EigenCloud (prev. EigenLayer)

Kunal Doshi

Shaunda Devens

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Equities ripped higher yesterday, with the Nasdaq up 2.15% and the S&amp;P 500 up 1.39% after Nvidia beat earnings and guided for $65 billion in Q4 revenue. Crypto moved the other way: BTC fell, most sectors closed red, and only a few outliers held up. Today we break down the divergence, Aave’s 2.6x YoY TVL growth and new app rollout, and why Solana’s equity-perp ecosystem is lagging Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 flywheel.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Indices</h2>



Despite the recovery in equities yesterday, BTC continued to show weakness and fell -1.66% on a day when the Nasdaq, S&amp;P 500, and Gold were up 2.15%, 1.39%, and 0.77%, respectively.



Nvidia’s earnings helped calm fears of the AI bubble popping, at least for now. The chipmaker beat analyst expectations with strong data center demand, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/19/nvidia-earnings-ai-wall-street-relief#:~:text=The%20company%20is%20projecting%20fourth,AI%20bubble%2C%E2%80%9D%20he%20said.">projected</a> fourth quarter revenue of $65 billion, compared to the $61 billion estimate. With Nvidia shares up 5% after hours, the tech-heavy indices should continue to see some relief. The case for BTC is less straightforward, with OG Bitcoin whales <a href="https://x.com/santimentfeed/status/1991280300601508328?s=20">continuing</a> to sell as BTC struggles to reclaim the key $100,000 level.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1176" height="623" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-124.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110061" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-124.png?w=1176 1176w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-124.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-124.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-124.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-124.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-124.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-124.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-124.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1176px) 100vw, 1176px" /></figure>



The weakness in BTC spread across the crypto market, with nearly every sector closing in the red. Memes were the rare outlier, rising 0.2% on the day, driven by SPX and MemeCore — which gained 6.3% and 2.3%, respectively. L2s also held up better than most, down only -0.5%.&nbsp;



Starknet stood out in the group, jumping 20.8% on the day and 81% on the week as it picked up the privacy narrative bid following news that the team plans to launch <a href="https://x.com/Starknet/status/1990437640684888167?s=20">Ztarknet</a>, a Starknet L2 designed for Zcash.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1174" height="645" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-120.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110055" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-120.png?w=1174 1174w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-120.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-120.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-120.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-120.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-120.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-120.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-120.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1174px) 100vw, 1174px" /></figure>



On the downside, Crypto Miners fell -5.9% despite Nvidia’s strong results reinvigorating the AI trade. The No Revenue index was the next weakest, dropping -4.5%, with XRP and XLM down -4.9% and -3.9%, respectively, on the day. Even tokens with strong fundamentals were not spared, with the Revenue index finishing -3% lower.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Market Update</h2>



It can be hard to stay optimistic in markets like this, but it is worth remembering that some teams are still shipping, still innovating, and still strengthening their fundamentals week after week. These are the projects that typically emerge strongest when sentiment finally turns. One name that stands out right now for me is Aave, which rolled out both the new <a href="https://x.com/aave/status/1990421343175672159?s=20">Aave App</a> and <a href="https://x.com/aave/status/1990421343175672159?s=20">Aave v4</a> this week.



Let’s start with fundamentals. Over the past year, the total value of assets deposited into Aave has grown from $20.5 billion to a peak of $74 billion in early October. Even after the recent market pullback brought that number down to $53.8 billion, Aave is still up roughly 2.6x year over year, which speaks to real, sustained demand for the protocol.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="713" height="368" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-119.png" alt="" class="wp-image-110056" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-119.png?w=713 713w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-119.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-119.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-119.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-119.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-119.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 713px) 100vw, 713px" /></figure>



The price of the Aave token may be drifting near April lows, but weekly revenues tell a different story. Revenues today are about 2.6x higher than they were back then, which suggests that the token is seeing multiple compression driven more by sentiment than by fundamentals.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="713" height="368" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-119.png" alt="" class="wp-image-110057" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-119.png?w=713 713w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-119.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-119.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-119.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-119.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-119.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 713px) 100vw, 713px" /></figure>



These fundamentals are primed to strengthen further with the launch of the Aave App. The goal is simple: Remove complexity and give everyday users a clean, intuitive savings experience. And the pitch is strong. Aave is offering interest rates of up to 6.5% on USD deposits, well above the <a href="https://aave.com/app">0.40-3.50%</a> range offered by savings accounts.



Onboarding is designed to be easy, with deposits supported through bank accounts and debit cards, and balances advertised as insured up to $1 million. The app is available in early access on iOS with Android support on the way.&nbsp;



However, the insurance piece deserves a closer look. The coverage is provided by <a href="https://relminsurance.com/">Relm Insurance</a>, a firm that focuses on emerging industries such as fintech, digital assets, AI and the space economy. Relm’s <a href="https://relminsurance.com/crypto-asset-insurance-comprehensive-protection-in-the-digital-asset-ecosystem/">crypto asset insurance</a> includes coverage for risks like smart contract exploits, stablecoin depegs, oracle manipulation, liquidity pool exploits and governance attacks. What remains unclear are the policy limits, the risk premiums Aave is paying, and whether Relm has the balance sheet strength or reinsurance in place to backstop large claims. For context, insuring $1 million of USDC on Aave v3 through <a href="https://app.nexusmutual.io/cover/product/97">Nexus Mutual</a> costs about 1.9% annually.



As a potential user, I would want these details around the insurance promise laid out clearly and upfront before I’d feel comfortable depositing capital into the app. And as an investor, it raises questions about the cost structure of offering both high savings rates and insurance at scale. These uncertainties sit alongside the broader question of how long Aave intends to subsidize the difference between the 6.5% yield offered in the app and the 4% APY available in stablecoin markets on Aave today.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="714" height="364" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-121.png" alt="" class="wp-image-110058" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-121.png?w=714 714w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-121.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-121.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-121.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-121.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-121.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 714px) 100vw, 714px" /></figure>



Even with those uncertainties, this moment feels important. The Neobank narrative is gaining momentum, and Aave is now positioned directly in that slipstream. Pair that with the arrival of <a href="https://aave.com/blog/understanding-aave-v4s-architecture">Aave v4</a>, and you have the foundation for what could be the protocol’s next major growth phase.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Solana equity perps?</h2>



Solana has long positioned itself as a platform purpose-built for institutional trading, with Anatoly Yakovenko describing the vision as &#8220;Nasdaq, but on a public, permissionless blockchain.&#8221; Central to this mission is bringing TradFi assets onchain, a goal that is slowly materializing. Since June 30, 2025, over 60 tokenized stocks from major US companies and ETFs (e.g., Apple, Nvidia, S&amp;P 500) are now available for non-US persons to buy and hold like they would any SPL token.



These tokenized stocks have gained significant traction on Solana, reaching $143 million in AUM compared to just $6.3 million for the EVM-based xStocks version. Furthermore, Galaxy Digital&#8217;s decision to tokenize its GLXY equity via the Opening Bell platform, along with its work with Superstate, signals that institutional adoption is slowly gaining momentum.



However, on the other side — equity perpetuals — Solana seems to be lagging behind. While Solana is advancing its capabilities by enabling CLOB latency (via BAM) to support trading of synthetic perps, Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 mainnet and subsequent &#8220;Growth Mode&#8221; (offering a 90% fee discount) has changed the landscape. With TradeXYZ clearing $400 million in daily volume, there is a question of whether Hyperliquid’s dominance is already too far ahead.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-125.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110062" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-125.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-125.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-125.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-125.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-125.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-125.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-125.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-125.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-125.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



The main argument for Solana’s struggle here is Hyperliquid’s distribution advantage via HIP-3. Normally, general-purpose chains benefit from users’ &#8220;proximity to capital&#8221; — the friction of bridging to a new exchange and setting up a wallet usually makes users prefer to stay within their own ecosystem. However, through Builder codes, Hyperliquid has secured integrations with top distribution channels: Phantom now directly offers HIP-3 equities through its frontend interface.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1056" height="676" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-123.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110059" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-123.png?w=1056 1056w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-123.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-123.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-123.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-123.png?w=401 401w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-123.png?w=408 408w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-123.png?w=342 342w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-123.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1056px) 100vw, 1056px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: Phantom Builder code volume ASXN</figcaption></figure>







Alternatively, the argument is that Solana retains a structural advantage due to its proximity to tokenized spot tokens (e.g., xStocks). This simplifies the task for market makers, as they can easily hedge between spot and perps (theoretically, as xStocks currently lack the onchain volume). In this regard, protocols like Drift that focus on scaling composability are well-positioned. For example, users could easily enter delta-neutral positions (collateralizing xStock to short an xStock perp). This could solve a very important problem with perps currently: the extremely high cost of carry.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1078" height="668" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-122.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110060" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-122.png?w=1078 1078w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-122.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-122.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-122.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-122.png?w=415 415w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-122.png?w=421 421w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-122.png?w=353 353w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-122.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1078px) 100vw, 1078px" /></figure>



That being said, most Solana protocols have still not integrated perpetual equities, so it remains to be seen how they execute on this theoretical advantage.



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0xResearch Newsletter

AI relief rally meets BTC drag

Byron Gilliam

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“Patternicity: Noun. The tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise.”



— Michael Shermer
</blockquote>



We are hardwired to see patterns in noise — a stick in the grass that looks like a poisonous snake, or a rustle in the bushes that looks like a saber-toothed tiger getting ready to pounce.&nbsp;



With a moment’s reflection, we can usually recognize we’re almost certainly not in danger. But why risk it?



When faced with ambiguity, our brains have been fine-tuned to succumb to Type I errors (false positives) due to the high evolutionary cost of making a Type II error (false negatives).



In other words, it’s better to mistake a stick for a snake than a snake for a stick.



Those prone to the latter — the Type II error of failing to recognize mortal danger — are soon removed from the gene pool.



The Darwinian result is that we’re all descended from people who were quick to make the (occasionally life-saving) Type I error of jumping to false-positive conclusions.&nbsp;



Michael Shermer <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/patternicity-finding-meaningful-patterns/">calls</a> this “patternicity”: the human tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise.



“Our brains are belief engines,” he explains — “evolved pattern-recognition machines that connect the dots and create meaning out of the patterns that we think we see in nature.”



Traders and investors are the world champions of patternicity.



Confronted with the cacophonous noise of financial markets, we try to impose order on chaos by drawing lines on charts and searching for reassuringly familiar patterns.&nbsp;



When we perceive a “cup and handle” pattern in the price history of a stock, for example, we’re using the same part of our brain that perceives the shape of a rabbit in a cloud.&nbsp;



But the cup-and-handle is formed by charting prices over time, which seems more quantitatively scientific than a billowy pattern of vapor in the sky.



