As the Layer 2 race is being drained by Monad (parallel EVM) and Base (consumer-level L2), Starknet today is facing not only a market pullback but also a massive unlock sell-off from early investors.
STRK plummeted 12% today, falling below a key psychological support level. Before the momentum of Monad's launch fades, it is advisable to avoid the older generation of ZK-Rollup tokens.
Monad Launch 48 Hours Before: The "Bridge Fee" War between Wormhole (W) and LayerZero (ZRO)
Only 2 days remain until the Monad mainnet goes live on February 14. Today, there has been a crazy "pre-bridging" frenzy on-chain.
According to DefiLlama data, in the past 24 hours, the amount of funds bridged to the Monad deposit contracts (and related pre-heating pools) via Wormhole and LayerZero has exceeded $300 million.
As Monad's official preferred bridge, Wormhole saw a rise today against the trend.
As a major competitor, ZRO also recorded an increase. The market logic is very clear: regardless of the fate of the meme coins on Monad, cross-chain bridges are guaranteed to earn "toll fees".
Monad Launch Countdown (3 days): Wormhole (W) Becomes the Largest Shovel
The highly anticipated parallel EVM public chain Monad will officially launch its mainnet on February 14 (Valentine's Day). Today, Monad officially announced that Wormhole will be its preferred official cross-chain bridge at the time of mainnet launch.
The market expects a huge demand for capital cross-chain at the initial stage of Monad's launch (to rush for mining), and Wormhole will capture the fees from this traffic.
Wormhole (W) surged 15% today, seen by the market as the best "Beta asset" to bet on Monad's success.
DeFi Rotation Third Stage: Compound (COMP) Governance Proposal Imitates Aave
As the "DeFi Dividend" narrative completely ignites the market under the leadership of Uniswap and Aave, the capital flow this Tuesday is very clear: seeking the stagnant old blue chips in "DeFi 1.0". At the same time, the highly anticipated EigenLayer large unlock took place today, but the market staged a reversal drama of "bad news being fully priced in is good news".
This is a typical sector rotation logic. Following Uniswap and Aave, the community of the lending protocol veteran Compound has today introduced a new governance proposal named "Golden Circle".
The proposal suggests using part of the surplus in the Compound Treasury (mainly USDC reserves) for the buyback and destruction of COMP, which is seen as the most radical attempt at token economics reform in the protocol's history.
Funds are starting to mindlessly sweep up all "old DeFi", with Synthetix (SNX) and Balancer (BAL) both seeing gains today.
DeFi Revival 2.0: Aave Founder Hints at 'Activating Dividends', Coin Price Hits Two-Year High
This is a typical 'Weekend Surprise'. Just as the Uniswap governance proposal received overwhelming support, Aave founder Stani Kulechov today posted a brief but significant tweet on social media: "It's time to turn on the faucet."
Subsequently, a new 'Temperature Check' proposal appeared on the Aave governance forum, suggesting the use of excess income accumulated in the protocol treasury to buy back AAVE and distribute it to stakers, or directly activate the 'Fee Switch'.
The market instantly surged, with AAVE's price soaring to a new high since 2024.
Funds began to frantically search for the next protocol with 'real revenue but no dividends yet', with Maker (MKR) and Curve (CRV) continuing to rally today. $AAVE
With the conclusion of last night's Federal Reserve FOMC meeting, the market's panic sentiment has dissipated. Powell's "hawkish pause" has been interpreted by the market as his last stubborn stance before leaving office, while funds are more focused on the regulatory easing that the "Warsh era" is expected to bring.
The market is beginning to re-evaluate the cash flow valuation (PE Ratio) of DeFi protocols. Aave (AAVE) and Curve (CRV) have surged closely behind, as funds bet that they will be the next protocols to initiate dividends.
Last night, Powell announced as expected that interest rates would remain unchanged, and during the press conference, he took a tough stance, claiming that "the likelihood of a rate cut in March is very low." However, the market completely ignored his hawkish remarks.
Wall Street traders are trading "The Warsh Call" (Warsh call options). The market generally believes that with Kevin Warsh about to take over, the current tightening policy will make a complete turnaround in May.
