Defi_Maestro ✺

HyENA just went live~ - Rewards on USDe for perps position - @hyenatrade Points - @ethena Points - @BasedOneX Points - HLPe Vaults : Earn Fees from USDe, market making and liquidations - Rewards: 12%+ APY on eligible USDe margin during initial month LFG Ref Link: app.hyena.trade/ref/defimaestro

@ChanhBui177509 I was still posting quite abit on my TG chnl. Just stopped posting on X as i was getting many AI slop replies. This seemed to have improved in recent times

@Defi_Maestro 太久了呀

GM Been awhile since i posted on X. Seems like my feed went from Crypto DeFi content to mostly commodities and war related news. 😂

This livestream dug deeper into what you can expect not just for $mETH, but for the broader trajectory of the LST landscape as a whole. It’s been a while since I’ve listened to a podcast packed with this level of clarity and forward-looking insight, so here’s a recap with my own takeaways to do it justice 👇 Firstly, Retrospective Performance & Goals: 2025 was a pivotal year for mETH Protocol, defined by two overarching goals: (1) Improving accessibility for retail users, and (2) laying the structural foundation for institutional adoption. Here, long-term alignment >> short-term narratives remains the guiding philosophy. This paved the roadmap that included expanding on multiple frontiers that collectively adds up to a holistically stronger foundation: 🔸 Buffer Pool Upgrade → A hybrid blended-yield model integrating @aave, enabling predictable ~24h redemptions while maintaining enhanced yield efficiency. 🔸 Custodian-grade integrations → Enterprise-level support across @FireblocksHQ @CopperHQ @osldotcom enabling complex treasury operations + workflow automation. 🔸 Stronger DeFi <> CeFi Distribution → Strong @Bybit_Official availability offering Earn products, yield pathways, trading liquidity & margin-collateral utility expanding $mETH ’s role as a capital-efficient asset and soon on @krakenfx broader ecosystem availability such as $cmETH support on @HyperliquidX One of the most transformative upgrades of Q1 was the Buffer Pool, which introduced predictable ~24hr redemptions powered by a hybrid blended-yield model combining Aave yields with staking yields. This upgrade materially improved liquidity and addressed one of the most persistent institutional pain points: uncertainty around withdrawal timing. Predictability lowers operational friction which improves inventory management. This provides the capital safety and operational reliability profile that institutions need when managing ETH-denominated balance sheets. Performance so far validates this design. Withdrawal mechanisms have remained smooth, and mETH deposits (particularly via Bybit) surged by >$270M despite weak market conditions, demonstrating strong organic demand. Furthermore, the Buffer Pool also introduced a two-way benefit: 1️⃣ Reduce redemption timing to ~24hrs when withdrawal queues are heavily congest 2️⃣ Conversely, when Ethereum deposit queues choke → surplus ETH can be deployed into Aave in the interim to earn incremental yield while the Beacon Chain clears. This design ensures that mETH holders are never stuck in a ‘dead zone’ with idle capital the protocol continually reallocates liquidity to the most productive location available. ⇒ This actively protects users from ‘capital and yield-driven opportunity cost’ by ensuring liquidity is continually put to work, optimising yield-bearing time while simultaneously enhancing overall liquidness. ========== On Leading Holistically With Distribution: When it comes to LSTs, understanding the actual playbook isn’t as straightforward. The landscape is far more nuanced and competitive. As @jesswpotato highlighted, success depends on a holistic approach: Institutions increasingly look beyond headline APYs → they evaluate capital safety, operational reliability, liquidity guarantees, and risk-managed workflows. As a result, mETH has embedded itself in multiple key frontiers, setting up as a preferred ETH yield asset across treasuries + balance sheet management frameworks. mETH’s infrastructure (built deliberately throughout 2025) was designed to meet these standards, offering flexible and robust contingency responses rather than relying on unsustainable incentives. @Bybit_Official’s distribution arm further strengthens this foundation. Asset availability on Bybit unlocks capital-efficient strategies such as collateralised trading, options hedging, borrowing against mETH, and structured exposure → all while retaining underlying ETH-based yield. Recent campaign hosted by Bybit have acted as an effective, organic onboarding channel, familiarising users with mETH’s utility and creating a natural distribution funnel. These efforts now serve as stepping stones for more advanced products to be built across CeFi <> DeFi. Looking forward, horizontal distribution is expanding meaningfully. As more platforms integrate $mETH (from CeFi venues to onchain ecosystems) we see growing momentum for yield-embedded products, structured vaults, synthetic instruments, collateral markets, and cross-network liquidity pathways. Mantle’s DeFi ecosystem also continues maturing, becoming more selective and fundamentally driven than prior cycles. Even so, DeFi remains an important growth channel, but it is now complemented by emerging domains where ETH yield primitives are naturally suited: tokenised assets, DATs or even hybrid financial products that extend beyond the boundaries of traditional DeFi. 