DeFi Saver Newsletter: January 2026

Welcome to the first DFS Newsletter of 2026! 

We hope your year is off to a great start! It definitely is on our side, with multiple major updates coming your way in January alone. 

For this issue, we’ll be wrapping up the last month of 2025, with everything you need to stay up to date in DeFi, alongside DFS updates and feature enhancements you might have missed. 

And before we dive into it, make sure to check out our DFS Year In Review post for a glimpse into what 2025 looked like for our team and how we plan to build and evolve moving forward.

Now, here are some of the main news and updates we’ll cover:

1. Aave governance dispute and new EU crypto regulation;
2. Automation update for Spark, New market integrations, and DFS Year in Review giveaway;
3. Most important 2025 Stats;

Aave’s governance debate

The most popular protocol among DeFi Saver users and, indeed, the broader DeFi community has gone through a few weeks of heated debate regarding brand and IP ownership. The relationship between some of the key stakeholders in the Aave ecosystem was already slightly shaken with some earlier questions raised around the Horizon instance launched in August, but the gap between stakeholders turned into a gulf when the discussions around where fees collected from the Aave.com frontend should go.

The discussion seems to have calmed down by now, with both sides seemingly committed to finding a compromise that works for all stakeholders, and the ultimate goal for all sides being to keep the Aave adoption wave going. This is an extreme simplification of potentially the most important discussions we saw in the DeFi space recently, so we recommend checking out the great summary article by Rekt, as well as the latest "How Aave will win" thread on their forums.

Given the current, improved state of affairs, we believe the V4 launch is unhindered and we expect to have big news of a new integration to share in the coming weeks.

In other news, one new regulation recently sparked a debate on X, as the EU introduces a new digital asset tax reporting directive, DAC8.

Despite the rapid reaction of the community on X, it is worth noting that regulations such as these are intended to curb tax evasion and fraud prevention,  as well as enhance cooperation between the Member States in tackling them.

DeFi Saver news&updates

We wrapped up 2025 with some newly added markets, automation enhancements, and a small additional feature that lets you review all your 2025 activities at a glance.

Without further ado, let’s get into it.

New markets at DFS

The $mUSD stablecoin by MetaMask is now available on Aave x DFS. It can be lent or borrowed, however, it cannot be used as collateral. It’s available on both Aave Core and Linea instances.

Furthermore, Maple Finance’s new yield-bearing asset, syrupUSDT,  has also gone live on Aave x DFS. It earns interest through Maple’s institutional lending markets, allowing for new, yield-focused looping strategies.

And of course, you can now fully access this opportunity with the help of DFS Zaps. This Zap specifically allows you to start with any popular stablecoin, such as USDT, USDC, and GHO, then instantly create a leveraged syrupUSDT position. 

All that, within one instant tx, via DFS Trending.

New automations for Spark x DFS

We have expanded on our automation support for Spark, with Stop Loss and Take Profit now available.

In case you missed it, these automation options allow you to secure profits when the market moves above your chosen, predefined thresholds, and also protect your funds when the price falls below them.

You can simultaneously set up Stop Loss and Take Profit by going to the Automate section on your Spark dashboard. However, there are two limitations to keep in mind. First, your Spark position must be held on a smart wallet. The second is a Mainnet-specific requirement that requires your position’s debt to exceed $30 000.

DFS Year in Review giveaway

For those of you who missed it, if you head to the DFS app and find the Santa hat in the top right corner, you can take a look at your most prominent DFS activities and transactions for the year 2025!

2025 has been a heck of a ride, but we could not have gotten here without your support! To say thanks, we’ll be looking to reward some members of our DFS community with some cool merch. 

It's your last call to reply to the giveaway thread with your DFS tx count from the Year in Review, or simply post it and tag us, and we’ll reach out to the lucky winners in the upcoming weeks.

You can find our giveaway post here:

Good luck, and thanks for being a part of the DFS community!

DFS 2025 Automation stats

Let’s take a moment to look back on 2025, and see how its ups and downs reflected on the numbers, and how it compares to those of 2024.

In 2024, we had 43.709 successfully executed, automated transactions. In 2025, the number rose to 50,316. It’s interesting to note that Arbitrum was and still is the go-to chain for DFS Automation (with 35.499 txs in 2025, and 33.048 in 2024). Base seems to have gained some traction among DFS users, as its numbers jumped from a mere 460 txs in 2024 to 3566 in 2025.

Additionally, TxSaver helped execute 713 txs protected from MEV in 2024, whereas that number was almost quadrupled in 2025, with the sum being 2630.

Now, especially interesting are the top 3 busiest days fro DFS Automation. Let’s have a look:

1. 3 February, 2025 (1489 DFS txs): On this date, the crypto community experienced the biggest crash up until that moment. BTC dropped by 4.86%, and ETH by 13.84%, with the liquidation event totaling at around $2B. 
2. 10 October, 2025 (908 DFS txs): The October crash takes the title of the biggest crash in crypto history. Following President Trump's tariff announcement, the market was hit with $19B in liquidations, and ETH continued to drop 40% in the subsequent month.
3. 4 November, 2025 (812 DFS txs): Another crash, with BTC falling below the $99.000 mark, as ETH plummets by 9% (at $3200). 

We have already covered these events in more detail in our previous Newsletters, but what we want to highlight is that the number of DFS txs executed on these respective dates does not necessarily mean liquidation.  Au contraire, a great deal of our users managed to avoid significant losses by utilizing our Automation tools.

And if you need any help in managing DFS Automation, do not hesitate to contact our support guys via DFS Discord. That would be all for this issue, but make sure to stay tuned for exciting updates, especially in the upcoming weeks!

Stay connected:

🌍: DeFiSaver.com

💬: Official Discord

📢: Official Twitter/X