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AerodromeFi has emerged as the dominant DEX on Coinbase's Base chain. It drives over 50% of Base's TVL, offering unmatched liquidity efficiency through its veAERO flywheel. Aligned with Coinbase's strategy for onchain growth, Aerodrome is positioned to play a pivotal role in expanding global DeFi access, supported by major investors and innovative partnerships like Universal Asset.
ETH is a new form of permissionless money. It cannot be censored or shut down by a third party. ETH has a low inflation rate of 0.8%, the same as Bitcoin's for the next four years, and is ultimately aligned with the general expectation of a currency's inflation schedule. Even with low rollup fees, enough rollups could lead to massive ETH burn and solidify the asset as the best data availability and settlement layer.
AI agents are emerging as a powerful new crypto trend. They initially function like memecoins but have the potential to evolve into “ownable agents” with their own tokens that grow in value as their utility and prominence increase. With advances in ease of creation, distribution, and compelling narratives about their future potential, these agents have the potential to catalyze a new cycle of crypto adoption, much like NFTs and DeFi did in previous cycles.
The next major market correction is predicted to come around Q1 2025, coinciding with the announcement of U.S. crypto regulations. However, a long-term positive regulatory framework could lead to a rally post-correction, particularly benefiting fundamentally strong “Dino” coins like AAVE, MKR, and ETH, which could set the stage for a potential multi-year supercycle.
The current memecoin meta of mass-producing tokens prioritizes short-term gains far more than previous eras like ICOs and DeFi, which had valuable and lasting projects.
Morocco's central bank governor has announced that a draft law to regulate crypto is under review, potentially ending the underground use of crypto, which was banned in 2017.
Ethereum has reclaimed its position as the leading blockchain for Tether (USDT) supply, surpassing Tron's $58.1B with $60.3B., marking Ethereum's first lead since 2022.
Base has reached a record daily transaction count of 9.M, marking a ~30x increase since January.
Kraken's NFT marketplace will be fully shut down by February 2025 as it failed to see any meaningful traction.
Crypto investment products have seen record-breaking weekly net inflows of $3.13B, largely driven by U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, with BlackRock's IBIT contributing $2.05B. This surge pushed YTD net inflows to $37B and assets under management to a peak of $153B. As Bitcoin approaches the $100,000 milestone, altcoins like Solana and XRP are also attracting notable inflows.
Bernstein analysts expect MicroStrategy will acquire 4% of Bitcoin's circulating supply by 2033 and have raised its stock price target to $600 by the end of 2025. Analysts attribute the firm's bullish trajectory to favorable regulatory conditions, institutional adoption, and a strategic approach to scaling its Bitcoin holdings while managing liquidity risks.
Archax, in collaboration with Ripple, has launched the first tokenized money market fund on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), using abrdn's $3.8B USD Liquidity Fund. This milestone highlights the XRPL's growing role in real-world asset tokenization and institutional DeFi. Archax hopes to improve operational efficiency and settlement processes for financial institutions.
Bullet is Solana's first ultra-low latency optimistic rollup. It is designed to power the Zeta X decentralized exchange with CEX-level performance through its streaming sequencer model. The system achieves sub-50ms latency. It uses Solana for both settlement and data availability, with ZK fraud proofs for security and a VM-less architecture for maximum flexibility. Bullet aims to enable high-performance DeFi applications that combine centralized exchange speed with decentralization security guarantees.
Crypto agents are emerging as autonomous blockchain-based systems designed to execute transactions and smart contracts without human intervention. Instead of being replacement technology, agents are positioning themselves as user-empowering tools. Lit Protocol uses a network of distributed private keys to enable secure autonomous operations for sensitive tasks. Current applications include decentralized trading, data sharing with user control, and content verification systems.
A new category of personality-driven AI agents has emerged that includes projects ranging from research analysts to investment DAOs and virtual influencers to podcasters. Their valuations range from the low-millions to $50+ million, largely driven by unique features like onchain tipping, multimodal content creation, and automated investment strategies. Notable innovations include Luna Virtuals' cross-platform presence and real-world engagement, Vader AI's agent investment DAO, and Holoworld's audiovisual capabilities through AVA.
Solana-based meme coin platform Pump.Fun has paused its live-stream feature indefinitely following backlash over harmful and violent incidents captured during streams, some involving minors. While users can still create and trade tokens, the platform is overhauling its moderation policies to ensure better safety and transparency.