🔸 TradFi-adjacent composition → $mETH as the core ETH-yield component within @MantleIndexFour, alongside heavy @Mantle_Official Treasury exposure (peaking at ~75%). 🔸 Public-company adoption → The first LST to be included in exposure held by Republic Technologies (and many more to come) 🔸 DAO Treasury allocation → @nounsdao direct adoption via a 1,000 ETH allocation into mETH, validating its role as a treasury-grade yield instrument. 🔸 Strong Q1 inflow momentum → +$270M inflows from the Bybit pipeline in Q1, achieved despite weak market conditions Crucially, mETH fits neatly into these new narratives by enabling productive capital flows. Instead of sitting idle, ETH-based yield assets can be mobilised across credit markets, structured markets, synthetic products, and permissionless collateral systems. This aligns well with the rising demand from ecosystems like HyperEVM (which is arguably the fastest-growing ecosystem for now) since its built on top of one of the most robust perps economy creates significant demand for high-quality collateral. ========== On The Broader Discourse: 2025 has been a rocky and transformative year not just for crypto at large, but for DeFi specifically. The ecosystem has evolved meaningfully, and with that evolution comes recurring questions 2025 has been a rocky year for not just crypto, but DeFi as it has evolved significantly. @0xjlow was asked about “Has ETH shifted away from DeFi?” and the answer is clearly no. While the surface-level activity has diversified since the 2021 DeFi summer, core protocols that defined early DeFi still dominate today, proving the thesis of durable innovation. What has changed is the participation landscape: early cycles were permissionless experiments; today, institutions are actively building their own ecosystems, developing new primitives inspired by those early experiments. With AI-led automation accelerating, pushing agentic financial systems emerging the need for verifiable, permissionless settlement layers becomes even more important. Ethereum continues to be the most credible base layer for trust-minimised coordination, evidenced by the momentum behind ERC-8004 and x402. In many ways, Ethereum is maturing into the settlement layer it was designed to be. So what’s the takeaway from here? Against this backdrop, the mission for mETH is clear: to become the most INCLUSIVE trusted and capital-efficient $ETH allocation choice for users, institutions, and increasingly, autonomous agents. This requires business-oriented decision-making + strong distribution channels, and a first-mover mindset in identifying gaps where LSTs have not yet penetrated, especially across institutional rails and regulated environments. ========== Looking Ahead for mETH: And finally, the golden question after reflecting on the milestones and achievements throughout 2025: “Have Q1’s goals been achieved?” In many ways, the answer is yes according to @Defi_Maestro, but not in the conventional “objective completed” sense. The philosophy behind mETH Protocol has never been to treat milestones as fixed endpoints. Progress is meant to compound, and each achievement is simply a foundation for the next layer of innovation. That mindset is why the team continues raising the ceiling. With growing interest from institutional partners, more integrations in the pipeline, and accelerating inflows from established CeFi rails, the momentum only continue to expands. This imo, is a validation that the groundwork laid in 2025 is now paying forward into stronger demand and broader adoption. The Buffer Pool upgrade has already proven itself as a strategic differentiator, setting mETH apart from traditional LST designs. This simply underscores an important truth: not all LSTs are created equal. Q1 2026 makes that distinction clearer than ever. And if anything, the rate of progress suggests that we’re still only at the beginning of what mETH can unlock. ---------- Lastly, not to forget, kudos to @speicherx for moderating the session. If you’d like to catch the full conversation, feel free to tune in to the stream below👇

