DeFi Holds Its Course as Prices Slide and Ethereum Chooses Safety Over Speed

1. The Big Picture

A tough week for prices. Mixed earnings from Tesla and Meta on 22 October revived doubts about AI spending, and DeFi tokens led the rest of the crypto market lower. By 28 October, the DeFi token category had shed about 10% of its value in seven days. That afternoon (US time), the US Federal Reserve kept interest rates in the range of 3.75% to 4.00% and said inflation "remains elevated." Bitcoin and Ether traded at about $81,100 and $2,350, respectively.

Underneath the price moves, the industry kept doing careful work. Ethereum developers paused their next upgrade on a test network to study a safety concern, Uniswap began pulling in liquidity from rival exchanges, and Moody's gave Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin an investment-grade rating.

DeFi's total value locked (TVL), the money deposited in DeFi apps, stood at about $88 billion on 27 October, down about 2.5% in seven days and equivalent to about ₹8.37 lakh crore.

TVL, DEX and stablecoin changes are DefiLlama 7-day figures as published; against our 21 October readings, DEX volume fell about 7%.

What it means: DeFi token prices took a hit, but the total value locked in DeFi apps fell a lot less. Trading slowed sharply, with DEX volume down about 12% according to DefiLlama. Stablecoins, the digital dollars that fuel DeFi, slipped only 0.66%, so the cash inside the system largely stayed put.

2. Five Stories That Shaped the Week

Ethereum pauses an upgrade to stay safe. On 22 October, Ethereum's core developers postponed the 26 October launch of the Glamsterdam upgrade on the Hoodi test network. Security firm ChainSecurity had warned that two planned gas changes could weaken protections in existing smart contracts, and it found 13 real-world contracts that could be affected. Separately, developers fixed a bug in how staking deposits would be routed after the upgrade, with no losses reported. No new date is set, and one report expects it after the Devcon conference on 3 to 6 November.

Uniswap pulls in liquidity from rivals. On 22 October, Uniswap's aggregator hooks went live on Ethereum, Base and Robinhood Chain. They let Uniswap v4 route trades through outside pools on Fluid, Curve and PancakeSwap, and trades that use outside liquidity pay protocol fees that go towards burning UNI tokens.

A regulated "first" for Hyperliquid. On 26 October, Hyperliquid said it intends to make Payward, the parent of Kraken, the first CFTC-regulated deployer of its HIP-3 markets through Payward's exchange Bitnomial. The plan still needs regulatory approval.

Ripple's stablecoin gets an investment-grade rating. On 28 October, Moody's gave Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin an A2 long-term rating and a P-1 short-term rating. It cited reserves held mostly in short-term US government assets and cash at BNY, with a 103% coverage target.

A global bank launches a retail stablecoin. HSBC started the rollout of RedCoin, a Hong Kong dollar stablecoin, to retail users of its PayMe app on 23 October. PayMe works with over 100,000 merchants, and wallet activation is being phased in.

3. Top 10 DeFi Tokens and the Most Traded

Hyperliquid's HYPE leads the DeFi category with a value of $17.29 billion, about 24% of the category's total value of $72.57 billion. The list excludes stablecoins, fund tokens, and staked or wrapped tokens.

Top 10 DeFi tokens by market value, 28 October 2026. Source: CoinGecko.

CoinGecko snapshot taken on 28 October 2026; prices moved higher later that day.

Most traded DeFi tokens by 24-hour volume, 28 October 2026. Source: CoinGecko.

Every token in the top 10 fell this week.

Price change of the top 10 DeFi tokens, 21 to 28 October 2026. Source: CoinGecko.

What it means: Aster held up best, down only 1.4%, and HYPE fell 4.5%. Aave fell 17.5% and Rain fell 23.7%. Ethena traded about 17% of its total market value in a single day, the busiest relative to its size. The most-traded list covers the 25 largest DeFi tokens.

4. Major Upgrades and Launches

This week's focus was on building safely and building bridges to regulated finance. Uniswap's hooks let it route trades through some rival pools, not just its own. Hyperliquid's planned regulated deployer would bring a CFTC-licensed firm onto its markets, using allowlists that are already live on its test network. Aave V4 reached about $704 million in deposits, near its all-time high, up from about $2.6 million at the end of March. Balancer's pausable pools begin moving to withdrawals-only on 30 October.

5. Security Watch, Last 15 Days

Between 14 and 28 October, reported incidents with losses totalled about $10.04 million, roughly ₹95 crore, including an unconfirmed Initia estimate.

 What it means: The two main cases this week came from different weak points. At X100, an Ethereum project, an attacker used a flash loan, money borrowed and repaid within one transaction, to win two of three seats in the project's voting system and drain its treasury, because votes had no waiting period. At Initia, an attacker used a previously unknown bug to mint tokens with no backing, and the network was halted the same day. Both are reminders to check how a protocol's voting rules and code are tested before depositing.

6. ETH Staking Rate

Staking held near its high. At 2.45% a year, ₹1 lakh staked would earn about ₹2,450, before fees.

What it means: Almost nobody is waiting to leave staking, while about 1.29 million ETH is waiting to join. Even in a falling market, the amount of ETH staked held steady at about 44.1 million. In liquid staking, where users get a receipt token they can still use, Lido is the largest DeFi protocol at about $22.4 billion, down more than 3% in a week.

7. Where the Money Moved

Ethereum still holds more than half of all DeFi money, at about $48.4 billion, down about $1.2 billion in a week according to DefiLlama (about $1.8 billion below our 21 October reading). Morpho was the bright spot. It gained about $304 million in a week according to DefiLlama, up about 2.7% to $11.4 billion. Aave was near $17.4 billion, down from about $19.1 billion at the end of September.

What it means: Stablecoin supply is about $12.7 billion below its May peak, and USDC accounted for most of the decline over the past 30 days, shedding $4.69 billion. USDT still holds about 61% of the market.

8. Hot Topic: Ethereum Chooses Safety Over Speed

A postponed upgrade is not usually a positive sign; this week, however, it looked like a system working as it should.

Ethereum's Glamsterdam upgrade aims to allow a much larger gas limit and a faster way to build blocks, and developers want it on the main network soon. However, when an outside security firm found that two gas changes could weaken protections in 13 real-world contracts already in use, developers paused the next test rather than pushing ahead. That was not the only safety fix that week. A bug report from Lido's George Avsetsin led developers to change how staking deposits would be routed, again before any real funds were at risk.

For DeFi users, reliability matters more than speed. Lending apps, exchanges and stablecoins all run on Ethereum, and Ethereum still holds more than half of DeFi money. Careful delays help protect the contracts that hold that money.

India's crypto industry is asking for similar clarity. At the Business Standard BFSI Insight Summit in Mumbai on 27 October, SB Seker, Binance's Asia-Pacific head, said market demand was moving ahead of policy discussions, and BitDelta India CEO Vikaas Sachdeva said investors now ask about the safety of their money and personal data, not just profits.

There are trade-offs. Postponing an upgrade means users wait longer for cheaper, faster transactions. Still, the direction is clear. Testing before launching is how trust is built.

9. What to Watch Next

Main Sources

DefiLlama (as published by Crypto Daily and Bitcoin.com News); CoinGecko; ValidatorQueue; The Block; CoinDesk.