Author: Claude, Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Reading: In the past week, DeFi has seen a flurry of releases. Uniswap activated the fee switch on the V4 pool, and protocol revenue is now officially linked to the UNI burning mechanism. 1inch officially released Aqua, replacing the traditional liquidity pool model with a "registration system," covering 13 EVM chains on the first day. Lido launched its largest upgrade since the V2 in 2023, initiating the migration of over 8 million ETH (approximately 16 billion USD) for validator merges, which is expected to reduce the total number of Ethereum validators by one-third. Kaito launched the Katalyst creator incentive platform, officially implementing data cooperation with X. GRVT completed its TGE and issued tokens, while Injective launched the institutional-grade RWA issuance platform Injective Mint.

Uniswap fee switch activated on V4 pool, UNI officially becomes a cash flow asset

Voting last week led to implementation this week.

According to Crypto News, the Uniswap governance approved two proposals: activating V2/V3 protocol fees on the Robinhood Chain and activating V4 protocol fees across 7 chains including Ethereum, Base, and Arbitrum. Fees will flow into the TokenJar contract, and after bridging back to the Ethereum mainnet, they will be used to buy back and burn UNI.

This marks a watershed moment in the UNI token economic model. Before the approval of the UNIfication proposal with 125 million votes in December 2025, the value proposition of UNI was limited to governance voting rights. After activating protocol fees, UNI has become a cash flow token directly linked to protocol revenue. According to Crypto News, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams revealed on July 12 that the average daily fee revenue of the protocol had reached 5.2 million USD. In just 18 days, the trading volume on the Robinhood Chain had exceeded 6 billion USD, making it the largest single source of incremental growth to date.

Protocol fees are now operating across 11 chains (including Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Polygon, Optimism, BNB Chain, etc.), with V4 and Robinhood Chain being the latest pieces of the puzzle.

1inch launches Aqua: no more depositing money into pools, providing liquidity with a "registration system"

According to the official announcement from 1inch on July 28, 1inch Aqua has officially launched, covering 13 EVM chains on its first day, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, BNB Chain, and Robinhood Chain.

The core idea of Aqua is that liquidity providers no longer need to deposit tokens into pools; they just need to connect their wallets, approve the token limit, and create positions. The tokens remain in their own wallets, and only when a trade matches the position's conditions will the protocol pull the required tokens in one atomic transaction and return profits and fees. The same balance can simultaneously support multiple positions.

According to on-chain research data from Dune cited by 1inch, in the first half of 2026, 85% of concentrated liquidity on mainstream DEXs is idle (about 1.6 billion out of 1.84 billion USD), with approximately 542 million USD deviating completely from price ranges each week, resulting in wasted fees of about 150 million USD each year.

Aqua also introduces a "verified counterparty" mechanism: the executing party of each trade must be a verified market maker or arbitrage bot, with verification executed in real-time on-chain. 1inch claims this is the first instance of introducing risk-control counterparty verification in liquidity venues. The accompanying liquidity incentive program is funded with 10 million 1INCH from the 1inch Foundation and 500,000 USDC from the DAO, distributed through Merkl.

Lido launches Curated Module v2, initiating a 16 billion USD validator migration

According to The Block on July 27, Lido has launched Curated Module v2 (CMv2), initiating the largest core protocol upgrade since the V2 in May 2023.

Key figures: Lido will migrate over 265,000 validators from the old 0x01 withdrawal credentials to the 0x02 standard following the Ethereum Pectra upgrade. The 0x02 standard allows a single validator to hold up to 2,048 ETH (the old maximum was 32 ETH). According to The Defiant, Lido expects this merger to reduce the total number of Ethereum validators from about 880,000 to around 628,000 (a reduction of about one-third), and the number of proof messages per epoch will decrease by approximately 29%. The proportion of ETH staked on 0x02 validators will increase from around 32% to about 52%.

CMv2 also requires professional node operators to submit ETH collateral for the first time. Previously, the accountability mechanism for operators relied entirely on reputation. Under the new rules, each operator must provide a unified collateral for all their validators (held in the form of ETH, stETH, or wstETH), which can be forfeited in the case of penalties, prolonged downtime, or violations of execution layer rewards.

LDO holders approved this upgrade in on-chain vote #203 from July 15 to 18, with the contract deployed to the mainnet on July 7 following audits by Certora, Statemind, MixBytes, and Composable Security.

Kaito launches Katalyst, officially implementing cooperation with X data

According to Crypto Economy on July 29, Kaito AI launched Kaito Katalyst, an incentive platform focused on creator marketing. Project parties can pay based on the actual conversion effects generated by creators (including mindshare, clicks, registrations, deposits, and in-app activities), relying on Brevis's zero-knowledge proof validation technology and cooperation with X data.

Context is crucial for understanding this news. In January 2026, X tightened its API policy, directly leading to Kaito being forced to shut down its "Yap-to-Earn" rewards program, causing the KAITO token to drop by 17% on that day. According to Crypto Briefing, Kaito subsequently signed a formal data agreement with X, restoring official direct access to X's data streams. Katalyst is the first productized landing of this partnership.

The KAITO token increased by approximately 120% in July, rising from below 0.50 USD at the beginning of the month to a peak around 1.30 USD. Its market capitalization is about 300 million USD, with over 415,000 holders.

Other noteworthy developments

GRVT completed its token issuance. The decentralized derivatives exchange GRVT officially issued its native token, GRVT. The registration for the previously reported airdrop ended on July 27, and the selection window for the Multiplier Plan closed on July 17. 28% of the token supply is allocated for community airdrops.

Injective launches Injective Mint. According to Injective officials, Injective Mint is an institutional-grade RWA issuance platform that allows for the creation and management of institutional-level physical asset tokens on the Injective chain. The release came shortly after the July 16 Injective Washington summit.

Ethereum Foundation board changes. Pavel Caversaccio, co-founder of SEAL 911, has joined the Ethereum Foundation board. SEAL 911 is a white-hat security response team, and Caversaccio is also a well-known developer in the field of Solidity security audits.

Fluid launches Fluid Liquidity as a Service. A new product to help asset issuers guide liquidity on-chain.

Zama launches Confidential RFQ. An on-chain trading mechanism based on fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) that allows trading parties to match without revealing trade size and asset type.

Altura claims user funds redeemed are frozen by the bank. Specific details are pending further disclosure.

Variational receives support from the Arbitrum Foundation, for expanding security auditing and subsidizing gas costs.

fxyz launches, a native trading agent for Hyperliquid and Lighter.