SG-FORGE Officially Enters DeFi, Aims To Boost Stablecoin Growth

Bitcoin spot ETFs keep rewriting the record books. On October 1, BlackRock’s IBIT broke into the top 20 ETFs, less than two years after launch. No fund has ever crossed $90 billion in assets this fast.

The top 10 is now just $50 billion away. Small wonder, reports now suggest Vanguard is preparing to add crypto ETFs to its brokerage platform after years of resistance.

At current AUM, IBIT is already throwing off more than $200 million a year in fees. Vanguard’s hardline refusal, by contrast, has left a lot of money on the table.

Today, we’ll talk about:

• SG-Forge officially enters DeFi to boost stablecoin demand
• DoubleZero debuts mainnet beta and token
• Bitcoin-lending startup Lava raises $17.5 million

HIGH SIGNAL NEWS

• Stripe introduces stablecoin issuing platform. With "Open Issuance," businesses can more easily launch their own stablecoins, while Bridge manages reserve backing, security, liquidity, and GENIUS-ready compliance behind the scenes. Early users include Phantom, Native Markets, Metamask, and Dakota.💵
• CME Group to launch 24/7 crypto futures and options trading. The offer is expected to go live in early 2026, pending regulatory approval.🕰️
• Major fintech platform announces stablecoin payments. Soon, more than 20,000 customers of leading spend management platform Brex will be able to send and receive USDC payments on Solana.💸
• Monthly perp DEX volumes top $1 trillion for the first time. The surge comes amid fierce competition in the sector, with upstarts like Aster and Lighter battling to take market share from leader Hyperliquid.📈

INSTITUTIONAL ADOPTION

Société Générale-FORGE Officially Enters DeFi, Aims To Boost Stablecoin Growth

Institutional debut: On Tuesday, Société Générale, via its blockchain arm SG-FORGE, became the first global systemically important bank (G-SIB) to integrate its euro (EURCV) and dollar (USDCV) stablecoins into leading DeFi protocols.

• Why it matters: Until now, EURCV and USDCV have remained relatively modest in scale, with circulating supplies of roughly €56 million and $32 million, trailing competitors like Circle’s EURC, which has surpassed €220 million. By opening these stablecoins to permissionless borrowing, lending, and spot trading on platforms such as Morpho and Uniswap, SG-Forge is aiming to accelerate adoption and bring new liquidity into its tokens.

From hesitation to action: This push into DeFi marks a notable shift. As Blockstories exclusively reported in June, SG’s compliance team had long resisted such exposure, citing concerns over the lack of transparency into stablecoin holders — despite MiCA explicitly allowing issuers not to identify end-investors at all times.

• Things are moving forward in a step-by-step progression to bring an entire banking group in this direction,” Jean-Marc Stenger, CEO of SG-Forge, explained to us.

Following demand: According to Stenger, this progression has been driven by rising client demand, especially for an EUR stablecoin: “Crypto has gone mainstream and we’re receiving requests from all client segments, from retail to institutional. Many partners are interested in offering euro-denominated earn solutions. Beyond that, Europe needs its own euro stablecoins, issued by European players, capable of holding their ground against other markets.”

New endeavour: To meet this demand, SG-Forge is now embedding its stablecoins into the DeFi ecosystem with support from French crypto firms and infrastructure partners.

• Lending: On Morpho, users can now borrow in EURCV and USDCV, with collateral options including ETH, BTC, and tokenized money-market funds from French startup Spiko. Risk firm MEV Capital will manage these vaults.
• Trading venues: SG-Forge has also launched Uniswap liquidity pools for both stablecoins. Managed by market maker Flowdesk, they enable permissionless spot trading of EURCV and USDCV.

More DeFi integrations: These initial steps are just the beginning. “We expect numerous integrations in the coming months, including with the largest and most well-known platforms in the DeFi market. We are already in advanced discussions with all of them,” Stenger said.

Next steps: “Our three current priorities are clear: increasing liquidity, expanding distribution, and developing payment services around our stablecoins.”

Sébastien Dérivaux is the co-founder of Steakhouse Financial, a leading DeFi curator with over $1.5 billion under management and partnerships with traditional players such as Janus Henderson, Apollo, and SG-Forge.

Having a Tier 1 bank integrate its stablecoins into Uniswap and Morpho is a watershed moment for DeFi. Euro stablecoins have struggled to gain traction globally, and SG-Forge is trying to change that by using incentives to drive activity. For now, however, those incentives remain modest, around €2,000 of EURCV distributed daily, compared to roughly $130,000 for Ripple’s rlUSD and $70,000 for PayPal’s PYUSD. Can a European player really compete with this?

Incentives, though, are only the beginning. Sustained adoption comes from embedding stablecoins into fast-growing DeFi-native issuers like Ethena in recent months. Consider also why stablecoin issuers were rolling out the red carpet to secure HyperEVM’s USDH.

Another path is CeDeFi, with Coinbase showing how quickly liquidity can scale after its users supplied $100 million USDC to Morpho in just two weeks. For SG-Forge, partnerships with platforms like Bitpanda could be next.

INFRASTRUCTURE

DoubleZero Debuts Mainnet Beta and Token — Interview with Co-Founder Austin Federa

Double launch: Yesterday, the DoubleZero network had two reasons to celebrate. First, it rolled out the long-awaited mainnet beta, a major step toward its goal of becoming the blockchain-native alternative to the public internet. At the same time, its native $2Z token went live, debuting at a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of about $6 billion.

• Why it matters: “To make blockchains as performant as traditional, centralized systems and to truly bring all of finance onchain, we need to go beyond improvements at the software level,” Austin Federa, former Head of Strategy at the Solana Foundation and one of the co-founders of DoubleZero, told us. “That's why we set out to build a parallel internet for high-performance blockchains.”

Big plans: For this purpose, the team raised $28 million from top-tier VCs such as Multicoin Capital, whose managing partner Tushar Jain calls DoubleZero "one of the most ambitious projects we've ever invested in."

Interview: In our conversation, Federa elaborated further on these ambitions, shared who’s already contributing to the network, and laid out what concrete performance unlocks DoubleZero can bring to high-performance networks like Solana.

On why DoubleZero was created:

On how the system works:

On the direct impact for networks like Solana:

On the current state of the network and what’s next:

Flying Tulip | $200 million | Seed : Onchain platform spanning all of DeFi, including spot trading, derivatives, lending, and insurance.

xMoney | $21.5 million | Strategic : Payment platform that provides businesses with a unified platform to accept, manage, and optimize payments globally.

Lava | $17.5 million | Series A+ : Lending platform for bitcoin-only loans. For more insights, see our Proof-of-Talk with founder Shehzan Maredia below.👇️

A conversation with Shehzan Maredia, founder of Lava, a platform for bitcoin-backed loans that just secured $17.5 million in fresh funding.

Disclaimer: The information provided in the Crypto Briefing by Blockstories does not constitute investment advice. Accordingly, we assume no liability for any investment decisions made based on the content presented herein.