a16z Says Anti-CLARITY Bank Lobby Keeps Stablecoin Yield Alive
gm, Defiers!
These were the biggest crypto and DeFi stories today:
- Miles Jennings: banks fighting CLARITY are speeding their own obsolescence
- ether.fi strips restaking out of weETH, nearly done with EigenLayer
- Uniswap's launchpad out-launched Pons on its first day
- Robinhood Chain DEX volume fell 72% while deposits set records
- Sentora lends against Wellington's first onchain credit book
- Can LP Agents Outrun Their Own Debt? Inside Ratehopper's Self-Repaying Loan Competition [PARTNER]
The banking lobby has spent three months trying to kill the CLARITY Act. a16z's policy chief says that keeps stablecoin yield alive.
Miles Jennings, head of policy and general counsel at a16z crypto, wrote on Thursday that TradFi's effort to block the bill is “accelerating their own obsolescence”. The GENIUS Act is already law and “opened the floodgates for dollars to move onchain,” he wrote. Without a market-structure bill, “crypto intermediaries will keep paying yield on stablecoin deposits under GENIUS, the very outcome banks have been lobbying so hard against.”
Six banking trade groups asked senators on Jul. 22 to tighten the bill's prohibition on interest-like rewards, and they may get their way by doing nothing. Prediction-market traders cut the odds of passage this year to 22 cents after Senate Majority Leader John Thune skipped a cloture filing Tuesday night, moving about 43 cents of probability into 2027. Jennings frames CLARITY as the banks' way in: the bill would let institutions into the onchain economy, permissionless DeFi included, and without it they stay sidelined.
Read more below!
WATCH
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WATCH [PARTNER]
REGULATION
a16z's Miles Jennings Says Banks Fighting the CLARITY Act Are 'Accelerating Their Own Obsolescence'
Miles Jennings, head of policy and general counsel at a16z crypto, argued on X on Thursday that the banking industry's campaign against the CLARITY Act will backfire. The GENIUS Act is already law, he wrote, and without a market-structure bill “crypto intermediaries will keep paying yield on stablecoin deposits under GENIUS, the very outcome banks have been lobbying so hard against.” Six banking trade groups, the American Bankers Association and the Bank Policy Institute among them, said on Jul. 22 that the Senate's updated draft still needs a tighter prohibition on interest-like payments, “which will siphon away the bank deposits that fuel small business, mortgage and farm loans.” Jennings said many institutions hear that decentralized finance removes intermediaries and, being intermediaries themselves, “default to being anti-DeFi.” More than 200 crypto companies have pressed Senate leaders for a floor vote, and Galaxy research head Alex Thorn cut his odds of 2026 passage to 60% from 75%.
Why this matters: The banks want stablecoin yield banned. The bill they are blocking is the vehicle that could do it, and traders have this year at 22 cents.
DEFI
ether.fi Removes Restaking From weETH, Nearing A Full EigenLayer Exit
ether.fi removed all restaking exposure from weETH on Thursday, making its flagship asset a plain liquid staking token and moving restaking into weETHs, a separate token built on Symbiotic. There are 1.72 million weETH in circulation against 9,136 weETHs worth roughly $18 million. ether.fi's staking arm holds $3.3 billion, the largest liquid restaking protocol and third-largest across staking and restaking behind Lido and Binance staked ETH, down from a $12.43 billion peak in August 2025. Its slashing risk documentation says under 1% of assets remain restaked with EigenLayer, down from about half in early 2026, and that EigenPod withdrawal credentials come off its validators by the fourth quarter. Mike Silagadze, ether.fi's chief executive, quote-tweeted the announcement: “End of an era. Sad.”
Why this matters: ether.fi was EigenLayer's largest source of deposits. Holders who want restaking have to opt into a token that holds half a percent of the protocol's staking base.
DEFI
Uniswap's New Launchpad Out-Launched Pons On Its First Day On Robinhood Chain
Uniswap Labs' pools.trade created 10,506 tokens on Aug. 5 and 11,610 more by roughly 16:40 UTC Thursday, against Pons' 7,210 on the same day, per The Defiant's count of successful transactions to its three launch contracts on Robinhood Chain. At least 2,113 of Wednesday's tokens went through the production contract before the interface opened at 21:10 UTC. Pools charges no launchpad fee and routes each token into a Uniswap v4 pool with a 0.25% autocompounding LP fee the creator cannot withdraw. Pons charges 1%, splits it 70/30 with creators, and spends 80% of its cut on PONS buybacks. Hayden Adams, founder and chief executive of Uniswap Labs, called the 1% pool fee “the primary method of extraction.” Uniswap Labs and Pons did not respond to requests for comment.
Why this matters: Uniswap now competes with an app that settles on its own AMM and that it listed in its launchpad aggregator six days earlier. PONS fell 49% on the week.
BLOCKCHAINS
Robinhood Chain's DEX Volume Fell 72% While Transactions And Deposits Set Records
Robinhood Chain's DEX volume fell 72.5% from an $878 million peak on Jul. 11 to $241 million on Aug. 1 while transactions, total value locked and stablecoin supply all set records. Volume per transaction went from $105.56 on Jul. 13 to $27.82 by Aug. 4. Nineteen live incentive campaigns pay $58,351 a day, and two that reward Morpho depositors take $53,808 of it; the 11 campaigns aimed at trading liquidity split $4,543. Volume has recovered to $665.9 million by 16:30 UTC Thursday, and the chain held $433 million in total value locked.
Why this matters: The chain's records come from lending deposits. Of every dollar in live incentive spending, 92% pays capital to sit still.
DEFI
Sentora Opens A Lending Vault Against Wellington's First Native Onchain Credit Strategy
Sentora is curating a Morpho vault that takes PYUSD deposits and lends against mWIN, a Midas-issued token backed by an actively managed credit portfolio run by Wellington Management, which had more than $1.3 trillion under management in December 2025. The vault held 9,647,369 PYUSD against a 10 million cap at 17:45 UTC Thursday and paid 8.31% net; 7.61 percentage points of that come from a PYUSD reward stream, leaving 0.70%. Total mWIN supply is 57.13 tokens, and 86% of it sits in Sentora's market as collateral at a 77% liquidation loan-to-value.
Why this matters: Anthony DeMartino, Sentora's chief executive, says mWIN carries duration and credit risk and that total return can turn negative in a COVID-style shock. Leverage against it is live.
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