ChainFeeds on July 31 published a research roundup spanning five topics: China’s technology investment system, leadership changes at Coinbase, the gap between protocol revenue and token performance, Robinhood’s second-quarter earnings call, and a16z’s case for DUNA as a legal structure for Web3 organizations.
China’s tech investment system outside Silicon Valley
In the first feature, titled “Another innovation system outside Silicon Valley: an inside look at China’s tech investment ecosystem,” Bohan wrote that China is taking the lead in several future-facing sectors, including open-source AI, biotech, and robotics. He said he traveled to China last month and met with many top-tier investment firms as well as management teams at large robotics and biotech companies.
The piece said Chinese models have become a popular choice for Silicon Valley startups in open-source AI. It also argued that while the U.S. government has constrained projects such as Fable, China has stepped into a larger role in advancing the global open AI technology stack. In biotech, the article said a large share of Chinese clinical trials is focused on innovative therapies, while a meaningful portion of drugs in U.S. Food and Drug Administration clinical trials comes from China through licensing deals. In robotics, China’s structural advantages were described as large-scale data production capacity and faster hardware development and feedback loops.
Even with those strengths, the article said Chinese founders and investors remain closely focused on Silicon Valley because it is still seen as the world’s innovation center. One top venture capitalist told the author that whenever Benchmark or Sequoia releases a new podcast, he asks people at his firm to watch and study it. Bohan also wrote that posts from his X and LinkedIn accounts are often translated within hours by one of three Chinese tech media outlets — 新智元, 机器之心, and 量子位 — and that even replies on X are screenshotted and translated. He argued that this information asymmetry speeds up learning in China’s tech sector and may help narrow the gap with the West.
The article then turned to capital markets. It said Chinese founders face a harsher financing environment and stronger pressure to find an exit. That setup may produce companies with stronger execution and sharper competitive instincts, but it may also create more bubbles and risk because founders are under heavy strain. According to the article, many founders at robotics and AI startups are planning initial public offerings next year, even when their companies have not reached the scale of Unitree or Moonshot.
Part of that pressure comes from financing structures described as “equity in form, debt in substance.” Under those arrangements, some founders commit to hitting a return target within a set period. If that does not happen, the company may be liable and the founder may also need to repay funds personally. The article said U.S. founders would find that setup hard to understand, but it has also helped shape a cohort of companies with unusually strong execution. With little room for trial and error, founders are pushed to commercialize quickly. When they cannot win in China’s intense domestic market, they often move into overseas markets and compete through tighter cost control and faster execution.
The article grouped China startup financing into three main sources of capital:
- Onshore renminbi funds, often backed by local governments or provincial and municipal capital. These funds pursue financial returns but also local industrial policy goals, so they may ask portfolio companies to set up offices or factories locally and create jobs. In strategic sectors such as AI, semiconductors, and robotics, some companies can only accept renminbi capital. The article cited DeepSeek as an example.
- Onshore U.S. dollar funds, including Sequoia China, Source Code Capital, Hillhouse, and ZhenFund. These firms were described as closer to the traditional venture capital model and more attractive to founders with global ambitions.
- Offshore funds, meaning firms with a fully Western background. The piece said investors such as Coatue and Tiger Global generated substantial gains in China’s tech market in the past, but direct foreign capital into China has fallen sharply in recent years.
It also highlighted the role of FA, or financial advisors, in China’s venture system. In that context, FA does not refer to wealth managers. Instead, they act more like early-stage investment bankers, packaging startups, finding investors, and brokering fundraising deals. Many venture firms now outsource part of deal sourcing and early due diligence to FA firms, while founders use them to strengthen their position in financing negotiations. The article said they usually charge 2% to 5% of the amount raised. Compared with the U.S., where relationships are often built through open networks, email, and LinkedIn, the article said Chinese business culture relies more heavily on trust networks and personal ties, which raises the importance of intermediaries.
Coinbase shifts leadership as strategy broadens
A second article, from 链捕手, asked what Coinbase is rebuilding after changing five executives in one month. It said the company has gone through a concentrated round of leadership changes this month.
Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal is set to leave on July 31 for a startup, with Molly Abraham promoted internally to succeed him as general counsel. Coinbase also created a vice chair role for Ryan VanGrack, who has SEC and White House experience and will oversee policy and corporate affairs. Chief People Officer Lawrence Brock moved into an advisory role. Greg Tusar, co-head of institutional business, shifted to a policy post. Base lead Jesse Pollak began stepping back from day-to-day management. Then, on July 28, Coinbase appointed longtime employee Rob Witoff as its new chief technology officer.
Those changes came as the company faced pressure in its core business. The report said Benchmark cut its second-quarter revenue estimate for Coinbase as crypto trading activity cooled, projecting that spot volume on the company’s centralized exchange fell about 28% quarter over quarter. It also said Coinbase shares were down about 30% for the year.
For the past few years, Grewal had been central to Coinbase’s legal fights with regulators. The biggest case was the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit filed in 2023, which the article described as a major test case for crypto regulation in the United States. The SEC withdrew that case in February 2025 and did not fine Coinbase. Other lawsuits involving the SEC and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation over regulatory transparency and disclosure also moved toward closure before Grewal’s departure.
