---
title: What's Driving Token Prices? February 18, 2026
description: This week on What’s Driving Token Prices, Katie Talati examines Aave governance developments, Apollo’s investment in Morpho, Lighter’s Circle partnership, and Aztec’s token launch.
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---

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# What's Driving Token Prices? February 18, 2026

[![Katie Talati](https://www.ar.ca/hubfs/Katie%20Talati.png)](https://www.ar.ca/blog/author/katie-talati)

 Written by [Katie Talati](https://www.ar.ca/blog/author/katie-talati)

 Feb 18, 2026

**Join Katie Talati, Arca’s Head of Research, weekly on Wednesday at 4PM EST / 1PM PST as she shares notable token activity over the past week and her insights on what market events drove these token price movements.**

- **AZTEC (+7.2%)** - Layer-2 privacy-focused Aztec, a nearly ten-year-old project, launched its token last week amid rough market conditions. The project, which was founded in 2017, has raised over $100M in funding from crypto investors, including Paradigm, a16z, and others, with the promise of delivering superior privacy features. Although the token has held up quite well since launch, many have pointed out that at its current $0.018 price, it is trading 50% below its public sale price back in November of last year. The Aztec L2 launched its mainnet in November last year but has since only attracted $7.3M in TVL.
- **LIT (+9.5%)** - Perpetual futures exchange Lighter protocol announced last week that it struck a deal with stablecoin issuer Circle for revenue-sharing. The partnership is designed to share interest income generated from USDC, Circle’s stablecoin. Lighter currently has $916M in USDC deposited on its platform, potentially netting it a large amount of revenue. Since Lighter does not charge trading fees, only subscription fees for premium trading features, additional revenue lines such as these strengthen its revenue generation potential. The protocol currently earns about $81M annualized based on the last 30 days of data.
-  **AAVE (+17%)** - Last week, Aave Labs, the entity supporting development of lend/borrow DeFi protocol Aave, posted a proposal to direct 100% of Aave’s revenue to the DAO. Over the past few months, there have been disagreements between the Aave DAO and Aave Labs over where revenue from the front-end product is ascribed. The proposal from Aave Labs seeks to unify the Aave protocol. However, it also requested a large budget from the DAO in order to support itself, drawing criticism from the community in the process. The Labs division requested a $50M budget in cash and tokens, which is far more than other DAO service providers have been paid to date. The proposal is still up for debate and includes provisions for launching and unifying around the V4 upgrade expected in the coming months.  
- MORPHO (+32%) - Apollo Global Management announced yesterday that it entered into a deal to buy up to 9% of the MORPHO token supply over the next four years. Morpho is one of the largest on-chain credit markets with $5.8B in TVL. It currently supports yield strategies for a large number of institutions, many of which are not crypto-native. Apollo will also be working with Morpho to support lending markets on the latter’s protocol. Notably, the MORPHO token only serves as a governance token over the Morpho protocol, which does not collect any fees or revenue that are redirected to a DAO or third-party organization. The deal follows last week’s announcement that BlackRock purchased Uniswap’s tokens, as it also makes shares of the tokenized BUIDL fund tradable on the DEX.  
   
  
  *DISCLAIMER: This commentary is not intended to be investment advice, investment research, or a recommendation. Please consult your investment professional for your own circumstances.*

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Disclaimer: This commentary is provided as general information only and is in no way intended as investment advice, investment research, legal advice, tax advice, a research report, or a recommendation. Any decision to invest or take any other action with respect to any investments discussed in this commentary may involve risks not discussed, and therefore, such decisions should not be based solely on the information contained in this document. Please consult your own financial/legal/tax professional.

Statements in this communication may include forward-looking information and/or may be based on various assumptions. The forward-looking statements and other views or opinions expressed are those of the author, and are made as of the date of this publication. Actual future results or occurrences may differ significantly from those anticipated and there is no guarantee that any particular outcome will come to pass. The statements made herein are subject to change at any time. Arca disclaims any obligation to update or revise any statements or views expressed herein. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results and there can be no assurance that any future results will be realized. Some or all of the information provided herein may be or be based on statements of opinion. In addition, certain information provided herein may be based on third-party sources, which is believed to be accurate, but has not been independently verified. Arca and/or certain of its affiliates and/or clients may now, or in the future, hold a financial interest in investments that are the same as or substantially similar to the investments discussed in this commentary. No claims are made as to the profitability of such financial interests, now, in the past or in the future and Arca and/or its clients may sell such financial interests at any time. The information provided herein is not intended to be, nor should it be construed as an offer to sell or a solicitation of any offer to buy any securities, or a solicitation to provide investment advisory services.

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