Cultural Shift: Surveillance Fatigue → Digital Sovereignty
A decade of breaches, algorithmic profiling and state snooping has turned privacy from nerd-talk into dinner-table politics. Users now realize that metadata—time-stamps, gas prices, IP hops—can reveal identity, net-worth, friendships and location. The new default is “my keys, my data, my business.” Privacy is no longer a niche perk; it is a prerequisite for digital self-ownership. Coins that leak more than a Swiss banker will be treated like broken wallets.

Institutional Reality: Selective Transparency or Bust
Banks, remitters, fintechs and Fortune-500 treasuries are finally piloting tokenized deposits, cross-border settlement and multi-jurisdiction payment nets. None can run on a glass ledger. Cash-flows, supplier lists, FX positions, client names and contract terms are crown jewels; exposing them would breach fiduciary duty and invite front-running. What enterprises need is “confidentiality with an audit hatch,” not a public aquarium. Zcash taught the lesson in 2016: privacy must be baked into the protocol layer—retro-fitting zero-knowledge proofs is like adding airbags after the crash.

Tornado’s Cautionary Tale
Tornado Cash proved there was appetite for on-chain anonymity, but its design maximized secrecy and minimized compliance hooks. When regulators arrived, the protocol’s inability to disclose even a single suspicious transaction turned it into a sanctions bull’s-eye. The takeaway: privacy that rejects auditability becomes a single point of failure. The market now wants privacy that can answer a subpoena without answering everyone.

Tech Breakthrough 1: Zama — FHE as a Universal Confidentiality Layer
Enter Zama. Its fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) lets smart contracts compute on encrypted inputs, states and outputs while still producing verifiable proofs. Translation: an AMM can match orders, a lender can price risk, an insurer can settle a claim—all without ever decrypting user data. Because Zama plugs into existing EVM stacks, developers gain privacy without abandoning Ethereum’s liquidity or tooling. The same math also future-proofs systems against quantum computers, making FHE the closest thing to a cryptographic Swiss-Army knife.

Tech Breakthrough 2: StarkWare — zk-STARKs Meet Validium
StarkWare weaponizes zk-STARKs for scale and secrecy. Its new S-Two prover crunches proofs 100× faster while keeping them quantum-resilient. Validium mode parks data off-chain, slashing gas yet letting regulators—or chosen auditors—reconstruct state whenever required. The combo yields a dial-able spectrum: from “public verifiability” to “need-to-know confidentiality,” all without re-architecting the application layer.

Use-Case Explosion Where Silence Equals Money

• Cross-border payments: banks want atomic settlement, not a public travelogue of every correspondent hop.

• Real-world assets (RWA): cap-tables and investor identities must stay GDPR-quiet.

• Supply-chain finance: buyers and sellers need to verify shipment, invoice and payment without revealing unit costs or supplier names.

• Enterprise networks: auditors and supervisors see everything; Twitter sees nothing.
  Retail users, meanwhile, are tired of having their entire NFT shopping history doxxed by a free block-explorer. “Privacy by default” is becoming the UX equivalent of HTTPS.

Canton: The Enterprise Test-Case
Canton Network already mirrors the future: each participant runs a private ledger, yet a global synchronization layer guarantees eventual consistency and shared settlement. Corporations get blockchain’s netting and reconciliation wins without publishing trade volumes to rivals. Canton is the architectural proof that “private execution, public consensus” is not an oxymoron—it’s a product-market fit.

Market Signal: Capital Flows to Quiet Money
Data from PitchBook shows privacy-focused infra start-ups have raised $2.4 bn in 2025 YTD, doubling 2023’s tally. More telling: 62 % of rounds were led by strategic corporate investors—banks, payment giants and commodity traders—searching for compliant confidentiality, not cypherpunk ideology.

Outlook: Privacy Is the New Scalability
The next decade will not be framed as “privacy vs transparency” but as “privacy AND transparency.” Zcash proved the concept; Canton validated the enterprise appetite; Zama is wiring confidentiality into the universal plug socket. Protocols that deliver practical, scalable and regulator-cooperative silence will define the winners of this cycle. In the privacy super-cycle now unfolding, Zama’s FHE layer is emerging as both the timeliest and the most transformative bet—an encrypted engine for a world that finally understands: if money talks, the blockchain should whisper.

The original edge of Web3 “research” was simple: spot the signal before the crowd. In 2018 a GitHub commit history or a token-economics PDF still told you something. Today the same artefacts are generated on demand—white papers, code repos, audit reports, even on-chain wash-trading patterns—by fine-tuned models that know exactly what VCs want to see. I know because I ghost-wrote some of them. The cost of faking credibility has collapsed to a few GPU hours, while the cost of verifying it has exploded to weeks of forensic work. Public information is no longer asymmetric—it’s adversarial.

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2. Price and Value Have Divorced—Tokens Are Now Purely Narrative Derivatives

A technically exquisite L2 can stall at a $50 m FDV while a dog-themed JPEG with AI-generated memes does a 50× in two weeks. The reason: the people who build the product no longer control the token. Market-making rights are auctioned off to specialist desks at launch; the same desks that write the unlock calendar and the “news flow”. Good news becomes the perfect exit ramp. Fundamental analysis is reduced to theatre criticism: you are not evaluating tech, you are second-guessing the exit strategy of a book-runner you will never meet.

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3. Meme > Tech—Flow Is the Only Fundamental Left

In the current cycle the winning diligence question is not “Does it scale?” but “Can it trend?”. Community heat, emoji density, influencer screen-time—these are the new cash-flow statements. A meticulous report on data availability sampling will get 300 Medium claps; a one-page “X-to-earn” meme with a pink logo trends for 48 hours and pumps 8×. When the market’s utility function is attention, deep research becomes a negative-yield activity: you pay with time and opportunity cost, yet harvest nothing but self-righteousness.

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4. The Only Remaining Value of Research Is Self-Protection

I still read code, token designs and governance forums—but only to keep myself from stepping on obvious land-mines, not to find alpha. Public “research” articles have become loss-leaders whose true business model is Discord invite → paid group → private placement → exit liquidity. I tried the funnel for a month; the ROI lay in selling the shovel, not digging for gold. So I shut it down.

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5. If You Don’t Know the Cap-Table, You Don’t Know the Project

In Web3 the cap-table is encoded in SAFTs, OTC warrants, locked NFTs, off-chain options and handshake agreements in Dubai hotel suites. None of these appear in Notion docs. “Understanding” now means mapping who paid what, at which vesting cliff, and whose cousin runs the market-making desk. That map is drawn in private Telegram chats, not in public GitHub repos. Without it, even the most elegant tech audit is just a pantomime of knowledge.

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Epilogue: Buffett Was Right—Stick to What You Can Actually Understand

The sentence I underlined five years ago—“Never invest in a business you cannot understand”—finally makes sense. In Web3 “understanding” is not parsing solidity code or tokenomics diagrams; it is seeing the unseen wiring of incentives, egos and exit doors. Since that wiring is deliberately hidden, the rational default is non-participation. Research hasn’t lost its value—it has simply retreated to its only honest purpose: keeping you from betting on illusions you were never meant to see.

Market Snapshot

• Volume & Efficiency: Ethereum alone processed ~US$1.4 bn of FX volume in 2024. Spreads on EURC/USDC on Uniswap V3 are now ~6 bps; on L2s such as Base they have fallen below 1 bp, rivalling inter-bank screens .

• The Last Mile Problem: The real friction is the on-/off-ramp. Converting bank money to stablecoins still costs 100–450 bps via MoonPay, Ramp, Transak, etc. Tokenized bank deposits—regulated digital liabilities backed 1:1—are emerging as a lower-cost bridge .

• Power Shifts to the Edge: Traditionally, FX happens at the sender’s bank. Stablecoins flip the model: the sender pushes USD-stable value; the receiver decides when and where to convert. This “down-stream” FX is already popular in Argentina, Nigeria and Turkey, where wallets and merchants now capture the spread once monopolized by remittance incumbents .

Numo: On-Chain Forwards for Emerging Markets
Numo’s target is the FX-hedging gap faced by SMEs in developing economies. Banks rarely offer affordable forwards in KES, NGN or COP, leaving firms exposed when they earn in USD but pay salaries in local currency.

• Design: Each Numo pool is a zero-coupon bond curve for a single currency. Pairing two curves (e.g., USD and KES) produces an algorithmic forward rate that updates as liquidity changes. No credit lines, no oracle feeds, no off-chain market-maker.

• Outcome: A permissionless forward market that lets an SME lock in a 90-day KES rate straight from its MetaMask wallet .

Mento: Fixed-Price Market-Making Against the Real World
Mento tackles price stability, not price discovery. Traditional AMMs introduce slippage even between stablecoins; Mento’s Fixed-Price Market Makers (FPMMs) quote tight bands around an oracle’s mid-rate.

• Mechanics: When inventory drifts, the protocol executes lightning rebalances via reserve vaults or CDPs, snapping the price back to the peg.

• Use-case: Remittance apps and payment processors get near-institutional spreads (1–2 bps) with full on-chain transparency. Mento is effectively an on-chain currency board for cUSD↔cEUR↔cBRL .

ViFi Labs: Synthesizing Restricted-Market FX Dynamics
Where Mento anchors to external rates, ViFi simulates the internal dynamics of economies with capital controls or parallel FX windows.

• Core Tool – VARQ: Users deposit USDC and mint vUSD. vUSD is then split into (i) vFiat, a synthetic local-currency token, and (ii) vRQT, a claim to redeem at the official rate later.

• Market – VEX: Traders freely swap vUSD, vFiat and vRQT; supply/demand sets the premium/discount, mirroring real-world scarcity of hard currency. Every position remains 100 % collateralized by the underlying USDC.

• Impact: ViFi offers a transparent, fully-backed proxy for restricted FX regimes, letting users hedge or arbitrage without touching the offshore market .

From Niche to Universal Settlement Layer
Stablecoin FX is quietly becoming the bedrock of global digital finance. Spreads are compressing, on-/off-ramps are improving, and the locus of conversion is shifting from banks to wallets. Yet the ecosystem will remain fragmented without seamless interoperability. Whether stablecoins evolve into a universal settlement layer or stay siloed in dollar-dominated pools depends on how quickly projects like Numo, Mento and ViFi can knit together a coherent, cross-chain FX fabric .

https://www.panewslab.com/zh/articles/123db8b4-9dc8-4f6c-9852-926edda2f468

Following the news, the prices of mainstream cryptocurrencies generally rose. Considering Trump's prior pardons for several individuals in the crypto sector sentenced to various terms, and the increasingly close ties between crypto capital and the Trump family, this is interpreted as a further positive signal from Trump towards the crypto industry.

For CZ, this is indeed a moment of great significance. In response, he stated on Twitter (X) that he would do everything he can to help the US become the crypto capital of the world and promote the global development of Web3.

However, beyond these macro issues, the outside world is more focused on the impact CZ will have on Binance and what adjustments he might make after being away from its frontline operations for over a year. Specifically, will his return bring more wealth effects to Binance?

During the nearly two years of CZ's absence, Binance's internal and external environment has undergone significant changes. From OKX launching its Web3 wallet and challenging Binance in areas like inscriptions and Memes, to Hyperliquid capturing a substantial market share in perpetual contracts. Meanwhile, key competitor Coinbase has acquired over ten projects in the past year to address its weaknesses or enrich its product lines, such as Deribit, Sensible, Spindl, and Opyn.

Perhaps influenced by the $4.3 billion settlement paid to the US government, Binance has maintained a very restrained approach in both product line expansion and mergers & acquisitions over the past two years. Apart from follower-type launches like the Web3 wallet, there have been few major moves. It was against this backdrop that Binance launched its trump card product, Binance Alpha. Leveraging its position in liquidity and influence, it successfully consolidated its advantages in user traffic and trading volume, also driving the BNB price to new highs.

While attracting a large number of users and providing substantial airdrops, Binance Alpha became a target for many alt-project teams to exit their liquidity. Several incidents of tokens listing on Binance Alpha and subsequently crashing have occurred recently, causing significant losses for many retail investors.

