Market Weekly Report: The market performed weakly during the double holiday period, and a rise may be expected in the first quarter of next year.

Market Overview

This week, the cryptocurrency market showed an overall downtrend under the influence of the holiday. The market sentiment index rose slightly from 7% to 10%, but it is still in the extreme fear zone. It is worth noting that despite the weak overall environment, USDC, which is primarily focused on the US market, achieved a growth of 1.91%, indicating that institutional funds continue to enter the market, injecting some confidence into it.

The DeFi sector saw a slight decline in TVL this week, down 0.37% to $52.7 billion, but projects like the Gun Pool and other stablecoin yield programs performed impressively. The overall supply of stablecoins continues to grow, indicating that foundational liquidity is still flowing in, and projects like the Gun Pool are in high demand.

The AI Agent sector continues to receive significant attention, with a total scale reaching $10.9 billion. In particular, the aipool model that incorporates TEE technology has become a new market focus, and is expected to become a new asset issuance method following "inscription", showcasing the trend of deep integration between AI and blockchain technology.

The Meme coin sector is experiencing a sluggish performance due to the holiday and overall decline, with a noticeable decrease in investor participation and capital inflow. The market enthusiasm has temporarily shifted to other sectors, highlighting the high volatility characteristics of this sector.

The public chain sector demonstrates strong resistance to decline. Stacks has achieved an important milestone with sBTC, BOB is advancing the development of BitVM Bridge, and Taiko has launched a new round of ecological plans, indicating that major public chains are continuously making efforts in technological innovation and ecological construction.

Looking ahead, the market is expected to continue a sluggish trend during the New Year's holiday. Investors are advised to maintain a defensive allocation, increase the proportion of top assets, and moderately participate in high-yield machine gun pool projects. In the long term, the market generally expects a rise in the first quarter of 2025, and AI Agent and DeFi machine gun pool projects are worth focusing on.

Market Sentiment Index Analysis

The market sentiment index has risen from 7% last week to 10%, still in the extreme fear zone. Altcoins performed worse than the benchmark index this week, showing a significant downtrend. The Christmas holiday caused a sharp decline in liquidity, leading to increased market price volatility, making it easy to experience sudden pumps and drops. It is expected that Altcoins will remain in sync with the benchmark index in the short term, with a low probability of independent trends.

When altcoins are in a state of extreme panic, the market is often at a temporary bottom, and a reversal upward could happen at any time.

Overview of Overall Market Trends

• The cryptocurrency market is in a downtrend this week, with the sentiment index remaining in extreme fear.

• DeFi-related projects have performed outstandingly, showing the market's continued focus on improving basic yields.

• The AI Agent track project has generated high public sentiment this week, indicating that investors are beginning to actively seek the next market breakout point.

Hot Tracks

AI Agent

This week, the market is in a downward trend, with all sectors declining. Although most tokens in the AI Agent sector have also decreased in price, it is the most discussed topic in the market. There is a heated discussion about the development of the aipool model, which combines AI Agent and TEE, in the future of Crypto and its impact on Defi.

One of the boosters for the periodic surges in the crypto market is the new asset issuance methods. Mechanisms such as ICOs, IEOs, INOs, IDOs, and engraving have all propelled the rapid development of the market and price increases. In the context of the rapid integration of AI and crypto, aipool has become a popular asset issuance method, continuing the "money printing FI" trend from early 2024. If aipool is widely accepted by the market, it may usher in a wave of asset issuance, which is worth paying close attention to.

The top five AI Agent projects by market capitalization:

1. Worldcoin (WLD)
2. Fetch.ai (FET)
3. Singularity NET (AGIX)
4. Ocean Protocol (OCEAN)
5. The Graph (GRT)

DeFi track

TVL rise ranking

The top 5 projects by TVL rise in the market over the past week ( do not include projects with a smaller TVL, with a standard of over $30 million ):

1. Resolv:82.04%
2. USDX Money:74.25%
3. Usual:55.56%
4. Hashnote:52.54%
5. Spectra:51.81%

Resolv(未发币):

Resolv is a Delta neutral stablecoin project that focuses on the tokenization of market-neutral investment portfolios. This week, it completed an important technical upgrade, successfully transforming into an Omnichain project by integrating LayerZero and StarGate technologies. The ecological development is outstanding, attracting a second influx of 100 million USD, with a growth rate of 84%. The USDC Vault provides up to 36.36% APY in Euler Finance, attracting 5.67 million USD TVL. It also launched the wstUSR pool on Pendle.fi and introduced a unified points structure.

