Monthly Market Update (March 2026)

Executive Summary

March 2026 was defined by three forces: the U.S.-Israel military campaign against Iran (launched February 28) that sent Brent crude above $119/bbl and reshuffled safe-haven dynamics; a hawkish Federal Reserve that held rates steady and warned of greater inflation ahead, dimming hopes of further rate cuts into 2026; and a decisive institutional recovery in Bitcoin ETF flows that brought more than $1.35B in March. The total crypto market cap closed at $2.3T relatively unchanged for the month. Bitcoin gained ~1.8% while the S&P 500 fell ~4.3% and gold tumbled 12.9% as oil-driven inflation fears strengthened the dollar and erased hopes of rate cuts.

The month’s landmark institutional event was BlackRock’s launch of the first staked Ethereum ETF (ETHB), which attracted $155M on its Nasdaq debut — exceeding BlackRock’s own IBIT Bitcoin ETF first-day record. In DeFi, Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 permissionless perpetual infrastructure drove $68B in 30-day volume with the Iran crisis catalysing a new category of demand: 24/7 commodities perpetuals trading. The share of open interests in commodities rose from 40.7% in February to 52.3% in March. In RWA, the distributed on-chain asset market reached $27.8B (+6.9% MoM), with tokenised stocks posting the strongest activity growth.

Macro Overview

War between US-Israel and Iran dominated headlines in March with rippling consequences globally: surging commodities prices causing an inflation shock, and a cautious Fed against further rate cuts amid geopolitical uncertainty.

U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28 triggered an immediate risk-off move — crypto liquidations hit $500M within 24 hours — before a staged recovery as ceasefire signals intermittently emerged in late March. The Fed held rates steady at 3.50–3.75% on March 18 with a 11–1 vote, simultaneously raising its 2026 personal consumption expenditure(PCE) measure to 2.7%, eliminating rate-cut expectations and briefly pushing BTC from $74,658 to $70,503 on the day. Traders’ sentiments still err on the side of caution hovering between extreme fear and fear as conflicting stories emerged from US and Iran on a mutually agreeable ceasefire contract. Bitcoin gained ~1.8%, while the S&P 500 fell 4.3%, the Nasdaq shed 4.8%, and gold declined 12.9%. In contrast, Brent oil surged more than 60% from end February to March highs, marking the largest monthly growth since 1988. Trump’s five-day strike pause on March 23 resulted in a sharp decline of Brent to ~$98/bbl, stabilised equities, and reignited crypto’s risk-on moves. Institutional activity recovered alongside: spot Bitcoin ETFs logged approximately $1.35B in net inflows for the month. Strategy added 44,377 BTC in March, bringing total holdings to 762,099 BTC. Morgan Stanley filed an amended S-1 on March 20 for a spot Bitcoin ETF (ticker: MSBT) — its formal entry into the ETF distribution channel offering the lowest fee in the market.

Bitcoin

As of March, the % of BTC supply in profit stands at ~56% slightly up from February’s 55%. Bitcoin’s price is still heavily influenced by macro headlines and $72K currently stands as a strong resistance level formed by STH of BTC. If the Iran War comes to a ceasefire, this could drive more risk on capital, potentially driving a decisive break above $72K with $78K — $80K being the next key resistance level.

Ethereum and Layer 2s

Ethereum gained 7.09% MoM in March as institutions deepened their ecosystem alignment despite fundamentals weakening amid the broader risk-off sentiment. BitMine Immersion added more than 310,000 ETH in March bringing its total holdings to 4.73M. BlackRock’s staked ETH ETF (ETHB) launched on March 12 and attracted $155M on debut day. As institutional capital seeks productive onchain yields, expect the share of staking ETFs to grow from its current market share of ~33% of the total ETH ETFs AUM. Institutional participation in staking not only helps to strengthen the underlying security of Ethereum which currently has more than 38M ETH staked but also reduce selling pressure as institutional capital aligns itself to future protocol growth potential. On a similar vein, Ethereum Foundation has also doubled down on its ETH staking treasury initiative with a target to stake 70,000 ETH.

The technical pipeline remained active. Glamsterdam, Ethereum’s next scheduled hard fork targeting base-layer scaling, advanced meaningfully through March as devnet iterations progressed leading up to devnet 3 expected in April. Core developers spent the month running benchmarking exercises across client teams and refining execution-layer performance ahead of further devnet iterations. Key proposals progressing through testing include enshrined proposer-builder separation (EIP-7732), which aims to reduce centralisation in block production, as well as Block-Level Access Lists (EIP-7928) which enables parallel transaction execution on Ethereum and enhances CPU efficiency by 3x. No fixed mainnet date has been confirmed; the core developer team continues to prioritise empirical validation over schedule, with launch expected sometime in H1 2026.

