Vitalik Buterin’s recent posts reflect a shift from idealistic decentralization toward pragmatic system design. Rather than rejecting Ethereum’s core principles, he questions where complexity, governance, and the current development path fail under real-world constraints.
Alex Harutunian
Hyperliquid is evolving from a perp DEX into a vertically integrated financial stack. By launching its own L1, native stablecoin, and spot markets, it prioritizes market fit over ideology. Started on Arbitrum, its roadmap reveals a larger ambition: to become the global base layer for all trading.
Alex Harutunian
Triggered by a routine macro shock, crypto once again unraveled faster than any other market. Not because of sentiment alone, but because CEX risk engines, DEX liquidation incentives, and always-on leverage turn small moves into cascading stress.
Alex Harutunian
From Polymarket’s stripped-down design to Kalshi’s regulatory breakthrough, prediction markets are turning collective opinion into a financial asset class — and a new battleground over who defines truth
Alex Harutunian
Curve Finance is launching Yield Basis with a $60M crvUSD credit line. The product aims to eliminate impermanent loss for liquidity providers, and at the same time transform CRV from a governance token into an income-generating asset with revenues shared back to holders
Alex Harutunian
Vitalik Buterin’s recent posts reflect a shift from idealistic decentralization toward pragmatic system design. Rather than rejecting Ethereum’s core principles, he questions where complexity, governance, and the current development path fail under real-world constraints.
Alex Harutunian
The digital euro is increasingly framed as a tool of EU sovereignty. China’s interest-bearing e-CNY shows no banking disruption so far. Tokenization goes mainstream as the ECB validates DLT collateral and the U.S. SEC distinguishes issuer-backed from wrapper tokens.
Bermuda is integrating USDC stablecoin into its economy. In a dollar-pegged island state, stablecoins aren’t replacing money—they’re upgrading the rails. If it works, dozens of “Other Bermudas” could emerge as the next growth engine for stablecoins.
👀 Observing — Jan 31 • Y Combinator to allow founders to receive funding in stablecoins. • Nomura crypto subsidiary Laser Digital discloses Q3 2025 losses. • Ripple Labs achieves major license in Luxembourg. • Prediction markets hit all-time high with $12B in volume in January.
01.01.2026 EU crypto tax transparency directive DAC8 takes effect, requiring crypto-asset service providers to report user data to national tax authorities. 01.01.2026 MiCA comes into force in Spain. 31.12.2025 Ethereum smart contract deployments hit a record high in Q4. 2026 OUTLOOK Haseeb Qureshi (Dragonfly
Balancer Protocol was exploited through a tiny rounding bug in its code. As losses neared $100 million, projects froze pools, rolled back blockchains, and clawed back funds—revealing the centralized and still untamed side of decentralized finance
01.12.2025 Telegram’s Pavel Durov announces Cocoon, a decentralized confidential AI compute network. 01.12.2025 SushiSwap CEO steps down as Synthesis invests $3.3M in the struggling DEX. 01.12.2025 Grayscale to launch the first Chainlink ETF in the US. 01.12.2025 Germany and Switzerland
29.10.25 Ondo Finance launches Ondo Global Markets on BNB Chain. 29.10.25 Ethereum Foundation launches portal to guide institutional adoption. 29.10.25 Securitize goes public via SPAC merger with Cantor Fitzgerald’s CF Acquisition Corp VIII. 28.10.25 Trump Media & Technology Group to launch
Kazakhstan launched a state-backed crypto reserve, Alem Crypto Fund, partnering with Binance Kazakhstan and starting with an investment in $BNB. SWIFT is building a blockchain ledger with 30+ banks using Consensys. Polish lawmakers passed a Crypto-Asset Market Act, aligning rules with the EU’s MiCAR. Vitalik Buterin opposes EU’s
Uniswap’s Unichain has boosted L2 volumes past $40B, but liquidity tells a different story. TVL has halved since July, exposing the limits of incentive-driven growth. Despite cheaper fees, users remain on Ethereum—where Uniswap continues to be one of the network’s largest revenue engines.
