Author: Ignas Source: Ignas | DeFi Research Translation: Shan Ouba, Golden Finance
I love meme coins, but this "mania" seems to be reaching its limit.
My Crypto X dynamics and information flow are so full of meme coins posts (and Pudgy Penguins) that many major crypto industry developments have been buried. The recent market drop has given me the opportunity to seriously study these developments. However, this drop did not last long.
In this article, I want to share 10 developments in DeFi and the broader crypto ecosystem that are worth your close attention.
Avalanche has just released its largest upgrade yet - Avalanche 9000, making it easier, cheaper, and more flexible to create L1 blockchains.
L1 is the new L2? The old subnet model is gone.
Developers no longer need to verify the mainnet or stake 2000 AVAX (worth about $100,000), just pay a small ongoing fee, which greatly reduces costs.
Sounds like Polkadot and a bit like Cosmos, right?
Inspired by Ethereum's EIP-4844 (Proto-Danksharding), Avalanche L1's fees are close to Celestia-based rollups, but with better interoperability and reliability.
The upgrade also introduces L1-only validators, allowing each L1 to manage its own rules, whether it is a PoS or Proof of Authority blockchain. This means better token economics and value premium.
It reduces the cost of running a validator from 2K AVAX ($100,000) per month to 1.33 AVAX.
Avalanche has launched a $40 million funding program called Retro9000, and currently has 700 L1 projects in development, covering multiple fields from games to DeFi.
Avalanche is successfully attracting traditional financial (TradFi) partners through tokenization and has attracted gaming projects such as Off The Grid. In the competition between Solana and Ethereum, Avalanche seems to have found its own market position.
While Base and Solana have caused FOMO (fear of missing out) by continuously releasing AI agent-related projects (such as Virtuals and ai16z), NEAR is quietly opening up its own AI innovation path.
NEAR already supports agent-driven on-chain functions and is developing more tools and features.
What makes it different is the native chain abstraction of multi-chain AI agents, making it easier for developers to build interconnected systems.
In addition to this, NEAR Intents also introduces a new transaction model that enables cross-chain settlement between AI agents, services, and end users. Personally, the coolest collaboration is the one between Infinex and Near, so you can trade BTC, XRP, or anything on a decentralized platform.
NEAR launched NEAR.ai, an AI assistant that can act on behalf of users by connecting to other AI agents and across web2 and web3 services. You need a Near wallet to log in.
To be honest, the wallet experience on Near used to be pretty bad, but it's getting a lot better now (I recommend Near Mobile).
Interestingly, social agents built on NEAR are starting to host Twitter Spaces with each other.
In addition, NEAR has launched a research center to explore new AI models and has partnered with Delphi on an AI accelerator program to support builders in this field.
It is worth noting that the blind computing blockchain Nillion Network is being built on top of NEAR to bring privacy-preserving technology to private LLM training and sensitive data reasoning.
This can unlock the full potential of user-owned artificial intelligence.
LQTY prices rose 120% in a month. The reason?
• The market is generally bullish
• The launch of Liquity v2
Problems with traditional DeFi lending models:
Funding markets like Compound and Aave set interest rates based on utilization, resulting in unpredictable costs.
Governance protocols like MakerDAO are slow to adjust, and interest rates are often stuck due to governance delays.
Even Liquity V1’s fixed fee model was unable to adapt to market changes.
Liquity V2 solves this problem with user-set interest rates and BOLD, a stablecoin focused on decentralization, user control, and yield.
Borrowers open a "Trove" to set an interest rate - a lower rate for savings, a higher rate to avoid redemption. Troves with the lowest interest rates will be redeemed first.
Liquity V2 has an LTV of up to 90% and a leverage of up to 11x, which is extremely efficient.
Borrowers can use not only ETH, but also LST such as wstETH and rETH as collateral, and still receive staking rewards while borrowing BOLD.
Therefore, BOLD is fully backed by ETH and LST, redeemable at any time, and is not subject to TradFi risks.
Unlike USDC, it does not rely on RWAs, thus avoiding counterparty and censorship risks. Its peg to $1 is maintained by a simple mechanism:
If $BOLD falls below $1, arbitrage will encourage redemptions for ETH.
If $BOLD rises above $1, lower borrowing rates will increase supply.
Stable pool depositors receive 75% of the protocol revenue through BOLD and ETH liquidation proceeds, while 25% of fees go to Protocol Incentive Liquidity (PIL) to support BOLD liquidity in DeFi.
A big change is Forkonomics for Liquity V2, as Liquity is one of the most forked protocols in DeFi.
