JupUSD is an Ethena whitelabel stablecoin backed primarily by BlackRock's tokenized USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund.
U.S. spot crypto ETF flows, stablecoin supply, prediction markets, perp DEX activity, and the DAT craze were among the data trends of 2025.
Lighter is set to allocate half of the token supply to the ecosystem, while the remaining half is allocated to the team and investors.
Hyperliquid Labs is set to receive its first major allocation of HYPE tokens, worth about $31.2 million, on Jan. 6.
The proposal, which transforms UNI into a value-accruing asset, received more than 125 million votes in support with just 742 dissenting.
The proposal would activate protocol fee switches, burn 100 million UNI, and formally align Uniswap Labs with governance.
Coinbase is rolling out stock trading, prediction markets via Kalshi, Solana DEX trading through Jupiter, custom stablecoins and more.
Following the success of Kalshi and Polymarket, major firms such as Coinbase and Gemini have moved to enter the prediction markets space.
While its perpetual contracts remain unavailable to U.S. traders, dYdX Labs said it will track regulatory developments from the SEC and CFTC.
Cascade raised $15 million in seed funding in a round co-led by Polychain and Variant, with support from Coinbase Ventures.
Hyperliquid Strategies, which filed for a $1 billion shelf registration in October to fund its HYPE treasury, approved a stock repurchase program.
The suspected token, called "year of the yellow fruit," was promoted using official Binance channels just seconds after it was issued onchain.
Lighter also recently rolled out equities perp trading, starting with COIN and HOOD, and expanded foreign exchange offerings.
This is Phase 1 of the rollout, so staking rewards aren’t live yet; they are expected to begin in Phase 2, early next year.
The following article is adapted from The Block’s newsletter, The Daily, which comes out on weekday afternoons.
CEO Vladimir Novakovski explains the infrastructure powering the perp DEX, and why Lighter opted for a zero-fee structure for retail users.
The compromise comes nearly two years to the day after a similar attack took down their front-ends in November, 2023.
Vector’s tech will plug into Coinbase’s DEX integration, while Tensor Labs shifts its NFT marketplace and TNSR token to Tensor Foundation.
A debate over the XRP Ledger’s (XRPL) economy model has ignited after Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), David Schwartz, directly addressed questions about taxation on the blockchain. Critics have suggested that if XRP holders do not earn from the ecosystem, someone must be collecting a tax. Schwartz’s response challenges this assumption, framing the XRP Ledger as a public utility rather than a profit-generating mechanism for token holders. The debate has since sparked broader conversations about real-world use cases, passive income expectations, and the underlying purpose of the XRPL blockchain. Ripple CTO Says No Tax On The XRP Ledger In a post on X social media, Schwartz clarified that the XRP Ledger does not impose a tax on its users. He explained that the ledger allows holders to issue assets, trade, create NFTs, and make payments without central authority extracting value from these financial activities. He also stated that transaction fees and reserves exist solely as anti-spam measures, not as a mechanism for wealth extraction. Related Reading: Ripple CTO Explains Real Value Of XRP Ledger And Why It Doesn’t Trigger Price Rallies The Ripple CTO emphasized that ownership of XRP does not give anyone the right to collect fees or profits from the ledger itself. He drew a comparison to Bitcoin’s blockchain, highlighting that the XRPL provides similar decentralized functionality while also supporting features such as Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs), stablecoins, and NFTs. These features work without XRP holders needing to profit from the system’s operations. Schwartz’s remarks on taxes on the XRPL blockchain come after Matthew Sigel, head of digital asset research at VanEck, raised questions about who benefits if XRP holders do not earn anything from the ecosystem and the protocol itself does not generate value. In response, other members of the community, including XRPL dUNL validator Vet, emphasized that the absence of a tax encourages developers and users to focus on building meaningful, functional use cases rather than relying on passive income. XRP’s Utility Outweighs Tax Considerations The XRPL tax debate between Schwartz and Sigel also intersected with discussions about the blockchain’s real-world applications. In a much earlier post, Sigel questioned the blockchain’s relevance, subtly hinting that its supporters overstate its functionality. Related Reading: XRP Leading A $400 Trillion Revolution? How Ripple’s Tokenization Campaign Is Sparking Utility In response, an XRP community member pointed to the recent collaboration between Ondo Finance, Ripple, and BlackRock, in which the XRP Ledger will be utilized for stablecoin issuance, minting, Treasury asset redemption, and liquidity enhancement in financial markets. While Sigel acknowledged the innovative initiative, he reiterated that these applications do not directly generate revenue for XRP token holders, highlighting a gap between network activity and personal gain. Schwartz responded by explaining that the value of XRPL stems from enabling financial independence and reducing reliance on intermediaries, rather than providing passive income. He added that focusing on tax collection as a measure of success can overshadow the blockchain’s purpose of promoting open access and meaningful innovation. Featured image from Peakpx, chart from Tradingview.com
1inch unveiled Aqua, a shared liquidity protocol designed to let multiple DeFi strategies run on the same capital without locking funds, at Devconnect.
Uniswap has unveiled its Continuous Clearing Auction protocol for onchain token auctions with automatic liquidity seeding and optional ZK-based privacy.
The Bermuda Monetary Authority issued its first license to a decentralized derivatives protocol, the DAO-governed DerivaDEX.
OKX is following competitors like Coinbase by integrating DeFi trading directly into their core self-custody wallet product.
Dromos Labs unveiled a central liquidity hub called Aero to serve as a home base for additional EVM extensions beyond Base and Optimism.
An onchain analyst speculated Hyperliquid paused transactions after a trader tried to prop up the price of memecoin POPCAT.
Perp DEX Lighter has raised $68 million as venture capitalists double down on the surging market for decentralized perpetual trading platforms.
Uniswap founder Hayden Adams and key Uniswap Foundation leaders proposed a plan to burn UNI tokens and merge the organizations.
The following article is adapted from The Block’s newsletter, The Daily, which comes out on weekday afternoons.
USDX, which had an all-time circulating supply of $683 million, is trading below $0.60, raising concerns of potential defaults.
Balancer’s preliminary report says a rounding flaw in swap logic caused the recent exploit, with recovery efforts underway across affected chains and forks.