The article said Coinbase’s legal and policy posture is now moving from resisting regulators to participating in rule-making. It tied that shift to the company’s “Everything Exchange” strategy, first proposed at the end of 2025, which aims to turn Coinbase from a crypto trading venue into a broader financial gateway connecting crypto, stocks, ETFs, prediction markets, and perpetual futures under one account system.
According to the report, Coinbase accelerated that product push in June 2026. It opened U.S. stock, ETF, and index trading in its main app and let users transfer in brokerage assets from outside platforms. It launched tokenized U.S. equities for non-U.S. users with around-the-clock trading. It rolled out pre-IPO perpetual contracts tied to valuation expectations for private companies such as SpaceX. It listed themed index perpetuals tied to AI, China, and defense. It partnered with prediction market platform Kalshi to bring election, rate-decision, and macro event markets into the app. It also introduced the AI advisory product Coinbase Advisor. After receiving approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Coinbase became one of the first compliant firms able to offer global crypto perpetual contracts to U.S. customers.
In July, the company expanded further by listing S&P 500 index perpetuals and said it planned to build a unified trading platform in Canada covering crypto assets, tokenized stocks, and prediction markets.
The article also described a reset at Base. Jesse Pollak has handed some management duties back to Coinbase and acknowledged that two years of effort in social and creator directions did not produce the expected scale. Base is now focusing on three areas: trading, payments, and AI agents. Brian Armstrong said AI agents will need real-time, programmable payments, and that crypto infrastructure could become a major part of that stack.
AI is changing internal operations as well. The report said Coinbase previously cut about 14% of staff and moved toward a smaller, more efficient team model. The company said roughly 95% to 100% of code development is now AI-assisted, up from about 40% at the start of 2026. Each engineer is currently running an average of 5 to 10 AI agents, giving the company what it described as the equivalent output of about 1,200 full-time developers. Coinbase has also said it wants AI agents to handle work equivalent to 100,000 employees by 2030.
On the product side, Coinbase is building around what the article called “agent finance.” Armstrong said crypto is not competing with AI. In his view, it is core infrastructure for the future AI economy. The company is working on tools that would let AI agents receive USDC payments through Coinbase Business, carry out trading strategies from natural-language instructions, and give developers fast access to agent payment rails. Coinbase also said visits from AI agents to Base documentation pages have, for the first time, surpassed visits from human users.
Why protocol revenue does not always reach token holders
A third piece, by Castle Capital, examined why protocols can make money while their tokens lose value. It said crypto protocols have generated $7.42 billion in revenue so far this year, yet most tokens still fail to reflect the success of the underlying businesses.
The report argued that investors are moving away from pure speculation and looking at tokens more like investments. It framed the analysis around four questions: how the protocol generates revenue and whether that revenue is durable; how revenue is distributed and whether token holders actually share in it; how much value is diluted by inflation, unlocks, and incentive emissions; and whether an equity structure gives some holders stronger claims than current token holders. The article said most projects cannot answer those questions clearly.
Pump.fun was used as one example. Since the token launched, the protocol has generated about $450 million in revenue over a year, according to the report. But PUMP has remained in a prolonged downtrend because of fast unlocks and failed airdrop expectations, among other factors. The point was simple: strong revenue by itself does not prove a protocol has a durable model.
Castle Capital said investors need to look at revenue across multiple time periods rather than at one point in time, and they need to compare protocol income with token issuance. A protocol that generates $100 million in annual revenue but issues $200 million worth of new tokens presents a very different picture. Dilution includes not only inflation but also team and investor unlocks and the incentives distributed to keep an ecosystem running.
The report said most protocols split revenue between the treasury and token holders, with the exact ratio determined by governance. Once token issuance is subtracted from the value distributed to holders, net value flow at some protocols turns negative. In other words, holders may receive revenue on one side while being diluted on the other because the protocol emits more tokens to sustain its current level of activity.
As for how value reaches holders, the article identified two main mechanisms: buybacks and fee distribution. Buybacks were described as one of the most direct ways to return value. Protocols can use revenue to buy tokens in the market, then either burn them or send them to the treasury for future incentives and staking rewards. Aave, the report said, places repurchased tokens into its treasury, while more projects choose to burn them outright.
The article listed several examples:
- Lighter has burned about 15.6 million LIT using protocol revenue, equal to about 6.6% of total supply.
- Hyperliquid has used an automated process for buybacks and burns, taking out more than 47 million HYPE so far, about 4.72% of total supply.
- Uniswap has burned about 107 million UNI since December 2025.
Castle Capital cautioned that burning is not universal and the details vary widely from project to project. One key question is whether the tokens being destroyed are already in circulation or not yet circulating. The article said buybacks and burns alone cannot rescue a protocol with falling revenue or a broken token model. They need to be judged in the broader context of protocol market structure and long-term growth. Even so, sustained market purchases funded by protocol revenue can offset inflation to some extent.
