Weekly Recap: Wall Street's Onchain Sprint

This was the week Circle won a national trust-bank charter, placing USDC reserves under federal bank supervision, while Hyperliquid and Phantom asked the CFTC to write DeFi's non-custodial line into a formal rule.

Away from the regulators, Vitalik Buterin laid out a three-to-four-year "Lean Ethereum" overhaul, and Robinhood's week-old chain spent its debut overrun by memecoins, a long way from the tokenized stocks it was built for.

Enjoy!

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Building Paragon: A Perps Market on Hyperliquid

This week's build session goes inside Paragon, a new perpetuals market launching on Hyperliquid — the same venue whose policy arm spent the week petitioning the CFTC. Camila Russo sits down with the team to walk through the design live.

Top Stories This Week

Circle Wins Final OCC Approval for a National Trust Bank

Circle received final OCC approval to charter a national trust bank, First National Digital Currency Bank, letting it custody digital assets and eventually hold the reserves backing USDC under direct federal banking supervision. It is the strongest regulatory footing any major stablecoin issuer has secured; CRCL shares rose more than 10% on the news.

Hyperliquid and Phantom Ask the CFTC to Exempt DeFi From Broker Rules

Hyperliquid's policy arm and wallet maker Phantom filed a joint comment with the CFTC seeking to exempt non-custodial wallets and on-chain infrastructure from exchange and broker registration requirements. The filing would turn the no-action relief Phantom won in March into a formal rule for every provider that never takes custody of user funds.

Vitalik Buterin Outlines a Multi-Year 'Lean Ethereum' Overhaul

Vitalik Buterin laid out a 'Lean Ethereum' roadmap, a three-to-four-year protocol overhaul aimed at simplifying Ethereum's base layer and hardening it for the long term. The plan reorients the roadmap around fewer, cleaner core components as the network takes on more institutional weight.

Robinhood Chain's First Week Was All About Memecoins

Robinhood Chain's on-chain activity surged a week after launch as Pump.fun wired in trading, a CASHCAT meme frenzy built up, and CEO Vlad Tenev called the RWA-focused chain "great for memes." The gap between the tokenized-equities pitch and the speculative reality became the week's defining narrative story.

Other Stories

HSBC Issues Its First Digitally Native Structured Product in Hong Kong — the global bank placed USD-denominated notes issued directly on a blockchain, with Marketnode as tokenization and digital paying agent, pushing tokenization into higher-margin structured products.

PayPal's PYUSD Goes Native on Polygon — Paxos began issuing PYUSD natively on Polygon and plugged it into the network's Open Money Stack, dropping the bridge dependency and joining the week's institutional-rails buildout.

Paradigm Raises $1.2 Billion for Its Fourth Venture Fund — the crypto VC's largest fund yet widened its mandate to span crypto, AI, and robotics, a top-of-cycle confidence signal from one of the sector's marquee investors.

Traders Sue Polymarket and CEO Coplan Over a Strategy Market — a group of traders sued the prediction market over how it resolved a bitcoin-related Strategy market, testing who ultimately controls outcome adjudication on decentralized betting platforms.

Trending on The Defiant

• Strike Launches Bitcoin Loans With No Price Liquidations
• JPMorgan's JLTXX Tokenized Money Market Fund AUM Grows 250% in a Month on Ethereum
• Aave Labs Launches Stable Vaults for Fintech Stablecoin Yield
• Gauntlet Raises $125M Series C From SBI Holdings
• Tether Invests $20M in Brazil's Mercado Bitcoin

That's it for today — have a great weekend! If you enjoyed this newsletter, tell your friends!