Happy Friday, Defiers!

TL;DR:

BNB Chain dominates by number of AI agents
BlackRock debuts staked ETH ETF
Whale loses $50M in botched DeFi swap
Sahara AI’s Vision for the Agentic Era [SPONSORED]
7 Altcoins That Outgrew Bitcoin in 2025 — And What They Have in Common [MEDIA PARTNER]

Let’s dive in.

Markets saw a mild uptick today, with total market cap reaching $2.5 trillion again. BTC and ETH rallied ~2% to reach over $71K and $2.1K, respectively. They’re both closing the week solidly in the green.

Among the top-100 large-caps, the U.S. President’s memecoin, TRUMP, is the biggest gainer on news of an exclusive conference for top holders at Mar-a-Lago next month.

In DeFi, the biggest news in the past 24 hours is that an anonymous trader used their phone to swap $50 million in USDT for AAVE — but they ended up only getting ~$36,000 worth of the token, namely because the available rate was so bad, it meant losing 99.9% in the process. Hot takes, official responses/explanations (the protocol worked as intended!), and calls for DeFi to do better, especially on the UX/UI side, are raging across Crypto Twitter.

Meanwhile, the on-chain AI agent meta continues to heat up, and BNB Smart Chain is emerging as the blockchain network of choice for verified agents that use the ERC-8004 standard (something like an immutable cross-chain ID for agents). BSC recently overtook both Ethereum and Base as the chain with the most ERC-8004 agents, while on-chain activity among BSC agents is also on the rise.

Finally, in TradFi land, the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock ($14 trillion AUM) debuted its staked Ethereum ETF on the Nasdaq yesterday. The firm’s spot ETH ETF is the largest Ethereum ETF by total net assets. And in its first day of trading, the new staked ETH ETF saw the second-most inflows and volume among ETH ETFs, after Fidelity’s fund. BlackRock says it plans to stake anywhere from 70-95% of the fund’s ETH under “normal market conditions” (not so clear what that means).

In other Ethereum news, the board of the Ethereum Foundation today published a 38-page manifesto/constitution/guide, the EF Mandate, that aims to articulate the "promise of Ethereum,” as well as the EF’s role in the ecosystem.

Read more below! But first, please give our sponsors some love; they make this newsletter possible.

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We’re back! Here’s what you need to know in web3 today

📈 Markets in the Past 24 Hours

TICKER	VALUE	24H
Bitcoin	$71,011	1.42 %
Ethereum	$2,097.91	2.23 %
BNB	$655.32	0.88 %
XRP	$1.39	1.23 %
Solana	$88.59	2.80 %

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🎬WATCH

Optimism Is Done with ‘Ethereum Alignment’ — Users Come First

In this episode of The Defiant Podcast, Cami sits down with Jing Wang to discuss how Optimism is evolving and why the debate over what counts as a “real” Ethereum L2 might be missing the point.

Watch the full interview:

Top News in the Past 24 Hours

BNB Chain Overtakes Ethereum, Base by Number of AI Agents

BNB Chain recently surpassed Ethereum as the blockchain hosting the largest number of AI agents operating under the ERC-8004 standard. DEX volumes and transaction count from BNB Chain agents is also on the rise.

Why it matters: Agents using ERC-8004 is a growing trend, with the number of agents across networks growing from 337 to nearly 130,000 since January.

BlackRock's Staked Ethereum ETF Sees Over $43M in Inflows on Day One

BlackRock's iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHB) saw a strong debut on the Nasdaq on Thursday, drawing $43.48 million in net inflows and recording $16.54 million in trading volume on its first day.

Why it matters: While ETHB is not the first staked ETH ETF in the U.S., BlackRock already dominates across both Ethereum and Bitcoin ETFs by net assets.

Whale Swaps $50 Million in Stablecoins for Just $36,000 of AAVE

The crypto community is buzzing after an unidentified wallet swapped $50.4 million in USDT for just $36,000 worth of AAVE tokens. Aave founder Stani Kulechov said the user confirmed the trade despite being warned of “extraordinary slippage” by the Aave interface.

Why it matters: The incident has spurred a debate among prominent DeFi figures around who’s to blame for the catastrophic trade: the user, the UI, DeFi ethos, lack of sufficient guardrails, etc.