James Gleick refers to this as “periodicity.”&nbsp;



&#8220;Why do investors insist on the existence of cycles in gold and silver prices?” he asks in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Making-Science-James-Gleick-ebook/dp/B003YL4KOO/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.wbgQnuEhLIWY1HpuwBAg68ey4RWvDMHGoydJqSagN4DxsD4TW9khHUiB4S07pkwyAI9PZ7ENDVba-3DmEALTYmFRxnkGKpt3W5vPpmeXRkqNgnlaydfPEjxyz0U8yOIAu9ORS2bGtNkz7lg0WJpWXVD0Fkj3btJCEdSVpvoov9NIk_t-_tbOTc-zPX5j3z9D7AX8h3Fz4GEt2z0aNarG0V8yuxoJPEJrhuZEAmC0b5U.3e_k-V8SS5j8t5RCNcYG3xub3le5GO-LXI9WElflzMU&amp;qid=1763573303&amp;sr=1-1">Chaos</a>. “Because periodicity is the most complicated orderly behavior they can imagine.”&nbsp;



Investors, being the descendants of Type I thinkers, impose neat, repeating cycles on chaotic price data because that’s the most complexity our pattern-hungry brains can process.



“When they see a complicated pattern of prices,” Gleick adds, “they look for some periodicity wrapped in a little random noise.”



Investors and traders may be particularly prone to this evolutionary foible because even the best of them have a hit rate close to 50%.



That makes their performance close enough to random — and randomness tends to beget superstition.



Shermer, for example, notes that baseball players are much more superstitious about their hitting than they are about their fielding because the lower success rate in hitting makes it feel more random.



Traders don’t do anything as obviously superstitious as donning a lucky shirt like they would when they sit down to watch their favorite team play football or baseball.



But that’s because drawing lines on charts and picking patterns out of the noise makes us think we have more agency in making or losing money than we actually do.&nbsp;



Worse than superstition, this is superstition dressed up as science — not just seeing patterns in the stars, but believing the patterns have some meaning.&nbsp;



The “science” of technical analysis is really just astrology for traders.



Shermer calls this “agenticity”: the tendency to infuse patterns with meaning, intention, or agency — or the belief that ghosts, demons, aliens, and government conspiracists haunt our world and control our lives.



Stock market traders, for example, commonly believe it’s the Federal Reserve that controls prices on the way up (and sometimes a cabal of hedge funds that control themes on the way down).



But of all traders, crypto traders are the best of the best at both patternicity and agenticity — because what else is there to go on?



With little or no intrinsic value to ground their decisions, crypto traders are forced to impose imaginary patterns on pure price noise just to have a reason to act.



The original imaginary pattern was the four-year cycle — the idea that bitcoin (and therefore all of crypto) should rally for about 18 months after each of its four-year halvings.



That perceived periodicity is now breaking down, however, with bitcoin falling below $90,000 when the pattern says it should be making new highs above $150,000.&nbsp;



This idea was particularly unscientific, as it’s based on a sample size of just three previous halvings.



Still, there are presumably some tradeable patterns in finance — otherwise Cliff Asness wouldn&#8217;t be a billionaire.&nbsp;



The persistent success of quantitative traders like Asness in finding tradeable price patterns suggests that markets are not perfectly random.



Some might even <a href="https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2024/11/hadd-its-day-theres-no-evidence-for-an-inherited-hyperactive-agency-detection-device/">argue</a> that patternicity is itself a pattern in the noise of human behavior.



In financial markets especially, it might be that human behavior creates the patterns that humans are always looking for.



But even so, the thing to know about markets is this: Any pattern of prices that’s visible to the naked eye will soon stop being a pattern.



In crypto, the four-year cycle lasted longer than most before being exposed as a Type I error of overzealous pattern-matching — which made it a profitably tradeable pattern for a while.&nbsp;



But with bitcoin at $89,000, it’s time to start looking for the next one.



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bitcoin halving

Astrology for traders

Marc Arjoon

Boccaccio

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Markets opened to a clear risk-on tone, with crypto sectors sharply outperforming traditional assets. BTC posted a modest gain of +0.8%, while Gold (+1.0%) performed similarly. However, equities lagged meaningfully as the S&amp;P 500 (-0.9%) and Nasdaq 100 (-1.3%) both slipped, reflecting a mild unwind in tech momentum. Crypto equities also softened (-1.0%), suggesting the rotation favored onchain assets rather than public proxies.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="853" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-116.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110044" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-116.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-116.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-116.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-116.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-116.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-116.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-116.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-116.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-116.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Crypto sector indices saw broad strength, with DePIN (+6.2%) and AI (+6.1%) leading the board amid continued enthusiasm for infrastructure-heavy narratives. Ethereum-aligned assets (+5.1%) and Revenue-generating protocols (+4.3%) also climbed, hinting at renewed investor appetite for cash-flow visibility as activity improves on major L1s. Launchpads (+4.1%), Gaming (+3.8%), and Solana-ecosystem names (+3.3%) followed, rounding out a day dominated by high-beta segments. Even traditionally slower sectors like RWA (+3.1%), L1s (+3.0%), and DeFi (+2.8%) participated, while L2s (+1.8%) and Modular (+0.3%) underperformed relative to the rest of the crypto complex.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="835" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-118.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110046" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-118.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-118.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-118.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-118.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-118.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-118.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-118.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-118.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-118.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



The move appears to have been driven less by macro catalysts and more by positioning. With equities cooling and rates stable, crypto’s higher-volatility sectors benefited. Looking ahead, volatility remains compressed, but today’s dispersion hints that rotation trades are back in focus. With macro data light over the next 48 hours, crypto may continue to trade on sector-specific flows and narrative momentum.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Market Update</h2>



MegaETH’s “Frontier” mainnet beta was <a href="https://x.com/megaeth/status/1990833692067901552">announced</a> and starts in early December 2025. This announcement drops into a market primed for speed-as-a-moat narratives and any catalysts or excitement during the current downturn.&nbsp;



With Frontier running for one month in December (with zero incentives!), early flows are likely to pivot toward infra and app plays that are incredibly fast. Think high-frequency options and reactively-updating onchain games, segments that have been bottlenecked by block cadence rather than liquidity. Sentiment is cautiously optimistic: “real-time blockchain” messaging positions MegaETH as the execution-layer analogue to Solana’s UX but with Ethereum’s settlement trust. That “forced inclusion from day 1” call-out also matters, as it frames MegaETH not as a parallel universe L2 but as a high-performance lane plugged into the ETH security budget. This subtly shifts the modular narrative from “many uncorrelated rollups” to “one performance frontier.”&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="900" height="447" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-117.png" alt="" class="wp-image-110045" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-117.png?w=900 900w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-117.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-117.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-117.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-117.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-117.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-117.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px" /></figure>



On the valuation front: MegaETH’s public sale opened with a starting fully diluted valuation (FDV) of about $1 billion for 5% of supply, while the auction cap sat at roughly $999 million. Meanwhile, futures contracts on platforms like Hyperliquid implied an FDV in the $5-$6 billion ballpark ahead of token launch. The spread from the auction cap and futures pricing suggests that speculators are already betting on a substantially higher launch valuation than the public sale implies. From a market-dynamics lens, this divergence means the derivative markets are frontrunning launch expectations, creating a potential mismatch between early allocation pricing and broad-market demand. If the actual listing price aligns with the futures-implied $5-$6 billion FDV, early backers could enjoy a sharp upside.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="853" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-116.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110043" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-116.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-116.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-116.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-116.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-116.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-116.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-116.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-116.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-116.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



High-speed apps that prove real user loops could see speculative capital frontrun expectations before the beta ships. However, downtime is explicitly expected (it’s happened with EVERY “fast chain”), so levered bets on “MegaETH never breaks” may be mispriced.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Equity perpetuals</h2>



Equity perpetuals seem to be the single sector dominating most mindshare over the past few weeks, with the launch of multiple Pre-IPO and public equity perpetuals markets on Hyperliquid by various HIP-3 market providers, including Ventuals, Felix and trade.xyz.



At their core, equity perpetuals promise two new forms of tradable markets, which have not existed yet, or have not existed meaningfully:



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>Perpetuals futures on equity products</li>



<li>24/7 trading of equity products</li>
</ol>



Apart from recent HIP-3 markets, we saw steps taken toward equity perpetuals a few times over the past few years, most recently by Ostium, but previously by Gains Network as well.



Both Ostium and Gains Network use a peer-to-pool model, where traders trade against a pool of capital (which liquidity providers deposit into). Although an improvement on the GMX v1 style pools, where LPs had to hold a broad basket of risk assets (BTC, ETH, UNI, LINK etc.), peer-to-pool trading still struggles due to difficulties in scalability. In addition, toxic flow could take advantage of the pool, which always has to take the other side of the traders. However, overall, we’ve seen some of these pools be profitable for a long period of time (although it can end up like the “1000 days in the life of the turkey” charts every once in a while).



Similarly to the shift away from peer-to-pool perpetuals models, order-book-based equity perpetuals have also become increasingly more popular compared to Ostium. For example, while NDX-USD on Ostium has seen $5.5 million in volume on Ostium over the past day, XYZ100 (tradexyz’s Nasdaq 100 market) has seen $75 million in volume. Similarly, while TSLA-USD on Ostium has had only $1.4 million in 24-hour volume, the trade.xyz TSLA market has had $12 million and the Felix TSLA market has seen $2.6 million in volume.



There are other equity perpetuals platforms coming up slowly as well. One new player is Vest markets, which also provides equity perpetuals for a broad range of assets, including equity indices like Nasdaq 100 (24-hour volume: $9.5 million) and SPY (24-hour volume: $7.5 million). We also expect other competitors to pop up over the next few months, in particular Lighter, which will likely deploy equity perpetuals at some point.



In particular, we believe internally that equity perpetuals offer an opportunity for perpetuals platforms to get more involved in the tokenization space. Thus far, most tokenization has benefited spot DEXs and lending products. However, perpetuals platforms can now start getting involved as they launch more markets. We believe that perpetuals are a great way to take on risk (but not to hedge risk!), especially for retail traders, given they are more intuitive. With increasing demand from retail for options (particularly 0DTE options) to gain leveraged exposure to the stock market, we believe that perpetuals can largely replace this demand and provide the best venue for doing so.



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We should give everybody unrestricted access to leveraged perpetuals for stocks

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“No problems, no progress.”



— Kevin Kelly
</blockquote>



Large portions of the world wide web, including services like X, ChatGPT, Uber and Spotify, were inaccessible for hours yesterday morning because Cloudflare, a content delivery network, had an “outage” — just weeks after a similarly debilitating outage caused by AWS.



We did not have these problems when every website was hosted on a dedicated server, often in someone’s basement.



Back then, however, the sites were slow to load and quick to crash.&nbsp;



CDNs like Cloudflare were designed to fix this. Instead of every website fighting for itself, we now route traffic through a kind of virtual switchboard that caches content globally (solving latency) and absorbs threats like DDoS attacks (solving security and availability).



It worked.&nbsp;



The web has become incredibly fast, secure and reliable, and services like ChatGPT and Uber can scale without burning scarce capital on redundant infrastructure.



Last morning’s events suggest it might have worked too well. 



Most of the modern web now runs on three cloud providers and a few dominant content delivery networks, which have created single points of failure in what was once a decentralized system.



As a result, we have massive, internet-wide blackouts instead of sporadic, isolated crashes.&nbsp;



This is the typical way that technology develops.&nbsp;



As Kevin Kelly <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_kelly_the_future_will_be_shaped_by_optimists">explains</a>, “Most of the problems we have today are created by the solutions we had in the past.”



