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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

Byron Gilliam writes the Blockworks Daily newsletter, in which he tries to explain crypto markets to traditional investors and traditional markets to crypto investors (while trying to explain both to himself). Before joining Blockworks, Byron spent 25 years trading international equities for banks and brokers in Frankfurt, London, Paris and New York. He holds a bachelor's degree in History from Binghamton University. Contact Byron at byron@blockworks.co.

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dan Smith is a Senior Research Analyst based in the United States covering Curve, Convex, Aave, and Compound. Daniel previously worked in tax and valuation at EY and Bennett Thrasher. He is focused on using data visualization tools to better understand the health and profitability of various DeFi protocols. Contact Dan at daniel@blockworks.co

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Jess is the CEO of Reown, the onchain UX platform and builders of the WalletConnect Network. Previously she led Crypto at Checkout.com, a global fintech company. Jess was also a member of the Bank of England CBDC Engagement Forum and a member of UK Finance New Digital Money Steering Group, Innovate Finance Fintech Strategy Group and Department for International Trade Fintech Group.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Macauley Peterson

DBS, Singapore’s largest bank, has taken a notable step under the country’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/project-guardian">Project Guardian</a> initiative by moving its structured-note tokenization efforts onto <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a> mainnet.&nbsp;



The bank announced Thursday that it will issue crypto-linked structured notes as $1,000-denominated tokens, distributed through three digital investment platforms: ADDX, DigiFT and HydraX.



This is DBS’s first use of Ethereum’s public blockchain for token issuance, expanding beyond earlier experiments on permissioned networks. The bank framed the launch as part of a larger strategy to “scale this ecosystem by fostering responsible innovation” and meet demand for more flexible portfolio tools, according to Li Zhen, Head of Foreign Exchange and Digital Assets, Global Financial Markets at DBS.



Unlike traditional structured notes, which typically require a $100,000 minimum investment and are tailored individually, tokenization breaks instruments into smaller, fungible units. DBS said this “bite-sized” format should make structured notes more liquid and accessible to accredited and institutional investors.



Still, the extent of that liquidity is bounded. Compared to crypto-native structured products — such as <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/boros-pendle-tokenizes-funding-rates">yield instruments from Pendle</a> — DBS’s notes will not circulate freely across Ethereum’s open ecosystem.



Kelvin Tan, who heads tokenization at DBS, said the aim is to balance accessibility with compliance.



“Tokenising a structured note on the Ethereum public blockchain provides eligible accredited and institutional investors with greater flexibility to transfer and trade individual ‘bite-sized’ tokens between whitelisted wallets across different platforms, compared to an entire structured note,” Tan told Blockworks. “This helps investors manage their portfolios across platforms with greater precision and agility.”



That design reflects how banks are approaching Ethereum: as settlement rails and programmable infrastructure rather than an open market. Tan acknowledged the contrast with DeFi tokens, which often circulate unrestricted, but stressed the bank’s compliance-first stance: “We currently do not plan to deposit our tokens in decentralised liquidity pools.”



DBS also sees Ethereum as a foundation for future features.&nbsp;



According to Tan, “the Ethereum public blockchain gives DBS the flexibility to explore future on-chain use cases for the bank&#8217;s tokenised structured notes. This could include atomic settlement of token issuances with stablecoins, as well as wrapping tokens for re-distribution across other blockchains.”



For now, distribution remains confined to accredited and institutional investors via DBS’s selected partner platforms. That ensures compliance with KYC and AML requirements, but it also highlights the difference between bank-issued and DeFi-native instruments. Standards such as ERC-1400 and ERC-3643 exist to allow issuers to embed compliance into token behavior. However, DBS has not disclosed whether it’s using one of these established frameworks, or a custom, proprietary contract.



But the bank did say the demand for such instruments is rising.&nbsp;



In the first half of 2025, its clients traded more than $1 billion of crypto options and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-tradfi-degen-products">structured notes</a>, with volumes up nearly 60% quarter-on-quarter. The tokenized offering extends access to accredited and institutional investors who are not already DBS clients.



The bank’s first issuance is a cash-settled crypto-linked participation note, designed to deliver payouts when cryptocurrency prices rise while capping potential downside. Beyond that, DBS plans to tokenize equity-linked and credit-linked notes.



While open finance broadly thrives on open liquidity and permissionless composability, DBS’s experiment on Ethereum highlights both the promise and the limits of tokenization when banks come onchain.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.</li>



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: Apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: All things Solana.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supply-shock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
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DBS taps Ethereum for tokenized structured notes, but trading stays fenced

Donovan Choy

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



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The Solana ecosystem revolves heavily around the aptly named Jupiter protocol, and for good reason.



They’re an ambitious team trying to do damn near everything in DeFi.



In 2021, Jupiter launched a DEX aggregator on Solana, the dominant venue today for routing order flows to DEXs and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solanas-proprietary-amms">prop AMMs</a>. Alongside the aggregator, Jupiter founder meow also launched Mercurial DEX, rebranded today as Meteora.



A perps DEX followed in 2023, then a memecoin launchpad in 2024, and then a majority stake <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/jupiter-majority-stake-moonshot">acquisition</a> in the Moonshot memecoin trading platform earlier this year. There’s also the upcoming omnichain network “<a href="https://meow.bio/jupnet.html">JupNet</a>,” which plans to aggregate liquidity across chains.&nbsp;



But all eyes this week are on Jupiter Lend, the superapp’s first formal foray into the Lending vertical.



<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">jupiter lend public beta coming this week 👀👀👀 devs had a last-minute idea to make it even better, can&#39;t wait to show you all&mdash; Jupiter (🐱, 🐐) (@JupiterExchange) <a href="https://twitter.com/JupiterExchange/status/1958228036555313204?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 20, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Jupiter’s lending product is built on Fluid’s liquidity/risk engine. If you’ve never heard of Fluid, it’s a protocol that took the Ethereum world by storm over the past year.



To see the promise of Jupiter Lend requires a baseline understanding of how Fluid actually works. It’s not the most straightforward product, but here’s the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/defi-superapp-competitor-to-aave-uniswap">gist</a>.



Fluid (previously Instadapp) is an integrated application consisting of DEX, lending and borrowing. All three draw from a unified liquidity layer, which enables unique features that just aren’t possible on other DEXs or lending protocols.



For instance, a borrower on Fluid can denominate their debt to serve as liquidity for Fluid DEX (what the team calls “smart debt”), rather than letting it sit idle as posted collateral.



This, in effect, puts a borrower’s debt to “work.” As traders on the DEX side are paying fees to trade, that lets borrowers earn fees to reduce their debt. It’s somewhat unintuitive, for it inverts the logic of how we commonly think of debt as an unproductive asset that needs to be paid down.



This is how Fluid opens up billions of dollars in “TVL” that isn’t actually TVL, at least not in the conventional DeFi sense. Which leads to memes like these:



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeD-OeW5i3Mb0RfbF0-sfWmO04iAlUfag15JjUB1Nv9PbJe3drG1tqWZNLwmpO7B5NxH9gGFg2CDfrDbmYxCdKk4thi6BK75EPHxLYtflMIEI56kJ4DMeRqrIzhUUu_jg-6l1wd?key=oyKFHnWHafLE8mY6xJPfeA" alt="" style="width:671px;height:auto"/></figure>



Fluid also has perhaps one of the most advanced liquidation engines in DeFi. Its borrowing vaults bucket positions into “ticks,” which liquidates positions partially as markets move, rather than in one fell swoop.&nbsp;



Again, Fluid’s tight integration allows liquidations to simply settle as ordinary swaps on its own DEX.



This combo drastically reduces slippage and penalties (~0.1%). And the end result is that it enables abnormally high loan-to-value (LTV) ratios of 90-95% on its lending product. For context, even highly liquid assets like WBTC/WETH have LTVs of 70-85% on Aave.



As a testament to Fluid’s success, its lending has $1.4 billion in active loans since its launch on Ethereum less than a year ago, per Blockworks Research data.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdBGcx0EQFgjZUbmUK6e7lza9DjxgN5oMfIKeN2nIVeuP08SL4dp_bvQfSQYoDOEi2VW_sVOgZB-lUoYNSXqHmdKMXM5het0ycDcUhkNsQeh8DMyycRQPAgT2AVdjGjTeXo9bXt?key=oyKFHnWHafLE8mY6xJPfeA" alt="" style="width:668px;height:auto"/></figure>



And you can see strong traction on its DEX product too.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcLRTxoWd7arKoZfXozpSlcyQ4GEjyDlRH-vnYgrimJHpBpioI69b-SA2Ha4p1oI4rC24MlHM29tRHb45W9lCtC-wsawuFeIHVzjKylboFEyoutMHLy9BiRMpqppFcOEsYx5tzJDA?key=oyKFHnWHafLE8mY6xJPfeA" alt="" style="width:677px;height:auto"/></figure>



Jupiter founder meow has a close relationship with the Fluid founders. You can read more about that <a href="https://meow.bio/fluid">here</a>.



It’ll be interesting to see how well Jupiter can replicate Fluid’s success in the SVM world. Kamino has a stronghold on that market, but market leader positions in DeFi are fleeting. Definitely one of the major battles to watch on Solana.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: All things Solana.</li>



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Jupiter Lend readies for public beta launch this week

David Canellis

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



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Kanye did it. He launched a memecoin on Solana.



Some say this is the top signal for which we’ve been waiting, making Yeezy the Lisan al-Gaib of bears.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="730" height="376" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/yzy.png" alt="" class="wp-image-106383" style="width:481px;height:auto" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/yzy.png?w=730 730w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/yzy.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/yzy.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/yzy.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/yzy.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/yzy.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 730px) 100vw, 730px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><a href="https://x.com/kanyewest/status/1958346810801697237">Source</a></figcaption></figure>



Maybe so. Although the top signals were much, much louder last time around.



For one thing, Yeezy has fallen off. I’m not sure YZY on Meteora in 2025 will ever have the same impact as if it was sold at the height of the Yeezy brand circa 2020.



Still, I spent my morning going over archives of crypto headlines from the tail-end of the monster 2021 bull market.



What were the signs that crypto would peak at a $3-trillion market cap in the second week of November?&nbsp;



Any top signal would need to come within six months of that cycle peak, I decided. You probably remember that 2021 saw two major tops, in May and November, so really any signal that came before May would’ve ultimately pointed to much higher prices (making them bullish signals).



And yeah, hindsight is 20/20. But tell me that these headlines weren’t screaming that a top was soon near.



“<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ftx-closes-900m-series-b-round-valuing-exchange-at-18b">FTX Closes $900M Series B Round Valuing Exchange at $18B</a>” — July 20, 2021 (yes, that’s a $900-million raise).



“Tim Berners-Lee sells web source code NFT for $5.4m” — June 30, 2021 (132 days until top).



“CityCoins Community Officially Launches with MiamiCoin, Its First City-Based Token” — August 3, 2021 (remember these?)



“El Salvador buys bitcoin as the digital currency becomes legal tender” — September 6, 2021.



“OpenSea admits insider trading of NFTs it promoted” — September 16, 2021 (arguably the most compelling yet).



“China declares all crypto-currency transactions illegal” — September 2, 2021 (68 days until top).



“<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbases-new-direct-deposit-feature-allows-users-to-get-paychecks-in-crypto">Coinbase’s New Direct Deposit Feature Allows Users to Get Paychecks in Crypto</a>” — September 27, 2021.



“TikTok Is Auctioning Its NFT Collection Featuring Lil Nas X, Grimes, Bella Poarch, More” — October 1, 2021 (NFT = Nearly Freakin’ Top).



“<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/celsius-valued-at-3-25b-after-400m-raise-amid-regulatory-headwinds">Celsius Valued at $3.25B After $400M Raise Amid Regulatory Headwinds</a>” — October 12, 2021 (narrator: Celsius would file for bankruptcy nine months later and its CEO would eventually be sentenced to 12 years’ prison for fraud).



“Bahamas-based crypto exchange FTX raises a $420.69M Series B-1 at a $25B valuation from 69 investors, including BlackRock and Tiger Global” — October 21, 2021 (I mean, this one was a doozy, especially paired with the Celsius saga).



“Facebook Changes Company Name to Meta in Focus on Metaverse” — October 28, 2021 (12 days until top).



“Incoming NYC Mayor Eric Adams: Pay Me In Bitcoin” — November 4, 2021.



“<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/05/technology/nft-nyc-metaverse.html">Crypto Is Cool. Now Get on the Yacht</a>” — November 5, 2021 (all about NFT.NYC, the New York conference that attracted a record 5,000 attendees just four days before the top).



“About 5% of Sotheby’s, Christie’s Contemporary Art Auctions Are NFTs” — November 8, 2021 (one day before the top).



To cap it off, Coinbase’s Q3 earnings were even <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-reports-q3-net-revenue-dropped-39-to-1-234b">released</a> on the exact day that crypto peaked. Revenue had dropped 39%, from $2 billion to just over $1.2 billion, lower than estimates, and the number of monthly transacting users dipped 16%. COIN tanked 12% in postmarket trading as a result.



So, does a lame ChatGPT 5 release, a new SPAC from Chamath, Meta hiring freeze and a memecoin from washed entertainer stack up to this monumental run of headlines? Not really.&nbsp;



<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">The top signals rolling in fast. Chamath SPAC, Meta hiring freeze, OpenAI admitting GPT-5 is a “miss”, Kanye coin. All in 48h. <a href="https://t.co/qJdmpnzS8S">https://t.co/qJdmpnzS8S</a>&mdash; Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) (@adamscochran) <a href="https://twitter.com/adamscochran/status/1958353499848147190?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 21, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



But then again, it may be another cycle or two before crypto runs back its cultural significance, as it was in 2021. The signals might be quieter this time around.



Read More: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/paris-hilton-bitcoin-celebrity-indicators">Was Katy Perry a top signal in 2022?</a>



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forward-guidance">Forward Guidance</a>: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: Apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: All things Solana.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supply-shock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
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If Kanye’s memecoin is a top signal, then crypto has fallen off

Kraken has become the first major crypto exchange to fully adopt Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) across its Ethereum staking infrastructure, using the open-source SSV Network protocol.&nbsp;



The move marks a major shift towards a more decentralized validator architecture for <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a>.



“Following the successful transition, [100%] of Kraken’s ETH staking infrastructure runs on distributed validator clusters, rather than single-machine validators,” a <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/kraken">Kraken</a> spokesperson told Blockworks.



DVT decentralizes validator operations by splitting responsibilities across multiple independent nodes that cooperate to perform attestations and block proposals. Kraken said each validator is now operated by “a cluster of typically four independent nodes,” with deliberate diversity in both software and geography.&nbsp;



“We design for maximum diversity: nodes are spread across different regions and run a mix of Ethereum client implementations to avoid any single-client bug impacting the whole cluster,” the spokesperson added.



Key management was also overhauled as part of the migration. “As part of our transition to DVT, validator keys were split and distributed to cluster operators to ensure no single operator holds the entire key,” Kraken said. For newly created validators, keys are generated in a distributed manner “so the full private key is never assembled.”



To reduce slashing risk, Kraken’s operators use a synchronized, distributed slashing-protection database. “If a node goes offline, it can sync the history of signed duties from the cluster before signing anything new,” the spokesperson explained.



SSV Labs, which is a core contributor to the DVT protocol, emphasized the modularity and configurability of its approach. “The nature of DVT is more diversity by design, and it is more of a ‘user’ choice. Every participant can optimize for diversity, whatever that means for them,” an SSV spokesperson told Blockworks.



Kraken’s implementation gives a strong boost to DVT adoption, according to Alon Muroch, SSV Labs founder and core contributor. “It demonstrates that the technology is ready for use at scale in institutional staking environments,” Muroch said.



Originally known under Blox.io and CoinDash brands, the team behind SSV Network pivoted, beginning in early 2021, launching the <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/ssv">SSV</a> token, to focus on noncustodial ETH staking infrastructure, and later DVT, <a href="https://medium.com/%40researchcoindelta/ssv-network-transforming-ethereum-staking-with-unrivaled-security-9c69aa7dbad7">supported</a> by an Ethereum Foundation grant. SSV Network was created <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ssv-network-decentralized-staking-infrastructure">to make centralized staking providers obsolete</a>.



Earlier this year, Obol — another DVT provider — <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/obol-launches-obol-token-validator">launched its native OBOL token</a> to empower community governance and operator coordination. The <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/bellcurve/dca8d3ea-2574-11ee-b0e7-1b2252d58a45">rise of DVT solutions</a> like SSV and Obol help Ethereum reduce centralization risks by distributing validator duties across diverse operators and geographic locations, enhancing uptime, slashing safety, and the overall robustness of network consensus.



Updated August 21, 2025, at 1:00 pm ET: Kraken clarified that all its validators are now on distributed clusters.



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Kraken completes full DVT integration for Ethereum staking using SSV

Kunal Doshi

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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The weakness in the market continues, with BTC and ETH down 7.5% and 9.5%, respectively, over the last seven days. With majors showing a first real sign of correction in weeks, it’s an apt time to ask if the local top could be in.&nbsp;



One segment of the market I like to watch is retail interest. When retail participation surges, it often signals that the crowd is in, which historically marks the local top in markets.&nbsp;



The first key indicator is weekly spot volume on CEXs. Last week, spot volumes reached $465 billion, approaching levels seen in January and March this year when the market was hitting new highs. Since most retail users trade through CEXs given the ease of onboarding, elevated volumes here provide a clear signal of growing retail engagement.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdsqsxAIBX1fsW9isKUsLqvY7vqxmSMOOerKhK4188P1Mn-klqSAEVNaHOJvasn9AQsLfiUSrH2LQEDtb71ngDkKs12_JwcY6E-O6RmagNotrbLDP8ug-cPbcm0Qph53pdvHss9KA?key=7EbrmKQzVODYrpHPXbYHAw" alt=""/></figure>



Search trends offer another powerful lens into retail sentiment. Interest in terms like “Crypto”, “Ethereum”, and “Altcoins” is climbing sharply, set to reach levels last seen at the peak of the 2021 bull market.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcYlbO3tbIIWZqAxNu-hE7gWZ7UFtvHrXR9q04jm9f-ycWnDtxyyP_2dXzBm0uMj2VM0LNd-FFwnhVTkkyMB0dRHfgQHxjLgq8I6VVDrs-hKHAPl92ONYahwC4SVRhK45jivyUcgg?key=7EbrmKQzVODYrpHPXbYHAw" alt=""/></figure>



Even anecdotal signals matter. I am noticing more friends asking how to get started in crypto, which always catches my attention. While retail adoption is positive for the long term, sudden FOMO-driven spikes in these indicators often reflect emotional, late-stage buying from people chasing quick gains.



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Same game, new players — but retail’s now smarter

Katherine Ross

Stablecoin payments processor Loop Crypto raised a strategic round co-led by VanEck and Fabric Ventures, the firm exclusively told Blockworks.&nbsp;



This brings the total funding raised by the firm to $6 million, but the team declined to give specifics on the most recent round.&nbsp;



Co-founders Eleni Steinman and Shane van Coller noted that they — like many in crypto — couldn’t have foreseen the rapid rise in stablecoins.&nbsp;



For Steinman specifically, Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge earlier this year showed that bigger players “see the value in rebuilding the payment rails and that it&#8217;s working…people really are choosing stablecoin payments because of their value proposition of being faster, cheaper, and just inherently global.”



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/vaneck">VanEck’s</a> Wyatt Lonergan said: “Once you start moving to stablecoins, like everything is instant, and in fact, that win, win, lose is inverted. The losers are kind of the banks that sit between you and the merchant, and the merchant can get access to their funds, and you can do all these really expressive, interesting things with stablecoins.”



“And that&#8217;s a lot of the tools that Loop has built to enable what feels like the same payment process for a merchant or a business to accept money,” Lonergan added.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/two-vaneck-funds-back-depin-dawn">Exclusive: 2 VanEck funds back Solana-based DePIN DAWN</a>



Loop has, as an example, built out the ability to charge a subscription using stablecoins.&nbsp;



“We basically get an approval from the user who&#8217;s paying in that stablecoin for our smart contract to spend that stablecoin on their behalf. So when they sign up for the subscription, the first thing that they do is sign this approval transaction, which gives us the ability to go and pull money from their wallets when that subscription becomes due in the future. So it really is a pull payment from the wallet, versus a payment that a lot of other payment solutions do,” van Coller explained.&nbsp;



Loop currently serves merchants such as Helius, OpenPay, Kaito, and Privy, just to name a few. A press release noted that paid transaction volume in the second quarter of this year jumped by 344% in comparison to the same time period last year.&nbsp;



Loop, the team noted, has had both crypto native and non-crypto native merchants looking for stablecoin payment solutions.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/vaneck-venture-fund-crypto-ai">Is crypto’s ‘ChatGPT’ moment nearly here?</a>



“​​Our game plan is to keep trying to grow…basically, how many merchants are using us, right? Are we solving their problems? And the quality of that merchant really matters to us too, so we don&#8217;t want to serve just like 1,000 merchants who are maybe doing a few transactions, but can we solve problems for 10 really good merchants and build tools that really meet their needs,” Steinman told Blockworks.&nbsp;



Lonergan added that he sees a “huge role” for projects in the space that are “neutral,” meaning that they aren’t pushing their own stablecoin and instead allow merchants to have a slew of choices based on their needs.&nbsp;



“It feels like even though it&#8217;s been massive growth, like it&#8217;s still really tiny compared to the payments. B2B payments is a $190 trillion category…And so I&#8217;m not quite sure that we know what businesses and consumers want yet. I think the winners are going to be ones that still could play that neutral role and just, again, facilitate whatever the customer needs,” Lonergan said.&nbsp;



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Exclusive: Loop Crypto raises round led by VanEck, Fabric Ventures

Byron Gilliam

This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read more editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/brand/the-breakdown">subscribe</a>



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



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.”



— Alfred North Whitehead
</blockquote>



Investors love the pricing power of “last mile” businesses.&nbsp;



Comcast charges $75 a month for internet access because it buried the cable outside your house that connects you to the world wide web.&nbsp;



Walmart is the last mile of consumer goods because its shelves are where supply meets demand, and brands pay dearly (in discounts and promotions) to win a place on them.



Amazon charges third-party sellers as much as 45% of their sale price for access to its virtual shelf space and last-mile network of warehouses and delivery trucks.



Is this how the stablecoin business will work as well?



Last week, we learned that both Stripe and Circle are building stablecoin-optimized blockchains, and the timing (on the same day, even) inevitably frames this as a competition: “Circle and Stripe now appear to be converging on the same goal: building rival financial networks for digital money,” Bloomberg <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-19/circle-bets-on-its-own-blockchain-in-challenge-to-payment-giants">reported</a>.&nbsp;



If so, they will likely be converging from different directions.&nbsp;



Stripe’s blockchain, Tempo, is expected to focus first on retail-merchant payments, while Circle’s Arc sounds more like behind-the-scenes infrastructure — “an enterprise-grade foundation for stablecoin payments, FX and capital markets applications,” as they pitch it.



It’s tempting to say Stripe starts with an advantage here, since it’s already a last-mile business — it owns the checkout button and the customer relationship, connecting directly to more than a million merchants.&nbsp;



Circle, by contrast, has no direct contact to its end-users at all — we get our USDC on exchanges, not from Circle itself.



But the last mile isn’t always the place to make money.



Gas stations, for example, earn only pennies on each gallon of gas they sell while the oil majors they buy from make much bigger profits upstream. Retail brokers have to offer customers free trading while the exchanges they connect to mint money from data and transaction fees.



In other industries, however, the last mile and the infrastructure can be equally profitable: Nvidia and AWS, for example, both do very well for themselves.



The business of moving money that Stripe and Circle are both hoping to disrupt is enormous: Austin Campbell <a href="https://youtu.be/cULv9k3ExdM?si=Zk9cEvnFaOvDG9xY&amp;t=621">notes</a> that international transfers alone move roughly $1.25 quintillion annually. The all-in cost for a bank to make an international wire transfer is <a href="https://www.financialprofessionals.org/docs/librariesprovider8/default-document-library/determining-your-true-cost-of-payments.pdf?sfvrsn=52b5166b_2&amp;utm_source=chatgpt.com">over $8</a>, so I imagine there’s a lot of money for Circle to make just from banks (without ever reaching the end user) if it figures out how to do it cheaper with stablecoins.



Payments are also highly complex.



A single dollar spent on a YouTube ad, for example, might be collected in euros, split between Google in Ireland, a content creator in India and a publisher in Brazil, then routed through multiple banks, in multiple currencies — all of which is set in motion by a click on a website.



If Stripe can use programmable money to automate that complexity at the de minimis cost of a stablecoin transaction, its Tempo blockchain could be a hit.



There are many more niches of the payments world to disrupt, so even if Stripe and Circle are destined to converge, it might be a long time before they actually compete.&nbsp;



There should be plenty for both to do — it’s reasonable to imagine that every kind of payment could someday be made in stablecoins.



Guillaume Poncin, CTO of the crypto infrastructure provider Alchemy, told me that banking infrastructure “will run on blockchain rails,” noting that stablecoins are particularly well-suited for cross-border payments, ACH transfers and interchange payments between banks.



It might happen fast. “In five years,” Cosmo Jiang told <a href="https://youtu.be/QX6jxGQlM-w?si=s6g2i_xxfXP0md8z&amp;t=4617">Empire</a>, &#8220;I&#8217;d be shocked if not all the financial applications on your phone were running on blockchain rails.”



If so, it probably won’t happen on a general-purpose chain like Ethereum.



For stablecoins to be used at scale in the real world, they will probably have to be on a specialized blockchain like what Circle is <a href="https://6778953.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6778953/Arc%20Litepaper%20-%202025.pdf">building</a> — with predictable fees, dispute resolution, privacy for users and transparency for regulators.&nbsp;



I’m sure Stripe’s yet-to-be-announced chain will have similar functionality. But that doesn’t mean it will be a direct competitor.



If the stablecoin market gets as big as they think it will, it might not be Stripe vs. Circle, but Stripe and Circle both.



Or neither, maybe.



Austin Campbell believes that in the race to build stablecoin payment rails, “the answer to who will win is none of the people on the field.”



The race itself is only in its first mile.



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The stablecoin marathon enters its first mile

Ben Strack

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



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Recent developments in Congress and comments from senators indicate that a market structure bill won’t be as easy to pass as the GENIUS Act.&nbsp;&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Clarity on CLARITY?</h2>



Before Fed Chair Jerome Powell takes the Jackson Hole spotlight Friday, other bigwigs in the same valley gave us some regulatory tidbits to chew on at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium. 



US Sen. Tim Scott and SEC Chair Paul Atkins shared the type of praise for Donald Trump you’d expect from a Republican leader and an agency head nominated by the president. Making the US “the crypto capital of the world,” yada yada yada.&nbsp;



But between the lines, there were some more substantial soundbites. For example, Scott — chair of the Senate Banking Committee — addressed market structure legislation. Perhaps you remember Scott, Cynthia Lummis and others introducing a “discussion draft” last month that built upon the CLARITY Act <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/us-house-passes-clarity-act">passed by the House</a>.



It looks to define “ancillary assets” in a bid to clarify which digital assets are not securities, and it directs the SEC to “tailor existing requirements to digital asset activity.”



Eighteen Democrats voted for the GENIUS Act. Scott said he thinks he’ll have between 12 and 18 Dems at least open to voting for a market structure bill.&nbsp;



But it’s “a far more complicated piece of legislation,” he acknowledged, and someone like Sen. Elizabeth Warren standing in the way of Democrats wanting to participate is, in his words, “a real force to overcome.”



Patrick Daugherty, head of the blockchain and digital assets practice at law firm Foley &amp; Lardner, agreed that this legislative effort is no sure thing. He also emphasized the difference between what the House passed and what the Senate Banking Committee revealed.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The CLARITY Act would help layer-1 blockchain builders, for example, raise capital more efficiently and protect them from failing to register with the SEC, the lawyer told me. Crypto exchanges would also be safer from attack for trading unregistered tokens.



Side note: To the contrary, it seems crypto project leaders may have to fend off overly friendly commissioners wanting to get coffee near their hometowns.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeLzxBefKCZDDMAL8wKNkXH-Grfs0UA3qpnt15WCkY-_MRBywz_vX7J_20aPpr1vSlN0RqSUfcaWuZeWSWTItQnRF9qYep96CrRv15Vzr7DZlgi8IZyeEr9zECtr_r2waX1Uh0lSg?key=8kOZ-8YQc2Z_Vp7WC6s7Iw" alt="" style="width:772px;height:auto"/></figure>



This CLARITY legislation would give both the SEC and CFTC jurisdiction over certain parts of the industry — with regulation around this technology able to shift from one agency to the other, Daugherty added.&nbsp;



Scott’s proposal puts more of the rule-making and regulation burden on the SEC. It’s worth noting, though, that the Senate Agriculture Committee — with oversight of the CFTC — is expected to soon introduce its own draft language focused on digital commodities.



“More than the stablecoin statute, either market structure statute, if enacted, will require considerable rulemaking and interpretation by the SEC and the securities bar who are following developments closely,” Daugherty said. “Will CLARITY clarify the law? Yes, but less than some would like.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Atkins doubles down on ‘super-app’ approach</h2>



Atkins hammered home some of his “Project Crypto” priorities in a discussion later that morning — with some relating to the regulatory jurisdictions mentioned above. If you forgot the gist of the SEC chair’s broad plans:



<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">A portion of SEC chair Paul Atkins&#39; response to yesterday&#39;s White House report. &quot;Project Crypto&quot; underway &#8230; <a href="https://t.co/yO5g0S806i">pic.twitter.com/yO5g0S806i</a>&mdash; Ben Strack 🟪 (@strack_ben) <a href="https://twitter.com/strack_ben/status/1950975816323493918?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Atkins had also noted, in the July 31 remarks, that he would help the Senate craft a market structure bill “that future proofs our markets against regulatory mischief.”



He then said Tuesday: “I didn’t come to Washington to engage in a turf battle,”



He doubled down on themes of being flexible as the marketplace and technology evolves, as well as implementing a so-called super-app approach.&nbsp;



“Five or 10 years from now, things will be completely different I’m sure,” Atkins said. “And we can’t put things into little cement-surrounded pockets that are immutable.”



Friendly competition and a balance of power is key, he noted — in part to guard against one regulator becoming “too obstinate.”



Related is the super-app piece. Atkins is talking about (as elaborated on a few weeks ago), letting securities intermediaries offer a bunch of products and services “under one roof with a single license.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfqdwpPcuNa8UKy_-j5QRSXTYqzGlfD0aPdGQnkmwF9BC0SHOFi3iktxkZUaklGhNmBFSZPk0xo-0kH6IpSUlbUdxbU31J9a-qNPuZK3jm2H-hHcBIkp3FstM7bJtfxlFhYgWft0g?key=8kOZ-8YQc2Z_Vp7WC6s7Iw" alt=""/></figure>



Republicans previously <a href="https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/majority/what-they-are-saying-support-for-scotts-september-deadline-on-digital-asset-market-structure-legislation">aimed</a> to advance market structure legislation by Sept. 30, and Scott reiterated on Tuesday the urgency of getting this done: “Executive action is not enough. Period.”



Between future-proofing this bill and getting enough bipartisan support, it seems this tall task could take longer than some hope.



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Why a market structure bill is ‘far more complicated’ than the GENIUS Act

The term “Ethereum layer-2” is generally thought to mean that a chain <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/layer-2-secured-by-ethereum">inherits Ethereum’s security</a>. But the line has always been blurry, and remains so, especially with the rise of OP Stack chains that use alternative data availability (DA) layers. These so-called &#8220;Optimiums&#8221; settle to Ethereum but post data elsewhere, introducing some additional trust-assumptions.



Toghrul Maharramov, a <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/rollups">rollup</a> researcher and former <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/scroll">Scroll</a> contributor, has been a vocal critic of looser L2 definitions, and <a href="https://x.com/toghrulmaharram/status/1958059218814029970?s=46&amp;t=yjAdM2ddX0KgGQimu7jcDQ">declared</a> Wednesday on X:



“Optimiums are not L2s. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to psyop you.”



A good example of this is Celo, which Blockworks reported <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/rollup-reality-check">as a case study</a> of an L1 becoming an L2. For the most part, Ethereum rollups post their data to Ethereum itself — originally via calldata and now, predominantly, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-blobs-balancing-act">via blobs</a>. That enables the useful property of permissionless <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/glossary#S">state</a> reconstruction and withdrawals from an L2 to Ethereum mainnet.



Optimiums, by contrast, outsource DA to off-chain networks like EigenDA, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/celestia">Celestia</a> or <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/avail">Avail</a>, and rely on attestations to prove that data is available. They may use fraud proofs and settle to Ethereum, but they add a layer of trust that Ethereum cannot directly verify.