FOMC Decision Outlook: Powell May Announce "Hawkish Pause", BTC Volume Shrinks and Fluctuates
The Federal Reserve FOMC meeting is currently underway, with the decision to be announced in a few hours. Recent trading desk reports from Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan indicate that Powell is highly likely to announce tonight that interest rates will remain unchanged, emphasizing the determination to combat inflation during the press conference to counter political pressure from the White House demanding "immediate rate cuts".
Bitcoin (BTC) has seen a significant decline in trading volume today, and options data shows that traders are heavily buying short-term put options for hedging to prevent a "spike" market condition tonight.
The US Dollar Index (DXY) has slightly rebounded to 103.5, limiting the upside potential for risk assets. $BTC #加密市场
Visa's "Solana Ambition": Global Consumer Payment Pilot Launched
Payment giant Visa today released a significant press release announcing the official expansion of its USDC settlement pilot project on the Solana chain from "inter-institutional settlement" to "consumer merchant payments."
Visa will collaborate with Worldpay and Nuvei to allow select contracted merchants to receive USDC payments directly through the Solana network, with a settlement time of less than 1 second.
Driven by this substantial positive news, Solana (SOL) price today ignored market fluctuations and briefly broke through $158, emerging from the previous "congestion gloom."
This news also boosted Pyth Network (PYTH) (as Visa's payment data oracle partner) by 12%. #Visa
L1 New King Ascends: Berachain Mainnet Officially Launches Today
The highly anticipated and repeatedly delayed Berachain has finally announced the official launch of its mainnet today afternoon Singapore time.
Berachain's unique "Proof of Liquidity (PoL)" mechanism is now operational. Users providing liquidity can earn BGT (governance token) rewards, which are non-transferable and can only be exchanged 1:1 for BERA (Gas token).
On-chain data shows that over 800 million dollars worth of assets have flowed into Berachain through cross-chain bridges from Ethereum and Arbitrum in the past 6 hours.
The trading volume of the native DEX Kodiak and lending protocol Infrared within the Berachain ecosystem has surged. In the OTC market, the valuation of BERA has quickly climbed to an FDV (Fully Diluted Valuation) of 6 billion dollars.
Standard Chartered Bank's Major Research Report: BTC Target Price Raised to 200,000 USD
Geoff Kendrick, Head of Crypto Research at Standard Chartered Bank, released the latest research report today, titled "The Warsh Effect: The End of Financial Repression."
The report points out that Kevin Warsh's ascension means that U.S. regulators will shift from "suppressing crypto" to "incorporating crypto into the dollar hegemony system." As a result, Standard Chartered Bank has raised its target price for Bitcoin at the end of 2026 from 150,000 USD to 200,000 USD.
Influenced by this report, institutional buying significantly increased during Monday's early trading session. #BTC何时反弹? $BTC
🚨 Breaking Confirmation: Kevin Warsh Wins the Federal Reserve 'Iron Throne'
On January 30th (Friday) at 9 AM Eastern Time, Trump posted on Truth Social announcing: "I am very pleased to nominate Kevin Warsh as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board." Trump praised Warsh as the "Chosen One (Central Casting)" and claimed he "will never disappoint you," predicting he will become the "great, if not the best, Federal Reserve Chairman."
In the election, Warsh defeated another popular candidate, current National Economic Council (NEC) Director Kevin Hassett (Trump stated that Hassett was too important to be away from the White House).
Although Warsh's nomination is seen as a long-term positive for cryptocurrency (reasons below), within hours of the announcement, the market experienced "hawkish panic": the Dollar Index (DXY) surged instantly, while Bitcoin (BTC) and Gold saw a short-term decline.
The reason being, Warsh was known as a "hawk on inflation" (advocating for interest rate hikes and tightening) during his tenure as a Federal Reserve Board member from 2006 to 2011. Old Wall Street traders still remember him as a proponent of "Hard Money."
Compared to Kevin Hassett, who unreservedly supported Trump's interest rate cuts, the market is worried that Warsh might maintain a certain level of "integrity" and not engage in the reckless monetary expansion that the market expects.
