CoinW Research Institute Weekly Report (May 4, 2026 - May 10, 2026)

Key Points

The total global cryptocurrency market value is $2.79 trillion, up from $2.75 trillion last week, marking an increase of about 1.45% this week. As of the time of writing, the cumulative net inflow of the US Bitcoin Spot ETF is approximately $59.34 billion, with a net inflow of $622 million this week; the cumulative net inflow of the US Ethereum Spot ETF is about $12.09 billion, with a net inflow of $70.49 million this week.

The total market value of stablecoins is $316 billion, up from $315.7 billion last week, an increase of about 0.09%. Among them, USDT has a market value of $189.67 billion, accounting for 60.02% of the total stablecoin market value, up about 0.06% from last week's $189.55 billion; USDC has a market value of $77.8 billion, accounting for 24.62%, down about 0.25% from $78 billion last week; DAI has a market value of $5.36 billion (almost unchanged from last week), accounting for 1.7% of the total stablecoin market value.

According to DeFiLlama, the total TVL (Total Value Locked) in DeFi this week is $85.889 billion, up from $85.704 billion last week, an increase of about 0.22%. When categorized by public chains, the three public chains with the highest TVL are Ethereum, accounting for 53.57%; BNB Chain, accounting for 6.47%; and Solana, accounting for 6.37%.

This week's performance of major public chains (Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain, Ton, Sui, Aptos): In terms of daily trading volume, both BNB Chain ($0.504B, -32.44%) and Ton ($0.0012B, -24.43%) decreased, while the other chains grew: Ethereum $0.968B (+43.2%), Solana $1.208B (+49.14%), Aptos $0.052B (+44.45%), and Sui saw over a threefold increase. In terms of transaction fees, Ethereum ($0.02), Sui ($0.00239), and Solana ($0.001) increased by 100%, 298.36%, and 43.65%, respectively, while BNB Chain, Ton, and Aptos saw little change. In daily active addresses on-chain, Ethereum (565,000, +16.12%) and Sui (334,000, +25.64%) increased, while the other chains decreased, with Aptos having the largest drop (-42.42%). In terms of TVL, Ton ($0.092B) and Sui ($0.667B) showed significant growth, increasing by 35.43% and 19.32% respectively, while the other chains saw little change, with Ethereum still leading by far ($45.69B), followed by Solana ($5.83B) and BNB Chain ($5.67B).

New project highlights: Saturn is a stablecoin and on-chain yield protocol built around "Bitcoin-backed Digital Credit," with the core goal of bringing the Bitcoin Credit market advocated by Michael Saylor/Strategy into DeFi. Stockcoin.ai is a trading platform for stocks and crypto derivatives that combines AI and on-chain data analysis, aiming to provide retail and institutional investors with intelligent, on-chain-driven quantitative trading and market insights. Elastics.ai is a decentralized computing and collaboration platform for AI Agents and large language models (LLM), designed to provide developers and enterprises with high-performance, scalable distributed computing networks.

Key Points

I. Market Overview

1. Total cryptocurrency market value/Bitcoin market value share

2. Fear Index

3. ETF inflow and outflow data

4. ETH/BTC and ETH/USD exchange rate

5. Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

6. On-chain data

7. Stablecoin market value and issuance situation

II. This Week's Hot Money Trends

1. Top five VC tokens and Meme coins by growth this week

2. New project insights

III. New Industry Dynamics

1. Major industry events this week

2. Major events coming up next week

3. Important investment and financing from last week

IV. Reference Links

I. Market Overview

1. Total cryptocurrency market value/Bitcoin market value share

The total cryptocurrency market value globally is $2.79 trillion, up from $2.75 trillion last week, with an increase of about 1.45% this week.

Data source: Bitcoin dominance from cryptorank, https://cryptorank.io/charts/btc-dominance

Data as of May 10, 2026

As of the time of writing, Bitcoin has a market value of $1.63 trillion, accounting for 58.42% of the total cryptocurrency market value. Meanwhile, the market value of stablecoins is $316 billion, accounting for 11.33% of the total cryptocurrency market value.

Data source: coingeck, https://www.coingecko.com/en/charts

Data as of May 10, 2026

2. Fear Index

The cryptocurrency fear index is 49, indicating a neutral sentiment.

