This week, the cryptocurrency market witnessed declines in key metrics, with market capitalisation, trading volume, and volatility indices dropping by -5.05%, -32.10%, and -43.02%, respectively.
In notable developments, Lido (LDO) launched the Identified Community Staker (ICS) application on the Ethereum mainnet. This initiative aims to verify individuals with priority terms within the Community Staking Module. The ICS employs a points system to evaluate experience, engagement, and community contributions, requiring applicants to accumulate a minimum of 15 points to qualify. Those approved as ICS participants stand to benefit from a 6% reward share, a 1.5 ETH bond, and priority deposit options for the first ten keys. The program seeks to channel early capacity to verified participants while ensuring robust controls around validator performance and strike policies.
Aave Labs (AAVE) introduced a new platform named Horizon, facilitating institutional borrowing of stablecoins by leveraging tokenised real-world assets as collateral. This move is expected to enhance the liquidity and stability of stablecoin markets.
dYdX (DYDX) has refined its 2025 roadmap to include plans for launching a trading feature integrated with Telegram in September, aimed at enhancing accessibility for users.
Ethena’s USDe stablecoin has reached a significant milestone with a total supply of $12 billion, capturing 17% of USDC’s supply as of September 1. This remarkable growth places it as a formidable challenger to established stablecoins USDC and USDT, as its supply surged by 44% in August, compared to 12% for USDC and just 2% for USDT. The rise of USDe may be attributed to leveraged yield loops on Pendle and Aave, enabling users to exploit high-return delta-neutral hedging strategies, although this leverage-centric model prompts concerns regarding sustainability in adverse market conditions.
In another key partnership, Underdog, a sports gaming company, has teamed up with Crypto.com | Derivatives North America (CDNA) to deliver sports event contracts to its customers. This collaboration will empower Underdog’s users to express and trade their opinions on major sports events in real-time, covering leagues such as the NFL, NBA, and MLB.
Cronos has unveiled its roadmap for 2025-2026, which includes the establishment of a robust decentralised finance (DeFi) ecosystem and a partnership with Crypto.com to create an institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure. These efforts aim to enhance retail adoption through seamless integration with Crypto.com’s product offerings, ultimately striving for significant market penetration by the end of 2026.
The Ethereum Foundation has outlined a comprehensive multi-track roadmap aimed at boosting Ethereum’s performance and interoperability. This includes the introduction of the Open Intents Framework, the Ethereum Interoperability Layer, and extensive research on zero-knowledge proofs to improve Layer-1 finality, all while upholding fundamental principles of censorship-resistance, privacy, and security.
Additionally, the US government has collaborated with Chainlink and Pyth Network to bring economic data such as gross domestic product and consumer price index on-chain, striving for greater transparency in government spending and facilitating the development of automated trading strategies.
Avalanche is partnering with Toyota Blockchain Lab on a pioneering project to create a blockchain-based infrastructure for autonomous robotaxi fleets, termed the Mobility Orchestration Network (MON). This initiative seeks to facilitate secure data sharing and ownership transfers, potentially revolutionising the market for fully autonomous vehicle fleets.
In a significant community decision, the Stargate community voted overwhelmingly in favor (with 95% support) of a $110 million bid from LayerZero, resulting in the dissolution of the Stargate DAO and a token swap of STG tokens for LayerZero’s ZRO tokens.
Offchain Labs has forged a partnership with Succinct Labs to integrate ZK proofs into the Arbitrum Layer-2 network through the Tandem initiative, which aims to enhance asset withdrawal speeds, interoperability, and overall security.
Tether has announced plans to release its USDT token on the RGB protocol, anchored to Bitcoin, which is expected to improve the efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and privacy of USDT transactions on the Bitcoin network.
Finally, XStocks is set to launch on Ethereum with approximately 60 tokenised stocks, following its initial release on Solana.
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