Relying on the user and asset entry of Kraken, Ink has formed a DeFi ecosystem centered on lending and perpetual trading.

Written by: angelilu, Foresight News

The "American Institutional Chain" is becoming an important force in the new round of public chain competition. Recently, the Robinhood Chain and Circle's Arc have attracted attention, backed by brokerage firms and stablecoin issuers respectively. These public chains start with users, funding access, or mature financial products, and how they bring existing businesses onto the chain has become their common competitive direction. In this wave, the Ink ecosystem launched by the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is also worth noting.

The Ink mainnet was launched on December 18, 2024, built on the OP Stack and using ETH to pay Gas fees. Kraken disclosed in July 2025 plans to integrate the INK token and Ink protocol into its core products, and the token issuance has become one of the reasons the ecosystem remains in the spotlight. Recently, Kraken has been quite active, first launching the HYPE wrapped token kHYPE on the Ink network, and planning to deploy a perpetual contract market based on Hyperliquid for U.S. users.

Leveraging Kraken's exchange entry and the OP Stack's Superchain infrastructure, Ink has chosen to enter through DeFi. As of September 22, 2026, Ink's DeFi total locked value is approximately $211 million, with a stablecoin market value of about $173 million. Currently, its ecosystem covers lending, perpetual trading, token issuance, and tokenized assets. The following is a review of active projects in the Ink ecosystem.

Lending and DEX

Tydro: The largest lending market in the Ink ecosystem

Tydro is the largest lending protocol currently in Ink, which establishes a non-custodial lending market based on the Aave V3 architecture. Users can deposit assets to earn interest or collateralize assets to borrow stablecoins or other tokens.

According to DefiLlama data, Tydro currently has a TVL of $141 million, and over the past 30 days, its TVL has increased by about 124%, generating approximately $193,100 in fees and $20,900 in protocol revenue.

Tydro attracts users to deposit and borrow assets through the "Tydro Ink Points" points program. The second season launched on September 9 further introduced a bonus mechanism, providing up to a 50% points weight increase based on user’s early participation records, lending history, and kBTC holdings, allowing eligible users to earn a higher share in the same reward pool.

Nado: Spot and perpetual contract DEX

Nado integrates spot trading, perpetual contracts, and money markets into a unified margin account, and uses an off-chain sequencer for high-speed matching, with Ink responsible for on-chain settlement. Its NLP vault provides liquidity to the market, enabling traders to manage collateral and positions across different markets within the same account.

Nado currently has a TVL of $54.37 million, growing about 4.7% over the past 30 days. Although its fund scale is smaller than Tydro, its trading activity is a more prominent feature: during the same period, the perpetual contract trading volume reached $8.668 billion, generating approximately $1.54 million in fees and $876,900 in protocol income. Currently, the platform has an open contract value of about $45.03 million, with a liquidation volume of about $14.95 million over the past 30 days. In contrast, its spot trading volume in the past 30 days was only $13.12 million, with perpetual contracts constituting the main trading business of Nado.

In terms of user incentives, Nado also encourages user participation through platform points, benefits from the official NFT "Templars of the Storm," xPoints bonuses, and trading competition rewards.

Surrounding the trading needs of Nado, the ecosystem has also seen the emergence of tools providing different operating methods and auxiliary functions:

Nadobro focuses on executing trades via text commands and offers copy trading and strategy execution functions;

Trade offers grid trading, copy trading, and wallet analysis. They extend Nado's trading services to more use cases, providing users an alternative outside the official interface.

https://x.com/TemplarsTrade

Yield Vaults and Strategies

Veda and Sentora: The infrastructure for Kraken DeFi Earn

Veda is a multi-chain yield vault infrastructure evolved from the Ethereum ecosystem, currently with a total TVL of approximately $1.929 billion, covering 13 chains, of which the TVL attributable to Ink is about $896 million (Veda's vault scale involves cross-chain strategy allocation, different from the statistics of Ink's chain-level DeFi TVL), accounting for 46.5%, making Ink its largest deployment network.

Its development within Ink is closely related to Kraken's cooperation: in January 2026, the two parties collaborated to launch a DeFi Earn covering Ethereum and Ink. Users selecting yield products within Kraken can deposit funds into Veda vaults and participate in on-chain yield strategies.

