Author: Claude, Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Introduction: Crypto KOL @TheDeFiInvestor lists the catalyst list for this week, 6 projects intensively releasing good news, but the real main line this week is regulation and revenue. Uniswap launched on-chain voting today, intending to connect the protocol fees of V2/V3 on the Robinhood Chain to the UNI burn mechanism, while activating V4 protocol fees across 7 chains. The cumulative trading volume on the Robinhood Chain, which has been online for only 18 days, has exceeded 6 billion USD. On the macro front, Congressman Bryan Steil expressed an optimistic attitude about the Senate passing the CLARITY Act next week, but Polymarket gives a probability of only 34% for it to be signed within the year. The Morpho Midnight fixed-rate lending protocol is about to be publicly launched, Derive V3 upgrade is imminent, and the Pendle community call on July 22 will disclose the roadmap.

UNI: Fee switch voting starts today, Robinhood Chain's 6 billion USD trading volume will be connected to the burn mechanism

The most significant catalyst this week is Uniswap.

According to Crypto News on July 19, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams submitted two governance proposals on July 17, entering the final on-chain voting phase: the first proposal activates V2 and V3 protocol fees on the Robinhood Chain, and the second proposal activates V4 protocol fees on seven chains including Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Robinhood Chain, BNB Chain, Polygon, and Optimism. The voting window is from July 19 to July 26, requiring a quorum of 40 million UNI to pass.

According to Crypto Times, Uniswap has been deployed on the Robinhood Chain for only 18 days, with a cumulative trading volume exceeding 6 billion USD. The Robinhood Chain even surpassed Hyperliquid in daily DEX trading volume for a short period, exceeding 375 million USD in a single day. If the proposal passes, the protocol fees collected on the Robinhood Chain will flow into the TokenJar contract, ultimately bridging back to the Ethereum mainnet for the purpose of burning UNI.

The background of these proposals is the UNIfication plan passed in December 2025. UNIfication was approved with 125 million UNI in favor (only 742 votes against), linking protocol fees with UNI burns for the first time, transforming UNI from a pure governance token into a cash flow asset. According to Crypto News, Adams revealed on July 12 that Uniswap's average daily fee revenue had reached 5.2 million USD, exceeding all crypto protocols except for the two major stablecoin issuers.

Risk warning for holders: The voting has not yet ended, and there will be a 2-day lock after passing. The V4 fee structure is more complex due to the hooks mechanism, and the actual fee rates vary significantly due to different pool types. Since July, UNI has rebounded about 30% from a low of 2.70 USD, with Standard Chartered analyst Geoff Kendrick giving a target price of 6.50 USD by the end of 2026, but this only represents a single analyst's viewpoint. Short-term sentiment has been relatively fully digested.

Macro Events: CLARITY Act may go to full Senate vote this week, but Polymarket only gives a 34% probability

The CLARITY Act, the U.S. crypto market structure bill, is in its final sprint stage.

According to Benzinga on July 18, Bryan Steil, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee's Digital Assets Subcommittee, expressed an optimistic view on the Senate passing the bill next week during a hearing at the federal building in New York. Senator Cynthia Lummis is also reported to expect a full Senate vote during the week of July 20, with Senate Republicans releasing an updated version of the bill text after meeting with Trump's White House.

According to CoinDesk on July 9, the bill needs to merge two versions from the Senate Banking and Agriculture Committees and must receive 60 votes to overcome lengthy debate barriers. Currently, Republicans hold 53 seats, but Senators Josh Hawley and Rand Paul are expected to vote against, meaning at least 7 to 9 Democratic supporters are needed. Currently, only two Democrats, Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks, have voted in favor during the committee stage. According to Yahoo Finance, Stifel’s chief Washington policy strategist Brian Gardner believes the bill "likely needs to pass the Senate by the end of July," otherwise the outlook will "substantially worsen."

The odds of the CLARITY Act being signed into law within the year on Polymarket are 34%, after previously reaching 44% and then quickly retreating.

For the crypto market, the bill will clarify the regulatory boundaries for digital assets between the SEC and CFTC and is the most anticipated legislation in the industry for years. However, Democratic concerns over Trump's conflicts of interest in crypto remain the biggest obstacle.

MORPHO: Morpho Midnight fixed-rate lending protocol about to be publicly launched

According to Bankless on July 17, Morpho CEO Paul Frambot announced that Morpho Midnight will officially launch in the "next few days" after months of testing. According to CoinMarketCap, the mainnet launch date for Midnight was July 18.