The problem of widespread hunger, for example, was solved by industrialized farming — but now food is so cheap and industrialized we have an epidemic of obesity.



The problem of routine infections becoming deadly was solved by antibiotics, but now we have antibiotic-resistant superbugs.



The problem of near-universal poverty was solved by fossil fuels, but now we have the problem of climate change.



If it seems like there are ever more of these technology-induced problems, that’s because there probably are.



In the same way that one scientific answer gives rise to several new questions, one technology solution gives rise to several new problems.



“There will be more problems because new solutions create many more problems,” Kelly explains.



But this is good news, not bad.



“Problems don’t impede progress,” Kelly says; just the opposite: “Problems are the conduit of progress.”&nbsp;



Progress, he adds, is not the process of eliminating problems, but of upgrading them.&nbsp;



Obesity is an upgrade relative to starvation, for example, and climate change is an upgrade relative to near-universal poverty.



Therefore, the increasing complexity of our problems is not a cause for despair, but a measure of the progress we’re making.



Even when these upgraded problems seem too complex, Kelly assures us they won’t be for long: “We can trust the fact that future generations will be able to solve problems that we cannot ourselves.”



In other words, the problems born from solving the last generation’s problems will be solved by the next, because each succeeding generation is more capable than the last.



Now, let’s do crypto.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Mo solutions mo problems</h2>



Whereas: Problems are the engine of technological progress. Resolved: Technologies with the most problems will do the most good.



If problems are good, then crypto — by the transitive property of equality — must be great.



Crypto has lots of problems! And all of its own creation.



But it’s worth remembering that, as with any technology, these new problems arose as solutions to previous problems:&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1400" height="1004" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-115.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110035" style="width:781px;height:auto" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-115.png?w=1400 1400w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-115.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-115.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-115.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-115.png?w=358 358w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-115.png?w=364 364w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-115.png?w=305 305w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-115.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1400px) 100vw, 1400px" /></figure>



Kevin Kelly’s dictum that there’s “no progress without problems” is unfortunately not a law of physics, so there’s no guarantee that crypto will find solutions for all these new problems it’s created.



But there are reasons to share Kelly’s techno-optimism and belief that this is all for the best.



In the case of the world wide web, for example, we solved the frequent, small inconveniences of decentralized Web1 with a solution that created the rare but large-scale outages of centralized Web2.



And the solution to that problem might be to re-decentralize the internet…with crypto!



At its best, Web3 might be seen as solving the problems that Web2 created in solving the problems of Web1.



That, too, would cause all new problems, I’m sure.&nbsp;



We should welcome them.



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technology

Techno-optimism and problems as a conduit of progress

Sam Schubert

Carlos

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Markets retreated on Monday amid renewed uncertainty over Federal Reserve rate cuts, softer real-economy prints and broadening rhetoric that we are in an “AI bubble.” The S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq 100 dipped 1% and 1.1%, respectively, pressured by tech sector weakness. Gold was also down 1.4%, with bitcoin down 2.3% to now sitting just above $90,000.&nbsp;



It was a risk-off day across the board, with virtually every major sector in the red except bitcoin miners, which managed a modest +1.0% gain. The hardest-hit pockets were L2 tokens (−6.1%) and the Solana ecosystem (−5.6%), hurt by broader DeFi deleveraging. L1s (−2.3%) tracked our REV index lower at roughly the same pace, while AI (-2.6%), DePin (-2.7%), and RWAs (-3.2%) were marginally worse off.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1109" height="599" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-106.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110023" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-106.png?w=1109 1109w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-106.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-106.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-106.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-106.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-106.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-106.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-106.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1109px) 100vw, 1109px" /></figure>



None of our indexes have held up on a one-week view, underscoring crypto&#8217;s status as the most reflexive asset class amid escalating macro headwinds. BTC is down 13% over the period, holding up the best among crypto investments. Network fundamentals are deteriorating, with our REV index sliding 13.3% as Ethereum and Solana ecosystem tokens crater 25-30%.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1332" height="740" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-109.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110026" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-109.png?w=1332 1332w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-109.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-109.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-109.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-109.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-109.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-109.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-109.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1332px) 100vw, 1332px" /></figure>



When dollars get scarce, the most speculative asset classes, crypto first among them, always take the hardest and fastest hit. An example of liquidity stress is the widening positive spread (SOFR &gt; EFFR) being a sign of low levels of cash in overnight money markets. This means when cash gets scarce, people are desperate enough to pay more than the Fed’s rate to get their hands on dollars overnight.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1007" height="622" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-111.png" alt="" class="wp-image-110028" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-111.png?w=1007 1007w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-111.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-111.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-111.png?w=416 416w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-111.png?w=423 423w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-111.png?w=355 355w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-111.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1007px) 100vw, 1007px" /></figure>



Broader macro themes remain tense. With the government shutdown resolved, TGA drawdowns should provide some liquidity relief as the government reopens. Debate continues on QT ending and how much a pivot to Fed balance-sheet expansion will actually increase liquidity and support risk assets. On more fundamental data, Nvidia earnings hit Wednesday, and the delayed September jobs report arrives Thursday following the six-week government shutdown.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Market Update</h2>



Bitcoin ETFs have flipped to heavy outflows in November, with roughly $3 billion in outflows over the last three weeks as institutional investors de-risk amid macro weakness and liquidity stress. ETH spot ETFs saw ~$1.2 billion outflows over the last three weeks. Meanwhile, Solana ETFs pulled in nearly $650 million, helped by new ETF launches.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="900" height="500" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-105.png" alt="" class="wp-image-110022" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-105.png?w=900 900w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-105.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-105.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-105.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-105.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-105.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-105.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px" /></figure>



Even perennial outperformers like Strategy (MSTR) are cracking under the pressure, its their mNAV ratio dipping below 1.0, now trading at around 0.9x, a stark inversion from the 2-3x premiums in the early 2025 surge. All other bitcoin treasury companies are now trading materially below NAV, with mNAV ratios ranging from 0.7x to nearly 0.4x.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="900" height="500" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-108.png" alt="" class="wp-image-110025" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-108.png?w=900 900w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-108.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-108.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-108.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-108.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-108.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-108.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px" /></figure>



Corporate crypto treasury accumulation has slowed dramatically in November amid compressed equity premiums that curb fundraising for buys. The fading momentum raises questions around whether persistent mNAV discounts will lead these firms to sell crypto assets.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="900" height="500" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-107.png" alt="" class="wp-image-110024" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-107.png?w=900 900w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-107.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-107.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-107.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-107.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-107.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-107.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px" /></figure>



Bitcoin miners aren&#8217;t faring any better, with hashprice collapsing to ~$38 per PH/s as network hashrate climbs back to 1,100 EH/s despite falling BTC prices. The sole bright spot is rising volatility driving network activity higher, pushing fees to ~1.2% of block rewards, up from last month&#8217;s 0.5% lows. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="blob:https://cms.blockworks.co/71dd3e2a-c7c1-461a-8f46-a02c26bf8fd8" width="720" height="227">



Miners’ cash flows are still tied to collapsing BTC hashprice, driving a one-week selloff of ~17%. The drop was amplified by rising “AI bubble” chatter, with our AI index down ~20%. We see that as noise, with the dip presenting an opportunity as they transform into critical AI infrastructure players (see our report <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/research/bitcoin-miners-the-megawatt-trade">Bitcoin Miners: The Megawatt Trade</a>).



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1330" height="743" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-110.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110027" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-110.png?w=1330 1330w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-110.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-110.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-110.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-110.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-110.png?w=467 467w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-110.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-110.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1330px) 100vw, 1330px" /></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Near Intents: The cross-chain liquidity hub</h2>



The Near Intents product was introduced as part of the core Near Protocol in November 2024. For context, intents are an order type in which a user specifies a desired outcome, rather than a specific path of execution. This order type tasks external agents, referred to as “solvers” or “fillers,” to identify some transaction that returns the desired outcome, usually in exchange for a fee. Leveraging Near’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/near-protocol-chain-signatures-multichain-defi">chain abstraction stack</a> and the intent solver network, Near Intents allows trading of hundreds of assets across various chains from a single account or by any agent, without the need for bridging or wrapping assets.



After steady but slow monthly growth, October marked a breakout month for Near Intents. As shown in the chart below, the protocol processed $1.72 billion in volume in October, a 256% MoM increase. November has already surpassed that with $2.19 billion in volume as of Nov. 17, putting Near Intents on track to settle nearly $4 billion this month.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-114.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110031" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-114.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-114.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-114.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-114.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-114.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-114.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-114.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-114.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-114.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Looking at fees, the growth over the past two months is even more dramatic. Near Intents has generated $4.09 million in fees in November 2025, surpassing the $3.95 million of cumulative fees from inception to October 2025, with nearly two weeks still left in the month. If current activity levels persist, Near Intents is on pace to generate around $7 million in fees in November.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-112.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110029" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-112.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-112.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-112.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-112.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-112.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-112.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-112.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-112.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-112.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Near Intents’ primary catalyst for its exponential growth in recent months was its Zcash support and Zashi integration. Zashi, the most popular Zcash mobile wallet, allows users to perform decentralized cross-chain swaps from other crypto assets into ZEC within the wallet. Yesterday, Zashi<a href="https://x.com/zashi_app/status/1990467451461787783?s=20"> introduced</a> an update to the Near Intents integration that unlocks private swaps, allowing users to directly convert any Near-supported asset (e.g., BTC, ETH, USDC) into shielded ZEC. Previously, Zashi only supported swaps to a transparent address, requiring users to manually shield their ZEC afterward. Moreover, a swap from ZEC to other assets would<a href="https://x.com/zachxbt/status/1980612190609576229?s=20"> return</a> a small refund to a transparent address even if executed from a shielded one, establishing a link between both addresses. With yesterday’s update, this issue is now fixed.&nbsp;



The chart below shows the cumulative volume of Near Intents by asset since Sept. 1, 2025. ZEC is the most swapped asset behind USDT and USDC, with $569 million in cumulative volume. A key question is whether Near Intents’ recent activity spike is a temporary effect of ZEC buying demand or the start of more durable growth. The surge in attention could ultimately seed a stickier user base for permissionless swapping across a broader set of blockchains and assets.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-113.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110030" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-113.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-113.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-113.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-113.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-113.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-113.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-113.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-113.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-113.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



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Markets in full risk-off mode

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“How did Andean societies exchange resources and administer large numbers of people without currency or writing?”



— Jacob Bongers, digital archeologist
</blockquote>



A mysteriously precise, mile-long band of 5,200 holes dug into Monte Sierpe, Peru, at least 600 years ago has long been a subject of speculation.



Ever since the site was popularized by aerial photography in 1933, professional archeologists have puzzled over its purpose — but hypotheses related to defense, water collection, fog capture, gardening, burial, geoglyph symbology and resource mining have all been discounted for one reason or another.



Having ruled all those out, amateur archeologists settled on the only remaining explanation: “ancient astronauts.”



Last week, however, a team of digital archeologists published an academic <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/indigenous-accounting-and-exchange-at-monte-sierpe-band-of-holes-in-the-pisco-valley-peru/41D83389D230D99CFF18194CF274A9A3">study</a> that finally determined the site’s true purpose: Monte Sierpe, they explain, was “an indigenous system of accounting and exchange.”



