(37/52) Weekly Market Insight | September Week 4 | The Decentralised Perpetual Exchange War

Headline News: The Decentralised Perpetual Exchange War

• Bitcoin demonstrated lack of momentum last week, closing with a marginal 0.05% loss despite the Fed’s 25bps rate cut. Meanwhile, the Altseason Index touched 99, a level unseen since 2018, before retracing to 76. A standout performer was BNB, which surged 13% to break the key psychological barrier of $1,000 and further fueled by the successful launch of Aster, a new decentralized perpetual exchange widely seen as a Binance-backed “vampire attack” on Hyperliquid.
• Efforts to avert a US government shutdown have stalled after a short-term funding bill failed to secure the required votes in the Senate. The political impasse is expected to continue, increasing the likelihood of a shutdown after the September 30 deadline unless a compromise is reached.

Macro-Outlook: Risk Management Cut

• The US Federal Reserve reduced the interest rate by 25bps, shifting the balance of risk between inflation rate and unemployment rate. The Fed acknowledged the downside risk of employment has risen and most of the Fed committees expect two more rate cuts by the end of 2025. Chair Powell stated the committees don’t feel need to move quickly to cut rates and wasn’t widespread support at all for a 50bps cut.
• The weekly initial jobless claims was 231K last week, lower than the market expectations of 240K.
• The US retail sales increased by 0.6% in August, well above the market forecasts of 0.2%.
• The US Secretary Bessent commented that the next round of US-China trade talks could result in another 90-day pause.
• The most aggressive phase of the US Treasury’s TGA replenishment is now largely complete, with the account balance reaching $816 billion, just $34 billion shy of the end-of-quarter target, reducing the significant headwind on market liquidity.

Upcoming Economic Calendar including,

• Wednesday, September 24, 12:35am: The Fed Chair Powell Speech
• Thursday, September 25, 8:30pm: US Final Q2 GDP & Durable Goods Orders in August
• Thursday, September 26, 8:30pm: US PCE Price Index, Personal Income and Personal Spending in August

Weekly-Cryptos-Overview: In-coming Alt-ETF Waves

• The SEC approved the generic listing standards proposed by Nasdaq, Cboe and NYSE, streamlined the process of crypto asset ETF listing with a track record of six months futures trading on Designated Contract Market, and more.
• The previously halted Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund got the final approval from the SEC to be traded on NYSE, marking the first multi-crypto asset ETF with BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL and ADA.
• Banco Santander, the largest bank in Spain, launched retail crypto trading with its online banking brand, Openbank. The trading service will be available to German clients and soon to Spanish clients.
• The Swiss Bankers Association stated PostFinance, Sygnum Bank and UBS are experimenting with binding payment using bank deposits on public blockchains.
• London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) launched its blockchain platform Digital Markets Infrastructure, focusing on tokenised private funds with the goal of expanding to other asset classes.
• Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) announced exemption for issuing stablecoin by Australian Financial Services (AFS) providers.
• BDACS launched the first Korean won-stablecoin that fully collateralised with Korean won deposited at Woori Bank, KRW1, on Avalanche.
• Google partnered with Coinbase and Salesforce, releasing an Agent2Agent payment protocol with stablecoins. Google also announced Agent Payment Protocol (AP2), an open-source payment protocol between agents and merchants, collaborating with multiple crypto protocols including Coinbase, Crossmint, EigenCloud, Ethereum Foundation, Mysten Labs, Mesh and Metamask.

Layer 1 and Layer 2s

• The Ethereum Foundation introduced a new AI team (dAI Team), aiming to make Ethereum the preferred settlement and coordination layer for AIs and the machine economy. The team is working on ERC-8004, a standard for AI agents with unique identity, reputation score, and verifiable action. Ethereum tentatively set Fusaka upgrade on December 3, introducing PeerDAS, making Layer-2 blob verification much more efficient.
• Mantle completed the mainnet upgrade using OP Succinct, becoming the largest ZK rollup based on TVL. This upgrade significantly reduces the finality to 1 hour and 6 hour for withdrawals, instead of 7 days, and massive transaction cost reduction. Bybit is expected to announce additional MNT integration this week.
• DBS Bank announced listing of Franklin Templeton’s sgBENJI and Ripple‘s RLUSD on the DBS Digital Exchange. DBS Bank will later provide credit lines by taking sgBENJI as collateral, creating a repo with tokenised securities and stablecoin.
• Tron launched SunPerp, a Tron-based perpetual exchange with high liquidity and no gas fee. Tron also onboard PYUSD to the network via Stargate, further expanding its stablecoin ecosystem.
• Paypal also launched its PYUSD on Aptos, its first Move-based blockchain.
• Movement announced migration from Layer-2 to become Layer-1.