Many viewpoints suggest that the low barrier to listing on Binance Alpha negatively impacts project development paths and even the broader ecosystem. "This mechanism seems to benefit a large number of small projects, rekindling the possibility of ICOs, but it actually creates an incentive trap where short-term liquidation is favored over long-term development. To some extent, BN's monopoly isn't just over attention and liquidity, but it's changing the entire industry's rules of the game – replacing 'long-term building' with 'quick exits'," said independent researcher Haotian.

From an external perspective, exchanges represented by Binance have become entities that exploit all liquidity and premiums in this cycle. Base lead Jesse Pollak also sarcastically remarked, "Raise your hand if you're ready to fight with CEX listing projects that charge 2-9% of the token supply."

For an exchange chasing users and profits, these actions by Binance are understandable; all goals can revolve around collecting more trading fees. However, as a "pillar" of the industry, having repeatedly positioned itself as a key builder committed to industry development, the external expectations for Binance extend beyond its own state to guiding and fostering the industry's positive development.

CZ has not been directly involved in Binance's operations for nearly two years. How he will view and adjust the operational mechanisms of Binance Alpha remains unknown. However, his series of statements and actions on X concerning BNB Chain and Memes over the past period have already "annoyed" a significant number of users.

Long term, BNB Chain has been one of Binance's core strategic directions, but the state of its ecosystem development has consistently been unsatisfactory, far less open and diverse than chains like Base. Major ecosystem projects like PancakeSwap, Aster, and Lista DAO mostly have backgrounds involving Binance work or Chinese affiliations, some even directly managed by current Binance staff. Ecosystem types beyond DeFi are also relatively scarce.

Starting about a year ago, chains like Solana attracted massive user traffic through Memecoins, while BNB Chain failed to keep pace with the market trend. CZ subsequently, either actively or passively, provided many personal elements (e.g., his dog's name, nicknames, remarks), driving tokens like $BROCCO, $CZDOG, $4, $GIGGLE, and "Binance Life" based on BNB Chain to surge in price and get listed on Binance markets, successfully helping BNB Chain gain a foothold in the Memecoin wave.

Nevertheless, CZ's level of involvement in this Memecoin wave led many to question his stature. "As a leader in the industry, he shouldn't be leading retail investors to gamble

The contributions Binance and CZ have made to the industry are undoubtedly indelible and significant. However, looking at the overall ecosystem of the crypto industry, Memecoins contribute very little to substantive industry development. If CZ is merely complacent about the growth of his own platform's traffic and users, it will be difficult for the outside world to hold higher expectations for him. Particularly in this context, can CZ lead Binance to further break through the ceilings of growth and compliance?

Furthermore, Binance's fundamental strengths have faced significant scrutiny recently. During the recent "1011" crash, the role Binance played raised many external doubts. Numerous crypto industry executives and KOLs alleged that an internal oracle failure at Binance caused the market crash. Although Binance published explanations and compensated some users, it still reflected major flaws in Binance's own trading structure and risk control. Moreover, this incident was not an isolated case.

While this is unlikely to shake Binance's leading position in the exchange arena, it will inevitably have some negative impact on the global public perception of the crypto industry, regulatory attitudes towards crypto trading, and Binance's overall industry competitiveness. For CZ, who emphasizes industry responsibility, this presents an exceptionally complex situation.

This system is based on the concept of self-sovereign identity, granting citizens control over their personal data. It allows for the secure storage of credentials like driver's licenses and educational certificates in a digital wallet, enabling selective sharing.

Bhutan's choice of Ethereum was primarily driven by security and decentralization considerations. As the world's second-largest blockchain, Ethereum offers battle-tested infrastructure and long-term stability.

Bhutan possesses advantages for blockchain technology application, including a small population size that facilitates rapid implementation, and the utilization of its hydropower resources to mine Bitcoin and Ethereum, amassing significant cryptocurrency reserves.

Globally, countries like Brazil and Vietnam are also exploring blockchain identity systems, but Bhutan is the first to fully adopt a public blockchain for this purpose. Its approach could serve as a blueprint for other developing nations.

This transition reflects Bhutan's Gross National Happiness-oriented governance philosophy, emphasizing personal data sovereignty and trust-building, providing an innovative model for the future of digital identity.

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Summary

Author: BLOCKHEAD

Compiled by: Baihua Blockchain

This Himalayan kingdom is betting on Ethereum to build the world's first national identity system on a public blockchain – and in the process, reimagining the relationship between citizens and their data.

This week, the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan announced its decision to migrate its national digital identity system from Polygon to Ethereum, creating a stir in the blockchain world. Scheduled for completion by Q1 2026, this move positions the Himalayan nation as a pioneer in using public blockchain infrastructure for sovereign identity management.

The presence of Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum Foundation Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi at the launch event signaled that its significance extends beyond a simple technical migration. As Miyaguchi stated in an X post, Bhutan becoming "the first country to anchor its National Digital Identity on Ethereum" marks a milestone moment for blockchain adoption at the national level.

Bhutan's journey to blockchain for identity management wasn't instantaneous. Its National Digital Identity system was first launched in 2023, when His Royal Highness The Gyalsey became the country's first digital citizen. The system was initially built on Hyperledger before transitioning to Polygon in August 2024, favored for its zero-knowledge protocols and promises of scalability for handling high transaction volumes.

Now, less than a year later, Bhutan is moving again, this time to Ethereum. According to Jigme Tenzing, Bhutan's Secretary of GovTech, the decision was primarily based on enhanced security: "By transitioning to Ethereum, we are further strengthening the security of our digital identity."

Ethereum, the world's second-largest blockchain by market cap and the leading platform for decentralized applications, was chosen for its battle-tested, decentralized infrastructure, reflecting Bhutan's long-term commitment to supporting critical national systems.

Understanding Self-Sovereign Identity

At the heart of Bhutan's NDI system is the concept of Self-Svereign Identity – a paradigm shift in how we think about digital credentials. Unlike traditional identity systems where governments or corporations control your data, SSI empowers individuals to own and manage their own digital identity.

In practice, this means Bhutan's nearly 800,000 residents can store digital credentials like driver's licenses, education certificates, and health records in a secure digital wallet they control. When accessing government services or proving their identity online, citizens can precisely decide what information to share and with whom, transmitting only necessary credentials instead of handing over comprehensive personal data.

SSI offers users greater autonomy over their personal information, allowing them to control who can access and use it. This provides a higher level of privacy protection, as data is no longer held in centralized silos. The blockchain serves as an immutable record for credential issuance and verification, but crucially, sensitive personal data itself is not stored on-chain. Instead, cryptographic proofs are used to verify credential authenticity without exposing the underlying information.

This architecture addresses several key vulnerabilities in traditional identity systems. Centralized databases create "honey pots" for hackers – breaching one system can compromise millions of identities. The decentralized platform enabled by SSI allows users to provide only specific details to verifiers via blockchain and verifiable credential technology, reducing the risk of identity theft while adhering to evolving privacy norms.

Why Bhutan? A Small Nation with Big Digital Ambitions

For a small South Asian nation with a population under one million, Bhutan's strong push into blockchain-based identity management might seem surprising, but several factors give it unique advantages for making this digital leap. Scale becomes an asset here – with a compact population, Bhutan can implement and iterate innovative systems faster than larger nations bogged down by legacy infrastructure and bureaucratic inertia.

Bhutan's willingness to embrace cryptocurrency and blockchain technology sets it apart from most countries. Bhutan has been actively mining Bitcoin using its abundant hydropower resources, converting its renewable energy advantage into digital assets. According to Bitbo, the country ranks sixth globally in Bitcoin reserves, holding 11,286 BTC valued at $1.28 billion; and holds 495.44 ETH according to Strategic ETH Reserve.

Bhutan's governance philosophy, guided by Gross National Happiness rather than mere GDP growth, creates space for experimenting with systems that prioritize citizen empowerment and data sovereignty over pure economic efficiency – values with which SSI systems are inherently aligned. By establishing a national-level blockchain identity system, Bhutan also positions itself as a potential hub for blockchain innovation and testing in South Asia, with its NDI system potentially serving as a blueprint for other developing nations seeking to leapfrog traditional identity infrastructure.

Bhutan's choice of Ethereum over other blockchain platforms reflects both pragmatic and philosophical considerations. As one of the most decentralized blockchain networks globally with hundreds of thousands of validators, Ethereum provides a level of security that makes it extremely difficult for any single entity to tamper with identity records. Its robust developer community support and institutional adoption offer assurance of long-term stability needed for a national identity system. Building on Ethereum also opens doors for interoperability with the vast ecosystem of decentralized applications, enabling future innovations across areas from DeFi to digital governance.

Perhaps most importantly, as Aya Miyaguchi articulated, "Bhutan's transition reflects what Ethereum was designed for – empowering individuals with sovereignty over their data, building trust without central points of failure, and enabling human-centric inclusive digital systems." While Polygon offers faster transaction speeds and lower costs, when a nation stakes its identity infrastructure on blockchain technology, the base-layer security and decentralization offered by Ethereum are ultimately paramount.

Global Context

Bhutan is not the only country exploring blockchain for national identity systems, though it may be the first to fully adopt a public blockchain like Ethereum specifically for this purpose.

* Brazil: Over 214 million Brazilian citizens are expected to use blockchain technology for digital identity, with the states of Rio de Janeiro, Goiás, and Paraná being the first to issue identification documents on-chain. The Brazilian government introduced a blockchain network to enhance data sharing security between the Federal Revenue Service and civil identification agencies, supporting the tax authority's operations. However, Brazil's approach differs from Bhutan's in scale and implementation. While Bhutan is transitioning to a fully public blockchain (Ethereum), Brazil's system appears more focused on inter-institutional data sharing and may utilize a more permissioned blockchain architecture.

* Vietnam: Vietnam launched a national-level blockchain called NDAChain for digital identity and records. The chain has 49 validator nodes overseen by public institutions and large enterprises, aiming to serve government and business needs. The associated NDAKey allows citizens to verify statements about their identity in real-time, a key part of Vietnam's fight against fraud, impersonation, and scams as its economy digitizes. Vietnam established a comprehensive national blockchain strategy in October 2024, aiming to create 20 major blockchain platforms and place the country among the top ten in Asia for blockchain research. This represents a more systematic, government-led approach compared to Bhutan's focused identity initiative.

A "Human-Centric" Digital Future

Despite challenges, Bhutan's commitment to blockchain-based identity management represents a reimagining of the relationship between citizen and state in the digital age.

As more aspects of our lives – from healthcare to finance to education – move online, the question of who controls our digital identity becomes increasingly critical. Bhutan's answer prioritizes individual sovereignty, security through decentralization, and transparency via an open blockchain infrastructure.

Whether other nations will follow Bhutan's lead remains to be seen. But as the world watches this small Himalayan country implement one of the most advanced national identity systems ever conceived, one thing is clear: the future of digital identity is being written on the blockchain, one citizen at a time.

For Bhutan's 800,000 residents, that future begins on Ethereum in early 2026.

Equities: AI Giants Invent a “Closed-Loop” Valuation Model
September’s rate cut smashed the historic “September jinx”: the Nasdaq, S&P 500 and Dow all closed at record highs. Semiconductors led the charge—Intel jumped 22 % in one session—while AI names continued their 2025 tear. A new valuation template is emerging from the triangle of Nvidia → OpenAI → Oracle:

• Nvidia pledges US $100 bn to OpenAI’s 10 GW AI-mega-data-centre build-out (≈ 4.5 mln GPUs, or one full year of Nvidia shipments).

• Oracle chips in US $40 bn for GPUs, then signs a US $300 bn cloud contract to rent the finished capacity back to OpenAI.
  Cash therefore flows OpenAI → Oracle → Nvidia → OpenAI, turning a capital outlay into captive revenue and equity upside for all three. The arrangement tightens the AI oligopoly, boosts visibility for Nvidia’s pricing power and lets Oracle leap-frog hyperscale rivals. Investors are now pricing AI stocks on “network GDP” rather than single-company cash-flow, explaining the sector’s 20 %-plus YTD multiple expansion even as Powell warns that valuations look “quite high.” With core inflation sticky and some FOMC voters still hawkish, any hint of a slower cutting pace could trigger a violent unwind.

