The Liquidity Issue | Month of April 2026

Welcome Back to PIKUP

Welcome to the fourteenth edition of PIKUP.

April was the month PikuDAO stopped proving and started routing. Yield consistency was already a settled question — nine consecutive weeks of positive backing returns settled it. The new question was whether USP could become a liquidity surface across DeFi, not just a yield-bearing position to hold.

April answered.

This is the Liquidity Issue.

The DAO did not spend the month shouting one announcement louder than the last. It did something more useful: it widened the set of strategies backing USP, pushed governance through a heavy execution month, launched Galxe Season 3, approved a rapid-deployment growth budget, and opened a Frax-aligned liquidity path through the frxUSD/USP Curve pool.

The month's signal in three lines:

• TVL +12.1% — from $14.97M on Apr 1 to $16.79M on Apr 30 (DeFiLlama)
• 8 governance proposals — backing additions, allocation changes, max-allowance updates, and a joint Frax liquidity incentive
• Galxe Season 3 — The Yield Strikes Back — live with $10,000 in PIKU rewards and a Merkl-focused contest

By month-end, the Frax Finance / Piku Finance collaboration had become the clearest new narrative thread for the next cycle. USP was no longer only a hold-to-grow product. It had routes.

Let's get into it.

---

Piku Protocol Update

Performance & Stats

• Transparency Dashboard: dune.com/piku_dao

DefiLlama's Piku feed shows TVL moving from $14.97M on Apr 1 to $16.79M on Apr 30 — a roughly $1.82M / 12.1% monthly increase. On May 7, the on-chain TVL read was $16.93M, with 15,397,144 USP outstanding at a $1.090956 issuance price.

Native yield math reads 9.14% 7-day APY and 10.13% 30-day APY. Quiet. Consistent. Automatic.

Last Week's Backing Performance (Apr 27 – May 4)

USP backing continued to compound upward into early May:

• USP price moved from $1.088223 to $1.090056
• 7-day APY: 9.17%
• Yield distribution: 90% to USP backing, 10% to DAO treasury
• Redemption fees added to backing: $134.03

Weekly annualized backing returns by strategy:

BMMF Proof of Solvency: Live On-Chain

USP's largest backing allocation just became verifiable in real time.

This month, BMMF — the anchor strategy in USP's backing stack, operated by Balsa — launched a Proof of Solvency dashboard built by Accountable:

• Live reserve verification
• Real-time collateralization tracking
• Supply monitoring
• Near real-time updates

Built on Base, powered by Accountable's Data Verification Network.

Why this matters: stablecoin transparency too often means quarterly attestations, PDFs, or "trust us." Proof of Solvency is different — continuous, on-chain, and independently verified. Every USP holder can now confirm in real time that the largest single piece of their backing is solvent and properly collateralized.

That's not how most stablecoins work. It's how this one does.

• Dashboard: bmmf.accountable.capital
• Announcement: @AccountableData on X →

The useful read: the system isn't only maintaining collateralization. It's steadily routing productive yield back into the reserve base.

Don't trust. Verify: Dune Dashboard | DeFiLlama

The Bigger DeFi Read: Yield Needs Active Management

April was also a reminder that DeFi yield lives in a minefield.

Recent exploit waves across the market have shown that risk doesn't only come from bad smart contracts. It comes from bridge infrastructure, admin access, oracle assumptions, social engineering, liquidity dependencies, and the protocols behind the protocols. In that environment, advertising yield without showing the machinery behind it isn't enough.

This is where Piku's approach matters.

USP is not a stablecoin with a number attached to it. It is a managed backing system with security transparency as the first priority. The work is in selecting strategies, assessing counterparties, routing allocations, watching performance, approving changes through governance, and keeping the backing stack transparent as conditions change.

April's protocol direction was clear: keep USP productive, but make the backing stack more flexible. Instead of relying on a single narrative, governance kept expanding the number of approved reserve routes. Midas mHYPER, Staked Axis USD, and updated maximum allowances all point toward the same operating thesis — USP should be able to move between yield sources as opportunities change, while keeping the reserve framework DAO-approved and transparent.

The point is not that risk disappears. It never does. The point is that Piku's job is to make risk visible, managed, and worth taking.

---

Backing & Strategy Updates

April governance introduced or updated several backing-related strategies:

April's backing story is not "new strategies added." It's governance giving the protocol more room to route capital intelligently. USP is only as strong as the quality, diversification, and execution discipline of its backing. The DAO spent April improving all three.