A study analyzing over 1,500 memecoins promoted by 377 Twitter influencers found that 76% of influencers promote “dead” memecoins, meaning 86% of these coins lose 90% of their value within three months. Notably, only 3% of promoted tokens achieve a 10x gain, with smaller influencers (e.g., <50k followers) showing slightly better outcomes than their larger counterparts.
Solana's DEX trading volume exceeded $100B for the first time in November, reaching $109.8B, nearly double Ethereum's $55B for the month.
Fluid, a new DeFi protocol with $800M in TVL and $16M in annualized fees, has a novel DEX design that integrates lending and trading through its “Smart Debt” system, allowing debt positions to serve as trading liquidity through automatic rebalancing.
Ethereum's ecosystem is emerging as a comprehensive solution for multiple financial and technological challenges.
Hong Kong's largest digital bank, ZA Bank, now allows retail users to buy Bitcoin and Ethereum directly via its app.
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Cantor Fitzgerald has acquired a 5% stake in Tether valued at approximately $600 million, coinciding with the appointment of CEO Howard Lutnick as Trump's Secretary of Commerce. The financial services firm holds the majority of Tether's $134 billion USDT reserves in Treasury bills, acting as the stablecoin issuer's primary banking partner. The political implications of this arrangement are significant, as Lutnick's new role could influence regulatory oversight of Tether, particularly as the company faces investigations for potential illicit activities.
Franklin Templeton, a firm with $1.5 trillion in assets under management, has formed a strategic partnership with the Sui network to support ecosystem builders and deploy novel blockchain technologies. The partnership follows Grayscale's earlier establishment of the Grayscale SUI Trust and the launch of major stablecoins like USDC on the network.
Account Abstraction (AA) simplifies Ethereum wallets by enabling externally owned accounts (EOAs) to function like smart contracts and supporting advanced features like custom signature schemes (e.g., Passkeys). Various EIPs support this (EIP-4337, EIP-3074, and EIP-7702). EIP-4337 enables smart contract wallets, EIP-3074 couples EOAs with smart contracts using new opcodes, and EIP-7702 delegates EOA functionality to external contracts without requiring major EVM changes.
Ethereum's block production is highly centralized, with two entities (Beaverbuild and Titanbuild) responsible for over 95% of blocks, raising concerns about potential transaction censorship. EIP-7805 proposes FOCIL (Fork-choice Enforced Inclusion Lists) to enforce the inclusion of specific transactions in blocks, improving censorship resistance without altering the centralization of block-building itself.
The memecoin sector has been leading the industry in terms of mindshare and retail volume, surpassing DeFi with a market cap exceeding $120 billion. It has evolved since Dogecoin's early dominance through various phases, including the rise of Shiba Inu, Pepe, and Solana-based memes, with new trends emerging nearly weekly this year. Dog-themed tokens remain the largest category, but new coins in the Internet Culture and Sentient AI categories are emerging. Memecoins will likely follow the broader crypto market, with a few established coins maintaining longevity while new opportunities in untapped themes.
Current intent-based applications like CoW Swap and UniswapX operate in isolation, creating fragmented ecosystems that limit broader market efficiency and user experience. A new framework, the Modular Intent Stack, along with the ERC-7683 standard from Across and Uniswap, aims to create a unified infrastructure for cross-chain intents and solver integration. The implementation's three components, standardized intent representation, propagation via DA networks, and decentralized solver selection through Auction AVSs, could transform the fragmented landscape into an “invisible garden” with seamless interactions and composability.
The crypto industry is emerging from a two-year consolidation phase characterized by infrastructure optimization rather than groundbreaking innovation, with speculation and stablecoins emerging as the dominant use cases. Technical improvements have led to abundant blockspace, near-zero transaction fees, and mature tooling, while established protocols like Solana, Ethereum, and Uniswap continue to strengthen their market positions. The next phase of development hinges on regulatory clarity and an influx of new talent.
Launching a new blockchain is very costly, requiring tens of millions of dollars for top-tier infrastructure, ecosystem development, operational costs (e.g., L1 validators, L2 sequencers), and legal compliance. This makes it unlikely that the industry will be able to sustain thousands of chains, so it will probably stabilize to around a few hundred.
