RaaS #457: Stablecoins Cross $250B!

Who Controls SOL, Gaia Raises Seed And Series A, and Moar!

Boundless provers stake USDC to bid for jobs. Fast CPUs help win auctions. You can adjust your settings such as proving speed, price per job, and gas. There’s no perfect setup. Simply adjust based on your hardware, internet, and how the market moves.

Despite its reputation for speed and accessibility, Solana’s ownership structure reveals familiar patterns of concentration. Power pools around a few exchanges, LSTs haven’t broken out, and decentralization efforts still face uphill terrain. Coinbase alone holds 4.7% of supply, and the top 0.33% of wallets control 54% of supply.

What is this woke nonsense about “egc”? Tomorrow, you might start saying these “employees” deserve wages and whatnot.

Will Vitalik make the bet using Cobie’s services?

Gaia Labs has raised $20 million to scale its DeAI infra and launch a smartphone with local inference. With 700K+ nodes and 17T inferences, it’s betting on peer-run intelligence over cloud AI. The token and phone rollout aim to cement user-owned AI as a new norm.

Solana just raised block capacity from 50M to 60M compute units, a 20% increase in the amount of transaction data fits per block. This means more room for activity, lower fees under the same demand, and more room for complex apps.

Everclear is teaming up with NEAR Foundation to scale cross-chain clearing, combining NEAR’s Intents infra with Everclear’s $1B+ volume protocol. With 23+ chains supported and major DeFi integrations, Everclear now targets $1T+ in cross-chain liquidity over the next year.

Stablecoins quietly hit $250B after a decade of grind. With clearer regs, surging demand, and real utility kicking in, the next $250B won’t take another 10 years. Buckle up, the stablecoin era isn’t coming, it’s already here.

Ether.fi launches up to 2M ETHFI in rewards for new weETH or LiquidETH deposits. Starts with 1M, unlocks another 1M if more than 100k ETH is deposited. Users must hold 30+ days to qualify, and this offer only runs until August 9th.

One smol step for man, one giant leap for mankind or something.

Magma becomes the first LST protocol to commit 100% of staking fees to buyback-and-burn, rejecting treasury stockpiles in favor of provable alignment with holders. It’s a clear signal for sound economics onchain.

Regulation can make or break DeFi’s future. Acknowledging self-custody, disintermediation, and the limits of TradFi frameworks is key to crafting viable standards. Disclosure, liability, and compliance need new logic to sustain innovation and protect users.

Wall Street’s biggest names are now pushing money markets onchain. BNY and Goldman will tokenize MMF shares on GS DAP, letting clients trade digital fund representations via LiquidityDirect. This targets a $7.1T in traditional assets and brings 24/7 liquidity to U.S. treasuries.

Top Gainers: ZORA, SPK, SAHARA, MOBY, GP.

Tether is building a parallel stack across energy, AI, Bitcoin infra, and DeFi. Its latest portfolio snapshot includes Holepunch, Synonym, Bitdeer, and 20+ others, each one a bet against legacy rails and a step toward sovereign infrastructure.

Ethereum’s validator queues are jammed on both ends, $1.9B in exits and $1.3B in entries, reflecting a wave of profit-taking and renewed institutional staking interest post-SEC guidance. With over 36M ETH staked, Ethereum’s security layer is getting both crowded and expensive.

That’s all for today!