The New York Innovation Center (NYIC), a joint project of US Fed and BIS, is launching a proof-of-concept project to explore the feasibility of an interoperable network of digital central bank liabilities and commercial bank digital money using distributed ledger technology.
Alex Harutunian
The Scourge is a new stage in the Ethereum Roadmap. Why is it needed and what will it bring to the network?
Alex Harutunian
MoneyGram announced that they are launching cryptocurrency trading in partnership with a crypto exchange Coinme. Users of MoneyGram, a financial services provider, can now trade cryptocurrencies in a mobile application. The list of digital currencies is limited to Bitcoin, Ether, and Litecoin. The new feature is available to U.S.
Observers
Gala Games faced an exploit that could have potentially brought hackers several billion dollars.
Alex Harutunian
On October 10 FTX announced that it reached an agreement with Tron to allow the holders of Tron-based tokens to swap them from FTX to external wallets.
Sasha Markevich
Reuters recently [again] accused Binance of processing transactions from Iran worth over $8 billion despite U.S. sanctions. And this is not for the first time.
Sasha Markevich
Circle and Paxos can now officially conduct transactions with their stablecoins, as well as other digital payment tokens in Singapore.
Alex Harutunian
A Twitter user found an exploit in the BitBTC bridge. But, the developers ignored the user's requests until someone started using the exploit.
Alex Harutunian
The digital euro is increasingly framed as a tool of EU sovereignty. China’s interest-bearing e-CNY shows no banking disruption so far. Tokenization goes mainstream as the ECB validates DLT collateral and the U.S. SEC distinguishes issuer-backed from wrapper tokens.
Bermuda is integrating USDC stablecoin into its economy. In a dollar-pegged island state, stablecoins aren’t replacing money—they’re upgrading the rails. If it works, dozens of “Other Bermudas” could emerge as the next growth engine for stablecoins.
👀 Observing — Jan 31 • Y Combinator to allow founders to receive funding in stablecoins. • Nomura crypto subsidiary Laser Digital discloses Q3 2025 losses. • Ripple Labs achieves major license in Luxembourg. • Prediction markets hit all-time high with $12B in volume in January.
01.01.2026 EU crypto tax transparency directive DAC8 takes effect, requiring crypto-asset service providers to report user data to national tax authorities. 01.01.2026 MiCA comes into force in Spain. 31.12.2025 Ethereum smart contract deployments hit a record high in Q4. 2026 OUTLOOK Haseeb Qureshi (Dragonfly
Balancer Protocol was exploited through a tiny rounding bug in its code. As losses neared $100 million, projects froze pools, rolled back blockchains, and clawed back funds—revealing the centralized and still untamed side of decentralized finance
01.12.2025 Telegram’s Pavel Durov announces Cocoon, a decentralized confidential AI compute network. 01.12.2025 SushiSwap CEO steps down as Synthesis invests $3.3M in the struggling DEX. 01.12.2025 Grayscale to launch the first Chainlink ETF in the US. 01.12.2025 Germany and Switzerland
29.10.25 Ondo Finance launches Ondo Global Markets on BNB Chain. 29.10.25 Ethereum Foundation launches portal to guide institutional adoption. 29.10.25 Securitize goes public via SPAC merger with Cantor Fitzgerald’s CF Acquisition Corp VIII. 28.10.25 Trump Media & Technology Group to launch
Kazakhstan launched a state-backed crypto reserve, Alem Crypto Fund, partnering with Binance Kazakhstan and starting with an investment in $BNB. SWIFT is building a blockchain ledger with 30+ banks using Consensys. Polish lawmakers passed a Crypto-Asset Market Act, aligning rules with the EU’s MiCAR. Vitalik Buterin opposes EU’s