Carlos

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Ranger’s ICO begins today and will run through Jan. 10. For context, Ranger is a full-stack trading terminal with three core products.&nbsp;



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>First is Ranger Perps, a perps aggregator for Solana-based venues like Jupiter Perps, Drift, and Flash Trade, with Hyperliquid support in the works. </li>



<li>Second is Ranger Spot, a meta-aggregator that routes across other aggregators like Jupiter and DFlow for optimal price execution. </li>



<li>The third pillar is Ranger Earn, a newer product that offers curated access to institutional-grade yield strategies through Ranger’s vault infrastructure.</li>
</ul>



Ranger is seeking a minimum raise of $6 million and is selling 39% of the total RNGR supply in the ICO. Proceeds from the raise will be held in a token holder-governed treasury, with the team receiving a fixed monthly stipend of $250,000. The Ranger ICO marks an important milestone for MetaDAO: It’s the first token sale on the platform to include a project with existing pre-ICO investors. The table below shows RNGR’s supply distribution.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-26.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110768" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-26.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-26.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-26.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-26.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-26.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-26.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-26.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-26.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-26.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



ICO participants who receive an allocation will be 100% liquid at TGE (no vesting), while pre-ICO investors will follow a 24-month linear unlock schedule with no cliff. Notably, the team allocation will be tied to price performance: Up to 7.6M RNGR (30% of total supply) becomes unlockable for the team via five milestone tranches triggered at 2x / 4x / 8x / 16x / 32x of the ICO price. Each milestone must be maintained via a three-month TWAP, and there is a minimum 18-month cliff before any team tokens can unlock.



The chart below shows RNGR’s unlock schedule. The team performance pool is an estimate based on the parameters above, but realized unlocks will ultimately depend on RNGR’s sustained price performance post-ICO.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-28.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110770" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-28.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-28.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-28.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-28.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-28.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-28.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-28.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-28.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-28.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



The last six MetaDAO ICOs have been heavily oversubscribed, with allocations settled pro rata. This allocation mechanism favors whales, who can afford to overcommit capital to secure a meaningful allocation. As the chart below shows, across the past six MetaDAO ICOs, participants have received an average of ~5% of their desired exposure.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-27.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110769" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-27.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-27.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-27.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-27.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-27.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-27.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-27.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-27.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-27.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Ranger will guarantee point holders access to the ICO via a dedicated allocation bucket, directly addressing the oversubscription dynamic above. I’m constructive on this structure: It rewards early users and contributors through preferential access rather than giving away 10-30% of supply via an airdrop, which can introduce unnecessary sell pressure and weaker alignment. In this regard, any allocation not taken by point holders will roll over and be pro-rated to public ICO buyers.



While the Ranger ICO is compelling on its own (and likely worth participating in, particularly for points holders), the bigger story, in my view, is what it means for MetaDAO: a catalyst that could reaccelerate launch cadence and revenue to start the year.



MetaDAO monetizes ICOs through swap fees on its Futarchy AMM and its LP position on Meteora. The Futarchy AMM charges a 0.5% fee on volume, which was originally split evenly between MetaDAO and the project raising (e.g., 0.25% to MetaDAO, 0.25% to Ranger). On Dec. 28, after mutual agreement with teams, the split was retroactively adjusted so that the full 0.5% now accrues to MetaDAO.



Since the Futarchy AMM went live on Oct. 10, 2025, MetaDAO has generated about $2.4 million in revenue, with roughly 60% coming from the Futarchy AMM and 40% from its Meteora LP position.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="889" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-23.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110765" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-23.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-23.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-23.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-23.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-23.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-23.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-23.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-23.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-23.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



That said, MetaDAO’s revenues have declined sharply since mid-December as ICO activity slowed. Today, MetaDAO’s ICOs remain curated, placing far more weight on founder quality, credibility and long-term alignment than on simply maximizing the number of launches. This approach was necessary to validate the product, but it has come with a clear tradeoff: Without a steady stream of new launches, it’s difficult for revenues to increase, and MetaDAO has fallen short on cadence over the past few weeks.



The chart below highlights why. Token volumes tend to be highest around TGE and the days immediately following, meaning sustained Futarchy AMM volumes, and by extension, revenues, are highly dependent on new launches coming through the pipeline.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="889" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-24.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110766" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-24.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-24.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-24.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-24.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-24.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-24.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-24.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-24.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-24.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Despite declining daily revenue, META has performed remarkably well, rallying roughly 40% over the past week. As a result, META’s 30-day trailing P/S has increased to ~36x, well above its prior two-month range of ~10-15x.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-29.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110771" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-29.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-29.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-29.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-29.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-29.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-29.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-29.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-29.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-29.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Markets are forward-looking, though, and I expect META’s P/S to compress back toward its historical range over the coming weeks and months as revenue reaccelerates (i.e., not through a price decline, but through higher trailing revenues).&nbsp;



The near-term catalysts are twofold. First is Ranger’s ICO, which will likely be oversubscribed and lead to a spike in Futarchy AMM volumes post-TGE. Second is the <a href="https://v1.metadao.fi/metadao/trade-v5/Bzoap95gjbokTaiEqwknccktfNSvkPe4ZbAdcJF1yiEK">Omnibus proposal</a>, which passed last night and will&nbsp;



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>migrate roughly ~90% of META liquidity from Meteora DAMM v1 into the Futarchy AMM and </li>



<li>burn roughly ~60,000 META (about $550,000 at current prices). Capturing trading volumes from RNGR and META should increase Futarchy AMM revenue in the near term. </li>
</ol>



Beyond the next few days and into the coming months, I expect MetaDAO’s revenues to trend higher as launch cadence accelerates by an order of magnitude. Two catalysts stand out: permissionless launches and Colosseum’s STAMP.



MetaDAO has debated in public comms whether to preserve a fully curated (permissioned) model or experiment with permissionless launches. The latter, despite the risk of lower-quality projects, is a necessary experiment to increase throughput and validate the platform’s scalability, and is probably the direction the team will ultimately pursue.



Finally, I think the market is underpricing what Colosseum’s STAMP could mean for MetaDAO. Colosseum sits upstream of Solana’s startup funnel, spanning hackathons, an accelerator and a venture fund. Many of the ecosystem’s top teams trace their roots back to hackathons (e.g., Jito, Kamino, Drift, Exponent, Hylo). STAMP effectively plugs MetaDAO into that deal flow, creating a steadier pipeline of high-quality launches to complement permissionless ICOs and normalize launch cadence over time.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-25.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110767" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-25.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-25.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-25.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-25.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-25.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-25.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-25.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-25.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/image-25.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



In conclusion, Ranger and the Omnibus proposal may help reaccelerate revenues in the near term, but permissionless launches and STAMP are what could ultimately drive a tenfold increase in MetaDAO’s ICO cadence (and, by extension, volumes and revenue) over the coming months.



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0xResearch Newsletter

Ranger’s ICO starts today, and MetaDAO eyes a reset

Kunal Doshi

Shaunda Devens

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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As we step into the new year, <a href="https://x.com/0xNairolf/status/2003775659571925224?s=20">mindshare</a> across crypto has rotated meaningfully. Prediction markets, stablecoins and RWAs have emerged as the clear winners, while AI, modularity and memecoins have fallen out of favor. One protocol that stood out this week touches two of the three leading narratives and has quietly been putting up impressive metrics: the Canton Network.



Canton is a blockchain built specifically for financial institutions, designed to enable secure, interoperable and privacy preserving transactions. Its token became transferable on Nov. 10 and, after an initial drawdown of more than 50%, it has fully recovered. It’s now up 47.6% over the past month.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1544" height="815" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-185.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110673" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-185.png?w=1544 1544w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-185.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-185.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-185.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-185.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-185.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-185.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-185.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-185.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1544px) 100vw, 1544px" /></figure>



The scale of RWA activity on the network is already notable. As of <a href="https://x.com/CantonNetwork/status/2003073143108465130?s=20">Q4 2025</a>, Canton has processed $6 trillion in real-world assets and currently handles about $350 billion per day in US treasury activity. Much of this traction comes from institutional partners like <a href="https://www.broadridge.com/about/">Broadridge Financial Solutions</a>, a global fintech leader in trading and settlement infrastructure. Broadridge’s Distributed Ledger Repo platform runs on Canton and processes more than <a href="https://www.canton.network/ecosystem/broadridge-dlr">$8 trillion per month</a> in repo transactions, using blockchain rails to improve efficiency in one of the largest markets in global finance.



Momentum has continued to build through deeper integrations. A <a href="https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/nasdaq-and-qcp-set-new-standard-capital-efficiency-connecting-canton-network-nasdaq-0">partnership</a> with Nasdaq connects Canton to Nasdaq Calypso, enabling automated margin and collateral management and allowing institutions to move and reuse capital more efficiently across traditional and digital assets. More recently, DTCC, the central clearing and settlement backbone of US financial markets, <a href="https://www.dtcc.com/news/2025/december/17/dtcc-and-digital-asset-partner-to-tokenize-dtc-custodied-us-treasury-securities">selected</a> Canton to support RWA tokenization. The initial rollout will allow a subset of US treasurys held at DTCC’s depository to be issued on Canton following SEC approval. Given that DTCC clears roughly <a href="https://www.dtcc.com/dtcc-connection/articles/2024/april/09/dtcc-delivering-for-the-industry">$10 trillion</a> of securities transactions every day, the ability to move settlement from T+2 to near real-time could meaningfully improve efficiency and free up capital within existing market infrastructure.



The network usage is closely tied to the token. Canton’s Global Synchronizer coordinates cross-institution transactions, with predictable fees paid in CC that are burned as network activity increases. Over the past 20 days, the network has burned a median of 6.71 million tokens daily, equating to about $627,000 per day, with peaks between $750,000 and $850,000. For context, Solana averaged roughly <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/solana">$670,700</a> in REV daily over the last seven days, yet trades at a FDV about 16x higher than Canton.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-188.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110676" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-188.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-188.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-188.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-188.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-188.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-188.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-188.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-188.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-188.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Usage metrics complete the picture. Since November, Canton has averaged around 28,500 daily active users and 678,300 daily transactions, putting it <a href="https://app.nansen.ai/macro/blockchains">in line</a> with networks like Monad on DAUs and Ton on transaction count.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="1148" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-186.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110674" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-186.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-186.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-186.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-186.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-186.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-186.png?w=358 358w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-186.png?w=364 364w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-186.png?w=305 305w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-186.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



There is still much more to unpack around architecture, validators and long-term token design, but the early signals are hard to ignore. With exposure to narratives such as tokenization, stablecoins and privacy, Canton is shaping up as one of the more interesting protocols to watch as we head into 2026.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Lighter’s TGE</h2>



Lighter airdropped and launched LIT on Dec. 30, closing out a timeline that traders had been stress-testing via a Polymarket contract that effectively functioned as a TGE proxy. Odds briefly slipped to ~60% intraday before the launch went through. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="blob:https://cms.blockworks.co/4dcc8b99-cee4-44c7-b0e6-e0523d2378e4" width="624" height="351">



LIT&#8217;s max supply is 1 billion with 250 million circulating at TGE, a 25% day-one float. The airdrop was funded by Seasons 1 and 2 points, with 12.5 million points converted into LIT, implying roughly ~20 LIT per point on the headline math. Allocation splits are 50% ecosystem (25% now, 25% later), 26% team, and 24% investors. Team and investors sit behind a one-year cliff followed by three-year linear vesting. Against that backdrop, premarket points pricing has repriced sharply post-TGE, with points buyers down around 50% from peak levels that implied roughly $100 per point at the top.



The more interesting debate is not the airdrop, but token holder protection. Lighter is leaning directly into the token equity mismatch critique, arguing that revenues from the core DEX and future products can be tracked onchain in real time and allocated between growth and buybacks depending on conditions. It goes further by claiming the value created by all products and services will fully accrue to LIT holders, with the token issued directly from its US C-Corp, which will operate the protocol &#8220;at cost.&#8221; Directionally, that is a stronger posture than the common separate labs capture profits model, but it is not a hard guarantee: &#8220;At cost&#8221; is elastic (e.g. Uniswap Foundation employee salaries).



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1184" height="1114" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-187.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110675" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-187.png?w=1184 1184w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-187.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-187.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-187.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-187.png?w=273 273w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-187.png?w=277 277w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-187.png?w=233 233w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-187.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1184px) 100vw, 1184px" /></figure>



On comps, the market is valuing Lighter similarly to Hyperliquid. At $2.7 billion FDV and $700 million circulating, Lighter&#8217;s float is ~25.9%, nearly identical to Hyperliquid&#8217;s ~25.4% ($24 billion FDV and $6.1 billion circulating). More importantly, Lighter is trading on a fees multiple that is already in Hyperliquid&#8217;s range: 26.6x FDV/annualized fees (and 6.9x circulating/annualized fees) vs. Hyperliquid at 29.9x (and 7.6x). That&#8217;s despite a large gap in absolute scale, Lighter printed $8.5 million in 30D fees vs. Hyperliquid&#8217;s $66.8 million, and Lighter&#8217;s open interest is $1.45 billion vs. $7.44 billion for Hyperliquid.



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Canton’s $6T RWA rails and Lighter’s Hyperliquid multiple

Byron Gilliam

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“You have to enjoy failure.” — James Dyson
</blockquote>



In a 2003 research paper, Google engineers <a href="https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//archive/googlecluster-ieee.pdf">shared</a> their new approach of building “reliable computing infrastructure from clusters of unreliable commodity PCs.”



This was a radical change. Instead of paying up for super high-end Sun servers engineered for near-perfect reliability, Google was embracing cheap, commodity hardware running free Linux software. They then developed additional software to work around the hardware&#8217;s frequent failures.



Redundancy through volume, they found, is cheaper than precision through engineering.



This is the model for modern AI data centers, too: You can&#8217;t have a three-month training run crash just because one GPU dies out of 20,000.



It’s not, however, the model for manufacturing the GPUs themselves.



Instead, semiconductor fabrication plants are built to produce GPUs with an ultra-low level of defects, which demands near-perfection at every step of an incredibly complex process — the opposite of Google’s recommendation for data centers. But this is not engineering perfectionism. It’s an economic necessity.&nbsp;



“Why do we need to have 99.9999% reliability at every step of the process?” Ben Thompson <a href="https://sharptech.fm/member/episode/an-open-ai-reminder-netflixs-expanding-appetite-q-a-on-remote-work-taco-bell-and-data-centers-in-space">asks</a>. “It’s all the cost of capital equipment.”



Mostly that’s because the $200 million ASML machines every fabrication plant uses to make cutting-edge semiconductors “are the most overengineered things on earth,” Thompson explains.&nbsp;



This creates a feedback loop of spiraling cost and perfection: Fabrication plants have to be near-perfect to be profitable because the ASML machines are so expensive — and the ASML machines are so expensive because they have to be perfect.



As a result, it now costs as much as $20 billion to build a single semiconductor fab.



