| gm Bankless Nation,
With all the attention on Robinhood's to-be-launched ETH L2, it's time to take a look at a high-growth L2 that has been keeping a lower profile. Today's Issue ⬇️ - ☀️ Need to Know: World Reserve Asset
The ECF makes a stir at EthCC. - 🗣️ Analysis: Unichain's Climb
The L2 has been building steam behind the scenes.
Sponsor: Mantle — Mantle is building the largest sustainable hub for onchain finance. . . . NEED TO KNOW World Reserve Asset - 🐝 'Ethereum Community Foundation' Makes a Stir at EthCC. One of the buzziest presentations at EthCC insists the EF isn’t working hard enough to make ETH a world reserve asset.
- 👨⚖️ Supreme Court Declines to Hear Coinbase Data Case. The Trump admin scored a win against privacy advocates who remain concerned about government financial data requests.
- 💵 Circle Wants a Bank Charter. The USDC issuer has applied for a US trust bank license which would allow it to custody its own reserves.
📸 Daily Market Snapshot: Crypto's total market cap continued to slide, even as stocks rallied and pushed top indices to record highs. | Prices as of 6pm ET | 24hr | 7d |  | Crypto $3.25T | ↘ 2.4% | ↘ 0.6% |  | BTC $105,826 | ↘ 1.3% | ↘ 0.2% |  | ETH $2,407 | ↘ 3.2% | ↘ 1.6% | . . . ANALYSIS Unichain’s Climb Continues Unichain is emerging as one of the top L2s while flying under nearly everyone’s radar. While L2s like Base receive most of the attention in the Superchain, Unichain has continued to expand in the background since its mainnet launch in early February, leveraging its deep Uniswap integration to provide a superior DeFi experience, particularly around yield generation. Let's take a look at its momentum 👇 Network Growth 📈Unichain currently holds ~$1.3B in total locked value (TVL) across DeFi and stablecoins, up 41% over the last month to rank fourth across all Ethereum rollups. Further, for L2s, it ranks third in total user transactions according to L2Beat, up 42% in the month of June, and processing 2.2% of total weekly DEX volume — fifth among all chains overall. Of its $1.3B in TVL, $860M accounts for DeFi while the rest ($440M) comes from stablecoins, all of which are strongly concentrated around a set of lending protocols and their third-party curator vaults. - Uniswap | TVL: $641M — As one might expect, Uniswap holds the largest share of TVL on the chain, with the overwhelming majority pooled in v4.
- Euler | TVL: $330M — Next comes Euler, a permissionless lending protocol with MEV-resistant liquidations, dynamic interest rates, and multi-collateral stability pools. Euler’s instance on Unichain has already grown to be the fifth largest lending protocol across the Superchain overall.
- Morpho | TVL: $67M — Morpho, the non-custodial lending protocol, ranks third offering customized lending markets and optimized yield vaults for efficient capital deployment, curated by third-party DeFi companies like Gauntlet and RE7.
With these protocols accounting for the vast majority of Unichain’s TVL, they paint a clear picture of the chain as a home for, first and foremost, yield generation rather than speculation. Interestingly, this view comes reinforced by the fact that not a single memecoin on the chain exceeds $1M in market cap, with most liquidity held in bluechips like $ETH (or versions of it), $wBTC, and stablecoins. What's Next for UnichainUnichain is continuing to build out its core infra as it looks to be the chain most optimized for DeFi, a goal already furthered by a couple key mechanisms in the chain’s architecture: - Flashblocks — Developed alongside Flashbots, Flashblocks provides Unichain 1-second block times by splitting each block into four sub-blocks. This compression improves execution speed, arbitrage, and reduces MEV-related losses, creating an experience of heightened capital efficiency and speed.
- Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) — Unichain’s sequencer uses TEEs to provide private, tamper-resistant environment for ordering transactions that supports fairer MEV outcomes and lowers the risk of extractive behavior.
The next big upgrade for Unichain will be the introduction of its validation network (UVN), a planned system to reduce reliance on a single sequencer and overall improve the chain’s decentralization. - Today, sequencers can delay, reorder, or even submit invalid transactions — undermining trust and slowing finality across chains. UVN introduces a network of independent validators that verify blocks before they are finalized.
- Validators will notably be required to stake $UNI to participate in the network. Once live, 65% of Unichain’s net chain revenue will be distributed to these validators and UNI stakers. It’s worth noting that Unichain is the second-largest Superchain L2 by net revenue right now.
- A testnet for UVN is scheduled to launch in the coming months, with mainnet deployment to follow. Over time, UVN may introduce further protections — such as monitoring the mempool to ensure transactions are included fairly, or requiring validator consensus before blocks are accepted.
Overall, Unichain’s architecture proves purpose-built for DeFi built around execution speed, MEV-aware fairness, and liquidity alignment, despite being a “general-purpose” L2. From Flashblocks and TEEs to its upcoming Unichain Validation Network, every component supports the goal of deeper capital efficiency and composability. Its DeFi-first footprint — anchored by lending protocols like Euler and Morpho — has quietly driven it to the top of L2 revenue charts, with strong TVL growth and meaningful user activity. Further, when looking at Unichain in conjunction with Uniswap and Uniswap Wallet, it becomes clear that Uniswap Labs is constructing a vertically integrated DeFi stack — controlling the application, wallet, and execution layers to become the go-to source for liquidity in crypto. While Unichain still has a long way to go, it proves to be a compelling long-term bet that issues of interoperability will soon become a thing of the past, and that the next era of DeFi will come from an environment defined by execution speed, revenue alignment, and deep control over liquidity. Experience the next generation of onchain finance with Mantle—where blockchain meets everyday banking. Powered by a $4B treasury, Mantle Network and mETH Protocol, Mantle is launching three innovation pillars: Enhanced Index Fund for optimized crypto exposure, Mantle Banking for blockchain-powered banking, and MantleX for AI-driven innovation. Stay tuned and enter the future of on-chain finance with Mantle. |
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