“We hypothesise that Monte Sierpe initially served as a barter marketplace before being turned into a large-scale accounting device under the Inca Empire (1400-1532 AD) for collecting tribute from local communities.”



One hundred years before Luca Pacioli popularized the concept of double-entry accounting in Italy, Incas in Peru were keeping their books on a hillside.



The paper’s lead author, Jacob Bongers, frames this in modern terms by <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-centuries-old-grid-of-holes-in-the-andes-may-have-been-a-spreadsheet-for-accounting-and-exchange-269277">saying</a> the hillside “functioned as a large spreadsheet for the Inca Empire.”&nbsp;



Others call it a ledger.



But it looks like a blockchain:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1141" height="613" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-104.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110014" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-104.png?w=1141 1141w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-104.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-104.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-104.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-104.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-104.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-104.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-104.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1141px) 100vw, 1141px" /></figure>



Imagine a blockchain, and you’ll likely see something like Monte Sierpe: a continuous, physical stream of data stretching a mile into the horizon.



Bongers’ paper comes close to acknowledging the likeness: “The band is not continuous but rather segmented into sections or blocks.”



This is even more evident in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRhNJQxx41Y&amp;t=63s">video</a>, where the “blocks of holes” are more visible.



But the resemblance is much more than skin deep — because what could be more proof-of-work than digging thousands of holes?



“Depositing goods in the holes,” the paper explains, “could have been a way of publicly displaying information about the quantity of goods” used for “tribute collection.”



This is useful because you can&#8217;t have a system for tribute or large-scale economic exchange unless you first have clear rules about who owns or controls what.



Blockchains are a public display of information, designed to allow anyone to verify who owns and controls what unit of exchange.



Monte Sierpe was a public display of information that allowed anyone to verify who had paid what tribute to whom.



This public display, the paper proposes, is how a society as large as the Inca Empire was able to administer larger numbers of people without the help of currency or a system of writing.



“The visual prominence of Monte Sierpe…may have increased the probability of locating suitable trading partners, drawing together producer-specialists (e.g. farmers and fisherfolk), mobile traders (e.g. llama caravans and seafaring merchants), lords and administrators for periodic exchange. Large numbers of people depositing goods in the holes would give participants information about the quantity of goods available in an ordered way.”



In other words, they built a public blockchain.&nbsp;



The key insight that led the researchers to this conclusion is that the arrangement of Monte Sierpe’s 5,200 holes into 60 distinct blocks “is structurally reminiscent of at least one locally found khipu, an Inca knotted-string device used for detailed record-keeping.”



In pre-modern Andean societies, khipus — knotted and maintained by specially trained khipukamayuq —&nbsp; “were used to keep track of census information, tribute and inventory,” the paper explains.&nbsp;



By that definition, the portable khipu was the spreadsheets of the time, not Monte Sierpe.&nbsp;



Monte Sierpe — immutable, publicly verifiable, trustless — was the blockchain.



To trust a khipu was to trust the khipukamayuq who tied the knots…much like trusting a bank account is trusting the banker who keeps the accounts.



It’s not a perfect analogy.&nbsp;



The Incas probably were not adding new blocks to their chain of holes for each new bundle of transactions that came in.



Instead, each block is thought to have corresponded to a social group, and each group would fill their assigned holes with goods when it was their turn to pay tribute to the State.



Like a blockchain, the key innovation was that the Band of Holes allowed this to be done publicly, where anyone could verify the payments — up until the goods were removed.



So this analog precursor to the modern blockchain had one limitation: reusing the blocks erased the chain’s history.



It took 600 years to invent a digital version that preserves the full history of a chain by appending new blocks rather than overwriting old ones.



This is Satoshi’s great innovation.



But the principles are unchanged — as is the value proposition.&nbsp;



Digging 5,200 holes in a precise formation on top of a hill is not just a proof-of-work, it was hard work, too.



This monumental investment of labor is evidence that the Incas thought recording transactions in a public, immutable ledger had significant value as a way to organize large groups of people.&nbsp;



Perhaps we are only now catching up.



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History

Did the Inca envision a blockchain system?

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Following the longest government shutdown in US history, markets still have not recovered well. While gold has outperformed (+1.79% over the past week) and the S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq 100 are only slightly down (-0.21% and -0.57%, respectively), BTC has seen significant downside, with -10.32% over the past seven days.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1477" height="824" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-101.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110000" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-101.png?w=1477 1477w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-101.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-101.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-101.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-101.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-101.png?w=468 468w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-101.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-101.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1477px) 100vw, 1477px" /></figure>



Altcoins have similarly not fared well. The only sectors which have outperformed BTC are RWA and no-revenue indices. No-revenue tokens have outperformed slightly due to XRP holding up better than BTC (down only -6.36% over the past week), and RWA tokens have been held up by OUSG (+0.73%) and HASH (-3.44%) this past week.



In terms of worst performers, we’ve seen the crypto-miner, Solana Eco, and Modular indices bear the brunt of the pain. Notably, within Solana Eco, MPLX is down -42.36% over the past week (due to an <a href="https://x.com/playsolana/status/1989732663289147540">exploit/incident during the PSG1 launch</a>), and JTO is down -26.81% (possibly due to the announcement of Harmonic as a competitor).



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1481" height="829" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-102.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110001" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-102.png?w=1481 1481w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-102.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-102.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-102.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-102.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-102.png?w=466 466w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-102.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-102.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1481px) 100vw, 1481px" /></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Charts for The Week</h2>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="900" height="500" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-99.png" alt="" class="wp-image-109998" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-99.png?w=900 900w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-99.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-99.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-99.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-99.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-99.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-99.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px" /></figure>



Hyperliquid continues to lead in terms of application revenue, making $17.1 million over the past week, followed by Pump.fun, which made $9.6 million. Despite Pump.fun having a lower multiple based on these revenue figures, the token has held up worse than HYPE. The PUMP/HYPE pair is down 23.4% over the past week.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="900" height="500" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-100.png" alt="" class="wp-image-109999" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-100.png?w=900 900w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-100.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-100.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-100.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-100.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-100.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-100.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px" /></figure>



In terms of chain revenue, Solana has held up surprisingly well, despite the continued downturn in memecoin activity (apart from pump.fun). Over the past two months, Solana revenue market share has shrunk from 21% of all chains to 12%. Despite this, the chain still has higher revenue compared to Ethereum, but now sits behind Hyperliquid and Tron.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="900" height="500" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-98.png" alt="" class="wp-image-109997" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-98.png?w=900 900w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-98.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-98.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-98.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-98.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-98.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-98.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px" /></figure>



MSTR outstanding mNAV has fallen to 0.9. Earlier today, Saylor announced that MSTR bought 8,178 BTC for ~$835.6 million at ~$102,171 per BTC. Although Saylor is unlikely to sell, NAV less than 1 makes issuance increasingly difficult, leading to fewer buys and potentially lower mNAV.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-103.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110003" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-103.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-103.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-103.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-103.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-103.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-103.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-103.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-103.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-103.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



In the most recent Upbit 10 listings, the median listing-day price jump was 70%, with an average of 115%, compared to roughly 40% on Binance for non-meme listings — reflecting South Korea’s highly active retail investor base, where enthusiasm for new assets often drives short-term price spikes (read <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/research/naver-s-bid-for-upbit-building-korea-s-next-generation-super-app">more</a>).



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-103.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-110002" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-103.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-103.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-103.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-103.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-103.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-103.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-103.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-103.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-103.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Loopscale deposits have grown by about 28% over the past 90 days to $93 million, with active loans growing at a similar rate to $34 million. For comparison, both Kamino deposits and outstanding loans have experienced negative growth over the same period (read <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/research/loopscale-scaling-net-new-assets-in-de-fi">more</a>).



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Bitcoin falls, even as Strategy buys $835.6M for its holdings

Macauley Peterson

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As crypto markets have tumbled, it’s been a reflective week in Ethereum land. On Thursday, Vitalik Buterin and co-authors Yoav Weiss and Marissa Posner dropped <a href="https://trustlessness.eth.limo/general/2025/11/11/the-trustless-manifesto.html">The Trustless Manifesto</a> — a sweeping, almost poetic call to arms for developers to recommit to the network’s founding ethos: Build systems that rely on math and consensus, not on people or platforms.



The document reads like a philosophical companion to Justin Drake’s Lean Ethereum proposal, which turned one year old this week. A newly active X account, <a href="https://x.com/leanEthereum">@leanEthereum</a>, has popped up to mark the milestone — and the overlap in timing doesn’t feel accidental. With <a href="https://devconnect.org/">DevConnect</a> kicking off Monday in Buenos Aires, the pair of ideas together set the tone for a week that’s as much about vision as it is about innovation.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">‘Trustlessness is the thing itself’</h2>



At its core, the manifesto argues that Ethereum’s success has also made it fragile. As infrastructure and apps scale, the community risks outsourcing too much — RPC endpoints, rollup sequencing, even “self-custody” — to a shrinking circle of trusted intermediaries. Each convenience, it warns, brings the network closer to dependence.



“The only defense is trustless design,” the authors write. “Without it, everything else — efficiency, UX, scalability — is decoration on a fragile core.”



The text lays out three “laws” of trustless design — no critical secrets, no indispensable intermediaries and no unverifiable outcomes — and ends with a pledge: “We refuse to call a system ‘permissionless’ when only the privileged can participate.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The drift toward dependence</h2>



One of the manifesto’s most striking metaphors compares Ethereum’s current trajectory to that of email — once an open, decentralized protocol that anyone could run themselves. Today, spam filters, blocklists and trust-based reputation systems have made it practically impossible for ordinary users to host their own mail servers, the manifesto reads.&nbsp;



“Email became effectively centralized — not because the protocol was closed, but because practical trustlessness was lost,” the authors write.



It’s a cautionary tale for Ethereum’s access layer. If node operation, transaction relaying or cross-chain messaging ends up dependent on a handful of privileged service providers, the network could become as “permissionless” as Gmail: still functional, but fundamentally gatekept. The manifesto’s plea is simple — don’t let that happen.



“Every shortcut that assumes trust eventually costs freedom.”



If that strikes a chord, a smart contract is now live on mainnet for those who want to “sign” the manifesto — literally staking their names to the principle that decentralization is worth the friction.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">From ‘Lean Ethereum’ to the endgame</h2>



If The Trustless Manifesto is a moral compass, Lean Ethereum is the architectural blueprint it points toward. Drake’s vision, described as Ethereum’s “endgame” or “final form,” imagines a network stripped down to its purest minimal core — fewer dependencies, simpler consensus, and stronger guarantees that anyone can run a node without institutional backing.



The Lean Ethereum account opened with a video teaser of sorts, sketching a picture of where Ethereum might be heading next: lighter, smaller, but more robust.



<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">zkEra soon™️ <a href="https://t.co/PZSzNr1kPZ">pic.twitter.com/PZSzNr1kPZ</a>&mdash; lean Ethereum (@leanEthereum) <a href="https://twitter.com/leanEthereum/status/1988645664595878183?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 12, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



A related <a href="https://ethresear.ch/t/eil-trust-minimized-cross-l2-interop/23437">research proposal</a> getting attention this week is the Ethereum Interop Layer (EIL), posted Nov. 13 on Ethereum Research.