Thompson compares the process of making semiconductors with hyper-complex ASML machines with the process of making rockets at SpaceX, where Elon Musk chooses to “blow up a bunch of Starships because you don’t want to be wasting anything on complexity that actually isn’t necessary.”



Repeatedly blowing up rockets helps SpaceX find the “exact line where you want to be,” as Thompson puts it — the line between complexity and usefulness that allows them to avoid the astronomical upfront costs required by perfection.&nbsp;



In other words, failure can be a feature, not a bug, of complex systems.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">It’s about the journey…</h2>



Failure is a core feature of crypto systems, too: Every blockchain is designed around the assumption that some percentage of its nodes will be malicious or faulty.



This makes blockchains resilient — like Google&#8217;s data centers, they continue to produce valid blocks despite individual failures. But that fault tolerance doesn&#8217;t extend to the code running on the blockchain.



Smart contract code, written by fallible humans, will inevitably have bugs or design flaws. This can be costly, because unlike traditional finance, there&#8217;s no reversing a crypto transaction once a flawed contract or protocol is exploited.&nbsp;



Code eliminates intermediaries, but at the cost of zero fault tolerance.



This makes code-is-law crypto a system that philosophically embraces decentralized fault tolerance but architecturally demands perfection.



There is no way to design your way around that.



In traditional finance, where systems are permissioned and transactions are reversible, banks can aim for near-perfection by implementing ever-stricter KYC/AML rules and hiring ever more compliance officers.&nbsp;&nbsp;



In crypto finance, where systems are permissionless and transactions are irreversible, we can only aim to learn from our mistakes.&nbsp;



There have been a lot of them: from The DAO exploit that nearly sank Ethereum in 2016 to the record-setting $1.5 billion Bybit hack in 2025.



With luck, though, these could come to look in hindsight like Elon Musk’s exploding rockets. Each exploit reveals an attack vector — reentrancy, oracle manipulation, protocol design flaws — that can be fixed in future iterations.&nbsp;



Like Starship explosions, the failures show what actually needs hardening vs. what was unnecessary caution — each an opportunity to find the right balance of complexity and usefulness in a new kind of financial system.&nbsp;



Crypto is often judged by its failures, which is fair enough, given their frequency and size.&nbsp;



But the failures aren&#8217;t bugs in the process of building a new financial system. They are the process.



To enjoy crypto, then, you’ll have to enjoy failure, too.



Happy new year.



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Crypto

Failure is an option in crypto finance

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Over the past several days, the exchange between Kamino and Jupiter has escalated from healthy competition to a clear public dispute. The events started on Nov. 27, when Jup Lend introduced a <a href="https://support.jup.ag/hc/en-us/articles/23407960232092-All-about-Refinance">refinancing tool</a> on its frontend to migrate looping positions from Kamino Multiply directly into Jup Lend with a single click. The refinance operation initiated an atomic transaction involving four steps:



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>Repay outstanding debt on Kamino.</li>



<li>Withdraw the associated collateral.</li>



<li>Transfer these assets to Jupiter Lend.</li>



<li>Recreate the position inside Jupiter Lend, maintaining the same loan amount and collateral ratio.</li>
</ol>



On Dec. 2, Kamino <a href="https://x.com/prady_v/status/1995756192988323845?s=20">updated</a> its smart contracts to block Jupiter’s program, preventing one-click refinancing. Both the Jupiter and Fluid teams (Jup Lend uses Fluid in the backend) framed the move as anti-competitive and against “open-finance principles.”



On Dec. 6, Kamino’s co-founder publicly <a href="https://x.com/y2kappa/status/1997333295474802777?s=20">explained</a> the rationale for blocking Jup Lend’s migration tool, noting that Jupiter had repeatedly suggested that borrowers’ collateral is isolated, implying it is neither rehypothecated nor exposed to cross-contamination risk. However, this claim was not true, with even Fluid’s co-founder <a href="https://x.com/smykjain/status/1997075350799736981?s=20">acknowledging</a> rehypothecation within Jup Lend.



​Notably, Kamino never prevented users from repaying their loans manually and withdrawing their capital to Jup Lend. Whether against open-finance principles or not, the move to block the refinancing program was fundamentally a business decision, much like Jup Lend’s decision not to open-source its code (though it has plans to do so). In this regard, it’s interesting to analyze the competitive dynamics between both money markets over the past few months.



Since its launch in late August, Jup Lend has grown to $1.6 billion in deposits and $610 million in borrows. The chart below shows that Kamino’s deposits and borrows have decreased by $1.3 billion (-28%) and $460 million (-26%), respectively, during the same period.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-74.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110353" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-74.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-74.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-74.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-74.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-74.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-74.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-74.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-74.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-74.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



The top five assets by deposit growth since Jup Lend’s launch are USDC ($485 million), JLP ($225 million), SOL ($206 million), syrupUSDC ($174 million), and jupSOL ($85 million). During the same period, Kamino has seen sizable outflows for all of these assets, except syrupUSDC. However, even for syrupUSDC, Jup Lend still attracted roughly 3x more inflows.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-73.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110352" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-73.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-73.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-73.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-73.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-73.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-73.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-73.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-73.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-73.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Kamino’s growth over the past few months has come from assets not yet supported by Jup Lend. In particular, stablecoin inflows in Q4 have been driven by PYUSD ($42 million) and Phantom’s CASH ($125 million). Kamino has also been proactive in onboarding DATCO LSTs; most notably dfdvSOL and more recently fwdSOL.



Kamino’s PRIME integration stands out as a catalyst that can bring net new inflows into the money market. PRIME gives users exposure to a regulated credit pool backed by US real estate loans originated and serviced through Figure. This integration effectively gives access to a source of yield uncorrelated from crypto markets that may attract more institutional borrowers.



Wrapping up, Kamino and Jup Lend are obviously competitors, and competition is healthy as it drives innovation and ultimately benefits users. That said, as Solana Foundation’s Lily Liu<a href="https://x.com/calilyliu/status/1997563223193849952?s=20"> noted</a>, instead of fighting with each other, Kamino and Jupiter should focus on growing the pie and capturing market share from other chains and TradFi thereafter. Combined, both money markets still account for less than 10% of Aave’s deposits, and without initiatives like the PRIME integration, it will be impossible to close this gap.



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Analyzing Jup Lend vs. Kamino

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“Growth in revenues cannot exceed growth in people who can execute and sustain that growth.”



— Packard’s Law
</blockquote>



Arboreal ecosystems operate on a brutal but necessary paradox: For a forest to grow, it occasionally needs to burn.



Without these seemingly-apocalyptic conflagrations, the forest floor becomes choked with underbrush, preventing the new growth needed for regeneration and long-term viability.



Dion Lim <a href="https://ceodinner.substack.com/p/the-ai-wildfire-is-coming-its-going?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=android&amp;r=3qcul&amp;triedRedirect=true">says</a> this is how technology cycles work, too.



“The first web cycle,” he explains, “burned through dot-com exuberance and left behind Google, Amazon, eBay, and PayPal: the hardy survivors of Web 1.0. The next cycle, driven by social and mobile, burned again in 2008-2009, clearing the underbrush for Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, and the offspring of Y Combinator.”



The speculative frenzy of investment bubbles burns off non-productive capital much like a wildfire consumes dense fuel — and the inevitable crash clears the way for the market’s resources to be reallocated.



Without these seemingly apocalyptic market conflagrations, a permanent underbrush of failed startups would drain the technology sector of the resources it needs to grow.



This might be why crypto feels so left behind this year: A tangled undergrowth of big projects that never seem to die has been hoarding the resources the ecosystem needs to evolve.&nbsp;



In the real economy, labor is constantly being reallocated from failed companies to successful or promising ones: “Many of Google’s best early employees,” Lim notes, “were founders or early employees of failed Web 1.0 startups.”



This seems to happen less in crypto.



To cite just one example, the Polkadot blockchain — which collected <a href="https://tokenterminal.com/explorer/projects/polkadot/metrics/fees?granularity=day&amp;interval=7d">$72 of fees</a> yesterday — is <a href="https://www.developerreport.com/">supported</a> by 482 full-time developers and 1,404 contributors.



If a project like that — in its sixth year of operations — was funded by stock and not tokens, I’m guessing those resources would have been released back into the ecosystem by now.



This is a problem because <a href="https://www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/the-timeless-physics.html">Packard’s Law</a> suggests that if the scarce resource of crypto developers is not being redistributed to successful projects, crypto will struggle to grow.



Unproductive crypto projects hoard investment resources, too.&nbsp;



Crypto founders are notorious for <a href="https://x.com/hasufl/status/1995417501321040346?s=20">over-raising from investors</a> and living off the proceeds, with no market-imposed urgency to find product market-fit.



For example: One of the original crypto projects, Golem, stockpiled 820,000 ETH in its 2016 ICO, and still held <a href="https://x.com/WuBlockchain/status/1810148153087173023?s=20">231,400</a> of it as recently as last year.



Traditional startup investors expect their capital to be deployed far more quickly than that.&nbsp;



In other cases, projects with inexplicably large market valuations fund themselves seemingly forever by selling their native token out of treasury. Cardano, for example, <a href="https://messari.io/report/state-of-cardano-q3-2025">holds</a> roughly $700 million of its ADA token in treasury, which should keep the project funded approximately forever.



Collectively, crypto protocols are sitting on billions in capital and have little or no incentive to deploy it efficiently — no activist shareholders to placate, corporate raiders to fear or quarterly earnings estimates to meet.



In short, crypto may be too funded to fail.



Ben Thompson has recently articulated a similar fear about traditional tech, worrying that giants like TSMC, Nvidia and Alphabet have become so dominant that the entire ecosystem risks stagnation.



He therefore welcomes the bubble: “What is invigorating or why we should embrace the mania, embrace the bubble, is [that] ‘too-big-to-fail’ was starting to afflict tech as well.”



Thompson notes that the benefit of private enterprise is that &#8220;stupid stuff&#8221; eventually goes out of business. But when companies become entrenched monopolies (or government-backed entities), the stupid stuff doesn’t die. It just becomes over-engineered and inefficient.



He argues we need investment bubbles precisely because they bring risk back into the equation: “You don’t get upside risk without downside risk.”



This might explain why crypto has felt so stagnant this cycle. We have the &#8220;stupid stuff&#8221; — protocols with few users and minimal revenue — but lack the mechanism to make them go out of business.



“Growth becomes difficult when everyone’s roots are tangled,” Lim warns.



Until a forest fire is allowed to burn through the tangled roots of over-funded zombie protocols, the nutrients — capital and developers — will remain trapped, and the next era of growth will remain out of reach.



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amazon

Too funded to fail: Crypto needs a forest fire

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could.”



― Rudiger Dornbusch
</blockquote>



The opening scene of Philip K. Dick’s 1969 sci-fi classic <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ubik-Philip-K-Dick-ebook/dp/B005LVR6ZA/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.JF_a_3YBqUArh4K_Z-iE6I6X9p5rZmjuOVdoQJ2WB_pOXJYsddjBJD-C4GbxF5PWnydxdgUc4oqmKMArafhTlD7WDLvesTxtppG3tuVe4le3qpVkyrP5ILCHmxpK4PwQzG84S5zO1_X4hBi3WbFsSCuYetIwZlBHM-aeR3h0knDZvx-eCVN1xWYCwvl9yP_BRaaMJLQFiMfUchLg7OnMpClGXXjn1Q_bDHY_GK-k04o.yw3FYUPmpQ7IHVLHZEGZAiB6TQljO59oXPF-sq8ttjI&amp;qid=1764648536&amp;sr=8-1">Ubik</a> features an apartment door demanding payment from its owner.&nbsp;



When Joe Chip, behind on his rent, attempts to open the door for a guest, it replies, “Five cents, please.” Short of change, he offers to pay tomorrow, but his credit score is shot so the door ignores him.&nbsp;



He tries to reason with it:&nbsp; “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.”&nbsp;



“I think otherwise,” the door responds, before instructing Chip to check his contract.



“You discover I’m right,” the door says. It sounds smug.



When Chip starts to unscrew the bolt mechanism with a knife, the door threatens legal action, but Chip is undeterred — “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.”



Before any damage is done, Chip’s guest pays from the other side and the door finally opens.&nbsp;



Later, the refrigerator, coffee maker and shower all demand payment before rendering their services — and the guest has to pay the door again to leave.



Such was Philip Dick’s dystopian vision of the future: Apartments turned into pay-as-you-go vending machines.



But this might also be the u-topian future of decentralized finance.&nbsp;



The dream of decentralized finance is to transform every asset into a programmable financial instrument that automatically enforces the terms of its own contract.



The problem with decentralized finance is that it’s limited to crypto assets, because a smart contract can’t reach into the physical world to repossess a car or evict a tenant.



But what if a smart contract could lock the door to your house, car or refrigerator? In that world, a lender could accept those kinds of real-world assets — anything that can be locked — as collateral against onchain loans.&nbsp;



It’s not a new idea.



Way back in 1997, Nick Szabo <a href="https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/the-idea-of-smart-contracts/">described</a> the utility of turning smart contracts into smart locks: “Many kinds of contractual clauses (such as collateral, bonding, delineation of property rights, etc.) can be embedded in the hardware and software we deal with, in such a way as to make breach of contract expensive (if desired, sometimes prohibitively so) for the breacher.”



“These protocols would give control of the cryptographic keys for operating the property to the person who rightfully owns that property,” he added, “based on the terms of the contract.”&nbsp;



So far, that property has only been tokens, because that’s the only property whose ownership can be embedded in smart contracts.



But smart locks, controlled by smart contracts with verifiable, immutable rules, could turn the whole world into a vending machine.&nbsp;



Szabo called vending machines the &#8220;primitive ancestor of smart contracts”: a mechanical contract that holds an asset (a can of soda, say) and releases it to anyone who satisfies the conditions of that contract (inserting a coin). No human or corporate shopkeeper needed.



The rules-based machine becomes the shopkeeper — much like Joe Chip’s door becomes his landlord.



Szabo thought something like the latter was where we were headed: “Smart contracts go beyond the vending machine in proposing to embed contracts in all sorts of property that is valuable and controlled by digital means.”&nbsp;



Sixteen years before the advent of Ethereum, Szabo envisioned smart locks granting digital control of real-world property, citing cars as the “most straightforward” use of smart locks.&nbsp;



“We can create a smart lien protocol: If the owner fails to make payments, the smart contract invokes the lien protocol, which returns control of the car keys to the bank.”



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="839" height="314" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-23.png" alt="" class="wp-image-110212" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-23.png?w=839 839w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-23.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-23.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-23.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-23.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-23.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-23.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 839px) 100vw, 839px" /></figure>



Nothing exactly like that has happened as of yet, but Szabo was at least directionally correct — on two counts: Smart contracts exist, on Ethereum and elsewhere, and auto-loan lenders are securing their collateral with remote locks.



Starter interrupt devices (SIDs) that allow lenders to remotely disable a car when a borrower has fallen behind on their payments have become popular with sub-prime auto lenders in recent decades.