Data source: coinglass, https://www.coinglass.com/pro/i/FearGreedIndex

Data as of May 10, 2026

3. ETF inflow and outflow data

As of the time of writing, the cumulative net inflow of the US Bitcoin spot ETF is around $59.34 billion, with a net inflow of $622 million this week; the cumulative net inflow of the US Ethereum spot ETF is approximately $12.09 billion, with a net inflow of $7.049 million this week.

Data source: sosovalue, https://sosovalue.com/zh/assets/etf

Data as of May 10, 2026

4. ETH/BTC and ETH/USD exchange rate

ETHUSD: Current price $2,357.26, all-time high $4,946.05, down approximately 52.32% from the highest price

ETHBTC: Currently 2,357.26, all-time high 0.1238

Data source: ratiogang, https://ratiogang.com/

Data as of May 10, 2026

5. Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

According to DeFiLlama, the total DeFi TVL this week is $85.889 billion, up from $85.704 billion last week, an increase of about 0.22%.

Data source: defillama, https://defillama.com

Data as of May 10, 2026

When categorized by public chain, the three public chains with the highest TVL are Ethereum, accounting for 53.57%; BNB Chain, accounting for 6.47%; and Solana, accounting for 6.37%.

Data source: CoinW Research Institute, defillama, https://defillama.com/chains

Data as of May 10, 2026

6. On-chain data (Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain, Ton, Sui, Aptos)

Layer 1 related data

This section analyzes the current major Layer 1 related data including ETH, SOL, BNB, TON, SUI, and APTOS based on daily trading volume, daily active addresses, and transaction fees.

Data source: CoinW Research Institute, defillama, https://defillama.com

Data as of May 10, 2026

On-chain Dex daily trading volume and transaction fees: The daily trading volume and transaction fees of on-chain Dex are core indicators of public chain activity and user experience. This week, only BNB Chain ($0.504B, -32.44%) and Ton ($0.0012B, -24.43%) experienced a decline in daily trading volume. Sui increased more than threefold, while the other chains' daily volumes were: Ethereum ($0.968B, +43.20%), Solana ($1.208B, +49.14%), and Aptos ($0.052B, +44.45%). In terms of transaction fees, this week BNB Chain ($0.00001), Ton ($0.0014), and Aptos ($0.000001) remained almost the same as last week; Ethereum ($0.02), Sui ($0.00239), and Solana ($0.001) rose by 100%, 298.36%, and 43.65% respectively.

Daily active addresses and TVL: Daily active addresses reflect the ecological participation and user stickiness of the public chain, while TVL indicates user trust in the platform. In terms of daily active addresses, only Ethereum (565,000, +16.12%) and Sui (334,000, +25.64%) increased this week; the other chains all saw declines, specifically Aptos (453,000, -42.42%), Solana (1.67 million, -13.02%), BNB Chain (2.5 million, -8.76%), and Ton (143,000, -7.57%). In terms of TVL, Ton ($0.092B) and Sui ($0.667B) grew 35.43% and 19.32% respectively from last week, while other chains showed little change. Ethereum ($45.69B) continues to lead all chains, followed by Solana ($5.83B) and BNB Chain ($5.67B).

Layer 2 related data

According to L2Beat data, the total TVL of Ethereum Layer 2 this week is $35.08 billion, up from $34.18 billion last week, an increase of about 2.63%.

Data source: L2Beat, https://l2beat.com/scaling/tvs

Data as of May 10, 2026

This week, the market shares of Base and Arbitrum are 46.93% and 15.99%, ranking first and second.

Data source: CoinGecko, https://www.coingecko.com/en/chains/layer-2

Data as of May 10, 2026

7. Stablecoin market value and issuance situation

According to Coinglass data, the total market value of stablecoins is $316 billion, up from $315.7 billion last week, an increase of about 0.09%. Among them, USDT has a market value of $189.67 billion, accounting for 60.02% of the total stablecoin market value, up about 0.06% from last week's $189.55 billion; USDC has a market value of $77.8 billion, accounting for 24.62%, down about 0.25% from $78 billion last week; DAI has a market value of $5.36 billion (almost unchanged from last week), accounting for 1.7% of the total stablecoin market value.

Data source: CoinW Research Institute, Coinglass, https://www.coinglass.com/pro/stablecoin

Data as of May 10, 2026

According to Whale Alert data, this week the USDC Treasury issued a total of 2.5 billion USDC, and the Tether Treasury issued a total of 1 billion USDT this week. The total issuance of stablecoins this week is 3.5 billion, an increase of 7.69% compared to last week's total issuance of stablecoins (3.25 billion).