Robinhood reports records across revenue, profit, and customer growth
The fourth item covered Robinhood’s second-quarter earnings call. Chief executive Vlad Tenev said decentralized exchange volume on Robinhood Chain has topped $12 billion since launch, making it one of the largest chains by weekly trading volume. He also said it was the fastest chain to reach 100 million transactions and has now moved well past 150 million transactions.
Tenev added that customers have deposited more than $200 million into Robinhood Earn, the company’s stablecoin lending product built on Robinhood Chain and the USDG stablecoin. He said the product now offers a 7% annual yield and has been live for only a few weeks.
He also said tokenized stocks are one of the products he is most excited about. Robinhood has launched them in more than 120 countries, aiming to give global users ownership exposure to U.S. equities and other high-quality assets. According to Tenev, Robinhood is already serving more than 1 million accounts outside the United States.
Before going through the financials, he highlighted three themes for the quarter. First, the core business was strong. Net deposits reached a record $22 billion, with an annualized growth rate of 28%. Records were also set in equities, options, prediction markets, and margin. The company added nearly 1 million funded customers in the quarter. Second, that momentum fed into record revenue of $1.31 billion, up 32% year over year, along with another quarter of strong profitability. Adjusted EBITDA margin reached 57%. Third, Robinhood said it remained disciplined on expenses and lowered and tightened its full-year spending guidance even as the core business hit records and new products were layered on.
The company said trading activity reached record levels across most asset classes and market share hit a new high. Interest-earning assets also increased, while margin, credit card, and banking all posted records. Other revenue grew as well. Gold subscriptions climbed to a record 4.8 million, and Trump accounts began contributing revenue.
Robinhood also laid out three metrics it believes investors should follow: net deposits, with customer funds growing at more than 20%; Rule of 40, or growth plus margin, though the company said it has operated at Rule of 80+ over the past few years; and the number of business lines generating more than $100 million in annualized revenue. Robinhood said it now has 13 such lines, adding Robinhood Legend and credit card in the latest quarter alone.
a16z argues DUNA could become a new organizational model for Web3
The fifth and final essay came from a16z and focused on why DUNA — the decentralized unincorporated nonprofit association — may emerge as a new organizational model for Web3.
a16z started with a broad historical argument. For centuries, business has revolved around one central problem: how to get people with different roles, information, and incentives to coordinate around a shared goal. The corporation was presented as one of the defining organizational innovations of the industrial era because limited liability, share ownership, and separate legal personhood made large-scale capital formation and risk sharing possible.
That framework, however, was built for an earlier age. As the internet and software have advanced, much of the coordination once handled by managers, administrative systems, and intermediaries can now be handled by digital systems and internet-native protocols. Management costs, layers of hierarchy, and information-transfer costs are all falling, while legal frameworks are still grounded in industrial-era assumptions. Against that backdrop, a16z described DUNA as the only new legal entity formally recognized in the latest U.S. market structure legislation and designed specifically for internet-native organizations. It argued that DUNA could become a serious contender to the corporate form in the next phase of organizational evolution.
The essay also revisited the practical limits of DAO structures. Blockchains made it possible for large groups to coordinate without centralized managers or trusted intermediaries, giving rise to decentralized autonomous organizations governed by smart contracts and community voting. In practice, though, token-holder participation in governance has remained very low, even lower than turnout in public company board elections, according to the article. Voting power can also become concentrated in the hands of a small number of large token holders.
Legal uncertainty has been an even bigger obstacle. The article said the SEC has not created clear rules for crypto projects in the United States and has often relied on ambiguity while bringing enforcement actions. At the same time, because DAOs have not been fully recognized as legal entities, members do not receive limited liability protection. If a project faces legal claims, those involved in governance could in theory bear unlimited personal liability. In a16z’s telling, that puts DAO participants closer to medieval merchant risk than to modern corporate protection. To reduce that risk, many crypto projects have set up offshore foundations or moved outside the U.S., sending innovation, jobs, and tax revenue abroad.
DUNA, the essay said, changes that equation by addressing the long-running problem of legal identity. Before DUNA, Web3 projects generally had three choices: operate as a DAO without legal personhood or limited liability; use a traditional company structure and accept centralized governance and securities pressure; or rely on an offshore foundation, which can reduce some regulatory exposure but often adds complexity, slows governance, and creates new centers of power.
DUNA was presented as a fourth option. It can convert a decentralized group of community members directly into a legally recognized entity. a16z said legislation has already passed in Wyoming, West Virginia, and Alabama. The structure gives organizations legal personhood, limited liability, continuity, and formal legal recognition — core capabilities associated with modern companies. That means a community can sign contracts, hold assets, raise capital, hire workers, pay taxes, and conduct commercial relationships through a recognized legal wrapper, while members avoid unlimited personal liability.
The piece closed by comparing DUNA’s possible trajectory with the rise of the LLC. Organizational forms usually take time to spread, a16z wrote, but just as the LLC became the standard structure for many U.S. startups, DUNA may become the standard legal architecture for internet-native organizations and Web3 protocols.