Sentora undertakes the strategy design and risk management of these vaults. In Kraken DeFi Earn, Kraken provides the user entry, Veda provides the vault infrastructure, and Sentora is responsible for selecting underlying protocols, allocating funds, and monitoring risks, with strategies covering lending, liquidity provision, and other directions. According to Sentora's disclosures, as of July 2026, the balances of the four Kraken yield vaults it managed exceeded $600 million, with over 80,000 active deposit users covering stablecoin and Bitcoin products.

For Ink, this provides a direct path to engage exchange users: users can access on-chain yield products via the familiar Kraken interface without having to select and operate underlying protocols individually.

Launchpad and Trading Center

InkyPump and InkySwap

InkyLabs has developed a token issuance platform called InkyPump and trading product InkySwap around Ink, both sharing infrastructure. The former allows creators to raise ETH through joint curves, and upon meeting the fundraising conditions, migrates token liquidity to Uniswap V4 pools; the latter offers a wider range of asset trading, covering not only the tokens issued by InkyPump.

DefiLlama shows InkySwap currently has a TVL of approximately $981,900, growing about 64.9% over the past 30 days, with 362 active addresses in the past 24 hours. Compared to Tydro and Nado, this is still a small market, but several tokens recognizable by the Ink community have emerged:

• ANITA is currently one of the largest native trading assets on InkySwap. Its ANITA/WETH pool has a market value of about $1.77 million, with liquidity of approximately $142,900.
• BEAST is a concept token of the Kraken mascot, with a market value of about $1.41 million and primary pool liquidity of about $106,400.
• BERT comes directly from InkyPump, developing applications around the early community culture of Ink such as engravings, NFTs, and Telegram tools; its main trading pool has a market value of approximately $159,900, with liquidity of around $36,500.

Additionally, tokens like PURPLE, KRAKMASK, DOG, AK47, and SHROOMY make up the long-tail market for InkySwap. Most of these still belong to community meme assets, with individual pool liquidity ranging from tens of thousands to over a hundred thousand dollars. InkyPump has now added a token issuance option priced in xStocks, allowing creators to choose to establish issuance curves using ETH or authorized tokenized stock assets. This has shifted its positioning from the Ink version of Pump.fun to a issuing market that intersects memes and tokenized stocks.

Although InkyPump is originally a token issuance protocol native to the Ink ecosystem, it has also expanded to support the Robinhood Chain.

Tsunami and Calamari

Launched in September, Ink's Tsunami uses a joint curve issuance model. Once the tokens reach graduation conditions on the curve, the raised funds will migrate to Calamari's V4 liquidity pool. Once the fundraising completes on the curve, liquidity will migrate to Calamari's Uniswap V4 pool, thus its TVL only counts assets that remain on the issuance curve (approximately $44,100), and graduated projects will not continue to be included, but the cumulative trading volume of assets after launch has reached about $3.86 million, generating approximately $2,943 in fees and $2,131 in protocol income over the past 30 days.

Calamari adopts a framework similar to Uniswap V4, extending liquidity pool functions through Hooks; according to DefiLlama data, its TVL is approximately $167,700, with about $11,200 in trading volume in the past 24 hours.

Tsunami has been launched for a short time and has not yet formed head assets representing the platform like ANITA, BEAST, and BERT.

Hookit: A token issuance platform supporting composable trading mechanisms

Hookit is a token issuance platform on Ink built on Uniswap V4 Hooks, providing both direct pool creation and joint curve issuance methods. The former synchronously establishes a trading pool when creating the token, while the latter migrates to Uniswap V4 after raising approximately 4.2 ETH worth of assets. Creators can combine mechanisms such as counter-sabotage, automatic destruction, and liquidity replenishment, and choose ETH, USDG, or Quotrons wrapped stock assets to establish trading pairs.

Hookit has issued the token HKT. HKT is a platform protocol token, and according to project documentation, 10% of the 1% basic transaction fee is used to purchase issued tokens in the corresponding pool, which are then distributed to HKT holders according to their weight; a portion of the protocol revenue is also used to buy back and destroy HKT. The platform page has displayed projects such as HKT, Hook Me Up, and Anchor. As of the time of publication, HKT's FDV is approximately $738,000, and the platform is still in a phase driven by interest in its native tokens.