Data source: Whale Alert, https://x.com/whale_alert

Data as of May 10, 2026

II. This Week's Hot Money Trends

1. Top Five VC Tokens and Meme Coins by Growth This Week

Top five VC tokens by growth over the past week

Data source: CoinW Research Institute, coinmarketcap, https://coinmarketcap.com/

Data as of May 10, 2026

Top five Meme coins by growth over the past week

Data source: CoinW Research Institute, coinmarketcap, https://coinmarketcap.com/

Data as of May 10, 2026

2. New Project Insights

Saturn is a stablecoin and on-chain yield protocol built around "Bitcoin-backed Digital Credit," with the core goal of bringing the Bitcoin Credit market advocated by Michael Saylor/Strategy into DeFi. The project's main products include the stablecoin USDat, backed 100% by tokenized US Treasury bonds for on-chain payments and liquidity; and sUSDat, which generates yield through holding Strategy’s STRC (digital credit assets), targeting an annual yield of over 11%. Saturn essentially attempts to combine the fixed income market and RWA (real-world assets) from traditional finance with Bitcoin Credit to create a "digital dollar yield layer" on-chain.

Stockcoin.ai is a trading platform for stocks and crypto derivatives that combines AI with on-chain data analysis, aiming to provide retail and institutional investors with intelligent, on-chain-driven quantitative trading and market insights. The platform's core products include AI Stock Signals, Tokenized Equity, and Pre-IPO investment tools, allowing users to optimize trading strategies for US stocks, crypto assets, and hybrid derivatives through on-chain signals and AI algorithms. Stockcoin.ai covers smart trading strategy generation, on-chain asset tokenization investment, and AI-driven market forecasting, providing investors with an efficient, transparent, and verifiable trading experience while exploring new Web3 investment models that blend "on-chain + traditional finance."

Elastics.ai is a decentralized computing and collaboration platform for AI Agents and large language models (LLM), aimed at providing developers and enterprises with high-performance, scalable distributed computing networks. Its core products include Elastics Compute Network (ECN) and Agent Marketplace, allowing users to rent, share, or trade computing resources while deploying intelligent agents for data processing, model training, and inference tasks. The application scenarios of Elastics.ai include AI model training, inference acceleration, intelligent agent deployment, and cross-organizational collaborative computing, providing a decentralized, efficient, and verifiable computing infrastructure for the AI ecosystem, promoting the deep integration of AI and Web3.

III. New Industry Dynamics

1. Major Industry Events This Week

On May 6, 2026, the RWA (Real World Asset) infrastructure protocol KAIO officially completed the Token Generation Event (TGE) for the KAIO token and opened trading. KAIO is a Sovereign AppChain protocol focusing on institutional-grade RWA tokenization, with its core business helping traditional asset management products like BlackRock, Hamilton Lane, and Brevan Howard achieve on-chain issuance, circulation, and cross-chain interoperability, while supporting compliant institutional funds to enter DeFi. In this TGE, the total supply of $KAIO is 10 billion tokens, with 37.5% allocated to community and liquidity incentives, and 12.5% released immediately at TGE for liquidity; the team and early investor shares are unlocked at TGE with a 12-month cliff and linear release over 24 months afterwards.

On May 4, 2026, the decentralized digital identity protocol Billions Network officially completed the $$BILL Token Generation Event (TGE). Billions Network is an AI authentication network combining DID (Decentralized Identity) and Zero-Knowledge Proof, with the core goal of achieving "trusted identity verification between humans and AI Agents" in the AI era, allowing users to complete identity authentication without exposing private data. The project was created by core team members of Circom (one of the most widely used ZK libraries globally), emphasizing privacy protection and mobile verification, explicitly targeting the narrative of "Human + AI Identity," competing with Worldcoin. In this TGE, the total supply of $$BILL is 10 billion tokens, using a zero-inflation model, with community allocations accounting for approximately 32%, and an initial circulation of about 788 million tokens at TGE.

On May 8, 2026, the Sharing Economy infrastructure protocol ShareX officially completed the $$SHARE Token Generation Event (TGE). ShareX is a Web3 Consumer & Financial Layer aimed at real-world shared devices (such as power banks, vending machines, self-service terminals, etc.), with the core goal of putting IRL shared devices, usage data, and cash flow on-chain to create a verifiable Revenue-based RWA network. In this TGE, the total supply of $$SHARE is 100 million tokens, while multiple rounds of airdrop activities will be launched. The project has previously received support from OKX Ventures, Folius Ventures, The Open Platform (TOP), among others, and the current key narrative includes shared economy RWA, DePIN, IoT on-chain, and Web3 consumer finance.

