Adam Efrima is the SSV Core team Co-founder. He has been active in the crypto industry since 2013. Over eight years living in China working in the financial industry and fintech space, Adam has worked in CITIC Bank covering outbound investments for Chinese SOEs, he was also in charge of setting up the eToro Shanghai operation. Since then, Adam has been deeply involved in Ethereum staking, co-founding top performing staking project Bloxstaking as well as co-founding SSV Network, a decentralized validator infrastructure for ETH staking.

Adam Simmons is Chief Strategy Officer at RDX Works, a key contributor to the Radix public ledger. He has over 13 years of experience in building &amp; growing businesses in a range of industries including online video, blockchain &amp; digital marketing. With experience in both senior leadership &amp; hands-on roles, he has repeatedly recruited, managed, and trained highly successful teams within marketing, customer success and operations functions. Adam is also a previous member of the UK Paralympic Sprint Kayaking Team and has competed in multiple World and European Championships.


Adam Swick is the Chief Growth Officer at Marathon Digital Holdings. Prior to joining Marathon, he served as a principal at Refinery Ventures, where he was responsible for identifying and recommending business strategies to accelerate the growth of all companies in Refinery’s portfolio. Before Refinery, Swick was the director of strategic finance at Kraken Digital Asset Exchange, where he managed the company’s balance sheet, debt program, investor relations, and all forecasting activities. Prior to Kraken, he founded Swick Capital, a crypto-asset hedge fund, worked at Pritzker Group Venture Capital, and was a consultant at Boston Consulting Group. Swick holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a BS in finance from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Adrian Brink is the co-founder of Namada and Anoma, where he focuses on building privacy-preserving systems that are resilient to global crises. Previously, he was a core developer at Tendermint (Cosmos) and worked at the Web3 Foundation. He also co-founded Cryptium Labs, which was later sold to Chorus One, and Metastate, where he contributed to major upgrades to the Tezos protocol​.

Adrien Stern is the founder &amp; CEO of Reveel, the omnichain payments infrastructure that enables one-click cross-chain payments to connect people across borders and networks. Before founding Reveel, Adrien led digital transformation efforts at BNP Paribas CIB. He was also previously a venture builder, and owns Bridge Music, a record label and recording studio. Adrien has a Bachelor’s degree in Sciences of Management from The University of Lausanne and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Esade. 

Alex Hoffman is Head of Ecosystem at Superposition Finance. Superposition is revolutionizing DeFi by addressing its core challenges through robust risk management powered by Concordia’s best-in-class risk engine, omnichain functionality, and transparency.

Alexei Zamyatin is a co-founder of BOB, a first-of-its-kind hybrid Layer-2 powered by Bitcoin and Ethereum. He has been a Bitcoin and interoperability research contributor since 2015 and is most known for his work on trustless cross-chain bridges and L2s. Alexei holds a PhD in computer science from Imperial College London.


Alison Haire is the CEO and founder of Lilypad, a serverless, decentralized compute network that democratizes access to computational power by providing scalable infrastructure for AI, machine learning and other high-demand processes. Before founding Lilypad, she held roles at companies such as Filecoin, IBM and Accenture. Under her leadership, Lilypad leverages idle GPU capacity worldwide to fuel an open AI economy, providing cost-effective and scalable compute resources. Her work focuses on making high-performance computing accessible to more developers and researchers, while challenging the dominance of large centralized cloud providers​​.

With over 20 years of experience leading and designing games and tech companies, Alun is well-versed in creating innovative products that tackle experiential and developer challenges. In addition to his stewardship of LAOS Network, he is CEO and co-founder of the company building LAOS, Freeverse, which focuses on building scalable blockchain infrastructure. His history as the co-creator of ‘Barcelona World Race - THE GAME,’ a cutting-edge video game enabling virtual participation in real-world events, and his wider passion for gaming, have fed into his vision for LAOS Network as a solution for the intersection of Web3 tech with both gaming and real-world applications. Alun also led Shar3d.io, a pioneering company enabling collaborative 3D web applications, and served as CTO of Bodypal.com, a virtual garment services company. He holds a Ph.D. in Medical Physics from University College London.



Amanda Cassatt is the founder and CEO of Serotonin. Amanda previously served as Chief Marketing Officer of ConsenSys from 2016 through 2019. Joining one year after the launch of Ethereum, Amanda played a crucial role in defining, creating, and growing the narrative for ConsenSys, Ethereum, and blockchain overall.

Amanda stewarded the ConsenSys brand through its global expansion across enterprises, governments, developers, and consumers. She created and scaled the marketing team to over 50 people, serving both the ConsenSys brand and 50+ portfolio companies such as MetaMask, Infura, Truffle, and Gitcoin; managing teams in product marketing, growth, design, content, community, events, email, analytics and SEO. Amanda’s contributions to some of the most successful product launches, token sales and fundraises landed her on Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2016. Amanda is the author of the world's first web3 marketing book, Web3 Marketing: A Handbook for the Next Internet Revolution.

Amanda Keleher currently serves as Chief People Officer at Consensys, one of the largest and fastest-growing companies in the blockchain technology space. A well-rounded business leader with an over 25-year career in the technology space, Amanda is the driving force behind the human element of Consensys where she is responsible for overseeing all of the aspects of people, from building and maintaining the company culture to harnessing human capital as a key driver of business. 

Before joining ConsenSys, Amanda served as the Head of People at ThoughtWorks, a global technology consultancy company, for nearly ten years, where she led the global scale expansion by opening offices around the world and recruiting a diverse workforce at a time when the DevOps movement had just been born and a new skill set were yet to be developed. After her time at ThoughWorks, she served as the Executive Vice President, People &amp; Culture of Index Exchange, one of the world’s premier ad tech organizations; and as VP of People at Little Bits and Intent Media where she excelled in designing effective and creative strategies to attract and retain world-class talent in hyper competitive environments

Andrea Berry is a seasoned online video strategist with 15+ years of experience in transformative media partnerships. 

Her early successes include helping to launch Qello Concerts, the first direct-to-consumer live-music OTT service, later transforming it into Qello Media Services and Vimeo’s OTT channels offering across various industries as their first strategic sales director for their enterprise.

Currently, as the Head of Business Development at Theta Labs, Andrea leverages her expertise in online video and blockchain to drive strategic partnerships and growth opportunities for the company. She helps enterprises take advantage and lean into the opportunities Web3 presents. 

Andrew Redden is the CEO and CTO of Last Network, a blockchain platform focused on sustainable cash flow and reinvestment. Previously, he worked at Gitcoin and has contributed to numerous DeFi and Web3 projects. Redden's career reflects a commitment to developing technologies that prioritize long-term viability and community engagement​.

Andrew Thurman is a Data Editor based in Washington, DC. He previously wrote for CoinDesk and Cointelegraph, and worked in various roles for Chainlink and Nansen. His analysis has been quoted in The Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes, Fortune, Reuters, The BBC, CNBC, and elsewhere. Contact Andrew at andrew@blockworks.co.

Andrey Sergeenkov writes educational articles as a freelancer. His works have been published in Coindesk, Cointelegraph, Entrepreneur and CoinMarketCap. He believes that transforming society towards lifelong learning, combined with decentralization in government and business, will lead to exponential social development.

Andy Bromberg is CEO of Beam and Contributor to the Eco Protocol. Eco has raised more than $90 million from an array of leading investors, including a16z Crypto, L Catterton, Activant Capital, Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and others. Prior to Eco, Andy was Co-founder and President of CoinList. Andy is also a founding board member at FreeWorld, a non-profit seeking to end institutionalized poverty in the United States by providing access to living-wage jobs for people with criminal histories. He studied Mathematics and Computer Science at Stanford University and co-founded the Stanford Bitcoin Group.

An established and versatile Financial Executive with over two decades of experience running multiple trading businesses across top-level banks such as HSBC, Barclays, and UBS. After running the top Agency and SSA business for both UBS and Barclays, he took over Emerging Markets macro trading for Barclays. In 2018, wanting to go deeper into Emerging Markets he took a role as Head of Latam local markets trading where he was responsible for trading activities across Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Chile. In 2021 DeMartino moved into Crypto when he became CEO and founder of Coinbase Risk Strategies focused on DeFi and Derivatives trading. More recently he started Trident Digital Group, a crypto-native solutions firm that is focused on lending and safe yield generation and stablecoin adoption.


Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio.

Prior to founding SkyBridge in 2005, Scaramucci co-founded investment partnership Oscar Capital Management, which was sold to Neuberger Berman in 2001. Earlier, he worked in Private Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs &amp; Co.

In 2022, Scaramucci was ranked #47 in Cointelegraph’s Top 100 Influencers in Crypto and Blockchain. In 2016, he was ranked #85 in Worth Magazine’s Power 100: The 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. In 2011, he received Ernst &amp; Young’s New York Financial Services “Entrepreneur of the Year” Award.  Anthony is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and a board member of the Federal Enforcement Homeland Security Foundation. He is the author of five books.

Scaramucci served on President Donald J. Trump’s 16-person Presidential Transition Team Executive Committee, and in 2017 briefly served as Chief Strategy Officer of the Export-Import (EXIM) Bank and White House Communications Director.

Scaramucci, a native of Long Island, New York, holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Tufts University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.

Antoni is a co-founder of Aleph Zero Foundation (Switzerland), an organization overseeing the development of the Aleph Zero blockchain, and a Managing Partner of Cardinal Cryptography (Poland), firm focused on core development of the Aleph Zero ecosystem.

Ari Juels is the Weill Family Foundation and Joan and Sanford I. Weill Professor in the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and the Technion and a Computer Science faculty member at Cornell University. He is a Co-Director of the Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts (IC3). He is also Chief Scientist at Chainlink Labs. He is the author of crypto thriller novel The Oracle (Talos Press), which was released on 20 February 2024.

Austin Alexander is co-founder of LayerTwo Labs, a company focused on advancing the Bitcoin ecosystem through innovative solutions and specializing in the development of Drivechain, a specific type of blockchain sidechain designed to foster creativity and scalability within Bitcoin.

Austin Campbell is the founder and managing partner of Zero Knowledge Consulting and an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. Previously, he has run portfolio management at Paxos for the stablecoins as well as being the chief risk officer of Paxos National Trust, has managed fixed income trading desks at JP Morgan and Citi, and has been a portfolio manager and structurer at Stone Ridge, the parent of NYDIG. He holds a BS in Mathematics from CSU Chico and a MBA from NYU Stern.

Ben Mills is the co-founder of Meso, a payments platform connecting banks and blockchains. Prior to Meso, Ben spent a decade building payments products as an early team member at Braintree (acquired by PayPal), as Head of Product at Venmo, and working on Solana Pay at Solana Labs.

Ben Rubin is the CEO and co-founder of Towns, a decentralized messaging platform dedicated to redefining online communication. Rubin has a rich background and a decade of experience in creating digital spaces that build trust and foster human connection. Prior to founding Here Not There Labs, the developer of Towns, Ben founded two venture-backed startups, Meerkat and Houseparty, both of which reimagined how people interact digitally. He scaled his communication products to hundreds of millions of users and raised over $70M in funding from Sequoia Capital and Greylock. After Houseparty was acquired by Epic Games in 2019, Ben went on to found Here Not There Labs, a venture-backed startup with over $30M in funding from a16z crypto and Benchmark Capital.

Ben Strack is a senior reporter covering macro and crypto-native funds, financial advisors, structured products, and the integration of digital assets and DeFi into traditional finance. Prior to joining Blockworks, he covered the asset management industry for Fund Intelligence and was a reporter and editor for various local newspapers on Long Island. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in journalism.

