Search the archive

Arbitrum, Hyperliquid and Unichain. Start building on Across

DEFI DERIVATIVES: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW

DeFi derivatives have surged in adoption since 2020, now holding $5.37B in TVL with daily volumes rivaling centralized exchanges, but they face structural challenges around liquidity, execution, and scaling. There are tradeoffs across design choices (AMM vs. orderbook, cross-margin models, and clearing layers) and it can be difficult to transition protocols (e.g., GMX and dYdX) without fragmenting users or liquidity. While TradFi still wins on capital efficiency and margin infrastructure, DeFi offers unmatched permissionless innovation and global access, positioning it as the future of derivatives settlement once scaling and interoperability are resolved.

PENDLE THESIS: “THE BEST STABLECOIN BETA PLAY?”

Stablecoins are entering a hyper-growth phase, evidenced by trading volumes outpacing PayPal 20x and Visa 3x and Circle's IPO being 25× oversubscribed. By tokenizing yield-bearing assets into Principal and Yield Tokens, Pendle has secured 30% of the fast-growing YBS market and deployed 80% of its $7 billion TVL in stablecoins, delivering $35–40 million in annualized revenue. Upcoming launches, including Boros for perpetual funding-rate tokenization and Citadel for cross-chain and institutional markets, promise to dramatically expand Pendle's addressable market and push annual revenues toward $100 million. Trading at a sub-20 P/E despite Circle's 80x multiple, Pendle's entrenched network effects, vePENDLE governance model, and revenue-sharing mechanics suggest significant upside as stablecoin adoption accelerates.

INSIDE WEB3 MARKETING

Web3 Key opinion leader (KOL) marketing is evolving toward micro-influencer campaigns using tools like Kaito and Cookie3 to score authenticity, but most agencies still rely heavily on a small core of trusted creators. While micro-KOLs offer decentralization, they risk echo chambers and overexposure, whereas classic paid KOLs often fail to convert unless the product is genuinely strong. Long-term relationships, cross-engagement, and authentic content remain the most effective strategies, especially on platforms beyond X like Telegram and Substack.

NEW L1/L2 PLAYBOOK

Platforms live or die by killer applications rather than raw throughput or low fees. Without a flagship app, a blockchain is the on-chain equivalent of a console with no games. New chains today succeed either by delivering a rare 10x technical leap or, more reliably, by building a breakout app first and then spinning the underlying infrastructure into a dedicated chain. Hyperliquid and Abstract exemplify this app-first flywheel: obsessive product focus attracts users, which fuels tailored chain adoption, liquidity inflows, and a widening moat. Going forward, the most enduring blockchains will debut as must-use games, financial tools, or social networks that prove product-market fit before protocol-market fit.

POLYGON POS SET TO HIT 1K+ TPS WITH UPCOMING HARDFORK

Polygon PoS is scheduled for its Bhilai hardfork, aimed at pushing transaction throughput above 1,000 TPS, on July 1.

TOP 30 PROTOCOLS BASED ON 30D FEES

Tether and Tron continue to dominate fee generation, raking in over $430M and $347M in the past 30 days.

STABLECOINS WIN AS THE LEGACY SYSTEM FAILS

Stablecoins aren't viral because they're trendy, they're viral because the legacy system keeps breaking.

KRAKEN THESIS

Kraken has veteran leadership, a tight-knit team, and a customer-centric culture.

SENATE PASSES STABLECOIN BILL, TURNING FOCUS TO HOUSE

The Senate passed the GENIUS Act, a bipartisan bill regulating stablecoins in the United States. The bill mandates full dollar backing and annual audits for large issuers. It introduces consumer protections like “super-priority” bankruptcy status. It also restricts Big Tech firms like Meta and Amazon from issuing stablecoins without meeting strict criteria. The focus now shifts to the House, which must decide whether to advance its own bill or adopt the Senate's version. Trump has signaled that the legislation should be passed by August.

THAILAND APPROVES FIVE-YEAR CRYPTO TAX EXEMPTION

Thailand has approved a five-year capital gains tax exemption on crypto sales conducted through licensed digital asset service providers, effective from 2025 through 2029. The policy is part of a broader initiative to establish Thailand as a global financial hub and foster regulated crypto activity under Thai SEC oversight and FATF-aligned AML standards. Officials estimate the move could boost economic activity and generate over $30 million in additional tax revenue. This follows increased regulatory scrutiny, including the recent blocking of five unlicensed foreign exchanges and expanded local operations by firms like KuCoin and Tether.