2. Major Events Coming Up Next Week

The Web3 robot and decentralized robot capital market project XMAQUINA officially announced that its governance token $$DEUS will have its TGE (Token Generation Event) on May 27, 2026. XMAQUINA is a robot investment ecosystem that combines AI, robotics (Humanoid Robotics), and Web3 DAO governance, aimed at allowing ordinary users to participate in ecological investment and governance of robotic companies like Figure AI, 1X, Apptronik, and Agility Robotics through on-chain DAOs and Robotics Capital Markets (RCM). The total supply of $$DEUS is fixed at 1 billion tokens, with no additional issuance, where the DAO Treasury accounts for 30%, Genesis Auctions account for 23.24%, and Core Contributors account for 12.5%. Approximately 31.5% of the tokens will enter circulation at TGE, with 100% of the Liquidity & Ecosystem Growth and RCM Protocol portion unlocked, while the team and advisor shares have a 12-month cliff and subsequent linear release mechanism.

On May 8, 2026, the AI inference network project OpenGradient announced that its Titan Launch airdrop has officially begun, which will continue until next week, with eligible users now able to directly claim $OPG airdrop rewards in their Virtuals Protocol accounts. According to the official announcement from Virtuals Protocol, a total of 500,000 OPG will be distributed on the first day of this round to reward Virtuals ecosystem contributors, with the distribution weighted based on two types of users: one type being Agent Creators, trading users, and community contributors who have been active in the Virtuals ecosystem for a long time; the other type being early users participating in the OpenGradient AI inference network, node testing, and development ecosystem. OpenGradient is a Web3 AI infrastructure project focusing on AI Inference and decentralized agent networks, aiming to provide on-chain inference, model calling, and verifiable execution environments for AI Agents, while Virtuals Protocol serves as the ecological distribution and Agent market entry point.

On May 5, 2026, the stablecoin yield protocol Ethena officially opened the fifth season (Season 5) for ENA airdrop claims, distributing 2% of the total supply of ENA as rewards to incentivize long-term participation in USDe, sUSDe, ENA staking, and ecological interactions. Ethena is a synthetic dollar protocol built on a Delta-neutral strategy, with core products including the yield-generating stablecoin USDe and the staking version sUSDe, which has become one of the largest yield stablecoin protocols by TVL in the DeFi market. The Season 5 airdrop claim window will remain open until August 3, 2026, with any unclaimed rewards being redistributed to future ecological incentive programs.

3. Important Investment and Financing from Last Week

The cross-chain privacy trading aggregation protocol Houdini Swap announced its acquisition by Nasdaq-listed company SOL Strategies for approximately $18 million, with the deal expected to be completed by the end of May 2026. Houdini Swap is a non-custodial cross-chain swap aggregation platform focused on privacy protection, supporting over 100 blockchains and 18+ DEX/Bridge routes, allowing users to exchange and trade assets anonymously between different chains, with core focuses including privacy trading, cross-chain liquidity aggregation, and institutional-level DeFi execution. (May 4, 2026)

The stablecoin yield infrastructure protocol OpenTrade announced it has completed a $17 million strategic financing round, led by Mercury Fund and Notion Capital, with participation from a16z crypto, AlbionVC, CMCC Global, among others, bringing the total financing amount to over $30 million. OpenTrade is a stablecoin yield infrastructure platform for fintech, exchanges, and digital banks, primarily focused on integrating stablecoin funds like USDC, USDT, EURC into yield vaults supported by real-world assets (RWA) and on-chain strategies, enabling institutions to offer dollar and euro yield products without building their own custody, compliance, and investment systems. (May 6, 2026)

Payward Inc., the parent company of Kraken, announced plans to acquire the Hong Kong fintech company Reap Technologies for up to $600 million (cash plus stock). Reap is a FinTech platform focusing on stablecoin payments, corporate card issuance, and cross-border payment infrastructure, with core businesses including stablecoin corporate payments, global cash management, B2B cross-border settlement, and stablecoin-supported corporate credit card services, aiming to connect traditional finance with the digital asset system. (May 7, 2026)