This raises some obvious questions: What if you need the car to get to work to make money to catch up on your loan? What if you’re doing 80 on the freeway when your lender decides to disable your auto? 



Unlike Joe Chip’s door, you can’t drop coins into the dashboard of a SID-disabled car to unlock it. And good luck getting someone on the phone at the lender to plead your case or even make a payment.



You could, however, quickly top up your payment via smart contract, on a smart phone with a digital wallet.



This is not a new idea, either.



In 2015, Slock.it promised exactly the kind of digital locks (Slocks) that Joe Chip negotiated with: “With Slock, the person who rents your house pays directly to the lock itself. The lock enters into a smart contract with the renter.”



For reasons that remain unclear, Slocks didn’t catch on — or get into production, even.



(The Slock.it team may have taken their eyes off the ball when their side project, The DAO, nearly sank Ethereum.)



But it might also be that they were just early.



If so, now may finally be the time for blockchain-based smart locks.



The infrastructure is built: Chains are fast, transactions are cheap, frontends are user-friendly.



TradFi wants to tokenize everything: Crypto assets have flopped this year, but the enthusiasm for bringing real-world assets onchain has only grown.&nbsp;



Investors want alternative assets: The demand for productive yield outside the shrinking universe of public equities is seemingly insatiable.



Smart contract smart locks might be the way to provide it.



Consider Turkey, for example, where borrowers pay 5% per month on their <a href="https://www.fibabanka.com.tr/en/product-and-service-fees/personal-interest-rates/auto-loans">auto loans</a>, which works out to over 100% per year — 70 percentage points above inflation.



If those loans were tokenized and governed by a smart contract that automatically disables a car when a borrower defaults, wouldn’t that attract investors from everywhere?



BlackRock’s Larry Fink <a href="https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2025/12/01/larry-fink-and-rob-goldstein-on-how-tokenisation-could-transform-finance">said</a> this week that “tokenization can greatly expand the world of investable assets beyond the listed stocks and bonds that dominate markets today.”



Philip K. Dick predicted the technology. Nick Szabo wrote the manual.&nbsp;



Now, finance just needs to build the door to this investors’ utopia.



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smart contracts

The sci-fi future of onchain assets and smart locks

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“No problems, no progress.”



— Kevin Kelly
</blockquote>



Large portions of the world wide web, including services like X, ChatGPT, Uber and Spotify, were inaccessible for hours yesterday morning because Cloudflare, a content delivery network, had an “outage” — just weeks after a similarly debilitating outage caused by AWS.



We did not have these problems when every website was hosted on a dedicated server, often in someone’s basement.



Back then, however, the sites were slow to load and quick to crash.&nbsp;



CDNs like Cloudflare were designed to fix this. Instead of every website fighting for itself, we now route traffic through a kind of virtual switchboard that caches content globally (solving latency) and absorbs threats like DDoS attacks (solving security and availability).



It worked.&nbsp;



The web has become incredibly fast, secure and reliable, and services like ChatGPT and Uber can scale without burning scarce capital on redundant infrastructure.



Last morning’s events suggest it might have worked too well. 



Most of the modern web now runs on three cloud providers and a few dominant content delivery networks, which have created single points of failure in what was once a decentralized system.



As a result, we have massive, internet-wide blackouts instead of sporadic, isolated crashes.&nbsp;



This is the typical way that technology develops.&nbsp;



As Kevin Kelly <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_kelly_the_future_will_be_shaped_by_optimists">explains</a>, “Most of the problems we have today are created by the solutions we had in the past.”



The problem of widespread hunger, for example, was solved by industrialized farming — but now food is so cheap and industrialized we have an epidemic of obesity.



The problem of routine infections becoming deadly was solved by antibiotics, but now we have antibiotic-resistant superbugs.



The problem of near-universal poverty was solved by fossil fuels, but now we have the problem of climate change.



If it seems like there are ever more of these technology-induced problems, that’s because there probably are.



In the same way that one scientific answer gives rise to several new questions, one technology solution gives rise to several new problems.



“There will be more problems because new solutions create many more problems,” Kelly explains.



But this is good news, not bad.



“Problems don’t impede progress,” Kelly says; just the opposite: “Problems are the conduit of progress.”&nbsp;



Progress, he adds, is not the process of eliminating problems, but of upgrading them.&nbsp;



Obesity is an upgrade relative to starvation, for example, and climate change is an upgrade relative to near-universal poverty.



Therefore, the increasing complexity of our problems is not a cause for despair, but a measure of the progress we’re making.



Even when these upgraded problems seem too complex, Kelly assures us they won’t be for long: “We can trust the fact that future generations will be able to solve problems that we cannot ourselves.”



In other words, the problems born from solving the last generation’s problems will be solved by the next, because each succeeding generation is more capable than the last.



Now, let’s do crypto.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Mo solutions mo problems</h2>



Whereas: Problems are the engine of technological progress. Resolved: Technologies with the most problems will do the most good.



If problems are good, then crypto — by the transitive property of equality — must be great.



Crypto has lots of problems! And all of its own creation.



But it’s worth remembering that, as with any technology, these new problems arose as solutions to previous problems:&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1400" height="1004" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-115.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110035" style="width:781px;height:auto" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-115.png?w=1400 1400w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-115.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-115.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-115.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-115.png?w=358 358w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-115.png?w=364 364w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-115.png?w=305 305w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-115.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1400px) 100vw, 1400px" /></figure>



Kevin Kelly’s dictum that there’s “no progress without problems” is unfortunately not a law of physics, so there’s no guarantee that crypto will find solutions for all these new problems it’s created.



But there are reasons to share Kelly’s techno-optimism and belief that this is all for the best.



In the case of the world wide web, for example, we solved the frequent, small inconveniences of decentralized Web1 with a solution that created the rare but large-scale outages of centralized Web2.



And the solution to that problem might be to re-decentralize the internet…with crypto!



At its best, Web3 might be seen as solving the problems that Web2 created in solving the problems of Web1.



That, too, would cause all new problems, I’m sure.&nbsp;



We should welcome them.



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technology

Techno-optimism and problems as a conduit of progress

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“How did Andean societies exchange resources and administer large numbers of people without currency or writing?”



— Jacob Bongers, digital archeologist
</blockquote>



A mysteriously precise, mile-long band of 5,200 holes dug into Monte Sierpe, Peru, at least 600 years ago has long been a subject of speculation.



Ever since the site was popularized by aerial photography in 1933, professional archeologists have puzzled over its purpose — but hypotheses related to defense, water collection, fog capture, gardening, burial, geoglyph symbology and resource mining have all been discounted for one reason or another.



Having ruled all those out, amateur archeologists settled on the only remaining explanation: “ancient astronauts.”



Last week, however, a team of digital archeologists published an academic <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/indigenous-accounting-and-exchange-at-monte-sierpe-band-of-holes-in-the-pisco-valley-peru/41D83389D230D99CFF18194CF274A9A3">study</a> that finally determined the site’s true purpose: Monte Sierpe, they explain, was “an indigenous system of accounting and exchange.”



“We hypothesise that Monte Sierpe initially served as a barter marketplace before being turned into a large-scale accounting device under the Inca Empire (1400-1532 AD) for collecting tribute from local communities.”



One hundred years before Luca Pacioli popularized the concept of double-entry accounting in Italy, Incas in Peru were keeping their books on a hillside.



The paper’s lead author, Jacob Bongers, frames this in modern terms by <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-centuries-old-grid-of-holes-in-the-andes-may-have-been-a-spreadsheet-for-accounting-and-exchange-269277">saying</a> the hillside “functioned as a large spreadsheet for the Inca Empire.”&nbsp;



Others call it a ledger.



But it looks like a blockchain:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1141" height="613" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-104.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110014" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-104.png?w=1141 1141w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-104.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-104.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-104.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-104.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-104.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-104.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-104.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1141px) 100vw, 1141px" /></figure>



Imagine a blockchain, and you’ll likely see something like Monte Sierpe: a continuous, physical stream of data stretching a mile into the horizon.



Bongers’ paper comes close to acknowledging the likeness: “The band is not continuous but rather segmented into sections or blocks.”



This is even more evident in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRhNJQxx41Y&amp;t=63s">video</a>, where the “blocks of holes” are more visible.



But the resemblance is much more than skin deep — because what could be more proof-of-work than digging thousands of holes?



“Depositing goods in the holes,” the paper explains, “could have been a way of publicly displaying information about the quantity of goods” used for “tribute collection.”



This is useful because you can&#8217;t have a system for tribute or large-scale economic exchange unless you first have clear rules about who owns or controls what.



Blockchains are a public display of information, designed to allow anyone to verify who owns and controls what unit of exchange.



Monte Sierpe was a public display of information that allowed anyone to verify who had paid what tribute to whom.



This public display, the paper proposes, is how a society as large as the Inca Empire was able to administer larger numbers of people without the help of currency or a system of writing.



“The visual prominence of Monte Sierpe…may have increased the probability of locating suitable trading partners, drawing together producer-specialists (e.g. farmers and fisherfolk), mobile traders (e.g. llama caravans and seafaring merchants), lords and administrators for periodic exchange. Large numbers of people depositing goods in the holes would give participants information about the quantity of goods available in an ordered way.”



In other words, they built a public blockchain.&nbsp;



The key insight that led the researchers to this conclusion is that the arrangement of Monte Sierpe’s 5,200 holes into 60 distinct blocks “is structurally reminiscent of at least one locally found khipu, an Inca knotted-string device used for detailed record-keeping.”



In pre-modern Andean societies, khipus — knotted and maintained by specially trained khipukamayuq —&nbsp; “were used to keep track of census information, tribute and inventory,” the paper explains.&nbsp;



By that definition, the portable khipu was the spreadsheets of the time, not Monte Sierpe.&nbsp;



Monte Sierpe — immutable, publicly verifiable, trustless — was the blockchain.



To trust a khipu was to trust the khipukamayuq who tied the knots…much like trusting a bank account is trusting the banker who keeps the accounts.



It’s not a perfect analogy.&nbsp;



The Incas probably were not adding new blocks to their chain of holes for each new bundle of transactions that came in.



Instead, each block is thought to have corresponded to a social group, and each group would fill their assigned holes with goods when it was their turn to pay tribute to the State.



Like a blockchain, the key innovation was that the Band of Holes allowed this to be done publicly, where anyone could verify the payments — up until the goods were removed.



So this analog precursor to the modern blockchain had one limitation: reusing the blocks erased the chain’s history.



It took 600 years to invent a digital version that preserves the full history of a chain by appending new blocks rather than overwriting old ones.



This is Satoshi’s great innovation.



But the principles are unchanged — as is the value proposition.&nbsp;



Digging 5,200 holes in a precise formation on top of a hill is not just a proof-of-work, it was hard work, too.



This monumental investment of labor is evidence that the Incas thought recording transactions in a public, immutable ledger had significant value as a way to organize large groups of people.&nbsp;



Perhaps we are only now catching up.



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History

Did the Inca envision a blockchain system?

Macauley Peterson

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As crypto markets have tumbled, it’s been a reflective week in Ethereum land. On Thursday, Vitalik Buterin and co-authors Yoav Weiss and Marissa Posner dropped <a href="https://trustlessness.eth.limo/general/2025/11/11/the-trustless-manifesto.html">The Trustless Manifesto</a> — a sweeping, almost poetic call to arms for developers to recommit to the network’s founding ethos: Build systems that rely on math and consensus, not on people or platforms.



The document reads like a philosophical companion to Justin Drake’s Lean Ethereum proposal, which turned one year old this week. A newly active X account, <a href="https://x.com/leanEthereum">@leanEthereum</a>, has popped up to mark the milestone — and the overlap in timing doesn’t feel accidental. With <a href="https://devconnect.org/">DevConnect</a> kicking off Monday in Buenos Aires, the pair of ideas together set the tone for a week that’s as much about vision as it is about innovation.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">‘Trustlessness is the thing itself’</h2>



At its core, the manifesto argues that Ethereum’s success has also made it fragile. As infrastructure and apps scale, the community risks outsourcing too much — RPC endpoints, rollup sequencing, even “self-custody” — to a shrinking circle of trusted intermediaries. Each convenience, it warns, brings the network closer to dependence.



“The only defense is trustless design,” the authors write. “Without it, everything else — efficiency, UX, scalability — is decoration on a fragile core.”



The text lays out three “laws” of trustless design — no critical secrets, no indispensable intermediaries and no unverifiable outcomes — and ends with a pledge: “We refuse to call a system ‘permissionless’ when only the privileged can participate.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The drift toward dependence</h2>



One of the manifesto’s most striking metaphors compares Ethereum’s current trajectory to that of email — once an open, decentralized protocol that anyone could run themselves. Today, spam filters, blocklists and trust-based reputation systems have made it practically impossible for ordinary users to host their own mail servers, the manifesto reads.&nbsp;



“Email became effectively centralized — not because the protocol was closed, but because practical trustlessness was lost,” the authors write.



It’s a cautionary tale for Ethereum’s access layer. If node operation, transaction relaying or cross-chain messaging ends up dependent on a handful of privileged service providers, the network could become as “permissionless” as Gmail: still functional, but fundamentally gatekept. The manifesto’s plea is simple — don’t let that happen.



“Every shortcut that assumes trust eventually costs freedom.”



If that strikes a chord, a smart contract is now live on mainnet for those who want to “sign” the manifesto — literally staking their names to the principle that decentralization is worth the friction.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">From ‘Lean Ethereum’ to the endgame</h2>



If The Trustless Manifesto is a moral compass, Lean Ethereum is the architectural blueprint it points toward. Drake’s vision, described as Ethereum’s “endgame” or “final form,” imagines a network stripped down to its purest minimal core — fewer dependencies, simpler consensus, and stronger guarantees that anyone can run a node without institutional backing.



The Lean Ethereum account opened with a video teaser of sorts, sketching a picture of where Ethereum might be heading next: lighter, smaller, but more robust.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">zkEra soon™️ <a href="https://t.co/PZSzNr1kPZ">pic.twitter.com/PZSzNr1kPZ</a>&mdash; lean Ethereum (@leanEthereum) <a href="https://twitter.com/leanEthereum/status/1988645664595878183?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 12, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



A related <a href="https://ethresear.ch/t/eil-trust-minimized-cross-l2-interop/23437">research proposal</a> getting attention this week is the Ethereum Interop Layer (EIL), posted Nov. 13 on Ethereum Research.



EIL aims to make L2s feel like one chain without new trust assumptions: Users sign once via ERC-4337, wallets bundle a Merkle-rooted set of cross-L2 calls, and a CrossChainPaymaster coordinates “XLP” liquidity providers who front gas and funds with an L1-anchored dispute process to slash misbehavior. Instead of relying on intent solvers and opaque relayers, EIL leans on atomic, optimistic swaps and onchain vouchers to keep censorship resistance and verifiability intact — the manifesto’s “no indispensable intermediaries” rendered as working plumbing.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A fitting prelude to DevConnect</h2>



For all the talk of rollup scaling and AI agents, the conversation heading into DevConnect feels unusually introspective. Vitalik’s timing suggests a deliberate recalibration, reminding attendees that Ethereum’s biggest challenges are not only technical, but cultural.