INTRODUCING EIGENCLOUD: UNLOCKING CRYPTO'S APP ERA

EigenCloud is a developer platform that leverages blockchain's trust and verifiability benefits across both on and offchain applications. Powered by the EIGEN token and built on EigenLayer, EigenCloud integrates Autonomous Verifiable Services (AVSs) like EigenDA for data, EigenVerify for dispute resolution, and EigenCompute for execution. This platform enhances crypto's programmability, allowing developers to create complex, verifiable Web2 applications while utilizing blockchain for payments and trust management.

JPMORGAN INTRODUCES USD DEPOSIT TOKEN ON BASE

JPMorgan has launched a pilot of its permissioned USD deposit token, JPMD, on Coinbase's Base L2. It is positioned as an alternative to stablecoins for institutional clients, offering 24/7 settlement and trading. This is the first use of the Kinexys DLT platform on a public blockchain. JPMorgan also filed a trademark for a broader crypto platform under the JPMD brand, insinuating deeper crypto ambitions.

MEV AND THE LIMITS OF SCALING

MEV spam bots now consume over 50% of gas on major L2s like Base while paying under 10% of fees, effectively nullifying scaling gains and raising costs for real users. These bots flood chains with gas-intensive transactions that rarely execute trades, wasting compute simply to read prices and compete for MEV opportunities due to private mempools and lack of efficient bidding. The solution proposed is programmable privacy and explicit MEV auctions (via TEEs), enabling bots to backrun securely without spam and restoring blockspace for actual economic activity.

CURRENT STABLECOIN FARMING STRATEGY

This portfolio targets an average APR of roughly 45% by diversifying stablecoin farms across seven protocols. Key positions include a 40% APR allocation on Plasma Foundation's chain, leveraged 62% point farming on OpenEden, and a delta-neutral 46% yield at Resolv. The strategy also locks 30% APR for 12 months in Neutrl Labs, taps 20% APR on Optimism Superstack pools, and outsources 38% APR to professional farmers via StreamDeFi. A 60% APR position in Usual offers upside but carries distribution-related risk.

TRADFI TREASURY ADOPTION WILL PULL WALL STREET AND MAIN STREET INTO DEFI

Digital asset treasury strategies using ETH and BTC are quietly becoming TradFi's first large-scale onboarding to DeFi. As firms like MSTR and SBET optimize crypto yields and report onchain performance to public markets, Wall Street will be forced to understand decentralized protocols. Once institutional interest normalizes DeFi, consumer and enterprise adoption will follow, enabled by scalable infrastructure, regulatory clarity, and a shift toward community-aligned, tokenized internet models.

THE ONCHAIN CLOB WARS

A new generation of onchain central limit order book (CLOB) protocols is leveraging rollup-era innovations, like Ethereum's Dencun blobs, Celestia DA, and ZK VMs like Succinct SP1 and RiscZero, to deliver near-CEX performance with trustless, self-custodial execution. Specialized chains and hybrid rollups achieve sub-second latency and 50-100K+ TPS by combining offchain matching with onchain settlement and ZK proofs. While centralized exchanges still dominate volume, the onchain CLOB wars are set to redefine trading with fully transparent, composable, and user-aligned order books.

PUMP.FUN AND FOUNDER ALON'S ACCOUNTS BANNED ON X

SOUTH KOREAN CRYPTO CEO ACQUITTED OF $650 MILLION FRAUD CHARGES

A South Korean court acquitted Haru Invest CEO Lee Hyung-soo of fraud charges tied to $650 million in investor losses, ruling his actions didn't meet the legal standard for criminal deception.

$12B IN BTC SHORTS AT RISK IF PRICE HITS $115K

Over $12 billion in Bitcoin short positions will be liquidated if BTC climbs to $115,000.

SBET: ETHEREUM'S TROJAN HORSE INTO INSTITUTIONAL FINANCE

SBET is positioning itself as a data-rich, publicly traded vehicle that educates investors on Ethereum through the lens of treasury strategy.

→ How Coinbase Became Mission Focused [10]

→ Why Focusing on Coinbase's Mission Drives Belonging [9] (4 minute read)

—> Get started building with Across

—> Bridge now to BSC

PancakeSwap's integration [6]of Across enables seamless crosschain swaps between BSC, Arbitrum, and Base, available for all PancakeSwap token pairs, including CAKE. The PancakeSwap integration follows integrations with other top DEXes like Uniswap, Kyberswap and Velora.

TRON LOOKS TO GO PUBLIC IN THE U.S.

Tron is set to go public via a reverse merger with Nasdaq-listed SRM Entertainment, creating “Tron Inc.” and seeding it with $210 million of TRX tokens in a treasury model akin to Michael Saylor's Bitcoin holding firm. The deal lifted TRX by nearly 4% and sent SRM shares up about 250% in pre-market trading. Justin Sun, a Trump ally, aims to leverage this listing to capitalize on recent crypto IPO momentum despite Eric Trump publicly denying any formal role.