Dapps

• Perpetual exchanges have been favourable by the market lately. Yzi Labs-backed Aster launched its ASTER token at approximately $12 billion FDV, with an open interest (OI) of $380 million and a Hidden Order feature. According to Arkham, 93% of the token supply is held by the team. Meanwhile, Pantera-backed Avantis launched AVNT token at approximately $2 billion in FDV with $40 million in OI and features such as Zero-Fee Perpetual and Loss-Rebate.
• Metamask launched its stablecoin mUSD using the M^0 framework, offering strong liquidity on Linea network, and low-cost for on-ramp. The team also announced Metamask will be launching a token “very soon”. Metamask is also expected to launch Hyperliquid integration directly from the wallet, potentially at Token2049.
• Trust Wallet released an update on its TWT tokenomics, including loyalty reward for boosted yield or airdrop, fee discount and more. The platform also integrated StockX, enabling direct tokenised stocks swap in the wallet.
• Wormhole announced W 2.0 tokenomics upgrade, using protocol revenue to form the Wormhole Reserve, distributing a 4% target reward to W stakers, and changing the annual unlocks to bi-weekly unlocks for a smoother schedule.
• Pendle announced the official full launch of Boros, increasing the cap of open interest and maximum leverage to 2x, reiterated Boros revenue will be direct back to PENDLE holders. Pendle also launched cross-chain PTs powered by LayerZero, starting with PT-USDe on Avalanche.
• Noon Capital, a curated DeFi strategy yield-bearing stablecoin, announced the team is considering integrating Pendle’s and Spectra’s Principal Tokens into their strategy.
• Yield Guild announced partnership with Public AI with undisclosed strategic token swap, linking gaming data produced by Yield Guild players to PublicAI for monetisation.
• Zora updated its fee structure by lowering the trading fee from 3% to 1%, while creator revenue sharing increased from 33% to 50%, reduced protocol split from 33.33% to 5% and more.
• Everlyn, an AI-generated video platform, partnered with Walrus for storing videos, training data onchain and utilising Sui network for smart payment channel.
• Aethir announced Chainlink joining the AI Unbundled alliance, providing grants to eligible participants that adopted both Chainlink and Aethir infrastructure.
• Decentralised De-Science launchpad, Bio Protocol, raised $6.9 million from Maelstrom Fund.
• Symbiotic partnered with Chainlink and Lombard to power LBTC interoperability using CCIP across multiple blockchains. Lombard, the 1.5 billion BTC liquid staking protocol, launched BARD token at approximately $1 billion in FDV.
• Circle announced launching native USDC support and CCTP v2 on HyperEVM. The team also stated CCTP support for USDC in HyperCore will soon be available, and the team is considering becoming a Hyperliquid validator. Circle also introduced CCTP.to, a fee-free frontend for users to swap USDC across chains.

Governance and Upcoming Alpha

• Ethena Foundation disclosed that the Risk Committee is discussing the fee switch implementation and is expected to finalise soon.
• Base announced the team is “beginning to explore a network token.” The potential airdrop could boost the activities in ecosystem protocols.
• According to Polymarket’s filing to SEC, showing the latest raise involved “other warrants” which is speculated as a possible protocol token. Polymarket also launched new markets for trading companies’ earnings.
• Limitless, a prediction market on Base, is launching on Kaito Launchpad on September 25.
• Hyperliquid proposed permissionless spot assets listing requirements, involving 200K HYPE staked for 3 years and slashable if the new listed asset has poor quality quote. The community proposed HIP-4, introducing prediction market architecture to Hyperliquid.
• Based, the leading Hyperliquid front-end, is launching its first Fair Launch protocol on its launchpad with Upheaval this week.
• Bitfinex-based stablecoin blockchain, Plasma, is expected to launch its token XPL on September 25. Maple Finance announced partnership with Plasma, launching an exclusive syrupUSDT vault with $200 million pre-deposit on Plasma.
• Curve Finance is voting to create a 60 million crvUSD credit line for Yield Basis to boostscrap the launch. The proposal is likely to be passed on September 25.
• Ronin announced the team will use the USDC and ETH from its treasury to buyback RON in the open market starting on September 29, for approximately $4.6 million or 1.3% RON supply.
• Fluid will start its token buyback on October 1 with 100% revenue from Ethereum, potentially 0.2% of FLUID supply per month. The team then slowly incorporates revenues from Jupiter Lends and Layer-2s.
• Project 0 launched the first DeFi-Native Prime Broker, where users can borrow against their entire portfolio in other protocols on Solana. Kamino integration will be live on October 8, while Drift integration is expected in November. The team will also be rewarding MarginFi point holders.
• The Solana leading DEX, Meteora, is expected to launch its MET token in October, following with a new Airdrop Claim feature on the platform.
• Polkadot passed the proposal to cap the maximum DOT supply at 2.1 billion and reduce the yearly emission by half every 2 years on Pi Day (March 14).
• Gnosis proposed to launch gEURO, an Euro-denominated stablecoin using Liquity V2 mechanics with 75% borrowing fees accure to gEURO holders.
• Polygon plans to increase the network throughput by 33% by increasing the block limit in Q4 2025.
• CoWSwap is hiring Solana engineering, looking to integrate Solana network into its intent-based aggregator swap next.

Token Unlock

• NIL token unlocked on September 24, amount representing 29.1% of the token supply.
• PARTI token unlocked on September 25, amount representing 39.7% of the token supply.
• RESOLV token unlocked on September 27, amount representing 9.14% of the token supply.
• SAHARA token unlocked on September 27, amount representing 3.82% of the token supply.
• TREE token unlocked on September 30, amount representing 6.16% of the token supply.
• REZ token unlocked on October 1, amount representing 12% of the token supply.
• IO token unlocked on October 1, amount representing 6.09% of the token supply.
• KMNO token unlocked on October 1, amount representing 22% of the token supply.
• MAV token unlocked on October 2, amount representing 7.2% of the token supply.