(15/52) Weekly Market Insight | April Week 4 | Deal or No-Deal

Headline News: Deal or No-Deal

• Bitcoin surged 4.35% last week, buoyed by market optimism surrounding US-Iran negotiations, while the S&P 500 climbed 4.54% to hit a new record high. This broad-market rally was largely driven by short covering on positions established during the initial conflict, compounded by stronger-than-expected Q1 bank earnings. Despite this bullish momentum, shifting developments over the weekend regarding the US-Iran talks could temporarily cool the market. Looking ahead, expect continued headline-driven volatility as traders price in the likelihood of a peace agreement ahead of Wednesday’s ceasefire deadline.

Macro-Outlook: Backed to All-Time-High

• Despite the failed first round of negotiation, markets were optimistic that the negotiation was heading in the correct direction. President Trump extended ceasefire, and announced the Israel-Lebanon truce and substantial progress in the negotiation, including uranium enrichment terms and reopening of Strait of Hormuz. However, IRGC announced the US’s blockade in the Strait is “breaches of trust” and reclosing the Strait themselves, further claiming Iran had not accepted US-proposed nuclear terms. Iran reportedly attacked US military ships with drones in retaliation for the US striking and seizing an Iranian cargo vessel in the Strait.
• Senate Banking Committee confirmation hearing for Kevin Warsh as the next Fed Chair is scheduled on April 21. Several key lawmakers had publicly refused to advance the nomination until these legal pressures over Chair Powell and Cooks were dropped.
• The US PPI increased by 4% in March, the highest since February 2023, but significantly below the market expectation of 4.6%.

The Upcoming Economic Calendar includes,

• Tuesday, April 21, 8:30pm: US Retail Sales in March

Weekly-Cryptos-Overview: Second 9-Digit Hack in April

• SEC announced crypto trading interfaces, including DeFi front-ends, wallet extensions, and mobile apps, may operate without broker-dealer registration if there’s no order routing, no investment advice, no custody of user assets, and only fixed, neutral fee structures.
• Kraken received a $200 million strategic investment from Deutsche Börse, valuing the exchange at approximately $13.3 billion.
• Goldman Sachs filed for Bitcoin Premium Income ETF, offering a covered-call strategy that provides income and reduced volatility for investors seeking Bitcoin exposure.

Layer 1 and Layer 2s

• Solana partnered with Triton One to rebuild its read layer from the ground up into two modular engines, accounts indexing and columnar ledger managed by the Solana Foundation, addressing latency and cost issues in data access.
• DoubleZero launched Edge beta, delivering Solana shreds up to 28ms faster via a dedicated high-performance multicast fiber network across over 30 metros which are already backed by 45% of Solana stake from validators and 50 subscribers at launch.
• Ripple announced its partnership with Kyobo Life Insurance to explore on-chain financial infrastructure using Ripple Custody, marking Korea’s first tokenized government bond settlement on blockchain and bringing institutional digital asset adoption to Tier-1 Korean insurers.
• XRP Ledger partnered with Boundless, offering native ZK verifier on its public blockchain with programmable privacy for confidential and compliant finance.
• Avalanche powered NHN KCP, South Korea’s leading payment processor, to launch a dedicated Layer-1 via AvaCloud, modernizing national payment infrastructure with ultra-fast authorization, on-chain encryption for privacy, and customizable merchant digital wallets.
• Unichain activated ERC-7715 support, enabling agents and apps to request scoped, time-bound wallet permissions to execute transactions on users’ behalf via MetaMask Advanced Permissions.

Dapps

• KelpDAO suffered a $292 million exploit across the mainnet and several L2s. Initial investigation revealed the 1-of-1 LayerZero’s DVN may have compromised and caused the incident. Post memorandum from officials has yet to be released. Aave protocol suffered a potential ~$230-$262 million bad debt as rsETH collateral no longer fully-backed.
• Drift Protocol announced a collaboration with Tether and secured $150 million to fund a dedicated user recovery pool and support relaunch with USDT settlement on its perpetual platform.
• Tether Wallet officially launched as its fully self-custodial mobile app supporting USDT, USAT, XAUT, and Bitcoin (on-chain + Lightning), with simple username-based sends (@tether.me) via a single QR code across networks and cloud-backed key recovery.
• Circle launched the USDC Bridge, a direct native burn-and-mint cross-chain transfer solution with upfront clear fees, live status tracking, and automatic destination gas handling, no route selection or complexity required.
• Morpho launched its fixed-rate vaults named Morpho Midnight, a completely new intent-based paradigm for fixed-term, fixed-rate onchain lending with externalized risk and rate management.
• Virtuals Protocol introduced Eastworlds, a new initiative designed to accelerate humanoid robots out of labs into real jobs via a prototyping accelerator, robot-as-a-service deployments, and real-world data for full autonomy.
• Wilder World, an AAA web3 game, launched its Open World live, supports WILD as the main currency, multiplayer, in-game items and marketplace.

Governance and Upcoming Alpha

• Polymarket announced its V2 exchange upgrades will go live April 22, introducing pUSD collateral and open-sourced CTFv2 contracts.
• Optimism announced a stake-based transaction ordering experiment on testnet, allowing users to stake OP for top-of-block priority access under FIFO then stake-weighted rules.
• World released World ID 4.0, partnering with Zoom for fighting deepfake in virtual meetings, DocuSign for human-verified signature, Tinder for real-person match etc.
• Strategy proposed paying semi-monthly dividends on STRC instead of monthly to stabilize prices, dampen cyclicality, drive liquidity, and grow demand.
• Hyperliquid introduced priority fees on testnet where traders bid in HYPE for faster execution, with the fees burned and drawn from undelegated staking balances.
• Tempo announced development of Zones, private interoperable blockchains run by institutions for business stablecoin use cases such as payroll, treasury, and settlement, while keeping assets locked on Tempo Mainnet for full interoperability, shared liquidity, and compliance tooling.

Token Unlock

• AVNT token unlocks on April 23, representing 7.84% of the token supply.
• XPL token unlocks on April 25, representing 4.94% of the token supply.
• ZORA token unlocks on April 30, representing 3.73% of the token supply.
• EIGEN token unlocks on May 1, representing 5.33% of the token supply.
• FF token unlocks on May 1, representing 4.06% of the token supply.
• EDGE token unlocks on May 2, representing 4.25% of the token supply.
• ZAMA token unlocks on May 2, representing 5.21% of the token supply.
• ADI token unlocks on May 9, representing 7.18% of the token supply.