---

Governance — April Was a Sprint

Eight governance proposals created. The DAO didn't just vote often — it voted around a coherent operating theme: expand backing flexibility, fund growth, and turn liquidity into a campaignable product surface.

Snapshot space: snapshot.box/#/s:pikudao.eth

The Main Read

The strongest signal from April governance is operational maturity.

The DAO is not only approving incentives. It is tuning the reserve system, adjusting allocation limits, funding rapid campaign infrastructure, and rewarding tooling that improves the user strategy experience.

Proposal 30 is the standout — a joint liquidity incentive around the frxUSD/USP Curve pool. That puts PikuDAO directly into a Frax-aligned liquidity narrative, with real pool participation instead of abstract partnership language.

---

Campaigns & Rewards

Season 3: The Yield Strikes Back

Season 3 launched at the start of April with $10,000 worth of PIKU rewards and a Merkl-focused quote-RT contest.

The launch post was the month's strongest official PikuDAO social moment.

Season 3 matters because it connected Piku's reward layer to active user behavior. Instead of simply announcing yield, the campaign pushed users to find active campaigns, compare APRs, and engage with the highest-opportunity routes.

Rapid-Deployment Growth Campaign Budget

Proposal 25 approved 50,000 PIKU for rapid-deployment growth campaigns.

This matters because Piku Rush needs ammunition. Short campaigns only work if the DAO can move quickly, with clear budgets, repeatable templates, and reward pools that don't require a fresh operational scramble every time. April set that foundation.

Here is an example; If you're reading this, drop your guess for Piku Finance's TVL on May 31, 2026 at 11:59 PM under the X post where we announced this issue of Pikup. The closest guess wins a whopping 1,000 PIKU. You were not expecting this huh? lol

Frax / Curve Liquidity Push

The frxUSD/USP Curve pool became the key late-April liquidity story.

On Apr 22, PikuDAO proposed an 8-week co-incentive program for the frxUSD/USP Curve pool:

• Frax: $100 in WFRAX per day
• PikuDAO: 6,844.63 PIKU per day
• Goal: bootstrap deeper liquidity and enable yield-stacked LP opportunities
• Snapshot: Proposal 30
• Curve DAO context: Curve proposal 1395

---

Community Spotlight: @ZiloByte

Governance Is Not a Spectator Sport.

This month's spotlight goes to @ZiloByte — a non-ambassador community member who captured one of April's most important themes: PikuDAO governance is not just something to watch from the outside.

Why We're Highlighting This

The post wasn't the highest-reach mention of the month. That's the point. It was the right kind of signal — a real user describing Piku as something shaped through votes, proposals, and participation, not just yield numbers and price action.

What makes this worth featuring:

• Framing matters. Most retail crypto content reduces protocols to "hold this, earn that." @ZiloByte framed Piku as an institution where outcomes are a function of who shows up to vote. That's the cultural shift the DAO needs to win.
• Voice without volume. The reach was small. The signal was clean. Communities grow when low-engagement-but-high-quality posts get rewarded — not just when influencers tweet for hire.
• Independent. Not an ambassador. Not paid. Just paying attention.

PIKUP Content Creator of the Month

Congratulations to @ZiloByte — this month's featured creator earns 10,000 Voting Power (VP). DM @piku_dao to claim.

This happens regularly. Create content that educates, analyzes, or explains Piku — and you earn governance influence. Not tokens. Not points. Real voting power in the DAO that governs the protocol.

Read the full post on X →

Want to be featured in PIKUP? Tag us @piku_dao with your Piku content — threads, analysis, memes, whatever you've got. The best one each cycle earns 10,000 Voting Power.

---

Partner Spotlight: Frax x PikuDAO

From Alignment to Liquidity.

The cleanest partner story for April is Frax.

PikuDAO and Frax moved from ecosystem alignment into a concrete liquidity campaign around the frxUSD/USP Curve pool. This matters because frxUSD is not a generic partner asset — it's a stablecoin-native primitive with a real DeFi user base. Pairing it with USP unlocks a new use case: hold becomes hold + LP. The same USP that compounds yield in your wallet can now earn LP fees, Frax incentives, and PIKU rewards inside a deep, co-incentivized Curve pool — without giving up the underlying yield.

