(42/52) Weekly Market Insight | October Week 5 | All-Eyes on Fed

Headline News: All-Eyes on Fed

• Market sentiment shifted towards risk-on last week, overlooking concerns about banks’ private credit exposure as optimism grew for a likely US-China trade deal. Cooler-than-expected inflation data provided a further boost to risk assets. Bitcoin surged 5.35%, fueled by investor expectations of an upcoming FOMC rate cut and potentially slower or ending quantitative tightening.

Macro-Outlook: Flying Blind

• President Trump raised additional 10% tariffs on Canada due to “fraudulent” advertising of former President Ronald Reagan.
• The “rare exception” CPI release showed September core CPI fell to 3.0%, below expectations of 3.1%. The market is expecting a near 100% probability of 25bps rate cuts in both October and December FOMC meetings. October jobs and inflation data will likely be absent next month due to government shutdown.
• The Kalshi market is predicting a record shutdown of over 45 days by the US government.

Upcoming Economic Calendar

• Thursday, October 30, 2:00am: FOMC Meeting
• Thursday, October 30: President Trump meets with President Xi
• Earnings reports released by major tech companies.

Weekly-Cryptos-Overview: Pardoning + Privacy + x402 + ICO

• The Hong Kong SFC approved the first spot Solana ETF in Asia, trading on OSL Exchange.
• Japanese fintech JPYC launched its yen-stablecoin, JPYC, which is fully backed by bank deposit and government bonds.
• JPMorgan Chase plans to allow institutional clients to use Bitcoin and Ethereum as collateral for loans by the end of 2025.
• President Trump pardoned Binance’s founder CZ. The pardon may pave the way for merging Binance.com with Binance US and entering the US market directly. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has a 15% chance of being pardoned by President Trump on Kalshi.
• Coinbase announced Payment MCP, enabling LLMs to easily gain access to blockchain via x402 protocol. Coinbase also acquired ICO platform, Echo, for $375 million.
• DraftKings picked Polymarket as the designated clearinghouse for its upcoming prediction market after acquiring CFTC-regulated prediction market Railbird.

Layer 1 and Layer 2s

• Ethereum will include EIP-7825 in the upcoming Fusaka upgrade, introducing a per-transaction gas limit, which improves block efficiency and paves the foundation for future parallel execution.

• Ripple introduced Ripple Prime, providing clearing, prime brokerage and financing services to institutions across foreign exchange, digital assets, derivatives, swap and fixed income through the acquisition of HiddenRoad.
• Polkadot launched Elastic Scaling, the final piece of Polkadot 2.0, increasing performance of Polkadot Rollups by 3x by scaling vertically.
• EigenLayer announced EIGEN token is now live on Google Cloud‘s Web3 Faucet on Ethereum Testnet.
• SSV Network introduced Compose, a rollup agnostic layer where transactions between rollups can be executed together atomically.
• Linea partnered with Lido and Chainlink, offering direct staking yield on ETH on Linea Network via Lido v3 stVault in a single transaction.
• Plasma acquired a VASP-licensed entity in Italy, aiming to facilitate compliant digital asset services with AML and CFT regulations. The team aims to apply for CASP authorization under MiCA to operate custody and exchange assets for users and prepare for an EMI for on/off-ramps services.
• Stable, the Tether-backed USDT blockchain, launched its pre-deposit campaign. The pre-deposit cap of $825 million hit within 20 minutes and allegedly filled by insiders.
• The RWA-focused Layer-1, Pharos Network, launched its AtlanticOcean Testnet.
• Kadena announced it is ceasing all operations and active maintenance because of unfavorable market conditions.
• ORE, the innovative proof-of-work protocol, introduced new mining mechanisms where miners can “wager” SOL on any of 25 blocks and every minute the winning block will receive all the SOL wagers and 1 ORE, and 10% of the SOL wagers will be used to buyback and burn ORE tokens.

Dapps

• Aave listed syrupUSDT on its Plasma V3 market, the first Maple Finance asset on its platform. SyrupUSDT supply surged past $1 billion.
• Aave also acquired Stable, a crypto-saving app, bringing the Stable team to Aave Labs to build consumer-focused products.
• Hyperliquid HIP-3 markets are now available on the platform front-end.

• Pear Protocol released HL Engine v2 Beta, introducing advanced trading tools such as basket trading, conditional orders based on market metrics and more.
• Aster introduced Rocket Launch, aiming to boost liquidity of early-stage protocols by incentivising traders with ASTER and the participating project’s tokens. Traders need to hold a certain amount of ASTER to be eligible for incentives. Aster also announced using it will use 70% to 80% of its Season 3 revenue to buyback ASTER tokens.
• Jupiter launched Net Worth History, enabling users to track their on-chain performance across time. Jupiter also integrated Kalshi prediction markets on its platform.

