Messari Research •
February 19, 2026 at 15:21 •
Analysis
In Q4, Rootstock’s total transactions rose 2.9% QoQ to 783,286, while merged-mining participation strengthened to 88.0% (+3.7% QoQ; +51.7% YoY), reinforcing network security even as user activity declined, with average daily active addresses falling to 280 (−33.1% QoQ) and new addresses to 26 (−35.5% QoQ). DeFi TVL pulled back 24.9% QoQ to $197.0 million (−3.3% YoY), with total protocol TVL down 30.3% QoQ to $168 million, though DeFi diversity improved YoY from 3 to 4. Stablecoin balances declined 8.0% QoQ to $12.8 million, with DOC leading at $3.7 million. On the technical side, Reed 8.0 reduced BTC peg-out costs by ~60% via SegWit-enabled PowPeg, Flyover v2.3 improved bridge automation, and Reed 8.1 advanced parallel transaction processing on testnet. The quarter a...