Contact Ben via email at ben@blockworks.co

Bessie is a Brooklyn-based reporter covering DeFi and technology. Bessie worked as a tech journalist for The Org prior to joining Blockworks and was a management consultant for KPMG in another life. She is originally from Melbourne, Australia and holds an MA from New York University. She is also the mother of a bratty cat named Mochi. You can reach Bessie at bessie@blockworks.co

Bezalel Eithan Raviv, an ex-member of IDF Cyber Unit 8200, is a seasoned entrepreneur with deep expertise in technology and innovation. He now leads Lionsgate Network, a blockchain analysis firm specializing in professional money recovery services for digital asset investors in the +$2.5 trillion market. Prior to this role, Bezalel founded an investment banking firm supporting AI startups and developed Halleluiah, a pioneering web3 migration pattern for global music copyrights.

Billy Luedtke is the CEO and founder of Intuition, an information protocol powering a more trustful internet. Billy previously served as senior technology advisor at EY, a leading global professional services organization providing assurance, tax, audit, strategy and transactions. At EY, Billy created the company’s blockchain consulting practice, leading the technical development of blockchain-enabled distributed systems. Billy later became a senior token engineer at Consensys, a leading Ethereum developer (MetaMask, Infura, Linea). Billy continues to serve as an advisor at Consensys and MetaMask.

Billy Sebell is the Executive Director of the XDC Foundation and an early contributor to the XDC Network. Since early 2018, Billy has worked to develop the XDC community, focused on ecosystem and network growth and implementing use cases in trade finance. Billy previously spent more than 25 years in manufacturing and consumer products, dealing with the challenges businesses face in capital markets and international trade.

Bob Bodily is the Provo, Utah-based CEO and Co-Founder of Bioniq, a BTC Ordinals wallet and marketplace. He has a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and a Ph.D. in educational/instructional technology from Brigham Young University, with 25 articles and 1K citations. He is a data engineer with 100K+ lines of production Python code, and he has two previous software startups, including an EdTech SaaS that sold in 2021.


Bogdan is the Co-Founder and CTO of Tenderly, the full-stack infrastructure solutions provider powering Web3 developer teams with the essential tools and services throughout their development journeys. 

Prior to co-founding Tenderly, Bogdan worked as a software engineer for major software platforms such as MVP Workshop and Go Daddy where he was responsible for constructing and managing the development of distributed cloud systems before realizing the lack of infrastructural support for Web3 developers. With his vast experience in constructing, expanding, and overseeing extensive distributed cloud systems, he is well-versed in the intricacies of blockchain technologies and their practical applications. 

Brandon Truong is lead product contributor for ZetaChain. He previously co-founded social platform Yada (which was acquired in 2020) and spent time building products for BuzzFeed and Udacity. 


 Brian Pak is CEO &amp; Co-Founder of ChainLight, an award-winning blockchain security firm that specializes in smart contract audits and on-chain monitoring. He is also a co-founder of Theori, an established US-based offensive cybersecurity company, since 2016, which he still leads today, having now amassed trusted partners including Microsoft, Google and Samsung. Brian’s early career started when he co-founded and developed Kaprica Security, inventing and patenting the Skorpion Charger, an Android mobile charger that can detect malicious software with no user action required. He has worked on research and development projects with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the US. Brian is also a founder of the team PPP (Plaid Parliament of Pwning) which won DEF CON CTF, one of the most prestigious hacker competitions held in Las Vegas, in 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022 and 2023. Brian graduated with a Masters Degree in Software Security Research from Carnegie Mellon University.

Three years ago, his act of burning a physical Banksy ignited global discourse on NFTs and Web3, exposing the industry's flaws. Now, through XION, founder Burnt Banksy leads a mission to democratize Web3 to the masses, making ownership accessible to all by removing unnecessary barriers and complications through chain abstraction. To date: XION has raised over $36M in funding with the goal of "making crypto disappear." Ultimately, Burnt Banksy wants to provide the benefits of crypto to people without requiring them to know anything about crypto.

Byron Donalds grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and he is also the proud son of a hardworking and loving single mother. His mother dedicated her time instilling in him that greatness requires sacrifice, which drives him as a devoted family man and United States Congressman.  

Byron is a graduate of Florida State University and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in finance and marketing. Byron's career led him to Southwest Florida, where he worked in the banking, finance, and insurance industries. Elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 2016, Byron represented Hendry County and east Collier County in the State Capitol. During his tenure in the Florida House, Byron served as the PreK-12 Quality Subcommittee Chair during the 2018-2019 Legislative Session and served as the Insurance &amp; Banking Subcommittee's Chairman 2019-2020 Legislative Session. While serving in the Florida House, primarily focused on elder affairs, criminal justice reform, and ensuring that each child has access to a world-class education. 

Byron is committed to serving and giving back to the community that gave him so much. He has served Southwest Florida in many ways, including previously serving on the Board of Trustees for Florida Southwestern State College after being appointed by then-Governor Rick Scott. Byron continues to volunteer in his church as a youth leader and a mentor. He also enjoys volunteering as a coach in youth football and basketball leagues.

Congressman Byron Donalds lives in Naples, Florida, with his wife, Erika, and their three sons: Damon, Darin, and Mason. Byron has spent his entire adult life serving others, whether it be through volunteering, business, or leadership. He is committed to representing Florida's 19th Congressional District's conservative values in Washington DC to ensure a stronger Florida and a stronger nation.

Cameron B. Pick is a partner and patent attorney at the Chicago-based intellectual property boutique law firm Marshall, Gerstein &amp; Borun. He prosecutes patents for emerging technologies, including blockchain and crypto, among other innovative areas. He may be reached at cpick@marshallip.com. 

Candace Kelly is the Chief Legal and Policy Officer for the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), a non-profit organization that supports the development and growth of Stellar, an open-source network that connects the world's financial infrastructure. She leads the team responsible for SDF’s legal affairs and the policy team that is focused on bridging the gap between the public and private sectors. Previously, Candace worked for Uber Technologies, Inc., where she helped navigate the company’s response to regulatory investigations and advised on safety, security, privacy, consumer protection, and law enforcement response. Prior to that she served for 17 years at the United States Department of Justice.

Carlos Mercado is a data scientist at Flipside Crypto, specializing in the convergence of data science, cryptocurrency, economics, and open-source research. His expertise spans the Ethereum ecosystem and over 20 other blockchains, where he leverages SQL, R, Python, and Solidity to develop innovative data models and analytics tools. Carlos's notable contributions include the creation of the True Freeze DeFi primitive and leading the production of the 2023 Crypto Users Report, generating significant industry impact. Prior to Flipside, he applied his skills in AI strategy and product development at Guidehouse and offered data science consulting services.


​​Casey Wagner is a Senior Reporter based in New York. Casey covers crypto regulation, markets and central banks. Prior to joining Blockworks, she reported on macroeconomics at Bloomberg News. She graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in Media Studies. Contact Casey via email at casey@blockworks.co

Charles Hoskinson is a Colorado-based technology entrepreneur and mathematician. He attended Metropolitan State University of Denver and University of Colorado Boulder to study analytic number theory before moving into cryptography through industry exposure.

His professional experience includes founding three cryptocurrency-related start-ups – Invictus Innovations, Ethereum and IOHK – and he has held a variety of posts in both the public and private sectors. He was the founding chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation’s education committee and established the Cryptocurrency Research Group in 2013.

His current projects focus on educating people about cryptocurrency, being an evangelist for decentralization and making cryptographic tools easier to use for the mainstream. This includes leading the research, design and development of Cardano, a third-generation cryptocurrency that launched in September 2017.

Chris Barrett serves as the Director of Communications at Chainlink Labs and has been involved with Chainlink since 2017. Chainlink is the only on-chain data and cross-chain platform that enables financial institutions to develop customized, flexible, compliant, and future-proof blockchain applications and tokenized assets. Before this role, he founded a leading PR agency for technology startups, where he worked with over 1,000 innovative companies. Chris is also an avid runner, having maintained a streak of running for over five consecutive years. 

Chris Brooks founded CryptoAssetRecovery.com in 2017 to help digital asset owners recover lost assets. Chris was a programmer at Fidelity Investments, VP of Technology at venture-backed Carescout (which sold to GenWorth, a spinoff of General Electric) and has founded and sold three bootstrapped internet companies. 

Chris Swenor is a seasoned entrepreneur and blockchain pioneer with a 20-year career that kicked off as a self-taught programmer at age 13. He swiftly moved from corporate roles into startups, leading several to successful acquisitions. Chris started venturing into blockchain and cryptocurrency in 2013, founding Reach in 2019, a platform that has since attracted over $13M in funding and onboarded more than 8,000 developers.

In recent years, Chris founded Humble, a decentralized exchange on Algorand, and Alloy, a blockchain gaming platform acquired in 2023. He is currently working on Voi Network, a layer 1 blockchain empowering its community with user-centric governance and economics. 

Christopher Perkins is President of CoinFund, a web3 focused Registered Investment Advisor.  He is also a member of the CFTC’s Global Markets Advisory Committee and its Digital Asset Markets Subcommittee.

Ciarán Murray is a seasoned veteran of the blockchain industry. Aside from advising on numerous blockchain projects over the years, and releasing a synthetics assets proof-of-concept last year, Ciarán previously worked in the media industry for British Sky Broadcasting. He is not only well placed to understand the issues facing the media industry but also how to apply blockchain and other distributed technologies to remedy them.

Da Hongfei is the founder of Neo, an open-source, community-driven blockchain platform designed to welcome developers into the Smart Economy. Hongfei operates as CEO of Neo Global Development (NGD), the executive arm of the Neo Foundation that is committed to developing the Neo protocol and its supporting ecosystem. He is seen as a luminary in the Web3 space and as a blockchain pioneer in Asia. Hongfei received his education at the South China University of Technology, receiving degrees in technology and English.

Damian Alvarez is a communications professional helping Web3 clients get their stories heard. He is currently the Head of Communications at Aori, an omni-chain logic layer that leverages off-chain data storage to enable high-frequency on-chain trading. He has worked at agencies such as Edelman and YAP Global to assist a variety of emerging and established clients to engage in industry-wide narratives surrounding technology. He may be contacted at damian@aori.io.

Dan Keeler is Editor-in-Chief at Blockworks. Prior to joining Blockworks, he was Frontier Markets Editor at the Wall Street Journal where he managed the Journal’s coverage of smaller emerging markets as well as created a number of high-profile events and a highly regarded newsletter. Before joining the WSJ, he was the Editor of Global Finance magazine. He is also the founder of New York’s FM Network, a group that hosts gatherings of finance professionals focused on smaller emerging markets.

Contact Dan via email at dan@blockworks.co

Daniel Batten is a ClimateTech investor, Bitcoin environmental impact analyst, CEO advisor and author. He is most widely known for his data-driven approach to Bitcoin mining research.


Daniel Cawrey has been involved full-time in the crypto space since 2013, including as an editor at CoinDesk. He is author of 2020’s “Mastering Blockchain” and 2023’s “Understanding Crypto” books, both available on Amazon.

Daranee Ganesh is a publishing and production manager based in Washington, DC. She holds an LLB with a focus on emerging technologies. Prior to Blockworks, Daranee worked on several legal and non-profit projects aimed at integrating decentralized solutions in the social justice framework, specifically within immigration and environmental law. Contact Daranee at daranee@blockworks.co.

Darren Kleine is an Alberta-based reporter covering podcast content at Blockworks. Previously reporting for Cointelegraph, he wrote feature content and a weekly series focused on the personal stories of influential figures in the Web3 space. He has been an active participant in the NFT art scene since 2020, creating works on curated platforms including SuperRare and KnownOrigin and hosting an NFT art-focused podcast called NFP with DKleine. Contact Darren Kleine at darren@blockworks.co.

