Katana launches as Agglayer's DeFi chain with yield-generating bridged assets
Polygon Weekly Overview - May 30, 2025
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By The Numbers
Polygon daily active users: 549.05K (+12.66%)
Polygon daily txns: 3.19M (+6.34%)
Polygon Total Volume Locked (TVL): $988.92M (-0.29%)
NFT weekly sales volume: $15.9M (-17.04%)
Top 3 NFT collections by sales volume:
Courtyard: $13.31M (+0.86%)
DNS: $962.43K (-55.60%)
Infinitex: $276.19K (+3.59%)
The percentages and metrics are based on a 7-day timeframe, unless noted otherwise.
Agglayer Spotlight
🟪What happened: Katana, a DeFi-focused chain incubated by Polygon Labs and GSR, announced its private mainnet went live with public access coming in June.
🟪Why does it matter: Katana was “reverse engineered” for Agglayer’s need for deep liquidity and real yield, according to Polygon Labs’ blog article.
Traditional chains face many challenges such as bootstrapping their own users, developers and liquidity from scratch. While these networks stay neutral in order to attract builders, it also fragments liquidity across multiple decentralized exchanges (DEX) and lending protocols on the same chain. This results in shallow liquidity and poor execution.
Katana is focused exclusively on DeFi applications, rather than being a general-purpose chain. Its specialized approach can address the key challenges of fragmented liquidity and idle capital.
The chain will also leverage VaultBridge in order to put idle bridged assets to work for generating yield.
The VaultBridge can change how bridged assets function. When users bridge assets to Katana, their funds don't sit idle in contracts like in traditional layer-2 chains. Instead, these funds are deployed into yield-generating strategies on Ethereum. This creates a revenue stream that grows with the chain's TVL, offering a source of "real yield."
Real yield comes from the actual money a DeFi protocol makes, like fees from trades or interest paid on loans, similar to how a business earns profits. This is in contrast to short term spikes from high network fees or "emission-driven yield" which is paid out in newly created tokens by the protocol itself. While this can make the rewards look high, it often devalues the token over time, like printing more money to pay bills.
Katana's economic design directs 100% of sequencer fees and some application revenue back into chain-owned liquidity (CoL), creating a system where growth can compound over time.
For the Agglayer, Katana's design can help chains tap into a pool of deep liquidity out-of-the-box. Katana also plans to create deeper liquidity by concentrating it in the ecosystem's core apps and assets. This will begin with apps like Morpho and assets like Ether, stablecoins and wrapped bitcoin.
This lets developers build specialized chains intended for DEXs, games, or social app, that are all able to tap into existing users and liquidity instead of starting from zero. In turn, this can create better user experiences onchain.
🟪The big picture: As an Agglayer Breakout Graduate, Katana plans to airdrop ~15% of KAT tokens to POL stakers. Katana also marks the beginning of Agglayer's multistack era as the first chain to use the CDK OP Stack. The recent Multistack upgrade allows support for chains built on different frameworks, while still tapping into the ecosystem's interoperability layer. This creates more possibilities for developers to leverage benefits of different stacks.
Meanwhile, lending TVL is at $512 million, up 21.14% year-to-date on Polygon PoS, according to DeFiLlama data. This sector's growth can also help Agglayer’s DeFi presence to continue growing. Katana's specialized chain would tap into this by providing deep liquidity infrastructure that other Agglayer chains can tap into.
Katana represents a shift toward purpose-built chains for specific use cases. By creating sustainable economic models where bridged assets generate yield, Katana and VaultBridge can advance Agglayer's goal of reducing fragmentation and improving capital efficiency across the multi-chain ecosystem.
Into the Agglayer
Tune in to Katana’s X Space with its core contributors from GSR, Polygon, Morpho, amongst others
Listen to the X Space on Agglayer’s multistack deployment capabilities
Watch Agents Unleashed podcast ft. Sentient's Technical Product Manager Oleg Golev as he discusses decentralized AI ecosystems
1M in POL rewards is being distributed for providing AUSD-USDC liquidity on QuickSwap and Fluid
Ecosystem Showcase
Morpho Labs app has deployed on Polygon PoS to offer deposits, borrowing and earning
Copperx processed over $1.2M in just 30 days through their Virtual US Bank Accounts powered by stablecoins on Polygon PoS
Watch dYdX's step-by-step guide for depositing USDC from Polygon as trading margin
Join in the fun
Want to dive into the Polygon ecosystem full-time? Find the latest job postings here.
Join Sentient at the Open AGI Summit at ETHCC
In Las Vegas? Attend Litecoin Summit for LitVM’s unveiling
Join Polygon and Boys Club to toast a spritz as the sun sets on la Croisette in Cannes
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This product was built by Token Relations.
This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.