April → Early May Campaign Surface

• frxUSD/USP pool live on Curve
• Frax incentive: $100 in WFRAX per day for 8 weeks
• PikuDAO incentive: 6,844.63 PIKU per day for 8 weeks
• Live weekly reward surface: $700 in WFRAX + 47,000 PIKU
• Proposal 30 — joint liquidity incentivization, passed with 45 votes and 14.89M VP
• Proposal 33 — added immediately after April: deploy treasury liquidity into the frxUSD/USP Curve pool

Explore Before LPing

• Curve pool: curve.finance/dex/ethereum/pools/frxUSD-USP
• Piku rewards hub: piku.co/rewards

Why This Matters

A protocol can announce a partnership. A liquidity pool with real co-incentives across two DAOs is a different thing — it's shared capital, shared rewards, and shared upside. Frax is not a logo on a slide. It's now a route.

---

Live Merkl Opportunities

USP no longer has one job. It has surfaces — hold, stake, LP, Pendle, Morpho, Curve, vaults.

As of the May 7 live Merkl check, Merkl returned 8 active Piku-related opportunities:

*YT APR is a function of small TVL — early-mover advantage. Will normalize as capital enters.

The raw APRs will move as liquidity and rewards shift. The broader read is what matters: by the end of April, USP was no longer only a hold-to-grow product. It had active routes across holding, staking, LPing, Pendle, Morpho, Curve, and vault exposure.

That is liquidity gravity starting to form.

View All Piku Opportunities on Merkl →

APRs are dynamic and subject to change. PIKU rewards are Pre-TGE tokens. Campaigns are recurring — when one ends, the next begins.

---

Macro Snapshot

Selective liquidity. Fear-flavored sentiment. Stablecoin yield still the cleanest user story.

April's broader market tone improved from panic to cautious risk-taking — but it was not a clean euphoria month. Bitcoin moved higher across April. Ethereum had a more uneven recovery. The cleaner signal was sentiment.

Crypto Markets

• Crypto Fear & Greed Index — spent much of early and mid-April in Fear or Extreme Fear, recovered toward Neutral late in the month, then slipped back to Fear around month-end. Recent prints: 47 Neutral on Apr 27, 29 Fear on Apr 30, 40 Fear on May 4 (alternative.me)
• Bitcoin — moved higher across April; full weekly context via T. Rowe Price below
• Ethereum — uneven monthly recovery; lagged BTC

For broader equity, rates, and central-bank context across the United States, Europe, Japan, and China, see: T. Rowe Price Global Markets Weekly Update.

The Takeaway

In a market where attention was returning but conviction was still uneven, productive stablecoin liquidity remained a clean user story: don't sit in dollars — put them to work through transparent, yield-bearing routes.

For PikuDAO, April's macro message was simple: liquidity was selective, stablecoin yield still mattered, and protocols with clear on-chain routes had a better shot at converting attention into deposits.

---

What's Next

May starts with April's threads becoming executable.

Watch for:

• frxUSD/USP Curve pool growth — TVL, fees, LP participation
• Piku Rush campaign execution — first real test of the rapid-deployment budget
• LP participation campaigns built on top of the new pool
• Continued reserve strategy tuning through governance
• New standout vaults
• More transparency

The major question for May:

Can PikuDAO turn April's governance and campaign setup into measurable liquidity growth?

That's the next test.

Stay tuned on X for real-time updates.

---

Why Piku? Because Liquidity Compounds.

April did not look like a single headline. It looked like a system getting more complete.

Backing routes expanded. Governance accelerated. Season 3 pulled users into action. Frax turned into a real liquidity partner. Merkl opportunities multiplied across the stack. Each piece, on its own, was incremental. Together they describe a protocol moving from "USP is a yield-bearing token" to "USP is a liquidity surface."

That distinction matters.

A yield-bearing token has one user behavior — hold. A liquidity surface has many — hold, stake, LP, Pendle, Morpho, Curve, vault. Each surface is a new entry point. Each entry point is a new user. Each user is another node in a network that gets harder to compete with as it grows.

This is the part most protocols miss. They optimize the headline yield and ignore the routes. Piku spent April building the routes — through governance, through partnerships, through campaign infrastructure — and the yield kept compounding underneath all of it.

$16.93M TVL. 15,397,144 USP. $1.090956. 10.13% 30-day APY. 8 governance proposals closed. Season 3 live with $10K in PIKU rewards. Frax co-incentive program active. 8 live Merkl opportunities. Backing stack expanded with mHYPER, Staked Axis USD.

The protocols that build during selective markets are the ones that already have product-market fit when capital comes back. Piku didn't need a euphoric tape to grow. The next leg up will find it already routed.

That's not a narrative. That's the on-chain record.

---

Stay Connected and Hedge against the machine!!

Website | App | Rewards | X (Twitter)

Disclaimer: This newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. USP involves risks; please read our documentation and risk disclosures before participating.

---