Vitalik Buterin has used “L2” liberally, and indeed <a href="https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1838809754002690403">specifically referred</a> to Celo as moving to an “L2,” so we’re in good company there, but the difference is more than semantics.&nbsp;



Ethereum scaling tracker L2BEAT now classifies most Optimiums as “<a href="https://l2beat.com/scaling/summary?tab=others">Others</a>,” a catch-all category for chains that don’t meet the strict rollup criteria. Celo, for example, completed its transition in March 2025 to run on the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/optimism">OP Stack</a> with EigenDA.



According to L2BEAT, it fails two key checks for rollup status:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>It has fewer than five external actors who can submit fraud proofs</li>



<li>It has no DA bridge that posts EigenDA availability proofs on Ethereum</li>
</ul>



The result: no L1-enforced remedy if data goes missing.



Lisk, which migrated to Ethereum in late 2024, also falls into this bucket for similar reasons — reliance on a permissioned challenger set — although it does post data on Ethereum.



According to Sreeram Kannan, founder of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/eigenlayer">EigenLayer</a>, we can think of rollups as “out-of-protocol scaling for execution,” while EigenDA is “out-of-protocol scaling for blob space.” In both cases, the data and logic happen outside Ethereum’s protocol rules — but only rollups ensure Ethereum can enforce validity directly.



“When a certificate from EigenDA shows up, you’re trusting that that certificate implies that the data is available,” he told Blockworks.



That trust model has no on-chain enforcement today.



“If the DA claimed the data is available and the data is not available, there’s no recourse,” Kannan said.



So, is “L2” just Ethereum-aligned marketing? Or should it reflect the protocol’s ability to enforce both correctness and availability?



L2BEAT’s current stance is that Ethereum must be able to reject bad state roots and verify data availability independently. Anything else requires more trust — whether that’s in a DA quorum, a governance council, or a permissioned set of challengers.



Optimiums without either state validation or a DA bridge remain in the “Others” category. But as the tech matures, some may graduate to “Validiums &amp; Optimiums” or even gain rollup status. To do that, you’d need some robust fallback mechanism or a way to make DA failures an “objectively attributable fault,” —&nbsp;a tough problem to crack.



Until then, the debate continues, grounded in practical considerations for users about who is trustworthy to keep funds safe.&nbsp;



“If you&#8217;re just honest, every layer-2 is controlled by a multisig, so we should be talking more about that,” Kannan said. This is certainly a prime bugaboo for critics of Ethereum’s scaling scheme, he acknowledges.



“But I would want to also point out that every app on <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/solana">Solana</a> has like a 2-of-3 or some very small <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/safe-exploit-comprehensive-review">multisig</a> that controls it,” he said, meaning there’s more work to be done to minimize trust all around.



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Optimiums and the ‘L2’: Ethereum security revisited

Kate Irwin

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



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Arbitrum’s gaming investment group is offering Ronin up to 750,000 ARB spread across three consecutive years to join them as an “Orbit” chain.



Currently, that’s worth about $367,500, which doesn’t seem like a whole lot.



But in this down-and-out gaming market, maybe that’s enough.&nbsp;



Ronin’s cofounders shared screenshots on social media of the offer from Arbitrum Gaming Ventures (AGV), noting that it would also include Gaming Content Creator Program access (social content support funded by Arbitrum DAO).&nbsp;



They’d also get financial assistance with audit costs via an existing $10 million Arbitrum ecosystem audit program.



“Cool to see Arbitrum throwing their hat into the ring,” Jeff “Jihoz” Zirlin, one of the founders, <a href="https://x.com/Jihoz_Axie/status/1957845308681195992">wrote</a> in a pretty neutral-seeming response to the offer, which came from AGV councilmember and Offchain Labs Head of Gaming and Consumer Partnerships David Bolger.



<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">The proposals are starting to roll in. Many of the questions we&#39;ve gotten around Ronin 2 revolve around: • How will Builder score be calculated? • Which L2 provider will be chosen? These are not fully up to Sky Mavis. They will be worked on and decided in conjunction with… <a href="https://t.co/zkq0jmh51G">pic.twitter.com/zkq0jmh51G</a>&mdash; Jihoz.ron (@Jihoz_Axie) <a href="https://twitter.com/Jihoz_Axie/status/1957845308681195992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 19, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The proposal emphasizes Arbitrum’s continued interest in gaming.



Despite some <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/arbitrum-gaming-catalyst-dao-relations-rep">controversy</a> earlier this year around how much money AGV more broadly was committing to gaming, they’re still pushing forward in the sector.&nbsp;



AGV was previously known as the Arbitrum Gaming Catalyst. Its founding partner, Daniel Peng, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blockchain-gaming-reckoning-gdc">told me</a> back in March that they were talking to over 100 game teams (some of those talks seemed to have resulted in investments since).



Arbitrum Gaming Ventures is now helping fund <a href="https://x.com/ArbitrumPlay/status/1920545754432877026">titles like</a> Wildcard (a fun MOBA-style creature battler), plus gaming startups like Xai Games and Proof of Play (the latter of which recently killed its onchain game Pirate Nation).



“Studio Chain” is also <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/studio-chain-gaming-blockchain-launch">building</a> with Arbitrum, which is a gaming- and entertainment-focused Orbit chain from the My Pet Hooligan-affiliated Karrat Foundation.



Ronin’s founders don’t seem totally sold on the idea of jumping on the ARB train just yet. They’re still open to offers from other sequencers.&nbsp;



<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">We&#39;re starting to see different L2 providers submit their proposals to Ronin. This means that they&#39;re looking to provide access to their sequencer technology which would facilitate Ronin becoming an Ethereum layer 2. What does a sequencer do? • Collects user transactions from…&mdash; Jihoz.ron (@Jihoz_Axie) <a href="https://twitter.com/Jihoz_Axie/status/1957942407028437202?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 19, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Ronin and Sky Mavis cofounder Aleksander Larsen specifically <a href="https://x.com/Psycheout86/status/1958051860780032326">mentioned</a> Optimism and zkSync as other possible vectors for Ronin to become an L2 besides going the Arbitrum route.



Zirlin also emphasized that these decisions are “not fully up to Sky Mavis.”



“They will be worked on and decided in conjunction with the governing validators,” he explained.



Last week, Ronin’s leaders <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ronin-becoming-ethereum-l2">announced</a> they were planning to rejoin Ethereum, moving away from being a sidechain to turn into a true Ethereum L2.&nbsp;



The change could help speed up transactions and make Ronin more than just a gaming chain.&nbsp;



Where will they land? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.



But it’s probably a sign that sidechains are over. At least, for now.



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Arbitrum Gaming Ventures offers Ronin 750K ARB to become Orbit chain

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



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When one thinks of DeFi’s greatest innovations, automated market makers (AMMs) come to mind.



Popularized by early OG teams like Bancor and Uniswap in 2018, AMMs enabled permissionless liquidity provision without the need for professional market makers to manage an order book.



This permissionless structure has immense benefits for bootstrapping markets around illiquid tokens, but it comes with many well-known tradeoffs.&nbsp;



Since liquidity positions and execution is public, LPs are vulnerable to MEV attacks, manifesting in price impact and slippage problems for the end-user.



Protocol designers have tried to tackle these problems in a variety of ways over the years (e.g. Uniswap v3’s concentrated liquidity or dark pools). Others such as Hyperliquid have simply opted for the reliability of the central limit order book (CLOB) design.



In recent months, a wave of new AMM DEXs on Solana has been charting its own path to address these issues.



These DEXs are popularly referred to as prop (short for proprietary) AMMs, or dark AMMs; they include players like HumidFi, SolFi, Tessera, ZeroFi, GoonFi and Obric.



You’ve probably never heard these names, and that’s by design.



Prop AMMs do not use a frontend. They quote prices privately and rely on vault-based liquidity supplied by one proprietary market maker as opposed to external liquidity pools.&nbsp;



By centralizing liquidity provision in the hands of a few, this design choice enables prop AMMs to protect order flow execution from MEV attacks by high-frequency traders that public AMMs are susceptible to.



How then do prop AMMs find users? They simply plug into a DEX aggregator — such as Jupiter or Titan — on the backend, which allows the aggregator to query across DEXs for the best price quotes.