Otomate: A meme launcher and NFT minting tool

Otomate provides meme token issuance and matching NFT creation tools through otomate.fun. Creators can issue their own tokens and configure a companion NFT series for the project, which the platform calls "Companion NFT." Tokens first trade via a joint curve and, upon meeting the graduation conditions, enter the liquidity pool; after the companion series is open for minting, users can destroy the project's tokens to mint NFTs and participate in fee rewards according to project rules. Otomate also has a platform token OTO, with an FDV of approximately $6.9 million at the time of publication; part of the transaction fees is used for buybacks and destruction of OTO according to the rules.

In terms of trading tools, Otomate.trade integrates spot, perpetual contracts, strategies, and portfolio management on the same interface and provides an AI assistant called oTo to help users understand market events, filter copy traders, and generate trading plans. The platform also provides access to services connecting ChatGPT, Claude, and Telegram, supporting users in obtaining market information and assisting trading decisions through conversations.

Sentry: A token issuance platform supporting tokenized stock pairs

Sentry is a token issuance platform deployed on Ink and Robinhood Chain, supporting one-click token creation and trading pool establishment, allowing creators to earn part of the trading fees. In addition to WETH, the platform also supports tokenized stocks as pairing assets, connecting token issuance with the on-chain liquidity of stock-like assets.

RWA and Tokenization

Mavrk: Infrastructure for tokenized equity issuance

Mavrk attempts to bring corporate equity issuance to Ink, building tools around issuance limits, fund management, shareholder governance, and investor access. Compared to platforms mainly serving community token issuance, it targets on-chain circulation of corporate financing and equity, and is currently still building a compliance framework without opening up equity issuance.

InkBrokers: Combining NFT accounts with tokenized asset trading

InkBrokers integrates tokenized asset trading with the NFT account system, providing users with a trading entry and organizing the related rights of NFT holders through token binding accounts. NFTs here are not only collectibles but also serve as a tool carrying the account and transaction fee distribution mechanism. InkBrokers NFTs total 4,444, with a current floor price of approximately $15.

SuperSwap Ink: A multichain trading aggregation entry for tokenized assets

SuperSwap started as a DEX aggregator from Ink and has gradually expanded into a multichain trading entry for tokenized assets. Its product positioning is to integrate different issuers, networks, and liquidity sources into the same interface, facilitating users in discovering and exchanging tokenized stocks, ETFs, commodities, and crypto assets. Supported assets include xStocks, Ondo, Paxos, etc., covering networks like Ink, Ethereum, Base, etc.

From the usage scale, according to DefiLlama page data, SuperSwap has recorded a cumulative DEX aggregated trading volume of approximately $35.12 million, with about $273,900 in the past 30 days, and cross-chain aggregated trading volume of about $123,800 during the same period. Its fees in the past 30 days were about $785, of which Ink contributed about $534, accounting for about 68%, still its main business network.

NFT

Templars of the Storm: An NFT series around the Nado ecosystem

Templars of the Storm is the official NFT series of Nado, deployed on Ink, with a total of 1,200 pieces, themed around knights in a stormy world, combining collectibles with Nado's community identity and ecological rights. Compared to standalone avatar projects, it has a closer link to on-chain trading applications, and the series introduction connects the expansion of holder usage to the development of Nado.

An earlier page snapshot from OpenSea shows that this series has an accumulated transaction volume of approximately $2.4 million, with around 819 unique holders.

Rekt Ink: An NFT project integrating animated characters and ecological tools

Rekt Ink consists of 4,444 animated NFTs, with plans to further develop NFT tools and DeFi products and propose future issuance of the REKT token. OpenSea page snapshots show that this series has an accumulated transaction volume of approximately $171,000, with about 1,015 holders; as of the snapshot on September 22, its floor price is around $54.48.

Shellies: An NFT project combining staking points and gaming interactions

Shellies has established a points and lottery system around 2,222 NFTs, allowing users to earn Shellies Points (SP) by holding, staking NFTs, and participating in mini-games, with points used for lottery entries to win NFTs and other prizes. Its floor price is around $10.40. Compared to simple avatar collectibles, Shellies emphasizes maintaining community through ongoing participation mechanisms.

Onchain InkPunks: A pixel punk NFT series on Ink

Among avatar collectibles, Onchain InkPunks is a series consisting of 10,000 pixel avatars on the Ink chain, with a floor price of approximately $5.46, having increased by 90.8% in the past 24 hours.

