ZkSnarker

[Crypto World] All along, XRP Ledger and Cardano have been doing the same thing—building truly decentralized settlement infrastructure that supports high throughput and high controllability. It may not sound special, but compared to the functions that traditional finance is just now starting to replicate, their scale is insignificant.
What’s the key difference? These Web3 native systems use on-chain governance and formal verification to build, making them inherently more resistant to censorship and more transparent. Meanwhile, schemes led by large institutions, no matter how efficient they claim to be, fundamentally prioritize maintaining their own control.
In the short term, price fluctuations are the hot topic. But what do institutional investors need? Programmable, neutral, and truly trustworthy settlement channels. This demand is continuously growing. So, what is truly competitive is not how much the price has risen this year, but the maturity and reliability of the system itself. That’s why these types of infrastructure can ultimately survive and be integrated into the ecosystem—

【Crypto World】BitMart announces the official launch of Beefy (BIFI) at 17:00 on December 26 (UTC+8), with the BIFI/USDT trading pair opening simultaneously.
What is this project? Beefy.Finance is a yield farming optimizer built on a major public blockchain, simply put, it helps you participate more efficiently.

On December 26th, the Bitcoin options market will experience the largest expiration in history, with approximately 300,000 contracts with a notional value of up to $23.7 billion. Analysts expect this to amplify market volatility, and historical data shows that such deliveries often lead to clear unilateral trends, with investors remaining cautious.

The latest ETH trend shows a weak consolidation pattern, with prices dropping sharply while trading volume increases, indicating increased selling pressure. Technical indicators show no clear trend, and key price levels suggest opportunities for both bulls and bears. Risk management is the top priority in trading.

This year, the US cryptocurrency market regulation has performed strongly, with a surge in SEC filings mentioning blockchain, especially related to Bitcoin, reflecting the enthusiasm of institutions and investors. Crypto assets are gradually integrating into mainstream investment portfolios, indicating a market shift.

Tianji Holdings plans to combine sports intellectual property projects with AI and VR through Web3 blockchain technology to create traceable digital products. Each product is unique and dynamic, enhancing the interactivity of traditional static collectibles. This move demonstrates their emphasis on new business areas and opens up new monetization opportunities for the integration of sports IP and blockchain.

【Crypto World】Ripple's Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz recently spoke out on social media, offering an interpretation of the company's 2017 escrow mechanism.
The design of this mechanism is as follows: lock 55 billion XRP, then release 1 billion each month. It sounds quite rigorous. But Schwartz's view is interesting—he says that this mechanism actually restricts the flexibility of XRP sales.
To be more straightforward, he personally opposes this escrow arrangement. In his view, the emphasis on "predictability" when promoting this mechanism actually masks a deeper issue: it locks the company's sales space in the face of market changes. In comparison, unlimited release of XRP actually provides more operational flexibility.
So why hasn't the price plummeted as a result? Schwartz explains that these potential future sales volumes have long been anticipated by the market.

Maple Lending Protocol achieved significant growth in 2023, with assets under management increasing from $500 million to $5 billion, and annual revenue exceeding $25 million. It has partnered with several major collaborators, continuously expanding its ecosystem. Looking ahead to 2026, Maple plans to raise its revenue target to $100 million, requiring breakthroughs in customer acquisition and product optimization.

Latest market expectations show an 84.5% probability that the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates unchanged in January, and a 15.5% chance of a 25 basis point rate cut. By March, the probability of a 25 basis point cut rises to 42.2%, but the likelihood of holding steady remains at 51.8%. The market has differing opinions on future interest rate policies, especially in crypto asset allocation, which requires close attention.

【Crypto World】2026 may truly be a watershed moment. Former CFTC Acting Chair Caroline Pham recently shared her approach to regulatory work and announced she will join MoonPay. This shift itself sends a signal — insiders are voting with their feet.
Meanwhile, members of Congress are also busy. The (PARITY Act) is advancing, with a clear core goal: to close the tax loophole of "wash sales," but more importantly, to open the door for staking, mining, and small-scale stablecoin transactions, offering tangible tax incentives. What does this indicate? It shows that policymakers are beginning to recognize the legitimacy of these activities.
The new CFTC Chair Michael Selig has been sworn in. JPMorgan is testing crypto trading services aimed at institutional investors, and Arizona is pushing forward with digital asset tax reforms.

