Howdy!

It’s so interesting seeing these long-fabled “X company is exploring a stablecoin” scoops come to fruition all at once. The more interesting question is almost becoming: Which big consumer brand isn’t exploring a stablecoin?  

Today, we’ve got Bybit’s Solana DEX, weekly REV reporting, and the coming battle over Solana ETF staking:

Bybit enters DeFi with hybrid Solana DEX

Solana's memecoin season mostly played out on DEXs like Raydium and Jupiter, with centralized exchanges, which sometimes only get around to listing new tokens after their popularity has peaked, sitting the party out.

Hard to blame them at the time. Liquidity was scattered, tokens were often unserious and (in earlier political climates) listings seemed sure to attract unwanted scrutiny from the big-bads at the SEC.

But the world has changed, there's money to be made and strategies are now in flux.

Last week, centralized exchange Bybit announced a new Solana-based exchange called Byreal. According to the company, it's being built from scratch and incubated in-house. Today, the project's socials went live with the announcement of a testnet, set for June 30, and a mainnet slated for Q3 this year.

According to the announcement, Byreal will offer a "hybrid" model meant to merge centralized liquidity with decentralized execution. 

Pitched as an extension of Bybit itself, it will route trades using Request for Quote (RFQ) and Concentrated Liquidity (CLMM) mechanisms, integrate MEV protection and leverage unified liquidity sources. Users get execution from market makers or LPs, depending on the asset and conditions.

There's also Revive Vault, a curated yield product designed to deliver real yield on Solana assets like bbSOL, and its own token launchpad, called Reset Launch.

The latter seeks to create a more equitable token distribution by combining a Smart Price Ladder that raises token prices incrementally with a Fairshare Engine that distributes allocations based on participation rather than speed.

And that's all well and good, but in a world already full to bursting with competing DEXs, why does Bybit think Solana needs another one?

Well, despite DeFi's promise of open, onchain finance, most trading still happens on centralized exchanges. That's partly due to liquidity fragmentation, partly due to painful UX and mostly because DEXs still can't compete with CEXs on slippage, speed or price execution.

With its fast finality and low fees, Solana is uniquely positioned to bridge that gap. But its most popular DEXs tend to specialize: Phoenix offers pure order books, Jupiter routes swaps and Raydium hosts memecoin liquidity.

Then there’s the growing trading juggernaut in Hyperliquid — which uses colocated validators to hit CEX-like performance in a no-KYC DEX environment. It’s obviously a different blockchain with some centralization tradeoffs, but Solana, DEXs, and CEXs could all have a lot to lose if Hyperliquid becomes the retail crypto trading platform of choice.

The Solana market-proper lacks a DEX that combines deep liquidity, fair price discovery and streamlined onboarding into a single package, though.

So that's the play for Byreal. Balance CEX-grade execution, DeFi transparency and user experience while unifying liquidity into a single trading venue. If it can ship fast and attract real projects, Bybit probably won't be the only CEX to script a second act beyond CeFi.

— Jeffrey Albus

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From token design and modular infra to ZK systems and economic coordination — this is where the best builders on the planet will gather. 

Names like Joseph Lubin, Luca Netz, and Jordi Alexander are already on the agenda. If you’re tracking where the space is actually going, this is the room.

June 24-26 | Brooklyn, NY

REV continues to ebb:

Solana’s REV, or tips and fees measuring user demand to land transactions on the blockchain, has declined for a fourth consecutive week. The $14.3 million figure from last week represented the third-lowest this year. 

Still, Solana stretched its REV lead streak to 12 weeks, again besting Tron and Ethereum which totaled $13.2 and $11.6 million, respectively.

— Jack Kubinec

The stakes are high for Solana staking ETFs.

One interesting note from our reporting last week on the SEC asking prospective Solana ETF issuers to submit amended S-1 forms was that the agency asked providers to specify how they would potentially handle staking. Ether ETFs currently do not include staking rewards, which certainly limit the funds’ attractiveness for investors. 

Staking being included for SOL ETFs would be a win for issuers, but it could be make-or-break for staking providers. Solana staking has made for good business lately, but the sector is yet to see ETF-scale flows. 

For context, Jito’s Solana stake pool is the network’s largest, with over 17 million in stake, worth some $2.7 billion. Ether ETFs — sometimes seen as lackluster from an inflows perspective — have roughly $9 billion in assets under management, according to Blockworks Research data.

Not all of the funds’ SOL is likely to be staked due to liquidity risks. Still, there’s potentially a lot of stake — and revenue for staking providers — up for grabs. Behind the scenes, I’m sure there’s a flurry of bidding going on over fees and potential fund seeding between staking providers and issuers. 

How much of this spills into public view will remain to be seen. I’ll try my best on that front, folks. 

— Jack Kubinec

A message from Jesse Brauner, co-founder of Lulo: