· 3 min read

Yield Week In Review: August 15th, 2025

Yield Week In Review: August 15th, 2025

Your overview of weekly DeFi and staking yields, all in one place.

Stablecoin markets saw a boost this week as fresh liquidity flowed into leading DeFi protocols, attributed to increased regulatory clarity. Coinbase revived its long-dormant Stablecoin Bootstrap Fund, injecting USDC and EURC liquidity into protocols like Aave, Morpho, Kamino, and Jupiter signaling renewed institutional focus on deepening yield markets and improving stablecoin stability onchain.

Yield Updates: Liquid Staking, Stablecoins, LPs, and More

Stablecoin lending rates on Morpho and Euler remain strong, with Ethena USDe offering some of the highest yields in DeFi. Ethereum liquid staking has held steady just below 3%, while POL and ATOM staking are currently in the double-digits.

DeFi Vaults:

Lending Markets:

Liquid Staking & Restaking:

Native Staking

Governance and Ecosystem Developments

Morpho vault update (performance fee rollout): On August 11, 2025, Morpho announced a 25% performance fee on its Base Steakhouse USDC and Smokehouse USDC vaults, in alignment with a pending institutional partnership. The role of guardian is also set to transfer to the partner, with veto rights retained by vault holders. Source

Coinbase to boost stablecoins in DeFi: Coinbase announced the revival of its Stablecoin Bootstrap Fund (originally from 2019), deploying liquidity in USDC and EURC to DeFi platforms like Aave, Morpho, Kamino, and Jupiter. Source

Aave V3 Governance proposals for onboarding new assets: A Direct-to-AIP” proposal was submitted to onboard rsETH (Kelp DAO’s liquid staking token) to the Aave V3 Sonic instance. Source

Compound Governance proposals for a new collateral assets: Two proposals were filed to add rsETH as collateral in Compound V3’s USDC market on Ethereum and rsETH as collateral in Compound V3’s WETH market on Unichain. Source

Spark Protocol Governance poll curator fee: Spark DAO held a governance poll to implement a 10% performance (curator) fee on their Morpho USDS vault. This step would, upon executive action, introduce a fee that boosts DAO revenue. Source

Morpho has introduced MIP Spark USDC Deposit Rewards 3: Morpho’s proposal to extend 50% of the standard MORPHO reward rate for Spark’s USDC deposits was approved, streaming more rewards to sUSDC for the next six months. Source

Morpho introduced Morpho Vaults on Arbitrum: Morpho Arbitrum vaults are curated by partners like Steakhouse Financial, Gauntlet, MEV Capital, and Yearn. These vaults support major assets USDC/USDT to assets like ETH letting users earn from Morpho’s lending optimizations. Source

Spark Overdrive Program Concludes: Spark announced the end of its “Overdrive” rewards program on August 11th. This signaled the close of a high-yield incentive period for Spark Lend. The update also noted that Spark’s governance token SPK distribution was imminent for participants. Source

Gearbox Protocol BTC Looping Integration: Gearbox highlighted a new integration with Hemi. This collaboration enables BTC-backed looping yield strategies on Gearbox. This gave Gearbox users a way to deploy BTC as collateral in automated yield vaults managed by Hemi. Source

JustLend New Stablecoin Support: Tron DAO (JustLend) passed a proposal to add jUSD  stablecoin support to JustLend. This comes as Tron sunsets its old USDJ stablecoin by the end of August. Source

Validator Updates 

This week brought a mix of growth milestones, strategic partnerships, and network exits across the validator landscape.

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