Bitcoin: Buy-the-Dip Etched in Stone—ETFs Absorb 241 mln in One Day
BTC slipped below US $110 k late month as leveraged longs were flushed on U.S. budget-shutdown fears. Yet the spot ETFs saw their biggest daily inflow of Q4—US $241 mln on 25 September alone, with BlackRock’s IBIT taking US $129 mln and lifting its hoard to 768 k BTC (≈ US $85 bn). The pattern rhymes with 2019: after the Fed’s mid-year “insurance” cut BTC chopped for six months, then ripped from US $7 k at Christmas 2019 to US $29 k by December 2020 (+300 % from the low). Institutions again appear to be “buying the forecast, holding the volatility.”

Corporate Treasuries: From Meme Bet to Strategic Asset
Listed firms are no longer dabbling; they are allocating. Nasdaq-listed JZXY Holdings (NASDAQ: JZXN) approved a US $1 bn crypto treasury plan in September, telling shareholders the coins will be held “for the long term as a store-of-value hedge against macro uncertainty.” The SEC and FINRA have opened probes into more than 200 similar announcements, scrutinising pre-release share spikes. Short-term headline risk, long-term cleansing: the crackdown should purge “pseudo-treasury” pumps and leave genuine adopters trading at a verifiable premium. In a world of 3 % risk-free drift, balance-sheet allocation is the most unambiguous vote of confidence management can cast.

Looking Forward: Three Tail-Winds Align

1. Macro Fuel: another 2–3 cuts are priced through 2026, compressing yields and the dollar.

2. Political Put: a second Trump administration is campaigning on a pro-crypto platform; even noise about curbing Fed independence makes decentralised assets look like constitutional hedge.

3. Real-Virtual Convergence: gold’s 2025 breakout signals global recession angst; crypto offers the same hard-cap scarcity plus tech-beta upside.

Cheap money, friendly politics and a proven store-of-growth profile are converging. The Fed did not merely light a spark this September—it is pumping fuel into the tank.

What We Talked About When We Talked Web3
The curators chased the frontier, not the hype. Stablecoins, AI co-agents, real-world assets, on-chain gaming, DePIN and the fusion of CeFi-DeFi were stitched into a single narrative: how to move from sandbox to street. Eight keynotes, thirteen panels and one fireside turned the gallery into a live white-paper.

Main-Stage Lightning—Eight Talks That Mattered

• ME’s Jessica unveiled 24/7 AI brand agents that tweet, moderate and upsell while you sleep.

• HolmesAI’s Killian demoed a user-owned AI persona that learns privately, earns on-chain and forgets only when you command.

• Kaia’s Sam Seo pitched Asia’s “stablecoin orchestration layer”—a regulatory router wired to local banks and CBDC rails.

• TruStable’s Ro reframed stables as anti-inflation money, stacking RWA yield without sacrificing redemption rights.

• Sign’s Xin Yan sketched a post-SWIFT, post-Visa lattice built on encrypted sovereign channels.

• StableStock’s Zixi Zhu tokenised the NYSE so Jakarta traders can own fractional Tesla at 8 pm local time.

• Bakkt’s Nicholas Baes traced the next-decade compliance stack: custody, trust, tokenised identity—one licence at a time.

• ICC’s Yoka Zhou restated the accelerator’s mandate: ship startups, bridge continents, keep the East open for global cap tables.

Round-Table Radar—Where the Edges Met
Main-stage circles dissected Web3 gaming’s post-hangover sobriety, stablecoins scaling from remittance to payroll, RWA liquidity levers, AI as the new operating system, and the rise of Digital Asset Treasuries (DAT) inside listed firms.
Fireside-stage huddles went granular: DeFi 2.5 risk curves, CeDeFi trust bridges, investor-incubator hybrids, payment-to-treasury pipelines, Web3 game UX frictions, equity-token convergence, RWA liquidity unlocks and DePIN hardware economics. The takeaway? Infrastructure is sexy again—if it ships with a token model that doesn’t bankrupt node runners.

The Fireside Glow—BNB Treasury Unpacked
Jack Kong (Nano Labs) and Sarah Song (BNB Chain) sat ankle-to-ankle debating corporate treasuries that blend equity raises with BNB reserves. The verdict: multi-asset war-chests hedge dilution and amplify ecosystem flywheels—provided the CFO can stomach mark-to-market volatility.

More Than Talk—A Network in Motion
Hall-way “Connection Lounges” rotated 600 five-minute intros per hour; community booths ran live quests; artists minted 1/1 NFTs on-site; and a silent disco DAO pitched grants while DJs wore laser glasses. Dialogue was the protocol, serendipity the consensus mechanism.

Thank-You Ledger—The Names Behind the Noise
Title sponsors: HolmesAI, TruStable, Bitrise Capital, Nano Labs.
Gold tier: Sei, Planet Hares, SavannaSurvival, Loop Finance, Google Cloud, CloudMile.
Silver and ecosystem allies:半山KOL Club, Sieger, The9bit, Solulu, BTSE Enterprise, MetaArena, Nika Labs, XPIN Network, SeekD—plus 47 media nodes broadcasting in seven languages. Your bandwidth made the signal louder.

Epilogue—The Question We Took Home
InnoBlock 2025 ended with no closing bell—only an open tab. Web3 is no longer a vertical; it’s the horizontal layer beneath money, games, credit, identity, even culture. The next cycle will be written by teams who can ship products invisible enough that grandmothers and CFOs use them without reading the white-paper. See you at InnoBlock 2026 for the first user testimonial.

Division of Labor: Alpha vs. Prep

The Alpha platform provides a natural attention pool and an initial user base, serving as the critical stage for market makers to accumulate and build positions. Prep (Perpetual Contracts), on the other hand, is the core tool for market makers to increase Open Interest (OI), attract traffic, and complete distribution.

Market Maker Profit Strategy

Market makers actively absorb selling pressure within the brief window after Alpha listing to control the spot筹码 (chips/supply). After Prep launches, they create hype by pushing up OI and capitalize on abnormal funding rate spikes for spot-futures arbitrage, generating stable cash flow. Finally, when OI is high and long positions are overcrowded, they orchestrate a sell-off, completing spot distribution and profiting from their short positions.

Retail Investor Reference Signals

Projects exhibiting high concentration of holdings and significant community FUD might be worth attention. A simultaneous Alpha + Prep listing on the first day often indicates sufficient liquidity. Attempting to estimate the market maker's profits during pumps and pullbacks can help understand their logic. If the Alpha opening price seems too high, waiting for a more suitable entry point might be prudent.

In essence, this is a structured game dominated by market makers. How far the price action goes depends not on the story, but on the depth of capital and the precision of the market manipulation节奏 (rhythm/pace).

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Summary

Author: @0xBenniee

Amid the current market environment where liquidity from the interest rate cutting cycle is not yet abundant, the Binance Alpha bull run continues to play out: obscure projects can often silently rally several hundred percent within a short time.

This article will discuss the market making strategy for initial Alpha + Prep listings from the market maker's perspective, including their internal monologue, aiming to "dance with the market maker."

Binance Alpha acts as a natural liquidity pool. On the listing day, it concentrates immense attention and retail investor resources, also attracting a group of native Alpha users who may choose to sell or buy – every "Alpha worker" is placing bets from their own viewpoint.

However, from the project team and market maker's perspective, the thinking is more direct: "Having already paid a 1-2% token cost to list on Alpha, plus the additional expense to enable Prep, paying these 'protection fees' makes the probability of abandoning the project later relatively low."

Thus, we witness the subsequent "Alpha on-chain bull run." In reality, relying solely on the Alpha spot market makes large-scale distribution difficult. Market makers must utilize Prep, continuously increasing OI to attract more retail investors, turning this trade into a "casino table."

The logic for projects nowadays has shifted from the past "narrative-driven" model to being thoroughly capital-driven: whoever has thicker筹码 (chips/capital) can create a more aggressive price move; as long as enough gamblers (speculators) enter the market, market makers can continuously create volatility and extract profits.

The summary is as follows:

* Alpha provides the natural attention pool and initial user base.

* Prep is the core tool for market makers to increase OI and attract traffic.

For market makers, the key logic on the listing day is:

* Alpha → Accumulation + Position Building

* Prep → Pumping + Distribution

Taking a new token listing as an example, let's see how market makers profit via Alpha+Prep

The Alpha listing time is 8:00 (UTC), and the Prep listing is at 10:30, leaving market makers only a two-and-a-half-hour window to acquire tokens. This period is essentially a stage where market makers compete with retail investors for筹码 (supply). Active MMs will aggressively absorb selling pressure. If a significant portion of the tokens is taken by free-rider retail investors, the subsequent pumping cost for market makers increases.

(Based on market observations, the main market making force on Alpha is predominantly active MMs. Industry speculation suggests their allocated capital typically ranges in the millions of USD, with relatively sufficient liquidity provision on the spot side.)

After Prep launches, market makers push up OI to attract more retail investors, making the game a "increasingly crowded casino table." The core role of Prep is not just to provide a hedging tool, but to amplify market attention and trading participation.

Simultaneously, market makers often coordinate with relevant KOL promotions, positive news, or exchange listing marketing PR to further generate topics and heat, attracting more attention. Whether going long or short, participants essentially contribute liquidity to the market, which also provides market makers with greater maneuvering space and more ample profit sources.

As shown in the chart, OI is quickly pushed up after Prep launches and remains stable at high levels. In the early stages, market makers usually avoid drastic pumps or violent sell-offs for distribution. The reason is that selling too early might mean they cannot repurchase筹码 at the same or lower cost,反而 increasing their overall pumping cost. The core goal is to transfer the筹码 to retail investors at the highest possible price, ensuring successful distribution.

During the pump, the funding rate often provides a key reference. By observing changes in the funding rate, market makers can gauge if market sentiment is overheating and fine-tune their tactics. For instance, when the funding rate spikes abnormally, market makers can use spot-futures hedging or short-term funding rate arbitrage to reduce holding costs, further enhancing overall returns.

With the spot supply largely in their control, as long as market makers refrain from selling, the funding rate market becomes a tool. During the pump phase from 9/12–9/15, OI continued to rise, and the funding rate spiked multiple times:

* Peak: 0.3–0.4% / 4h (annualized approx. 270%–360%)

* Average: 0.1–0.2% / 4h (annualized approx. 90%–180%)

This means that by establishing hedge short positions in the futures market while maintaining their spot longs, market makers could continuously collect the funding rate, forming a stable arbitrage cash flow as an important means of cost optimization.

On 9/16, when OI remained high and long positions were severely overcrowded, the market maker chose to execute a significant sell-off, distributing spot holdings while profiting from their short positions:

* Price dropped from 0.058 → 0.035, a decline of approximately 40%.

* Market maker's cost range was 0.015–0.02, with an estimated distribution average price of 0.045–0.05.

* Estimated profit margin per token: approximately +150%–200%.

(Under ideal conditions, profits from on-chain liquidity pools are not included in this overall calculation. Specific strategies vary among different market makers.)

Key Points for 'Dancing with the Market Maker'

* In the early stages, if a project shows signs of high concentration of holdings and significant community FUD, it often warrants closer attention. Projects with complex tokenomics (like "Grand Slam" types) are inherently harder to analyze clearly and require cautious participation.

* If a project lists simultaneously on Alpha+Prep on the first day, it usually indicates sufficient liquidity, and price volatility will likely be more intense.

* Trying to estimate the market maker's profit situation during each pump and pullback can help understand their manipulation logic.

* At Alpha launch, pay attention to the pricing on PancakeSwap V3. If the opening price seems too high, waiting for a more suitable entry rhythm might be safer.

Conclusion

The initial listing model of Alpha + PREP is reshaping the current market landscape. Superficially, it appears to be a narrative-driven bull run for new tokens. In reality, however, it更像 is a structured game directed by market makers. Alpha provides the筹码沉淀 (token accumulation/sedimentation) and initial traffic. PREP amplifies liquidity and volatility. OI and the funding rate become key tools for market maker manipulation. Retail investors might capture short-term opportunities, but more importantly, they need to understand the underlying logic: how far the price action goes depends not on how compelling the story is, but on the depth of capital and the precision of the manipulation节奏 (rhythm/pace).

Why the Fed Is Finally Blinking
The pivot is born of two realities:

1. The U.S. labour market is wheezing. April–June averaged only 29 k new jobs a month—the weakest three-month stretch outside a recession since 2010. Job openings have dipped below the number of unemployed, initial claims are at a four-year high, and long-term unemployment is back to late-2021 levels.

