Data & Insights: Polymarket's eSports Rise; Robinhood Rally

Quick Take

• Data & Insights is a weekly series showcasing top charts from The Block’s Data Dashboard.
• This week, we’re taking a look at Robinhood Chain and Circles Q2 results. We’ll also look at Bitcoin transactions, Ethereum staking, and eSports predictions.

Robinhood Chain Is Here to Stay

• Robinhood Chain averaged 11.6 million daily transactions last week, a record for the network and ~30% above the prior week's daily average.
  • Meanwhile, total value locked (TVL) in the chain stands at $473 million, up 32% from the prior week.
  • Despite all this, the average number of daily active accounts is up just 3.3% week-over-week and still 11% below the July 16 peak.
  • Active accounts briefly spiked on Thursday following the spot listing of the Cashcat memecoin on the Robinhood app, yet the weekly average barely moved.
• There is a clear divergence in the number of transactions and TVL growing against a stagnating user base
  • This indicates that Robinhood Chain has simply been facilitating the same cohort of users from weeks ago, and that they’ve just been trading in higher frequencies, as opposed to the chain attracting entirely new participants.
• Robinhood Chain’s stablecoin mix also deserves its own watch, as there is now $253 million of USDe in the chain, now making up ~43% of the chain's total stablecoin float.
  • Quite impressive considering there was only $17 million of USDe on Robinhood Chain just a month ago, with Robinhood’s native USDG being the dominant stablecoin.
  • A network whose dollar base is rotating toward a yield-bearing synthetic dollar is one where capital parks rather than transacts, which lines up with the chain’s rising TVL and a stagnated number of active accounts.

Circular Earnings

• Circle reported Q2 2026 total revenue and reserve income of $701 million on August 5, up 7% YoY but short of the consensus estimate.
  • Total USDC supply ended June at $73.3 billion, up 19% year-over-year but down from roughly $77 billion at the end of Q1.
  • Circle also redeemed $87 billion of USDC against $83 billion minted, a net burn of about $4 billion.
  • Meanwhile, the reserve return rate fell 66 basis points to 3.48%.
  • Average USDC circulation set an all-time high of $76.5 billion, but the quarter closed $3.2 billion below that average as the float peaked mid-quarter and has shrunk since then.
• Full-year “other” revenue guidance nearly doubled to $310–$330 million from $150–$170 million.
  • In this case, “other” revenue refers to all of Circle’s revenue lines that aren't reserve income
  • This includes subscriptions & services, payments & token infrastructure and proceeds from its ARC token presale.
  • Note that more than half of the revised guidance is recognized ARC presale revenue, from a $242 million raise in Q2.
  • This was a one-time token sale, not a sustained business line, which means Circle's “other” revenue actually fell -19% QoQ, to $34 million, ending five straight quarters of growth.
• With the OCC national trust charter now in hand and Arc's public mainnet due in September, the number to watch is whether Arc generates recurring revenue distinct from the presale already booked.

Coldcarded at the Door

• The number of new Bitcoin addresses climbed from roughly 260K to north of 330K last week, a sharp break from the decline that has held for most of the year. 
  • This coincides with the ongoing Coldcard exploit. Coinkite's hardware wallet has lost at least 1,816 BTC (~$116 million) across four theft waves since July 30, traced to a 2021 firmware bug that generated seeds using a weak software random number generator instead of the device's hardware entropy source. Attackers were able to collapse the effective key strength enough to brute-force offline wallet generations.
  • Coinkite has advised any users who generated wallets between March 2021 and the security patch to move to freshly created wallets. This has contributed to the rise in new addresses being used on the network. 
• The Coldcard exploit is a useful stress test of self-custody. The allure of self-custody has included the removal of counterparty risk. However, it doesn't remove implementation risk, and events like this surface the risks that holders still face even when following best self-custody practices. 
  • As exploits have surged this year, users and holders are increasingly evaluating the benefits of self-custody versus custodial options such as centralized exchanges or ETF vehicles for exposure.

Stake Your Claims

• The share of ETH supply staked has climbed to 34%, up from about 29% at the start of the year. With staked supply reaching ⅓ of total Ethereum, there have been questions regarding the sustainability of native yield on Ethereum.
  • On August 4, researchers including Ethereum Foundation's Justin Drake filed EIP-8361, a "tapered issuance burn" that destroys a growing share of validator rewards as the staking ratio rises. The burn hits 100% at half of the current supply, zeroing out net issuance for validators past that point.
• At today's roughly one-third staking ratio, the authors' own modeling puts annual consensus yield falling from about 2.6% to 1.2%, phased in over 18 months rather than all at once.
  • The current issuance mode never fully switches off the marginal incentive to stake more, and the authors argue that pulls in centralized operators, exchanges, and custodians at the expense of solo validators and non-staking holders who get diluted regardless.
• While this would impact all stakeholders, ETH DATs stand to be among the most directly affected. At current staking levels, revenue would be cut by half, with further worsening as the ratio climbs toward 50%. 
  • Ethereum DATs stand uniquely to Bitcoin precisely because of the native yield that can be generated through staking and securing the Ethereum network. Should these incentives be reduced, investors may find less reason to pay a premium for ETH treasury vehicles over holding staked ETH, narrowing the structural case that has differentiated ETH DATs from BTC DATs to begin with.

eSports are Sports too

• Polymarket's eSports category traded a record $790 million in July, up 33% month over month and up from $221 million at the start of the year.
  • Polymarket has expanded its market reach across a number of games including CS2, League of Legends, and Dota 2.
  • July volume also got a structural boost separate from any singular events. Polymarket rolled out a data partnership with GRID, an official eSports data provider, in late June, which expanded the granularity of markets it could list, including individual maps and in-game events, not just match winners.
• eSports betting's mainstreaming has been gradual over the last decade. Over the past few months, prediction markets have been supercharging eSports prediciton/betting. While traditional sportsbooks have provided support for video game betting, prediction markets have treated it as a category worth building dedicated data infrastructure for, rather than just listing tournament winners as an afterthought.
• Outside of eSports, prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi are both racing to lock down data and distribution rights across verticals before the other does. The race has been wide-reaching into categories such as culture, tech, and finance, with some cautioning that prioritizing speed may forego diligence.