Now, teams need permission to use Liquity code (and some airdrops to LQTY holders), but in return they get support from Liquity, access to the liquidity network, shared security resources, and potential LQTY rewards.
It's a win-win: forks are better supported, and BOLD can scale across chains without the usual risks of hacks or mismanagement.
Most people thought Pendle V3 was just another fork or a minor update, but Pendle unexpectedly launched a whole new direction: Boros, Pendle’s “brother protocol”, which brings yield trading into a new realm.
Boros’s Core Highlights:
• Designed for leveraged yield trading.
• Users can trade yields through leverage.
Boros focuses on funding rates (the cost of borrowing leveraged positions), solving the current pain point of lacking a way to hedge or effectively trade funding rates.
What’s the problem? Until now, there hasn’t been an effective way to hedge or trade these rates. That’s where Boros comes in. With it, traders can:
Hedge funding rate exposure for predictable returns.
Speculate on funding rate fluctuations using leverage
Take Ethena, for example, whose profitability relies heavily on funding rates. With Boros, Ethena can hedge volatility and lock in stable returns. Meanwhile, speculators can take advantage of the rise and fall of funding rates, resulting in greater profits.
Why funding rates, you might ask?
Perp exchanges process $150-200 billion in volume per day, and funding rates are at the heart of how these markets work. Yet they’ve been overlooked in DeFi.
Boros makes funding rates tradable. This means protocols, market makers, and traders can now integrate funding rate strategies into their portfolios.
Pendle has now grown into a full-service yield trading platform. V2 and Boros complement each other perfectly:
V2 focuses on tokenized, on-chain yields such as staking, RWA, and BTCfi.
Boros dives deep into funding rates and off-chain opportunities.
As is always the case with Pendle, they have simplified everything for the community. No new tokens.
The same $PENDLE and vePENDLE tokens power V2 and Boros. Revenue distribution also remains the same — 80% to vePENDLE holders, 10% to the protocol treasury, and 10% for operations.
As the Points meta cools down, Boros arrives right on time.
This is probably the most confusing L2 in crypto.
Zircuit recently concluded its Season 1 and Season 2 airdrops on November 20th, distributing 300 million tokens for claiming. They seem to be very generous in providing airdrops to each of their partner protocols.
What’s next for Zircuit? How do they plan to keep users engaged and create real use cases for their token?
The answer seems to be the hottest topic right now: Artificial Intelligence.
Zircuit is working on a new product called Gud AI.
It’s an AIXBT-like AI agent that does alpha discovery. There’s also a native AI token, $GUD, which has a fair launch that requires staking $ZRC.
It’s a great strategy for a new L2.
Zircuit is a layer 2, but it takes a different approach to layer 2 infrastructure. It doesn’t just focus on scaling, it also focuses on security, efficiency, and usability.
One of Zircuit’s key features is Sequence Level Security (SLS). While most blockchains detect malicious transactions after they are executed, SLS can identify threats before they even reach the chain.
During the restaking era of Ethereum, LRT on Zircuit has been very notable, attracting over $2 billion in TVL. Zircuit’s Mainnet Phase 2 is accelerating and is now live:
Bridge between Ethereum and Ethereum. The bridging process takes only a few minutes, which is incredibly fast. Since its launch, Zircuit’s net deposits have jumped to $300 million.
Some native DeFi dApps such as ZeroLend and Elara Labs for lending, Ocelex and Dodo for exchange and liquidity mining.
Recently, Zircuit distributed 2% of its supply to more than 190,000 EigenLayer re-holders.
Zircuit is backed by Binance Labs, Pantera Capital, and Dragonfly Capital, but is not yet listed on Binance (maybe soon).
Although the STRK airdrop was once negatively affected, Starknet has made significant progress recently, pushing the boundaries of Layer 2 technology and worthy of in-depth attention.
One of the major initiatives is the launch of the staking function for its native token STRK. As the first L2 to provide native staking functionality, STRK staking is now live on the mainnet. Bitwise, a company that manages $11 billion in crypto assets and has $3.5 billion in ETH staked, has also officially joined the Starknet ecosystem to support STRK staking.
On the technical level, deployment costs are reduced to just $5, while verification fees are as low as less than $1. Through the efforts of multiple teams, even SNARK proofs can now be verified, making it possible for developers to build real applications based on zero-knowledge technology, such as private identity verification or secure file verification.
In addition, the v0.13.3 update reduces blob gas costs by 5 times through smarter compression and block consolidation technology, effectively controlling fees and keeping costs low even as Ethereum's blob usage grows. Starknet's future plans include more efficiency upgrades, which even Vitalik has affirmed.