But don't be fooled by the short-term decline; Warsh's ascension is actually a significant positive for the medium- to long-term fundamentals of Crypto, primarily reflected in "currency form" rather than "currency quantity": Warsh has publicly criticized central bank digital currencies (CBDC) multiple times as a "threat to freedom," believing that the Federal Reserve should not compete with private banks through CBDCs.
This directly clears the biggest official competitor for Circle (USDC) and PayPal (PYUSD). Private stablecoins will become America's "de facto digital dollar."
In addition, Warsh has close ties with Wall Street elites (such as Stanley Druckenmiller) and is more inclined to incorporate Bitcoin and crypto assets into a formal financial regulatory framework, rather than suppressing them like Gensler. #下任美联储主席会是谁? $BTC
Social Carnival on Base: Farcaster Daily Active Users Exceed One Million
Benefiting from the explosive growth of the Base chain this week, the decentralized social protocol Farcaster today announced that its daily active users (DAU) have officially surpassed the one million mark.
The Farcaster client Warpcast launched "Frames v2" today, which supports one-click NFT minting and token swapping directly in the social feed (similar to WeChat mini-programs, but fully on-chain).
Driven by this, the Farcaster community token Degen (DEGEN) surged again today by 20%, and its trading volume on the Base chain briefly exceeded ETH. #加密市场
European regulatory crackdown lands, Worldcoin (WLD) faces a "permanent ban" at its darkest moment
The cryptocurrency market faced a regulatory black swan today, as AI identity verification leader Worldcoin (WLD) is experiencing the most severe survival crisis since its inception. According to the latest disclosures from Reuters and The Block, the Bavarian State Office for Data Protection (BayLDA) and the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) have unusually issued a joint statement today, proposing to upgrade the previous temporary restrictions on Worldcoin's iris scanning operations to a "permanent ban." After two years of in-depth investigation, regulators determined that Worldcoin's data collection model has fundamental flaws in protecting minors' privacy and implementing the GDPR's "right to be forgotten," and the immutability of blockchain technology makes the complete deletion of biometric data technically inconsistent.
Upon the announcement, panic selling erupted in the secondary market, causing WLD's price to plummet sharply, with intraday losses once exceeding 18%, hitting a new low since 2026. On-chain data further shows that leading market makers such as Wintermute quickly transferred large amounts of tokens to exchanges after the statement was released, indicating extremely strong risk-averse sentiment. Although the Worldcoin Foundation urgently responded that its latest "personal custody" technology has addressed privacy pain points and pledged to appeal to the European Court, market confidence is on the verge of collapse under the historically strict enforcement of GDPR fines (which can reach up to 4% of global turnover) in the EU. This incident not only severely impacted WLD's fundamentals but also cast a heavy compliance shadow over the entire Web3 biometric recognition sector, advising investors to remain highly cautious until the legal outcomes are clear.
Base Ecosystem Explosion: TVL Doubles in One Day, Surpassing Arbitrum
Driven by the dual momentum of yesterday's Stripe expanding payment support and the favorable 'Market Structure Act', Coinbase's Layer 2 network Base has reached a historic moment today. Data shows that Base's total locked value (TVL) on-chain surged by 12% in the past 24 hours, officially surpassing Arbitrum in numerical terms, becoming the number one L2 in the Ethereum ecosystem TVL rankings.
As the top liquidity hub on Base, Aerodrome's token price skyrocketed by 25% today, breaking $2.50.
The market generally believes that as regulation becomes clearer, Coinbase will directly onboard tens of millions of compliant users to Base, with AERO being the first stop to capture this traffic (similar to Raydium/Jupiter on Solana).
It is evident that Base is becoming the 'compliant version of Solana'. In addition to the leading AERO, meme coins on Base (such as DEGEN, BRETT) can also be exploited, which typically rally when ecosystem funds overflow.
Historic Moment: Senate Committee Passes the Digital Asset Market Structure Act
Today afternoon Eastern Time, the Senate Agriculture Committee officially passed the Markup stage of the Digital Asset Market Structure Act with a vote of 14 to 6.