2. Policy-makers now believe the tariff-related bump in prices is “one-and-done.” Chair Powell’s Jackson Hole line—“the downside risks to employment have increased”—was the unofficial starter’s gun for the cutting cycle.

Unknown #1: The Dot Plot—How Many More in 2025?
With September’s move baked in, every eye is on the refreshed “dot” diagram.

• Futures are pricing better-than-even odds for October and December cuts.

• Goldman expects the median dot to show only two moves in total this year, leaving the market a full cut too dovish. A slower pace could spark a risk-asset repricing; a third dot would be rocket fuel for bulls.
  Watch also for dissenters: new governor Stephen Miran wants 50 bp now, while inflation hawks Schmid and Musalem may vote “no” altogether. The split itself will be news.

Unknown #2: Powell’s Tone—Balancing Two Mandates Under One Microphone
The statement will be dry; the presser won’t. Powell must sound:

• Data-dependent enough to keep October live,

• Dovish enough to defend the employment mandate,

• Hawkish enough to keep long-term inflation expectations anchored.
  Expect the word “recalibrate” rather than “pivot,” and at least three uses of “meeting-by-meeting.”

Unknown #3: Politics—The Fed’s Independence Is on the Docket
Never before has a sitting president tried to fire a governor mid-term. Trump’s attempt to remove Lisa Cook—blocked for now by an appeals court—plus the lightning confirmation of Stephen Miran (sworn in Tuesday morning just in time to vote) turns the FOMC into a political arena. Markets hate nothing more than a central bank that looks like a committee of the White House.

Bottom Line
The 25 bp cut is trivia. What matters is whether the dots, the chair and the governance drama collectively tell us 2025 is a slow-scalpel year or a rapid-easing rescue. Portfolios will move on the nuance, not the headline.

Skin in the Game, Literally
Multicoin co-founder Kyle Samani—Solana’s answer to Michael Saylor—just wired US $25 m of personal capital into the trust. When a general partner writes a nine-figure check to his own deal, the message is unambiguous: “I’m not pitching, I’m betting.”

The Unbeatable Three-Body Problem

• Multicoin Capital has sunk > US $500 m into the Solana galaxy; nobody owns the narrative better.

• Jump Crypto ships code (Firedancer client), market-making and a high-frequency-trading brain trust that turns latency into alpha.

• Galaxy Digital sits on > US $1 bn of SOL, tokenised its own stock ($GLXY) on Solana and opens every institutional door from Toronto to Tokyo.

Together they form a trinity of story, tech and distribution—the rare syndicate that can both write and underwrite its own headlines.

Tech That Is Already Outrunning the Hype Cycle
Solana’s next fork, Alpenglow, plus Jump’s Firedancer validator client, have quietly pushed test-net throughput past 100 k TPS with sub-150 ms finality. The proposed DFBA (Dual-Flight Batch Auctions) mechanism could unlock entirely new on-chain order types. One overlooked governance footnote: SIMD-228, which would have slashed SOL staking inflation, was voted down last week. Had it passed, real-yield maths for DAT treasuries would have looked far less sexy. The rejection keeps the carry trade wide—and institutional appetite whetted.

From MicroStrategy Meme to Internet Capital Markets
Solana’s DAT is not another “buy-coin, issue-convert, repeat” playbook. The trust’s mandate is to become the balance-sheet backbone for an Internet Capital Markets (ICM) stack: a single venue where MEME launches, DePIN networks, PayFi rails and HFT strategies all price, clear and settle natively. That narrative is big enough to swallow every bullish Solana vertical whole—and dovetails perfectly with Washington’s newfound affection for regulated on-chain finance.

Bottom Line
A zero-baggage shell, a GP who just backed his own Brink’s truck, a three-headed hydra of venture, trading and prime-brokerage firepower, and a Layer-1 that is finally outrunning its own reputation—when those pieces click together, the market still quoting “tiny alt-L1” may be looking at the Nasdaq-listed gateway to the next generation of global capital markets.

The move is designed to reduce reliance on Circle’s USDC and to create an internal, self-sustaining “blood-making” system. Issuance will be decided by community proposals and validator votes, with an explicit promise of regulatory compliance and decentralized oversight.

Within minutes of the news, the platform’s native token HYPE jumped 4 % to $47.63 before settling near $46. Traders applauded the narrative; critics immediately questioned the fairness of the ticker un-ban and the timing of candidate-team funding.

Whether USDH becomes a watershed moment or another governance drama, it is unmistakably the last puzzle piece in Hyperliquid’s bid to become a fully-fledged financial empire rather than “just another DEX.”

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From Upstart to Top-Tier DEX

Hyperliquid’s 2025 growth curve looks vertical.

According to DeFiLlama, the venue cleared $398 billion in perpetual-futures volume during August alone, plus another $200 billion in spot. On 25 August, its BTC/USDC pair briefly surpassed Coinbase and Bybit, a first for any decentralized platform.

Total value locked has followed the same trajectory: from $317 million in January to $2.5 billion by early September—an eight-fold expansion that has turned Hyperliquid into a primary liquidity sink for both retail and institutional flows.

Launching a proprietary stablecoin is therefore less a marketing stunt than a logical scaling decision: capture the float, internalize the spread, and recycle reserve yield back into the ecosystem.

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How USDH Will Be Born—A Governance-First Mint

Unlike USDT or USDC, USDH will not be summoned by a corporate boardroom.

The Foundation has permanently reserved the ticker “USDH” inside the Hyperliquid L1 genesis file. Any team can now submit a technical-and-compliance proposal covering custody, reserve composition, audit cadence, and on-chain attestations.

Validators will vote for five days; the winning team must then outbid rivals in the weekly “Spot-Deploy Gas Auction,” a blind-burn race that permissionlessly slots the contract into the order-book module.

Only after passing both hurdles can USDH go live. The two-step filter is meant to guarantee that the issuer is simultaneously (a) community-approved and (b) economically committed, a novel twist on the usual multi-sig mint.

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USDH vs. USDT/USDC—Same Dollar, Different DNA

| Dimension | USDT / USDC | USDH (Proposed) |

|-------------------------|---------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------|

| Issuer | Centralized entity (Tether / Circle) | Team elected by validator vote |

| Reserve yield | Kept by issuer | Can be redirected to validators/community |

| Primary use-case | Universal settlement | Hyperliquid-native margin & spot quote currency |

| Transparency | Periodic attestations | Real-time on-chain proofs + elected auditor |

| Compliance | Varies by jurisdiction | Explicitly designed around U.S. GENIUS Act |

In short, USDH is not trying to replace the greenback everywhere; it wants to become the “in-house blood plasma” that lubricates leveraged trading, liquidation buffers, and liquidity mining—while still being redeemable 1:1 for greenbacks held in a regulated trust.

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Instant Backlash—Ticker Reversal & “Pre-Loaded” Candidates

The announcement ignited controversy within hours.

Max, lead developer of Hyperstable, reminded the community that the Foundation had black-listed “USDH” six months earlier, forcing his protocol to launch under the ticker “USH.”

“Changing the rulebook after teams have spent months and seven-figure audits is the opposite of credible neutrality,” Max wrote on X, garnering thousands of likes.

A second flash-point involves Native Markets, whose deployer wallet received 50 k HYPE from a known Foundation hot-wallet only three hours before the blog post. Their proposal document—complete with Cayman trust structure and Fireblocks custody diagrams—looked suspiciously polished, fueling rumors of insider coordination.

Foundation contributors counter that the GENIUS Act’s passage materially alters the regulatory landscape, making the old blacklist obsolete, and that the inbound transfer was simply an arms-length ecosystem grant. The debate now sits at the heart of Hyperliquid’s governance forum, with voters demanding on-chain evidence and third-party audits before casting ballots.

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The Broader Stablecoin Arms Race

Hyperliquid is hardly alone in wanting its own dollar.

MetaMask and M0 are beta-testing mmUSD; Stripe’s recent acquisition of Bridge is widely seen as a prelude to a Stripe-issued token; Coinbase has already ported USDC onto a half-dozen new L2s this year.

Aggregate stable-cap has swollen to $285 billion, up 5 % in the last seven days alone, according to DeFiLlama. Owning the contract means owning the float, the yield, and the data—an irresistible trifecta in a low-fee trading environment.

If USDH survives governance, Hyperliquid will plug the final hole in its balance-sheet loop: traders mint USDH to post margin, the reserve buys T-bills, interest flows back to validators, validators burn HYPE to boostrap spot pairs, deeper liquidity attracts more traders, who in turn need more USDH. A flywheel, sealed at the edges with dollar-denominated glue.

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What Happens Next

The first governance sprint begins Monday, 15 September.

Proposals must be submitted by 12:00 UTC; the five-day validator vote closes on the 20th; the winning team will enter the following week’s gas auction. If no proposal secures >50 % of voting power, the cycle restarts.

Whatever the outcome, USDH has already achieved one thing: it has forced the industry to confront the question of whether “decentralized” exchanges can remain philosophically pure while racing to capture the same monetization levers as their centralized rivals.

The Empire has all but assembled itself; only the dollar is missing. In two weeks we will learn whether the community hands it over—or demands a different design entirely.

Revenue Model in Three Layers

1. Storage Fees – tiered pricing (permanent vs. term-based) pegged to real-world hardware costs to mute token volatility.

2. Execution Fees – gas-like revenue every time a contract reads, writes, or transforms on-chain data via IrysVM.

3. Node Economics – operators stake disk space (minimum 16 TB) and continuously submit integrity proofs to share network yield.

Use-cases already span AI-training provenance, DePIN telemetry, NFT licensing, and RWA compliance audits.

Competitive Edges
• Storage + execution in one subnet, removing cross-chain friction.
• Multi-ledger architecture balances permanence with flexibility.
• Enterprise-grade price predictability and plug-and-play SDKs.

Headwinds
• Differentiating against entrenched incumbents (Arweave, Filecoin).
• Reconciling immutable storage with real-time data needs.
• Navigating GDPR “right-to-be-forgotten” and token-security concerns.

Irys: the Origin Story
Bundlr began as a simple bundler for Arweave—batching transactions for speed and lower costs. It quietly notched >1 billion on-chain events. By 2023 the team rebranded to Irys, signalling a pivot from tool to sovereign chain. Two venture rounds—Lemniscap in 2024 and CoinFund’s $10 M Series A in August 2025—cement the narrative: the market now treats Irys as the DataFi substrate rather than a side-car.

Thesis: Data as Active Capital
Static files are the GeoCities of Web3. Irys borrows from the web’s maturation: once HTML became scriptable (JavaScript → Web 2.0), value exploded. Likewise, on-chain data must become callable, composable, and monetisable. Three design pillars make this concrete:

1. Attestable Provenance – every byte carries cryptographic lineage.

2. On-chain Programmability – IrysVM (EVM-compatible) lets smart contracts treat data as first-class inputs.

3. Long-term Availability – multi-ledger design keeps critical data forever while offering cheaper, time-boxed tiers.

Product Architecture

1. Multi-Ledger Stack
   • Submit Ledger – temporary, high-throughput buffer for validation and replication.
   • Publish Ledger – permanent, Arweave-style storage.
   • Term Ledger (road-mapped) – configurable retention for enterprise workloads.

2. IrysVM
   An EVM-compatible runtime that can read, transform, and write data without leaving the network—turning storage into an active state layer.

3. Consensus & Incentives
   • uPoW: useful Proof-of-Work based on verifiable storage proofs.
   • Staking: operators lock disk capacity; slashing kicks in if proofs fail.
   • Rewards come from upload and execution fees, aligning capital expenditure with network health.

Developer UX is rounded out with SDKs, CLI, Gateway endpoints, and multi-currency checkout (ETH, USDC, SOL).

Business Model Deep-Dive
Layer 1: Storage Revenue
Permanent ledger = one-time payment, priced against hardware cost curves. Term ledger (coming) = subscription model for non-permanent data, appealing to cost-sensitive enterprises.

Layer 2: Execution Revenue
Every IrysVM call incurs gas. Because execution and storage share one domain, latency and cost become predictable—no cross-chain hops.

Layer 3: Miner Economics
Node operators must:

1. pledge raw storage (≥16 TB),

2. post continuous integrity proofs.
   Failure to prove triggers slashing; honest uptime earns a slice of both upload and execution fees.

