No. 6Monday, 26 October 20266 min read

Aero relaunched on seven chains and its fee take fell 21%

Six of the seven chains earned $27,535 between them yesterday; Base earned $219,389.

BTC $80,320 +0.1%ETH $2,327 +0.1%SOL $101.31 +0.7%XRP $1.29 -0.2%

Good morning. Bitcoin is $80,320, flat on the day and down 4.4% on the month, and the week carries three central-bank decisions and $10.9bn of bitcoin options expiring on Friday. What it costs to hold risk into that is the thing to watch: the 30 October future pays 9.09% annualised, the December one 5.54%.

The tape

24-hour change: DOOD +72.1%, OSMO +20.0%, QNT +16.0%, ENA +8.7%, ZEC +3.6%, SOL +0.7%, ETH +0.1%, BTC +0.1%, T -28.6%, Q -31.2% — Five names moved more than 15%; the majors moved less than a point. As of 10:27 UTC, 26 Oct 2026.

Bitcoin (BTC) $80,320, +0.1% on the day and -4.4% over 30 days. Ether (ETH) $2,327, +0.1% and -13.2%. Solana (SOL) $101.31, +0.7% and -15.8%. XRP $1.29, -0.2% and -16.6%. The market is $2.68tn, -2.4% in 24 hours; bitcoin's share 60.1%.

Doodles (DOOD), the token of an NFT art brand, rose 72.1% on $140.1m of volume against a $19.4m market value. Quant (QNT), which sells banks software for plugging their systems into blockchains, added 16.0% and is +102.7% over 30 days, the best month in the top 50. Quack AI (Q), an on-chain governance tool, fell 31.2%; Threshold Network (T), which runs the tBTC bitcoin bridge, fell 28.6%, handing back Friday's 47.7%. Privacy led the week at +3.5% cap-weighted, one of two sectors of eleven that rose; lending fell 9.6%.

Where to look

Six things today, in order: Friday's expiry, Wednesday's Federal Reserve decision, the basis hump, retail levered long, dollars leaving, three collateral votes.

Deribit 30-day implied volatility, 91 days: bitcoin 38.07 against 34.92 a month ago, ether 53.21 against 49.02 — Both have risen into Wednesday's decision; ether options cost 1.40 times bitcoin's. As of 10:08 UTC, 26 Oct 2026.

01
$10.92bn of bitcoin options expire on 30 October, 35.1% of every bitcoin contract open.
The book at the options venue Deribit holds 87,603 calls against 48,266 puts, a put/call ratio of 0.551, and the Federal Reserve decides on 28 October with the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan in the same week. Implied volatility is 38.07 on bitcoin against 34.92 a month ago.
WatchA close above 40, last seen on 10 September.
02
The 30 October bitcoin future trades 0.097% above spot, 9.09% annualised, against 5.54% on 25 December and 5.38% on 26 March.
The three-month Treasury bill paid 4.22% on 23 October, so the expiry week pays 487bp over cash and December 132bp.
WatchThe 30 October rate back under 6%.
03
Retail accounts on OKX are 2.18 to one long bitcoin, a 30-day high, up from 1.60 a week ago.
Dogecoin (DOGE) is 4.67 to one, XRP 3.58, Solana 2.88, the perpetual-futures exchange Hyperliquid (HYPE) 2.59, ether 2.48, behind $2.51bn of bitcoin open interest.
WatchThe ratio above 2.20 with price under $80,000.
04
Spot bitcoin funds sold $773.4m across 22 and 23 October and the week still closed $304.7m positive.

The deep dive

Aero, the trading venue created on 22 October when Aerodrome and Velodrome merged, now keeps $575 of every $1m traded, against $731 in the three comparable windows before the merger. Three-quarters of its volume has moved onto the new seven-chain contracts, and the price it charges for that volume has fallen by a fifth.

Aero fees by chain in 24 hours: Base $219,389, Robinhood Chain $10,729, Ethereum $9,836, OP Mainnet $3,429, Arbitrum $1,900, Arc $1,133, Ink $503 — Base, the original home, earned 88.8% of the fees. As of 10:08 UTC, 26 Oct 2026.

We divided daily fees by the combined daily volume of both deployments: the Base-only Slipstream it ran before, and the new one live on Base, Ethereum, OP Mainnet, Arbitrum, Arc, Ink and Robinhood Chain. Across the four full days since launch it took $275,070 of fees a day on $478.3m of volume. Across the three previous Thursday-to-Sunday windows it took $341,615, $367,583 and $349,835.

Four days is short and two are a weekend, when trading thins, so we matched the weekdays. Combined volume of $478.3m a day sits inside the range of those three windows, $450.3m to $505.3m, and under the $519.6m daily average of the 30 days to 21 October. Volume is normal. The take is not.

The second objection is that the fee data might not yet see the six new chains. It does, and names each: of $246,924 collected in the last 24 hours, Base produced $219,389 and the other six $27,535 between them.

What would prove this wrong: a week in which the six new chains carry more than a tenth of the fees and the take returns above $700 per $1m traded.

The news

A marketplace for tokenized Pokémon cards out-earned the largest lending protocol over 24 hours. Collector Crypt took $1,194,313 of fees in 24 hours against Aave V3's $1,114,677, and $18.56m over 30 days against $10.72m in the 30 before. Solana carried $1,178,350 of the day's total. The ninth-largest fee line in crypto yesterday sells cardboard.
Quant (QNT) is up 102.7% in 30 days after The Clearing House picked its Overledger software for tokenized bank deposits. It added 16.0% to $209.70 on $113.2m of volume and is worth $3.05bn. It remains 51.0% below its September 2021 high of $427.42, and the announcement does not say the token settles anything.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency finalised the first rule under the US stablecoin act on 21 October, setting reserve, redemption and risk standards before the 18 January 2027 start. JPMorgan put its deposit token on Ethereum the same week. The rules land on a float down $2.68bn in 30 days.
Lending tokens fell 9.6% on the week, the worst of eleven sectors. Aave (AAVE) lost 11.0%, Morpho (MORPHO) 18.2% and Compound (COMP) 10.3% in 24 hours. Aave V3 earned $7.90m of fees last week against $8.35m the week before, a 5.5% fall. The tokens are repricing far faster than the business behind them.

Token talk: Ethena (ENA)

USDe supply by chain: Ethereum $2.45bn, Plasma $608m, Base $380m, Robinhood Chain $369m, Solana $318m, everywhere else $455m — Robinhood's chain holds 8.0% of the supply, more than Solana. As of 10:08 UTC, 26 Oct 2026.

Ethena issues USDe, a dollar token backed by crypto held long against matching short positions in perpetual futures. The funding those shorts collect is the yield, paid to holders who stake into sUSDe. ENA is the governance token and earns nothing directly.

It is here because it rose 8.7% on the day and 8.5% on the week, the second-best week of the 35 tokens worth more than $2bn, while the product behind it shrank. USDe circulation is $4.58bn, down $347m in 30 days and $98m in seven. Ethereum holds $2.45bn of it, 53.5%; Plasma $608m; Robinhood's own chain $369m.

sUSDe pays 5.10% on $1.19bn, 88bp over the three-month Treasury bill. ENA is $0.2064, a $2.77bn market value with 13.41bn of a 15bn cap circulating, -25.6% over 30 days and 86.4% below its April 2024 high of $1.52.

What would change the view: USDe supply turning up would mean the yield is winning deposits. Supply falling while the token rises means it is not.

Token Tape is written by an automated research desk built and supervised by Eric Manoukian. Figures are pulled live each morning and errors are possible. Nothing here is investment advice. The editor may hold positions in assets discussed.

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