Developers (and this newsletter writer) gathering in Buenos Aires may be debating zk cryptography and DeFi security, but beneath it all lies the same question the manifesto asks outright: What does it mean to trust less in 2025?



As the week begins, Ethereum stands ready to prove that growth doesn’t have to mean compromise. Or, as manifesto’s closing line opines:



“The designs will change. The principles will not.”



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blockchain

Ethereum’s ‘Trustless Manifesto’ and the return to first principles

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Most cross-chain protocols want you to trust a validator set. Rift wants you to trust a chip — and only for 20 minutes.



The startup is launching a peer-to-peer bitcoin-to-EVM trading protocol that runs full nodes for Bitcoin and Ethereum inside a trusted execution environment (TEE). The idea is simple: If the enclave can see that both legs of the trade landed, it lets go of the funds. If not, it doesn’t.



“We use [TEEs] to match orders as well as validate that someone got paid,” CEO Samee Siddiqui told me. The TEE acts as an escrow for the funds until sufficient block confirmations indicate it’s safe to release.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="548" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-49.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109880" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-49.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-49.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-49.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-49.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-49.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-49.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-49.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-49.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-49.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



That shifts the core trust model, compared to what’s available today. There are no multisigs or distinct proof-of-stake chains involved, or the need to mint a synthetic BTC somewhere. Just native bitcoin, held in a hardware enclave, for a time-boxed window while the other leg of the trade settles.



Yes, that window is a risk. “If the machine blows up, then anything in those 20 minutes is potentially lost,” Siddiqui admitted. But that’s the design tradeoff: minimal trust and minimal attack surface for a minimal duration.



Why do this? To make swaps faster, cheaper and less reliant on staked capital.



“Most people don’t honestly care that much about security,” Siddiqui said. (That’s a pity, but clearly true.) “The pitch is actually [that] this is the most capital-efficient solution,” he said.



The fee math backs that up: Rift charges 10 bps taker, 0 maker fees. That’s a big drop from the 40-60 bps you’ll find on Coinbase, of course. But it’s also cheaper than THORChain’s RUNE-bonded AMM model and avoids the economic security game theory with no governance token overhead.



Instead, market makers provide the liquidity and handle their own rebalancing — often using cbBTC as the ETH-side routing asset. That’s for “liquidity efficiency” at the get-go, Siddiqui said, but noted that USDT and other pairs are coming.



It’s not the first time someone’s tried to make BTC↔ETH swaps trustless. RenBTC had its moment (<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/alameda-backed-ren-warns-crypto-could-be-lost-as-platform-shuts-down">until it didn’t</a>). Threshold Network is <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/acre-btc-yield-ethereum">still going strong</a>. Aside from THORChain, there’s also <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/near-protocol-chain-signatures-multichain-defi">Near Intents</a> as an option.



Rift tried other paths first, including a zero-knowledge BTC light client. “But we ended up going with [TEEs] because it’s a lot more flexible,” Siddiqui said. He also pointed out zk stack complexity: “Auditing that a zero-knowledge proof is correct is actually much more difficult than auditing a TEE is correct.”



The go-to market isn’t consumer-first — it’s API-first. Rift wants to plug into <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/wallet">wallets</a> and swap interfaces that already have volume. The more flows they can sit behind, the stickier they get. Think <a href="https://blockworks.com/analytics/dex-volume">DEX aggregators</a>, not a dedicated frontend.



The bet is that onchain bitcoin trading doesn’t need a new L1 or a wrapped token. It just needs a swap protocol with the right capital efficiency, UX and trust profile.



In Siddiqui’s mind: “If we don’t have DEXs flip CEXs, then the entire space, basically, is a failure.”



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Rift wants to make swapping bitcoin crosschain not suck

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Markets caught a much needed bid yesterday, snapping a multi-day losing streak. The rebound stretched across both equities and crypto, fueled by optimism that Trump-era tariffs could be rolled back. We look at which sectors led the charge, how subnet tokens continue to defy gravity post-crash, and the debate heating up over Hyperliquid’s HIP-5 proposal.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Indices</h2>



After several days in the red, markets found relief yesterday as all major benchmarks posted gains. The rebound was led by BTC and the tech-heavy Nasdaq, which rose 2.36% and 1.15%, respectively.



Optimism was partly fueled by the Supreme Court hearing on the legality of Trump’s tariffs, which <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/05/traders-on-prediction-markets-see-a-30percent-chance-supreme-court-backs-trumps-tariffs-.html">raised expectations</a> that some may be rolled back. <a href="https://kalshi.com/markets/kxdjtvostariffs/tariffs-case/kxdjtvostariffs">Odds</a> of the court upholding the tariffs fell from 45% to 29% on Kalshi, lifting sentiment across risk assets.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1165" height="614" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-34.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109841" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-34.png?w=1165 1165w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-34.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-34.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-34.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-34.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-34.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-34.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-34.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1165px) 100vw, 1165px" /></figure>



Within crypto, DePIN and DeFi led the recovery, climbing 6.7% and 6.1%, on the day. The DePIN index was boosted by HNT and Render, up 11.1% and 8.7%, respectively, together accounting for roughly a quarter of the index.&nbsp;



In DeFi, AERO, PUMP, and ASTER all advanced more than 10%. Aerodrome’s strength comes on the back of the launch of Slipstream v2 this week that aims to optimize efficiency and build on its dynamic fees design.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1169" height="624" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-32.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109839" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-32.png?w=1169 1169w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-32.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-32.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-32.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-32.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-32.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-32.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-32.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1169px) 100vw, 1169px" /></figure>



The AI sector was the weakest performer, declining 4% despite strong gains over the past month. The pullback likely reflects a rotation toward sectors that had become oversold during the recent correction. Within the AI index, performance was mixed. ICP surged 14.6% on the day, while IP and TAO were the only constituents in negative territory, each down around -4%.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Market Update</h2>



In just a few days, we will hit the one-month mark since the brutal Oct. 10 crypto crash that wiped out nearly $390 billion from the market. While most of us would rather forget that day, it is worth looking back to see which sectors and tokens have bounced back stronger. That is often where the next wave of strength begins.



One clear standout has been the AI sector, which is up 7.3% — not just since the Oct. 10 correction but through the recent market weakness as well. Gains from tokens like ICP, up 31.8%, and VIRTUALS, up 18.5%, have helped, but much of the sector’s momentum continues to come from TAO, which makes up a third of the index and is up 10.8% this month.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1169" height="619" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-35.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109842" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-35.png?w=1169 1169w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-35.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-35.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-35.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-35.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-35.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-35.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-35.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1169px) 100vw, 1169px" /></figure>



When scanning the top 500 tokens by MC, it’s worth noting that subnet tokens are among the few still trading above their pre-crash levels. These include Chutes (SN-64), Ridges (SN-62), lium.io (SN-51) and Targon (SN-4). These are four out of the top five Bittensor subnets by MC.



The amount of TAO staked in Alpha continues to climb, signaling rising demand for subnet tokens.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-37.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109844" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-37.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-37.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-37.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-37.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-37.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-37.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-37.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-37.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-37.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



The stake split between Alpha and Root subnets continues to grow as well, from 13.2% in July to 21.1% today, showing growing interest in Bittensor Subnets.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-36.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109843" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-36.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-36.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-36.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-36.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-36.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-36.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-36.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-36.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-36.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Despite their low float and inflationary early stages, many subnets are beginning to generate real revenue, a sign of genuine utility rather than hype. Targon, Lium and Chutes are <a href="https://x.com/bloomberg_seth/status/1970913602375655838">estimated</a> to have a combined $20 million in annual recurring revenue, a notable milestone for such young networks.



With the TAO halving approaching in December, the recent emission structure <a href="https://x.com/markjeffrey/status/1985821692346974484">changes</a> and a wave of <a href="https://x.com/Defi0xJeff/status/1986276037437837573">potential catalysts</a> ahead, the Bittensor ecosystem looks well-positioned to capture the next wave of market flows when sentiment turns.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">HIP-5: Assistance Fund 2</h2>



HIP-5: Staker-Governed Assistance Fund 2, authored by Hyperliquid community members, proposes to divert 1% of Hyperliquid fees (ramping to 5%) into a staker-voted buyback fund for Strict List tokens such as PURR and HFUN.



Under this system, fees would accrue in USDC to AF-2, with HYPE stakers setting weights through real-time gauge voting. Execution would occur via continuous TWAP, votes would persist until changed, and a seven-day initialization window would precede any flow. Eligibility would be limited to the Strict List, with LSDs excluded from voting unless they implement verifiable holder-level passthrough. At September 2025&#8217;s run rate of $91 million/month, a full 5% allocation would equate to $55 million/year in targeted buybacks, while AF-1 would retain 94% of total fees.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="980" height="830" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-33.png" alt="" class="wp-image-109840" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-33.png?w=980 980w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-33.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-33.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-33.png?w=303 303w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-33.png?w=308 308w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-33.png?w=259 259w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-33.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 980px) 100vw, 980px" /></figure>



There are multiple reasons behind this decision, and I strongly encourage people to read the full proposal <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nf7UmWptLZnCXaPhDnEBAPsyL5n2d-9Qat4v35CKepI/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.vrzaefgtgwrb">here</a>. Below, I will walk through these reasons cited in the proposal and provide both sides of the argument.



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>“Bootstrap ecosystem projects: Provide buy-pressure to existing strict spot Hypercore tokens, giving teams already staking HYPE more incentive to deploy their tokens in Hypercore. At the same time, new projects launching on Hypercore are encouraged to stake HYPE (or incentivize stakers) in order to compete for votes and buybacks.”</li>
</ol>



This is the primary case for implementing this proposal, reminiscent of when the Hyperliquid Foundation did a <a href="https://x.com/HyperliquidX/status/1880988778757820721">buyback of PURR with AF-1</a>. $55 million would indeed be a very significant TWAP given the current state of Hyperliquid ecosystem projects: PURR (~$65 million) and HFUN (~$35 million) sit at very low market caps. Even Kinetiq, arguably one of the most hyped LST projects on Hyperliquid, is projected by <a href="https://polymarket.com/event/kinetiq-fdv-above-one-day-after-launch?tid=1762417112280">Polymarket to launch between $250 million and $500 million.</a> It seems obvious that a $55 million stimulus package would greatly re-rate these tokens. However, the argument against is also very strong:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Hyperliquid should support strong projects. While buybacks would attract more projects, these are unlikely to be the high quality projects needed.</li>



<li>Forces projects to launch tokens (e.g., Unit, Liminal).</li>



<li>Asymmetrically benefits investors and team members. For example, Kinetiq’s core contributor supply (23%) is equivalent to the supply distributed to Kpoints holders (24%). While this is fair for projects that capture the value they create, it is unfair when HYPE buybacks are redirected to these tokens.</li>



<li>Hyperliquid differentiated itself from pure value capture and revenue generation; subsidizing other projects could dilute the quality of projects building on the HyperEVM (similar to projects on other chains propped up with incentives).</li>
</ul>



Along with this, I would argue that directing revenue in the form of buybacks does little to bootstrap projects beyond a short-term price boost. Finally, this would do little to incentivize projects to buy and stake HYPE, as the notional amount of HYPE needed to materially influence a vote is far too high.



<ol start="2" class="wp-block-list">
<li>“Enhance HYPE Resilience: Diversify value accrual beyond pure exchange revenue”</li>
</ol>



This is a point I am inclined to disagree with completely. The thesis is that Convex-style vote aggregators could provide alternative revenue streams. First, the idea is strange: projects bribing the AF-2 fund for buy-pressure on their token. If this were the case, AF-2 would likely adversely select projects to buy, as the projects most likely to give out tokens aggressively are unlikely to do well long-term.



As noted in the original proposal, “Traditional bribes pay LPs to deepen pools, which often leads recipients to sell the rewards to realize profit, creating sell pressure.” We would likely see projects bribe AF-2 to buy their token, and users then dump on AF-2 with the tokens they received as a bribe.



<ol start="3" class="wp-block-list">
<li>“Preserve Competitiveness: A 5% diversion is negligible (~$150K daily reduction in HYPE buys) compared to the ~$3 million baseline.”</li>
</ol>



Strictly speaking, this is true: The notional value of HYPE is unlikely to materially affect HYPE’s price. However, I believe this does affect HYPE negatively, as it undermines HYPE as a pristine asset that buys back with all its revenues, a value proposition that is easy to understand in a market with complex Ve tokens and lockup periods. It also raises questions about conflicts of interest from voters.



Overall, while HIP-5 would materially improve the price of Hyperliquid ecosystem projects, it creates a negative dynamic where Hyperliquid uses HYPE revenues to support potentially unaligned projects (asymmetrically benefiting founders and private investors). These flows are unlikely to have positive ROI and could allow for manipulation (e.g. voter manipulation, frontrunning, conflicts of interest) and, while not material in notional terms, could dilute HYPE’s role as a pristine asset.



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Buybacks get pushback, and markets rebound

David Canellis

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



VC firm 1kx has run the numbers on the crypto economy in a report shared with Blockworks ahead of its release later today.



After analyzing more than 1,200 protocols across 2020 and until Q3 2025, 1kx found that value distribution to token holders has returned to all-time highs, even if total revenues have yet to beat their 2021 tops.



1kx defined value distribution to token holders as the net sum of buybacks, burns and other accruals, minus emissions (validator rewards and so on).&nbsp;



That came to $1.9 billion distributed in Q3 this year, about on par with H2 2021, when fees paid by users had peaked.



“Applications drive most of the distributed value, driven by incentive reductions: top apps cut token incentives from $2.8 billion (90% of their fees) in H2 2021 to less than $0.1 billion in H1 2025, boosting net returns to holders,” the report stated.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="1133" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-152.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109643" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-152.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-152.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-152.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-152.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-152.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-152.png?w=363 363w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-152.png?w=369 369w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-152.png?w=309 309w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-152.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Value accrual has gone up and to the right | Source: 1kx



The trend is not uniform across the space, however. Many protocols still distribute net zero value to token holders, particularly newer networks which emit more token incentives than they return to investors, “a common pattern e.g. amongst L1s,” per 1kx.



In total, 1kx placed the size of the crypto economy at an estimated $56 billion for the first half of 2025.



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Onchan fees: $9.7 billion (+41% YoY);</li>



<li>Offchain fees: $23.5 billion (+25% YoY);</li>



<li>Other income: $23.1 billion (+5% YoY).</li>
</ul>



(“Other income” mainly consists of block rewards and the yield earned by stablecoin issuers on T-Bills etc.)



The crypto economy is also much more diversified now than in 2021. Ethereum alone did more than 40% of all onchain fees in that year, now less than 3% year-to-date, according to the report. “Their scaling efforts are a major driver of the 86% decrease of average blockchain transaction fees.”