Almost all of prop AMMs’ volumes are routed from DEX aggregators, as per the below chart.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdfh9PlPhK62j0oabljX3Y9b9CMZJbsgM4elHIz1devfa5yzuDFNshf6XM_Vb-BaDPB-xYWkymlWFIT8Gi5n_FT5FUBhsvKeGq44T_jdKMVJmRKTHBERFQfbbqSCEwyzgEe8ohpIA?key=Htjrz4d2NG5fLa1a3iXfvg" alt=""/></figure>



Chris Chung, CEO and co-founder of Titan told me: “Initially, when prop AMMs first launched, you had to be integrated with all of them to even stand a chance of finding the best route due to their dominance. The first three (SolFi, ZeroFi and Obric) had a stranglehold over the market, but standard onchain AMMs could still compete.



“With the influx of many new prop AMMs, the market share of prop AMMs has continued to keep going up, but each successive one has seen less of an impact on a router&#8217;s success vs. its peers.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Prop AMM dominance</h2>



Since January 2025, prop AMM volumes have consistently made up about 13% to 24% of monthly DEX volumes.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe_FKTLqlXCzEKHrpkK5JJXl6iQj-2mYHUOSVrfhoIr3sjNLA5HRq5waxjI8pXkAAkRz9zGFZTpxEHtaWNUOS-NjtrFGPaXSl1hT7RVY1PVifCVA_TcddlOCYI-G30gbVH-FoMYzg?key=Htjrz4d2NG5fLa1a3iXfvg" alt="" style="width:653px;height:auto"/></figure>



Isolating volumes data down to highly liquid trading pairs, like SOL-stablecoin, brings the growing usage of prop AMMs into clearer view.



For SOL-stablecoin volumes in the last week, prop AMMs are collectively processing ~53% ($7.42 billion) of all DEX volumes, per Blockworks Research data.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc51fptUJGHA9AFk4HqgRhBYrQx6RxDIBcYdBhAMnDxUy531pvhQDQXJc_H7pfMezTL8VZzfDdsVmv6z7Qt7NJ0-JL8RCbKRhODRUx6uIj7Sko6hLPJxu9bgkDNg2kCRMkuuNTb?key=Htjrz4d2NG5fLa1a3iXfvg" alt=""/></figure>



Blockworks Research data shows a similar story emerges on stablecoin pairs — SolFi and Obric together captured ~50% of the $1.1 billion in trading volumes over the last week.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdfrZbR8oFbo0Mu18Bc1mTFK7PIN_jp6z_MPnsq8PWbBzS0Bb6mYdO32qxSdZTigK_kC80wLXvhUg7wbRWYsKYJiG9wmbglmBFcTfqpaPSXmQctk8y-Ok2RV6FeN8MWdK3IGWSb0Q?key=Htjrz4d2NG5fLa1a3iXfvg" alt=""/></figure>



And as expected, illiquid assets like memecoins are still traded on traditional AMMs (there’s a caveat, though: larger memecoins like <a href="https://solscan.io/tx/ai6HWvsU43upmtQ4DUGMmRK83g4P5RX6xz8VkRecZfJPEtiKeSiFLg9FTxdc8XS6PCbWHEwv9Vrs49BrcZ8pUKU?ref=solanatracker.io">POPCAT</a> and <a href="https://solscan.io/tx/5kYPVw38ac5xbiy7sqTZwWD2pn2ESa4RzEfXgW1FeunAX9frxkBF2nhtkhqaZonm7qnkLc9uzjdJHphC8M4jcWeQ?cluster=mainnet">FARTCOIN</a> are showing up on prop AMM routes).



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe043dnm19xm83_03syacFOe769iEubskgCLRUFskPlQn--i84gZoh-9RHHSY4O1sFGDOYuGGCHRfsz6ziNd0jFIlcZUWouUwasIB7JW5ZscQsf2mGo5n6ENKmoA8ovLJvsYr_R?key=Htjrz4d2NG5fLa1a3iXfvg" alt=""/></figure>



Blockworks’ Carlos Gonzalez Campo <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/flashnotes/prop-am-ms-changing-solana-s-market-structure">predicts</a> that tokens will increasingly bifurcate into traditional AMMs vs. prop AMMs based on asset maturity:



“On the one hand, long-tail assets (e.g. new memecoins) will be dominated by traditional AMMs like Raydium and Pump. On the other hand, it appears that prop AMMs like HumidiFi and SolFi will gradually dominate liquid markets (e.g. SOL-USD, stable-to-stable pairs).”



It looks like traditional AMMs will continue to power long-tail speculation and early price discovery as long as there’s demand to gamble on illiquid memecoins.



But for mature assets, liquidity is consolidating around AMMs that deliver tighter spreads and more predictable execution. The dominance of aggregators on Solana is steering its market structure toward a more efficient equilibrium where ideology matters less than fill quality.



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Solana’s proprietary AMMs are reshaping liquid asset markets for users

Marc Arjoon

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Tether was the seventh-largest net buyer of US Treasurys in Q2 2025. With ~$8 billion in incremental purchases, Tether is positioning its reserves as a quasi-sovereign allocator. This aligns with its business model: backing USDT with highly liquid, low-risk assets while capturing yield from elevated short-term rates. The move underscores two dynamics:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Institutionalization of stablecoins: Tether is now functionally a material participant in global USD funding markets, alongside central banks and sovereign wealth funds.</li>



<li>Liquidity concentration risk: Treasury bills are becoming the backbone of USDT collateral. Any regulatory, liquidity or market shock to this exposure could reverberate across crypto markets and short-term dollar funding channels.</li>
</ul>



Tether’s ascent as a top-10 foreign buyer signals a structural shift: Stablecoin issuers are no longer just liquidity users within crypto, but systemically relevant investors in global sovereign debt markets. For Treasurys, this is supportive in the near term, but the reliance on a private, opaque entity adds a new risk layer to the market’s stability profile.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcEgLQZXraQbDhjDN6TxCu-ElgXpdIWQYR8_Kblu4Rw3JpOoPyUnGZNKmlYC7TbJgyEsZ2MH6_y5xm97jsPB3sJdafOQ8yDoX-GULOujStorO3eGr_tSm2qzFBfNHULGHknO1IbxQ?key=y1XQPN8YOtqWP06vY2OM3g" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://x.com/PlasmaFDN/status/1957845665494483451">Plasma</a></figcaption></figure>



Continuing on the tokenized asset front, Figure Technology Solutions (hereafter “Figure”) formally <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/blockchain-lender-figure-technology-reveals-revenue-surge-us-ipo-filing-2025-08-18/">filed</a> for an IPO. It’s aiming for a Nasdaq listing under the ticker FIGR, with Goldman Sachs, Jefferies and BofA Securities serving as lead underwriters.&nbsp;



The company reported a 22% YoY increase in revenue to approximately $190.6 million for the first half of 2025. Even more compelling is Figure’s return to profitability: $29.1 million in net income, reversing a $15.6 million loss in the same period last year. Figure also disclosed that, since inception, it has originated over $16 billion in home equity loans, and counts more than 160 partners — including mortgage originators, banks, servicers and credit unions — utilizing its Provenance blockchain-powered lending platform.&nbsp;



In 2025, public markets have seen a vibrant “crypto IPO summer.” It was marked by standout debuts and filings from major players like Circle, Bullish, Gemini and others, driven by renewed regulatory clarity, investor enthusiasm and institutional backing. Figure Technology distinguishes itself within this wave by anchoring its strategy not around an exchange or stablecoin, but rather around tokenization of real-world, traditionally illiquid assets using public infrastructure (Provenance). With its profitability and healthy growth, Figure showcases a highly touted use case for blockchains in capital markets.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc_HMETD3zYYbeEnLgjiZ2jpq1KggVZE1w04DqfZpQIn6NdyTk7oaXS3IyWxJ6fqruBW_oNDz_r5oEoj_zzO0Z6TRDc3H1gHi-3zxsKEANdSdQKCylTOPuRa-mJ9s1xBLAy7mPunQ?key=y1XQPN8YOtqWP06vY2OM3g" alt="" style="width:668px;height:auto"/></figure>



<a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2064124/000162828025040673/ftintermediateinc-sx1.htm"></a>



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Tether: Quasi-sovereign allocator

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



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Everyone is searching for top signals.



It could be that crypto is destined to forever follow the global money supply. Any sign of the bull market’s end would then be buried in macroeconomic data. Boring!



Empire is all about giving a look behind the curtain of the crypto industry.&nbsp;



So let’s instead draw a more interesting correlation: how many shares crypto’s richest executives are cashing in on the way up.