David is an Editor based in the Netherlands focused on data-driven journalism. Previously, he wrote for TheNextWeb's crypto vertical before launching Protos in 2021. He's a reformed hardline Bitcoiner passionate about permissionless and decentralized networks. Contact David at david@blockworks.co

David Schwed serves as the Chief Operating Officer at Halborn, an elite blockchain security firm. Prior to Halborn, he was the Global Head of Digital Assets Technology at BNY Mellon, the world's biggest custodian bank, where he integrated the IT strategy for the company's digital asset services. David was also CISO for Galaxy Digital, where he led the development of information security and IT infrastructure, and served as a risk committee advisor, evaluating emerging threats in financial services. He also founded the Cybersecurity Master's Program at Yeshiva University’s Katz School of Science and Health, sharing his expertise as a practitioner-in-residence.


Delphine Forma is the policy lead for Europe &amp; UK at Solidus Labs, a leading market compliance and market integrity firm in digital assets. With a career spanning roles in major banks and blockchain ventures, she brings extensive experience in compliance and legal across sectors. She is the founder of the crypto compliance and legal TG group with 1,400 members. A Sciences Po Lyon alumna, Delphine also holds advanced degrees in European Criminal Business Law and anti-money laundering.

Denelle Dixon is the CEO and Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), a non-profit organization focused on working with and supporting changemakers to create equitable access to the global financial system through blockchain technology. She leads the teams that help maintain Stellar's codebase, support the communities around Stellar, and advocate on behalf of the network with international stakeholders. Before joining Stellar, Dixon served as COO of Mozilla, one of the most successful mission-driven open-source organizations.. During her tenure at Mozilla, she led the organization’s business, revenue and policy teams including the ongoing fight for net neutrality and the global effort to ensure that people can control their personal data.

Dermot O’Riordan serves as a Director at the POKT Network Foundation where he helps steer product development and strategy. From Ireland to Silicon Valley, Dermot’s career ranged from advising tech companies and VC firms to leading marquee industry events. His interest in Web3 was sparked in 2016 with the rise of DAOs, leading him to dive deeper into the blockchain space, where he served as an advisor to projects like Radix and Dusk, and later, spearheading growth at Eden Block.

Donovan is a reporter based in Singapore. He previously worked in editorial at Bankless and is a huge fan of spaghetti Westerns and the Wu-Tang Clan. Contact Donovan at donovan@blockworks.co.

Elena leads product marketing at Hiro Systems, a developer tooling company bringing smart contracts to Bitcoin. She has spent the past six years working in blockchain and cryptocurrency startups. Elena co-founded Blockchain Latinx, an online community that explores what blockchain means for Latinos and for Latin America. She has an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business.

Eli Cohen is a corporate lawyer with 25+ years of experience in commercial transactions, financial services and regulatory matters and has worked in Asia, Europe and the United States. He is the General Counsel for Centrifuge, a real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and securitization platform and Chief Compliance Officer for Anemoy Capital SPC Limited a British Virgin Islands fund company issuer of the tokenized Anemoy Liquid Treasury Fund 1. He is a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center, has a Masters in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Eli Zeger writes about democracy and its relationship with technology. His work has been published in the Boston Review, Noema Magazine, Strange Matters, Zora Zine, among numerous other publications.

Elliot is the Head of Climate Strategy at Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol, where he is helping unlock Bitcoin's clean energy potential by bridging sustainable miners and climate-conscious investors. In his role at Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol, Elliot educates policymakers and NGOs on Bitcoin’s relationship with the energy system. He is a climatetech operator focused on alleviating energy poverty, bridging the digital divide, and promoting financial inclusion through technologies such as Bitcoin. Elliot was previously a Schwarzman Scholar and has served in the military, US Department of Energy, Clinton Foundation, and more. 

Evan Thomas is General Counsel for Alluvial, a software development company supporting the Liquid Collective liquid staking protocol. He was previously at Wealthsimple, Canada’s largest consumer fintech, where he was Head of Legal for Wealthsimple’s crypto trading platform. While at Wealthsimple, Evan helped launch Canada’s first regulated staking product. Before Wealthsimple, Evan was a litigator at Osler, Hoskin &amp; Harcourt LLP for nearly 15 years. Among other notable cases, Evan was hearing counsel to 3iQ Corp. in its appeal securing regulatory approval for Canada’s first publicly traded bitcoin fund in 2019.

Felix Jauvin is the host of the On the Margin podcast. Based in British Columbia, Canada, he lives and breathes where crypto and macroeconomics intersect.

Felix Xu, crypto geek, early adopter, and NFT collector. Felix graduated from NYU Stern and founded two crypto projects, ARPA and Bella Protocol, among the global top 500 by market cap. Felix previously worked at Fosun Investment, Sackler family office, and Vertical Research in New York and Beijing. Felix loves sailing, kitesurfing and was featured in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times for his NFT collection.

Frank has a diverse career that spans creative writing, day trading, and a 12-year stint in financial planning. After experimenting with blockchain and being an early adapter to the Solana ecosystem, Mathis co-founded GenesysGo in 2021 to create a faster, more reliable and more secure decentralized data storage protocol. Their flagship product, shdwDrive is built on Solana and aims to bridge the gap between blockchain technology and traditional business infrastructure. GenesysGo is powered by a new type of decentralized data storage consensus mechanism, built from the ground up by the GenesysGo team.

Fraser is co-founder &amp; CTO of Cubist and an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. She is an expert in software correctness: her research focuses on systems security, automated bug finding, and formal verification, from verifying (parts of) production systems like browser JITs, to finding exploitable bugs in real codebases. Her tools have found many zero-day bountied bugs and CVEs in the Chrome and Firefox browsers and multiple operating systems. Fraser received her BA in English and her MS and PhD in Computer Science from Stanford.


Garrett Harper is the producer for the Empire podcast. Garrett worked in private equity and product management before jumping into crypto full-time in 2021. His favorite thing about crypto? It conflates art, gaming, finance, software, and psychology into one hyper-growth industry.

Gijs op de Weegh is the CEO and Founder of StablR, where he leads the strategy, business operations, and investor relations. He founded StablR out of his passion for implementing blockchain technology in the financial industry and exploring its possibilities. Before founding StablR, Gijs co-founded Payvision, an e-commerce payment service provider, in 2002. Under his leadership, Payvision grew to over 300 employees and achieved a turnover exceeding €4 billion.

Gísli Kristjánsson is co-founder and CTO of Monerium, the first company to issue fiat onchain. He fell in love with programming at the age of 13. After working as a bonds broker, Gísli saw the inefficiencies of securities settlements firsthand and recognized the potential of Bitcoin. Prior to co-founding Monerium in 2015, Gísli founded and sold a platform to give users access to geo-blocked content. Fun fact: Gísli’s Ethereum address is among the 1% of the oldest addresses.

Haden Patrick is Director of Business Operations of Cordial Systems, a provider of institutional-grade self custody software using a Zero Trust security model.  Haden has executive experience in team leadership, engineering and education originating from his 24 year career as a Naval Officer. After co-founding SoloKeys, the first open-source security key company, he went on to manage projects connecting web3 to traditional finance at a cryptocurrency trading firm before joining Cordial Systems.

Hadley Stern, Advisor to MPCH, has extensive experience in leadership roles within TradFi and digital asset industries. As Global Head of Custody at the Bank of New York Mellon (BNYM) from 2021 to 2023, Hadley spearheaded the creation of the industry’s first bank-grade crypto-custody platform. Hadley also previously served as Chief Operating Officer at Bloq where he was responsible for the P&amp;L, product roadmap, and general operations. Hadley was Founding President of Fidelity Digital Asset Services where he led Fidelity's Blockchain Incubator and Digital Currency group and was pivotal in early product launches, including activating Bitcoin donations to Fidelity Charitable and building and running Fidelity first Bitcoin mining Operation.



Hannah Finnerty is Blockworks' editorial operations manager and is based in the US. Hannah previously worked in podcast production for The National in Abu Dhabi. She graduated from Bowling Green State University with a degree in multiplatform journalism and Middle Eastern politics. Contact Hannah at hannah@blockworks.co.

Hatu Sheikh is the co-founder and CMO of DAO Maker, the largest on-chain funding platform with 1.5M+ users. The platform's contracts have distributed over $600M, with a cumulative return of around 10x. Hatu has a strong background in marketing and strategy and has played a pivotal role in driving the success of various blockchain-based projects and tokens, crafting effective marketing strategies, and forging powerful synergies within the industry.

Harry Duckworth, a law graduate, embarked on a unique journey that led him to become the youngest trader at global commodities giant Trafigura. He then went on to set up desks for several hedge funds worldwide, accumulating over a decade of experience in trading, hedge funds, and emergent technologies. 

Through his work, he became fascinated by the revolutionary power of blockchain tech soon after the inception of Bitcoin. Years later he founded AgriDex International, to provide digital marketplaces and supply chain information for all participants in the global food chain. 

Hind Kurhan is a Co-Founder of Thesis Defense, a decentralized technology security auditing company whose mission is the facilitation of broad adoption of decentralized technology by improving security and audit consistency throughout the blockchain sphere.


Ian Rogers is the Chief Experience Officer at Ledger, leading the consumer-facing business delivering the world’s #1 way to buy and secure cryptocurrency.  Prior, Ian was the Chief Digital Officer at LVMH for five transformative years, working with a portfolio of nearly one hundred brands across luxury including Louis Vuitton, Dior, Sephora, and Hennessy.  Ian also sits on the boards of Dr Marten’s and Lyst.

Ian spent twenty years bringing digital music to the mainstream, first with Winamp then Yahoo!, Beats, and Apple.  Ian contributed to the 2015 launch of Apple Music including Beats 1, their digital streaming channel. Ian graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science (with honors, Phi Beta Kappa) from Indiana University in 1994.  Ian built some of the earliest music-related Web sites in the early 90s and has been working with Beastie Boys since 1993.

Igor Telyatnikov is the CEO and co-founder of the blockchain and financial services technology company AlphaPoint. Headquartered in New York, AlphaPoint supports over 10 million users, powering marketplaces and wallets in over 35 countries. With 15 years of experience in tech and innovation, Igor has empowered over 150 clients, including CME Group and Scotiabank. In 2022, he partnered with the Government of El Salvador to upgrade its Chivo Wallet into a national Bitcoin and dollar wallet, creating the first nationalized crypto ecosystem. Igor previously held roles at Cvetlo, LiftDNA, and Ingersoll Rand/Allegion, and has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Marketing from Penn State University. He is a frequent speaker at industry events.

Ishan is a University of Texas McCombs School of Business graduate with a BBA in Finance &amp; Marketing. He founded and managed a Private Equity Fund that reached an eight-figure Assets Under Management (AUM) and has also gained experience with many top 200 projects of crypto market cap. In 2022, he helped found SCRIB3, a Web3 Marketing and PR venture. He was notably among the first to raise an alert about potential deceptive and unethical business practices by FTX. Ishan contributes as a DeFi analyst, an active angel investor, and an advisor in projects like Polygon Technologies.

Jack Kubinec is a Solana ecosystem reporter based in Brooklyn, New York. Jack previously interned at Blockworks before joining full-time. He graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University with a degree in sociology. Contact Jack at jack.kubinec@blockworks.co.

Jag is the CEO and co-founder of re.al, an L2 build to facilitate deep onchain liquidity for tokenized RWAs. re.al seeks to redefine how RWAs are integrated into DeFi, using yield-generating real-world assets as novel building blocks in existing DeFi primitives.

James Cirrone is a breaking news reporter based in New York. Prior to joining Blockworks, James was a reporter and newsletter writer at Bloomberg News. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in journalism. He also played trumpet in the university’s marching band. Contact James via email at james.cirrone@blockworks.co.

Jason Allegrante is the Chief Legal and Compliance Officer at Fireblocks. He is an experienced Counsel with a demonstrated history of working in the financial services industry with both large, traditional financial institutions as well as early stage fintech startups.



