Happy holidays, fam ❤️

sUSDai crossed $290M market cap, with Arbitrum hosting ~78% of activity.

It’s a yield-bearing synthetic dollar backed by loans collateralized with AI infra — mostly GPUs. Capital follows yield, narratives follow later.

For synthetic dollars, solvency is simple: reserves vs circulating supply.

Neutrl kept reserves consistently above NUSD throughout expansion, with the buffer widening as OTC tranches vested and hedges accrued funding. As of Dec 8, 2025, reserves sit ~3.9% above supply — conservative by design, with locked and illiquid assets deliberately undercounted.

$NEXO on-chain activity quietly broke out in 2025.

Transactions are up 91% YoY to 70.1K, with $297M in transfer volume — nearly double any prior year, and December isn’t even done yet. Usage trends tend to show up before narratives do.

Even with access capped at ~1.5K addresses, capital is already bridging into Ethereal.

Perp DEXs remain one of crypto’s strongest product-market fits, and users are voting early — with funds, not tweets.

Aave now captures 85%+ of all on-chain lending revenue.

At this point, it’s less a sector and more a monopoly with composability.

Pudgy Penguins are seeing renewed size on Blur and OpenSea, with multiple 4–5.8 ETH buys hitting back-to-back.

Speculation around a Base memecoin launchpad helps, but brand gravity is doing most of the work. Feels less random than past NFT spikes.

Solana stablecoin supply went from ~$3B two years ago to ~$12B last year, and now sits near ~$16B this December.

At this point, growth looks programmed.

Arbitrum pushed close to a quarter-trillion dollars in DEX volume in 2025.

Liquidity went where execution stayed cheap and deep.

RWA topped 2025 in profitability, averaging ~186% YTD across leading tokens.

Outperformance came mainly from Keeta, Zebec, and Maple Finance — though returns were still only a fraction of 2024’s mania. Narratives cool, cash flows stay.

Fundraising cooled in deal count but not in conviction.

Liquidity fragmented, fewer rounds closed than in 2024, yet VCs still deployed ~$68B in 2025 — mostly into narrative leaders with larger checks.

Around 70% of ETH derivatives positions on Binance are now net long.

Whales keep accumulating as exchange balances hover near cycle lows. Supply pressure is tightening quietly.

2025 wasn’t kind to GameFi: funding is down 55%+ YoY and most hyped launches failed to deliver.

What’s actually working are Web2.5 games – teams like Fumb, Mythical, and Wemade using blockchain as infra, not a product. Web3-native games still print some revenue, but player depth collapses once incentives fade.

Let's say "bye" to 2025 and see what it was like ↓

General
➖ Cryptorank: Bitcoin Is No Longer the Energy Threat, but AI Is Becoming One
➖ Cryptorank: 2025 Recap: Milestones and Events
➖ DL Research: The World Crypto Rankings
➖ Binance: Navigating Crypto: Industry Map
➖ Galaxy: Weekly Top Stories - 12/26/25

Market
➖ CoinShares: Digital asset fund flows | December 29th, 2025
➖ CoinShares: Equities update | December 29th 2025

By the end of 2025, L1s still dominate user mindshare.

Narratives rotate, but base layers keep pulling attention.

Arbitrum scaled its Treasury Management Program to $100M+ across RWAs, ETH, ARB, and stables.

In 2025 alone it generated $2M+ in yield, running around ~3% APY over the last month. Boring, but effective.

Not funny, but factual: BTC has never closed a year red – until now.

2025 ends with BTC at roughly -6% YTD. History doesn’t repeat, but it does flinch sometimes.

Stablecoin activity during European hours jumped sharply in 2025.

Even under tighter regulation, usage keeps growing – adoption doesn’t wait for perfect policy.

Tokenized stocks just hit a $1.2B market cap ATH.

Feels like stablecoins circa 2020 – niche, misunderstood, and clearly not done yet.

Prediction markets aren’t just about elections anymore.

Open interest hit a new ATH in December 2025, confirming PMF across broader event classes. This category escaped its original box.