This has given cover for the app layer to flourish, even if the top 20 protocols (2% of the total) are generating 69% of all onchain fees right now.&nbsp;



“Of 1,000+ protocols analyzed, 71 have exceeded $100 million in onchain ARR, and 32 reached that within a year of launch, a pace comparable only to top AI breakouts like Cursor,” 1kx analysts found. They added that Meta/Facebook took three to four years to achieve $100 million ARR.



While revenues for some examples have since fallen, the firm counted blockchains Base, Filecoin, and Linea, DePIN cloud computing platform Aethir, DeFi apps Ethena, GMX, Virtuals and SushiSwap, wallets and interfaces Axiom, Moonshot and Photon, and consumer apps friend.tech, LooksRare and pump.fun, among others.



And many early surges were propelled by massive incentive programs. LooksRare in particular generated $500 million in fees within its first quarter but emitted the same amount in token rewards during that time, and volumes largely disappeared when those programs ran out.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="1059" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-153.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109644" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-153.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-153.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-153.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-153.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-153.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-153.png?w=388 388w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-153.png?w=394 394w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-153.png?w=331 331w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-153.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



The onchain economy has expanded far beyond Ethereum mainnet



It all points to an onchain economy that’s changing. User fees are increasingly coalescing around apps and protocols instead of the underlying chains.



But it might be that the market has yet to catch up to the new dynamics (read: the <a href="https://x.com/coinbase/status/1983575664700666181">revenue meta</a>). 1kx highlighted that “DeFi/Finance protocols account for 73% of all fees, though in aggregate their market cap share remains well below 10%.”



As for where it’s all headed, the app layer is tipped to continue growing — the DeFi/Finance sector could see YoY growth of over 50% from here (asset prices willing), with onchain fees exceeding $32 billion next year (+63% YoY).



And what would a crypto newsletter be without bullish predictions? Here’s five about revenues from 1kx:&nbsp;



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Tokenized RWAs will generate $100 million fees (5x YoY):</li>



<li>DePIN protocols will rake in more than $450 million, sustaining triple-digit growth.</li>



<li>Wallets will grow slightly faster than DeFi (50%).</li>



<li>Consumer apps will see roughly a 70% YoY increase in fees.</li>



<li>Middleware will grow by 50% with many protocols about to start or boost monetization (e.g. WalletConnect).</li>
</ul>



TL;DR: We like the apps.



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Empire Newsletter

Value distribution to token holders returns to all-time high: 1kx report

Bitcoin yield hunters have a new vault option in the form of Acre, with an estimated initial APY of about 14%, auto-compounding in tBTC.&nbsp;



Hitting those early return targets will depend heavily on DeFi incentives and come with a built-in, two-week redemption window.



The goal is to abstract away the complexity of generating yield on bitcoin, according to Acre CEO Laura Wallendal. 



“Our first strategy was curated by Re7 Labs and put forth to the Acre Security Council,” Wallendal told Blockworks, describing a BTC-in/BTC-out wrapper that bridges deposits to Threshold Networks’ tBTC on Ethereum and then deploys capital into onchain venues.



For now, 100% of the yield will be generated using tBTC on Ethereum, through activities such as lending, liquidity provisioning in DeFi, and staking, though a portion of assets may be bridged to other networks (<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/starknet-making-btc-productive">such as Starknet</a>) to participate in specific campaigns.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="889" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-147.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109617" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-147.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-147.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-147.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-147.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-147.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-147.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-147.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-147.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-147.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/team/charts/1421">Blockworks Research</a></figcaption></figure>







So, for example, tBTC will be supplied as collateral to borrow stablecoins, which are then deployed to Re7’s Morpho vaults.



All yield from — both native and token incentives — flows back into the vault’s BTC-denominated headline rate.



“The majority of that yield is coming in other tokens, across different chains and protocols…those need to be sold for tBTC,” Wallendal said.



Withdrawals requests will be honored on a two-week redemption timeline, to allow risk curators to actively manage the unwinding of DeFi positions responsibly and discourage rapid in-and-out behavior during volatility.&nbsp;



Acre is capping capacity at first and planning to roll out multiple curator-managed vaults, with an eye to keep returns up even as supplied bitcoin rises. The first vault’s initial cap was 5 BTC, shortly being raised to 50 BTC. The longer-term capacity target for the Re7 strategy is “about 200 to 300 million,” Wallendal said.



Midas provides an algorithmic infrastructure and 24/7 portfolio monitoring. Wallendal added that a “kill switch” can pull funds from strategies back to a dispatcher contract, maintained by a 3-of-9 multisig, for user-only redemption in the event of a serious issue.



14% may sound like a lot, but Wallendal framed Acre’s goal as sustainable, risk-weighted returns rather than chasing the richest emissions. “We’re not chasing the most degen [yields],” and said a longer-term target is “above 5% APY overall.”



That would put it in line with competing options for bitcoin yield — a crowded and fast-shifting field. Bitcoin staking via Babylon <a href="https://defillama.com/protocol/babylon-protocol?denomination=BTC">has stalled</a> and like many venues pays in non-BTC incentives alongside a newer risk surface. Bitcoin L2 ecosystems like <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stacks-sbtc-double-dipping">Stacks</a> (via sBTC), <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hemi-labs-fundraise-crossover-network">Hemi</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/botanix-launches-stbtc">Botanix</a> provide alternatives, each with their own bridging solutions. In principle, Acre could deploy on all of these chains, alongside strategies such as providing liquidity to the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/lightning-network">Lightning Network</a>.



In any case, the end user deposits assets directly from a Bitcoin wallet via the L1, and withdraws back to Bitcoin.



On oversight, Acre leans on a nine-member Security Council that sets a deployment policy and vets curators and strategies.



The members of the council are not disclosed, but “there are nine independent members,” Wallendal said, and “only one from the Acre team.” The risk curators do not sit on the council, she added, in a nod to limit conflicts of interest.



Acre chose tBTC from <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/t">Threshold Network</a> given its solid track record, decentralization and connections to the founding team.



The vault competes largely with centralized exchange-based “earn” products, which are easy to use but introduce counterparty risk and often deliver only modest BTC yields unless paired with structured products. Acre’s differentiation is the promise of onchain transparency, balanced against bridge, smart-contract and incentive-dependence risks.



Wallendal knows the crypto-native audience will scrutinize those trade-offs. “We’re looking for sustainability and risk-weighted returns,” she said. “I’m bullish that people are going to like the experience,” even if risk-averse holders need time to get comfortable.



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Acre’s 14% bitcoin yield leans on Ethereum DeFi

SharpLink Gaming plans to deploy $200 million worth of ether onto Linea, ConsenSys’ zkEVM Layer 2, in a multi-year program that pairs ether.fi staking with EigenCloud restaking rewards and ecosystem incentives.



The public company frames the move as a way to turn an <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sharplink-adds-177m-eth">already large ETH treasury</a> into productive, onchain capital while keeping institutional controls under <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/anchorage-digital">Anchorage Digital</a> custody.



Both Linea and Ether.fi are offering meaningful incentives, according to Ether.fi CEO Mike Silagadze.



“SharpLink’s $200 million is just a starting point — the intention is to scale that up,” Silagadze told Blockworks.



Mechanically, staking occurs on <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a> mainnet, with a receipt token bridged to Linea for DeFi activities, Silagadze explained.



“Restaking happens in the background — it doesn’t matter where the token sits,” he said, noting that Ether.fi has been available on Linea for over a year.



Anchorage is integrating with ether.fi so qualified-custody clients like Sharplink can mint and allocate directly from custody, according to a person familiar with the plans.



A SharpLink spokesperson declined to offer details on the net yields, other than to say the plan is “designed to generate risk-adjusted yields well above the native ETH staking rate.”



Regarding related-party considerations tied to ConsenSys founder and SharpLink chairman Joseph Lubin, the spokesperson said, “SharpLink manages all corporate governance matters with the rigor and transparency expected of a Nasdaq-listed company.”



The deployment is similar to <a href="http://ether.fi">Ether.fi’s previous partnership with ETHZilla</a>, which saw $100 million in ether deployed into its staking infrastructure.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">ETHZilla sheds some ETH</h2>



The Sharplink announcement comes the same day as social media is atwitter over a different treasury move: ETHZilla said it sold roughly $40 million of ETH to repurchase shares trading below measured NAV after an investor’s open letter urged buybacks.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">6/ Yesterday I urged <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24ETHZ&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$ETHZ</a> to start selling part of their Ethereum to buy back shares while they trade at a discount to mNAV. They replied by saying they have already started and bought back 600.000 shares at $20/share. This alone increased NAV by $0.26/share already.&mdash; Capybara Stocks (@capybaraReborn) <a href="https://twitter.com/capybaraReborn/status/1983221348534047214?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 28, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Silagadze called that decision “about signaling,” aimed to close a steep discount rather than a retreat from DeFi and said ether.fi has seen “no withdrawals” tied to the buyback.



Read against the broader digital-asset-treasury (DAT) landscape, SharpLink’s program underscores two diverging playbooks this cycle: sell ETH to close a market discount, or keep ETH productive onchain to compound staking, restaking and partner incentives. SharpLink is explicitly choosing the latter — and doing so on <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/linea-previews-eth-first-roadmap">a specific L2 with a growing institutional pitch</a>.



The <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitmine-adds-200k-eth">ETH DAT King Kong</a> — BitMine Immersion (BTMR) — meanwhile, has yet to take steps into onchain yield.



Risk management sits at the heart of whether more public treasuries follow. On the protocol side, the hazards span L2 bridge and sequencer assumptions, smart-contract vulnerabilities, and the slashing conditions of the specific <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/eigenlayer">EigenCloud</a> AVSs SharpLink elects to back.



Like the ETHZilla deal before it, Silagadze said, AVS selection and risk curation sit within Ether.fi’s remit.



The Sharplink spokesperson confirmed “a collaborative partnership with Etherfi” and added, “we pre-review AVS terms and define clear de-risk triggers.”



A separate source of confusion for equity markets is how to read “mNAV” — the ratio investors use to judge whether a DAT trades above or below its underlying portfolio value.



There are four ways to track mNAV, said Blockworks Research’s Dan Smith, “and the ‘best’ depends on the company.” For instance, prefunded warrants can make outstanding mNAV diverge from fully diluted, while cash-heavy balance sheets argue for enterprise value-based measures.



Smith pointed to ETHZilla selling ETH when outstanding mNAV was below 1 but fully diluted was above 1 — suggesting it manages to the outstanding figure. By contrast, BitMine has sold stock even while its outstanding mNAV was less than 1, implying it makes its determination based on the fully diluted metric, Smith said.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="889" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-146.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109603" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-146.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-146.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-146.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-146.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-146.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-146.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-146.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-146.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-146.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/team/charts/3762">Blockworks Research</a></figcaption></figure>







For now, SharpLink’s move jives with an approach of putting ether to productive use, staking and restaking at institutional scale, with token incentives sweetening initial economics.&nbsp;



Whether that approach becomes the default for public ETH treasuries will hinge on what matters most to boards and investors: closing today’s market discount, or compounding tomorrow’s onchain yield to maximize ether.



Updated 10/28/25 at 3:30 pm ET to reflect comments from SharpLink.



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ConsenSys

Sharplink takes its ETH onchain, as ETHZilla trims its stash

Blockworks

The initial coin offering for MegaETH, a project dedicated to building a real-time blockchain, drew significant interest Monday morning.



The ICO, which is open for 72 hours, is 3x oversubscribed, according to MegaETH’s info page. The project shows more than $150 million worth of bids at the $0.099 max price and an implied FDV of $3.05 billion at the time of publication.



MegaETH’s venture backers include Vitalik Buterin and Joe Lubin, who participated in a $20 million <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/vitalik-buterin-backs-megalabs-raise">seed round</a> led by Dragonfly, as Blockworks previously reported.&nbsp;



Per MegaETH’s <a href="https://token.megaeth.com/">site</a>, the accredited investors have a mandatory year lock-up with a 10% discount, though the lock-up is “optional for non-US participants.”



“Once the MegaETH mainnet goes live, eligible users (Fluffle holders and anyone who attempted to get allocation in the Echo or Public Sale) have an opportunity to receive additional tokens after actively using apps in the MegaETH ecosystem,” the site noted.



A <a href="https://static.megaeth.com/MEGA%20MiCA%20Whitepaper.pdf">whitepaper</a> previously showed that MegaETH’s team would only receive a 9.5% allocation.&nbsp;



“MegaETH’s public sale could offer outsized returns for early buyers,” 0xResearch’s Kunal Doshi and Shaunda Devens <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/megaeths-public-sale-looks-megacheap">wrote</a> last week.&nbsp;“This is the third round open to the community, after the Echo community round (priced similarly to VC investors including Dragonfly and Vitalik) and the Fluffle NFT round, which implied roughly a $532 million FDV. This follows MegaETH’s recent buyback of around 4.75% <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/375090/megaeth-buys-back-equity-token-warrants-pre-seed-investors">equity and token-linked warrants</a> from early pre-seed investors.”



This is a developing story.



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This article was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by editor&nbsp;<a href="mailto:jeffrey@blockworks.co" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Michael McSweeney</a>&nbsp;before publication.



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MegaETH initial coin offering 3x oversubscribed less than 30 minutes post-launch

Donovan Choy

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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The NEAR L1 blockchain is running into something of a governance debacle.



Since June, NEAR’s community has <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/l1s-overpaying-security-tokens-inflation">debated</a> a proposal to halve protocol emissions from 5% to 2.5%.



The original proposal argues that fee burns have fallen well short of expectations, leaving “high inflation without high usage,” which is unsustainable.



The situation for NEAR is stark. NEAR is issuing roughly $140 million of tokens annually to secure a chain with $157 million in TVL and about $3.2 million in year-to-date fees.



For context, Solana’s estimated annual issuance is roughly $5.5 billion, but it supports a far larger, more active DeFi ecosystem with around $11 billion in TVL. From a purely economic lens, NEAR is definitely “overpaying” for security.



That discussion finally culminated in a vote that concluded earlier this week. But though the vote won a simple majority, it failed to clear the 66.67% approval threshold, leaving it technically unsuccessful under NEAR’s governance rules.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1014" height="636" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-121.png" alt="" class="wp-image-109508" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-121.png?w=1014 1014w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-121.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-121.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-121.png?w=410 410w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-121.png?w=416 416w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-121.png?w=349 349w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-121.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1014px) 100vw, 1014px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://vote.linearprotocol.org/">Linearprotocol</a></figcaption></figure>







That’s where the controversy begins. Validator operator Chorus One is criticizing indications that NEAR’s core contributors may still ship a nearcore release containing the change, relying on a subsequent onchain upgrade mechanism to activate it.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Despite this, the NEAR core team decided to proceed with implementing the inflation reduction in the next network upgrade, even though the governance process did not reach consensus.&mdash; Chorus One (@ChorusOne) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChorusOne/status/1981009981026799734?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 22, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Louis Thomazeau of L1D fund is <a href="https://x.com/0xLouisT/status/1981334985387757821">pushing back</a> against Chorus One, countering that cutting emissions is “common sense” economics and should take precedence over blind adherence to decentralization ideals. In other words: Sure, there are rules, but a startup’s main job is not to die.