USDX Money( Unissued Coins):

USDX Money is an emerging synthetic dollar stablecoin protocol that provides a new type of crypto-native stablecoin solution through a multi-chain, multi-currency strategy. This week, we completed a brand new UI/UX upgrade to optimize user experience, launching USDX/USDT and sUSDX/USDX liquidity pools on Curve Finance. The ecosystem continues to expand, with sUSDX achieving a TVL of $170 million through collaboration with Lista DAO. We launched an X-Points incentive program that includes content creation and angel plans, and held a special Christmas event.

Usual(USUAL):

Usual is a stablecoin project supported by Binance, providing decentralized stablecoin solutions. Recently, it secured $10 million in Series A funding led by Binance Labs and Kraken Ventures. It launched UsualM in collaboration with the M^0 Foundation. It has become the largest USD0/USD0++ pool on Curve Finance. TVL has surpassed $1.5 billion, placing it among the top five stablecoins globally, and the DAO treasury has doubled to $17 million. It has launched USUALx staking rewards with an APY of up to 18,000% and initiated a community airdrop event.

Hashnote( no token issued ):

Hashnote focuses on institutional cryptocurrency management solutions, offering innovative yield enhancement products like USYC. This week, it reached a strategic cooperation with CoreDAO and participated in an ecological group panel meeting, launching an innovative Bitcoin dual-staking model that combines BTC and Core Token to provide sustainable yield solutions. The project CEO shared the new strategy, which garnered over 14,000 views, indicating strong market interest in this innovative model.

Spectra(SPECTRA):

Spectra is a future yield tokenization protocol. This week, a new governance contract was launched on the Base mainnet, introducing Gauges and the ncentivize page. The multi-locking feature for veSPECTRA holders has been optimized to improve Gauge voting efficiency. The APW emission adjustment has been completed, and the new emission mechanism will be executed at a ratio of 1:20.

In summary, the projects with significant TVL growth this week are mainly concentrated in the stablecoin yield sector ( gun pool ).

Overall performance of the track

• Stablecoin market capitalization is steadily increasing: USDT has decreased by 0.27% to $14.47 billion, while USDC has risen by 1.91% to $4.29 billion. Although the market is down, the growth of USDC, which is primarily based in the U.S. market, indicates that buying power continues to enter the market.

• Liquidity is gradually increasing: The risk-free arbitrage rates in traditional markets continue to decline with interest rate cuts, while the arbitrage rates of on-chain DeFi projects have increased due to the rise in the value of crypto assets. Returning to DeFi will be a good choice.

• Funding Situation: The TVL of Defi projects has decreased from 52.9 billion USD to 52.7 billion USD, a drop of 0.37%. The main reason is that the Western market is in the Christmas holiday this week, leading to a decline in trading volume and on-chain activity. It is expected that there will not be much change during the New Year's holiday next week. It is recommended to focus on the overall TVL changes in January and monitor whether the downtrend continues.

In-depth Analysis

pump driver: The core driving factors of this round of pump can be summarized as follows: recent market decline has led to a decrease in APY across various DeFi protocols, while stablecoin yield projects have raised their yields through token/point rewards, giving liquidity pool projects a significant advantage in APY. Specifically:

• Market environment: Although we are in a bull market cycle, the recent decline has significantly reduced the market's base interest rate.
• Interest rate side: The base lending rate is raised, reflecting the market's expectations for capital pricing.
• Yield side: The yield rate of stablecoin earning projects has expanded compared to other projects, attracting more users to participate.

This mechanism strengthens the value support of stablecoin yield projects, forming a positive growth momentum.

