ARK’s Q3 DeFi report shows incentives propping up activity as Ethereum mainnet slips

ARK Invest’s DeFi Quarterly noted a broad recovery in the third quarter of 2026. The rebound was spurred largely by tokenized stocks, even though a large part of the activity is still reliant on brokerage distribution and token incentives. There was a drop in Ethereum’s mainnet revenue to ~$40.6 million from $63 million. Tokenized equities grow into a $50 billion market The report noted a glaring shift in the location traders choose to put their money. In fact, there was a ninefold increase in the trading of tokenized stocks on decentralized exchanges, hitting the $50 billion mark. Decentralized exchanges offer users the opportunity to swap assets in the absence of an intermediary. The $50 billion figure amounts to about 9% of spot DEX volume globally, up from ~1% in Q2. There was an upward trend in the overall spot DEX volume. It saw a 13% increase, hitting the $571 billion mark. This also happened to be its first quarterly gain in 12 months. The ratio of decentralized to centralized exchange spot trading also swung back to 23.3% from 20.3%. The top venues for tokenized equity trading were BNB Chain (~ $16.5 billion) and Robinhood Chain (~$13.7 billion). The most-traded names were NVIDIA (NVDA) at ~$3.1 billion and the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) at ~$2.5 billion. Robinhood Chain stood out as a clear example of how quickly a consumer brokerage can seed a network. Q1 saw the chain produce around $65 billion in DEX volume and network revenue of about $51 million, almost at par with BNB Chain. Perp traders hold bigger, fewer positions Perpetual futures DEXs saw a 76% increase, hitting the $24 billion mark, while trading volume also dropped by 16%. Also, the percentage of decentralized futures dropped to 11.7%. The trend could be blamed on fewer but larger and longer-held positions, led by Hyperliquid and its HIP-3 markets, according to ARK. Stablecoins and RWAs rise as supply dips There was an increase in the amount of stablecoin transactions, with adjusted volumes going up by 16% each quarter to about $781 billion. The average monthly active addresses reached 73 million, a 39% increase from previous figures. RWA share by network. Source: ARK Invest However, the total supply of stablecoins saw a downward trend. A 3% drop took it to about $309 billion, even though USDT and Ethereum (which make up the majority of the market) maintained previous levels. Another report confirmed the downward trend. Based on the report, there was a growth in stablecoin payments by 45%, hitting the $482 billion point. This occurred through September. Supply, on the other hand, went up a little by 0.4%. This trend is as a result of transfers happening more frequently but at a smaller scale.