EIL aims to make L2s feel like one chain without new trust assumptions: Users sign once via ERC-4337, wallets bundle a Merkle-rooted set of cross-L2 calls, and a CrossChainPaymaster coordinates “XLP” liquidity providers who front gas and funds with an L1-anchored dispute process to slash misbehavior. Instead of relying on intent solvers and opaque relayers, EIL leans on atomic, optimistic swaps and onchain vouchers to keep censorship resistance and verifiability intact — the manifesto’s “no indispensable intermediaries” rendered as working plumbing.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A fitting prelude to DevConnect</h2>



For all the talk of rollup scaling and AI agents, the conversation heading into DevConnect feels unusually introspective. Vitalik’s timing suggests a deliberate recalibration, reminding attendees that Ethereum’s biggest challenges are not only technical, but cultural.



Developers (and this newsletter writer) gathering in Buenos Aires may be debating zk cryptography and DeFi security, but beneath it all lies the same question the manifesto asks outright: What does it mean to trust less in 2025?



As the week begins, Ethereum stands ready to prove that growth doesn’t have to mean compromise. Or, as manifesto’s closing line opines:



“The designs will change. The principles will not.”



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blockchain

Ethereum’s ‘Trustless Manifesto’ and the return to first principles

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“A pin lies in wait for every bubble. And when the two eventually meet, a new wave of investors learns some very old lessons.”



— Warren Buffett
</blockquote>



Markets were down this week, possibly because GPUs are starting to go dark.



In Oregon, for example, three of Amazon’s new data centers are sitting idle because the local utility company <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-04/amazon-says-berkshire-utility-failing-to-power-data-centers">refuses</a> to connect them to the power grid.&nbsp;



That leaves thousands of cutting-edge GPUs, likely costing hundreds of millions, sitting idle as well — aging in place without making any return on the giant investment they represent.



Microsoft is having the same problem.&nbsp;



Satya Nadella <a href="https://datacentremagazine.com/news/microsofts-power-problem-ai-chips-are-sitting-in-inventory?utm_campaign=Weekly+Briefing&amp;utm_source=hs_email&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_content=2&amp;_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8VdfAdcq-ct7d0ENROqJaeaC3SmOvexqkq9p9qLdMzpbsROUqJBNSpVLOFlqeSXCkYY_uN8gqVimh8DxylgiwnCuImCA&amp;_hsmi=2">says</a> the “biggest issue” that Microsoft is now facing in AI is “a bunch of chips sitting in inventory that I can&#8217;t plug in.”&nbsp;



“It&#8217;s not a supply issue of chips,” he adds. “It&#8217;s actually the fact that I don&#8217;t have warm shells to plug into.”



The “shells” Nadella’s referring to are data centers and they’re not warm because they’re not connected to a source of power.&nbsp;



There are many such cases.



“The infrastructure has now been outpaced by the construction of facilities,” Kristin Hammond of CBRE <a href="https://djcoregon.com/news/2025/09/12/data-center-construction-slows-us-power-grid/">explains</a>. “There’s no use to having the facility if you don’t have the power poles to service it.”



But we’re still constructing the facilities.



Spending on data centers is on pace to <a href="https://news.constructconnect.com/november-data-center-report-spending-surges-92.8-as-southern-states-dominate-construction">double</a> this year vs. last, and the pipeline of <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/when-ai-hype-meets-ai-reality-a-reckoning-in-6-charts-bf8043b4?mod=djem10point">proposed projects</a> is growing even faster than that.



This might be starting to sound familiar.&nbsp;



For stock market investors, data centers going unused for want of power should evoke memories of 1999, when an estimated 97% of fiber optic cables that investors were frantically funding remained “dark,” or unused.&nbsp;



The analogy is not exact: It was a demand problem then, and it’s a supply problem now. But the end effect might rhyme to the effect of many billions of dollars of stranded infrastructure.



For credit investors, the current infrastructure frenzy is evoking memories of 2008.



Data centers are increasingly being <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/three-ai-megadeals-are-breaking-new-ground-on-wall-street-896e0023?mod=djemfoe">funded with debt</a>, often in special purpose vehicles that keep the debt off-balance sheets, and sometimes by selling asset-backed securities in various risk tranches to investors indifferent to the underlying assets.



Does that sound familiar? Here’s a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rhs3PVAP4o">refresher</a> on credit markets from Margot Robbie, if not.



For one veteran investor, the data center boom is evoking 1999 and 2008 — and all the other ones, too.



&#8220;For the first time,” Paul Kedrosky <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2025-11-14/odd-lots-ai-is-like-every-bubble-all-rolled-into-one-podcast?srnd=phx-oddlots">says</a>, “we&#8217;ve combined all the major ingredients of every historical bubble into a single bubble.&#8221;



Fun!



Kedrosky sees these ingredients as a compelling technology story, a speculative real estate boom, increasingly loose credit and a form of government backstop.



He sees this as a toxic brew for both markets and the economy: “The notion we can land this thing safely is nonsense.”



In short, the risk is that the current power shortage causing GPUs to go dark will cause data centers to build their own power plants — with borrowed money — in the out-of-the-way places where AI data centers are built, but hardly anyone lives.



These new power plants will become “stranded assets,” Kedrosky warns, when efficiency gains in AI training radically reduce the number of chips required: “We&#8217;re completely mis-forecasting arc of demand for compute.&#8221;



It’s the classic pattern: “The system is running at full throttle on forward expectations,” Kedrosky <a href="https://paulkedrosky.com/on-ai-capex-apologists/">writes</a>, “perceived shortage-now/glut-later is exactly how bubbles form.”



On the other hand, there’s no telling how long this process might take.



Kedrosky says it may be “four or five years” until the credit instruments underwriting the data center boom run into trouble.&nbsp;



Five years of booming markets in return for a bust?&nbsp;



I’d take that trade, for sure.



In the meantime, let’s check the charts.



We have big plans:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1064" height="624" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-89.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109978" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-89.png?w=1064 1064w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-89.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-89.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-89.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-89.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-89.png?w=445 445w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-89.png?w=373 373w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-89.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1064px) 100vw, 1064px" /></figure>



The number of announced plans to build data centers has exploded. But they’re increasingly hard and ever-more expensive to build. Perhaps more worryingly, the number of stalled projects is growing. What this chart will look like next year is probably the key to nearly all asset markets.&nbsp;



The plan for revenue:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1122" height="599" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-90.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109979" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-90.png?w=1122 1122w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-90.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-90.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-90.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-90.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-90.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-90.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-90.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1122px) 100vw, 1122px" /></figure>



If the data centers do get built, will we use them all? JPMorgan <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/when-ai-hype-meets-ai-reality-a-reckoning-in-6-charts-bf8043b4?mod=djem10point">projects</a> that “AI products would have to create an additional $650 billion a year, indefinitely, to give investors a reasonable 10% annual return” on their AI investments. The Raymond James forecasts above suggest we might fall well short of that.



Electricity prices:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1087" height="650" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-94.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109983" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-94.png?w=1087 1087w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-94.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-94.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-94.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-94.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-94.png?w=436 436w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-94.png?w=366 366w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-94.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1087px) 100vw, 1087px" /></figure>



People worry that data centers will raise the cost of electricity, but, per the above, that has not been the case so far — electricity prices have risen slower than inflation for years. There’s also <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/10/25/data-centers-electricity-prices-rise/">evidence</a> that data center demand might even lower electricity prices — likely because higher demand allows fixed costs to be spread over more customers.



It’s mostly a US story, for now:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="840" height="449" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-93.png" alt="" class="wp-image-109982" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-93.png?w=840 840w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-93.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-93.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-93.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-93.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-93.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-93.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 840px) 100vw, 840px" /></figure>



The US continues to lead the world in data centers, with 4,189 vs. just 381 in China. Tellingly, in <a href="https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-invests-50-billion-in-american-ai-infrastructure">announcing</a> its data center plans this week, Anthropic was careful to say it’s investing in “American AI infrastructure.”&nbsp;



Chinese exporters seem to be thriving without the US:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1421" height="752" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-96.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109985" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-96.png?w=1421 1421w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-96.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-96.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-96.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-96.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-96.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-96.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-96.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1421px) 100vw, 1421px" /></figure>



Torsten Slok notes that while China has exported $75 billion less to the US so far this year, it’s exported $150 billion more to Asia.



Worst US sentiment ever:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="859" height="539" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-91.png" alt="" class="wp-image-109980" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-91.png?w=859 859w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-91.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-91.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-91.png?w=410 410w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-91.png?w=416 416w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-91.png?w=349 349w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-91.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 859px) 100vw, 859px" /></figure>



The University of Michigan’s November survey of consumer sentiment returned its lowest reading on record, going all the way back to 1960. And the bubble hasn’t even popped yet!



Bearish sentiment, bullish returns:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="789" height="486" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-92.png" alt="" class="wp-image-109981" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-92.png?w=789 789w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-92.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-92.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-92.png?w=417 417w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-92.png?w=424 424w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-92.png?w=356 356w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-92.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 789px) 100vw, 789px" /></figure>



The best returns happen when people are most bearish.



You don’t have to be bullish on AI:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="966" height="615" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-97.png" alt="" class="wp-image-109986" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-97.png?w=966 966w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-97.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-97.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-97.png?w=404 404w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-97.png?w=410 410w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-97.png?w=344 344w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-97.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 966px) 100vw, 966px" /></figure>



David Hay <a href="https://haymaker.substack.com/p/haymaker-daily-aa9?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F74361197-9a8b-4d9d-8683-b5db821c2a40_868x554.png&amp;open=false">notes</a> that stocks dropped from the S&amp;P 500 (the black line above) outperformed the index by 5% a year in the 32 years from 1990 to 2022 — a cumulative excess return of 400%.



Do call it a comeback:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="1059" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-95.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109984" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-95.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-95.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-95.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-95.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-95.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-95.png?w=388 388w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-95.png?w=394 394w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-95.png?w=331 331w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-95.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



CSCO stock — left for dead in 2000 and long forgotten — is now 50% above its dotcom peak in total return (dividends reinvested).



A reminder that, if this bubble is soon over, there will be others to look forward to.



Have a great weekend, everything readers.



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The everything bubble?

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Crypto markets are ending the week in the red, with BTC falling below $95,000 after one of the worst days ever for bitcoin ETF flows. 