Value Proposition to Enterprise
Predictable pricing, low-friction integration, and cryptographically guaranteed audit trails. The pitch is not “cheaper storage” but “more certain data.”

Concrete Use-Cases
• AI – verifiable training-set lineage for model compliance.
• DePIN – device telemetry with auto-expiring or permanent logs.
• NFT & IP – on-chain royalty logic that queries the artwork itself.
• RWA – attested documents that regulators can trust years later.

Competitive Landscape
Storage Heavy-weights
Arweave (permanent, one-shot) and Filecoin (rental market) dominate mind-share. Irys straddles both: permanent when you must, term-based when you can.

Data-Availability Layers
Celestia & EigenDA optimise for short-term availability to rollups; Irys optimises for long-term integrity and direct programmability.

Data-Composition Protocols
Ceramic & Tableland offer flexible schemas but outsource persistence. Irys bundles persistence and logic, cutting systemic friction.

DataFi Peers
OpenLedger, DataDance, etc. tokenise personal data for retail users. Irys targets B2B infrastructure—less viral, but stickier revenue.

Strengths & Moats
• Single-domain storage + execution.
• Ledger triad balances permanence and cost.
• Hardware-cost-pegged pricing for CFO-friendly budgets.
• Dev-friendly tooling and multi-currency rails.

Open Challenges

1. Market Differentiation – proving value beyond “yet another storage chain.”

2. Freshness vs. Permanence – real-time data feeds may still need off-chain relays.

3. Regulatory Surface Area – GDPR deletion rights vs. immutable ledgers; token design may brush against securities law.

Conclusion: A B2B Wedge in DataFi
From Bundlr to Irys, the arc mirrors Portal Labs’ thesis: raw storage is table stakes; verifiable, programmable data is the business. By anchoring itself to enterprise cost certainty rather than retail speculation, Irys sidesteps the volatility of individual data monetisation yet shoulders the burden of proof: can storage-plus-execution capture sustainable value?

The answer won’t come from road-map slides, but from shipping integrations that make CFOs sign off and auditors sleep better. Until then, Irys remains a compelling subplot—not the whole story—of Web3’s evolving data economy.

Institutional Influx of Capital
In July 2025, Ethereum ETFs attracted $4.7 billion in inflows, with significant accumulations by institutions like BlackRock. Corporate treasuries are also accelerating their ETH allocations.

Wall Street’s Shift in Valuation Logic
ETH is no longer perceived as "Digital Gold 2.0" but rather as a cash flow-driven asset akin to infrastructure REITs. With annual network fee revenue exceeding $3 billion, it can now be analyzed using traditional valuation models.

Early Holders Reducing Positions
The number of addresses holding 100,000+ ETH has plummeted. Early investors are cashing out via centralized exchanges, and staking queue dynamics reflect a divided market.

Policy and Ecosystem Drivers
The U.S. has adopted a crypto-friendly policy shift under the Trump administration, boosting industry confidence. Ethereum ecosystem core players—such as Pantera Capital, ConsenSys, a16z, and Coinbase—are driving institutionalization through traditional financial instruments.

Market Structural Changes
Pricing power has shifted from retail to institutional investors. Liquidity is contracting due to long-term holdings and staking, while trading depth shows a bipolar trend.

Underlying Conflicts Revealed
A fundamental efficiency矛盾 exists between the ideal of decentralization and capital concentration. Institutional dominance may impact the network’s distributed characteristics.

This transformation signals the maturation of the cryptocurrency industry while prompting deeper reflection on the future of decentralization.

Summary
Ethereum is undergoing an unprecedented structural reshuffle—traditional finance is taking over, and crypto natives are cashing out.

New on-chain data indicates that ETH’s market dominance is shifting from retail to institutional investors. The number of retail investors has consistently hit multi-year lows, dropping to around 8 million. Meanwhile, institutional holdings have recently surged.

Currently, corporate treasuries and ETFs have accumulated over 10 million ETH, worth nearly $40 billion, with no signs of stopping. This likely marks a historic transition for ETH from a speculative asset dominated by "crypto natives" to a mature asset allocated by "traditional financial giants."

I. Wall Street’s ETH Awakening: From "Digital Gold 2.0" to "Infrastructure REITs"
1.1 Epic Influx of Institutional Capital
Wall Street capital has surpassed long-established crypto institutions like the Ethereum Foundation and Coinbase in just one month.

Wall Street’s interest in ETH is shifting from观望 to action at an astonishing pace.

• Record ETF Inflows: In July 2025 alone, Ethereum ETFs attracted $4.7 billion in inflows, nearly doubling the total since their launch. By month-end, ETH accounted for over 84% of the $1.9 billion invested in crypto ETFs, demonstrating overwhelming capital preference.

• BlackRock’s Clear Stance: BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager,单独增持 $1.2 billion worth of ETH in July, compared to only $267 million in BTC. This is not just a capital allocation but a value vote on Ethereum’s future potential.

• Corporate Treasury Allocation Race: From Bitmine Immersion Tech (BMNR) to SharpLink Gaming (SBET), Wall Street capital completed strategic ETH positions in just one month, surpassing the holdings of long-standing native crypto institutions. This indicates ETH is rapidly being incorporated into traditional corporate balance sheets.

1.2 Wall Street’s New Valuation Paradigm for ETH
Traditional finance has evolved its perception of ETH from the early "Digital Gold 2.0" concept to a more sophisticated cash flow-driven valuation framework.

• From Speculative Asset to Infrastructure Investment: Wall Street is redefining ETH’s value in traditional financial terms. It is no longer merely a store of value but the "fuel" and "toll station" of the entire Web3 economy. Tom Lee’s comparison to "crypto-style infrastructure REITs" is gaining traction.

• Cash Flow-Driven Valuation Logic: Unlike Bitcoin’s "digital gold" narrative, the Ethereum network generates billions in real annual revenue. In 2024 alone, network fees exceeded $3 billion, providing institutions with an analytical framework similar to traditional infrastructure investments, enabling quantitative valuation via DCF models.

II. Crypto Old Guards Gradually Exiting: A Tacit "Unloading Wave"
Wall Street’s entry perfectly coincides with the exit of another force.

2.1 Strategic Reduction by Early Holders
Data shows that many early Ethereum investors are strategically reducing their positions. The number of traditional crypto whales (addresses holding 100,000+ ETH) has plummeted from over 200 in 2020 to around 70 in 2025, a near-decade low. Whale monitoring indicates that many early supporters from the ICO phase are accelerating transfers to centralized exchanges to cash out.

2.2 Dynamic Divergence in Staking Queues
Recent ETH network staking entries and exits have reached two-year highs. This reflects market division and reorganization: on one hand, early stakers are unlocking and selling after Ethereum’s rebound from April lows; on the other, companies like SharpLink Gaming and BitMine Immersion are大幅增持 ETH and staking, moving tokens from circulation into long-term lockups.

III. Deep-Seated Drivers: A Historic Handover Weaved by Multiple Factors
3.1 Historic Release of Policy Benefits

• Trump Effect in Motion: Since the November 2024 U.S. election, crypto policy has done a 180-degree turn. New SEC Chair Paul Atkins’ crypto-friendly stance has reversed the regulatory hostility of the Gensler era. More importantly, Trump’s promised "National Strategic Bitcoin Reserve" plan has injected unprecedented policy confidence into the digital asset industry.

• Regulatory Arbitrage Window Opens: Wall Street敏锐ly captured this policy shift. Compared to the EU’s strict MiCA regulations, the U.S. is becoming a regulatory "oasis" for global crypto assets. This explains why global macro funds like Brevan Howard are urgently betting on U.S. crypto assets—they know this regulatory红利 won’t last long.

3.2 ETH "Native Giants’" Glorious Transition: A Wall Street Co-optation Led by OGs
When tracking these seemingly "Wall Street-led" investments, a startling fact emerges: the most active forces pushing ETH reserves are core players (OGs) of the Ethereum ecosystem. This indicates not a unilateral Wall Street action but a精密布局 orchestrated by crypto-native capital using traditional financial tools for asset transfer and capitalization.

• Pantera Capital: From ICO Angel to "Corporate Treasury" Creator
  As an early Ethereum ICO angel investor, Pantera Capital’s moves clearly demonstrate long-term belief in ETH. In 2025, they launched a Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) fund专门投资上市公司 holding digital assets as strategic reserves. They invested in SharpLink Gaming (SBET) and Bitmine Immersion Tech (BMNR), two of the largest corporate ETH holders. This is a sophisticated strategy: Pantera uses its capital to push traditional enterprises with clear ETH demand into the market, creating new, sustained buying pressure.

• ConsenSys: Transforming Infrastructure Value into Equity Gains
  As the developer of core ETH infrastructure like MetaMask and Infura, ConsenSys founder Joseph Lubin is a foundational figure in the ETH ecosystem. ConsenSys directly invested in SharpLink Gaming, with Lubin becoming its board chairman and holding 9.9% of shares. This milestone move shows how Ethereum OGs are converting ETH’s technological infrastructure value into equity and capital gains in traditional financial markets.

• Andreessen Horowitz (a16z): Dual Engine of Policy Lobbying and Ecosystem Penetration
  a16z, one of crypto’s most influential VCs, has a deep and multi-faceted ETH strategy. Beyond direct investments in ETH ecosystem projects, they are key players in political lobbying. They invested $70 million in Lido Finance, staking part of their own ETH, becoming major participants in the staking market. Crucially, a16z has invested heavily in Washington D.C., pushing for crypto-friendly policies. Their proposals, like the "safe harbor" suggestion to the SEC, cleared key regulatory hurdles for ETH spot ETF approvals.

• Coinbase: The Behind-the-Scenes Hero and Custodial Cornerstone of ETFs
  Coinbase plays an indispensable role as infrastructure provider in ETH’s institutionalization. Nearly all major ETH spot ETFs, including BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA), have chosen Coinbase as custodian. According to Coinbase Prime data, it custodies $171 billion in digital assets for institutional clients (as of March 31, 2024). This means that while institutional funds enter via ETFs, the underlying ETH assets are largely held by Coinbase. This makes it an invisible core in this "change of hands," further binding institutions to the ETH ecosystem through its staking services.

3.3 "Unloading Wave" Triggered by ETH’s Long-Term Underperformance

• Significant Relative Performance Gap: While BTC hit new highs from $69,000 to $120,000, ETH has fluctuated between $2,000-$4,000 for over three years, with its BTC ratio declining. This vast performance gap has left many ETH investors who bought at the 2021 bull market peak deeply trapped.

• Golden Exit Opportunity Provided by Institutional Rally: Wall Street’s large-scale entry offers these long-trapped retail investors a rare exit opportunity. Unlike previous rebounds, this institution-led rise has greater sustainability and certainty, giving trapped investors enough confidence and time to reduce positions.

• Perfect Match Between Unloading and Institutional Takeover: This creates an almost perfect market cycle—retail investors eagerly exit, while institutions urgently enter. Their interests align perfectly: institutions acquire relatively cheap筹码, and retail achieves long-awaited exits. However, behind this "win-win," ETH’s control has彻底 shifted from retail to institutions.

IV. Deep Evolution of Market Structure: A Capitalization Process of Technological Value
4.1 Historic Transfer of Pricing Power
The most profound impact of this "change of hands" is the complete transfer of ETH’s pricing power. Previously, ETH prices were driven by community sentiment and retail FOMO; now, institutional DCF models, risk parity allocations, and quantitative strategies dominate. Wall Street is re-evaluating Ethereum using traditional corporate valuation methods—treating it as a "decentralized tech company" with $3 billion in annual revenue.

4.2 Reshaping of Liquidity Structure

• Sharp Contraction of Floating Supply: Institutions’ long-term holding strategies and staking lockups further compress market liquidity. Companies like BitMine have explicitly stated they will hold ETH long-term, effectively permanently removing these funds from circulation.

• Bipolar Trading Depth: The spot market is showing clear stratification—large trades are executed via OTC and block trades, while retail trading concentrates on small spot and derivative markets. This structural divergence complicates ETH price discovery.

4.3 Technological Upgrade in Capitalization Methods

• Past Playbook: Attracting capital through native crypto narratives like ICOs, DeFi, and NFTs, hyped on Discord and Twitter, targeting speculative funds within the crypto space.