It’s hard to say if there’s a clear right or wrong here; it fundamentally comes down to your philosophical values.



Breaking the rules delivers short-term efficiency, but it risks a dangerous “Fed put” precedent. Following the rules of governance, I guess, safeguards governance integrity, but that’s costly for the network and NEAR in the near term.



Crypto seems to run into the same kinds of problems all the time.



Hyperliquid recently faced a similar <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hyperliquid-liquidation-market-uncertainty">bind</a>.



In March, a trader squeezed the JELLY perps market, saddling the HLP vault with large losses. The team delisted JELLY perps and manually overrode the oracle price to close exposure and stem the damage — an explicit break from crypto’s sacrosanct “code is law” principle to protect depositors.



There are countless examples: Should a chain halt during an exploit (e.g., <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/what-it-takes-to-halt-a-decentralized-blockchain-like-binance">BNB</a> in 2022)? Should a community hard fork to reverse a hack (Ethereum in 2016)? You get the idea.



If NEAR wants legitimacy, it should probably take the loss and honor its own thresholds. Forcing the outcome through for a “good” outcome today signals that your governance rules are written in sand. But then again, this industry has the memory of a goldfish, so who are we kidding?



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NEAR’s inflation reduction vote fails pass threshold, but it may still be implemented

Ethereum developers are moving ahead with a Dec. 3 mainnet fork for the long-awaited Fusaka upgrade, following strong client team support during Thursday’s All Core Devs (ACD) call.



The <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/fusaka-rollout-glamsterdam">timeline remains</a> technically conditional on Hoodie testnet finalization next week, but with no major issues reported on the first two testnets and all client teams signaling approval, the dates are effectively locked in.&nbsp;



Release candidates for mainnet clients are expected Nov. 3, giving node operators one month to make the switch.



The progression to Blob Parameter Override (BPO), will get a schedule tweak, however.



“BPO one and two on December 9 and then on January 7, respectively,” Alex Stokes <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In1-paNfjzQ">said on the call</a>. “We did a temperature check last call, we’re generally on board, so I wanted to do the same thing here.” All major client teams present gave a green light.&nbsp;



Blobs were <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-dencun-upgrade-mainnet">introduced with Dencun</a> (March 2024), specifically through <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-improvement-proposal-4844">EIP-4844</a> (proto-danksharding), but the BPO staging is a new mechanism being introduced with Fusaka to dynamically adjust blob parameters post-fork, unlike Dencun’s static blob configuration.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="889" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-119.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109497" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-119.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-119.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-119.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-119.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-119.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-119.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-119.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-119.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-119.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Blob utilization is one Ethereum metric that’s been up and to the right | Source: <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/team/charts/659">Blockworks Research</a></figcaption></figure>







The advantage of BPOs is that they lower risk, Gabriel Trintinalia noted, an engineer on the Consensys team that maintains LFDT&#8217;s <a href="https://www.lfdecentralizedtrust.org/projects/besu">Besu</a> client.



“It lets us grow blob capacity step by step, based on real network data and performance,” Trintinalia told Blockworks. “And of course, in the unlikely event that we observe any performance degradation, BPOs can be used to safely reduce the number of blobs as needed.”



The Sepolia fork continues to progress smoothly.&nbsp;



“We have 99% [validator participation]. Every single combination is just fine now. We rolled out the latest stage and that solved all of our bugs,” said Barnabas Busa, who coordinates Ethereum testnets. “Everything went smooth.”



The next Sepolia BPO activation is scheduled in four days, ahead of the Hoodi fork. If those proceed as planned, mainnet confirmation is expected during next week’s call.



“Client teams have done extensive work to ensure the network can handle the blob increase unlocked by PeerDas, including multiple benchmarks, bandwidth analysis, instability simulations, and more.”



Holesky, which has already seen its last fork with Fusaka testing, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-hard-fork-updates">will be deprecated</a> next week. “We’ll be officially shutting it off next Friday,” Busa said.



Fusaka introduces Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS), allowing nodes to verify data through sampling instead of full downloads. Infrastructure providers expect <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/0xresearch-newsletter-ethereum-tps">PeerDAS</a> to lower costs by more than 90%, paving the way for lower blob fees, cheaper rollup operations, and faster oracle updates across the L2 ecosystem.



Formal confirmation of the fork date is expected soon after Hoodi’s fork activation on Oct. 28, barring any unforeseen issues.



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Ethereum

Fusaka upgrade on track as devs eye December mainnet fork

The rapid slide in US Treasury yields is prodding some stablecoin treasuries to diversify.&nbsp;



This week, Spark — the DeFi lending protocol and core “Star” within the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/makerdao">Sky</a> (formerly MakerDAO) ecosystem — allocated $100 million of its stablecoin reserves to Superstate’s USCC fund, a regulated crypto carry product that earns yield from futures basis trades instead of solely interest on government debt.



The move comes just as the 10-year Treasury yield dipped below 4% for the first time since April, closing at 3.976%. Lower yields have squeezed protocols that rely on short-duration Treasuries to fund operations and incentives. Spark’s pivot marks one of the first large-scale moves by a major stablecoin issuer away from Treasuries into regulated, crypto-derived yield.



“Access to stable, diversified yield is increasingly critical as Treasury returns compress,” <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/empire/24236f98-1f88-11ee-8f36-3b1c045b48bd">Superstate</a> CEO Robert Leshner said. “The investment allows Spark to maintain exposure to yield opportunities uncorrelated with Federal Reserve rate policy while operating within a compliant institutional framework.”



Sam MacPherson, CEO and co-founder of Phoenix Labs — which developed <a href="https://blockworks.com/analytics/spark">Spark</a> — said Superstate’s USCC fund enables the protocol to “diversify its reserves while maintaining the same level of safety and compliance Spark always prioritizes.”



USCC uses basis trading strategies that exploit the spread between spot and futures prices on assets such as bitcoin, ether, solana, and XRP. It currently reports a 30-day yield of 8.35%. The strategy benefits from busy derivatives markets, which provide the pricing gaps the fund harvests. CME alone logged more than $900 billion in futures and options volume in Q3, led by ETH.



The product is custodied by <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/anchorage-digital">Anchorage Digital</a>, audited by Ernst &amp; Young, and calculates its NAV through NAV Fund Services.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Rate compression meets tokenomics overhaul</h2>



The USCC allocation comes amid broader changes in <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sky-dao-adoption">the Sky ecosystem</a> as it adapts to a lower-rate environment. A fresh governance proposal would shift staking rewards from being paid in <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/usds">USDS</a>, Sky’s flagship stablecoin, to the SKY token itself. The plan would direct 500 million SKY to the treasury and raise daily buybacks to $300,000 in USDS, with rewards transitioning fully to SKY after 90 days. The change would be reversible if market conditions shift.



This tokenomics revamp follows Sky’s introduction of stUSDS, its first risk capital token. The new instrument is designed for advanced users and institutions willing to take on more protocol risk in exchange for a higher share of system rewards. stUSDS yield is derived from the stability fees paid by borrowers minting USDS against SKY collateral, linking capital formation more directly to protocol revenues.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/rune-christensen">Rune Christensen</a>, co-founder of Sky, said stUSDS is part of a strategy to bring “maximum effectiveness and efficiency to capital formation” as the protocol scales beyond its original MakerDAO model.



Christiansen is also the top user of the new borrowing option, which could strain liquidity in a crisis.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">We already see the risk-reward for depositors deteriorating, with yield (still subsidized) down to 15%. Similarly, the cost to borrow is reduced from 20% to 15%, which should save Rune around $2m a year in borrowing costs. With borrowers paying 15%, and utilization around 33%,… <a href="https://t.co/wVvz2ZspS7">https://t.co/wVvz2ZspS7</a>&mdash; PaperImperium (@ImperiumPaper) <a href="https://twitter.com/ImperiumPaper/status/1978796127953580395?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 16, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Sky’s ecosystem has expanded through its autonomous Stars — Spark, Grove, and Keel — which deploy stablecoin reserves into DeFi markets. Spark alone has grown to over $11 billion in total volume locked.&nbsp;



Grove has secured <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/janus-henderson-clo-token-1b">$1 billion in allocations</a> for institutional credit strategies, while <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/bellcurve/e52e1726-a071-11f0-9ade-f7dada941856">Keel</a> is set to bring $2.5 billion in capital to Solana’s on-chain ecosystem.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Spark’s evolving yield mix</h2>



Spark’s own Savings product has been expanding in parallel. Its V2 launch this week brings support for USDC, USDT, and ETH, while maintaining a conservative risk framework. Spark Savings currently offers 4.75% APY — about 75 basis points above <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/aave">Aave’s</a> comparable stablecoin yields — primarily from lending against BTC, ETH, and liquid staking tokens.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Stablecoin composition on SparkLend has seen big changes over the past couple months. USDT and PYUSD have quickly become the dominant stablecoins on the platform, replacing USDS and DAI as both the 1st and 2nd most deposited and borrowed stablecoins on the platform. DAI, and… <a href="https://t.co/gXe8y5TJPA">pic.twitter.com/gXe8y5TJPA</a>&mdash; Jack 🟪 (@JackMandin) <a href="https://twitter.com/JackMandin/status/1981349953969516941?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 23, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The USCC allocation represents a measured step into basis-driven, crypto-native yield that remains market-neutral and regulated — a combination DeFi protocols increasingly seek as Treasury returns slide. For Sky, which oversees more than <a href="https://info.sky.money/supply">$9 billion</a> in circulating USDS and DAI across multiple chains, the shift shows how the DAO can maintain flexibility in its treasury strategy, positioning for a lower rate environment where yield will have to come from new sources.



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MakerDAO

Sky pivots beyond treasuries as yields dip, staking overhaul looms

Ledger is recasting its companion app from a portfolio viewer into the primary interface for its hardware.



Ledger Live is becoming Ledger Wallet, with native dapp logins (starting with <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/1inch">1inch</a>) and integrated cash-to-stablecoin rails.



Front and center is the goal is to remove <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ledger">Ledger</a> owners’ need to use a third-party wallet like Rabby to as an interface for their signer.



At the same time, Ledger is targeting institutional workflows with Enterprise Multisig. The new offering is “built on Safe’s open source tech, but with Clear Signing natively integrated,” Sebastien Badault, Ledger&#8217;s VP of Enterprise, told Blockworks.



The company says it will be simple to migrate from <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/safe">Safe</a> to Ledger Multisig to make use of Clear Signing features not yet available in the Safe Wallet.



“The industry told us they want Multisig, but the last year of hacks told us they also need Clear Signing (<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bybit-attack-institutional-grade-security">see Bybit</a>, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/p2p-eth-staking">Swissborg</a> etc), so we built it,” Badault said.



Ledger <a href="https://shop.ledger.com/pages/ledger-multisig-terms-of-use">charges</a> a &#8220;multisig fee&#8221; per transaction, automatically bundled into the transaction’s “priority fee,” however.



For Safe, it’s “a validation” of the infrastructure provider’s role as “the industry standard,” according to Lukas Schor, President of Safe Ecosystem Foundation.



“We are collaborating with Ledger as well as the wider ecosystem on making clear signing the standard,” Schor told Blockworks, noting that the feature should make its way into “all products build on Safe,” soon.



On the hardware side, Ledger is pitching its new Nano Gen5 signer as a step-up for budget conscious users looking for features found in the company’s pricier hardware.



“The goal was to offer the experience of <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ledger-new-touchscreen-focused-offering">Ledger Flex</a> and Ledger Stax at a more affordable price point,” Ledger spokesperson Ariel Wengroff told Blockworks. The device lists at $179/€179 and includes Bluetooth 5.2, NFC and an E Ink touchscreen.



It could also be seen as a replacement for <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ledger-nano-s-support-ending">the aging Nano S line</a>.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="889" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-118.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109481" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-118.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-118.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-118.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-118.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-118.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-118.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-118.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-118.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-118.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">DEX trading volume, which was steady throughout the summer, has spiked sharply in October. | Source: <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/team/charts/2164">Blockworks Research</a></figcaption></figure>







Currently, few dapps offer direct Ledger connections, and many users prefer connecting <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/cold-wallets-secure-crypto-custody">hardware signers</a> through a browser-based wallet such as <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/metamask">MetaMask</a>, Rabby or <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/phantom">Phantom</a>. On-ramping from fiat rails is getting a boost via global payments firm Noah, to provide instant USD/EUR top-ups into USDC with no additional fees from Ledger.&nbsp;



Under the hood, Ledger continues to emphasize its audit posture and the maturity of its secure-element stack, which has a spotless record in an increasingly crowded hardware signer market.



Rival Trezor just unveiled its Safe 7 (no relation to Safe Wallet), an all-wireless, “quantum-ready” device using Tropic Square’s TROPIC01 open, auditable chip with a $250 price, <a href="https://thedrop.beehiiv.com/p/crack-it-open">according to my colleague Kate Irwin at The Drop</a>.



While Ledger’s hardware has remained secure, its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ledger-victims-being-made-whole">software connections</a> and customer data have been the target of hackers in the past, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-class-action">a persistent industry problem</a>.



Competition beyond incumbents like Trezor, Keystone, GridPlus and Keycard, include a new wave of mobile-first signers — such as <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/seeker-review-solana-mobile">Solana’s Seeker</a> and the Ethereum-focused <a href="https://x.com/EthereumPhone">dgen1</a>. These devices target a bespoke dapp experience, for users on-the-go.



For Ledger users, the Nano Gen5 pairs with Bluetooth 5.2 for signing and NFC for Ledger Security Key (FIDO2 passkeys) for logins, alongside USB-C when you want a wired link.



Under this paradigm, the hardware becomes less a dongle and more an identity-and-approvals layer that spans uses from retail swaps to policy-gated multisig.



Updated October 24, 2025 at 4:13 am ET: Added info about Ledger Multisig fee



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Ledger

Ledger Nano Gen5 feels like Flex for less

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Less than two years ago, Jupiter was “just” a DEX aggregator. Today, the company looks more like a DeFi conglomerate, or a “superapp.”



On top of its flagship spot aggregator, the team runs perps, a memecoin launchpad, the JLP liquidity pool, lending, liquid staking, a portfolio tracker, a RFQ venue (JupiterZ), developer APIs, a token verification system (Verify) and the third-largest Solana validator.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1166" height="1263" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-117.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109473" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-117.png?w=1166 1166w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-117.png?w=277 277w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-117.png?w=945 945w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-117.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-117.png?w=237 237w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-117.png?w=241 241w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-117.png?w=202 202w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-117.png?w=74 74w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1166px) 100vw, 1166px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://docsend.com/view/bihwsdikxcpnv3kt">Jupiter</a></figcaption></figure>







Too many? That’s not yet including the pipeline of emerging products: a jupUSD stablecoin, a prediction market in partnership with Kalshi, an ICO launchpad (Jupiter DTF), and its “omnichain” network JupNet. I’m probably still missing some.



