July was a landmark month for digital assets, with regulation, infrastructure, and portfolio companies all making headlines. The GENIUS Act became law in the U.S., while the CLARITY Act advanced through Congress, setting the stage for accelerated stablecoin adoption. On the market side, the Hyperliquid ecosystem surged to $5.5 billion AUM, cementing its dominance in USDC flows. Meanwhile, portfolio leaders like Ethena, Maple, and Kinetiq delivered record-breaking growth, underscoring the sector’s momentum.
Ethereum made meaningful progress on its scaling roadmap this month where core developers outlined further plans to transform the current Layer-1 into a zkEVM, aiming to bring zk-proofs across the full protocol stack over time. The goal is to deliver zk-based validity directly on mainnet, narrowing the performance gap between rollups and Ethereum itself. Base activated FlashBlocks to improve block propagation speed and reduce MEV inefficiencies which slashes block times down to 200ms. At the same time, Ethereum also faced growing operational pressure, as the validator exit queue reached its highest point on record which signals increasing churn in staking participation, most likely correlated to the renewed upward pressure on the long-suppressed ETH price. On the competitive front, Solana’s Jito unveiled a major upgrade to its block-building architecture. Jito launched Block Assembly Marketplace (BAM) to clamp down on toxic MEV extraction which will make Solana more suitable for perps exchanges and CLOBs, and let apps share revenue with users. BAM works by running a network of nodes which order transactions within a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE); by running in a TEE, transaction flow is kept private until execution.
Furthermore, the long awaited Solana ETF officially debuted on US markets, although expected in early autumn. Rex-Osprey SOL and Staking ETF (SSK) were the only ones approved as they fell under the Investment Company act of 1940 which grants them automatic approval unless stopped by the SEC. Galaxy Digital recently facilitated one of the largest ever crypto transactions: a Satoshi-era investor sold 80.000 BTC valued around $9 billion via Galaxy. Meanwhile, MicroStrategy’s relentless accumulation pushed its holdings to three percent of all Bitcoin in circulation. Big news on the policy side came from US President Donald Trump announcing measures to open the US retirement market to crypto investment, creating a new potential demand channel for the asset class far down the line.
Similar to months prior, stablecoins have remained a hot topic in the industry, where the landmark GENIUS Act was officially enacted into law, establishing a federal framework for payment stablecoins in the United States, while the CLARITY Act and the Anti-CBDC Surveillance Act cleared the House and now head to the Senate. Furthermore, Citi bank revealed it is exploring the launch of its own stablecoins and tokenized bank deposits signalling one of many further preparations following the approved GENIUS Act; many are expected to follow. Circle entered a USDC revenue sharing partnership with Bybit, the second largest crypto exchange by volume, and also announced native USDC and CCTP V2 integration on Hyperliquid. JPMorgan Chase began exploring crypto collateralized lending and also partnered with Coinbase to streamline institutional access to digital assets. Binance rolled out a Pump.fun style bonding curve token launch product for Wallet users. Lastly, Telegram launched their highly anticipated native crypto wallet on their own TON chain, now available to over 87 million of its users.
Prediction market Polymarket acquired QCEX which is a derivatives exchange to establish a regulated foothold in the United States in order to re-enter the market. SharpLink Gaming became the largest corporate Ether holder with 280.706 ETH surpassing the Ethereum Foundation.Other treasury companies continued to make headlines, with new entrants like Hyperliquid Strategies (HYPE) and Bit Origin (DOGE). Phantom wallet integrated direct perpetual trading powered by Hyperliquid that amassed 2 billion dollars in volume within only 2 weeks. Furthermore on the Hyperliquid front, the team also shipped CoreWriter into production enabling a plethora of HyperEVM protocols to officially launch on the mainnet. Hyperliquid’s USDC market dominance grew sharply, capturing roughly 70 percent of USDC on Arbitrum and lifting total AUM from under 4 billion dollars to 5.5 billion dollars in July. Ether.fi announced plans to deploy on Hyperliquid with its new beHYPE staking token. Other notable launches included Botanix’s Bitcoin Layer 2 mainnet with five second block time. Kraken and Bybit collectively launched xStocks which represent tokenized versions of equity shares that can be traded on Solana. Pump fun’s long-awaited ICO reached 1.3 billion dollars at a four billion dollar valuation with 600 million dollars raised just on the public sale. In contrast, on chain perpetuals exchange GMX suffered a $42 million exploit, while Aave surged past $50 billion in net deposits and integrated with MetaMask to offer stablecoin yield directly in wallet.
Ethena completed Anchorage onboarding for their GENIUS compliant product line USDtb which can now be offered to institutional clients, while also unveiling a $360 million StablecoinX digital assets treasury company which would be purchasing Ethena's Foundation tokens, and through these receipts the foundation initiated a $260 million open market buyback. The protocol reported $292 million in revenue for 2024, becoming the second fastest ever to reach $100 million in annual revenue. Portfolio company Kinetiq went live on the back of Hyperliquid’s CoreWriter launch. Kinetiq had a growth nothing short of stellar, reaching $1 billion in staked HYPE within 3 weeks. Jokerace launched v2 of its on-chain vote and earn platform, and Eclipse executed its TGE. Resolv Protocol announced a forthcoming fee switch targeting 10% of daily protocol profits to the Foundation Treasury, while expanding USR availability to HyperLend and securing its first CEX integration. TVL momentum was strong across the board, with Maple Finance surpassing BlackRock’s BUIDL fund in AUM at 2.9 billion dollars versus 2.3 billion dollars, cementing its position as the largest active credit protocol in the market.