• Current Playbook: Attracting capital through traditional financial tools like financing and stock listings, promoted on mainstream financial media like CNBC and Bloomberg, targeting allocation funds from traditional institutions.

4.4 Fundamental Conflict Between Decentralization Ideal and Capital Efficiency
ETH faces a core矛盾: decentralized technical architecture and centralized capital control are inherently efficient矛盾. Distributed networks require numerous small participants to maintain decentralization, but capital market economies of scale naturally倾向 concentration. When Coinbase alone controls more staked ETH than the GDP of many small countries, we must question the long-term sustainability of this hybrid model.

Final Thoughts
ETH’s "change of hands" is not merely a market event but a significant标志 of the cryptocurrency industry’s maturation.

This process may be imperfect甚至 disappointing to some—after all, it means crypto is losing its initial "rebellious spirit" and becoming more like traditional finance. However, from another perspective, it also signifies that blockchain technology and crypto assets are gaining mainstream recognition, moving from the fringe to the center, from experimentation to application.

For investors, the most important task at this historic inflection point is to make the right choice:

• Continue immersed in the past "crypto mindset," or actively adapt to the new "institutional reality"?

• Complain about changing rules, or learn to survive and thrive under new rules?

Whatever path is chosen, one thing is certain: in this ever-changing and uncertain market, only those who maintain learning capability, adaptability, and independent thinking will succeed in the long-term game.

Primer: Crypto Checkout for Amazon

Primer is a Chrome extension that lets shoppers pay on Amazon with crypto. Because Amazon still refuses digital assets, the add-on quietly buys an Amazon gift card in the background and applies it to the order. Users simply click an injected “Crypto Checkout” button, approve USDC (or other stablecoins) from Coinbase Wallet, MetaMask, or Phantom, and the rest is invisible. Coinbase CDP API handles the swap, giving crypto holders a friction-free path to everyday e-commerce.

Swap Pay: Multi-Token Checkout in One Click

Swap Pay tackles the “wrong-token” problem in Web3 commerce. Instead of forcing users to pre-swap to a merchant’s preferred coin, the SDK lets wallets offer a shopping-cart-style mix of any tokens they hold. Chainlink streams real-time prices so the buyer can drag sliders until the total matches the price. One EIP-5792 transaction bundles approvals, swaps, and settlement into PYUSD; overpayments are auto-refunded. Scattered balances suddenly become spendable without extra steps.

Pumpkin Spice Latte: No-Loss Savings with Lottery Prizes

Pumpkin Spice Latte spins DeFi yield into a prize-linked savings game. Users park stablecoins in a shared pool; principal is always withdrawable, but every deposit’s yield is pooled for regular raffles. One lucky depositor pockets the excess yield, everyone else keeps their capital. ERC-4626 vaults (Morpho, Kinetic, etc.) source yield, while Flare and Flow VRF guarantee provably fair randomness. Saving becomes fun, and nobody risks their stake.

Hardhat 3-Ledger: Hardware-Wallet-Safe Deployments

Hardhat 3-Ledger drops native Ledger support into the latest Hardhat stack. Developers sign contract deployments directly on a Ledger device—no private keys ever touch disk. The integration uses Ledger’s device-management toolkit, ships with TypeScript bindings, and has been end-to-end tested on the new Ledger Flex. Bonus: the team shipped doc improvements and clearer code samples, raising the bar for secure dev-tooling.

Noah: Automatic Inheritance for Digital Assets

Noah is a dead-man’s-switch estate planner. If a wallet stops signing transactions for a user-defined period, smart contracts automatically transfer all assets to named beneficiaries. Dutch auctions, Uniswap swaps, or Fern off-ramps convert holdings to USDC/PYUSD—or even straight USD—so heirs don’t need to touch crypto. ENS names are inheritable too. Already live on Flow, Chiliz, and Katana, Noah makes “what happens to my keys when I’m gone” a solved problem.

Kyma Pay: Merchant-Friendly Stable-Coin Checkout

Kyma Pay is a GENIUS-compliant payment rail for merchants who want stablecoins but hate volatility and high fees. At 0.15 %—a tenth of Stripe’s cut—it supports PYUSD, USDC, USDT, and USDe. An Orbital-inspired AMM swaps stables instantly behind the scenes, while HTTP 402 responses let Coinbase’s x402 facilitator handle the hand-off. Built-in risk scoring audits reserve quality and audit history, giving merchants the cheapest—and safest—way to accept digital dollars.

TX Delay Insurance: Get Paid When the Network’s Stuck

TX Delay Insurance sells on-chain coverage for late transactions. Users insure any time-sensitive swap or bridge; if the tx lands past the deadline, the policy pays out. A thin RPC proxy timestamps broadcasts and confirmations, providing trustless proof of delay. DeFi farmers and MEV searchers finally have a hedge against clogged blocks.

x402-flash: Instant Micropayments for APIs

x402-flash kills the 200 ms lag in the x402 micro-payment standard. Clients pre-lock funds in an escrow contract; servers answer API calls immediately and settle later, insured against default by the escrow. USDC gas fees are sponsored via Circle Paymaster. The result: sub-100 ms latencies that unlock high-frequency Web3 APIs.

Pika Vault: Cross-Chain Treasury for Institutions

Pika Vault is a cross-chain asset vault that lets users deposit on any supported network while the vault itself rebalances native USDC across chains. No wrapped assets, no synthetic IOUs—just Circle CCTP moving real dollars around. Control and value layers are split: LayerZero orchestrates messages, Chainlink CCIP feeds prices, and whitelisted custodians meet institutional compliance. One interface, many chains, zero bridge risk.

Closing Thoughts

ETHGlobal NYC 2025 wrapped up after a marathon weekend of hacking. Hundreds of builders converged to push Web3 into gaming, payments, DeFi, and dev tooling. The ten winners above showcase the breadth of what’s now possible—and hint at what the next wave of mainstream adoption might look like.

Key Data:

• In July 2025, USDT and USDC accounted for over 90% of exchange transfer volumes (up from just 60% in 2022).

• The trading volume of Brazilian real-backed stablecoins reached $906 million in July 2025 and is projected to exceed $1.5 billion for the full year.

• The combined market capitalization of Mexican peso-backed stablecoins MXNB and MXNe hit $34 million, marking a 638-fold annual increase.

Use Cases:

• 71% of Latin American users utilize stablecoins for cross-border payments, while 100% of businesses have adopted, are testing, or are planning stablecoin strategies.

• The trading volume of Brazilian real-backed stablecoins has surged 230-fold over four years. Mexican peso-backed stablecoins have diverged into two paths: retail-focused (MXNB) and large-scale settlements (MXNe).

Technology Ecosystem:

• Brazil’s top five real-backed stablecoins (BRZ, cREAL, etc.) serve B2B payments, DeFi, and other scenarios, with Polygon and Celo as the primary on-chain channels.

• Mexico’s MXNB has migrated to the low-fee Arbitrum network, while MXNe focuses on large transactions via the Base chain.

DEX Liquidity:

• cREAL once dominated the Brazilian market, but BRLA has now become the main dollar通道. The MXNB-WAVAX trading pair in Mexico peaked at $29.7 million in a single month.

• Platform binding effects are significant: Uniswap dominates, while Aerodrome (on Base链) saw MXNe trading volume surge by $25.8 million.

Summary

Author: Filippo Armani
Compiled by: Tim, PANews

PANews Editor’s Note: This article is excerpted from Part 3 of "The Money Layer: LATAM Crypto 2025 Report," focusing on the current state of local stablecoin development in Latin America. Below is the compiled content.

Stablecoins have become the backbone of Latin America’s on-chain economic development. Both dollar-backed and local currency-backed stablecoins have replaced volatile assets as the core of crypto adoption, sustaining multi-fold growth momentum.

Key Insights:

• In July 2025, USDT and USDC accounted for over 90% of all exchange transfer volumes, a significant increase from approximately 60% in 2022.

• Brazil leads in both the number of active local stablecoins and total trading volume. As of July 2025, the trading volume of Brazilian real-backed stablecoins reached $906 million, nearly matching the 2024 total of $910 million. Projected annual trading volume is estimated to reach $1.5 billion at the current growth rate.

• The total market capitalization of Mexican peso-pegged stablecoins (MXNB + MXNe) reached approximately $34 million in July 2025, a 638-fold increase from 1 million pesos (about $53,000) in July 2024.

• Local stablecoins on major blockchains: Polygon (BRLA, BRZ), Celo (cREAL), Base (MXNe), and Arbitrum (MXNB).

Main Text
Stablecoins have become the financial cornerstone of cryptocurrency adoption in Latin America, with applications extending far beyond speculation. Across the region, stablecoins function as savings tools, payment channels, cross-border remittance corridors, and inflation hedges, making them the most practical and widely used form of cryptocurrency. Latin America currently leads the world in real-world stablecoin adoption: according to Fireblocks’ "2025 State of Stablecoins Report," 71% of respondents use stablecoins for cross-border payments, and 100% of businesses have either launched, are testing, or are preparing stablecoin strategies. Equally important, 92% of surveyed institutions reported that their wallet and API infrastructure supports stablecoin operations, reflecting both market demand and technological maturity. For millions in Latin America, stablecoins have become digital equivalents of the U.S. dollar—accessible inflation hedges and effective means to bypass capital controls. In many cases, they are the only viable channel for holding dollarized assets.

In countries like Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, stablecoins have surpassed Bitcoin as the preferred crypto asset for daily use, thanks to their price stability and direct peg to the U.S. dollar (Fireblocks, "2025 State of Stablecoins Report"). USDC and USDT account for over 90% of exchange transfer volumes. In Argentina, for example, 72% of crypto asset purchases on Bitso in 2024 involved these two stablecoins, while Bitcoin accounted for only 8% (Bitso 2024 data). Colombia shows a similar pattern, with stablecoins making up 48% of purchases due to restrictions on U.S. dollar bank accounts and persistent currency volatility. Brazil’s shift is even more pronounced, with stablecoin trading volume on local exchanges growing 207.7% year-over-year, far outpacing other crypto assets (Chainalysis, October 2024). Beyond transfers, 39% of crypto asset purchases in Latin America in 2024 involved stablecoins, up from 30% the previous year (Bitso 2024).

Current State of Local Stablecoin Development
Although dollar-pegged assets remain the dominant form of stablecoin application in Latin America (primarily for inflation hedging), local currency-pegged stablecoins have experienced explosive growth over the past two years. These tokens, pegged to national fiat currencies like the Brazilian real and Mexican peso, are increasingly used for domestic payments, on-chain commercial activities, and integration with local financial systems. By eliminating the cumbersome process of converting between dollars and local fiat, these stablecoins reduce costs for merchants and users while accelerating local trade settlements. For businesses, they enable direct connections to payment systems like Brazil’s PIX, facilitating instant transfers without bank involvement while meeting tax compliance requirements. In high-inflation economies, these stablecoins also serve as "bridge assets," allowing users to transact in stable local currency units while retaining the option to convert into dollars or other stores of value for risk hedging.

Brazil provides the clearest case study of this trend, with real-backed stablecoins showing staggering year-on-year growth. Transaction activity surged from just over 5,000 in 2021 to more than 1.4 million in 2024, maintaining a high of 1.2 million so far in 2025—a 230-fold increase from four years ago. The number of unique senders also grew exponentially, from fewer than 800 in 2021 to over 90,000 in 2025, an 11-fold increase since 2023 alone. On-chain native transfer volume jumped from approximately 110 million reais (about $20.9 million at the time of writing) in 2021 to nearly 5 billion reais (about $900 million) in July 2025, almost matching the 2024 total. Including data up to August 2025, the year’s total transfer volume has already surpassed that of 2024. What began as a marginal experiment has rapidly evolved into a core pillar of Brazil’s on-chain economy, with explosive growth in transaction scale, user base, and transfer value within just a few years.

