggest.

4. Major Upgrades and Launches

This week, most new releases brought regulated money a step closer to DeFi. USDG, a regulated dollar stablecoin by Paxos, launched on Arbitrum, 1inch added 77 tokenized stocks and ETFs on BNB Chain, and CME set 19 October to launch futures on Uniswap (UNI), subject to approval. One network is leaving. Abstract, the Pudgy Penguins Layer 2, will close on December 15, saying a consumer-only chain with thin liquidity is "unsustainable."

5. Security Watch (Last 15 Days)

From September 22 to October 7, 13 incidents cost around $414.4 million, roughly ₹3,996 crore.

 What it means: Bitget is 93.5% of the total. This week, five incidents cost $4.85 million, but a refund from NEAR reduced the actual loss to around $1.05 million. Attackers at Bitget used a flaw in a third-party security product to forge withdrawals, but Bitget's offline cold wallets were safe, and the protection fund covered the losses. The reserves were at 131% of customer balances on September 29. A reminder for users: not every bridge link is genuine. Double-check bridge links and review wallet approvals.

6. ETH Staking Rate

Staking locks ETH to secure the Ethereum network for rewards, like interest on a fixed deposit. Annually, at 2.59%, about ₹2,590 is earned on ₹1 lakh.

 What it means: One in three ETH is now staked. Validators fell while staked ETH rose, meaning each now holds about 51 ETH, up from 49. The exit queue grew fivefold, but more ETH is still waiting to stake than to leave.

7. Liquid Staking Rate

Liquid staking allows users to stake ETH and still get a receipt token to use in DeFi. On October 7, 17.27 million ETH ($46.59 billion) was staked this way, about 40% of all staked ETH.

Share of liquid-staked ETH by provider, 7 October 2026

What it means: 89% of the market is controlled by Lido (56.74%), Binance (21.59%) and ether.fi (11.06%). Lido lost 0.72 points of share and StakeWise gained 0.43, a slow, healthy shift.

8. Where the Money Moved

Almost every sector added value. Bridges, which move tokens between blockchains, added about $4.4 billion (+7.82%).

Seven-day change in DeFi TVL by sector, 7 October 2026

 What it means: Ethereum holds 56% of DeFi value. Risk curators and basis trading, which offer managed, steady returns, each added over $500 million, likely as users sought calmer yield.

9. Liquidity Pool Watch

Lending drew the steadiest money. Aave (+$434 million) and Morpho (+$554 million) added close to $1 billion together, and Falcon Finance jumped 37% as new USDf stablecoins were created. Spark had the week's biggest outflow, about −$2.2 billion (−23.1%), and Jupiter fell 21.4%. TVL reflects price moves as well as withdrawals. Balancer pools turn withdrawals-only on October 30.

10. Hot Topic: Wall Street Is Discovering DeFi

For years, people speculated whether traditional finance would ever use DeFi. This week answered.

In the 30 days to 28 September, $20.9 billion worth of tokenized stocks was traded on decentralized exchanges. About 60% of this volume was handled by Uniswap. Now the companies behind that market are knocking on the door. The owner of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) has chosen Uniswap v4 pools, Paxos brought a regulated dollar to Arbitrum, and CME is listing futures on a DeFi token. Regulators are mostly writing rules instead of blocking doors.

This pattern continues with India. On 3 October, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Shri Sanjay Malhotra, said the RBI remains cautious on crypto assets because of monetary sovereignty and capital flows, but its approach "has been to promote the underlying technologies" like distributed ledgers and tokenization. India, for now, is keeping crypto at arm's length, while backing the technology DeFi runs on.

There are limitations. OKXICE's pools will require identity checks, and a launch date has not been set. Still, the trend is obvious. The tools of DeFi are being adopted by the largest and most influential firms in traditional finance.

11. What to Watch Next

 Main sources: DeFiLlama, CoinGecko, ValidatorQueue, The Block, Decrypt.