Morpho Midnight represents the third-generation paradigm of DeFi lending. Frambot states: The first-generation protocols (like Compound) set risks, interest rates, and terms; Morpho Blue hands risk management to vault curators; Midnight further hands interest rates and terms to the market. Both lenders and borrowers transact around fixed interest rates set by the market and actual maturity dates, which is a long-missing duration dimension in DeFi.

The initial version deliberately maintains restraint: launching only one market on the Base chain (cbBTC/USDC, which is also Morpho Blue's largest market), providing multiple maturity dates, not integrating vault adapters, not supporting auto-roll over, and not cross-chain. The subsequent roadmap includes vault adapters (linking billions of dollars in liquidity from Morpho Vaults), more chains and collateral types, compliance gatekeeping, API, etc.

Morpho currently has a TVL of about 7.7 billion USD, second only to Aave, ranking as the second-largest DeFi lending protocol. According to CoinMarketCap data, Galaxy Curator has integrated with Fireblocks Earn on July 17, connecting Morpho vault earnings directly to over 2,400 institutions.

Risk warning for holders: Fixed-rate lending has been attempted multiple times in DeFi but has never really scaled up, and the core challenge is whether it can attract sustained liquidity. The initial launch only has a single market on one chain, so the short-term pull on protocol revenue is limited.

DRV: Derive will soon launch V3, the largest upgrade in history

@TheDeFiInvestor states that Derive will "soon" launch V3, defined as its largest upgrade ever.

Derive (formerly Lyra) is an on-chain options and derivatives protocol built on Derive L2 (an Ethereum Rollup based on OP Stack). According to CoinMarketCap, V3 will introduce 0DTE (zero-day expiration) options and a user experience more geared towards retail investors.

Recent developments: DRV was launched for trading on Coinbase on May 27, marking its largest centralized exchange listing. On April 23, the DAO voted to increase the proportion of protocol fees used for DRV buybacks from 25% to 35%, while reducing the weekly staking emission from 250,000 to 100,000 tokens. The DAO has cumulatively repurchased over 23 million DRV.

Risk warning for holders: DRV has a market cap of about 116 million USD, with a daily trading volume of only about 170,000 USD, indicating thin liquidity. The specific launch date and complete feature list for V3 have not been officially released, and the phrasing of "soon" is similar to Aave App's "soon," so do not mistake vague expectations for confirmed catalysts.

PENDLE: Community call on July 22 will disclose the roadmap, RWA momentum is the focus

According to Pendle's official X post (released on July 16), Pendle will hold a community call on July 22 at 1 PM UTC on Discord. Pendle previewed in the post that it will share "new news," covering the next steps for RWA momentum and the roadmap to make Pendle the "greatest yield trading platform in global finance."

According to CoinMarketCap analysis, Pendle's recent expansion direction includes distributing 470,000 MON tokens to incentivize YT holders on Monad (starting on July 23), and expanding into commodities and equity perpetual contracts (WTI crude oil, Brent crude oil, gold, silver, NVDA, TSLA, etc.) through Boros. Sierra has integrated with Pendle in early July to provide structured yield products.

Risk warning for holders: The community call is essentially an information disclosure event, and if the roadmap doesn't exceed known expectations with substantial content, it may trigger a "buy the expectation, sell the fact" scenario. PENDLE's current price is around 1.52 USD, with a market cap of about 260 million USD, and its 7-day price fluctuation is close to flat.

STRK: Polymarket privacy trading application based on Starknet goes live on July 20

Public information shows that an application built on Starknet will go live privately on July 20, allowing users to trade on Polymarket privately.

The specific project name and details of this catalyst have not been publicly disclosed, belonging to a single source. However, the background is reasonable: Starknet just launched a series of privacy features on July 3 (Private Yield, Private Swaps, Private Transfers), and on July 15 released the STRK20 privacy token standard, providing native support for protected ERC-20 transfers. A Polymarket front end utilizing Starknet's ZK privacy capabilities is technically feasible.

Risk warning for holders: The application’s name, team, and functional scope have not been confirmed by independent sources. STRK faces the unlocking of approximately 127 million early investor tokens in mid-July, with supply-side pressure being a downward factor independent of the application’s launch. STRK's current price is around 0.029 USD, down about 5.5% over the past week, and is in a historically low range.