Ethereum Hits $15b RWA Market
The market cap of tokenized Real-World Assets (RWAs) on Ethereum mainnet surpassed $15 billion, representing a nearly 200% YOY increase.
Ethereum hits $15b in RWAs.
Stani supports Abundance Assets.
EF sponsors PolyU scholarships.
Harvard endowment adds ETH.
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Listen to this episode from Ethereum News on Spotify. Ethereum's RWA marketcap hits $15 billion. Stani Kulechov proposes that Aave support abundance assets. The Ethereum Foundation Partners with PolyU. And Harvard's endowment adds ETH exposure. Read more: https://ethdaily.io/884 Earn 10% real yield on your dollars, fully onchain.
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The market cap of tokenized Real-World Assets (RWAs) on Ethereum mainnet has surpassed $15 billion, making Ethereum the leading blockchain by distributed RWA value. The value represents a nearly 200% year-over-year increase. Ethereum currently hosts 661 distinct RWA tokens with around 173,000 holders. U.S. Treasuries account for $5.3 billion of RWAs, followed by commodities at $5.1 billion and private credit at $2.4 billion. The Ethereum mainnet stablecoin market cap has also grown to over $164 billion. Ethereum dominance in tokenized finance captures roughly 59% of the total onchain RWA value across all chains.
Aave founder Stani Kulechov proposed that Aave should support abundance assets by tokenizing real-world infrastructure, such as solar and other clean energy projects, and supporting them as collateral on the protocol. Abundance assets are technologies that drive costs down, expand productive capacity, resist inflation, and generate positive economic feedback loops. Kulechov argues that bringing the asset class onchain through DeFi can help solve structural capital allocation problems in global finance. In his view, DeFi has already solved the supply side of capital by aggregating global liquidity. He believes tokenizing solar would create new borrowing demand, absorb stablecoin liquidity, and connect DeFi directly to productive economic activity.
The Ethereum Foundation is partnering with the Research Centre for Blockchain Technology (RCBT) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), providing scholarships for MSc in Blockchain Technology, MSc in Cybersecurity, and PhD students pursuing blockchain research. The Foundation emphasized that universities play a key role in Ethereum's long-term public good. The collaboration aims to establish a commitment to academic excellence, talent development, and a secure Web3 ecosystem. The Ethereum Foundation and PolyU will also co-host events, including the Ethereum Hong Kong Meetup at Consensus 2026.
Harvard Management Company, which oversees Harvard University's $50 billion endowment, has initiated its first Ethereum investment by acquiring 3.87 million shares of BlackRock's iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA), valued at $86.8 million, according to recent 13F filings. As of Q4 2025, the endowment's total cryptocurrency exposure through spot ETFs is approximately $352 million.
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Tomasz Stańczak Steps Down From EF
Bastian Aue will assume the role of Interim co-Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation. Stańczak will continue building on Ethereum.
Tomasz steps from EF.
Peer releases onramp extension.
EIPT builds private bonds on Aztec.
TheDAO publishes a gov proposal.
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Listen to this episode from Ethereum News on Spotify. Tomasz Stańczak stepped down as co-ED from the EF. Peer releases its embedded crypto onramp extension. The Ethereum Institutional Privacy Taskforce builds private bonds on Aztec. And TheDAO publishes a governance proposal. Read more: https://ethdaily.io/883 Sponsor: Arkiv is an Ethereum-aligned data layer for Web3.
](https://open.spotify.com/episode/12fzwpLDZETupEYJsWIGro)
EarnUSD is a stablecoin vault by Lido for earning transparent, onchain USD-denominated rewards. Get started today at stake.lido.fi/earn
Tomasz Stańczak, co-Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation and CEO of Nethermind, is stepping down from his role at the Ethereum Foundation at the end of February 2026. He will continue building on Ethereum ecosystem, beginning a new project on March 1st. Bastian Aue will assume the role of Interim co-Executive Director alongside Hsiao-Wei Wang. Aue has been a core member of the Ethereum Foundation's executive management team since 2019. In his announcement, Stańczak emphasized Ethereum's growing role as foundational infrastructure for global financial systems, AI-driven agentic economies, robotics, governance innovation, and emerging tech. Stańczak also stated his departure was not due to internal conflict.