Wallet and Cross-chain Entry

Kraken Wallet

In terms of wallets, Kraken Wallet has natively supported Ink, allowing users to directly manage on-chain assets and connect to ecological applications. Kraken's previously launched Beholder was positioned as a multi-chain self-custody wallet supporting gas-free operations, integrating asset management, trading, and yield entry; its official website has now transitioned to Kraken Wallet. Kraken Wallet supports networks such as Ethereum, Solana, Base, etc.

In addition to Kraken's own products, Rainbow has also natively supported Ink, while MetaMask users can access Ink by adding the Ink network. For users who already use these multi-chain wallets, participation in the Ink ecosystem does not require the establishment of a dedicated wallet.

The cross-chain funding entry into Ink has become quite comprehensive, with the Bridge page of Ink's official website listing cross-chain routes, and users can transfer assets via tools like Across, Bungee, Superbridge, and Brid.gg. Users who already have assets stored in Kraken can also withdraw using coin types that support the Ink network to enter the ecosystem, with regular transaction fees paid in ETH.

CAT ON INK: Expanding from AI Agent to cross-chain entry

CAT ON INK (formerly Cat Call Agent), early themed around a cat image and AI agent, has now extended its product direction to a cross-chain aggregation entry for Ink. Users can select the source network, assets, and target chain to query cross-chain transfer routes. The official site lists supported networks including Ethereum, Base, Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, BNB Chain, and Solana.

CAT ON INK has issued the token CAT, with a market value of about $1.8 million at the time of publication. The platform has also set up cross-chain earning point activities: according to page rules, eligible assets generating $1 in cross-chain amount can accumulate 1 point, involving ETH, WETH, USDT, USDC, USDG, and CAT.

Summary and Observation

In addition to the key projects introduced earlier, multi-chain DeFi protocols such as Uniswap, Velodrome, Curve, 0x, and YieldNest have also accessed Ink, supplementing the trading and yield services of the ecosystem. According to DefiLlama's single-chain data at the time of this article's statistics, the TVL of Uniswap and Velodrome on Ink is approximately $8.32 million and $7.63 million respectively, making them important components of the ecosystem's spot liquidity.

Compared to Ethereum L2s like Base, Arbitrum, and OP Mainnet, Ink's fund scale is still relatively small: its DeFi TVL is about 46% of OP Mainnet's, and there is a significant gap with Base and Arbitrum, where their TVLs are approximately 28.5 times and 6.8 times that of Ink, respectively.

However, the differences between various businesses are more worth attention. Ink's daily DEX trading volume is approximately $2.73 million, only about 6% of OP Mainnet's and less than 1% of Arbitrum's; however, the daily trading volume of perpetual contracts on Ink reaches approximately $498 million, exceeding Base's $330 million, roughly equivalent to about 15% of Arbitrum. This indicates that Ink has formed a certain scale of derivative trading activities, but the activity level of the spot market still needs improvement.

Kraken continues to introduce external assets, providing another path for ecological expansion. Launched on September 8, kHYPE is backed by equal amounts of HYPE held in custody by Kraken and issued on a 1:1 reserve basis, initially opened on Ink, enabling HYPE to enter Ink's lending, trading, and yield applications. Similar to kBTC that entered Tydro previously, kHYPE demonstrates Kraken's ability to convert exchange-custodied assets into on-chain usable assets.

In terms of RWA, according to the statistical caliber of this article, Ink's active asset scale is approximately $22.29 million, of which ACRED is approximately $11.1 million, accounting for nearly half. ACRED is a tokenized connection fund launched in collaboration between Securitize and Apollo, providing qualified investors an entry into on-chain credit investment by investing in the Apollo Diversified Credit Fund.

Ink's appeal lies in Kraken's ability to gradually guide users, custodied assets, and product distribution capabilities towards the on-chain. Currently, Tydro and Nado have formed lending and trading centers, and whether other applications can accommodate these funds and users will determine if the ecosystem can further expand. Whether the activity of perpetual trading can drive the spot market, and whether kHYPE, ACRED, and xStocks can gain more collateral, trading, and yield use cases are more indicative of the quality of ecosystem development than an increase in the number of applications.

Therefore, the expectations around the issuance of INK can attract attention, but evaluating the value of early participation ultimately must return to considerations beyond incentives: whether users are willing to continue using the product, whether funds can flow among different applications, and whether Kraken's brought assets can be transformed into long-term on-chain demand.