Source: Validatorqueue

Ethereum Performance Metrics

Source: Artemis.xyz

Ecosystem Gainers and Decliners in March

Source: DeFi Llama

L2

L2s had a mixed performance in March as the ecosystem witnessed broad declines in usage with transaction count and revenue down although adoption grew in terms of users and stablecoin supply on the network. In terms of TVL, notable L2 gainers include Mantle (Aave effect continues), Base and MegaETH. On Base, while overall transactions declined, stablecoin activity climbed in terms of stablecoin daily active users, transaction count and transfer volume. Polygon also stood out as an outperformer after completing its Lisovo Hard Fork on 4 March which activated a $1M gas subsidy for agentic transactions, dynamic fee pricing and enhanced wallet security. DEX volume and network revenue on Polygon soared due to Polymarket’s growing adoption. Polymarket hit a record $10.6B in notional volume in March (+34.9% MoM), fueling a 72.6% jump in Polygon’s network revenue.

L2s Performance Metrics

Source: growthepie.xyz, tokenterminal, Allium, DeFi Llama

Other L1s — Solana

Solana is conducting another upgrade in April, defined by SIMD-0226 (p-tokens), that will replace SPL tokens with p-token. This upgrade aims to significantly reduce the compute cost by 19x for every transaction while remaining backward-compatible with the SPL token program. The impact of this upgrade is a network with significantly higher throughput, lower transaction costs, batched transactions and a more seamless transition from wrapped assets to native assets.

This upgrade comes at a crucial time when the network experienced declining activity with application revenue and spot DEX volume reaching their lowest levels since September 2024. Meme spot dex trading volume has also reached its lowest level since February 2024. While volumes deteriorated, newer assets such as tokenized assets have also taken off on the network as its market share of spot DEX volume grew 5x since the start of the year from ~0.2% to ~1%.

This upgrade comes at a crucial time when the network experienced declining activity with application revenue and spot DEX volume reaching their lowest levels since September 2024. Meme spot dex trading volume has also reached its lowest level since February 2024. While volumes deteriorated, newer assets such as tokenized assets have also taken off on the network as its market share of spot DEX volume grew 5x since the start of the year from ~0.2% to ~1%.

Other L1s — Near

Building on the intersection of AI and privacy, NEAR shipped confidential swaps on mainnet as well as launched IronClaw to support deployments of confidential agents on the network. Transaction facilitated by NEAR Intents also remained high supported by continued demand for privacy-embedded transactions. On a YTD basis, adoption hit an all-time high driven by growth in new and returning users. This increased Network usage hit an all-time high YTD with growth in both new and returning users. Stronger adoption momentum on NEAR translated into an 11.22% increase in transaction count and a 32.15% uplift in network revenue over the period.

Source: Artemis.xyz

AI

x402 payment standard built by Coinbase ignited the wave of agentic payments with traction further gaining grounds in March. Despite a 24.5% decline in monthly transactions to 1.7M, transaction volume rose close to 2,000%, underscoring the increasing value that agents are entrusted with handling. x402 was the sole payment protocol driving agentic payment activity through early March 2026. The mainnet launch of Tempo intensified the competition by introducing Machine Payment Protocol (MPP), a new agentic payment model that began capturing transaction share since its debut on March 18. While both support agentic payments, they have inherently different architectural designs which we will compare below. Target audiences for both payment protocols are also different with x402 catering more towards crypto-native use cases while Machine Payment Protocol is tailored for hybrid use cases. Rather than replacing x402, MPP serves to reinforce the value of HTTP 402 for agentic transactions. Choose MPP if you need support for both crypto and traditional payment methods. Choose x402 if you want a simpler implementation focused on crypto payments.

Source: Artemis.xyz

Difference Between x402 and Machine Payment Protocol

Source: x402.org, mpp.dev

Stablecoins and Payments

Total stablecoin market cap reached $315.55B by the end of March, marking a growth of 1.7%. Key contributors to this growth include USDS, BUIDL, USYC, and USDY. While stablecoin supply increased, waning DeFi activity in March consequently dragged down transaction volume and active addresses. Adjusted monthly stablecoin transaction volume stood at $1.48T down 16.85% MoM. Monthly active addresses fell by 19.49% MoM to 45.78M.

Beyond onchain activity, real world adoption of stablecoin reached its highest level as payment count hit record high driven by broad gains in payment types although C2B model saw the largest increase as consumer demand for stablecoin payments to merchants continues to accelerate. Retail-sized transactions also reached record highs in March. Visa deepened its partnership with Bridge by expanding crypto card payments from the existing 18 countries to more than 100 countries by the end of the year, essentially a huge boost to C2B, enabling global users to pay across Visa’s 175M merchants worldwide. Mastercard also launched its Crypto Partner Program and announced the acquisition of BVNK which is expected to further boost stablecoin payouts, settlement and cross-border money movements.