Risk assets sold off as doubts loom over a December rate cut, with BTC down -1.87% yesterday and tumbling briefly below $95,000 this morning, extending its losses. US equities also saw investors de-risk, with the Nasdaq and S&amp;P 500 down -1.74% and -1.37%, respectively. Meanwhile, gold’s relative strength was notable, closing the day almost flat.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-87.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109970" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-87.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-87.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-87.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-87.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-87.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-87.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-87.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-87.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-87.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Expanding on the macro side, Fed members are pushing back against a December cut, especially given the lack of new data on the jobs and inflation fronts due to the government shutdown. Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said yesterday he didn’t support the last interest rate cut, noting he’s undecided on the best course of action for next month’s policy meeting. The chart below effectively illustrates the sudden shift in market expectations. As of Nov. 13, the CME FedWatch Tool was pricing a 25 bps rate cut at just a 51% probability, compared to 63% the day before and over 95% a month ago.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-88.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109971" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-88.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-88.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-88.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-88.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-88.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-88.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-88.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-88.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-88.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Bitcoin has been hit especially hard by recent macro uncertainty, with bitcoin ETFs experiencing their second-worst day ever, in terms of net flows, yesterday. Bitcoin ETFs saw almost $870 million in outflows, suggesting that we’ll close the third consecutive week with negative flows. The last time bitcoin ETFs experienced three or more consecutive weeks of outflows was between February and March of this year, with BTC dropping below $80,000. The chart below shows bitcoin’s weekly ETF flows by product, with this week still pending inclusion.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="889" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-85.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109968" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-85.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-85.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-85.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-85.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-85.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-85.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-85.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-85.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-85.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Speaking of ETFs, one of the largest issuers (Grayscale) <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/11/13/3187426/0/en/Grayscale-Investments-Announces-Public-Filing-of-Registration-Statement-for-Proposed-Initial-Public-Offering.html">filed</a> for an IPO yesterday. The filing revealed declining financials, with a 20% year-over-year decline in revenue for the first nine months of the year. Notably, AUM was also lower on Sept. 30 than a year prior, despite BTC rising 80% during the same period. Since bitcoin ETFs began trading in 2024, Grayscale’s GBTC has seen almost $25 billion in cumulative net outflows.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="889" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-86.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109969" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-86.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-86.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-86.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-86.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-86.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-86.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-86.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-86.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-86.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Finally, regarding cross-sector performance, every crypto index we track was negative on the day, with the sole exception of RWA (+1.2%). The worst-performing indices were Crypto Miners (-6.6%), Solana Eco (-5.9%), and Crypto Equities (-5.8%). The fact that two of the worst-performing indices were equities is a further indication of broader risk-off sentiment driven by macro concerns.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="902" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-84.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109967" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-84.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-84.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-84.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-84.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-84.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-84.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-84.png?w=463 463w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-84.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-84.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



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Markets tumble as doubts grow over December rate cut

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“If you can’t make money, you may want to consider being quiet. Maybe the market knows more than you do.”



— Jeff Yass
</blockquote>



Today, The Breakdown looks at developing stories and links from around the cryptoverse.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/moontower/p/spooky-jeff-yass-on-prediction-markets?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=android&amp;r=3qcul">Jeff Yass says prediction markets will stop wars</a></h2>



After Jeff Yass brought his math and poker skills onto trading floors in the 1980s, global options markets stopped looking like a casino and started looking like a science.



Yass thinks prediction markets could do the same for the world.



First and foremost, he says, “It will stop wars.”



Yass cites the second Iraq War, which President Bush said would cost the US $20 billion but is now thought to have cost at least $2 trillion, and maybe as much as $6 trillion.



It’s unlikely prediction markets would have settled on such an astronomical number, but Yass believes they might have predicted something like $500 billion, in which case “people might have said, ‘Look, we don’t want this war.’”



That would have saved many, many lives, as well: “If people know how expensive it’s going to be and how disastrous it’s going to be, they’ll try to come up with other solutions.”



Prediction markets, he says, “can really slow down the lies that politicians are constantly telling us.”



He also cites applications in insurance, technology and even dating.



Asked by the 16-year-old podcast host what advice he’d give young people, Yass suggested they could avoid relationship mistakes by creating an anonymous prediction market for their friends to bet on.



“I believe in markets,” he concluded.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://nodumbideas.com/p/does-momentum-exist-in-prediction">Do prediction markets trend?</a>&nbsp;</h2>



It sounds like a dumb idea: Unlike stocks with their open-ended valuations, prediction markets should converge toward the single fixed probability of a binary outcome.



But the author of No Dumb Ideas crunched the numbers and found that prices in political prediction markets do, in fact, trend: A market that trades up one day is more likely than otherwise to trade up the next day, too.



“Momentum seems to be real, at least for a day or two.”



The author speculatively attributes this to prediction markets making news, the dynamics of political campaigns and/or because momentum trading is fun.



I’d also cite Cliff Asness’s <a href="https://youtu.be/e1Iok2wyoCw?si=EFtXXTKtKE66hgs8">observation</a> that stocks exhibit momentum in part because they tend to underreact to news — so maybe prediction markets do, too.&nbsp;



Whatever the reason, the study by No Dumb Ideas suggests that prediction markets are subject to many of the same behavioral finance drivers as stock markets.



So there should be something in them for everyone: momentum traders, swing traders, quants…most of whom, I suspect, will lose money.



That would be good news, if so, because it will create a stronger profit motive for experts to participate — giving us better information on subjects like how much a war is likely to cost.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cohen-co-inc-cohn-q3-110037508.html?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAHrSRTmsAd6lSyvfTxRqPzte0umEmVDKNnADyPHwr54NKAQ4WbFoz-zVgj36EUv3GH-Tm6yHRdBnPcglpxzKJrr7HW8A8pV-KJzerF8rJf86v9KznGkfmFGeAvdZxtzyZ4kUIoO00KcT4RQq3Sdzp8YBxgnFNLGVmFEzxr1L1eEm">Cohen cashes in on DATs</a></h2>



The boutique investment bank Cohen &amp; Co. booked $179 million of revenue for its advisory work on a single DAT merger, Nakamoto Kindly MD.&nbsp;&nbsp;



That’s an astonishing haul given that the company currently holds just $594 million of bitcoin, per data from <a href="https://blockworks.com/analytics/treasury-companies">Blockworks Research</a>.



Even worse, Kindly MD now has a market capitalization of $267 million.



Cohen unfortunately took much of its compensation in shares, which have fallen 90% from the merger announcement. As a result, it booked a $146 million non-cash loss for the quarter, reducing its profit on the deal to only $33 million.



That’s still 5.5% of the company’s NAV and 12% of its market cap.



Nice work if you can get it.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://x.com/haydenzadams/status/1987990314997739625?t=e9VD7PIDjoziGT5ONb8LCA&amp;s=19">Uniswap flips the switch</a></h2>



Uniswap Labs has made a financially underwhelming but symbolically significant proposal for the Uniswap Protocol to collect fees and return them to token holders.



The <a href="https://www.uniswapfoundation.org/blog/unification?utm_source=blockworks-research.beehiiv.com&amp;utm_medium=newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=unification&amp;_bhlid=26d5152c813ec755cdd95b31c94dbd1712ab5600">proposal</a> would retroactively burn 100 million tokens held in its treasury, “representing the protocol fees that could have been burned if fees were turned on at token launch.”



That amounts to a 16% buyback over five years, which is…not a lot?



<a href="https://x.com/0xSharples?s=20">0xSharples</a> of Blockworks Research <a href="https://x.com/0xSharples/status/1988256449806372906?s=20">estimates</a> that, excluding wash trading, Uniswap would have generated about $6 million of fees over the past month, which annualizes to just 1.5% of UNI’s $4.8 billion market capitalization — also not a lot for what looks like an ex-growth business.&nbsp;



More importantly, though, the proposal states that “Labs will stop collecting fees on its interface, wallet, and API to supercharge distribution and adoption of the Uniswap protocol.”



Beyond the fees that will reroute to token holders, this carries <a href="https://x.com/TheiaResearch/status/1988241585834734001?s=20">symbolic weight</a>: It unwinds crypto’s most prominent dual equity-token structure, which has been so fraught with conflicts of interest.



I’d argue this comes at a cost, though.



When the UNI token was launched in 2020 as a pure governance token, it became Exhibit A for why tokens were not stocks and protocols were not companies.&nbsp;



Anecdotally, it felt like most UNI holders did not view themselves as owners of the Uniswap protocol — a protocol, it was thought, could not be owned in the same way a company could.



Token holders were only stewards of the protocol, and the best thing for the protocol was to either keep whatever fees it earned in its treasury or not charge fees at all.&nbsp;



Now, though, once the protocol starts collecting revenue and returning it to token holders, how is it not just a company?&nbsp;



Jake Chervinsky says the proposal will “<a href="https://x.com/jchervinsky/status/1988333836611011037?s=20">minimize governance, maximize ownership</a>” for UNI token holders — which makes Uniswap look a lot more like a company and UNI a lot more like equity.&nbsp;



This is probably for the best: The industry needs investors and investors need a profit motive to invest.&nbsp;



But minimizing governance and maximizing ownership also makes crypto less special.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/atkins-111225-securities-exchange-commissions-approach-digital-assets-inside-project-crypto">Project Crypto</a></h2>



If tokens are less special, do they risk being securities?



SEC Chair and crypto enthusiast Paul Atkins warns that calling something a token does not make it exempt from securities laws “if it in substance represents a claim on the profits of an enterprise and is offered with the sorts of promises based on the essential efforts of others.”



UNI now represents a claim on the profits of the Uniswap enterprise, so, to avoid being security, it will have to argue that it’s not making any promises on the efforts of others.



Chair Atkins promises to tread lightly, but warns that Project Crypto “is not a promise of lax enforcement at the SEC. Fraud is fraud.”



But he’s not asking a lot: “If you raise money by promising to build a network, and then take the proceeds and disappear, you will be hearing from us.”



That’s a pretty low bar for crypto projects to clear, although plenty would not have in recent years.



Nevertheless, Atkins will do everything he can to be sympathetic: “We will not forget that behind every token debate, there are real people.”



Sounds like he’s not on Crypto Twitter much.



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predictions market

Prediction markets, DATs, the fee switch, and Project Crypto

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Lido rolled out a buyback plan worth ~$4 million/year at current run-rates and paired it with a roadmap that pushes the protocol beyond staking. At the same time, Strategy (MSTR) slipped below mNAV of 1 and other BTC treasury names are trading at 0.4-0.8x, putting renewed focus on the model. In today’s edition of 0xResearch, we break down the data, the market reaction, and what stood out across sectors.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Indices</h2>



Markets slid again despite the optimism that started the week, with the S&amp;P 500 down -0.27%, the Nasdaq down -0.55%, and BTC lower by -1.54%. The flight to safety trend continued, with Gold climbing 1.08% on the day.



Weakness in Big Tech stocks has been the main drag on the tech-heavy indices, while capital continues to rotate into other sectors of the market that have lagged in the recent rallies. The Dow Jones Industrial Average stood out, rising 0.68% on the day and 2.5% for the week.