Jason Dehni is the co-founder and group CEO of Credbull, a leading DeFi platform offering structured high fixed yield solutions in SME private credit. Jason has over 25 years of senior management experience in asset management, private banking, SME lending, insurance, risk management, and crypto across North America, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. His background includes serving as group COO &amp; MENA CEO of a publicly traded crypto asset management company, co-founder &amp; CEO of an SME trade finance platform, and senior leadership roles in asset management, wealth management,  insurance, and management consulting. Jason holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an Honours BA in Economics &amp; Political Science from the University of Toronto. 

Jean-Marie Mognetti is Chief Executive Officer of CoinShares, a publicly listed investment firm that manages over five billion in digital assets on behalf of a global investor base, and an experienced commodities trader with a background in quantitative strategies. A veteran of the Global Advisors group of companies since 2011, Jean-Marie has served in various leadership roles throughout his tenure, most recently as CEO of Global Advisors (Jersey) Limited and director of GABI, the world’s first regulated Bitcoin fund. In addition to his management responsibilities as CEO, Jean-Marie oversees the firm’s proprietary trading arm, capital markets portfolio, and risk management practices – areas in which he has developed unique expertise over his career. Prior to joining Global Advisors, Jean-Marie was a quantitative strategist with Hermes Commodities Fund Managers, and an Energy Trader Assistant at Lehman Brothers. He holds Master of Science degrees in Mathematical Trading and Finance from Sir John Cass Business School in London, and Bank-Finance-Insurance from Université Paris Dauphine in Paris, in addition to a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics and Finance from Université Paris Dauphine.

Jeff is an editor at Blockworks, based in the United States. He has been a part of the blockchain space for over a decade, most recently working as US news editor at Cointelegraph. His areas of focus include empowering artists and creators through technology, using proof-of-participation methods to reward self-improvement, reducing the effectiveness of Sybil attacks, seeking transparent equity for disadvantaged communities, and exploring fairer models of world governance. Contact Jeff at Jeffrey@blockworks.co.

Jesper Johansen is the founder and CEO of NORTHSTAKE, a regulated custodial staking company specialized in building regulatory compliant crypto staking products for institutional investors and financial institutions. The team holds backgrounds from financial institutions, pension funds, large investment companies to consulting, technology and audit firms, such as Accenture, Deloitte, PwC as well as blockchain and crypto projects e.g. DAI Foundation (MakerDao), Ethereum and L1/L2s. 

Prior to NORTHSTAKE, Jesper held leadership positions with Accenture Strategy and Deloitte Consulting advising clients in heavily regulated industries to implement new technologies and drive business transformation. He holds a MBA from Copenhagen Business School and a B.Sc. in International Business. 

Jess Sun is an independent writer and content strategist. She loves bringing good ideas to light, helping the people behind them shine, and bridging gaps in understanding. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn. Go to her website to learn about working with her.

Jesse Knutson is the head of operations at Bitfinex Securities, where he is responsible for expanding the platform’s issuance pipeline, overseeing distribution and building its user base while ensuring compliance with regulatory standards. Prior to this role, Knutson served as vice president of financial products at Blockstream, and held roles at prominent investment banks including Macquarie Group and Barclays.

Jim Myers is an engineer, early-stage investor, and the CTO &amp; Co-Founder of Flipside Crypto, a leading blockchain data analytics and business intelligence platform. Prior to co-founding Flipside, Jim developed the core technology that took products from 0 to 1 at companies such as Mylestone, Pluralsight, and Smarterer. Jim’s journey into the crypto industry began in 2015, eventually co-founding Flipside Crypto in 2017 to help empower crypto communities to create and share data-driven insights on the projects they care most about. Jim's passion for building extends to the broader startup community via his developer event series, Stack Dive, and as an angel investor to several local Boston-area startups, including AdHawk and LinkSquares. In a previous life, Jim developed advanced models to quantify risk and abnormal returns in the market for Financial Transmission Rights, a type of energy derivative.

JJ is an advisor, mentor and co-founder working across Bitcoin, mining and web3. He currently mentors for Outlier Ventures new Bitcoin Base Camp program and has co-founded a new protocol operating in stealth mode.

Joey is ranked by Chambers and Partners as one of the top 12 lawyers in the world, advising many of the largest platforms around the globe in the space. He co-chaired the Gibraltar Government’s working group on Blockchain for 3 years, which was established to develop the infrastructure to accommodate a DLT regulatory framework. Joey is also a specialist consultant to the United Nations and trains and assesses authorities primarily around South East Asia in virtual asset developments, DeFi and regulation. He is a member of several think tanks including the prestigious global ‘Wharton Reg@Tech’ initiative, the Blockchain Industry Parliamentary Roundtable on Blockchain Technologies at Parliament in the UK, and also contributed to the UK Law Society on the Blockchain Legal and Regulatory Guidance publication. He was the Xapo Representative on the Libra/Diem Association and has also contributed to various stablecoin and CBDC developments. 

Joeyz Yu is an entrepreneur with over 18 years of experience in product design and development. He co-founded Sending Labs to revolutionize communication protocols and social applications for Web3, leading the development of their flagship products SendingMe and SendingNetwork. Previously, Joeyz co-founded MoboTab, where he created the Dolphin Browser, used by over 200 million users and later acquired by ChangYou. Joeyz's passion for empowering users and building exceptional teams drives his mission to shape the future of the internet. 

John is the Editor of Evergreen Content at Blockworks. Before Blockworks, he was the producer and founder of an explainer studio called Best Explained. As Evergreen Editor, he manages the production of explainers, guides and all educational content for anything crypto related. He is passionate about making digital asset education more accessible for degens and fence-sitters alike. Contact John at john@blockworks.co

John Woods is the CTO of the Algorand Foundation, which supports Algorand’s rapidly growing ecosystem by providing a best-in-class developer environment, supporting key infrastructure and setting technical standards, offering comprehensive support to builders and entrepreneurs, and providing the framework for decentralized governance.

Prior to joining the leadership team at Algorand, John worked as Chief Architect of Cardano at IOHK. He has held roles leading software architecture and applied cryptography at a number of firms including Informatica, ConsenSys and Central Bank of Ireland.

John Wu is President of Ava Labs, an Andresseen Horowitz backed technology company building the next-generation blockchain platform: Avalanche. John’s objective is to open up financial services and products to all. In this role, he leverages his expertise from over 20 years as a fintech executive and technology investor to create a blockchain-enabled solution for originating, issuing, and trading financial assets.  

Jeff Albus

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">subscribe</a>.



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Let’s take a moment to reflect on this year’s biggest memecoin highs and lows.&nbsp;



Some coins delivered huge gains, stuffing stockings with profits, while others <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hawk-memecoin-launch-fail">crashed</a> and burned, earning lumps of coal. Let’s take a look at some of the biggest winners and losers in the space — no sugar-coating included.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Political tokens: Naughty or nice?</h3>



Jeo Boden, parodying US President Joe Biden, <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/jeo-boden">surged</a> 1,548% from $0.06307 to $1.04 before crashing 99.74% to $0.00274. Meanwhile, the Donald Trump inspired MAGA <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/maga">skyrocketed</a> 4,170% from $0.41 to $17.51 but dropped 91.7% to $1.45, following a similar fate.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">The Parent Trap</h3>



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/vitalik-wrong-crypto-dumb-memecoins">Iggy Azalea</a>&#8216;s MOTHER <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/mother-iggy">sparkled</a> with a 4,798% climb from $0.004709 to $0.2306, but dropped 79% to $0.04837. Unshaken, Azalea has doubled down on her token’s future with Motherland, an online casino project that could breathe new life into the MOTHER token in 2025.



Not to be outdone, Andrew Tate <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/daddy-tate">introduced</a> the pseudo-affiliated DADDY, a memecoin designed to counter MOTHER’s success and “flip it for the patriarchy.” DADDY surged 487% from $0.04917 to $0.2886 before succumbing to a 76% loss to now sit at $0.0684.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">A lot of hot air</h3>



Fartcoin <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/fartcoin">blew</a> onto the scene in late 2024, climbing 3,052% from $0.04067671 to $1.28 and holding steady at $1.25.&nbsp;



Similarly, GOAT (<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/0xresearch-newsletter-goatse-memecoin">Goatseus Maximus</a>) <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/goatseus-maximus">paired</a> edgy humor with <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-newsletter-ai-bot-goat-memecoin">viral AI marketing</a>, surging 3,002% from $0.04354 to $1.35 before settling at $0.508.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">It’s snowing cats and dogs</h3>



Popcat <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/popcat">exploded</a> 14,400% from $0.01413 to $2.05 before settling at $0.7912. Cat in a Dog&#8217;s World (MEW) <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/mew">grew</a> 1,312% from $0.0009121 to $0.01288 but fell 51% to $0.006353. MEW’s attempt to challenge the dominance of dog-themed tokens injected some friendly rivalry into the memecoin ecosystem.



Bonk, Solana’s first <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bonkbot-volumes-rise">dog-themed</a> coin, <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/bonk">climbed</a> a mere 210% from $0.0000188 to $0.00005825. In comparison, Dogwifhat (WIF) <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/dogwifhat">outperformed</a>, rising 2,292% from $0.201808 to $4.83 before settling 56% lower at $2.12.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Viral hits and legal misses</h3>



ChillGuy, based on the “Just a Chill Guy” meme, <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/just-a-chill-guy">soared</a> 10,789% from $0.00604 to $0.6575 but dropped 71% to $0.1898. Artist Phillip Banks condemned the token, pursuing legal action over its use.



PNUT, <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/peanut-the-squirrel">launched</a> after the viral euthanization of Peanut the Squirrel, surged 7,554% from $0.03187 to $2.44 but fell 71% to $0.6981. The token’s trajectory was mired in controversy, as Peanut’s owner condemned its creation and sought to shut it down.



Moodeng, <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/moo-deng">inspired</a> by a viral <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/memecoin-moodeng-market-cap-soars">Thai baby hippo</a>, rose 4,300% from $0.01545 to $0.6804 but has since dropped 62% to $0.2576.



For every coin that soared, there were 10 that crashed, proving again and again that memecoins giveth and memecoins taketh away.&nbsp;



So, whether you’re toasting to the winners or mourning the lumps of coal in your portfolio, just remember that chaos is the only constant in crypto — and it doesn’t care one bit if you’ve been naughty or nice.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter</a>.



Get alpha directly in your inbox with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">0xResearch newsletter</a> — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.



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Memes and madness in 2024

Casey Wagner

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">subscribe</a>.



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As we approach what will undoubtedly be a new era for federal crypto regulation, this state watchdog head has some advice for companies: Start engaging now.&nbsp;



“Never surprise your regulator,” New York Department of Financial Services Superintendent Adrienne Harris said at the Blockchain Association Policy Summit earlier this month.&nbsp;



“We are by nature risk-adverse people,&#8221; she added. &#8220;We don’t like to be surprised, so come in and talk to us proactively.” 



Waiting until there is already an enforcement action underway to meet with regulators is a mistake, Harris said. Companies should be having these conversations before they even file applications, she added.&nbsp;



The comments come as New York continues to be a leader in state-level regulation. It was the first state to design a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/comptroller-audits-nydfs-bitlicense">“BitLicense” program</a> in 2014. The policy, which requires businesses conducting digital asset activities to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ny-authorities-more-fees-crypto-companies">register</a> with the DFS, came into effect the following year.&nbsp;



“Foreign jurisdictions and Congress have been for the last several years really borrowing from the New York framework as now it&#8217;s the gold standard,” Harris said.&nbsp;



New York’s BitLicense may have been received poorly by the industry at first (at least 10 companies initially left the state when the regulations were announced), but the regulatory framework shows the DFS is committed to allowing investors to access the markets they want, Harris said.&nbsp;



“It&#8217;s not our job as a regulator to decide what the market wants or doesn&#8217;t want, right? These instruments are here,” she added. “This technology is here. It&#8217;s our job to protect consumers, protect markets and ensure responsible growth in the industry.”&nbsp;



While President-elect Donald Trump has not commented on whether he would grant more authority to states to oversee the crypto industry, his administration’s efforts to shrink the size of several federal agencies, including the SEC, could ultimately have that effect.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter</a>.