Peer, a ZK-powered crypto-to-fiat bridge, released the Peer browser extension, enabling developers to embed a fiat-to-crypto onramp directly into their applications using the ZKP2P SDK. Through a simple SDK call, the Peer extension opens a side-panel flow that allows users to purchase crypto without leaving the dapp. Peer supports fiat payments from Venmo, Revolut, Wise, Cash App, and other platforms, enabling users to receive onchain assets like USDC, ETH, SOL, and USDT across 20+ chain. Transactions are gasless, require no redirects or centralized exchanges, and do not require additional verification beyond the connected payment platform.
The Ethereum Institutional Privacy Taskforce redeveloped its private zero-coupon bond prototype on Aztec, reducing the architecture from three separate components into a single ~200-line Noir contract. By leveraging Aztec's privacy-first L2, the rebuild provides a single contract instead of multiple codebases, an encrypted mempool, authentication witnesses for atomic swaps, composability with other private contracts, and a larger anonymity set. The proof-of-concept aims to showcase confidential, compliant bond trading on Ethereum.
The DAO, the infamous 2016 Ethereum crowdfunding experiment now evolved into the TheDAO Security Fund, has published its first governance proposal in nearly a decade. DAO token holders are asked to vote on three proposals that would authorize the Security Fund to: recover any DAO tokens mistakenly sent to TheDAO contract, and retrieve 49 SAI and 1.8777 DGD from the TheDAO contract. Voting is open for the next three days and will close on Monday, February 17, 2026, at 7 UTC.
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Disclaimer: Content is for informational purposes only, not endorsement or investment advice. The accuracy of information is not guaranteed.
Aave Will Win Framework
A strategic overhaul aiming to scale Aave and align the ecosystem around an AAVE-centric model.
Aave Will Win Framework proposal.
Optimism partners with Succinct.
CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee.
ETH staking queue hits ATH.
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Listen to this episode from Ethereum News on Spotify. Aave Labs proposes the Aave Will Win Framework. Optimism partners with Succinct to bring ZK to the OP Stack. And the CFTC forms the Innovation Advisory Committee (IAC). Read more: https://ethdaily.io/882 Sponsor: Arkiv is an Ethereum-aligned data layer for Web3.
](https://open.spotify.com/episode/67RbpePtPtjAn2nRIDf8T0)
EarnUSD is a stablecoin vault by Lido for earning transparent, onchain USD-denominated rewards. Get started today at stake.lido.fi/earn
Aave Labs proposed the Aave Will Win Framework, a strategic overhaul aiming to align the ecosystem around a token-centric model and scale Aave. The proposal asks the DAO to approve four core elements. The first is directing 100% of revenue from Aave-branded products to the DAO treasury. The second is ratifying Aave V4 as the protocol's primary technical foundation. The third is establishing a formal structure to govern and protect the Aave brand. And the fourth is funding Aave Labs with $25 million in stablecoins and 75,000 AAVE to execute at scale. The proposed initiatives aim to grow the DAO's revenue from the product layer and the protocol layer through Aave V4. The proposal is currently in the Temp Check phase and open for community discussion.
Optimism partnered with Succinct as its preferred zero-knowledge (ZK) proving provider for the OP Stack. Succinct will introduce canonical ZK validity proofs to the OP Stack, beginning with OP Mainnet. Succinct's proving system already secures more than $4 billion in TVL. By replacing the traditional 7-day fraud-proof challenge period used in optimistic rollups, the integration enables near real-time withdrawals, faster finality, and improved capital efficiency. Existing OP Stack chains will be able to seamlessly upgrade to validity proofs as part of Optimism's broader shift toward ZK-native infrastructure.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) launched a new Innovation Advisory Committee (IAC) under the leadership of Michael S. Selig. The group brings together top figures from crypto, traditional finance, and market infrastructure to help the agency update its regulatory framework and stay aligned with fast-moving innovations such as DeFi, blockchain, and artificial intelligence. Among the members are Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, Hayden Adams of Uniswap Labs, and Tyler Winklevoss of Gemini.
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Disclaimer: Content is for informational purposes only, not endorsement or investment advice. The accuracy of information is not guaranteed.