TRUMP'S TRUTH SOCIAL FILES FOR DUAL BITCOIN AND ETHER ETF

Trump Media and Technology Group filed an S-1 with the SEC to launch a spot Bitcoin and Ether ETF, allocating 75% to Bitcoin and 25% to Ether, with Crypto.com appointed as custodian and liquidity provider. It follows the company's recent standalone registration for a Bitcoin ETF and mirrors the Trump family's Ethereum-focused holdings at World Liberty Financial. If approved, the fund would join a roster of major crypto ETFs, with Bitcoin alone having amassed over $131 billion in assets under management.

ZKPDF: MAKING PDFS VERIFIABLE WITH ZERO-KNOWLEDGE

zkPDF is a zero-knowledge toolkit that cryptographically verifies digitally signed PDFs and proves specific facts like a name or balance without revealing the rest of the document. It overcomes PDF complexity by using the SP1 ZKVM for native Rust circuits, a custom lightweight parser for page-by-page text extraction, and optimized signature verification via precompiles. Proofs take under a minute on typical PDFs and require minimal dependencies, making zkPDF immediately applicable to ecosystems like India's DigiLocker, contract platforms (DocuSign), and banking documents.

INTRODUCING MARBLE

Marble is a managed cloud platform from the Ponder team that streamlines the hardest part of crypto backends – offchain indexing – by offering zero-downtime deployments, built-in RPC connections, automatic observability, and collaboration tools. Built on the open-source Ponder engine used by Morpho, ENS, and Optimism, Marble lets developers go from local prototype to production in a few clicks without wrestling with re-orgs, backfills, or infrastructure sizing. While indexing is the first focus, Marble's primitives-not-opinionated-solutions approach will soon extend to other offchain workloads.

NEW PAYMENT STACK CIRCUMVENTING CENTRALIZED EXCHANGES

The new payment stack streamlines crypto payments by removing intermediaries like CEXs and aggregators. Users onboard with Privy (embedded wallets), complete one-time KYC, and use Bridge for seamless in-app on/off-ramps, while Stripe supplies banking rails, licenses, and merchant access. Compared to the traditional fragmented stack, this model collapses complexity and may become the dominant UX layer for crypto payments at scale.

THE STATE OF NEW CHAINS

Several high-profile chains launched in early 2025, but only Unichain and WorldChain show strong signs of sustainable traction. This has largely been driven by DeFi integration and identity-linked network effects, whereas others like Berachain and Ink have struggled post-airdrop due to sharp usage drop-offs. The market is maturing fast: token hype is fading, and only chains solving real user problems or embedding into core crypto infra are surviving.

CELESTIA DOWN BECAUSE OF UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS

Markets price tokens not just on utility or promise, but on the gap between story and execution. Celestia, while building real infrastructure, launched with high narrative expectations that are outpacing visible traction, creating “narrative bleed.” In contrast, Hyperliquid's underpromise-overdeliver approach has kept its narrative aligned with progress. Token launches effectively borrow against future execution and if that debt compounds unaddressed, the market punishes the lag.

TRADFI'S LIQUIDITY ISSUE IS CRYPTO'S SILENT RISK

Crypto markets suffer a hidden fragility: liquidity that appears deep in calm conditions vanishes under stress, much like ETFs and passive funds in TradFi post-2008. Fragmented order books across dozens of exchanges and phantom volumes from spoofing and wash trades mean tokens plunge with severe slippage when sentiment shifts. Embedding cross-chain bridging and smart liquidity routing into base protocol designs could unify pools, reduce fragmentation, and ensure capital flows smoothly. With execution speeds now near 10 ms and automated stablecoin trading dominant, the infrastructure exists, but what's needed is plumbing that treats asset movement as a foundational feature, not an afterthought.

TRON QUIETLY DOMINATES STABLECOIN ECONOMY

Tron has quietly become a stablecoin behemoth, ranking #2 in both blockchain revenue and on-chain stablecoin supply, second only to Ethereum.

CENTRALIZED EXCHANGES BETTING ON AN ONCHAIN FUTURE

Bybit has officially launched Byreal, a Solana-powered onchain liquidity network featuring RFQ-backed vaults, a token launchpad, and native integration with its centralized liquidity.

RAIN CONTINUES TO POWER AND SUPPORT THE STABLECOIN ECOSYSTEM

Rain's platform extends stablecoin utility beyond storage powering card programs for remittance apps, exchanges, neobanks, and global fintechs.

THE NEXT HYPERLIQUID IS HYPERLIQUID

Hyperliquid has generated over $350 million in trading profits since launch.