Concerns around an AI bubble remain in focus after SoftBank <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/softbanks-58-billion-nvidia-stake-sale-stirs-fresh-ai-bubble-fears-2025-11-11/">sold</a> its entire $5.8 billion stake in Nvidia. Even though CoreWeave <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/coreweave-earnings-stock-price-339d49cf">beat</a> Q3 sales estimates, its shares slipped on a lower revenue outlook due to data center delays. However, on the earnings call, the company <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/coreweave-earnings-stock-price-339d49cf">reaffirmed</a> that AI demand still far exceeds available capacity and that it remains supply-constrained.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="846" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-79.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109949" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-79.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-79.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-79.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-79.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-79.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-79.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-79.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-79.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-79.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



In crypto, most indices ended the day in the red, dragged down by BTC and broader equity weakness. The standouts were L2s and Memecoins, which gained 0.57% and 0.45%, respectively. L2s were boosted by MNT, up 2.24%, likely driven by excitement around <a href="https://x.com/UR_global">Mantle UR</a> and its positioning in the growing Neobank narrative. The Meme index got a lift from MemeCore, which rose 1.44% on the day.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="831" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-81.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109953" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-81.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-81.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-81.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-81.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-81.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-81.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-81.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-81.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-81.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Laggard categories included Crypto Miners and RWAs, which dropped -4.44% and -7.94%, respectively. The pullback in AI-linked equities spilled into mining stocks, many of which have pivoted toward AI data centers. After a YTD rally of 105.5%, some profit taking in the sector is also to be expected.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Market Update</h2>



Doubts are starting to build around the sustainability of treasury companies now that the original pioneer of this playbook, Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), is trading below an mNAV of 1 for the first time since early 2024. The company’s mNAV multiple has steadily bled lower from a peak of 2.4 following Trump’s election win.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="783" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-78.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109951" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-78.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-78.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-78.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-78.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-78.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-78.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-78.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-78.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-78.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



The picture looks even worse for other BTC treasury names, which now trade at mNAV multiples between 0.4 and 0.8. Investors are increasingly skeptical of the model’s long-term viability. Relying on constant equity issuance to buy more BTC has become harder to justify as share dilution begins to outpace BTC accumulation. Many now see these companies as leveraged proxies for bitcoin, rather than efficient ways to gain exposure.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="787" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-80.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109952" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-80.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-80.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-80.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-80.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-80.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-80.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-80.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-80.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-80.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



That skepticism is showing up in the data. BTC purchases by treasury companies have slowed dramatically, down from billion-dollar waves every few weeks to more modest weekly buys of $25 million-$50 million recently.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="782" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-76.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109948" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-76.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-76.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-76.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-76.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-76.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-76.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-76.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-76.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-76.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Sometimes simplicity wins. While BTC is up just 0.2% over the past six months, MSTR has fallen -46.7%, and the newer BTC treasury names are down between -30% and -60%. Brutal, to say the least.



Still, it may be too early to write off the trade entirely. If these discounts persist, a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/hedge-funds-cash-grayscale-bitcoin-etf-conversion-sources-2024-01-26/#:~:text=Hedge%20fund%20Fir%20Tree%20Partners,ETF's%20assets%20to%20$20.4%20billion.">GBTC-style opportunity</a> could emerge where investors can acquire BTC exposure at a meaningful discount through public equities. And if there is one company that knows how to survive and adapt through cycles of expansion and contraction, my bet would be on Strategy.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Lido DAO</h2>



Following Uniswap&#8217;s move to align the Uniswap Foundation and Labs entity and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/uniswap-fee-switch">implement a fee switch</a>, Lido is also moving from pure governance into explicit value return for LDO holders.&nbsp;



<a href="https://research.lido.fi/t/liquid-buybacks-nest-execution-with-ldo-wsteth-liquidity/10894">A new Liquid Buybacks proposal</a> would route a slice of staking revenue into automated LDO buybacks, executed via NEST auctions and deposited into an LDO/wstETH LP fully controlled by the DAO. The mechanic is straightforward: Once ETH passed $3,000 and annualized revenue over $40 million, 50% of incremental staking inflows above that threshold are used to buy LDO, capped at $10 million per rolling year. At today’s run rate, this translates to roughly $4 million/year in buybacks.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-77.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109950" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-77.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-77.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-77.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-77.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-77.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-77.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-77.png?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-77.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-77.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



At first glance, this amount looks low. Aave runs a $50 million/year buyback program; Uniswap’s fee switch would have burned $26 million in the last month alone (not adjusted for wash trading). Secondly, the design also buys only when conditions are strong (high ETH price and high revenue) meaning Lido accumulates LDO when it is relatively expensive, while offering no counter-cyclical support during weaker market periods when the token likely suffers most.



However, Lido also outlined where the protocol is heading over the next 18 months, from a single-product staking business to a multi-product liquidity platform anchored by stETH.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="897" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-83.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109955" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-83.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-83.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-83.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-83.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-83.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-83.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-83.png?w=466 466w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-83.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-83.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



This sets the stage for Expanding Beyond Staking, where Lido evolves from a single-product stETH protocol in 2025 into a multi-product organization in 2026. Lido’s stVaults become the configurable chassis for institutional staking and yield strategies, Earn expands as the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lido-earn-tab">simple “default yield” front door</a> for retail and exchanges, and a new tier of structured and automated products sits on top as Lido moves both closer to users (distribution) and rightward into new asset classes.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="899" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-82.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109954" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-82.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-82.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-82.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-82.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-82.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-82.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-82.png?w=465 465w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-82.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-82.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Ultimately, Lido appears to be converging on the same insight that other LST protocols have already internalized: LSTs are structurally low-margin, and the real opportunity lies in the products and financial rails built on top of them. We see this clearly with Jito’s BAM (block-based auction markets) and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/etherfi-launches-defibank-us-crypto">EtherFi’s Cash</a>, both of which extend beyond pure staking yield. Lido’s roadmap is a necessary step in that direction.



 <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="624" height="351" src="blob:https://cms.blockworks.co/1c47da1d-9f13-4533-af8a-40db2bb09303">



However, when it comes to buybacks, the P&amp;L dynamics we highlighted previously still apply. The DAO remains unprofitable (Q3 income was -$200,000), raising questions about how impactful these changes truly are today — or if it&#8217;s too little, too late for Lido.



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Lido’s buybacks won’t fix the bigger problem

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As recently as a couple of years ago, investing was in a pessimistic place.



Techno-optimist Kevin Kelly <a href="https://youtu.be/5XCjWLJcUG4?si=WPklIiztOoNS8COu">worried</a> that “we’ve stopped making big things.”



Big Tech was pilloried for using immense profits to buy their own shares instead of building new things.&nbsp;



Ben Thompson’s Stratechery sounded more like a legal blog than a tech one, with his daily commentary dominated by the latest in anti-trust news.



Happily, that seems like ancient history now.&nbsp;



Ben Thompson seems to have some new, wildly ambitious tech venture to write about nearly every day: data centers in space, x-ray lithography, thermodynamic computing.



Big Tech has gone from returning cash to shareholders because it didn’t know what to do with it, to borrowing billions to build everything at once: OpenAI, for example, expects to make $100 billion of revenue in 2028 — and post a loss of $74 billion.



We’ve started making big things again: xAI’s million-square-foot data center in Memphis, a TSMC chip-fab occupying 1,100 acres of Arizona desert, a 400-foot-tall SpaceX rocket with 5,000 metric tons of liftoff mass.



People typically put a cynical spin on this: They see big corporations being greedy, or small investors being misled.



Kevin Kelly, however, sees a profound act of optimism.



Optimists, he <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_kelly_the_future_will_be_shaped_by_optimists">says</a>, “are willing to sacrifice immediate gains in order to postpone more gains into the future — that’s investment.”



You might be thinking, Yes, I own Nvidia shares now, so I can enjoy “more gains” next week, next month or next year.&nbsp;



But that’s just trading.



Kelly is talking about investing, which postpones the benefits of consumption not just years into the future, but generations.



“Right now,” he points out, “we’re benefiting from the work of previous generations, who have undertaken to create infrastructure — roads, canals, skyscrapers, telephone networks — that we are now enjoying.”



We should try not to take that for granted: People we don’t know took the risk of investing and did the hard work of building, and we get the benefits for free.



“By moving benefits to future generations,” Kelly says, the investors and builders of previous generations “have been acting as good ancestors for us.”



We, too, should aspire to be good ancestors, which we can do by moving some of our benefits into the future.&nbsp;



But that requires us to be optimistic about the future. “The deep history of new ideas,” Kelly explains, “makes it very clear that the optimistic stance of believing something is possible is a requirement to make anything new.”



Kelly is particularly optimistic about the new things that AI investors will make.



“The three chief consequences of AI,” he <a href="https://www.warpnews.org/premium-content/kevin-kelly-the-case-for-optimism/">predicts</a>, “will be the liberation of humans from their unwanted jobs, the explosion of new services and formerly impossible products that are co-created with AIs, and new occupations and desirable tasks for humans.”&nbsp;



Less drudgery, more stuff, better jobs — this is the future being created by today’s most optimistic investors.&nbsp;



Kelly is no utopian; he recognizes the ever-growing scale of the world’s challenges: “We have a planetary economy, we have planetary problems.”



But that just means we have to think bigger: “We have to do planetary solutions.” And he thinks we will: “They’re gonna be big.”



Bigger solutions will require bigger belief: “If we can become more optimistic,” Kelly <a href="https://youtu.be/5XCjWLJcUG4?si=BTR_AwW8elvZ_JaS&amp;t=803">said</a> in 2023, “we can imagine some big things, and then believe they can be made, and that will help make them come true.”



At the time, he worried that “we have an allergy to bigness right now.”



“Lots of people say they’re anti-capitalist,” he added, “but I think they’re anti-big.”



He encouraged people to rethink that: “We should be optimistic not because our problems are smaller than we thought, but because our capacity to solve them is larger than we thought.”



In 2025, it seems clear that AI has the potential to radically expand our capacity to solve even the biggest problems.&nbsp;



If so, it’s the optimistic act of investing in space-based data centers, x-ray lithography and giant chip fabs that will make it happen — eventually.



“In the long run,” Kelly concludes, “optimists shape the future.”



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Financial optimism is winning

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While crypto markets cooled this week under renewed macro pressure, Ika launched a multi-party computation design that enables trustless cross-chain signatures. With less than 1% of BTC currently productive in DeFi, Ika’s design could unlock tens of billions in dormant liquidity. ETFs continue to show outflows, though there are signs this may be ending.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Indices</h2>



Markets turned sharply risk-off, with nearly all crypto sectors in the red while traditional assets held steady. Gold (+0.6%) and the S&amp;P 500 (+0.1%) eked out small gains, contrasting with broad crypto weakness as BTC (-2.8%) and the broader crypto equities index (-1.8%) retreated. The Nasdaq 100 (-0.4%) mirrored muted tech sentiment, underscoring a modest flight to safety after recent volatility.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="839" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-73.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109933" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-73.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-73.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-73.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-73.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-73.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-73.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-73.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-73.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-73.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Crypto sector performance painted a stark picture of risk aversion. AI (-6.4%), L2 (-6.5%), and Launchpads (-6.6%) extended their declines, while DeFi (-8.1%) and Modular (-8.3%) led losses among infrastructure plays. Solana Ecosystem (-9.3%) and Ethereum Ecosystem (-9.2%) were the day’s biggest laggards, with onchain activity tapering and liquidity thinning across DEX volumes.