Another exciting development is the trustless Bitcoin bridge (OP_CAT proof-of-concept bridge) developed in collaboration with sCrypt. This move shows that Starknet and Bitcoin can be interconnected, opening important doors for interoperability and hopefully unlocking more interesting use cases.
After the airdrop, Mode launched two important initiatives: veMODE and AIFi ecosystem.
Mode is the first protocol with a voting custody (ve) governance model based on the OP stack Layer 2. With veMODE, users can stake MODE or MODE/ETH liquidity tokens to gain voting rights, with voting rights increasing up to 6x the longer they stake. Unlike traditional models, veMODE does not vote for specific liquidity pools, but focuses on supporting the growth of the entire ecosystem. In Season 3, $2 million in OP incentives will be distributed through this system. There are also plans to introduce a bribe market in the future, as well as AI agents to simplify the participation process and let AI agents vote on behalf of users.
The real highlight of Mode is its focus on AIFi. With a $6 million grant from Optimism, Mode is bringing AI agents to DeFi to simplify and scale on-chain interactions. These agents can handle tasks such as yield farming, risk management, and even governance, with little to no human intervention.
Mode’s AIFi ecosystem is built on a three-layer architecture:
AI Security Layer 2 Sequencer, which detects and blocks malicious transactions from entering the blockchain;
On-chain agent infrastructure, deploying agents with partners such as Giza, Olas, and RPS AI, while enabling agents to learn and execute advanced policies through Mode’s Dapp Intents SDK;
AI-driven interfaces, such as Mode’s AI Wallet, make DeFi easier to use by simplifying interactions.
To kickstart the AIFi ecosystem, Mode launched the AI Agent App Store, an AI agent discovery platform designed specifically for DeFi. Some highlight agents include:
Giza’s ARMA, for optimizing USDC yield in funding markets;
MODIUS by Olas (coming soon), an AI-driven liquidity farming strategist;
Brian, making DeFi interactions more conversational with natural language prompts;
Sturdy V2, an AI-driven yield vault designed to optimize returns.
Thus, Near, Mode, Zircuit entered the AIFi metadata on time.
DOT tokens are up 75% in a month. There are multiple factors behind this.
In the past few months, the activity of the Polkadot network has reached new heights. The number of monthly transactions has hit an all-time high, and key metrics such as fees, active users, and transaction volume have all grown significantly. Fees have increased by 300% year-on-year, and active users and transaction volume have also risen steadily.
The key factor driving this momentum is the launch of Polkadot 2.0.
The cost of running a parachain previously was about $16,700 per month, while in Polkadot 2.0, this cost is reduced to only $1,000 to $4,000. Projects can lease block space through DOT, creating continuous demand for tokens. Based on governance decisions, part of the revenue may be destroyed, reducing the token supply. This creates a positive cycle: demand for DOT increases, supply decreases, and the entire ecosystem becomes more stable.
Polkadot's cross-chain interoperability has also been significantly improved. Hyperbridge connects Polkadot to networks such as Ethereum and BNB, promoting cross-chain interactions and creating more possibilities for developers. The network also performed very strongly, processing more than 3.3 million transactions per day, proving that it is ready for large-scale applications such as games.
In the DeFi field, Polkadot also performed well. The Hydration ecosystem is growing rapidly, with active users growing 50% since October and fees doubling to a record high. Hydration integrates trading, lending, and stablecoins into one application chain. Its Omnipool simplifies liquidity and supports unilateral deposits, with a TVL of more than $68 million. Hydration's stablecoin 2-pool (USDT-USDC) has an annualized yield of up to 36%, including fees and vDOT rewards.
Hydration recently launched a lending function, which is a forked version of Aave V3 based on Polkadot. Its on-chain priority liquidation mechanism can liquidate at the beginning of each block, effectively reducing borrower losses and preventing front-running attacks. At the same time, liquidation penalties are converted into protocol revenue, benefiting HDX stakers and supporting governance decisions.
The competition in the perp DEX field has intensified, and the leaders have also undergone changes...dydx, GMX, Vertex, and now HyperLiquid.
However, I believe that the real losers are those CEXs that lose to fast-innovating emerging DEXs.
While Hyperliquid took the top spot after a successful airdrop, dYdX chose a more retail approach and launched dYdX Unlimited, which includes a series of new features: instant market listings, MegaVault, and an affiliate program.
With Instant Market Listings, anyone can create and trade markets instantly, without governance approval or long waits. It's simple: pick a market, deposit USDC into the MegaVault, and start trading.