$2b Trading vol $1b OI Sick growth. WP @variational_io

Variational has grown exponentially within 3 months. Daily Vol : $192m -> $1.68b (8.75x) OI : $60m -> $834m (13.9x) I'm still actively using the platform and i believe that @variational_io users will be eating good in 2026. Pretty bullish on some of their upcoming updates in 2026: - TWAP + Scale Orders (I need this so much) - RWA Perps - OLP Public Deposits - Mobile App - Token TGE Boolish. gVAR Ref Link: omni.variational.io/?ref=OMNIMAEST…

TLDR for $LIT - $LIT accrues value from all Lighter Services - Revenue from DEX and other Lighter products will be allocated to growth and buybacks depending on market conditions. - Token distribution: 50% Ecosystem + 50% Insiders (Team + Investors) - S1 and S2 points = 25% AD without lock - Remaining 25% to be used for future points and growth initiatives - Insider Allocations subject to 1y unlock and 3y linear vest. - LIT staking will have tiers - Financial Data Providers and subscribers will use LIT as Fee Token. Thoughts - $HYPE > $LIT - 50% Insider tokens gona be cancerous AF. - Launch probably gona be a dumpfest Hyperliquid.

@0xdefidaniel @variational_io gVAR

After reading @Defi_Maestro 's post with @variational_io , I decided to share my tips as a person with 0 refs. It's not single digit but I do think my tips would work for ppl who don't have a huge audience. Look even my ref link is "normal" 1. Majority were from memecoin trades ($USELESS , $PENGU) 2. It's more of really trying to make money 3. Most of my trades were 2 days durational 4. Total Vol on the account is 7 digits. 5. I did a few SL on the altcoins I traded. 6. I noticed a huge difference with rank 13 to rank 1 (3X more points difference). This means we are still very early. TLDR: Try to make money on "altcoins" with leverage. We still have a lot of products lined up - OLP - Variational Pro - RWA trading on Variational Omni - Trading API Think the team will incentivize these new features I will def lose this rank, but just wanted to share that even a small account like me can somehow reach to top 30 in a perp dex. Chiao and gVAR P.S. @variational_lvs @variational_io can I get a custom code plz?

Got a number of qns on how i farmed my points on @variational_io 1. Majority were from directional trades. I did my DN strats on my other accs. 2. Ref Points made up approx 15% of my points 3. Most of my trades were 1 - 7 days in durations 4. I traded many Alt coins on this account as its my degen acc. Probably 40:60 with my $BTC/ $ETH Vol. 5. Total Vol on the account is 9 digits. 6. My Other Acc with similar vol that traded only BTC/ETH did significantly lesser points. Aside to these questions , I do think that Variational kept majority of their points allocated to the remaining season as they would be expecting higher volumes and also potentially use it for their other product lines: - OLP - Variational Pro - RWA trading on Variational Omni - Trading API Will continue to use the platform but i do think that it will be difficult to maintain my position as Rank 1 as traders that are larger than me will be stepping in to trade on the platform. gVAR omni.variational.io/?ref=OMNIMAEST…

Introducing the mETH Buffer Pool upgrade. Faster and predictable mETH-to-ETH redemptions targeting ~24 hours. All while enjoying enhanced yields and no additional fees. ↓