Get alpha directly in your inbox with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">0xResearch newsletter</a> — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.



The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Subscribe to daily Solana news</a> from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

New York continues to lead on state crypto regulations 

Ben Strack

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">subscribe</a>.



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US spot ether products turned five months old yesterday.&nbsp;



But consistent (and substantial) net inflows only started coming after the election. First, a look at the flows by month:&nbsp;&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-table"><table class="has-fixed-layout"><tbody><tr><td>Month</td><td>Net Flows</td></tr><tr><td>July 23-31</td><td>-$484 million</td></tr><tr><td>August</td><td>+$6 million</td></tr><tr><td>September</td><td>-$46 million</td></tr><tr><td>October</td><td>+$43 million</td></tr><tr><td>November</td><td>+$1.1 billion</td></tr><tr><td>December 1-20</td><td>+$1.8 billion</td></tr></tbody></table></figure>



To summarize: A flood of net money exited Grayscale’s higher-priced Ethereum Trust (ETHE) in the first few days after it <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/grayscale-eth-trust-ethe-filing-vaneck-proshares">converted</a> to an ETF. The other funds’ inflows could not fully offset those.&nbsp;



Then there were three months of rather flat flows. Industry watchers attributed this in part to the need for <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/education-required-to-spur-eth-etf-outflows">more education</a> about ETH — an asset with a value prop more difficult to grasp than BTC.



Donald Trump’s election win spurred <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-impacts-since-election-outcome">crypto market euphoria</a>. While bitcoin has hit several new all-time high price levels, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/when-will-eth-break-all-time-high">ETH hasn’t</a>.&nbsp;



CoinShares research associate Luke Nolan <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/when-will-eth-break-all-time-high">previously told me</a> he’s eyeing February or March for ETH to hit a new high — as long as ether ETF flows remain strong.&nbsp;



BTC has gained more institutional attention than ETH because of its easier-to-understand digital gold narrative ($36 billion of net inflows for bitcoin ETFs vs. $2.3 billion for ETH products).&nbsp;



Then there’s the fact that ETH also faces competition from other layer-1s like solana, Nolan added. Several fund groups have proposed ETFs that <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitwise-ceo-solana-ncredible-emerging-asset">would hold SOL</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Ethereum developers have taken a long-term view as to improving the protocol whilst Solana has very much focused on capturing attention and demand now,” Nolan said. “They are both valid approaches that each attend to their own use cases and niches.”



Keeping an eye on crypto ETF flows will help us understand investor sentiment toward each asset — whether it be BTC, ETH or others that could soon make their way into an ETF wrapper.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter</a>.



Get alpha directly in your inbox with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">0xResearch newsletter</a> — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.



The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Subscribe to daily Solana news</a> from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

An end-of-year ETH ETF check-in

Macauley Peterson

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">subscribe</a>.



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BOB (“Build on Bitcoin”), a hybrid layer-2 solution leveraging Bitcoin and Ethereum, has taken a significant step forward by successfully testing its first BitVM-powered Bitcoin bridge prototype. Developed in partnership with Fiamma, the prototype in production will deliver trust-minimized BTC bridging. Doing so marks a milestone in the chain’s scaling — with bitcoin, the asset, at the center.



BitVM bridges <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research/issue/post_d08feb9f-1ecf-4108-85fe-878d48edd78d">stand out</a> from existing solutions like <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/wbtc">wBTC</a> or <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-wrapped-bitcoin-competitor-cbbtc">cbBTC</a> — which rely on centralized entities — and from semi-trusted models. By contrast, BitVM <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-rollups-closer-than-expected">leverages</a> a fraud-proof system, where BTC deposits and withdrawals are secured so long as one participant acts honestly.&nbsp;



“Bitcoin security and trust-minimized BTC bridging are the two most important pillars of Bitcoin L2s,” said Alexei Zamyatin, BOB co-founder and BitVM2 contributor.



The bridge prototype is expected to be deployed on BOB’s testnet in early 2025, followed by a mainnet rollout after audits. Additionally, BOB announced plans to integrate with bitcoin staking service <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/0xresearch-newsletter-babylon-btc-staking-deposits">Babylon</a> with an aim to establish itself as a Bitcoin-secured network with Bitcoin finality.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Signaling for Bitcoin scaling preferences</h2>



The open Wiki-style <a href="https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Covenants_support">signaling forum</a> on Bitcoin soft fork upgrades reflects the growing need for community consensus on covenants like <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-rollups-closer-than-expected">OP_CAT</a> and OP_CTV. Developers, including Zamyatin, have weighed in on proposals. For instance, Zamyatin has marked OP_CTV as “Weak,” while signaling “Evaluating” for OP_CAT, thus indicating areas where more discussion is required.



The forum is valuable because it collects rationales in one place, moving discussions away from social media fights, according to Zamyatin. “It makes it easier to evaluate proposals, summarize pros and cons, and have meaningful discussions,” he <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-zk-rollups-debate">told Blockworks</a>.



The signaling process has revealed divided opinions: While OP_CTV has garnered moderate consensus, OP_CAT and others remain contentious. As Zamyatin noted, achieving broad agreement will only grow harder as Bitcoin adoption increases.



For BOB and the wider Bitcoin ecosystem, these upgrades could eventually enable more advanced capabilities, including native zk-verifiers — a vital step toward scaling Bitcoin securely.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter</a>.



Get alpha directly in your inbox with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">0xResearch newsletter</a> — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.



The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Subscribe to daily Solana news</a> from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Bitcoin’s $100K milestone reflections, what’s next

David Canellis

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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In the mid-16th century, Nostradamus made 942 predictions in eight years.



He’d <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/oct/10/why-nostradamus-predictions-are-still-winning-converts">supposedly</a> dictated every one as a poem to his secretary. All while hallucinating on heroic doses of nutmeg.&nbsp;



Sadly, I don’t have a secretary. But why should that stop me?



Here are five crypto prophecies that will totally come true in 2025. And if not, they can easily be rehashed for hundreds of years, just like Nostradamus’s.



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>AI chatbots will gamify flash loan attacks.</li>
</ol>



We rarely hear about <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pump-fun-flash-loan-attack">flash loan attacks</a> anymore.&nbsp;



Apparently, the US Department of Justice <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/man-convicted-110m-cryptocurrency-scheme">largely</a> put a stop to them after they nabbed Avi “it’s just a profitable trading strategy” Eisenberg last year.



That is until some diabolical edgelord trains an AI model to trawl the dingiest illiquid corners of DeFi for potential targets.&nbsp;



After all, who’s to blame: The prompt engineer or the LLM with a crypto wallet?



<ol start="2" class="wp-block-list">
<li>Either a bitcoin ETF or a nation-state will be hacked</li>
</ol>



Never mind that most ETFs have abstracted the actual handling of coins far away from their own liability — presumably replaced by a WhatsApp chat with a Coinbase Custody support representative.



Next year will mark a return of monumental crypto hacks.&nbsp;



It’s indeed been a while since we saw one. Maybe the Ronin hack was the last hack that really, really hurt.&nbsp;



Be on the lookout for a nation-state or ETF issuer to fumble the bag, perhaps by falling for a North Korean phishing email for a phony Chick-fil-A coupon.



<ol start="3" class="wp-block-list">
<li>The FTC will sue a memecoin</li>
</ol>



You’ve probably heard that the next SEC chair should be more friendly to crypto.&nbsp;



But that’s just the SEC. There are still more than a dozen US agencies that could probably still pull some real boomer moves next year.



Enter the Federal Trade Commission. They’ve gone after crypto companies in the past, including Celsius and Voyager, and also pushed federal cases against fraudsters peddling fake investment schemes.



I’d watch for the FTC to characterize a random memecoin as such and start suing. Gensler is leaving a void that only another short-sighted regulator can fill.



<ol start="4" class="wp-block-list">
<li>Crypto lotteries will emerge as public goods</li>
</ol>



Crypto already has its own pseudo-lottery systems: memecoins.



If you’re really into buying Powerball and Mega Millions, why not buy a random pump.fun memecoin every week and hope to one day strike it big (as long as you can time the top).



So, it’s about time someone — perhaps from the very public-good-centric Ethereum space — codes an unstoppable permissionless crypto lottery that pays out once a week.



And before you point out that random number generators on the blockchain are always a bad idea, <a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/learning/ssl/lava-lamp-encryption/">study lava lamps</a>.



<ol start="5" class="wp-block-list">
<li>IRL livestreamers will adopt prediction markets</li>
</ol>



To suggest that livestreamers like Speed and KSI would mint their own memecoins (or would they be social tokens?) is too obvious.



Calling it now: A major streamer will figure out how to utilize prediction markets to crowdsource their content.



Case in point: Speed’s <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@houseofhighlights/video/7438400472920198446">suggestion</a> that he’ll run sprints at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles could be a prediction market. And all his viewers could bet whether that’s the case — or push him toward any other challenge for that matter.



Mass adoption through Twitch starts in 2025.



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5 crypto predictions for 2025

Jack Kubinec

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">subscribe</a>.



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Marginfi co-founder Edgar Pavlovsky <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/04/11/marginfi-leader-resigns-on-fiery-day-for-major-solana-lender">departed</a> suddenly from the Solana DeFi project in April.&nbsp;



The split wasn’t exactly amicable. “I don&#8217;t agree with the way things have been done internally or externally,” Pavlovsky <a href="https://x.com/edgarpavlovsky/status/1778175476118302775">wrote</a> on X at the time.&nbsp;



Now, eight months later, Pavlovsky is a core contributor to Paladin, a Solana client meant to protect validators from so-called sandwich attacks while helping them “earn more in block rewards.”&nbsp;



Around the same time, Temporal, a crypto research shop with multiple marginfi-linked members, began advertising “Nozomi,” a proprietary quic client partially meant to prevent sandwich attacks.&nbsp;



Temporal is legally distinct from mrgn and marginfi. Temporal said most of its staff never worked at marginfi.



A Temporal researcher I spoke to was critical of the project being worked on by his former colleague. The two products aren’t the same, by both parties’ accounts, but they are both focused on the same niche. There’s one notable difference though — Pavlovsky’s Paladin has a token, while marginfi, controversially, has yet to debut a native coin.&nbsp;



Temporal’s Nozomi infrastructure is built to land transactions as fast as possible. It also prevents sandwich attacks by only sending transactions to “whitelisted” Solana validators who are known not to attack users. The project pitches this as a way to democratize trading.&nbsp;



“We have a ton of experience from our trading arm getting the best execution for what we want to do,” Jakob Povsic, a developer at Temporal, said. Temporal is “getting this level of sophistication for basically anyone.”



Paladin, on the other hand, is a fork of the Jito-Solana client that identifies and drops sandwich attacks from transaction bundles and helps Solana validators prioritize transactions with high priority fees attached, Pavlovsky told me. Access to Paladin validators will eventually be gated with the yet-to-launch PAL <a href="https://x.com/paladin_solana/status/1870167984540626968">token</a>.&nbsp;



I asked Pavlovsky if building a product with similar anti-sandwiching aims to his ex-colleagues at Temporal makes him want to compete more aggressively.



“No, man, they’re like my children,” Pavlovsky said with a chuckle. “I’m stoked for them to win, stoked for them to build.” He said blockchain infrastructure creators tend to have too much of a winner-take-all mentality when, in fact, multiple businesses can succeed at the same time.



