Chainfeeds Summary:
A comprehensive review of the overall development, growth, and changes in the DeFi field in 2025.
Article source:
https://www.techflowpost.com/zh-CN/article/29769
Article Author:
Castle Capital
Opinion:
Castle Capital: 2025 is widely regarded as the "Year of Yields," with Pendle undoubtedly being the most representative protocol. Pendle breaks down interest-bearing assets into principal tokens (PT) and yield tokens (YT), allowing future yields to be priced and traded independently, while the principal is redeemable upon maturity. This structured design greatly enhances the composability of yield assets and, through deep cooperation with leading protocols such as Ethena and Aave, establishes its position as the central hub for on-chain yield distribution. Although Pendle's TVL experienced a temporary decline in the second half of the year due to Plasma chain migration incentives and has not yet returned to its historical high, its protocol fundamentals remain solid. Meanwhile, Pendle further expands yield trading scenarios through the Boros protocol, introducing yield units (YU) to hedge or leverage funding rate risks, continuing its long-term strategy of "financializing yields." Ethena is one of the most innovative protocols in the stablecoin sector in 2025. Its synthetic USDe achieves delta neutrality through short hedging of spot assets and perpetual contracts, and captures returns from funding fees, making stablecoins scalable interest-bearing assets for the first time. Although USDe experienced a temporary de-pegging on some platforms due to exchange liquidity and oracle issues during the October liquidation, causing a drop in TVL, its underlying assets remained secure. Ethena subsequently shifted its strategic focus to "stablecoins as a service," issuing customized stablecoins for different ecosystems, keeping the value that would have flowed to Tether and Circle on-chain. Meanwhile, Hyperliquid has performed exceptionally well in the perpetual market. After its token issuance, it quickly became a core venue for on-chain perpetual trading, with all protocol revenue used to buy back tokens, forming a strong value return mechanism, and continuously expanding its financial infrastructure footprint through HIP-3 and HyperEVM. The October 10th liquidation became one of the most important stress tests of 2025, with over $19 billion in assets liquidated and the total market capitalization of crypto falling by approximately 25% from its peak. In this incident, DeFi lending protocols such as Aave and Morpho performed steadily, with almost no bad debts; however, some stablecoins with high leverage strategies and obvious mechanism flaws suffered heavy losses. For example, Stream Finance's xUSD was essentially a highly leveraged, undercollateralized "pseudo-stablecoin." By exchanging user assets for deUSD and expanding through multiple layers of leverage, the supply reached more than seven times the actual collateral. When both off-chain and on-chain positions were liquidated simultaneously, the protocol quickly collapsed, leading to severe de-pegging and frozen withdrawals. This incident exposed the structural risks hidden behind high APY and once again reminded the market that stablecoins are not inherently safe, and careful evaluation of their collateral structure, leverage paths, and oracle mechanisms is crucial.
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