The Solana Eco Index was weighed down by weakness in key components like Jito, Drift and Metaplex. Early-week strength, particularly from BONK and DRIFT, faded by the weekend as profit-taking and liquidity unwinds hit DeFi and meme-adjacent plays hardest. ORCA and RAY showed relative resilience, stabilizing above weekly lows but still closing red. The sharp dispersion between protocols highlights rotation away from higher-beta SOL DeFi names toward liquidity hubs and yield platforms.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="843" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-74.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109937" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-74.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-74.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-74.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-74.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-74.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-74.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-74.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-74.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-74.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Macro headwinds are reasserting themselves as US yields climb, traders reassess the timing of 2026 rate cuts, and a firmer dollar and slowing ETF inflows dampen crypto momentum. Leverage has begun to unwind, tightening liquidity across derivatives markets. With BTC consolidating near six figures and volatility creeping higher, attention now shifts to the inflation print and the Fed’s final meeting of 2025. The broader tone is cooling exuberance, not panic — but for the first time in months, crypto looks vulnerable to macro gravity.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Market update</h2>



Flows across major spot ETFs flipped green last week, led by BlackRock’s IBIT and Fidelity’s FBTC. The reversal follows a choppy stretch through late October when nearly all issuers saw redemptions. Outflows from Grayscale’s GBTC have eased, helping net flows move back above zero.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1124" height="624" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-71.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109934" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-71.png?w=1124 1124w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-71.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-71.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-71.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-71.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-71.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-71.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-71.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1124px) 100vw, 1124px" /></figure>



The shift suggests investors are nibbling again after BTC’s brief dip to $100,000. Derivative markets tell a similar story as funding rates have leveled off, and futures basis has started to recover, pointing to stabilizing sentiment rather than aggressive risk-taking.



Meanwhile, ETH ETFs remain under pressure, with intermittent inflows failing to offset steady redemptions from major issuers. The latest data show ETH ETF flows leaning negative into mid-November. The result is a choppy flow profile that underscores weaker conviction in the ETH trade relative to BTC. ETH’s muted price performance hasn’t helped either; it continues to trail BTC both in spot and derivative markets. Funding rates remain flat, and the futures curve is showing less optimism compared to earlier in Q4, suggesting limited appetite for leveraged exposure.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1124" height="624" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-70.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109935" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-70.png?w=1124 1124w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-70.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-70.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-70.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-70.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-70.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-70.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-70.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1124px) 100vw, 1124px" /></figure>



Until ETH ETF inflows turn consistent, ETH is likely to keep trading in BTC’s shadow rather than setting its own pace.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Redefining decentralized multi-party computation</h2>



Bitcoin remains underutilized in DeFi, with less than 1% of circulating supply currently tokenized and generating yield. Capturing even an additional couple percent of native BTC would inject tens of billions in fresh collateral into DeFi ecosystems, creating step-function improvements in most areas. <a href="https://ika.xyz/">Ika</a>&#8216;s trustless architecture, utilizing Sui’s object-based blockchain, presents a path to leapfrog incumbent solutions and capture this underserved market.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="900" height="500" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-72.png" alt="" class="wp-image-109936" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-72.png?w=900 900w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-72.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-72.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-72.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-72.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-72.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-72.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px" /></figure>



The protocol&#8217;s novel 2PC-MPC architecture enables distributed networks to generate signatures with cryptographic guarantees that require user participation, solving a critical limitation in existing threshold signature schemes. While competitors like Lit Protocol, NEAR and ICP offer threshold signatures controlled by permissioned validator sets, Ika can ensure no transaction can execute without explicit user authorization, eliminating risks from compromised validators or rogue employees.&nbsp;



The strategic implications extend far beyond custody. Ika eliminates traditional bridge honeypots and wrapped token risks by enabling trustless cross-chain operations at Sui&#8217;s native speed, effectively making wallets on all chains programmable objects within Sui&#8217;s ecosystem. This architecture should allow Sui-based applications to access users and liquidity from any chain without wrapped intermediaries, while enabling projects on other chains to leverage Sui Move smart contracts as their backend without user-facing changes. As this technology matures, Ika could position Sui as a global coordination layer sitting above individual blockchains, capturing value from cross-chain activity while driving institutional integrations seeking compliant, trustless infrastructure.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="897" height="456" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-75.png" alt="" class="wp-image-109938" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-75.png?w=897 897w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-75.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-75.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-75.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-75.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-75.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-75.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 897px) 100vw, 897px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/67161f6a7534fbf38021d666/673dc7f1f9c5ef2fe161d8a6_Ika%20Whitepaper.pdf">Ika white paper</a></figcaption></figure>



 The Ika mainnet launched earlier this year, with developers like Human Tech and Native expected to launch products using Ika later this year.



<a href="https://human.tech/blog/our-wallet-as-a-protocol-is-now-secured-by-ika-s-2pc-mpc">Human Tech</a> leverages Ika to create a single interface controlling native assets across multiple chains through user-network co-signing, eliminating wrapped tokens and bridge risks while maintaining unified policies for recovery, limits and approvals.



<a href="https://www.gonative.cc/">Native</a> aims to leverage Ika&#8217;s 2PC-MPC architecture to enable Sui contracts to control actual bitcoin on Sui, delivering one-click, noncustodial BTC deposits and yield generation without bridges or wrapped intermediaries.



<a href="https://www.nativerse.xyz/">Nativerse</a> plans to employ Ika&#8217;s native signature capabilities to collateralize stablecoins with real bitcoin holdings, allowing Sui contracts to mint and manage BTC-backed dollars while maintaining dWallet policies for security limits and programmatic redemptions.



Following the mainnet launch, Ika’s token has sold off sharply, though meaningful onchain activity will take time to develop as the first production apps begin driving signature demand. The Ika token powers the network’s economy: Users and apps pay Ika for MPC operations like wallet creation and signing, while node operators earn those fees and staking rewards for securing the protocol. Ika also enables governance, with MPC nodes voting on protocol and economic parameters.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1521" height="822" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-69.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109932" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-69.png?w=1521 1521w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-69.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-69.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-69.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-69.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-69.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-69.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-69.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1521px) 100vw, 1521px" /></figure>







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Ika could redefine trustless cross-chain DeFi

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“If this all seems like a wild idea, that means you understand it.” 



— Ted Nelson
</blockquote>



If internet-native money existed in the 1970s, today&#8217;s newsletter would cost $0.001 to read.&nbsp;



Instead, it&#8217;s free.



Ted Nelson thinks that&#8217;s a world-changing disaster.



Nelson is the philosopher, media theorist and tech-visionary who, in 1960, first conceptualized a global “docuverse”: a vast, interconnected library of information made available by networked computers that did not yet exist.



Incredibly, that was nine years before the first computer-to-computer message was sent over the ARPANET.&nbsp;



Nelson prophetically explained that we’d soon access our information via computer screens, which seems intuitive enough — but he was explaining it at a time when hardly anyone had seen one.&nbsp;



He had to make cardboard and celluloid mockups of computer terminals to try to make his “Project Xanadu” comprehensible to people:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="466" height="282" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-68.png" alt="" class="wp-image-109925" style="width:575px;height:auto" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-68.png?w=466 466w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-68.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-68.png?w=425 425w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-68.png?w=431 431w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-68.png?w=362 362w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image-68.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 466px) 100vw, 466px" /></figure>



Nelson imagined those screens displaying “visible connections” between every piece of information: a universal system of permanent, unbreakable, two-way links between all the world’s documents, stored on networked servers that anyone could access.



That was 29 years before Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web — which Nelson is still unhappy about.



“I don’t want to talk about the Web,” he told an interviewer in 2021. “I hate it.”



Nelson dismisses today’s Web as a dumbed-down version of Xanadu, stripped of its most important parts: visible connection and micro-payments.



“The World Wide Web was my idea in the 1960s,” he later groused. “That other system caught on. The great disappointment of my life.”



Nelson is particularly disgusted by Berners-Lee’s now-ubiquitous hyperlinks, which he derisively calls “jump links” — a blind, one-way leap into an ocean of disconnected digital documents that simply “imitate paper.”&nbsp;



(In Nelson’s honor — and possibly to your confusion — I’ve refrained from including any hyperlinks in today’s article.)



To Nelson, building the Web in imitation of paper was no more imaginative than building cars in the shape of horses.



Project Xanadu promised instead a revolutionary version of the Web with “visible connections between pages,” two-way hyperlinks and “micro paywalls.”



This, he promised, would reflect the “nonlinear” nature of human thought, and thereby advance human creativity and progress — all while fairly compensating the world’s inventors, thinkers and content creators, one micro-payment at a time.



In short, Nelson wanted computers to be organized the way people think, and what we got instead is the opposite: a World Wide Web that makes people think the way computers are organized.



“Calling a hierarchical director a ‘folder,’” he characteristically argued, “doesn&#8217;t change its nature any more than calling a prison guard a ‘counselor.’”



He wasn’t speaking in metaphor: He really does think computers are a prison for the mind.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“I&#8217;m very unhappy about the Web,” he added in 2021, “but now we’re stuck with it.”



But maybe not for too much longer?



One reason you’re not paying $0.001 to read this newsletter on Xanadu is that Nelson’s lofty ideas were conceived decades ahead of the technology needed to realize them.



Even after the internet and the Web were invented, Project Xanadu would have required far more computing power, storage capacity, and networking sophistication than anyone thought possible.



Berners-Lee’s “dumbed down” version of the Web won out for one simple reason: It was possible.



Nelson’s vision of attributing all content to its original source, for example, was unfeasible because of the power and storage it would have required was unavailable.&nbsp;



His vision of compensating every idea with micropayments of royalties and sub-royalties was unfeasible because there was nothing to make micro-payments with.&nbsp;



But in 1989, Berners-Lee at least nodded at Nelson’s vision by including the status code “402: Payment Required” in his world-changing HTTP protocol. &nbsp;



402, as it’s known, would have allowed web servers to demand payment from a visiting browser before granting access to a document, video, song or idea.



Unfortunately, browsers, not being allowed bank accounts, had nothing to pay with — and even if they had, the process would have been too slow and too expensive to be useful.



Things have since changed, of course: Internet-native money was invented in 2009; onchain dollars were invented in 2014; and in 2025, high-throughput blockchains have reduced transaction times to a fraction of a second and transaction fees to a fraction of a cent.&nbsp;



In other words, everything is finally in place to realize Nelson’s “system of commerce that would create viable ways for people to be paid with a sensible and completely fair method.”



It won’t happen quickly.



For one thing, we’ve gotten thoroughly accustomed to internet content being mostly free, so ads are unlikely to be replaced by micropayments anytime soon.



Nor is online shopping likely to change: Credit cards work just fine for occasional purchases (also, we love our air miles).



But Ted Nelson’s original vision anticipated a problem that’s only now become evident, 60 years later: language models scraping the entirety of human knowledge from the internet and reproducing it without attribution.



This is exactly the future that Nelson was trying to prevent: a world where ideas were brutally detached from their creators and copied endlessly without context, credit or compensation.



I’m not sure anyone other than Nelson has even suggested a solution.



Project Xanadu — started in 1960, never a working project and long dismissed — somehow remains a futuristic vision.



To finally realize that vision, the Web might have to be reorganized along Nelson’s principles: with visible connections that allow all the world’s information to be properly attributed, and micro-paywalls so they can be properly compensated.



“I believe the original dream is still possible for everyone,” Nelson said in 2021. “ But not with today&#8217;s systems.”



With today’s systems, however, it might be.







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