Why Can’t Buybacks Save DeFi?
The 2025 DeFi Buyback Wave: Leading DeFi protocols spent approximately $800 million on buybacks and dividends in 2025—a 400% increase from early 2024—aiming to boost confidence by emulating public company strategies. Key Project Case Studies:Aave: Conducts weekly buybacks of ~$1 million in AAVE tokens, yet reported negative book profits after the pilot phase.MakerDAO: Uses DAI surplus via its Smart Burn engine to repurchase MKR, but the token price remains at only one-third of its all-time hi...
Why Can’t Buybacks Save DeFi?
The 2025 DeFi Buyback Wave: Leading DeFi protocols spent approximately $800 million on buybacks and dividends in 2025—a 400% increase from early 2024—aiming to boost confidence by emulating public company strategies. Key Project Case Studies:Aave: Conducts weekly buybacks of ~$1 million in AAVE tokens, yet reported negative book profits after the pilot phase.MakerDAO: Uses DAI surplus via its Smart Burn engine to repurchase MKR, but the token price remains at only one-third of its all-time hi...
Cracks in the Decentralized-AI Bloc: Why Ocean Protocol Walked Away from the ASI Alliance
One-Year Marriage, One-Day Divorce On 9 October 2025 the Ocean Protocol Foundation abruptly resigned from the Artificial Super-intelligence (ASI) Alliance, dissolving the token-merge pact it had signed barely eighteen months earlier with Fetch.ai, SingularityNET and, later, CUDOS. The departure is more than a personnel change: it unwinds roughly 81 % of OCEAN’s circulating supply that had already been converted into FET (now rebranded ASI) and forces the remaining bloc to re-imagine what “dec...
Cracks in the Decentralized-AI Bloc: Why Ocean Protocol Walked Away from the ASI Alliance
One-Year Marriage, One-Day Divorce On 9 October 2025 the Ocean Protocol Foundation abruptly resigned from the Artificial Super-intelligence (ASI) Alliance, dissolving the token-merge pact it had signed barely eighteen months earlier with Fetch.ai, SingularityNET and, later, CUDOS. The departure is more than a personnel change: it unwinds roughly 81 % of OCEAN’s circulating supply that had already been converted into FET (now rebranded ASI) and forces the remaining bloc to re-imagine what “dec...
Is Running a Web3 Market-Making Studio Legal in China?
The Bottom Line Up Front Operating a “Web3 studio” that rents out thousands of accounts to create fake volume for token projects is not a regulatory gray area in China—it is a criminal minefield. The act of “providing liquidity services” is, under current Chinese law, indistinguishable from aiding fraud, illegal fundraising, unlicensed financial activity, money-laundering and criminal-network assistance.Regulatory Backdrop: Two Notices, Zero Wiggle Room2017 “Notice 94” – ICOs banned; virtual-...
Is Running a Web3 Market-Making Studio Legal in China?
The Bottom Line Up Front Operating a “Web3 studio” that rents out thousands of accounts to create fake volume for token projects is not a regulatory gray area in China—it is a criminal minefield. The act of “providing liquidity services” is, under current Chinese law, indistinguishable from aiding fraud, illegal fundraising, unlicensed financial activity, money-laundering and criminal-network assistance.Regulatory Backdrop: Two Notices, Zero Wiggle Room2017 “Notice 94” – ICOs banned; virtual-...
Crypto AI Great Shuffle: Virtuals Fall Out of Favor, DeFAI and Prediction AI Grab the Mic
From Hype to Product: The Agent Market Grows Up Since May, when we last mapped the mainstream AI trade, two things have dried up: retail appetite and the fire-hose of fair-launch agent tokens. Liquidity fragmented, CT was buried in AI slop, and pumps lost their horsepower. Q1–Q2’s meme-of-the-week (Trump coins, celebrity coins, Pump.ICOs) siphoned off whatever attention was left, starving the AI vertical. The result: only products that actually do something are climbing the ranks now.Virtuals...
Crypto AI Great Shuffle: Virtuals Fall Out of Favor, DeFAI and Prediction AI Grab the Mic
From Hype to Product: The Agent Market Grows Up Since May, when we last mapped the mainstream AI trade, two things have dried up: retail appetite and the fire-hose of fair-launch agent tokens. Liquidity fragmented, CT was buried in AI slop, and pumps lost their horsepower. Q1–Q2’s meme-of-the-week (Trump coins, celebrity coins, Pump.ICOs) siphoned off whatever attention was left, starving the AI vertical. The result: only products that actually do something are climbing the ranks now.Virtuals...
In the Post-Bao Fan Era: Huaxing Capital’s All-In Bet on Web3
In the summer of 2025, Huaxing Capital announced a partnership with YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs), planning to allocate $100 million to BNB. This followed a previously approved $100 million budget to enter the Web3 and cryptocurrency space, signaling a strategic shift from traditional internet services to digital assets.Background & Challenges Huaxing Capital once dominated China’s internet M&A as a "super facilitator," but antitrust policies and market changes have eroded its traditional ...
In the Post-Bao Fan Era: Huaxing Capital’s All-In Bet on Web3
In the summer of 2025, Huaxing Capital announced a partnership with YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs), planning to allocate $100 million to BNB. This followed a previously approved $100 million budget to enter the Web3 and cryptocurrency space, signaling a strategic shift from traditional internet services to digital assets.Background & Challenges Huaxing Capital once dominated China’s internet M&A as a "super facilitator," but antitrust policies and market changes have eroded its traditional ...