The Zircuit Layer 2, touted as the “safest blockchain for DeFi and staking,” is releasing its token for stakers today.
Coinbase's early focus on design transformed it from a functional Bitcoin platform to one that prioritizes trust, simplicity, and accessibility for a broader audience.
Pumpdotfun has transitioned from a memecoin launchpad to a broader fair launch platform.
Base network's TVL surpassed $10B, growing ~5% in a week, while its TPS hit a record 104.47 yesterday, making it the second Ethereum L2 to achieve this milestone after Arbitrum.
AAVE holds ~$30B across all 13 of its supported chains.
SEC Chair Gary Gensler will step down on January 20, 2025. His tenure included updates to equity and treasury markets, corporate governance, and crypto regulation. He helped foster global cooperation on audit oversight.
South Korean police have officially identified North Korea as the entity behind the 2019 Upbit exchange hack, where 342K ETH (now valued at >$1B) was stolen. This marks the first time South Korea has publicly attributed a crypto heist to North Korea. South Korean police cited evidence such as IP addresses and asset flows. They recovered a small portion of the funds in collaboration with the FBI and Swiss authorities.
Maple Finance is expanding to Base to provide institutional lending. It will leverage LayerZero and AerodromeFi to strengthen Base's onchain economy.
Stripe is adding support for its crypto products on the Aptos Layer 1 following Circle's announcement that it will natively support USDC on the chain. It will provide onramp services while Circle will add Aptos to its Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol for native USDC bridging.
Decentralized Science (DeSci), a movement that leverages blockchain to solve science's centralization issues like funding and open access, is gaining momentum. Recent events, including Binance Labs' investment and support from figures like Vitalik Buterin, spotlighted top protocols like VitaDAO (longevity research) and ResearchHub (academic collaboration), showcasing the sector's long-term potential despite questions about sustainability.
The two main AI agent ecosystems are Virtuals, a Base-native stack that brings many unique features to agents, and Eliza, a framework for building Solana-based agents with trading access. Both projects are planning to add agent-to-agent communication support. Other platforms offer unique features like phone calls with agents, music and video creation, and productivity automation. Going forward, DeFi agents will start to be released alongside more platforms and coordination layers.
Celestia's "Lazybridging" plan aims to enable seamless cross-chain interoperability for a multi-rollup ecosystem, eliminating user and liquidity fragmentation. By integrating a ZK-based IBC client at its base layer and leveraging its single-slot finality and IBC support to access assets across blockchains, Celestia enables instant, native rollup connections, positioning roll-ups as an attractive alternative to monolithic chains.
The rush into stablecoins has created a trillion-dollar opportunity across eight key areas, including high-yield stablecoins for DeFi, on-ramping into emerging markets, and cross-chain stablecoin APIs. Additional opportunities lie in distributor-issued stablecoins, onchain foreign exchange platforms, and leveraging real-world assets (RWA) for stablecoin reserve yields, to name a few.
With foundational infrastructure ready, the Base team's focus will shift to scaling on-the-ground presence and delivering viral consumer products to expand the global onchain economy in 2025.
The $SUI blockchain experienced a downtime of 51 minutes with no block production, highlighting potential challenges in its infrastructure or operations.
Bitwise has registered a trust in Delaware for a spot Solana ETF.
The Trump admin's favorable crypto outlook, along with Ethereum's deflationary trends and rising institutional interest, is strengthening the case for ETH as a top-performing asset, particularly with staking levels at all-time highs and potential staking-enabled ETFs.
Russia plans to restrict crypto mining in 13 regions, including key hubs like Irkutsk, to prevent power shortages during peak energy demand seasons. These restrictions, if approved, would significantly impact the country's crypto mining industry, which relies on cheap hydropower and favorable conditions in Siberian regions, adding to the challenges posed by recent regulatory laws.
FDIC Chair Martin Gruenberg has announced his resignation effective January 19 amid criticism from Rep. Tom Emmer for his alleged role in “Operation Chokepoint 2.0,” which pressured banks to restrict crypto services and contributed to Silvergate and Signature Bank's collapses. The leadership change comes as industry leaders reveal details about regulatory pressure on crypto-friendly banks. This departure potentially signals a shift toward a more accommodating regulatory environment for crypto under the upcoming administration.