WALMART, AMAZON CONSIDER ISSUING OWN STABLECOINS

Walmart and Amazon are reportedly exploring issuing their own dollar-backed stablecoins to cut transaction costs and speed up e-commerce and cross-border payments by diverting billions in banking fees onto onchain rails. These brand-specific tokens would capitalize on growing regulatory clarity under the GENIUS Act, which aims to standardize stablecoin collateralization and AML compliance. Their moves follow Shopify's planned USDC integration and discussions among banks like JPMorgan and Bank of America about joint stablecoin launches, signaling a broader institutional embrace of regulated digital dollars.

SEC CLEARS TRUMP MEDIA FILING, OPEN DOOR TO BILLION-DOLLAR BITCOIN BUY

The SEC has declared effective Trump Media's registration for its Bitcoin treasury strategy, unlocking $2.3B in capital that can now be used to purchase BTC at the company's discretion. While the exact allocation and timeline remain undisclosed, the filing also includes a $12B universal shelf for future stock, debt, or warrant issuance.

CENTRALIZED EXCHANGES ARE COMING ONCHAIN

CEXes like Coinbase, Binance, and Bybit are going on-chain with hybrid products that blend DEX access and institutional safeguards. Coinbase offers Base-native swaps and KYC-gated Verified Pools, Binance Alpha curates early-stage tokens across chains, and Bybit's Byreal uses Solana for RFQ-style pricing and yield layers. These moves position CEXes as trusted gateways into permissionless markets while retaining Web2 UX.

YUPP: CRYPTO-INCENTIVIZED AI MODEL EVALUATION PLATFORM

Yupp is a new platform for evaluating and using LLMs. Users can query top models for multiple answers, then earn crypto credits or fiat via Stripe, PayPal, and Coinbase by providing feedback that helps train and benchmark models. That feedback feeds Yupp's “VIBE Score” leaderboard, giving AI builders provable, audit-ready evaluation data and giving users transparent rewards. Yupp utilizes blockchains as a “trust machine” for transparent, user-owned AI model evaluation.

MACRO LIQUIDITY, TRUMP-ERA POLICIES, AND CRYPTO'S INSTITUTIONAL SHIFT

Trump-era policies like the FIT21 Act, SEC leadership shifts, and stablecoin legalization are accelerating institutional adoption of crypto. With growing macro liquidity constraints and looming rate cuts, crypto is benefiting from structural policy clarity and rising ETF-driven inflows. While proposals like a U.S. sovereign BTC reserve remain theoretical, the cycle is clearly being driven by regulation-backed mainstream integration, not retail speculation.

ON THE FUTURE OF THE BLOB MEMPOOL

Ethereum's PeerDAS upgrade vertically shards onchain data availability checks, meaning validators now only verify a subset of each blob, yet the blobpool still forces every node to download full blobs, threatening to overwhelm lower-resourced operators as blob counts rise. To realign with the sharded DA checks, this proposal introduces a vertically-sharded blobpool where originators gossip only assigned blob columns, governed by a free, first-price auction with refunds for slot-based “blobpool tickets” to prevent DoS attacks under high demand. This market-driven approach preserves rollup inclusion guarantees and avoids the degraded service of simple horizontal sharding, while private blob flows and CL downloads remain intact. Remaining challenges include fine-tuning auction parameters, exploring reputation-based spam defenses, and coordinating rollups, builders, and stakers ahead of implementation.

ETHEREUM FOUNDATION DONATES TO TORNADO CASH CO-FOUNDER'S DEFENSE

The Ethereum Foundation has donated $500,000 to fund Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm's legal defense and will match up to $750,000 more in community contributions. His trial will start on July 14 in New York. Storm faces conspiracy charges for money laundering and sanctions violations tied to the 2022 OFAC sanction on Tornado Cash, though unlicensed money-transmitter counts were dropped under the previous administration. The Foundation's support is justified by its belief that privacy is normal and writing code is not a crime.

STRIPE, BRIDGE, AND PRIVY: BUILDING THE ONCHAIN BANKING STACK

Together, Bridge and Privy create a “Regulatory Arbitrage as a Service” platform that avoids traditional banking custody and licensing hurdles. This integrated Fintech 3.0 OS empowers developers to spin up programmable wallets, stablecoin payouts, and global USD rails via API with Stripe-grade UX and compliance. Looking ahead, Stripe is poised to expand into onchain lending, digital asset licensing, FX rails, and even a potential consumer app to round out its programmable finance ecosystem.

PROSPECTIVE SOL ETF ISSUERS SUBMIT UPDATED S-1 FILINGS

Franklin Templeton, Galaxy Digital, Grayscale, VanEck, and Fidelity have all submitted updated S-1 filings for spot Solana ETFs following recent SEC outreach signaling growing momentum toward approval.

ETH CONTINUES STRONG NET INFLOWS

Ethereum spot ETFs have recorded their longest streak of net inflows as of June 13, signaling rising institutional accumulation even as ETH price remains below prior highs.