Potential Risks: The market has recently continued to pump, with investors focusing more on yield and borrowing leverage, neglecting the risk of downturns. The Christmas holiday has caused a sharp reduction in liquidity, and the market's selling pressure lacks sufficient liquidity support, leading to a continuous drop in prices. The liquidation of long contracts has caused losses for investors, increasing the risk of a chain liquidation, further lowering prices and liquidating more assets.

Other track performance

public chain

The top 5 public chains by TVL rise in the past week ( excluding smaller public chains not counted in TVL ):

1. Stacks:16.95%
2. BOB:12.81%
3. Taiko:4.22%
4. Cardano:2.94%
5. Sei:1.23%

Stacks: This week, 922 BTC were transferred to the Stacks network, completing the first phase of the sBTC deposit limit of 1000 BTC. 35% of sBTC generates yield in the Zest Protocol. The ALEX community voted to allocate 12 million ALEX tokens for the Surge program. L1/L2 asset swaps are facilitated through Bitflow Finance and the AI console. The "Stackies" community reward program incentivizes developers to contribute.

BOB: Developed and released a prototype of the BitVM Bridge based on zero-knowledge technology in collaboration with Fiamma Labs, with plans to launch the testnet in early 2025. Collaborating with Lombard Finance to deploy on the BOB chain. Initial discussions with Aave regarding protocol integration. Launched a 6-week DeFi incentive campaign to encourage LST holders to participate through Babylon Points. Conducted multiple community education tasks and Spaces events.

Taiko: Launching the Trailblazers Season 3 plan with a reward pool of 6 million TAIKO tokens. Introducing the Liquidity Royale event to reward the top 100 liquidity providers with 12,000 TAIKO tokens. The on-chain ecosystem projects have increased to 130, with Symmetric added as a key DEX partner. Hosting the first community meet-up in Turkey with ITU Blockchain and Node 101. Strengthening community building through holiday giveaways and Meme contests.

Cardano: Highlights the technical advantages of the slashing mechanism to ensure the safety of users' ADA assets. Launches convenient Web application development tools. Deepens cooperation with Ledger. Promotes community governance decentralization through the DReps voting decision-making model.

Sei: Released a significant technological breakthrough named "Giga", extending EVM to a processing capacity of 5 gigagas per second, with a performance increase of 50 times. Released the Giga Roadmap. Launched the EVM Wrapped feature, allowing users to view activity records from multiple EVM chains. Established partnerships with PythNetwork, Silo, and Nansen. Launched the "12 Days of Christmas" holiday event.

rise leaderboard overview

The top 5 tokens with the highest rise in the market over the past week ( do not include tokens with very low trading volume and meme coins ):

1. ZEN (Horizen):124.91%
2. MOCA (Moca Network):108.87%
3. PHA (Phala Network):105.84%
4. AGLD (Adventure Gold):73.77%
5. MOVE (Movement):66.81%

ZEN: Horizen successfully deployed the Horizen 2.0 Devnet testnet, launching an optimized zero-knowledge verification solution. Strategic partnership with Automata Network to advance Web3 development. Recognized by institutional investors through Grayscale's Horizen Trust. Completed the final halving of ZEN, listed on Bitvavo exchange. Preparing the token distribution plan for the zkVerify project.

MOCA: Successfully integrated with SK Planet's OK Cashbag app, generating 1.5 million page views and 800,000 interactive spin-the-wheel lottery engagements. Enhanced user stickiness through the Christmas marketing campaign (#MocaFam). Focused on user safety education with multiple fraud prevention reminders.

PHA: Officially launched Phala 2.0, integrating GPU TEE technology and Ethereum Layer 2 scaling capabilities. Collaboration with NVIDIA for testing shows TEE achieving nearly 99% efficiency on H100/H200. Announced Khala chain migration to the Ethereum mainnet. TEE-as-a-Service adopted by multiple projects including Flashbots. Annual AI Agent contract execution volume increased to 4,500 times, with active TEE Workers reaching 37,650.

AGLD: Engaged with the community through a Christmas-themed marketing campaign, resulting in high community participation in Christmas blessing tweets. Collaborated with BladeGamesHQ on AI Agent-driven blockchain economics to showcase the gaming ecosystem.