The Act clarifies the jurisdiction of the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) over "digital commodities" such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and sufficiently decentralized tokens, and establishes a federal framework for stablecoin issuers. Uniswap (UNI) and Aave (AAVE) continue to maintain strength, with no significant "Sell the News" crash, as the provisions regarding "DeFi frontend exemptions" in the bill text are more favorable than expected.
Ethereum (ETH) benefits from the clarified definition of "digital commodities," outperforming BTC today, with the exchange rate (ETH/BTC) surging by 3%. #加密市场动态 $ETH
Vitalik's article ignites the flames of 'decentralized reasoning': Why are TAO and AKT the biggest winners?
Today, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin published a long article titled (Promise and Risks of Crypto-AI: 2026 Edition) on his personal blog. This article is not only a significant update to his 2024 article of the same name but is also interpreted by the market as a 'declaration of war' against the current monopoly of AI giants in Silicon Valley. As a result, the AI sector experienced a full-blown rally today after half a year of sideways movement. Among them, Bittensor (TAO) saw its daily increase approach 25%, followed closely by Akash Network (AKT) and Render (RNDR). Funds are voting with their feet, betting that 'decentralized reasoning' will be the next trillion-dollar sector following 'computational mining.'
DeFi's "Normandy Moment": UNI Leads the Rush for Legislative Benefits
Tomorrow (January 27), the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee will conduct the final markup and vote on the highly anticipated "Digital Asset Market Structure Bill."
A well-known lobbying group in Washington disclosed today that the latest draft of the bill removes the provision imposing broker compliance obligations on "non-custodial software developers" (i.e., DeFi protocol developers).
This is seen as a significant benefit for DeFi. Capital is betting that once the bill passes, DeFi protocols will be able to compliantly activate the "Fee Switch" and distribute dividends to token holders.
Wall Street's New Darling: BitGo Lists on the NYSE, Ledger Plans to Follow Suit
Crypto custody giant BitGo officially began trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) today.
BitGo's stock price experienced extreme volatility on its first trading day, surging as much as 36% after opening before retreating due to profit-taking. YZi Labs was revealed to be one of the main backers of BitGo's IPO.
Spurred by the positive news of BitGo's listing, another major hardware wallet/custody giant, Ledger, immediately announced that it is evaluating plans for an IPO in New York, targeting a valuation of over $4 billion. This marks a wave of "traditional capital market listings" for crypto infrastructure companies.
Trump Family WLFI Ventures into Space: Partnering with Spacecoin to Build a 'Censorship-Resistant' Financial Network
The DeFi project World Liberty Financial (WLFI), supported by the Trump family, officially announced today a strategic partnership with the decentralized satellite network service provider Spacecoin. The two parties not only completed a token swap but also announced that they will jointly build a financial settlement layer that is 'completely independent of the traditional internet.' This move is interpreted by the market as WLFI attempting to bypass the limitations of ground ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and the traditional banking SWIFT system, creating a truly 'censorship-resistant' DeFi infrastructure. According to the cooperation agreement, the stablecoin USD1 issued by WLFI will become the native settlement currency on the Spacecoin satellite network. This means that in the future, users connecting to the internet via the Spacecoin satellite will default to using USD1 to pay bandwidth fees, make transfers, and engage in lending.
Trump's speech at Davos eases the "Greenland Tariff" crisis, BTC stabilizes at $90,000
Previously, the market fluctuated sharply due to U.S. President Trump's threat to impose tariffs on the EU (triggered by the diplomatic dispute arising from the U.S. intention to purchase Greenland).
Today at the Davos Forum, Trump softened his tone, announcing that a "framework agreement" has been reached with NATO regarding Greenland and that the tariff plan against the EU has been canceled.
Market panic has subsided (known as the end of the "Taco Trade"). Bitcoin (BTC) has rebounded from yesterday's low of $87,000 and is currently oscillating in the range of $89,800 - $90,500. BNB is performing strongly, breaking through 890 USDT.