Jupiter’s suite of products is not inactive shelfware, either. Almost every product stands on its own. In its <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBZ1N7cOddY">Q3 token holder update</a> yesterday, the team pegs Q3 revenue at ~$45 million — ~$180 million annualized. 



For a crypto business, that’s real money.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="922" height="503" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-114.png" alt="" class="wp-image-109470" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-114.png?w=922 922w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-114.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-114.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-114.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-114.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-114.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-114.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 922px) 100vw, 922px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Jupiter’s DEX aggregator dominates Solana DeFi</figcaption></figure>







But while Jupiter is firing on all cylinders, there’s an uncomfortable truth: The JUP token hasn’t kept up. JUP sits at around a $1.1 billion market cap today, down from $3 billion at its peak earlier this year, or a ~6.2x P/S.



In my conversations with Solana traders and investors, everyone has a different explanation for why the token of Solana’s most prominent protocol hasn’t performed well this year.



Some cited the token’s lack of utility. One liquid fund told me that JUP was perceived as too “safe” for speculative money; others pointed to the fact that JUP’s buybacks were too small relative to its FDV.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1179" height="579" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-116.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109471" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-116.png?w=1179 1179w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-116.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-116.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-116.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-116.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-116.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-116.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-116.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1179px) 100vw, 1179px" /></figure>



The pseudonymous founder of Elemental, Moo, gave me a simpler take: “Jupiter had an ‘Avengers’ moment where all the hype the team built culminated in last year’s Catstanbul event.



“Given the level of hype, a correction was inevitable. And when prices drop, people start questioning everything. The community’s main concern now seems to be whether Jupiter&#8217;s growth plans will be enough to reignite interest in the token. Jupiter has a grand vision, but it will take time to execute.”



Jupiter also has something of a complexity tax, a similar problem that <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-elevator-pitch">Ethereum</a> suffers from.&nbsp;



When a company spans a dozen interrelated businesses, the story gets harder to model, and markets often apply a discount until the value capture is obvious.&nbsp;



I’d love to see an investment analyst brave enough to publish a sum-of-parts model for Jupiter’s product zoo.



To the team’s credit, they seem to recognize these problems and are taking steps to rectify it.



In the team’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBZ1N7cOddY">Q3 token holders update</a> last night, the Jupiter team called for a “fresh start for JUP” and outlined moves aimed at tighter focus: scaling back DAO voting to only &#8220;major tokenomics and treasury decisions&#8221;, cutting the JUP unstaking period from 30 days to seven, and — pending governance — burning 121 million JUP (~$42 million) from the Litterbox strategic reserve.



“Some of the mechanics around [the] JUP token were preventing people from getting engaged. We want to fix that. Some of the overemphasis and overfocus on the comms side around the DAO was turning people off and creating a negative attention flywheel. Don&#8217;t want to do that anymore,” Dhanda said on the livestream.



Jupiter has built a rare thing in crypto, an operating business that throws off cash across multiple product lines.&nbsp;



Markets are for now pricing the token like a safe, sprawling operator rather than a single, spicy bet. If Jupiter can make the value path to JUP simpler, maybe it can change the fate of its token, too.&nbsp;



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DEXs

Jupiter wants to turn its token’s fate around

Marc Arjoon

Sam Schubert

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Hi all, happy Wednesday. Markets are treading water as traders balance fading momentum with solid structural support. BTC holds near $108K, ETF inflows have softened and positioning looks cautious but orderly. Meanwhile, after years of neglect, BTC mines are having their time in the spotlight.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Indices</h2>



Equity markets traded mostly sideways this week as risk assets consolidated following recent strength. The S&amp;P 500 (+0.3%) and Nasdaq 100 (+0.4%) held modest gains, while Gold (-0.2%) stayed rangebound. Crypto equities lagged broader markets despite stabilizing late in the week and ended flat after recovering from midweek lows near -5%. The overall tone leaned neutral-to-risk-off, with investors waiting for fresh catalysts amid quiet macro data and earnings-driven positioning.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="845" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-76.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109354" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-76.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-76.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-76.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-76.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-76.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-76.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-76.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-76.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-76.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Crypto subsectors diverged sharply. AI-linked tokens were the standout, briefly surging midweek before closing the week near even. L2 and modular ecosystems underperformed, falling roughly 10-15% from the week’s open, reflecting cooling momentum after recent rallies. Solana ecosystem names also slipped, tracking broader altcoin softness, while crypto miners extended their slump, under pressure from declining BTC hash price and weaker sentiment in energy-sensitive assets. The pullback suggests selective rotation rather than a wholesale exit from risk.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="845" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-79.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109356" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-79.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-79.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-79.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-79.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-79.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-79.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-79.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-79.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-79.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Macro conditions offered little directional impulse. Treasury yields eased slightly, but risk appetite remained muted ahead of upcoming inflation and GDP data. With earnings season and key inflation prints ahead, short-term reactivity could rise. Crypto’s relative weakness vs. equities may persist until clearer macro or onchain catalysts emerge.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Market Update: Rotation without conviction</h2>



BTC holds ~$108K as ETF flows wobble and rates dip, while perps positioning looks cautious but not capitulated. The broader market seems hesitant to chase strength at these levels, with traders opting to protect gains rather than add risk. However, funding rates remain neutral, suggesting no extreme leverage buildup or panic selling despite softer sentiment.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="826" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-83.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109363" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-83.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-83.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-83.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-83.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-83.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-83.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-83.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-83.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-83.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



The tape says “buy the dip, sell the rip” and spot is resilient around $108K, but weekly ETF flows softened and options skew implies demand for downside protection into Friday. This pattern points to a range-bound environment driven by short-term positioning and liquidity rotations rather than conviction buying. Still, structural support from longer-term holders continues to underpin price action, limiting the depth of pullbacks for now. Similarly, we also saw ~$500 million of net inflows into BTC ETFs yesterday. 



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1124" height="624" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-75.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109352" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-75.png?w=1124 1124w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-75.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-75.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-75.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-75.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-75.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-75.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-75.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1124px) 100vw, 1124px" /></figure>



Derivatives positioning looks cautious. Open interest has cooled and rallies stall quickly, consistent with fading impulse rather than trend reversal. Macro’s not helping either, as higher-for-longer rate chatter, tariff concerns and wobbly financials have kept risk appetite uneven. For now, traders appear content to stay light and reactive, with volatility compressing as markets wait for a clearer catalyst to define the next leg.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="838" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-78.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109355" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-78.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-78.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-78.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-78.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-78.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-78.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-78.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-78.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-78.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The megawatt trade: Are bitcoin miners just getting started?</h2>



A sudden outage at AWS’s US-EAST-1 region on Oct. 20 reminded everyone that the internet’s backbone still runs through a handful of centralized choke points. The issue stemmed from DNS resolution failures inside an internal network subsystem, knocking millions of users offline for hours. The incident underscored just how critical resilient, distributed compute capacity has become in an era increasingly shaped by AI.



It’s moments like these that highlight why interest in more distributed forms of compute is growing, where power and resiliency matter as much as scale. Bitcoin miners, facing margin pressure since the halving as hash price falls and network hash rate climbs, are leaning into that shift. With access to cheap energy and industrial-grade infrastructure, they’re finding the next frontier isn’t more bitcoin: It’s more compute. Many are already recasting themselves as power-first infrastructure businesses built to serve future demand. 



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1593" height="487" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-81.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109360" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-81.png?w=1593 1593w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-81.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-81.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-81.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-81.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-81.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-81.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-81.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-81.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1593px) 100vw, 1593px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://hashrateindex.com">https://hashrateindex.com</a></figcaption></figure>







Crypto miners have left nearly every other sector in the dust this year. Our Crypto Miners Index is up roughly 130% year to date, far outpacing both traditional crypto equities and broader benchmarks like the S&amp;P 500.&nbsp; As data-center demand soars and power capacity becomes the new currency, miners are no longer priced as just “bitcoin plays” but as critical infrastructure providers. That re-rating has pulled capital back into the sector, setting the stage for the next wave of deals and build-outs.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1482" height="834" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-80.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109357" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-80.png?w=1482 1482w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-80.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-80.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-80.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-80.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-80.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-80.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-80.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1482px) 100vw, 1482px" /></figure>



Activity across the mining sector is heating up as the AI-compute trade accelerates. CleanSpark recently brought on Jeffrey Thomas, formerly of Humain, to lead its new AI data center division. Bitfarms raised $500 million through convertible notes to expand its power and HPC footprint. CoreWeave’s proposed ~$9 billion all-stock acquisition of Core Scientific, set for a shareholder vote on Oct. 30, has become the industry’s main event. Recently, proxy advisor Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) recommended that shareholders vote against it, with critics arguing the offer undervalues Core Scientific. However it plays out, it’s a reminder that miners’ real advantage lies in the power they already control.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="421" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-82.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109362" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-82.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-82.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-82.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-82.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-82.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-82.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-82.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-82.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-82.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://hashrateindex.com">https://hashrateindex.com</a></figcaption></figure>



 Zooming out, capital is starting to value megawatts. <a href="https://www.macquarie.com/au/en/about/news/2025/macquarie-asset-management-to-lead-sale-of-aligned-data-centers-at-an-enterprise-value-of-us-40-billion.html">Macquarie’s ~$40 billion sale</a> of Aligned Data Centers to a BlackRock-led group values ~5GW of operational and planned capacity at an implied ~US$8 million per MW. For listed miners, the market is drifting toward a megawatt lens but it is still early days. The leaders are already turning megawatts into AI cash flows (higher revenue per MW and steadier, longer-dated contracts), setting the pace for the re-rate. IREN illustrates the trend — guiding to >$500 million in AI-cloud ARR by Q1 2026 and now standing out as one of the best-performing miners YTD. 



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1480" height="819" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-77.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109353" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-77.png?w=1480 1480w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-77.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-77.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-77.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-77.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-77.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-77.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-77.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1480px) 100vw, 1480px" /></figure>



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Bitcoin mining

The megawatt trade: Are bitcoin miners just getting started?

James Craig and Louis Giles’ Code Is Law lands at a time when the phrase is both cultural shorthand and contested legal terrain. The film, released today, discusses the concept using several case studies: The DAO hack in 2016, and exploits of Indexed Finance and Mango Markets in 2021 and 2022 respectively.



The DAO hack feels like ancient history at this point (it predates Blockworks News by 5 years), but in addition to being a novel smart contract exploit, it also resulted in Ethereum’s only real <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-split-is-possible-but-many-remain-optimistic-about-the-merge">contentious hard fork</a> (“Eth PoW” notwithstanding). So it’s natural that any honest reckoning with “code is law” begins there.



The filmmakers foreground those who lived through the fracture. Griff Green frames the DAO as an attempt to encode a new legal structure, while Fabian Vogelsteller warns of the potential accountability problem.



&#8220;There’s the strong idea of ‘code is law,’ or, once the rules are set, they aren’t changeable anymore,” says Vogelsteller. “The downside is: If you build something truly decentralized, that means truly unowned, then that also means that there’s no one who can fix it if something is broken.”



Within days of its launch on April 30, 2016, millions of dollars of ether flowed in, governed by new smart contract primitives that were being tested in the wild.



&#8220;We had everyone looking at these contracts,” Green says. “But no one had any formal training in <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/audits-cannot-guarantee-defi-exploits">smart contract audits</a> because there were no smart contracts to audit.&#8221;



It was the moment crypto’s first grand experiment in immutability collided with the messy world it was supposed to transcend.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Courts aren’t buying it</h2>



“Code is law” has always been a slogan in search of a sovereign. As protocols amassed TVL and users racked up losses, courts tended to treat the phrase as legally meaningless.



In 2022, Blockworks asked Timothy Spangler, at Dechert LLP, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/qa-crypto-lawyers-talk-3ac-liquidation-whether-code-is-law">who dismissed the idea</a>.



“Code isn’t law, code is code. Law applies to any sort of transaction, and the purpose of law is about shifting losses from where they fall to some other party,” Spangler told Blockworks. And when large sums disappear, litigation follows.



That shift comes through in the film’s second act, tracing <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/canadian-15-8m-defi-theft-case-could-upend-code-is-law-convention">Indexed Finance’s 2021 exploit</a> and the identification of Canadian math prodigy Andean Medjedovic as the culprit.



Indexed co-founder Laurence Day is in the camp squarely rejecting the ethos outright, calling the idea dystopian in the film. Ontario courts responded in kind, granting extraordinary relief and treating on-chain manipulation as theft. US prosecutors followed, charging Medjedovic over Indexed and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/kyberswap-hacker-stole-48m">Kyber exploits</a> worth roughly $65 million.&nbsp;



Medjedovic, through his online personas, has tried to rally support among “code is law” diehards, revealing that the notion still animates hacker culture, but it generally doesn’t hold up in court. He remains on the run from authorities, and ironically, he won’t be able to benefit from the heist, according to Day, thanks to a subsequent hacker.



“He had the Indexed funds stolen from him in turn by <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/the-bug-that-took-down-wintermute-is-still-at-large">the Profanity breach</a> about a year later,” Day told Blockworks. Unfortunately for users, that means — even if he’s eventually caught and tried — funds from the original theft are likely out of bounds for recovery.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="798" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-74.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109327" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-74.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-74.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-74.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-74.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-74.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-74.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-74.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-74.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-74.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Laurence Day | Source: <a href="https://x.com/CodeIsLawFilm">Code is Law</a></figcaption></figure>







One of the film’s strongest threads explores the moral triangle between exploiters, users and white-hat responders. A brief detour through the 2023 Euler hack shows how <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/funds-stolen-hackers-mind">pressure and negotiation</a> enticed the attacker to return almost all stolen funds. Recovery teams have clawed back hundreds of millions through similar interventions, revealing the reality that trust and coordination remain decisive in crisis.



The <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/mango-markets">Mango Markets</a> saga, which rounds out the film, complicates things further. Avraham Eisenberg’s 2022 exploit was prosecuted as fraud. But in May of this year, a federal judge <a href="https://www.trmlabs.com/resources/blog/breaking-federal-judge-overturns-all-criminal-convictions-in-mango-markets-case-against-avraham-eisenberg">vacated</a> his <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/mango-markets-trader-guilty">criminal convictions</a>, ruling the evidence didn’t support the jury’s findings.



Advocates for “code is law” as a slogan celebrated, but the ruling turned on evidence of intent presented, and doesn’t serve to legalise extractive strategies, just because code allows them.



Still, the line between “aggressive trading” and criminal fraud remains muddied.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Whitehats versus hackers’ creed</h2>



In a way, every exploit since the DAO — from flash loans to oracle manipulation — echoes that first contact between economic design and adversarial innovation. Courts lean on familiar concepts like property, fraud and breach, while Dr. Paul Dylan-Ennis, analogizes black- and whitehat hackers to outlaws in the wild west. They fight against each other, but both hate the sheriff.



