(50/52) Weekly Market Insights: Ethereum’s Counterattack

Hot News

• Bitcoin surpassed $100,000 15 years, 11 months and 1 day after the genesis block. In the past week, Bitcoin ETFs recorded $2.73 billion in inflows, while Ethereum ETFs reached a record $836.69 million in inflows. Ethereum has outperformed Bitcoin for three consecutive weeks, gaining 8% last week, while Bitcoin only grew 4%.

Macro Outlook

• The U.S. ISM manufacturing PMI increased to 51.5 in November, higher than the expected 50.5; but the ISM service industry PMI fell to 52.1 in November, far below the forecast of 55.5.
• The U.S. non-farm payrolls added 227,000 jobs in November, beating the expected 200,000. However, the unemployment rate rose to 4.2% from 4.1% last month, in line with market expectations. Both the labor force participation rate and the employment-to-population ratio fell slightly in November.

The upcoming economic calendar includes:

• Wednesday, December 11, 9:30 pm: US November inflation rate
• Wednesday, December 12, 9:30 pm: US November PPI

Cryptocurrency Market Quick Facts

• Reports indicate that Trump will appoint Davis O. Sacks as White House Director of Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency. Sacks is an advisor to the 0x protocol, founder of Craft Ventures, which invested in dYdX, and early investor in Multicoin Capital.
• Donald Trump nominated Paul Atkins, a former consultant to Reserve Protocol and Securitize, as the new SEC chairman.
• The National Center for Public Policy Research has submitted a shareholder proposal to Amazon, suggesting that Bitcoin be included in the company's treasury reserves at the 2025 annual shareholders' meeting.
• Coinbase 50 Index adds AXS, BLUR, JASMY, KSM and EGLD.

Layer 1 and Layer 2 Public Chains

• Chintai has partnered with PowerDime to tokenize a $250 million virtual power purchase agreement (VPAA) to enable on-chain trading of renewable energy.
• Particle Network launches cross-chain trading platform UniversalX.
• The Movement Network mainnet Beta version is launched, and users will be able to claim MOVE on Ethereum and cross-chain bridge to the network.
• Mode launches Synth testnet on Bittensor subnet for financial prediction.

Dapps

• The Render Network passed RNP-016, 017, and 018, integrated OctaneRender for Arnold and Blender, and added rewards for artists and AI clients in the second year of emission.
• Jupiter passed Jupuary Vote 2 with 87% of votes in favor, a proposal that emphasizes clear allocations to stakers to reward historical consistency, real user parameters, and allocations to holders and voters.
• Aerodrome launches AERO Fed, where AERO holders can vote to adjust emission rates.
• PancakeSwap launched its BNB-based token issuance platform SpringBoard, with the top-ranked token CAKEDOG having a market cap of approximately $2 million.
• SushiSwap announced its 2025 plan, including a trading platform on Solana, an order book perpetual contract DEX, an LVR AMM solution, and a SushiSwap aggregator.
• The SSV passed a proposal to allocate a 4-year operating budget of $55.3 million, diversify the DAO treasury, and ensure long-term growth and stability of the network by controlling minting and fee burning.
• Kamino launches Kamino Swap, an intent-based exchange that provides best price execution for liquidators and traders.
• MilkyWay launches re-staking service with TIA and TIA LSTs, and about $3 million of TIA has been accumulated in the pool.
• Wormhole’s W Staking Rewards Program (SRP) is now live, with approximately 14% of the token’s circulating supply currently staked.
• Osmosis announced support for a native BTC bridge on the platform, with the platform’s weekly trading volume reaching its highest level since April 2024.
• Ritual launched its private testnet as an execution layer for AI models, supporting both on-chain and off-chain smart contracts. The protocol is funded by Archetype Ventures and Polychain Capital, among others.
• Hashflow, an intent-based DEX and ZK settlement layer, proposed to use 50% of the protocol fees for buybacks and destruction.
• Meteora, the DEX on Solana, launches M3M3, a (3,3) staking mechanism designed for Memecoins.
• Ora Protocol launches the Buddhist Religious Model BRM as the initial model for its platform. BRM is a large language model built from SFT and RLHF and the Humanistic Buddhist Corpus dataset, including classic Buddhist scriptures.

Governance/Project Updates

• Instadapp proposed to reshape INST into FLUID, and the proposal included protocol-owned liquidity, a 100% revenue repurchase plan, CEX listing allocations, and Fluid DEX v2.
• Blast proposes to use the native proceeds from ETH and USD stablecoin deposits in the network to buy back BLAST tokens.
• Pudgy Penguins announced that it will launch the PENGU token on Solana in 2024, with 25.9% of the supply allocated to the Pudgy community, 24.12% to other communities, and 0.35% to FTT holders.
• Adidas and StepN announced that 1,200 pairs of the physical shoe will be released in December.
• Microsoft shareholders will vote on whether to invest in Bitcoin on December 10.
• Morpho’s vote on delegating the protocol code to the Berachain Foundation will end on December 10, and based on current progress, the proposal is expected to pass.
• Frax Finance expects to announce details of Vision 2030 on December 11.
• Polygon expects to launch the AggLayer v0.2 testnet on December 9 to achieve AggLayer cross-chain interoperability.
• Treasure DAO is expected to make a major announcement on December 11th.
• SushiSwap proposed to liquidate all SUSHI stablecoins, BTC, ETH, and other decentralized finance tokens they hold. The proposal will end on December 14.
• Curve’s vote to increase scrvUSD’s fee share from 20% to 50% is expected to close on December 15th.
• EigenLayer proposes Rewards v2, which enables AVS to directly reward operators based on performance, variable operator fees, and batch reward claims. The upgrade is expected to be launched in January.
• ZKsync is expected to launch its cross-Elastic Chains interoperability Ignite on January 6.
• Ethena announced a partnership with the on-chain options protocol Derive, and DRV is expected to go live on January 15. 5% of the token supply will be allocated to sENA holders.
• Safe launched Safenet, a transaction processing network that connects the first-layer network, the second-layer network and even off-chain systems into a single unified experience. The team expects to deliver the Alpha version in the first quarter of 2025.
• Synapse Labs proposes to launch a 12-month buyback program with a target of 5 million SYN or 2% of the token circulation, plans to reduce emissions by 65%, and explore a staked SYN model based on network fee distribution.
• HMX, a leveraged perpetual exchange built on GMX, proposes to launch a new central limit order book (CLOB) model in 2025, redesign token economics, and rebrand.

Token Unlock

• IO tokens will be unlocked on December 11th, accounting for 2.88% of the total token supply.
• APT tokens will be unlocked on December 12th, representing 2.11% of the total token supply.
• STRK tokens will be unlocked on December 15th, representing 2.84% of the total token supply.
• ARB tokens will be unlocked on December 16th, accounting for 2.26% of the total token supply.
• APE tokens will be unlocked on December 17th, accounting for 2.16% of the total token supply.
• WELL tokens will be unlocked on December 23rd, accounting for 1.21% of the total token supply.
• IMX tokens will be unlocked on December 27th, representing 1.44% of the total token supply.
• GRASS tokens will be unlocked on December 28th, representing 1.52% of the total token supply.
• PRIME tokens will be unlocked on December 31st, representing 1.47% of the total token supply.
• OP tokens will be unlocked on December 31st, representing 2.55% of the total token supply.