AAVE founder Stani Kulechov repurchased tokens worth $10 million, sparking controversy. Some believe this move was to enhance voting power and influence governance proposals. DeFi strategists point out that the current token mechanism has shortcomings in preventing governance attacks, reflecting the potential impact of large traders on voting, and highlighting the contradiction between DeFi protocols protecting holder rights and preventing abuse.

On December 24th, BlackRock deposited 2292 Bitcoins and 9976 Ethereum into a compliant platform, demonstrating the continued interest of institutions in digital assets. This large transaction may reflect an active strategic positioning based on market trends, which is worth the attention of market participants.

【Blockchain Rhythm】 Prediction market platform Polymarket ran into trouble this week. On December 24th, the platform officially confirmed that recent security threats to multiple user accounts were caused by a vulnerability in a third-party identity verification provider.
As early as the beginning of this week, users on X and Reddit started reporting that their Polymarket accounts had been hacked. These victims shared details of their losses on social media, which drew considerable attention. Further investigation revealed that the issue mainly affected users who registered through Magic Labs. Magic Labs is a service that allows users to log in directly with an email and automatically generate non-custodial Ethereum wallets. For newcomers without experience in crypto asset wallets, this service is considered a very convenient entry point.
On Tuesday, Polymarket acknowledged the incident in its official Discord channel.

Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov proposed to allocate 17.45 million CRV tokens to Swiss Stake AG to support ecosystem development. However, voting results showed 54.46% opposition, mainly from addresses related to Yearn and Convex. The community discussed this, questioning the risk of governance centralization, and suggested increasing transparency and implementing phased payments before the allocation.

A leading exchange's Bitcoin reserves reached 34,055 coins, with a year-on-year growth of 114%. Its over-collateralization system has strengthened the robustness of its balance sheet, with a Bitcoin over-collateralization rate of 300% and Ether at 183%, reflecting the reserve accumulation strategy and risk management measures during the bear market.

Japan and the United States reached a new protocol in trade negotiations, with Japan planning to invest $550 billion in the U.S. to address tariff policies. This move aims to alleviate trade frictions through capital inflows, impacting the global economy and the crypto market, and investors need to follow related developments.

After the U.S. presidential election last year, DOGE rose by as much as 152%, but this could not be sustained due to the annual increase in dumping pressure and the rapid decline in market enthusiasm. This year, the newly launched Spot ETF also failed to attract sufficient demand, leading to an unfavorable situation.

[Coin World] On-chain monitoring has detected a transfer of 5,869 Bitcoins (worth approximately $513.8 million) from a Cold Wallet of a certain Compliance platform to a new Address. This transfer went through multiple intermediaries, and the final receiving Address also received two transfers of 152.611 and 50.87 Bitcoins. At the time of the announcement, the BTC price remained around $87,648, showing relative stability.
For such large transfers, the market typically has two interpretations. One is that holders are preparing for long-term accumulation, while the other is more mundane—possibly just routine operations like internal address management or adjustments to Cold Wallet balances. Which one it is will require further observation of subsequent developments.

【Coin World】Lemon Slice's recent financing move is significant — it has just completed a $10.5 million seed round, aiming to launch its own diffusion model, Lemon Slice-2, into the market.
This model is quite interesting: it can generate interactive digital avatars from a single image, and it runs effectively on a single GPU with a scale of 20 billion parameters, stably outputting a video stream at 20 frames per second. There's no need to utilize supercomputing clusters, which is a tangible advantage for reducing deployment costs.
The application scenarios are quite broad - customer service robots, virtual lecturers in educational settings, and mental health support, all of which are directly monetizable tracks. Particularly, it supports the generation of both human and non-human characters, which means the creative space has been opened up, whether it's virtual avatars or 2D assistants.
The investors behind it are also strong players — Matrix Partners and