As of June 2025, five different Brazilian real-pegged stablecoins are actively circulating, reducing market concentration and signaling ecosystem maturity. These include:

• BRZ, issued by fintech company Transfero, providing blockchain infrastructure solutions for banks and payment institutions in Latin America;

• cREAL, issued by the Celo blockchain, focusing on mobile-first DeFi integration;

• BRLA, developed by BRLA Digital and Avenia, serving as a compliant fiat-to-crypto bridge;

• BRL1, supported by an alliance of exchanges including Mercado Bitcoin, Bitso, and Foxbit, aiming to establish industry-wide standards;

• BBRL, issued by the Braza Group, targeting regional trade and payment scenarios.

Despite this growth, Brazilian real-backed stablecoins are still in their early stages, with a circulating supply of approximately $23 million.

According to analysis by Iporanga Ventures in their latest "Brazilian Real Stablecoin Report," the landscape is evolving rapidly. While no clear market leader has emerged yet, deeper analysis of project-tier data reveals specific areas of领先优势.

• BRLA leads in "unique remitter count," indicating the broadest retail user coverage.

• cREAL dominates in transfer volume, reflecting early traction in retail and small-value payments.

• In terms of native transfer volume, BRZ held an absolute lead until mid-2024, but this was abruptly overtaken by cREAL in the latter half of the year. By early 2025, Celo’s advantage in transfer volume waned as BRLA grew steadily. Then, in July 2025, BBRL made a震撼 entrance: despite having a relatively limited number of active sender addresses, its launch on the XRPL (XRP Ledger) triggered explosive growth, with its share of monthly native transfer volume soaring to approximately 65%.

Unlike dollar stablecoins, whose issuance and transfers are concentrated on the Ethereum mainnet, real-backed stablecoin activity is primarily on Layer 2 networks and other public blockchains. Polygon is the dominant channel by native transaction volume and active users: in July 2025, it recorded approximately 74,000 transactions (involving 14,000 unique users), with monthly transaction volume hitting a historic high of 500 million reais (about $50 million).

Celo ranks second, holding the record for highest transfers at 213,000, a peak reached in December 2024 driven by cREAL’s rapid early adoption in retail and small-value payments. Although the number of unique payers declined in 2025,规模化重复支付流 from merchants, aggregators, and liquidity pools have kept Celo’s transaction volume at a considerable level.

XRPL has emerged as a notable new participant, experiencing explosive growth after the launch of the Brazilian real-backed stablecoin BBRL in July 2025: transfer volume jumped from over 100 in May to approximately 3,000 in July, while native transaction volume surged to about 1.16 billion Brazilian reais, signaling the formation of a new high-value channel.

The Base chain showed steady growth in 2025, peaking in June, while the BNB chain has seen shrinking market share since a significant drop in transfer volume and active addresses in 2022. The Ethereum mainnet only intermittently handles large, low-frequency transfers, playing a limited role, though BRZ tokens briefly dominated its transaction activity from late 2023 to early 2024.

Beyond raw data, Iporanga Ventures’ report highlights the practical use cases and high-value drivers of stablecoins in Brazil:

• B2B payments lead the market, with businesses using stablecoins to pay overseas suppliers or employees and then settling locally via the PIX system.

• In cross-border fund inflow scenarios, dollars are converted into Brazilian real-backed stablecoins for domestic payments.

• These stablecoins are becoming key infrastructure for Brazil’s tokenized asset ecosystem, enabling on-chain settlements without bank custody.

• In the gig economy and among SMEs, stablecoins support payroll payments, risk hedging, and capital preservation. Merchant integration solutions like CloudWalk’s BRLC and Mercado Pago’s dollar stablecoin are driving mainstream adoption.

While Brazil boasts the most diverse and mature local stablecoin ecosystem, the Mexican peso stablecoin market is taking shape around two main projects: Juno and Bitso’s MXNB and Brale’s MXNe, which have distinct development trajectories. MXNB’s circulation pattern has evolved from sporadic large-scale issuance peaks in late 2024 to a more stable and broad circulation pattern in 2025.

MXNB’s growth in 2025 marks a significant shift toward everyday use cases. In July 2025, the platform processed 179 transfers involving 70 unique senders, a 339% and 290% increase from 46 transfers and 21 senders in the same period last year.

Although transaction volume peaked in January 2025 with 14.5 million Mexican pesos (about $750,000 at the time of writing) achieved through fewer transactions, July saw 480,000 pesos (about $25,000) in volume from more small-value payments. The average transaction size dropped from approximately 28,700 pesos in July 2024 to 3,600 pesos. This shift accompanied a clear migration to Arbitrum: in 2024, about 99% of transfers occurred on Ethereum, but since Q2 2025, approximately 94% have moved to Arbitrum, making low-fee Layer 2 channels the default choice.

In contrast, MXNe, issued by Brale, has taken the opposite path by operating exclusively on the Base chain, growing into the highest-volume Mexican peso-pegged stablecoin.

Activity peaked in March 2025 with 3,367 transfers from 274 senders; although transaction frequency slowed thereafter, total transfer value continued climbing. In July 2025, 2,148 transfers from 158 senders set a new record of approximately 637.7 million pesos, pushing the average transaction size to nearly 297,000 pesos, suggesting large-scale transactions and institutional activity.

The contrast is clear: MXNB now dominates small retail payments, while MXNe focuses on large-scale settlements. Compared to Brazil’s more fragmented ecosystem, the Mexican market remains concentrated around these two issuers and a few settlement channels, but this has not hindered liquidity growth. Since mid-2025, DEX trading volumes for Mexican peso pairs have rapidly climbed to the top, signaling increasingly mature market structures.

Welcome to the Web3 Compass series, where Shisijun provides focused analysis on emerging technologies, protocols, and products in the Web3 space.

The catalyst for this series? AI has doubled my efficiency in researching new projects, highlighting that human value increasingly lies in judgment, insight, and creativity.

Each installment will break down innovations through three lenses—industry context → technical principles → potential impact—helping you grasp core developments swiftly and anticipate their ripple effects.

A disclaimer: My views often lean pessimistic and are neither investment advice nor targeted at specific projects.

Jito BAM｜Solana’s "Block Sequencing + Modular Block-Building Marketplace"

What It Is
In short, BAM is a block-building platform for Solana, akin to Ethereum’s builder network implementing Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS). Both aim to standardize transaction ordering, combat MEV, and mitigate centralized risks.

Backstory and Key Players
Spearheaded by the Jito alliance—Solana’s dominant auction platform, controlling 90% of validator clients—BAM boasts heavyweight backers like Triton One, SOL Strategies, Figment, Helius, Drift, Pyth, and DFlow. This is clearly a coordinated effort by Solana’s core ecosystem.

The motivation is clear: Solana faces pressure from chains like Hyperliquid (a native order-book chain optimized for market makers). Solana’s open architecture makes such optimizations challenging, but customizable block construction could bypass its linear block-production limits, unlocking DeFi potential.

Deployment Roadmap

• Phase 1: Jito Labs operates nodes with limited validators.

• Phase 2: Expands to more operators, targeting 30%+ staked validators.

• Final Phase: Open-sourced code and decentralized governance.

With the industry’s growing emphasis on "verifiable fairness," BAM’s TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) + PBS approach aligns neatly with validator and protocol interests.

Technical Mechanics
Solana’s Proof-of-History (PoH) processes blocks linearly (400ms slots split into 64 tips intervals, where transactions are finalized upon submission). Unlike Ethereum’s "consensus-then-sync" model, BAM lets Jito upgrade validator clients en masse, boosting adoption.

BAM’s architecture (see diagram below) features a purple core module and plugin system:

![BAM System Structure]

Transactions are no longer fed piecemeal to leaders. Instead, TEE sequences entire blocks using plugin-defined rules (e.g., prioritizing oracle price updates or filtering failed DEX trades), then submits them wholesale. Validators must prove exclusive block space allocation to BAM.

Plugins enable hardcoded sequencing logic. For example:

• Oracles can mandate price updates as a block’s first transaction, reducing latency risks.

• DEXs can discard likely-to-fail trades pre-execution, saving fees.

BAM coexists with Solana’s current flow: regular order flow, Jito bundles, and BAM blocks (which are all-or-nothing).

Critical Take
BAM is "high-profile, narrative-rich, and use-case-driven," but mainstream adoption faces hurdles. Like Ethereum’s Builder Net and MEV Share, progress may stall due to:

• TEE limitations: High costs and ~1k QPS caps (despite handling 40% of Ethereum blocks). Solana’s throughput demands massive TEE scaling, plus redundancy for uptime.

• Economic viability: Jito’s Q2 2025 revenue was just 22,391 SOL (~$4M). Migrating Solana’s volume risks TEE outages (volatile memory exacerbates this), potentially causing mass transaction drops.

Yet, BAM’s killer features—oracle sequencing, fail-safe transactions—could attract market makers and enterprises. With Solana’s ideological backing, it’s a PR win.

Final Note: BAM isn’t for 24/7 throughput but "critical-block determinism." But in Web3, 99% reliability equals 0%—absolute certainty is non-negotiable for big players.

BRC 2.0｜"EVM Mirror": BTC-Powered Programmability

What It Is
Scheduled for activation on September 2, 2025, BRC 2.0 is a "BTC-triggered, EVM-executed" shadow system (distinct from BRC-20). Users inscribe "commands" on Bitcoin (via inscriptions or commit-reveal), while a modified EVM in indexers handles deployment/calls. Gas is waived in EVM but paid via BTC transaction fees.

Similar to Alkanes (which uses BTC’s OP_RETURN and WASM), BRC 2.0 runs on EVM.

Backstory and Key Players
Pioneered by BestinSlot (a BTC inscription-era platform), BRC 2.0 extends BRC-20’s ethos: avoid consensus changes, layer programmability atop BTC.

The backdrop? BTC programmability/L2 hype has outpaced engineering, leaving a gap now filled by BRC 2.0 and Alkanes.

Market traction may lag due to BTC’s fragmented development culture. BRC 2.0 and BRC-20 share design DNA but lack formal ties.

Technical Mechanics
BRC 2.0 operates in indexers—not on-chain or as a separate chain (no consensus). User EVM addresses derive from hashed BTC addresses.

Commands are JSON strings (like BRC-20):

{ "p": "brc-20", "op": "deploy", ... }  

Instructions (bytecode/calldata) are encoded in BTC transactions and replayed in EVM. Gas pricing is zeroed in EVM (resource caps only), with fees paid on BTC.

Risks: Code audits reveal no call-depth limits, risking infinite recursion crashes (fixable with max-depth guards).

Critical Take

• Branding: "BRC 2.0" leverages existing buzz better than a new protocol name (see RGB’s resurgence).

• Originality: Shares BRC-20’s schema but lacks creator endorsement.

• Philosophy: BTC’s value lies in scarcity, not programmability. Chasing smart contracts dilutes its "unvaluable" status—a paradox where limitations become strengths.

EIP-7999 | Ethereum’s Multidimensional Fee Market Proposal

What It Is
Proposed by Vitalik, this EIP (renamed from EIP-0000) addresses post-EIP-4844 fee fragmentation (blob vs. calldata vs. execution fees) by introducing a unified "total max fee + multi-resource price vector" transaction type.

Backstory
Vitalik has long advocated fee market reform (see 2022/2024 posts). The urgency stems from wallet/router pain:

• Blobs: 6/block, auction-based pricing.

• EIP-1559: Base fees for execution.

• Calldata: Variable pricing since 2015.

L2 devs are squeezed—setting separate fee caps per resource risks transaction failures even with sufficient total funds.

Technical Mechanics
The proposal replaces multiple max_fee_per_gas fields with a single max_fee, dynamically allocated across EVM gas, blob gas, and calldata gas.

New transaction type fields:

[ max_fee, fee_vector, ... ]  

Simpler than ERC-4337’s gas model (see From 4337 to 7702: Ethereum Account Abstraction’s Past and Future).

Critical Take

• Pros: Unifies fees, easing L2/L3 development—aligned with Ethereum’s roadmap.

• Cons: Complexity spikes. Changes to block headers, RLP encoding, and limits demand hard forks and ecosystem-wide upgrades (wallets, tools).

• Timeline: Likely 1-2 major forks away. Vitalik’s fee-market essays remain essential reading for crypto-economic insights.

Last night, official news revealed that Binance Alpha will list Towns (TOWNS) on August 5. Although Towns missed its Q2 TGE, its Binance Alpha listing signals an impending airdrop for early interactive users.

Below, Odaily Planet Daily breaks down the Towns project, its tokenomics, airdrop details, OTC prices, and积分 valuation.