First, it’s worth making one thing clear: People are allowed to make money. If any of us were in the same position, there’s no doubt that we’d be offloading our equity as markets heat up. That’s what it’s there for. 



And boy, have insiders been putting up numbers.&nbsp;



Since January 1, insiders at just four publicly-traded companies in and around crypto have altogether net-sold almost $1.7 billion in company shares.



More than three-quarters of that sum was sold in the past three months alone — during bitcoin’s push from around $103,000 to over $124,000.



The chart below plots those insider stock sales (the colorful columns) against the price of bitcoin (the purple line).&nbsp;



As you can see, insider sales remained relatively quiet for the first half of the year but ramped up once Circle went public in June.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcb-qLWXKS6SWLprYnRZP-dUnNiGZx48n4zzo2VwgeFqnQUjhIuiR9n1NEW99eBjNN_Q-hzw1PxgdzgomU9AGwERa2WbLJwJM-gZq62AutochOYt5Y2rCRkMCDYL0uejg-JfFDdtg?key=r_WgUn7XBsOqyXnRPtHFIA" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: Openinsider, CoinGecko</figcaption></figure>



Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire alone made $46.4 million by selling nearly 1.6 million shares on Circle’s second day of trade, some flowing through a trust. The stock was sold for $29.30 on average, while CRCL’s share price has since climbed past $135 — a 360% increase.



Still, that technically places Allaire in fifth position by value generated by stock sales for 2025 to date, excluding VC firms General Catalyst Group VI and Chuang Xi Capital, which cashed in $104 million and $68.2 million in shares, respectively, directly following Circle’s IPO.



As for who’s been selling the most stock in crypto, at least out of company executives, it’s Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, hands down.



Armstrong has sold $485.8 million in COIN shares so far this year through a trust, per OpenInsider data, which collates SEC filings.&nbsp;



That’s nearly $85 million more than former Robinhood CEO Bhatt Baiju’s $399.7 million worth of shares, and almost $300 million more than current CEO Vlad Tenev’s $207.1 million.



Not all insiders have been strictly dumping, however. Nine execs from Strategy have actually been buying shares over the past five months or so, led by Peter L. Briger, a recently-appointed company director and former co-CEO at Fortress Investment Group.&nbsp;



Briger <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1050446/000095017025099806/xslF345X03/ownership.xml">participated</a> in the STRC preferred stock offering in July to the tune of $19.8 million through an LLC.&nbsp;



What does any of this tell us about where we’re at in the cycle? It’s obviously been hot enough for insiders to start itching for a big payday, it seems.&nbsp;



Are they savvy enough to have sold the top?&nbsp;



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.</li>



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: Apps, games, memes and more.</li>



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Crypto insiders ramp up stock sales, nearing $1.7B in 2025

This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read more editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/brand/the-breakdown">subscribe</a>



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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“We are what we repeatedly do.”



— Aristotle
</blockquote>



Central banks are buying gold in the 21st century for the same reason Romans bought it in the first: It has value because people perceive it to have value.&nbsp;



That circular logic has proved so durable that the purchasing power of gold is <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w18706/w18706.pdf">virtually unchanged</a> since antiquity.



In that sense, central banks are buying gold now because Romans were buying it then.



Perception has become reality through repetition.



The bet with crypto is that it can pull off the same trick, but faster — compressing millennia of belief into a few short decades.&nbsp;



Lately, it’s started to look like it might.



Recent <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5029660">research</a> offers empirical evidence that people are using crypto to protect against the risk of government default: “A 10% increase in sovereign CDS spreads is associated with a 2.9-4% increase in crypto app downloads.”



10%!!! 



It doesn’t take much to move a credit default swap 10%, so that correlation suggests people are quick to turn to crypto at any sign of a debt crisis.



Importantly, the correlation tests positive for causality: “Crypto adoption jumps in the months following news related to sovereign risk.”



The researchers established cause and effect by studying credit-risk events like inflation shocks in Argentina, Turkey and Venezuela and sovereign debt crises in Sri Lanka, Greece and Ecuador.



Advocates have been telling these stories for years as proof of crypto’s utility, but with limited effect likely because the evidence was only anecdotal.



But the data now supports the narrative.



In short, the study confirms that when bank depositors are reduced to <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/15/what-is-behind-lebanons-bank-robberies-explainer?utm_source=chatgpt.com">stealing their own money</a>, people really do turn to crypto.



Other studies also suggest that crypto’s narratives often line up with reality.



Bitcoin, for example, has long been framed as an escape hatch from irresponsible economic policymaking by corrupt governments — and that is, in fact, how people use it.



“We document a flight-to-bitcoin (FTB) phenomenon,” one <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3278469">study</a> concludes, “whereby local demand for bitcoin increases with local economic policy uncertainties.”&nbsp;



“FTB is driven by investors’ lack of confidence in government as FTB is stronger in countries where the confidence in government is low and corruption incidents surge,” the authors explain.&nbsp;



It gets even better for the broader crypto narrative: “Bitcoin ownership shifts from centralized exchanges to decentralized wallets amid such turbulence.”



What could be more crypto-narrative-confirming than that?&nbsp;



Another <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612325013984">study</a> even cites crypto as a reason for corrupt governments to change their ways, concluding that “the control of corruption appears to discourage cryptocurrency adoption.”



Crypto advocates sometimes celebrate government dysfunction as another confirmation of their narrative (and who doesn’t love having their narrative confirmed?). But if crypto could frighten governments into good-governance reforms, that would be an even better story, I think.



The same study finds that “higher emigrant ratios in…lower-income countries are associated with increased cryptocurrency usage” — with the implication that people find crypto useful for remittances.&nbsp;



Remittances is one of crypto&#8217;s original use cases, but it’s always been surprisingly hard to quantify.&nbsp;



Western Union still hasn’t been fully undermined by crypto, but seeing the empirical evidence makes the remittances narrative more substantial.



Finally, another <a href="https://www.emerald.com/jfrc/article-abstract/33/3/406/1274488/Sanctions-and-cryptocurrency-a-catalyst-for?redirectedFrom=PDF">study</a> backs one of crypto’s grandest storylines — that it puts money and finance beyond the reach of government control. 



Studying the relationship between international sanctions and crypto usage, the authors conclude that “sanctions can act as a significant motivator for countries to adopt cryptocurrencies.”



Satoshi set out to create non-sovereign money, and sanctions evasion is proof that it works as such.



If these academic studies feel, well, academic to you, you’re probably reading from a developed economy: All of the studies found their results primarily in emerging markets.



In the US, by contrast, bitcoin’s “digital gold” narrative took a hit in 2023 when it failed to hedge against 9% inflation.



But the study on sovereign default risk showed that people mostly use bitcoin to hedge inflation risks resulting from a sovereign debt crisis, and not, say, supply shocks.



Even with CPI at 9%, no one doubted the US’s ability to service its debts, so people didn’t feel compelled to swap their dollars for bitcoin.



But there are signs that crypto’s value proposition is starting to be recognized in developed countries, too.



“In just the last year,” the lead author of the paper on sovereign debt <a href="https://youtu.be/YEXsFk4XKX0?si=kXyB3ybbVzjp-MGA&amp;t=2827">observed</a>, “we’ve seen [the crypto] narrative migrate from being just an emerging markets’ story to one that folks in advanced economies are contemplating, too.”



The signs are mostly anecdotal so far, but also impossible to miss: Larry Fink referring to bitcoin as a “flight to safety” asset class; Jim Cramer recommending both bitcoin and ethereum as a hedge against deficit spending; even the US government itself starting a strategic bitcoin reserve to hedge against its own irresponsibility.



The risk of US default remains small — but not so small that Wall Street, CNBC and the US Treasury can resist hedging it with bitcoin.



The more that behavior is repeated, the more the perception of crypto will become its reality.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/the-breakdown">The Breakdown</a>: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha in your inbox. Think like an analyst. </li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forward-guidance">Forward Guidance</a>: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: Apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: All things Solana.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supply-shock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
</ul>

Are crypto narratives becoming reality?

Skeptics of Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap have speculated that layer-2 networks might eventually peel away from the ecosystem. The concern was that rollup teams would grow tired of paying Ethereum’s data availability fees and break off into sovereign layer-1 chains with their own validators.



But so far, that hasn’t happened. Instead, the gravitational pull has flowed the other way: independent layer-1s are re-architecting themselves as <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a> L2s.



