Happy Monday, August 24, 2026.

Coinbase launches Tokenized Stocks on Base. FWA kicks off its first FWAir NFT launch. VaultsFYI releases a DeFi Vault Curation Report. And Mislav Javor joins Ethlabs.

Coinbase launched Coinbase Tokenized Stocks, equity stock shares minted natively on Base, now live for non-U.S. users. Dividends and stock splits are handled onchain using a multiplier mechanism that adjusts the redemption ratio without changing token balances, allowing it to be composable across the DeFi ecosystem. According to Coinbase, holders have a direct claim on the underlying share.

Tokenized stocks are built on B20, a Base-native extension of ERC-20. While the tokens are permissionless and can be transferred, only approved market makers can handle minting and redemption of the underlying shares. Coinbase Tokenized Stocks are available to non-US persons and can be accessed directly Base App. Launch partners include Chainlink for price feeds, Aerodrome for liquidity, and Aave for borrowing against Tokenized Stock collateral.

Fake World Assets (FWA), an NFT gatcha protocol on Ethereum, launched FWAir, its new NFT distribution mechanic, with a 111 piece PFP collection. Eligible users mint an NFT by backing it with 0.25 ETH. Both the NFT and the ETH backing get deposited into FWA's shared liquidity pool. From there, anyone can buy an entry for a shot at pulling the NFT. Winners choose between the NFT or the ETH backing. If they take the NFT, the original minter loses it but gets their ETH refunded. Minters also earn FWA token emissions.

The launch drew over 8,700 purchases of about 0.09 ETH each. Nearly every user who pulled the FWAir PFP NFT selected the NFT rather than the ETH, as prices on secondary markets ran between 1.5 and 3 ETH. FWA became the top gas consuming protocol on Ethereum, burning north of $100,000 in ETH in the process.

One side effect of the mint frenzy was that pool supply briefly dropped to roughly 400 NFTs, which pushed up the odds of pulling a rarer, higher value piece. This happened because each pulled NFT sits outside the pool for a short window while the winner decides between the NFT or the ETH. Once those windows closed, the pool supply snapped back above 1,000. TokenWorks, the team behind FWA, said PFP NFTs holders will be able to stake their NFTs for early access to deploying custom user pools.

Vaults.fyi released a market-wide analysis of curated DeFi vaults, covering 856 vaults across 131 curators and 18 protocols. The report found that curated vaults gained significant market share in the past year despite a broader contraction in the supply-side DeFi market. The market share of curated vault TVL grew from 5.24% to 12.51%, totaling $11.29 billion. Just five curators, Steakhouse Financial, Sentora, Gauntlet, Concrete, and Nonce Capiral manage 69% of curated vault TVL.

Across the 25 largest Morpho stablecoin vaults, three markets hold 52% of the $3.63 billion mapped capital. Across 788 covered vaults analyzed, the top 10 addresses control 74% of vault shares on a TVL-weighted basis. A sizable redemption can drain liquidity across multiple vaults that share the same underlying markets. The report notes a need for curated vaults to be underwritten as a chain of dependencies, such as collateral, counterparty, and redemption risks, rather than selected by APY alone.

Mislav Javor, a two-time Ethereum founder and co-author of one of the earliest guides on EVM development, has joined Ethlabs. Javor has been building on Ethereum since 2016, with a background spanning accounts, interoperability, and product. At Ethlabs, his focus will be on platform-oriented work that closes the gap between Ethereum's world-class research and what builders can actually ship and users can feel today.

In other news, Binji publishes the Ethlabs Week 9 update. Mike Neuder distills ePBS. Lion proposes to remove the sync committee. Bitmine buys 32k more ETH. And WalletConnect supports EIP-8130

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