GM, Sharing some updates on the DN positions on @variational_io and @hyenatrade - HyENA funding rates have been mainly positive. - HYPE Perps on HyENA remains the most volatile pair on terms of funding and flips both sides pretty often - ETH Perps on HyENA have been the most consistently profitable in terms of positive funding - Overall net yielding 30-40% on capital using 6x leverage on both platforms - HyENA markets still lag on mark prices as the markets aren't too efficient yet. Its possible to open slightly favorable positions for ur DN leg on HyENA if you closely monitor the price arb. - USDe Yield on HyENA netting 4% APY which overall contributes 2% APY towards the DN strat Overall the funding rates have been profitable for the past 4 days but I'm expecting the edge to close out quickly as the OI picks up. HIP3 Markets being only on Isolated markets makes the positions pretty capital inefficient and it would be nice to use some cross margin. Waiting for new markets and more liquidity to be added towards HyENA. The potential is there but the platform still has tons of work to be done tbh. Ref Links for both platforms: Variational : omni.variational.io/?ref=OMNIMAEST… HyENA : app.hyena.trade/ref/DEFIMAESTRO

Started deploying some DN positions on @variational_io and @hyenatrade to test it out. OI steadily increasing on HyENA and spread + funding favours shorts for now. $BTC OI have been avging approx 2-5% on Variational while it has been approx 10-30% on HyENA. Will be trying a 6x Leveraged position on both legs and see if there's constant funding rate arbs to be earned. Looking to run it for a week as a test to see how it performs. HyENA funding rates still pretty volatile so the position is more experimental and will also help clock some vol on both platforms. Ref Links for both platforms: Variational : omni.variational.io/?ref=OMNIMAEST… HyENA : app.hyena.trade/ref/DEFIMAESTRO

Update on the Gameplan for @hyenatrade 1. Done. 2. Funding rate flatten out so not much DN to be done yet until we see more volume inflow 3. 12% Boost for $USDe now currently only applies to long positions on HyENA 4. Still not enough liquidity to really size into larger directional trades 5. No RWA markets yet. Limited pairs so far but understandable as they have to build up liquidity 6. Volume so far is pretty slow. Negliable impact towards $ENA for now Will continue to monitor to see if any further developments happen. Ref link if you wana test out the platform: app.hyena.trade/ref/DEFIMAESTRO

The @hyenatrade Launch is happening tonight Gameplan here is~ 1. Get in early and deposit some $USDe towards their HLPe vault 2. Monitor funding rates and set up some Delta Neutral Trades w @variational_io 3. Understand any potential campaigns / incentives and maximize trades for that 4. If sufficient liquidity is build up from the start then migrate directional positions over. 5. If there are RWA markets integrated then see if DN trades available against tradexyz / Ostium 6. Monitor overall volume growth over the first week and see if it generates decent revenue for $ENA HyENA is built by the @ethena and @BasedOneX team on Hyperliquid HIP3. Expecting to see reasonable volume and TVL flow over towards the deployment from the launch. The perps exchange will be based around USDe and will allow users to trade perps while receiving USDe Yield. A key point to take note is that HIP3 markets will have higher fees vs directly trading on HL so you got to take that into account for your trades. Ethena and Based App have had really good track record for GTM so I'm pretty excited to see what they cook up this time.

@hyenatrade 👀

Tomorrow.

@rlclbu @3liXBT @GTRTrade Pretty nifty news feature

@3liXBT @Defi_Maestro @GTRTrade Yes there’s a custom desktop as well. Just login to gtr.trade Desktop actually has more features than mobile.

Any new innovative defi apps I shld try out? Finally got some time on my hands.

Top TVL. Strong yield. No depeg. And Aave still removed $USDS. Why? Because from Aave’s perspective, $USDS = carry the tail risk, get none of the upside This is not a small change. Aave almost never touches stablecoin collateral unless something fundamental shifts. The official line is “low revenue + evolving risk model,” but the context matters a lot more

Cant imagine the next generation of degens if they start so young. They either turn out a genius or a gambling addict 😂.

Pretty nifty feature from @YuzuMoneyX The Asset Whitelist allows users to see which venues their funds are allowed to flow towards. Seems to be a much needed feature especially across the various vault protocols.