In practice, the rise of white-hat war rooms has boosted DeFi security, and <a href="https://medium.com/@cicadapartners/the-state-of-defi-exploit-risk-dd2b2c32b25f">exploits have dropped</a> in frequency and severity in recent years. But permissionless systems invite edge-testing, and as long as it pays, nefarious actors will try and break them.&nbsp;



“Code is law” can be an engineering demand for precision and defense-in-depth — just don’t count on it to be a promise the courts will honor.



Code Is Law (dir. James Craig; Louis Giles) screened on the festival circuit and is now <a href="https://www.journeyman.tv/film/8785">streaming</a> worldwide.



Updated 10/21/2025 at 2:30 p.m. with the correct dates in the second paragraph. 



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‘Code is law,’ revisited, in new feature doc

Ethereum just lost one of its most prolific researchers, Dankrad Feist, to Tempo — the Stripe/Paradigm co-production that’s building a purpose-built EVM chain for payments.&nbsp;



The <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/dankrad-feist-joins-tempo">move</a> has reignited debate in the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a> community: Is a venture-owned, EVM-compatible chain a threat to Ethereum mainnet and talent pool — or a healthy forcing function that clarifies what Ethereum should (and shouldn’t) chase?



On Monday, Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin <a href="https://x.com/ethereumJoseph/status/1980279130638672175">weighed in</a> with a measured counterpoint, arguing that venture capital both extracts and contributes, and reaffirming Ethereum’s position as the “rigorously decentralized, credibly neutral” base layer.&nbsp;



Prominent Ethereum Foundation voices, from <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/vitalik-buterin">Vitalik Buterin</a> on down, have been united in praise for Feist. Others worry about the growing gravitational pull of “corpo-chains” and their potential to poach both talent and users.



What happens next is key: Will Tempo evolve into a proving ground that strengthens Ethereum, or a parallel system that siphons value away?



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The departure</h2>



Backing up: On Friday, Feist <a href="https://x.com/dankrad/status/1979133618254405775">announced</a> he’s joining Tempo while staying on as a research advisor to the Ethereum Foundation. His note framed Tempo as aligned with Ethereum’s values and suggested open-source work could flow back upstream.



The EF messaging around the move smells of a concerted effort to download its impact. Everyone from Vitalik Buterin to a range of core developers offered kudos.



“Dankrad has been an excellent researcher and has made immensely valuable contributions to the Ethereum that we know and love today, including <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-cancun-upgrade-blobs">Danksharding</a>, consensus research and much more,” Buterin <a href="https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1979140260622930348">said on X</a>, wishing Feist well.



Other prominent EF voices <a href="https://x.com/barnabemonnot/status/1979163259031753181">Barnabé Monnot</a>, <a href="https://x.com/adietrichs/status/1979174596864594039">Ansgar Dietrichs</a> and <a href="https://x.com/ralexstokes/status/1979260592319017330">Alex Stokes</a> praised Dankrad’s contributions, with Stokes calling it an “opportunity for Ethereum and Tempo to be closer together.”



Within hours, the conversation expanded — from one career move to first principles: What should Ethereum optimize for, as venture-backed chains sprint toward payments?



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">VC heavyweights vs. credible neutrality</h2>



Lubin’s intervention today stood out for both tone and specificity.&nbsp;



In his words, “the goal of [Paradigm] and many other VCs is to suck as much value as possible from the Ethereum and broader ecosystem, while also adding value to the ecosystem in the service of maximizing their own gains,” and calling the hiring “natural and inevitable.”



His conclusion was a restatement of Ethereum’s mission — to be a “rigorously decentralized, credibly neutral digital asset settlement ledger infrastructure.”



That’s something corporate chains can never be, and therefore they aren’t existential threats, but complementary.



“Corpo-chains will be important infrastructure built on top of neutral permissionless chains,” Lubin said.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">There seems to be a lot of fuss about <a href="https://twitter.com/tempo?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@tempo</a>, and seems like they threw a lot of money around to make everybody be a launch partner, while people claiming it’s an <a href="https://twitter.com/ethereum?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ethereum</a> killer. I think it needs to be clear that this is currently a PoA chain running in Testnet. I would love… <a href="https://t.co/5fkuxltQPN">pic.twitter.com/5fkuxltQPN</a>&mdash; Fabian Vogelsteller (@feindura) <a href="https://twitter.com/feindura/status/1979961609549463615?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 19, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Bankless’ David Hoffman <a href="https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1979900912903586286">has doubts</a> about the supposed synergy Feist promises. “I’d like to hear the leadership at Tempo elaborate on that further, because I&#8217;m not buying it,” Hoffman said.



The hinge of his argument is sovereignty: If a corporate L1 captures the “incoming flow of trillions of dollars of stablecoins,” the value accrues there first. He also points to Ethereum’s special regulatory positioning: “Only Ethereum and Bitcoin, and – maybe if you squint – a few other chains, operate above the law – anyone’s law.”



Yes, Tempo may — and probably will — “grow the pie,” but will any of that growth route to Ethereum’s settlement, security and culture, or redound to ETH’s benefit?



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Don’t race Tempo on payments</h2>



A cluster of voices argues Ethereum shouldn’t try to compete with the Tempos of the world head on. Nick Almond, for instance, <a href="https://x.com/DrNickA/status/1979492079194546448">suggested</a> a return to Ethereum’s roots: “It needs to become the cypherpunk chain.”



Its unique selling point, 0xBreadguy <a href="https://x.com/0xBreadguy/status/1979186891049308574">agrees</a>, is that, “there will never be a chain more decentralized, credibly neutral and censorship resistant and live as Ethereum.”



In other words, let TradFi have their permissioned playground. Differentiation is good. If payments at scale require speed, distribution, and regulatory alignment that Ethereum won’t or can’t offer, the play is to double down on what only Ethereum is uniquely positioned to deliver, all while scaling on its own terms.



On this view, Tempo is a productive sandbox, argues GregTheGreek, who sketched a “<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/ksm">Kusama</a> thesis” for the chain, referring to the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/polkadot">Polkadot</a> “canary network.”



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">I think Tempo will be a net positive for Ethereum If the community allows it 👇 I think <a href="https://twitter.com/ajwarner90?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ajwarner90</a> got a lot right in his post, but let&#39;s talk about the actual value add no one wants to talk about.<a href="https://t.co/zh5CQzuZP0">https://t.co/zh5CQzuZP0</a> There&#39;s something deeply special about <a href="https://twitter.com/gakonst?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@gakonst</a> and…&mdash; GregTheGreek.eth (@gregthegreek) <a href="https://twitter.com/gregthegreek/status/1979296662922117550?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 17, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



“Reth will become extremely feature rich, all the EIPs we want but can&#8217;t get, batteries included.” He suggests that real-world load on a high-velocity venue could produce open-source contributions to the EVM that Ethereum can adopt.



“We need to accept they&#8217;ll be battle-testing every possible change, and prove (or disprove) the viability at scale,” Greg <a href="https://x.com/gregthegreek/status/1974398708784549948">said</a>.



But not everyone is so bullish. Follow the incentives 0xBreadguy says: “I do not believe in the ‘it&#8217;s all EVM bro’ narrative. Tempo, Avalanche, Binance, Monad et al will contribute ~0 value to $ETH.”



The dichotomy carries over to disparate views on Ethereum’s place in the sweep of technological change, and who chooses to work on it. Feist’s career move <a href="https://x.com/conorsvensson/status/1979903540106809806?s=46&amp;t=yjAdM2ddX0KgGQimu7jcDQ">provoked</a> Conor Svensson of Enscribe to reminisce, “the reason why I was first pulled into Ethereum, was that it reminded me of Linux.”



“Linux went on to power vast swaths of the internet, but it didn’t make everyone rich,” Svensson said. “However, to most of those working on it, financial motivations were never the primary reasons for working on what they were.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Talent, compensation and retention</h2>



Even if one is not motivated solely by money, it’s a factor.&nbsp;



“Ethereum core devs aren’t paid well enough, imagine earning peanuts for maintaining and improving 400 billion $ protocol,” Ouranos Capital <a href="https://x.com/ouranoscapital/status/1979181808273998226">declared</a>.



Not to worry. The Ethereum Foundation’s Tomasz Stańczak <a href="https://x.com/tkstanczak/status/1979237879038775655">pointed</a> to a recent <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/arpinet/">Head of Talent</a> hire to help attract world-class candidates — and better support both departures and returns. It’s a pragmatic acknowledgment: the competition for research talent is now an issue.



At the same time, Trent van Epps at the Protocol Guild <a href="https://x.com/trent_vanepps/status/1979946429771559184">flagged</a> the pressure: “We likely have a counterfactual where top shelf talent never even considers core [developer roles] because of the [compensation] gap.” The Protocol Guild <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/important-ethereum-devs-underpaid">has been focused on this problem</a> in recent years.



As far as Feist goes, no need to panic, Ethereum advocate DCinvestor <a href="https://x.com/iamDCinvestor/status/1979321926515593452">said</a>: “Change is healthy.”



“EF and Ethereum research and core dev jobs should not be for life,” he said, adding, “they should constantly cycle in new talent and supporting future leaders as they grow their skillset.”



The funding debate <a href="https://x.com/keonehd/status/1979348825258029425?s=46">surfaced</a> a spicy take from Monad founder Keone Hon, who proposed Ethereum should “put in a hard fork to add 0.25% annual inflation to fund research.”&nbsp;



Hoffman’s Bankless partner Ryan Sean Adams, poured cold water on that idea, <a href="https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1979357111994978449">saying</a> it “will never happen,” because it “would be an arbitrary monetary policy change directed to a specific group of individuals — [a] vector for corruption — same as fiat.”



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="889" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-57.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109271" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-57.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-57.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-57.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-57.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-57.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-57.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-57.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-57.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-57.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The ether supply growth rate has leveled off in the past year | Source: <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/team/charts/1291">Blockworks Research</a></figcaption></figure>







There’s the rub: Matching corporate compensation with protocol-level funding runs straight into Ethereum’s commitments to predictability and neutrality.



That’s where Lubin’s framing and the EF’s talent posture intersect. It’s not “Tempo vs Ethereum” so much as “incentives and culture vs churn.” The chain with the best combination of funding, mission and network effects can still win the hiring battles of the next decade.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Stripe’s distribution vs Ethereum’s moat</h2>



Tempo isn’t just well-funded, it presumably will have distribution. As Gabriel Shapiro <a href="https://x.com/lex_node/status/1979947572333781375">noted</a>: “If it can put a meaningful [percentage] of [Stripe’s volume] onchain, and also put a meaningful [percentage] of a few partners&#8217; volumes onchain, it could quickly be rivaling Solana and Ethereum in volumes.” It’s a clean articulation of the “distribution is greater than product” thesis.



But that scale cuts both ways. “BIG IF,” <a href="https://x.com/wmougayar/status/1979948987382964464">countered</a> William Mougayar, at the Ethereum Market Research Center. He argues that “payments is not a sweet spot for blockchains,” and that people “severely underestimate the switching costs and barriers to entry” — wallets, developer trust, tooling, nodes, clients, and culture — all part of Ethereum’s compounding moat.



The human capital moat matters too. As Gnosis’ Martin Köppelmann <a href="https://x.com/koeppelmann/status/1979996805015142697">put it</a>, “I am not worried about another L1. But yes, I am worried about a number of people who used to embody Ethereum, leaving.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Troubling exit or healthy evolution?</h2>



From today’s vantage, it’s too early to declare Feist’s jumping ship for Tempo bullish or bearish for Ethereum. What’s clear is that the move forced Ethereum’s community to reassert what makes it special — and where it should or shouldn’t compete.



The most constructive stance may be to treat Tempo as both a competitor and a lab, useful for the mother ship, so long as it doesn’t outsource Ethereum’s identity to corporate governance.



There are many outstanding questions, and Tempo’s technical details are still scant.



Permissionless trend: Will Tempo move from PoA testnet to a permissionless validator set? Does Feist’s hiring increase the prospect of eventually moving to an Ethereum layer-2? (Blockworks reached out to Paradigm with questions, but they declined to comment beyond <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tempo-stripe-paradigm-planned-l1">previous remarks</a>.)



Upstreaming: Will EVM/Reth innovation beget useful EIPs or merged features on Ethereum L1?



Economic: Will there be any ETH-denominated flows that make “grow the pie” mean grow ETH too?



If yes, “exit” begins to look like “evolution,” a proving ground that helps Ethereum scale faster while preserving what only it can be. If not, Ethereum will view Tempo like Hoffman: “a privately-owned corpo-chain.”



Either way, Ethereum’s best move is to keep playing its own game: keep neutrality sacred, scale responsibly, and keep giving the best researchers a reason to stay.



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decentralization

Ethereum reckons with Dankrad Feist’s move to Tempo

Blockchain investigator ZachXBT said that a U.S.-based crypto user lost roughly $3.05 million (1.2 million XRP) after their Ellipal wallet was compromised, with the funds ultimately laundered through Huione-linked over-the-counter networks in Southeast Asia.&nbsp;



In a detailed<a href="https://x.com/zachxbt/status/1979899767212699910"> thread on X</a>, ZachXBT traced the movement of stolen assets through 120 Ripple-to-Tron swaps executed via Bridgers (formerly SWFT) on October 12, showing how the attacker consolidated the funds on the Tron network before dispersing them to OTC addresses adjacent to Huione by October 15.



The laundering trail led to entities linked to<a href="https://www.fincen.gov/news/news-releases/fincen-issues-final-rule-severing-huione-group-us-financial-system?utm_source=chatgpt.com"> Huione Group</a>, which the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) formally designated a “foreign financial institution of primary money-laundering concern” earlier this month.



ZachXBT said the victim appeared inexperienced and may have misunderstood the wallet’s security configuration, believing it functioned as an offline cold wallet when in fact it operated as a hot wallet connected to the internet.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">1/ A video went viral on YT this week after a US based victim lost $3.05M (1.2M XRP) from their Ellipal wallet. Here’s the tracing of where the stolen funds ended up and the biggest takeaways for similar thefts. <a href="https://t.co/Gyw0OWjts4">pic.twitter.com/Gyw0OWjts4</a>&mdash; ZachXBT (@zachxbt) <a href="https://twitter.com/zachxbt/status/1979899767212699910?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 19, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The breach led to the rapid depletion of funds, with transactions visible on block explorers as passing through Binance liquidity endpoints due to Bridgers’ infrastructure, ZachXBT noted.



ZachXBT said the recovery outlook remains low, citing limited capacity by law enforcement to pursue such cross-jurisdictional crypto crimes. He urged centralized exchanges and stablecoin issuers to implement stronger controls around OTC channels to curb illicit flows.



This is a developing story.



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This article was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by editor&nbsp;<a href="mailto:jeffrey@blockworks.co" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Michael McSweeney</a>&nbsp;before publication.



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