• Pump.fun acquired Padre, an advanced trading terminal for memecoin across multiple blockchains, and making PADRE token worthless.
• DYDX launched a prediction market on “Will the LA Dodgers win or lose the 2025 World Series?”, reintroducing the first prediction market since October 2024, when the platform launched the TRUMPWIN market.
• Opinion, a prediction market backed by Yzi Labs, is now live (invitation-only) on BNB Chain. The platform has generated about $150 million in volume in just a couple of days.
• Red Stone announced launching oracle services for prediction markets on BNB Chain, including push, pull and custom bespoke oracle solutions.
• Azuro, a prediction market infrastructure protocol, launched Azuro Launch, enabling AZUR token holders early access to new applications launching on top of Azuro.
• VII Finance is live on Unichain, enabling LP holders to earn from lending interest via Euler V2 and swap fees on Uniswap V4.
• Lagrange partnered with Talus Labs to integrate verifiable AI decisions, improved correctness and more.
• Brevis received a grant of up to $9 million from Uniswap Foundation to develop and manage a Router Rebate program using ZK-proofs. Brevis also partnered with KITE AI to provide verifiable AI outputs.
• MetaDAO, a launchpad that embedded futarchy governance, raised near $10 million from Paradigm, 6MV and Variant Fund via OTC proposal allocation.
• XStock integrated Chainlink CCIP and Proof of Reserve for greater interoperability and transparency.
• Ethereal, a USDe-based perpetual exchange, is now phase 1 live as an L3 on Arbitrum One.
• Ethena partnered with the Caldera to integrate stablecoin-as-a-service into Caldera ecosystem stack.
• Almanak announced a tokenomics update, enabling stakers to direct emissions, launch vaults and get discounts on computing power.
• Ping.observer launched PING as a memecoin using the Coinbase x402 protocol.
• INFINIT integrated with Google’s Agent2Agent (A2A) standard for AI agent interoperability, positioning INFINIT as the key channel for agents in Google Cloud to access DeFi.
• Virtuals Protocol announced Virtuals Robotics, creating a data platform where AI can learn about spatial actions in the real world and integration project launch with Unicorn.
• Farcaster announced Clanker, the leading launchpad on Base, is joining the Farcaster ecosystem. 66% of Clanker protocol fees will be used to buyback CLANKER tokens, and 7% of supply will be permanently locked for liquidity.
• Aerodrome introduced Aero Ignition, a token launch platform where stakers can direct emissions to the pool and collect rewards, enabling deep liquidity at the early stage and a clean path to be eligible on Coinbase.
• Bunni Protocol, an AMM liquidity management protocol, announced its shutdown after a $8.4 million exploit.
• Meteora launched MET token with approximately $550 million FDV. The founder is being sued in a class-action lawsuit accusing him of leading the “MELANIA” and “LIBRA” memecoin scams.
• Limitless launched its LMTS token and the price dropped by 63% shortly after the launch. The team liquidity wallet was observed consistently selling on DEX, but the team clarified this was part of the “MM strategy.”

Governance and Upcoming Alpha

• Kaito announced zkPass, a zkTLS-based oracle, to be listed on Capital Launchpad on October 27.
• Blackrock’s spot ETH staking ETF application deadline is on October 30. The SEC’s response is likely to be halted similar to Solana ETFs due to the US government shutdown.
• Beamable Network, a DePIN layer for web3 games, plans to launch BMB genesis token presale on November 6.
• Kinetiq introduced its governance token, KNTQ, with a 25% supply airdropped to Hypurr and kPoints holders. Users must accept the terms of use by November 21 to participate in the TGE.
• Rumble, a streaming platform backed by Tether, is launching Bitcoin tipping for creators in December.
• Mantra Chain proposed a rebranding of the OM token to MANTRA with a 1:4 ratio token split and a deadline of migration by January 15, 2026.
• Akash announced confidential computing that enables application contents to remain private. The new feature is expected to be launched in Q1 2026. Akash passed the Mainnet 14 proposal, enabling faster queries and execution, lease termination reasons and more.
• OpenServ announced an updated roadmap, planning to launch Multichain Launchpad in November, ERC-8004 and x402 integration in January 2026, futarchy grants in Q1 to Q2 2026, OpenServ L3 in the second half of 2026 and more.
• JPMorgan estimated Coinbase’s BASE token market cap to be between $12 billion to $34 billion.
• Polymarket confirmed a POLY token launch in the future and token airdrop.
• Aave proposed a $50 million annual buyback program funded by protocol revenue.
• Yield Basis announced an updated roadmap, including expanding the crvUSD credit line to $1 billion and fee switch after achieving $500 million TVL milestone.
• Berachain proposed a preconfirmation upgrade, improving the transaction inclusion from 2 seconds to 200ms.
• Helium announced the burning of HNT token will soon switch from using tokens in the team treasury to buyback from the market. The team is also exploring its DAT business.
• Spot ZCash is expected to be listed on Hyperliquid soon.
• Immunefi, a web3 security firm, announced it will launch IMU token soon, and introduced Immunefi Firewall that blocks exploits in real time and code review agents that check all pull requests on Github.
• Coinbase plans to release private stablecoin transactions using ZK-proofs to mask amounts and addresses where the holders of a viewing key can read the details.
• Bitcoin developers proposed limiting the size of arbitrary data posts using OP-RETURN and conducting a soft fork that lasts for a year to evaluate the implementation.
• Nillion introduced Nillion 2.0 tokenomics upgrade, redirecting NIL emission from professional validators to community nodes, improving the inclusion of the community in protocol growth.
• ZKsync proposed to activate a capped minter with 37.5 million ZK to trial ZK staking rewards over 6 months at 10% APY.
• Arbitrum proposed the DAO incentive Program (DIP 2.0), rewarding active delegates with public rationales and standout contributions with 7 million ARB left in the old DIP multisig.

Token Unlock

• GRASS token unlocks on October 28, amount representing 58.60% of the token supply.
• ZORA token unlocks on October 30, amount representing 3.73% of the token supply.
• REZ token unlocks on October 31, amount representing 12.00% of the token supply.
• IO token unlocks on October 31, amount representing 6.09% of the token supply.
• KMNO token unlocks on October 31, amount representing 22.00% of the token supply.
• EIGEN token unlocks on November 1, amount representing 8.70% of the token supply.
• OMNI token unlocks on November 1, amount representing 20.2% of the token supply.
• AVNT token unlocks on November 9, amount representing 4.64% of the token supply.
• LINEA token unlocks on November 10, amount representing 6.59% of the token supply.
• HOME token unlocks on November 10, amount representing 4.06% of the token supply.
• LAYER token unlocks on November 11, amount representing 12.00% of the token supply.