Source: Visaonchainanalytics

Source: Allium

Record high retail-sized transactions in March

Source: visaonchainanalytics

On the regulatory front, earlier roadblocks in the CLARITY ACT appeared to be resolved as industry leaders and politicians come to a consensus that passive yield on stablecoins are banned while allowing for activity-based rewards tied to payments and platforms use. However, the timeline for getting the CLARITY ACT into law this year is getting narrower with Polymarket assigning a probability of ~50% as at the time of writing.

Real World Assets

Tokenised commodities faced headwinds in March, weighed down by a sharp 12.9% decline in gold, as escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East stoked inflation concerns and prompted a rotation of capital into alternative assets, including oil. Total market cap declined from $7.55B to $7.3B as the appeal of tokenized gold waned. Monthly commodities transfer volume collapsed by 14.6% to $11.64B alongside a 8.4% MoM decline in monthly active address. Oil in contrast has dominated the headline in March as prices spiked to a high of $119.50 on supply chain concerns over the closure of the Straits of Hormuz. Monthly active address of Ondo tokenized oil fund increases by more than 475% to 1,686. On Hyperliquid HIP-3 markets, monthly trading volume reached $64.1B, representing ~70% MoM growth. Trading volume of crude oil surged from only $216M in February to $17.1B in March as traders hedge risks and speculate on the future value of oil.

Source: Artemis.xyz

Tokenised stocks entered March with strong momentum as total asset holders increased from 169,466 to 200,404, marking a 18.3% MoM gain. Looking at platform competition, a key contributor is Ondo Global Markets which increased its TVL from $657M to $685M while total asset holders increased 13.1% MoM. In tandem with the increase in TVL, trading volume across DEX and CEX also inched closer to $3B. Volumes remained healthy as the company introduced access to IPO stocks, and received regulatory greenlight under the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of ADGM via Binance platform. Trading competition on Binance Alpha and OKX Wallet coupled with the introduction of 60+ tokenized stocks across various sectors further encouraged trading activity amid the backdrop of greater geopolitical and macro uncertainty. Besides growth in CEX volumes, the growth in DEX volumes is also driven by Ondo partnership with 1inch as the key DeFi distribution partner as the DEX aggregator now dominates metrics across users, transaction count and volumes on BNB chain. xStocks remains the largest platform by asset holders as it expanded asset holders to 128,390 (+20.6% MoM), commanding 64% share of the market. As it kicked off its point incentive campaign, alongside Kraken’s tokenized stocks points program, xStocks saw a 13.2% MoM increase in TVL to $254.91M while trading volume across dex and cex reached $3.82B in March.

To sum up the competition, onchain strategy of Ondo did relatively better in terms of absolute TVL and DEX trading volume as it focuses its strategy on increasing the breadth of its equity coverage while xStocks focuses on a narrower equity coverage that is more popular among asset holders.

By DeFi venue, 1inch has positioned itself as a central hub for RWA adoption as it facilitates more than $3B in DEX volumes to date.

By network, BNB chain stood out as a notable performer in terms of absolute tokenized RWA gains, adding $55.56M of tokenized equity in March. BNB also increased its market share for tokenized stocks transfer volumes from ~44% to ~50% underscoring high network activity.

Funding and M&A Activity

In March, there were a total of 63 deals with a total deal value exceeding $2.4B of which stablecoin and payment continues to dominate investors’ interest as funding for the sector took up more than half of all disclosed funding.

Notable March transactions:

• Kalshi, a prediction market platform, is currently having an ongoing funding round which has raised over $1B led by Coatue at a $22B valuation.
• FX payment startup, OpenFX, raised a $94M Series A round led by Accel, Atomico, Lightspeed Faction, M13, Northzone and Pantera.
• Stablecoin infrastructure company, The Better Company, raised a $10M seed round led by a16z crypto to build a compliant stablecoin clearinghouse.
• Asset tokenization platform, Midas, raised a $50M Series A round led by RRE and Creandum.
• XFX, a cross border payment infrastructure company, raised a $17M Series A round led by Castle Island Ventures.
• Web3 infrastructure startup, Startale Group, closed a $63M Series A round backed by SBI Group and Sony Innovation Fund.
• Mastercard announced the acquisition of BVNK, a stablecoin infrastructure firm, at a $1.8B valuation.
• KAST, a stablecoin payment firm, raised a $80M Series A co-led by QED Investors and Left Lane Capital.
• ICE made a strategic investment into cryptocurrency exchange OKX at a $25B valuation.
• ARQ — $70M Series B; Latin American stablecoin payments fintech targeting SME cross-border flows
• Crossover Market, an execution-only institutional digital asset trading ECN platform, raised $31M Series B led by Tradeweb Markets at a $200M valuation.

April 2026: Catalysts and Calendar

Macro

• Senate Banking Committee markup of the CLARITY Act: targeted late April
• FOMC Meeting — April 28–29

Notable Token Unlocks

• LayerZero — 5.34% of released supply valued at $51.42M

Protocol Upgrades

• Solana p-token