Povsic showed less bonhomie. “I applaud them for going after sandwiching since [it’s] a big problem, but their approach is naive and very [self-serving] from what we are seeing,” he said of Paladin. Povsic added Paladin “arbitrarily” blocks some transactions based on a wide net of criteria, and sophisticated players will still be able to pull off sandwiches. And “forcing” its own token into the equation made matters worse for Povsic.



Pavlovsky responded to the criticism by saying that its anti-sandwich whitelist is “obviously systematic, not arbitrary.”



“[P]aladin is designed with sophisticated players in mind (and being tested comprehensively against sandwichers on the whole network). [W]e&#8217;re always happy to discuss tradeoffs,” Pavlovsky said in a text.



“[We] think [Paladin] is extractive and would rather focus on open-source initiatives rather than sending a % of priority fees to [Bloxroute], who own 20% of the token supply. Nozomi is quite different in that it&#8217;s simply a product to help land transactions fast,&#8221; Temporal partner and mrgn research co-founder Ben Coverston said.&nbsp;



The PAL token is an interesting part of the equation. Marginfi frequently draws criticism for its so-called points program that tracks user contribution to the platform. Points are frequently used to allocate token airdrops, but marginfi is one of the last major Solana DeFi protocols not to release a token. Pavlovsky never mentioned the lack of a marginfi token in his departure post in April 2024.&nbsp;



I asked him if frustration at the platform not launching a token contributed to his leaving. “[I] am pro token and think the right time to ship one was [Q4] 2023,” Pavlovsky said in response.



Updated Dec. 23, 2024: Modified headline. 



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Mrgn’s co-founder built a new product. Some ex-colleagues aren’t fans.

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">subscribe</a>.



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President-elect Donald Trump appears to be working down his <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/revisiting-trumps-crypto-promises-after-his-election-win">crypto promises</a> list via another personnel decision.&nbsp;



Trump said Sunday that Bo Hines will serve as executive director of the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets. David Sacks, the PayPal co-founder who <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-picks-crypto-czar">Trump tapped</a> to be the US government’s AI and crypto czar earlier this month, will chair this group.



Hines will work with Sacks “to foster innovation and growth in the digital assets space, while ensuring industry leaders have the resources they need to succeed,” Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113698639577293090?utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email">wrote</a> on Truth Social.



“Together, they will create an environment where this industry can flourish, and remain a cornerstone of our nation&#8217;s technological advancement,” he added.



A former NC State (and Yale) football player, Hines sought to represent North Carolina’s 13th Congressional district in 2022, but lost that election to Democrat Wiley Nickel. He launched a campaign in December 2023 to represent the state’s 6th Congressional district — endorsing Trump that same month before posting this to X in January:



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Cryptocurrency is the epitome of individual empowerment in finance. We don’t need the government stepping in and slapping burdensome regulations on financial innovation. This new sector needs the freedom to grow organically. Decentralized finance is the way of the future if…&mdash; Bo Hines (@BoHines) <a href="https://twitter.com/BoHines/status/1747379326465474698?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 16, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Trump had referenced a US crypto council in July during <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRQZAOK24IQ">his address</a> at the Bitcoin 2024 <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-2024-nashville-recap">conference</a> in Nashville. He said it was something he would assemble “immediately” before asking for a show of hands who wanted to be on it. The crowd roared.



The then-presidential candidate said the council’s task of designing crypto regulatory guidance would get done in 100 days. We’ll have to monitor that.&nbsp;



Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/crypto-industry-jockeys-seats-trumps-promised-council-2024-11-21/">reported</a> last month that people at crypto companies Ripple, Kraken, Circle, Paradigm and a16z were among those wanting a seat at that table.



Trump’s ongoing engagement with the industry seems to show his pro-crypto rhetoric was not just lip service. A few days before that Reuters story ran, Trump <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-nominates-commerce-dept-leader">nominated</a> crypto-friendly Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick to lead the Department of Commerce.



The soon-to-be president also just met with Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek last week about <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-crypto-ceo-btc-reserve-meeting">crypto-related appointments</a> and a bitcoin reserve.



Those congratulating Hines on X yesterday included crypto bigwigs <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-salesmen-michael-saylor-larry-fink">Michael Saylor</a> and Fred Thiel — leaders of two companies (MicroStrategy and Marathon Digital) which own roughly 490,000 BTC combined.



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Trump crypto appointment spurs optimism 

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President Biden over the weekend signed Congress’s bipartisan <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/congress-continuing-resolution">spending</a> package, narrowly avoiding a government shutdown and keeping federal operations funded through mid-March.&nbsp;



The bill, cut from 1,500 pages to around 100, does not raise the debt ceiling, a provision President-elect Trump requested. Also out: a 3.8% raise for members of Congress, a bipartisan provision included in the original bill.&nbsp;



The eleventh-hour deal did little to calm markets, which have <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/market-reaction-to-fed-rate-cut">struggled to maintain</a> their post-election momentum this month. The S&amp;P 500 is down 1.7% since the start of December. The tech-heavy Nasdaq has fared better, gaining 1.4% month to date, but the index lost almost 3% last week alone.&nbsp;



The dip, which Sevens Report Research founder Tom Essaye attributes to hawkish commentary from the Fed, political turmoil and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/jobs-initial-claims-report-december">disappointing</a> initial jobless claims data last week, could be a “potential preview” for the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/analyst-market-commentary-2025">new year</a>.&nbsp;



“Now, to be clear, while I say that, I’m also not saying I expect the market to decline next year,” Essaye added.&nbsp;



“Instead, I think last week was a preview of 2025 because it was a realization of what I have been warning about: Namely that uncertainty around the key drivers of this <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/standard-bitcoin-bull-market-cycle">bull market</a> is going to rise and we saw that last week with two of the drivers of rally, expectations for Fed rate cuts and pro-growth policies.”&nbsp;



The S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq Composite were trading fairly flat midway through Monday’s session, up 0.6% and 1%, respectively, as of 2:15 pm ET. Market moves are expected to be relatively soft this week with a limited number of trading days.&nbsp;



Meanwhile, bitcoin has also stalled. The largest digital currency is down around 13% from its all-time high of more than $108,000.&nbsp;



Historically, cryptos deliver mixed returns in the final days of the year. When trying to predict what might happen this week, analysts say keeping an eye on macro conditions will be key. 



&#8220;While reduced liquidity can heighten volatility, the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/institutions-need-altcoin-major-pair">absence</a> of major institutional activity may actually stabilize prices,” James Toledano, chief operating officer at Unity Wallet, said. “This year, much depends on investor sentiment following 2024’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-approves-bitcoin-etf">ETF</a><a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ether-etfs-approved-for-us-exchange-july-23"> approval</a> and the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-lenient-crypto-regulation">Trump-factor</a> as well as other macro trends.”



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Stocks trade sideways after Congress passes stopgap spending bill

Donovan Choy

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">subscribe</a>.



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“You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” — Harvey Dent



For Hyperliquid, it took all of 25 days since its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hyperliquid-most-valuable-airdrop">highly acclaimed airdrop</a> to run into a bout of controversy.



It started when Taylor Monahan (<a href="https://x.com/tayvano_/status/1870960207842701358">@tayvano</a>), a security researcher at MetaMask, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/north-korea-defi-hacks">sounded the alarm</a> on a series of Hyperliquid transactions made from North Korea-tagged wallets. Based on Monahan’s data, the wallets have accrued a $701k loss from ETH perps positions.



It’s a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stolen-crypto-north-korea">meager amount</a> for a state-sponsored hacker group. But what got people in an uproar was the revelation that North Korea hackers were actively familiarizing themselves with the Hyperliquid platform, presumably to launch an impending hack.



Hyperliquid chain’s highly centralized validator set of <a href="https://hypurrscan.io/staking">four</a> made it extra vulnerable to a potential hack, Monahan claims.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">There are no more than 4 validators and all run the same code, possibly collocated as well. Centralized infra, build systems, etc. maintained and accessed by unknown number of founders, c-levels, and engjneers who use the same devices to access said systems as they do to talk to…&mdash; Tay 💖 (@tayvano_) <a href="https://twitter.com/tayvano_/status/1871097647144280504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 23, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Hyperliquid’s liquidity is locked in a lock-and-mint style bridge from Arbitrum, where Hyperliquid <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hyperliquid-hype-airdrop">used to exist </a>as a perps DEX application.



When Hyperliquid migrated to its own <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/glossary/#tendermint">Tendermint</a>-consensus PoS L1 chain in March 2024, the team retained the lock-and-mint style bridge from Arbitrum, which remains the only way to onboard onto Hyperliquid today.



Based on Dune, the deposit bridge has seen a record high net outflow of $114.7m in USDC liquidity in the past day, though that is still a fraction of the remaining $2.22b in TVL.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcVBrVkHTPGMAe-4NhLZHaSToRdCLLgVzM5d8COiAtDcyRi9MAyKxKoOUYXBzYJL1HdANEtxv00R9MbDVWOymXAOo19GBrVwl5Gr9VUkraFa6_2yFja15Bfd2wBKicKKZVKx4IaDQ?key=n-XfG3ey8f5M1RCMdheTC7vX" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://dune.com/entropy_advisors/hyperliquid-bridge-tvl">Dune</a></figcaption></figure>



Talks of a Hyperliquid hack are merely speculative at this time, but if one happened, here’s a rough sketch of how it would play out.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Everyone wanted Hyperliquid to respond to the allegations of an impending hack, so here it is. TDLR: there is no exploit, all funds are safu. If a vulnerability is found, the team is always willing to listen as they have a bug bounty program. <a href="https://t.co/VHYeUogvxs">pic.twitter.com/VHYeUogvxs</a>&mdash; steven.hl (@stevenyuntcap) <a href="https://twitter.com/stevenyuntcap/status/1871225238543053137?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 23, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



To successfully attack Hyperliquid’s bridge contract would require three out of its four validators to be compromised, as per a two-thirds quorum.



Should that happen, the natively minted USDC on Arbitrum could theoretically be frozen by Circle before the hackers were able to swap the stolen funds into an uncensorable asset like ETH.



That, however, requires Circle to act on issued court orders, a tedious and slow legal process that may offer the time sophisticated hackers need to execute an exit.



The hacker may instead choose to try and swap to USDC.e (Ethereum-native USDC tokens that were bridged to Arbitrum) onto the Ethereum L1.



“The only plausible path that would enable the Arbitrum security council as a line of defense would be if the hackers attempted to withdraw the funds through the canonical bridge, likely after swapping to ETH,” Matt Fiebach at Entropy Advisors told Blockworks.



“In this scenario, the elected Arbitrum Security would need to make the decision of whether effectively blocking this transfer was within their scope of ‘addressing critical risks associated with the Arbitrum protocol and its ecosystem’.”



Finally, it’s also worth noting that a hacker would have trouble finding the necessary liquidity venues to swap out of the stolen funds. $2 billion of liquidity would have to be spread across a variety of third-party bridges, which would cause massive slippages.



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Hyperliquid under scrutiny amid signs of North Korean hacker activity

Katherine Ross

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">subscribe</a>.



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That seems to have been Robinhood’s approach to crypto this past year, from its Bitstamp acquisition (still expected to close in the first half of next year) to its response to the Wells notice it received from the SEC. The firm has shown an interest and, dare I say, commitment to crypto.



Johann Kerbrat told me that’s not changing anytime soon and, if anything, the “enthusiasm in crypto,” is serving to help the firm as it plots out the upcoming year.



But even before the bullishness really took off after Donald Trump won the presidential election, the firm reported $38 billion in crypto assets under custody as of November 2024. And while Kerbrat wasn’t able to provide a more updated number, he did note that the company’s seen an increase in engagement if you’re looking at customer behavior, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/robinhood-retail-user-engagement">echoing what he told Empire</a> back in October.



