Project Spotlight: @katana – The DeFi Layer 2 reviving “dead bags” with deep liquidity, real yield and chain-owned capital DeFi today is a rented economy. With fragmented liquidity, ponzi tokenomics and an endless cycle of mercenary farming have left protocols fragile & users disillusioned. Enter Katana. A DeFi-optimized L2 incubated by @0xPolygon and GSR, built to deliver deep liquidity, durable yields and economic alignment between protocols, users and the chain itself. Here’s how Katana is turning DeFi into a self-reinforcing yield machine ↓ ▫️ Bringing Liquidity That Works Onchain Most DeFi incentives are extractive. Projects offer inflated rewards to attract capital. LPs rotate to the next farm and stability is an illusion. Katana breaks the cycle with Chain-Owned Liquidity (CoL) — a permanent liquidity reserve that grows with the network: → Liquidity deepens over time, not drains with incentives → 100% of net sequencer fees are recycled into the CoL reserve → Core apps stream protocol revenue directly back into the pool This changes everything. Where others rent liquidity, Katana owns and compounds it. ▫️ Generating Yield From First Principles At the core is Vaultbridge, a yield engine that redeploys bridged assets ETH, USDC, WBTC, and USDT into offchain yield-bearing strategies on Ethereum. Users mint vbTokens, 1:1 wrappers of bridged assets and plug them into apps like: • @MorphoLabs for lending • @SushiSwap for spot trading • @vertex_protocol for perps • @yearnfi for yield aggregation On Katana, idle capital doesn’t exist. If your funds are on Katana, they’re working. ▫️ AUSD: TradFi Capital Brought Onchain Stablecoins are the lifeblood of DeFi, but most sit idle. Katana’s AUSD, by contrast, is an offchain-yield-backed stablecoin, collateralized by US Treasuries custodied by Van Eck and architected by Agora. → Brings real-world interest rates onchain → Powers DEX pairs, lending markets, and LP incentives → Pegged by design, productive by default Where USDC stagnates, AUSD compounds. Where DAI tries to balance decentralization with yield, AUSD chooses capital efficiency and clarity. ▫️ Built on the First Multistack AggLayer Chain Katana isn’t a generic L2. It’s the first AggLayer CDK chain to combine Polygon’s AggLayer with the OP Stack, creating a multistack foundation with: • Unified liquidity across L2s • Native Ethereum alignment • Low-latency, modular execution • Composable interop with other AggLayer chains Katana's not just scaling Ethereum. It’s curating the liquidity layer of a modular future. ▫️ The Proof Before Launch Katana is set to launch its public mainnet on June 30, 2025. Here’s the early traction: • $186M+ already in pre-deposits • 70M KAT tokens committed to early depositors • 15% of KAT airdropped to POL stakers, incentivizing Ethereum-native liquidity to migrate It’s seeding an ecosystem with capital, partners and aligned participants before genesis. ▫️ The Conclusion The future of DeFi won’t be won by the chain offering the highest APY this week. It will be defined by systems that recycle yield into long-term liquidity, protocols that own their capital and chains that align their survival with real user activity. Katana is that chain. A financial architecture where incentives, liquidity, and yield flow in one direction: Back to the network. On June 30, the Samurai rise. And they rise with purpose.