Jack Paul 
Ink’s rapid growth marks a turning point
Kraken’s Ethereum Layer 2 network, Ink, has reached a significant milestone with over $500 million in total value locked. This represents quite a dramatic shift for a network that spent most of its early life below $10 million in TVL. The growth really started accelerating in October 2025, which is interesting when you think about the timeline.
According to the latest data, Ink’s TVL stood at nearly $503 million as of Tuesday. That’s about a 3% increase in just 24 hours. The network has climbed steeply since October, positioning it among the larger emerging blockchains by this metric. I think what’s notable here is the timing—this growth happened after nearly a year of relatively flat activity.
The Tydro factor
The surge appears closely tied to Ink’s October 2025 launch of Tydro, a lending protocol built as a white-label deployment of Aave. Tydro’s current total market size stands at $737.5 million, with $443.8 million available to borrow and $293.7 million currently borrowed. That’s substantial for a relatively new protocol.
Tydro itself holds about $446.6 million in TVL, which is up 34% just this month. The next-largest protocol on Ink, Nado, holds roughly $40.8 million, while Velodrome has about $14 million locked. So Tydro really dominates the Ink ecosystem at the moment. It’s not just a small contributor—it’s driving most of the growth.
Other contributing factors
Some of the increase could also be tied to the recent rise in Ether’s price. ETH is up about 8% over the past week to $3,197, which naturally affects TVL calculations across all Ethereum-based networks. But that doesn’t fully explain Ink’s specific growth pattern.
There’s also speculation around Ink’s planned token launch. Kraken has mentioned plans to integrate the INK token into its core products, with an airdrop slated for eligible users through its Kraken Drops program. Though details haven’t been disclosed yet, this anticipation might be drawing more capital to the network.
A curious user activity pattern
What’s interesting, and perhaps a bit concerning, is that while liquidity has surged, user activity has moved in the opposite direction. Daily active users peaked at just over 157,000 in March 2025 before steadily declining through the rest of the year. Currently, Ink has about 49,000 daily active users.
This creates a somewhat unusual situation where TVL is growing rapidly but user numbers are declining. It makes me wonder if the growth is being driven more by large capital deployments than by organic user adoption. Or perhaps users are becoming more efficient with their interactions, needing fewer transactions to manage larger positions.
Either way, Ink’s journey from under $10 million to over $500 million in TVL represents a significant shift for Kraken’s Layer 2 experiment. The network seems to have found its footing with Tydro’s launch, though the relationship between capital inflow and user engagement remains something to watch closely in the coming months.