Celo and Lisk are two prominent examples. Celo launched in 2020 aiming to build a mobile-first, payments-centric L1 with its own stablecoins and identity layer. Lisk’s origins go back even further to 2016, when it launched with a focus on onboarding JavaScript developers through a custom SDK and sidechains.



But by the 2022–2023 bear market, both faced a common challenge seen across many mid-tier L1s: limited liquidity, fragmented developer ecosystems, and difficulty attracting and retaining users beyond niche use cases.



Rather than double down on independence, both chains opted to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/celo-migration-to-ethereum">plug into Ethereum</a>. Celo completed its migration in March 2025, relaunching as an <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/optimism">OP Stack</a> rollup using <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/eigencloud-launch-a16z-eigenlayer">EigenDA</a> for <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-roadmap-data-availability-da">data availability</a>.



“It was the right time to return home to Ethereum,” Rene Reinsberg, Celo co-founder, told Blockworks, citing new infrastructure like rollup-in-a-box stacks. “This allowed Celo to maintain its unique technical advantages like 1-block finality, sub-cent gas fees, and ERC-20 tokens as gas currencies… while gaining Ethereum’s security, community, and network effects.”



Celo says its community overwhelmingly supported the shift, with unanimous votes through onchain governance and proposals reviewed in public calls and open forums.&nbsp;



“Building in the open was, and remains, a core priority,” Reinsberg said.



The results are <a href="https://blockworks.co/analytics/celo">showing in the metrics</a>. According to Celo, daily active users now top 600,000, and stablecoin transfers have reached over 123 million across more than 1.1 million wallets. The chain also reports over $1 billion in monthly stablecoin volume and a 365% increase in protocol revenue since the migration. Celo’s onchain FX platform, Mento, recently processed over $200 million in a single day.



Much of the usage has been driven by real-world applications like MiniPay, a mobile wallet integrated with Opera’s browser.&nbsp;



“MiniPay’s built for everyday users,” the team said, noting that it recently surpassed 8 million activated wallets. Meanwhile, DeFi integrations have accelerated, with <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/aave">Aave</a> V3 hitting its initial supply caps, prompting governance to raise limits for USDT, ETH, and CELO.



Lisk’s path followed a similar arc. In May 2024, it migrated its <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/lsk">LSK</a> token to Ethereum and relaunched as an OP Stack rollup using Ethereum’s blobspace for DA. Its “DAO Season 1” campaign reportedly attracted over 277,000 new accounts and 48 million transactions. Lisk is now betting on distribution and Ethereum-native interoperability to power its next growth phase.



“The so‑called ‘crisis’ in Ethereum was never truly real, because Ethereum has never been just another ecosystem,” Dominic Schwenter, COO of Lisk, told Blockworks.



“Projects are joining the Ethereum ecosystem to interoperate, not compete…It has set the highest standard for what it means to scale technology at the most decentralized level possible,” he said.



The contrast with the feared L2-to-L1 narrative is stark, with virtually no examples of successful pivots. DYdX <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-solana-cosmos-convergence-blockchain-founders">left StarkEx</a> for a Cosmos appchain in 2023. Starknet continues to post data to Ethereum, and every major rollup launched since 2021 — <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/arbitrum">Arbitrum</a>, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/base">Base</a>, OP Mainnet, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/zksync">zkSync</a>, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/unichain-mainnet-is-live">Unichain</a>, Linea — remains anchored to Ethereum.



“The Ethereum community has the strongest network effects,” Reinsberg said. “This fact has helped guide the migration.” And rather than see it as a step down in sovereignty, Celo sees its L2 status as a way to scale Ethereum into emerging markets where mobile-first financial access is critical.



The upshot is, Ethereum’s center of gravity is growing stronger. Despite the persistent “L1 premium” reflected in certain token prices, no L2 has broken away to become a sovereign L1 in the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/rollups">rollup</a> era, while several L1s have chosen to become L2s.&nbsp;



For users, that means cheaper fees, more stablecoin liquidity, and a better onchain UX. For Ethereum, it signals a future where more of the network forms around a shared security and settlement core.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forward-guidance">Forward Guidance</a>: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: Apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: All things Solana.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supply-shock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
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Rollup reality check: It’s the L1s that are defecting

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



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More crypto IPO filings from Gemini and Figure affirm investors will soon have a more complex investment universe to navigate.&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-shares-nyse-day-one">Circle’s IPO turned heads</a> in June. Bullish followed suit with its own <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bullish-stock-surges-ipo-110">NYSE listing</a> two months later. It’s safe to say we’re just getting started.&nbsp;



I’m a journalist, so I won’t tell you which stocks to pick. I also don’t know; that would depend on the specific exposure you’re looking for. You must know by now that crypto companies are not a monolith. You have your miners, your exchanges, your stablecoin issuers, etc. Coinbase was one of the only renowned crypto stocks in town for a while after its 2021 direct listing.&nbsp;



More recent <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/genius-act-passes-house">regulatory</a> <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/us-house-passes-clarity-act">tailwinds</a>, crypto price surges and TradFi’s embrace of the space spurred demand for more pure-play exposure to crypto sectors with big growth potential (i.e. stablecoins and tokenization), Bitwise research head Ryan Rasmussen noted.&nbsp;



You therefore saw what he called the “massively oversubscribed” IPOs for Circle and Bullish. And he argued that investors haven’t fully gotten their fill.



“We expect investors to remain excited about crypto IPOs through the year end and beyond,” he told me. “Despite a handful of recent and successful crypto IPOs, there remains a massive shortage of publicly traded crypto companies.”



Gemini submitted an <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2055592/000110465925079323/tm255912-12_drsa.htm">S-1</a> with the SEC on Friday, marking its latest step toward an IPO. Blockchain-based lender Figure followed <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2064124/000162828025040673/ftintermediateinc-sx1.htm">suit</a> Monday, applying to list its Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Market.



Asset manager <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/grayscale-exposure-signals-etfs">Grayscale</a> and crypto custodian BitGo are among those also waiting their turn.



I asked Dan Weiskopf, co-PM of the Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK), about how to evaluate this growing set of public companies. His fund was essentially the first to focus on blockchain/crypto equities when it launched in 2018.&nbsp;



The space, of course, was a lot smaller seven years ago. The category’s universe has expanded by 25-35% over the past six months alone, Weiskopf told me.&nbsp;



BLOK’s process begins by evaluating the management’s experience in and commitment to the space. It tries to omit positions in firms “just trying to chase the fast buck,” Weiskopf noted.&nbsp;



“We are focused on operators who are trying to solve the necessary infrastructure problem beyond just facilitating transactions,” the BLOK PM added.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Also, valuations matter. Overpaying will obviously hurt returns.&nbsp;



“We have learned from past cycles that patience can be rewarded,” Weiskopf said. “We nibbled on CRCL when it first came out, but the run-up was too fast. We will be watching for the moat to be built on partnerships and distribution.”



A reminder: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-shares-nyse-day-one">CRCL shares opened</a> at $69 (up from the IPO price of $31). Circle stock peaked near $300 later that month but was trading around $134 as of this afternoon.



When the bench of public crypto firms is deep enough, retail and institutional investors will want exposure via index funds, Rasmussen explained — like they do across other markets, from energy to biotech.&nbsp;



“Most investors don’t want to spend time attempting to pick winners and losers,” Rasmussen said. “They just want to own the market.” (I’ve heard that sentiment on <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hashdex-crypto-etfs-index-sec-interview">the tokens front</a>, too).&nbsp;



And there will, indeed, be winners and losers.



Gemini, in its S-1, noted the “highly competitive industry” in which it operates — adding that DEXs and DAOs “may be able to innovate faster and offer products and services that we do not offer.”&nbsp;



The crypto platform, which lost $282 million in the first half of 2025, looks to diversify its revenue streams beyond mainly transactions.



Figure summarizes its mission as “building the future of capital markets using blockchain-based technology.” Its success will depend in part on the continued demand for home equity lines of credit, which Figure notes comprised over 99% of its total loan originations in 2025’s first half.



So as the crypto stock universe expands, take note of the nuances. Or, I guess, just buy the index.



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<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/the-breakdown">The Breakdown</a>: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha in your inbox. Think like an analyst. </li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forward-guidance">Forward Guidance</a>: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: Apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: All things Solana.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supply-shock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
</ul>