Towns: The Blockchain Discord
Towns is a group chat protocol and application designed for online communities, comprising three components: smart contracts, a decentralized node network, and apps built on the Towns protocol. Its standout feature is the "town square" concept, blending communities, NFTs, and gaming to offer users an Ethereum-based smart contract system with end-to-end encrypted chat. Towns lets community members own their virtual squares and communicate freely via a fully decentralized, encrypted protocol.

The platform provides foundational tools for creating ideal communities. Each Town’s ownership is on-chain, enabling transfer, sale, or management by DAOs or multisig contracts. Towns also allows programmable, autonomous gathering spaces, customizable APIs, and full control for groups to chat and set rules. Community owners can craft unique experiences, like selling channel access keys, rewarding contributions, or enabling in-chat NFT trading.

Per official disclosures, Towns has raised $46 million from investors like a16z Crypto, Coinbase Ventures, Benchmark, Framework, and echodotxyz.

$46M Raised: Towns’ Airdrop Nears
According to project lead coinbilly, Towns has generated over $35 million in real revenue, with $3.5 million in fees used for buybacks and burns.

TOWNS Tokenomics: Airdrop Allocates ~10%
TOWNS is an ERC-20 token with an initial supply of 10 billion and an 8% annual inflation rate, tapering linearly to 2% over 20 years. New tokens are calculated as: Annual inflation = Current supply × Annual rate (e.g., 800 million in Year 1, 864 million in Year 2). Distribution is as follows:

• Community Reserve: 43.14%

• Team: 21.46%

• Investor: 13.74%

• Airdrop: 9.87%

• Nodes Year 1: 7.9%

• Public Investor: 2.62%

• Node Inflation: 1.27%

Early interactors will share nearly 10% of the supply, with 43% reserved for future rewards.

Nearly 400K积分 Users: Top 75% Require 1,000+积分
On-chain data shows 573K total users, 446K Towns created, and 397K积分 users.积分 distribution:

• 100K+积分: 7K users (top 1.76%)

• 50K–100K积分: 6K users (top 3.35%)

• 20K–50K积分: 22.8K users (top 9.07%)

• 10K–20K积分: 25.8K users (top 15.57%)

• 5K–10K积分: 28.5K users (top 22.75%)

• 1K–5K积分: 210K users (top 75.64%)

• 0–1K积分: 95.9K users (bottom 24.36%)

Users with 1,000+积分 rank in the top 75%, making airdrop eligibility highly likely.

Town member analysis:

• 1-member Towns: 34.9K

• 2–3 members: 27.9K

• 4–5 members: 36K

• 6–10 members: 47.1K

• 11–15 members: 12.2K

• 16–20 members: 4.9K

• 20+ members: 12.5K

Most Towns are early-stage, with only 16.8% having 10+ members. Users can check rankings via layerHub without connecting wallets: layerHub.xyz/search?p=towns.

First Snapshot Closed April 10; Second Pending
Towns announced the first snapshot ended April 10, with a second pre-airdrop snapshot pending. Both will count toward allocations. To maximize rewards, users with prior activity should maintain daily check-ins until the airdrop portal opens.

40B积分 for 10B Tokens: Airdrop Likely "Small Fry"
Over 40 billion积分 have been issued. With ~10% (10B TOWNS) allocated for airdrops, the ratio is ~0.25 TOWNS per积分.

At MEXC’s pre-listing price of $0.049/TOWNS, each积分 is worth ~$0.0049. Thus, 10,000积分 ≈ 2,500 TOWNS ($120).

Note: Excludes thresholds or Sybil filters. Eligible users may receive more, but data and sentiment suggest this airdrop will be modest.

TOWNS Pre-Trading Price on MEXC
(Image placeholder for price chart)

Solana is already fast and already processes enormous volumes. Yet is that truly “enough”?

When we examine those transactions, one question keeps surfacing: are they actually creating value?

A large share of Solana’s throughput is not organic demand but high-frequency arbitrageurs exploiting millisecond information gaps. These “toxic takers” leverage technical latency advantages to front-run market makers. Just before a maker cancels an order, the toxic taker hikes the gas, slips in front, pockets the spread, and leaves the maker with losses. Makers respond by widening their bid-ask spreads. In the end, the average user foots the bill.

Solana has long dreamed of an on-chain central-limit order book (CLOB) that could replace centralized exchanges. Toxic flow is now the main obstacle. The new challenge is stark: volume ≠ liquidity. A healthy market needs better trades, not merely more trades.

The Root of the Problem: Periodic Gas Auctions

Under Solana’s current consensus, each 400 ms slot ranks transactions by priority fee. Whoever pays the most jumps the queue. Makers must constantly cancel and re-quote as prices move; takers—especially latency arbitrageurs—simply monitor for mismatches, outbid, and snipe. Makers are “sniped” repeatedly, bleed out, and widen spreads to survive.

An ideal CLOB DEX would reorder micro-events as follows:

1. Process all cancellations.

2. Process new limit orders.

3. Only then execute matches.

Solana’s base layer cannot enforce this sequence in a single slot. The same issue plagues oracles (price updates should precede price-dependent trades) and lending protocols (margin top-ups should precede liquidations).

What is needed is Application-Controlled Execution (ACE)—the ability for each protocol to define its own canonical ordering. Solana’s answer is BAM: the Block-Assembly Marketplace.

BAM in One Sentence

BAM inserts a preprocessing layer—effectively an ordering layer—between Solana applications and the mainnet. Using Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) as private sandboxes, it re-sequences transactions according to rules chosen by the application—most simply, FIFO (first-in, first-out).

This serves CLOBs, perpetual exchanges, dark pools, and any protocol that needs deterministic, fair sequencing without leaking strategy.

Side-by-Side Flow

Regular Solana Flow

1. User signs in wallet.

2. RPC node receives tx.

3. RPC forwards to the current slot’s Leader.

4. Leader sorts mempool, builds block, broadcasts.

5. Validators vote.

With BAM

1. User signs.

2. RPC receives tx.

3. Tx is routed to the BAM network; inside a TEE it is reordered (FIFO or custom). Plug-ins may inject extra instructions—e.g., oracle updates—then generate a proof.

4. The sealed bundle is delivered to the Leader.

5. Leader includes the bundle, builds block, broadcasts.

6. Validators vote.

BAM is optional, off-chain, non-consensus-breaking. It pre-sorts, bundles, and hands a ready-made package to the existing Solana validator set.

Three Operational Modes

1. Vanilla Solana – default behavior.

2. Block-Engine mode – Jito’s MEV auction.

3. BAM mode – validators enforce strict FIFO ordering.

BAM Mode: The Nuts and Bolts

• TEEs for Privacy & Fairness
  Intel SGX-style enclaves keep transaction data opaque until sequencing is complete, eliminating front-running.

• Plug-in System for Custom Logic
  Developers can embed domain-specific rules (cancel-before-place-before-match, oracle-update-before-trade, margin-top-up-before-liquidation) while preserving TEE security guarantees. The plug-in framework is still early-stage.

Concrete Wins

1. Lending Liquidation Protection
   Detect under-collateralization → inject margin top-up → only then check for liquidation.

2. Atomic Transaction Composability
   Update oracle price → execute spot trade → settle perp PnL in one coherent atomic batch.

3. Volatility Shielding
   Spot an outsized market order → split it into smaller tranches over micro-slots to avoid cascade liquidations.

4. Maker Protection
   Sudden news hits → millisecond-level cancellations, oracle refresh, fresh quotes—no toxic sniping, tighter spreads.

Timeline & Impact

BAM was slated for a late-July launch. Once live, Solana UX will edge closer to CEX-grade precision without sacrificing decentralization.

In short, BAM injects verifiability, privacy, and programmability into Solana’s settlement pipeline. Developers can now build CLOBs, perpetual DEXs, dark pools, and any infrastructure that demands controlled sequencing, deterministic execution, and strategic privacy—unlocking the next wave of innovation on Solana.

The shift has a name: Real-World Asset (RWA) tokenisation. Today, more than USD 24 billion of RWA circulate on public blockchains, spanning yield-bearing Treasuries, private-credit pools, tokenised commodities and real estate. What was once a crypto curiosity is becoming plumbing for global finance.

Hong Kong’s Answer: The “Leap” Framework
On 26 June 2025, Hong Kong released Digital Asset Development Policy Statement 2.0, unveiling the Leap regulatory architecture:

• Legal & regulatory simplification

• Expansion of tokenised products

• Advancement of use-cases

• People & partnerships

Leap codifies stable-coin licensing, clarifies rules for tokenised ETFs and extends pilots in digital bonds and green finance.
Most importantly, it defines tokenisation as core financial infrastructure, not a sandbox experiment—placing Hong Kong in a category of one.

Singapore remains institution-only; the EU is prescriptive; the U.S. is fragmented. Hong Kong offers a unified, principles-based regime and—crucially—retail access under clear suitability rules, multiplying the addressable market.

Tracks Don’t Run Trains
Issuing a tokenised asset is trivial; finding willing holders, traders and believers is not.
Too many projects learn the hard way: the tech works, the market doesn’t. Bottlenecks are distribution, demand and relevance—not regulation.

Winners share a formula: the right asset, wrapped the right way, for a clearly defined user.

• Tokenised Treasuries deliver transparent yield to global savers shut out of dollar liquidity.

• Maple Finance matches institutional borrowers with crypto-native lenders via on-chain risk rails.

Hong Kong’s Project Ensemble, led by the HKMA, is stress-testing tokenised bonds, funds, carbon credits, EV-charging infrastructure and supply-chain finance. The pieces are on the board; the breakout product is still missing.

The Final Hurdle: Product-Market Fit
Foundations are laid:

• Regulatory clarity

• Institutional buy-in

• Public-private sandboxes

• A bridgehead to mainland China’s digital-asset strategy

The next phase will be decided by traction, not policy.
Can Hong Kong:

1. Attract Southeast Asian savers into yield-bearing, fully-backed stable-coin products?

2. Wrap Chinese industrial assets into globally tradable, compliant tokens?

3. Spawn a new generation of RWA products that are not merely legal, but needed?

If the answer is yes, Hong Kong will not merely lead the tokenisation race; it will define the next financial era.

These fall into two categories:

1. Regulated stablecoins issued by Web2 companies

2. Decentralized stablecoins built by Web3 projects

1. Web2-Issued Stablecoins: Regional Champions Will Thrive

Beyond USDC and USDT, localized leaders will emerge—like a Hong Kong dollar-pegged stablecoin or e-commerce-native stablecoins (e.g., JD Coin). These fill gaps where giants can’t reach, embedding deeply with local businesses or niche use cases.

Why governments back local stablecoins:

• Prevent capital flight and dollar dominance by anchoring funds to domestic financial systems.

Survival lessons from crypto exchanges:
Mid-tier exchanges thrive by:

• Specializing in altcoins and obscure trading pairs (serving specific needs).

• Dominating underserved regions (capturing niche markets).
  Similarly, smaller stablecoins will carve out space despite giant competition.

2. Web3’s Decentralized Stablecoins: The Yield Opportunity

Recent U.S. and Hong Kong stablecoin regulations ban interest payments to users, aiming to keep stablecoins as pure payment tools—not bank deposit competitors.

But demand for yield persists:
Corporations and whales holding reserves want safe, yield-bearing alternatives. USDT/USDC offer zero yield, while issuers like Tether and Circle profit from reinvesting reserves.

Web3’s workaround:
Decentralized stablecoins can bundle CeFi/DeFi yield products, offering returns while skirting regulations. Examples:

• Delta-neutral stablecoins like Ethena’s USDe or Bitcoin-based BitFi:

  • Projects hold 1 ETH while shorting equivalent ETH futures, creating price stability.

  • Users earn funding rate income from perpetual contracts.

With security and yield, these decentralized options gain strong appeal.

The Iceberg Metaphor

The stablecoin market resembles an iceberg:

• Visible tip (regulated): USDC dominates, alongside regional compliant stablecoins.

• Subsurface (offshore): USDT reigns, larger than the visible market.

• Deep waters (niches): A thriving ecosystem of specialized and yield-bearing stablecoins exists beyond the giants’ reach.

The future is pluralistic—no one stablecoin will "win," but each will find its niche.