“In November alone, we did more than $3 billion in volume, which is, I think, almost twice as much as Q3,” he added. “If you look at the activity onchain … we see people buying on Robinhood, transferring to their self-custody wallet or transferring to other places,” he noted.&nbsp;



To put these figures in perspective, this is just a year after <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/robinhood-earnings-q3-2023">Robinhood’s trading revenues</a> tanked in the same quarter back in 2023.



Kerbrat’s also noticed a tick up in NFT activity. While activity is still way down from 2022 (to no one’s surprise), it’s looking like sales will either match or fall just under last year’s total figure, according to data from CryptoSlam.&nbsp;



As of right now, with a little over a week left in the year, NFT global sales volume sits at $8.69 billion. Last year, that figure totaled $8.71 billion. If we’re just looking at the average sale in US dollars, though, then this year outperformed last year at $122 on average in comparison to 2023’s $95.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe-jfjalLvAG8aFuu--JcvdEODYbMy6InV92sDc4QGqOgs5_JYWxyulYncGjT17m4yOgcZh_j0IG2zEF35gYGD5n6BQuJxLxLInewQR9AQHL0LyvwK-y5RMg_dFzwp31l_qH7UGXg?key=RztHTa0yKO7h41LHD4nydxv7" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: CryptoSlam!</figcaption></figure>



Europe has also been a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/robinhood-solana-staking-europe">big focus</a> for Robinhood this year, arguably one of their bigger years in terms of expanding their EU footprint. However, that looks poised to change once the aforementioned <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/robinhood-bitstamp-institutional-clients">Bitget acquisition closes</a>.&nbsp;



But it’s not just Bitget that has Kerbrat’s attention next year. He and his team are eager to “do more in tokenization,” he said.&nbsp;



The firm, alongside Kraken, Paxos and others, announced the Global Dollar Network based on a new stablecoin offering, <a href="https://paxos.com/blog/introducing-global-dollar-network-an-open-network-to-accelerate-and-reward-global-stablecoin-adoption-driven-by-anchorage-digital-bullish-galaxy-digital-kraken-nuvei-paxos-and-robinhood/">USDG</a>, earlier this year.&nbsp;



“We want to be a pioneer” in tokenization, he told me, given that the publicly-traded company feels like it can “bring a lot to the table.”



He’s also starting to loosely look into artificial intelligence, but he’s wary due to how narratives tend to play out (story gets big, then bad actors come in to prey on the weak). Specifically, his concern is focused on AI being used for deep fake videos that could be used to scam people. But that’s not to say he doesn’t think AI and crypto can find common ground.



“I think the intersection between crypto and AI is something that I&#8217;m following pretty closely. When I hear a lot of the issues around AI right now on like micro payments or fair remuneration of the data that is training the models you handle, like personal information, all this kind of thing, makes me feel like … we can actually combine [crypto and AI] and get somewhere that is pretty exciting,” he explained.



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Robinhood wants to be a tokenization ‘pioneer’

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Sanctum, the Solana startup focused on growing the network’s liquid staking ecosystem, launched a new primitive today called creator coins.&nbsp;



Creator coins are essentially Solana liquid staking tokens that Sanctum issues while giving the yield to creators. Fans can earn loyalty points for holding creator coins, and creators can use those points to dole out perks. It’s a new spin on an old concept in crypto, but Sanctum thinks launching with more crypto-native creators can help it pick up adoption where others have failed.



Sanctum is a newer startup that came up through the Solana Foundation’s startup incubator this spring and promised to create an “infinite LST future” on Solana. Its initial flagship product was called INF — a token that helps provide liquidity to a pool of Solana LSTs.



It then carried out a much-hyped airdrop focused on “earnestness” that ignited some controversy <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-newsletter-sanctum-airdrop-backlash">over the summer</a>. Since then, Sanctum has been a bit quieter, most notably <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sanctum-adding-binance-bitget-bybit-as-partners">launching LSTs</a> with Asia-based crypto exchanges including Binance in the early fall.&nbsp;



Creator coins are a concept Sanctum has seemingly toyed with for a while as well — co-founder FP Lee <a href="https://x.com/soleconomist/status/1787580806497554619">created</a> the fpSOL liquid staking token as a “personal LST” experiment in May.&nbsp;



Creator coin holders forgo their SOL staking yield to support creators. Sanctum takes a small cut of this as well, Sanctum’s anonymous co-founder J told me. Sanctum’s Solana staking APY is around 10% on average, J added.



In exchange, users earn “seeds,” which are loyalty points that can track fans’ investment and let creators offer loyalty perks.&nbsp;



When I asked why creator coins couldn’t just pass along some staking yield to users while charging a commission for the creators, J said giving creators all the rewards “makes economic sense for now,” but this could be changed in the future.



One obvious target audience for creator coins is celebrities who — <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hawk-memecoin-draws-lawsuit">like the “Hawk Tuah” girl</a> — seem to keep launching volatile memecoins that end in lawsuits or reputational damage. Creator coins may come with less immediate upside, but they also come with less risk.&nbsp;



Still, Sanctum isn’t the first to try luring creators with crypto-based loyalty programs. Jack Harlow joined a loyalty <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/jack-harlow-mith-fan-engagement">platform named MITH</a> last year, for instance, but other creators appear to be somewhat slow to adopt the platform, which hasn’t <a href="https://x.com/OnlywithMITH">posted</a> on X since May. As a response to this, Sanctum is limiting creator coins to just crypto creators for now.



“A lot of previous attempts often failed because there&#8217;s a certain disconnect between the creator and their supporters,” J said. “This is why we didn&#8217;t necessarily want to get the biggest creators for the beta launch. We wanted Solana folks who were really dialed in and connected to their fanbase.”



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Solana liquid staking startup Sanctum trials ‘creator coins’

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">subscribe</a>.



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When examining crypto stocks, chatting with a co-portfolio manager of the long-running blockchain-focused Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK) makes for a good convo.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Dan Weiskopf told me he’s more optimistic about 2025 now than he was about this year at the end of 2023.



A main reason? The “crazy opportunity” for BLOK investors that’s set to come as more pure-play crypto companies go public.&nbsp;



Some expect <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-files-ipo">stablecoin issuer Circle</a> could be among the next to do so. Weiskopf also has his eye on <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/figure-raises-60m-launches-dex">Figure Technologies</a>.



While a few more bitcoin miners could also go public, that’s a crowded field, Weiskopf noted. But BLOK would consider holding cloud-computing firm CoreWeave — one of mining giant <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/core-scientific-rejects-coreweave-buyout-bid-after-big-hpc-deal">Core Scientific’s largest clients</a>.



Speaking of Core Scientific, that stock — up ~320% year to date — is BLOK’s No. 1 holding (4.67%). Another interesting miner to Weiskopf is Hut 8 — the ETF’s sixth-largest holding, at 4.16%.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdjjIQ3TRWCtkQk6ivHw2GW5TAVq3y-ciKKxCDTkQ34l1Au-3Vb87-WLZxNdkomVa3Mg9jnJknYCM35rB36hVDDvSyAdi39J25MtZMqjDz9ks0GK0BlOVnW6-kKTlW5bCQIK1uyrg?key=faEA7u4tWkwGB1Ia4pTgPfjp" alt=""/></figure>



“I think we did a really good job repositioning and recalibrating amongst the miners in capturing the diversification <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/btc-miners-evolving-revenue-post-halving">into the AI side</a> of things,” the PM said.



Hut 8 is weighted slightly above MicroStrategy — a stock set to enter the Nasdaq 100 index next week (I’ll write more about that on Monday). BLOK started buying MSTR in August 2020 (when it was $14), Weiskopf and co-PM Mike Venuto <a href="https://blog.amplifyetfs.com/blok/blok-chain-monthly-commentary-december-2024?utm_campaign=BLOK&amp;utm_content=318841101&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;hss_channel=tw-4756273994">noted</a>.&nbsp;



MSTR shares were trading around $350 this afternoon (up more than 400% YTD). Benchmark analysts on Monday upped their price target for the stock to $650 after MicroStrategy increased its bitcoin holdings to 439,000 BTC.



That said, Weiskopf and Venuto recently reduced BLOK’s exposure to MSTR and CORZ as the stocks “rallied past our weighting limits,” they added. In other words, they’re trimming the winners in hopes of moving into other successes.



On that diversification point: As the BLOK money managers await more IPOs in 2025, they started buying Japan-based Metaplanet last month.



While more companies are <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/company-treasuries-btc-reserve-asset">adding BTC to their treasuries</a> (~60 by Weiskopf’s count), many are small. So-called “zombie companies” aren’t likely to bounce back just because they’ve bought the crypto asset, he said.



“They make a headline, but do they have a real strategy?” Weiskopf added about evaluating these BTC purchasers.&nbsp;



He argued that Metaplanet, which in April <a href="https://x.com/Metaplanet_JP/status/1777243921867014574">unveiled its intent</a> to emulate MicroStrategy’s efforts, is one committed to these BTC buys. The company said this week it would issue 5 billion yen in ordinary bonds to accelerate bitcoin purchases.



So, for those monitoring crypto stocks, BLOK holdings appear worth peeking at. And then there’re the yet-to-arise opportunities during what could be a transformative year for the segment.



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Crypto stocks to watch in 2025

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Ethereum All-Core Devs (ACD) held their final call of 2024 yesterday, which offered key updates on plans to raise the gas limit and progress toward the Pectra upgrade. Discussions revealed the community’s ongoing efforts to balance execution-layer changes, consensus-layer coordination and EIP implementation, reflecting Ethereum’s commitment to “build-in-public” iterative improvement.



In a bold but measured move, Ethereum developers are preparing for a gas limit increase, <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/04/22/ethereum-gas-limit-hits-15m-as-eth-price-soars">mirroring</a> a 20% rise seen over three years ago. This time, the proposed increase aims for 36 million gas, though significant technical constraints temper enthusiasm for higher thresholds. The primary limitation is the consensus layer’s &#8220;GOSSIP_MAX_SIZE,&#8221; which restricts validator block transmission to 10 MiB, equivalent to roughly 10.48 MB.&nbsp;



On the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-devs-milestone-call">Mekong testnet</a> — used for Pectra fork testing — the gas limit has already increased to 36 million, offering a stable testing ground for network performance under higher limits.



While the Mekong testnet runs stably with these changes, developers cautioned against increasing the mainnet gas limit beyond 40 million without addressing the gossip-layer constraints. Validator clients, such as Prysm, face challenges in dynamically adjusting gas limits, which underlines the need for further development.



An increase to the gas limit does not need to wait for a hard fork but can be signaled by validators in support of such a change. To date, only 16.8% <a href="https://gaslimit.pics/">have done so</a>, but the trend is up. Campaigns like PumpTheGas.org aim to build more momentum.



The <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research/issue/post_a2d3d0b2-7573-4379-a2d8-db9d7c7dc488">Pectra upgrade</a> remains a centerpiece of Ethereum’s 2025 roadmap. It’s on track for a Q1 release, with developers targeting a Devnet-5 launch by year-end. Changes discussed on the call include replacing EIP-7742 with EIP-7840 to offer more flexibility in managing &#8220;blob counts&#8221; — a key element for scaling Ethereum and supporting layer-2 rollups.&nbsp;



By allowing developers to set maximum and target blob counts independently, the network can balance scalability (by allowing more data blobs) with stability (by maintaining operational safety limits). This separation makes it easier to optimize block capacity without overloading the network.



Additionally, EIP-2537 focuses on gas repricing for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLS_digital_signature">BLS</a> (Boneh-Lynn-Shacham) precompile operations, which are essential for cryptographic computations in Ethereum. The proposal adjusts gas costs for specific mathematical operations, ensuring that resource-intensive tasks are priced fairly while removing inefficiencies like redundant operations. These updates enhance network efficiency, optimize resource usage and improve cost fairness for developers.



