Headline News: Winter Soldiers PTSD
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Ethereum surged by 6.77% last week, setting a new all-time high of $4,950. The rally was primarily propelled by a dovish tone from the Fed Chair Powell at the Jackson Hole symposium, which lifted broader risk assets. On-chain data indicates a trend of some Bitcoin whales rotating their holdings into ETH. Despite this bullish momentum, Ethereum faces significant headwinds from staker profit-taking, with the withdrawal queue reaching approximately 847,000 ETH, and the slow down of DATs acquisition due to low mNAV.
Macro-Outlook: “A Changing Situation”
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The US July FOMC minutes showed the majority of the participants raised concern about short-term persistent inflation and slow pass-through of input cost to consumers. Participants noted stable unemployment rate reflected a combination of low hiring and layoffs. They also commented on stablecoin and its implications for banking and financial systems, warranted close attention.
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Fed Chair Powell suggested due to the increasing risks to employment to the downside as “a changing situation” to monetary policy in Jackson Hole. Besides, Powell also announced some changes to the five-year review policy framework, including abandoning the “Makeup” Strategy, removing “shortfalls” view of employment, and de-emphasising the Zero Lower Bound (ELB). These aim to position the monetary framework to be forward-looking in the new higher interest rate environment.
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After the speech, the market increased slightly the probability of rate-cut in September from 85% to 89%, while a 75bps cut by the end of 2025 remained at 35%.
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The Commerce Department announced a new 50% tariff on more than 400 steel and aluminum derivative products. On the other hand, Canada announced removing most of the retaliatory tariffs on US goods.
Upcoming Economic Calendar including,
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Tuesday, August 26, 8:30pm: US Durable Goods Orders in July
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Thursday, August 28, 8:30pm: US Q2 GDP Second Estimation
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Friday, August 31, 8:30pm: US PCE Price Index, Personal Income and Personal Spending in July
Weekly-Cryptos-Overview: Memes Never Died, Tokenisation Never Stopped
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Startale Group partnered with SBI Holding, a financial institution with 11 trillion JPY in AUM, launching an onchain trading platform for tokenised stocks and other RWAs.
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EU officials are reportedly working to ditch CBDC and reworking plans for retail stablecoin.
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TRM Labs partnered with major exchanges such as Coinbase and Binance launching Beacon Network, a real-time response network to flag out criminal transactions on-chain.
Layer 1 and Layer 2s
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The first Wyoming state-issued stablecoin, FRNT, launched on Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana and 4 other blockchains. The stablecoin partnered with LayerZero for cross-chain token transfers.
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DBS Bank announced tokenising structure notes on Ethereum.
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SkyBridge plans to tokenise $300 million worth of funds on Avalanche, including one with a basket of cryptocurrencies and one with both venture and crypto. Avalanche C-Chain throughput has improved by 30% after validators raised gas targets.
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Alpen Labs revealed Glock, a new protocol, similar to BitVM, for optimistic verification of computation on Bitcoin. It utilises Garbler Circuit to cryptographically reveal fraud proofs and SNARK verification to minimise cost.
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Kraken and Backed Finance announced expanding xStocks’ tokenised stocks to Tron Network.
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Core DAO partnered with Hex Trust to offer institutional non-custodial Bitcoin staking for CORE reward.
Dapps
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Metamask officially introduced MetaMask USD, mUSD, partnering with Bridge and M0. The stablecoin will be launched on Linea Network and be spendable with MetaMask Card.
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LFG launched a new token launchpad, Token Mill, on Solana. Creators can opt in to a new feature, King of the Mill (KOTM), to compete for trading volume every 30 minutes. The top 10 tokens will gain all the fees generated within each round and are used to buying and burning their tokens via TWAP.
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Another token launchpad, Heaven, has also launched, featuring permissioned fee structure and Flywheel address that automatically buyback and burn tokens to encourage actual builders behind the tokens.
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USD.ai launched USDAI public deposit on Arbitrum, enabling users to mint USDAI that is backed by GPU clusters and receiving yield from real-world borrowers.
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1inch Network integrated Solana into 1inch Fusion, enabling swap of Solana assets across multiple blockchains via intent-based resolvers network.
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INFINIT V2 launched the public beta, allowing users to run multi-step DeFi strategies via AI agent coordination. The team plans to open up for builders and experts to create their own no-code DeFi strategies in the next step.
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Particle Network integrated xStocks, allowing users to trade tokenised stocks from any chain.
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Ether.fi launched its physical cards for crypto-to-cash payment.
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Injective introduced Nvidia GPU Derivative Market, a tokenised Nvidia H100 hourly rental cost with up to 5x leverage.
Upcoming Alpha and Governance
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China’s State Council reportedly plans to approve the new CNY-stablecoin in Hong Kong and Shanghai, with more detail expected in Tianjin SCO Summit from August 31 to September 1.
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Sonic proposed minting approximately 600 million S or additional 18% token supply to fund US expansion initiatives such as ETF enablement, bootstraping a Nasdaq-listed DAT company, and funding Sonic USA LLC to drive growth in the US. The proposal also includes a 5% gas burn from FeeM transactions, at the expense of validators. The voting is expected to end on August 31.
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World Liberty Finance announced WFLI will be tradable on Ethereum on September 1.
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Plasma partnered with Fluid to become the preferred DEX after Plasma mainnet launch. Fluid proposed 3 dynamic token buyback models based on FLUID token performance. The buyback is expected to be implemented on October 1, after the community aligns a buyback model.
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Curve Finance founder proposed pre-mint 60 million crvUSD to booststrap Yield Basis BTC pools. In exchange, Curve will get 20% of YB emission, while benefiting from the supply sinks for crvUSD and potential increase demand for crvUSD stableswap.
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Starknet passed SNIP-30, laying the framework for decentralised sequencer in the future, sub-second pre-confirmation, and implementing EIP-1559 fee market. The upgrade is expected on September 1. The team is also discussing implementing Bitcoin staking on Starknet in SNIP-31, targeting release in Q3.
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After LayerZero offered a $110 million worth of ZRO conversion buyout over Stargate and passed, Wormhole made a counter offer of at least $120 million USDC for Stargate and requested to hold the deal with LayerZero.
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Silo Finance passed the proposal to activate buyback USDC or ETH and distribute them to xSILO stakers.
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Ethena approved BNB as the new eligible asset backing USDe and indicated XRP and HYPE as next candidates soon, potentially improving the USDe APY.
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Napier Finance introduced Napier AMM, a yield curve built on top of Uniswap v4, featuring concentrated liquidity, JIT liquidity, rehypothecation, and time-adaptive curves. The new upgrade is expected in October 2025.
Token Unlock
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ALT token unlocked on August 26, amount representing 6.03% of the token supply.
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HUMA token unlocked on August 27, amount representing 7.28% of the token supply.
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RESOLV token unlocked on August 28, amount representing 9.14% of the token supply.
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OP token unlocked on September 1, amount representing 1.84% of the token supply.
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REZ token unlocked on September 1, amount representing 12% of the token supply.
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IO token unlocked on September 1, amount representing 6.09% of the token supply.
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KMNO token unlocked on September 1, amount representing 22% of the token supply.
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SUI token unlocked on September 1, amount representing 1.62% of the token supply.
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ENA token unlocked on September 1, amount representing 1.42% of the token supply.
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JTO token unlocked on September 7, amount representing 3.07% of the token supply.
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