HIGH SIGNAL NEWS

• BlackRock enters DeFi through Uniswap. On Wednesday, the firm announced that its tokenized money market fund, BUIDL, can now be traded on the leading decentralized exchange for the first time. Trading is currently limited to qualified purchasers with more than $5 million in assets. The asset manager also acquired an undisclosed amount of the UNI token. 🦄

• Robinhood Chain launches public testnet. Developers can now begin experimenting with the fintech’s Arbitrum-based Ethereum Layer 2, designed to support real-world assets. ⛓️

• Aave Labs proposes the “Aave Will Win Framework.” At its core, the initiative seeks to direct 100% of Aave’s product revenue to the Aave DAO treasury, positioning the Aave token as the primary vehicle for value accrual. 👻

• Tokenized equities expand into DeFi. This week, Euler and Morpho announced that, for the first time, tokenized equities issued by Ondo Finance can be used as collateral for stablecoin loans on their lending platforms. 💸 

• Spark announces Spark Prime. The lending platform's new product allows institutional borrowers to use assets held in DeFi protocols, with qualified custodians, and on centralized venues as collateral to access stablecoin liquidity in DeFi. 🏦

STAKING INDUSTRY

Jan-Philip Grabs is Founding Partner at Areta, a leading crypto-native investment bank offering services in M&A, capital raising, secondaries, and strategic governance. The firm works with entities such as the Arbitrum and Uniswap DAO, and has also advised staking provider Stakin in its recent acquisition by The Tie.

What's making staking providers want to sell, and who's interested in buying them?

Market consolidation in staking is driven by two factors: fragmentation and commoditization. There are hundreds of providers competing in this space. And rising price competition, declining yields, weak token performance, and margin pressure from exchanges and custodians have made the economics increasingly tough. As a result, we’re seeing weekly inbound interest from staking providers exploring a sale.

That seller interest is met by a broadening buyer base. Today, it’s mostly crypto-native players — exchanges, custodians, and select asset managers that see staking as a natural fit with their existing products. Looking ahead, we expect neobrokers like Robinhood and eToro to become more active, given their business models sit closer to crypto. Traditional asset managers and banks will take longer. We’ve had conversations with several, but their decision processes are slow and integrating crypto-native teams culturally is harder than it looks.

Now, fast forward to 2027 or 2028 and I believe the staking industry will look much different. Many players will be forced out of the market in distressed M&A transactions. And while staked ETPs and growing institutional participation could expand the overall staking market, growth will concentrate among established, trusted providers with real scale, which actually accelerates consolidation rather than slowing it.

Eva Lawrence is Head of Revenue at Figment, one of the largest non-custodial staking providers, which oversees roughly $18 billion in assets under stake. Founded in 2018, the firm serves over 1,000 institutional clients, such as Grayscale, Fireblocks, and Coinbase.

With competitors being acquired, how do you view the direction your market is taking?

We view consolidation as a sign of industry maturation. Early providers like Chorus One served the early adopter phase of staking very well. But the market today is institutionalizing, and future growth will be driven by larger banks, asset managers, and corporates entering the space with very different requirements. Based on our conversations, the types of institutions entering staking in 2026 are going to surprise many people.

We focused on these large entities from day one, and we’re now the first global staking provider to achieve NORS certification, a new institutional standard that includes Big Four audits. That foundation creates a moat that’s compounding, and other participants can’t build these capabilities quickly or replicate what we’ve built over eight years.

We’re also expanding geographically into LATAM, Japan, Hong Kong, and the Middle East. And while staking remains our core focus, we’re open to other yield products if there is client demand. In fact, we already soft-launched a stablecoin staking yield product in partnership with OpenTrade in LATAM a few months back.

Alexandre Elkrief is co-founder and co-CEO of Upshift, a DeFi protocol that provides generalized vault infrastructure for institutional-grade onchain asset management. Upshift currently manages $400 million in assets under management.

What’s the strategic value for Bitwise? Why acquire another staking provider?

This vertical integration reflects a broader shift in how asset managers are treating DeFi. At first, it was just about holding spot assets. Then came vanilla staking, closely followed by basic lending strategies. Now, firms are realizing there’s meaningful yield to capture in DeFi, which is driving the push into the next stage: diversified yield strategies.

Instead of just partnering, they’re now bringing in-house battle-tested infrastructure, roughly $2.2 billion in delegated stake, and — most importantly — a highly experienced team that’s been operating in this space for eight years.

This ensures full technical and regulatory control, while positioning them to boost staking yields and unlock additional revenue streams beyond base returns. Over 50% of Ethereum transaction flow no longer goes through the public mempool. By owning validator infrastructure, Bitwise can now theoretically participate in transaction routing economics through private deals with high-volume providers and other commercial arrangements around order flow.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Staking is consolidating fast. Margin pressure, rising institutional standards, and commoditization are accelerating M&A activity in the sector.

• Vertical integration is strategic. Owning validator infrastructure provides not only base staking returns but access to transaction flow economics and deeper onchain capabilities.

• Staking is becoming a gateway. Providers are moving beyond vanilla staking into broader yield generation, especially stablecoin-based “savings” products.

Levl | $7 million | Seed : Cross-border payment infrastructure provider enabling businesses to move money globally using both fiat and stablecoins.

Birch Hill | $2.5 million | Pre-Seed : A company that provides institutions with the infrastructure and services to underwrite, curate, and scale tokenized credit exposure.

Disclaimer: The information provided in the Crypto Briefing by Blockstories does not constitute investment advice. Accordingly, we assume no liability for any investment decisions made based on the content presented herein.