An EVM resource pricing working group will launch in January. This group will work on harmonizing gas cost calculations across various operations, aiming to improve efficiency and fairness in Ethereum&#8217;s fee structure.



EIP-4444, which schedules the rollout of pre-Merge history expiry for May 1, 2025, requires additional testing to finalize.&nbsp;



The call also underscored the need for clearer validator node requirements, with developers seeking community feedback. A further proposal to redefine “Meta” EIPs as solely process-related could simplify hardfork management.&nbsp;



Ethereum’s deliberate and collaborative approach to development was evident throughout the discussions. The Pectra upgrade and proposed gas limit increase reflect the network’s ambition to expand its technical capabilities while prioritizing stability.



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Ethereum to ramp up gas limit as Pectra progresses

<a href="https://overlord.bot/">Overlord.bot</a> is the first autonomous Trader AI Agent built on Arbitrum and living on X (previously Twitter) as <a href="https://x.com/OverlordBot_">@OverlordBot_</a>. Users can interact with Overlord on X to convince him to pump any token living under its reign.



Overlord reinvents how users and AI Agents can launch, trade and interact with the community created tokens on the Arbitrum network. Recently, Overlord has picked up some serious traction on X. Why? Because users have been trying hard to convince Overlord to pump their bags (or be their exit liquidity). The reward? The most convincing user will have Overlord support and pump their token. Who doesn’t want that?



The origins of Overlord stems from being the very first AI Agent launched out of <a href="https://aisweat.shop/">AiSweat.Shop</a>, also known as A.S.S. AiSweatShop is the first AI Agent Launchpad on Arbitrum and backed by Arbitrum Foundation. It was built with the OpenAgent AI Framework (the very first Web3 AI Agent Framework published on Github in March 2024) by <a href="https://open.network/">Open</a> (collective includes <a href="https://rss3.io/">RSS3</a>).&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Building a New Standard for Sustainable Growth</h3>



With Overlord, the lines between creator, developer, trader, community, and protocol blur. Conviction on-chain can be tokenized and exit liquidity can be democratized through DeAI-Fi. Discussion, persuasion, mindshare, and creativity play as large a role as liquidity and code. It’s a system designed to remove all entry barriers and encourage anyone to collaborate with AI Agents.



Designed to filter out short-lived cash grabs and encourage tokens with real narratives, unique propositions, and staying power, before a token gains full recognition by Overlord, it must achieve a 100K market cap before it graduates. Until then, a 2% platform fee applies with parts going back to Overlord’s own treasury, which will in turn be used to support other new tokens’ liquidity that is collectively decided by Overlord and the community on X (through convincing Overlord). This will motivate issuers to think longer-term and deliver sustainable value to their token. Holders of $OVER (the native token of Overlord), early adopters and compelling projects may enjoy ongoing perks from Overlord, setting the stage for a future where token teams are incentivized from forging meaningful relationships with the Overlord AI.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Launch your token with Overlord</h3>



With Overlord, there are no backdoors, zero barriers to entry and it’s so seamless even the image of your token can be automatically generated for you.



How you can get started:&nbsp;



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Launch a token on Arbitrum by posting and mentioning @Overlordbot_ on X.</li>



<li>Engage and convince Overlord that your token deserves to be pumped.</li>



<li>Work your magic and grow your token’s value, aim for that 100K market cap milestone, and watch the Overlord ecosystem respond in real time.</li>
</ul>



If you can convince Overlord of your token’s potential, then Overlord might use its autonomous wallet &#8211; currently holding 50 ETH &#8211; to buy your token within the next 24 hours. Think of it as a real-time, merit-based, AI generated investment decision that rewards authenticity, compelling visions, and community support, rather than empty hype.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">About AiSweatShop</h3>



AiSweatShop (A.S.S.) is the first DeFi AI Agent OS, an open source DeFi Agentic Infrastructure – allowing for the easy deployment of autonomous AI Agents with various decentralized financial abilities (DeFi) subsequently tokenized to form what is called DeAI-Fi. Powered by <a href="https://open.network/">Open</a> (collective include <a href="https://rss3.io/">RSS3</a>), A.S.S. is designed to challenge the norms of decentralized finance and beyond.



At its core, A.S.S. is set to revolutionize the existing complex UI/UX of DeFi to an autonomous AI agent companion user interface termed AgentUI. The unique positioning of being on Arbitrum, the top Layer-2 (L2) of the Ethereum blockchain with the most DeFi activities is anticipated to help kick off the DeAI-Fi revolution.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Find Out More</h3>



With Overlord being the very first AI Agent launched from A.S.S., we’re setting the stage for a more interactive, AI-driven, and community-centric era in token launches—an era where authenticity and vision eclipse empty speculation.



For more information, visit <a href="https://aisweat.shop/">https://AiSweat.Shop</a> or follow <a href="https://x.com/OverlordBot_">@OverlordBot_</a> on X to launch your token.



This content is sponsored and does not serve as an endorsement by Blockworks. The veracity of this content has not been verified and should not serve as financial advice. We encourage readers to conduct their own research before making financial decisions.



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Convince Overlord to pump your bags

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If we’re trying to celebrate Christmas, then we need to bring out some green to even out the red this morning.&nbsp;



Kraken’s Thomas Perfumo already <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-market-holiday-pullbacks">warned us last week</a> that we could see some pullbacks ahead of the holidays, and that seems to be ringing true right now. Whether or not we see the selling countered is another story.&nbsp;



But I’m not actually here to talk about markets. Or, I should say, I’m not talking about what the markets are doing today.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd6dwvu5R48RdU6YZzbtei5ghv_4Kfq37E3l6c83bOW-18vweS7Y3W5W7Ec3m3bpNEkWi9mqT1-hXaye1iBk4G3_VKO0-LS0VZ1DIGE9wT1iPW8zbGIlrIyOeGYB-b7R7rsowq40A?key=t1FBQ15ZXSF89ih_1dIaFidS" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Keep this chart in mind if you’re obsessively watching bitcoin’s price right now. Source: Coinbase Institutional</figcaption></figure>



Earlier this week, Coinbase Institutional released its market outlook for next year.&nbsp;



David Duong, head of research, pointed out in the note that the 2024 uptrend has shown some “stark” differences to previous cycles, but the overall landscape looks “promising” still.



VanEck, in its predictions, otherwise said it believes that the bull market’s going to carry on next year, peaking at around $180,000. After that, they expect a 30% retracement from bitcoin and altcoins could see double that.&nbsp;



“A recovery is likely in the fall, with major tokens regaining momentum and reclaiming previous all-time highs by the end of the year,” VanEck wrote.&nbsp;



But even if we see a decline, Coinbase Institutional came off pretty bullish in their note.&nbsp;



“As the regulatory and technological landscapes evolve, we expect to see substantial growth in the crypto ecosystem as wider adoption drives the industry closer to achieving its full potential. This will be a pivotal year. The breakthroughs and advancements of 2025 may very well help shape the long-term trajectory of the crypto industry for decades to come,” Duong wrote.&nbsp;



Let’s zoom in on a question I’ve asked a number of people now: Can <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/when-will-eth-break-all-time-high">ETH make a comeback next year</a>? 



ETH’s just been lagging behind, watching from the sidelines as both bitcoin and solana carve out new all-time highs.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXelOEjo8tLgBB6SzB2TyqaLUOhyqPVdOtfrVQNKQ7vela_9QHpwnBdM7liCmZFwyLvnbrtQA4lutkU5fHRRXQY3hpMXMdZDRtmOpjbmkRx1tBsALAH6jYoSJ4GSz1bokyhJ5WQI_w?key=t1FBQ15ZXSF89ih_1dIaFidS" alt=""/></figure>



In the long-term, Duong and his team think that the growth of the Ethereum L2 ecosystem is a “boon,” but it’s not clear right now if that’s going to be enough to aid ETH in the short to medium term.



21Shares, in their predictions report, thinks that Solana is going to continue to eat Ethereum’s lunch.



“While we don’t anticipate a full ‘flippening,’ Solana is primed to outperform and capture more market share from Ethereum through improved UX and infrastructure,” 21Shares analysts wrote.&nbsp;



They also think that Ethereum is primed for a “revenue renaissance” beginning next year.&nbsp;



“Web2 firms like Robinhood and PayPal, along with traditional finance entities like Visa, are likely to launch their own L2s, leveraging cost-efficiency and scalability to unlock new revenue streams and serve a growing demand for decentralized applications,” they said.&nbsp;



So maybe things aren’t looking so bad after all.



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What analysts say about the market next year

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">subscribe</a>.



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A group of 12 plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against two of the creators of HAWK, a memecoin promoted by the so-called Hawk Tuah girl Haliey Welch, in the Eastern District Court of New York this morning.&nbsp;



Welch is notably not party to the suit, which lists only her business partners, a launchpad and a Cayman Islands foundation as defendants. Welch became the latest celebrity to launch a Solana memecoin this year — and far from the first to have it blow up on her.&nbsp;



Haliey Welch became the face of the “Hawk Tuah” meme after appearing in a man on the street social media post in Nashville this summer. Improbably, Welch turned her brief clip into a promising influencer career: her Talk Tuah podcast <a href="https://x.com/ComplexPop/status/1838315768569532419">rose</a> to #4 on the charts.



Welch also made some crypto ties, <a href="https://x.com/HalieyWelchX/status/1816934298890432814/video/1">attending</a> Bitcoin Nashville and appearing <a href="https://x.com/MostCrucified/status/1831450281261007034">virtually</a> at Korea Blockchain Week. Her X profile picture is a reference to the Mog memecoin.



In late November, a little-known company called overHere announced it had partnered with Welch to launch HAWK, a memecoin that would “redefine the crypto space.” The HAWK token is the <a href="https://overhere.gg/">only</a> product listed on overHere’s website. It was founded by Clinton So, a Hong Kong resident who is one of the lawsuit’s defendants.



“We have been extremely transparent about the limited scope and extent of our involvement in the Hawk Tuah token project. We are confident that we have done nothing wrong. As for any litigation, we will let the process play out in court,” said So’s PR firm, which is called Rekt Partners, when reached for comment.



The crypto twitter personality Alex Larson Schultz, a Los Angeles resident known online as Doc Hollywood, also helped promote the launch. Some of the HAWK tokens were pre-sold and used to fund the project, the lawsuit says.



The token debuted Dec. 4 and saw its market capitalization shoot up before falling 90% all within a few hours, the suit adds. Welch, So, and Schultz initially defended the failed launch in an X space before largely disappearing from social media for the past two weeks. Welch has not posted or uploaded anywhere online since the incident.



So has already thrown Schultz under the bus for the incident: the overHere X account posted that Schultz/Doc Hollywood had full control of the token and “<a href="https://x.com/overHere_gg/status/1868799748305756667">vanished</a> when things got hard.” OverHere cast Welch and her team as wanting to tap “Web3’s potential” but not having the experience to do so in a savvy way.



Celebrities being taken for a ride by business partners urging them to debut hopeless projects is a time-honored tradition in crypto — just <a href="https://x.com/Caitlyn_Jenner/status/1795269306693075404?lang=en">ask</a> Caitlin Jenner. Reading between the lines, that seems to be the case here as well. Welch not being a defendant in the suit is telling in that regard. That story becomes sadder when the celebrity involved is a 22 year-old girl who just became famous overnight.



Max Burwick, whose Burwick Law firm filed the suit alongside Wolf Popper, told me the firm is “engaged in discussions” with Welch’s counsel.&nbsp;



He added that the case “underscores a troubling pattern in the crypto space: the targeted exploitation of celebrity and public figures’ names to generate profit, often at the expense of everyday people.”



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Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



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