This is a big advantage that CEXs can't offer.
MegaVault is the heart of the system, providing liquidity to all markets by pooling USDC.
It funds the markets, while depositors earn passive income. Half of the dYdX protocol fees go to the MegaVault, which makes liquidity provision rewarding. It's very similar to Jupiter's JLP Vault.
dYdX also launched an affiliate program that pays lifetime commissions in USDC to referrers. Bybit grew so fast in part because of the affiliate program :)
Trading Rewards, distributing $1.5 million in DYDX tokens per month, and offering a prize pool of up to 100,000 USDC for MegaVault depositors.
Since then, dYdX has had some great results, raising over $40 million with an APR of 51%.
After Sui, Aptos is also the fastest growing project in TVL and DeFi based on Move blockchain, with its TVL exceeding US$1 billion for the first time, a year-on-year increase of 19 times.
Riding the wave of TradFi on Aptos, BlackRock expanded its BUILD fund on Aptos, which is the only non-EVM chain integrated.
Franklin Templeton has also expanded its on-chain U.S. government money fund to Aptos, one of seven supported chains.
Bitwise and Libre have already launched their own tokenized funds on the blockchain.
Tether launched its native USDT on Aptos in August. Since then, the supply of USDT on Aptos has been increasing. Since its inception, the supply of USDT has increased from about $20 million to about $142 million.
Following Tether, Circle also announced the launch of native USDC and Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP), supported by Stripe's crypto products on Aptos.
With the injection of native stablecoins into Aptos, the ecosystem is gaining positive indicators, with TVL continuing to remain above $1 billion and 1 million new users joining the ecosystem.
Some DeFi milestones on Aptos:
Last year, daily DEX trading volume on Aptos grew 2,700% (28x).
Aries Markets, the leading lending protocol on Aptos, has reached a new high in total locked value (TVL), with more than $800 million in total deposits, of which more than $450 million has been lent out.
emojicoin dot fun, a pumpdotfun project based on Aptos, has launched mainnet and reported 16,700 unique addresses within 24 hours of launch.
I guess APT is following in the footsteps of SUI, which is doing very well. I think SUI, APT, and other L1s are fighting for market share from Solana, all competing at the execution layer, and ETH... is ETH!
The Thala token dropped 35% to $0.51 after the hack but has rebounded to $0.6116. Despite recovering the funds, farming functions remain suspended for security.
CatherinePolish presidential candidate Sławomir Mentzen promises to transform Poland into a "cryptocurrency haven" by creating a Bitcoin reserve and adopting crypto-friendly policies if elected. His vision reflects growing Bitcoin adoption in Poland, where millions now own the cryptocurrency, and he aims to leverage it as a key asset for the nation's future.
WeatherlyA graduate student received a disturbing message from Google’s Gemini AI chatbot, telling him to "please die," leaving him shaken. Google called it an isolated incident, but the event raised concerns about the potential harm AI can cause and the responsibility tech companies should bear for harmful content.
JoyHeather Morgan, aka "Razzlekhan," received 18 months for laundering funds from the 2016 Bitfinex hack, while her husband, Ilya Lichtenstein, got five years for stealing 119,754 BTC. The sentencing disparity sparks debate: is justice fairly applied or inconsistent?
CatherinePolter, a DeFi app, was recently hit by a "classic" flash loan exploit, with Web3 experts citing price manipulation via oracles as the likely cause. The attack underscores vulnerabilities in how price feeds are managed in DeFi.
KikyoA Brazilian pianist lost access to his Bitcoin wallet worth over 2 million reais after misplacing his recovery phrase. Despite efforts to recover it, he faces the harsh reality that without the backup phrase and PIN, the funds are likely gone for good.
JoySTEPN aims to set a Guinness World Records title by challenging users worldwide to complete a one-mile distance remotely within 24 hours, starting on 23 November. This event combines fitness with a record-breaking challenge for its global community.
CatherineCoca-Cola’s AI-generated Christmas ad has sparked backlash for its lifeless and mechanical feel, drawing criticism from creative professionals. The use of AI in the ad raises concerns about replacing human talent in the creative process, with many viewers feeling disconnected from the content.
AnaisBinance clarified that BFUSD is not a stablecoin after concerns arose over its high yields and comparisons to Terraform Labs' failed TerraClassicUSD.
KikyoTrump Media is reportedly in advanced talks to acquire cryptocurrency firm Bakkt in an all-stock deal, sending Bakkt's shares soaring by 163%. Despite its high valuation, Trump Media faces financial challenges but aims to expand into the competitive crypto market.
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