Intro and Background
Index Coop DAO builds onchain structured products and its mission is to make it easy for people to access crypto. Index Coop powers leverage and yield tokens, which can be found in the Index Coop app and in CEXs, dApps and wallets.
This report aims to keep token holders informed about the latest news, roadmap and significant successes and challenges. Going forward the reporting cadence will be quarterly.
NOVEMBER CLOSE
TVL: $38.4m
Monthly net dollar flow (MN$F): –$3.7m
Runway: ~15 months
Single counted TVL. Runway expected to increase through Q1-2 via deprecated product fee increases, asset price recoveries (underway).
NEWS FROM NOVEMBER
Product
In Q4 we released the referral program to complement the trading campaigns. The
intention is to establish a standing mechanism incentivising users to bring new
capital into leverage and yield strategies - especially noting a small cohort of power users who are the marginal drivers of TVL and volume contributing to additional revenue. Finally, we deployed targeted fixes and performance updates across Trade and Earn to support consistent execution under higher load.
Following on from the volatility of Oct 10th we also focused on strengthening
resilience across the platform. We launched a new monitoring and incident-
response dashboard that provides real-time visibility into system behaviour and
improves our response time during volatile periods. This reduces operational load
and increases stability and protection when users need it most.
Growth
Market conditions turned risk-off in November, so we reduced front-foot activity,
reviewed open campaigns, and planned how to further leverage new referral
program infrastructure in 2026 (currently leveraged in the raffle leaderboard). The
referral program currently has nine codes driving referral traffic, and had its first day of 100 views driven this week.
We continued routine campaigns and updates: INDEX burns, announcing BTC3x
and ETH3x’s availability on Mainnet, and Trade of The Month - which has a small,
steadily growing community participating, along with a number of addresses we now know well, which provide product insights and feedback. We also drafted a review of tthe first season of this campaign, which we’ll release publicly in December, and took three, cost efficient placements in The DeFi Investor’s newsletter and socials (to increase awareness of the leverage trading campaign and referral program).
FOCUS FOR DECEMBER
- Release six inverse (short) leverage tokens and weave into our leverage RUSH campaign
- Complete Data API simplification, materially lowering infrastructure spend
- Remove deprecated app surfaces and ship additional Trade/Earn performance updates
- Clarify wider use plan of referral program infrastructure in 2026
2025 YEAR IN REVIEW
2025 was a year of tightening focus and strengthening the foundation of the platform. We concentrated the product set, improved trading application quality, reduced fixed expenses and advanced our tokenomics framework.
Financial and runway overview
TVL and revenue tracked broader market conditions, with leveraged impact due to our predominantly leverage product set: a strong start, a difficult first half, a period of improvement through late summer and then a reset in October.
Payroll was reduced mid-year while delivery remained consistent, leading to an improvement in burn. Simplifying the product and app surface increased operational efficiency and positioned the organization more favourably heading into 2026.
Monthly payroll and revenue trendlines have been tracking to meet - flipping them in 2026 is a core priority.
Product
The product direction this year centered around leverage and yield, and on removing the drag from legacy products that no longer justified their maintenance cost.
Leverage continued to show consistent usage, with steady linear growth. We
expanded the suite across Base, Mainnet and Arbitrum, and made substantial improvements to quoting, slippage, mobile usability and execution reliability. These upgrades reduced friction between user intent and completed trades.
Yield produced both progress and constraints. hyETH’s migration into a Gauntlet-
managed vault improved efficiency and growth, demonstrating the potential of
leveraged yield when market structure supports it. Outside of hyETH, several
concepts were constrained by limited liquidity and utilization in spot-lending markets. The wider DeFi yield landscape also remains crowded. Rather than pursuing marginal opportunities, we focused on the infrastructure and automation required for future yield strategies.
In parallel, we continued to deprecate and wind down low-PMF, low-value products. Maintaining a long tail of underperforming tokens had been absorbing engineering and operational capacity without contributing meaningfully to usage or revenue.
Retiring those lines reduced maintenance burden, clarified the product story for
users and improved our ability to ship and iterate quickly on the products that matter most.
Across both pillars, we prioritized improvements that strengthen reliability, clarity and maintainability across the full product surface, while deliberately shrinking the parts of the portfolio that slowed us down.
Growth
Growth focus this year was on a smaller number of upper funnel, lower funnel and referral initiatives to support and grow the leverage suite.
Upper funnel was targeted via launch campaigns for various new, leverage tokens; Trade of The Month (/Sharpshooters - launched in April); and a major placement
partnership with MetaMask (launched in March). As we look back, the MetaMask
campaign was not a success: it had solid upper funnel performance, but consistently yielded very low value wallets. Changing copy and call to action a number times did not change this MetaMask funnel trend, which was confirmed by two other pilot partners in MetaMask Portfolio also.
The new leverage token launches, Trade of The Month - and more recently the Leverage RUSH campaign - have aided continued steady growth of the leverage suite. While November’s launch of the first iteration of referral program infrastructure has seen a small number of pilot users and our first day of 100 app users via referral traffic. We intended to experiment with this referral infrastructure in 2026.
Generally, external distribution channels, including wallets, were challenging to scale and we upsized focus on the app: improving onboarding, providing clearer
product explanations, reducing friction points, and making more direct paths from interest to action. These changes do not produce sudden growth spikes, but
increase conversion and retention for users who arrive. This remains a core area of
focus entering 2026 too - working hand-in-hand with referral programs.
And finally, and in a nod to 2024, the icUSD project was officially shelved in early
2025. After strong momentum and initial buy-in from Circle’s DeFi and BD Teams,
an internal block in Q4 from the top of their house meant key product support items could not materialize (liquidity, market making support, and large CeFi/wallet activations). We perceived this project as a large bet to make at the time with a favourable risk-adjusted profile, but it did not work out.
Tokenomics and governance
The DAO completed the monthly burn program of 100k INDEX per month and approved a six-month extension. Throughout 2025 we consistently communicated
that our goal for the token is linked to the goal for the DAO business: positive
sustainable cashflows. We’ll look to improve our tokenomics from this base in 2026.
Operations and infrastructure
Internal systems improved significantly this year. Monitoring and alerting were
strengthened, key data and API layers were simplified and outdated app surfaces
were removed. We advanced automation in rebalancing and lending-market
operations. These improvements reduce operational load and support consistent
performance during volatile periods.
HOW OUR BUILD CADENCE EVOLVED (2023 - 2025)
Across the last three years, the progression has been steady and deliberate.
In 2023, work centered on foundational protocol upgrades, automation and
governance mechanisms that made operations safer and less manual. Costs were
also reduced.
In 2024, focus shifted to migration and distribution. We modernized legacy products,
expanded across chains, refined issuance and rebalancing and tested early
versions of yield structures and incentives. The application matured into a more
coherent product surface.
In 2025, emphasis moved to productization and focus. Leverage and yield became
the primary pillars. UX, infrastructure and operations were improved to support
them. Low-value, low-PMF products were incrementally deprecated, removing
maintenance overhead and improving development velocity. Costs moved into
better alignment with revenue, and tokenomics actions progressed in a measured
and sustainable way.
LOOKING AHEAD
As we enter 2026, our priorities remain consistent with the direction communicated throughout 2025. We will continue strengthening financials, improving clarity and reliability across the app, and expanding leverage and yield where market structure and user demand support it. Growth efforts will focus on channels and product surfaces that demonstrate clear, repeatable value - with fresh optionality to explore via the new referral program infrastructure, especially targeted at our small cohort of power users which drive the majority of revenue.