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Why is it that recent acquisitions in the crypto space no longer include the token?
The day before yesterday, the Interop Labs team (the original developers of the Axelar Network) announced their acquisition by Circle to accelerate the development of their multi-chain infrastructure Arc and CCTP.
Normally, getting acquired is a good thing. However, the Interop Labs team's further elaboration in the same tweet caused quite a stir. They stated that the Axelar Network, foundation, and AXL token will continue to operate independently, and their development work will be taken over by CommonPrefix.
In other words, the core of this transaction is the "team joining Circle" to drive the application of USDC in the fields of privacy computing and compliant payments, rather than a full acquisition of the Axelar Network or its token ecosystem. The team and the technology are what Circle has acquired. Your original project is of no concern to Circle.
Following the announcement of the acquisition, the price of the Axelar token $AXL initially saw a slight increase before starting to decline, and it has now dropped by approximately 15%.
This arrangement quickly sparked a heated debate in the community about "token vs. equity." Many investors questioned whether Circle, by acquiring the team and intellectual property, effectively acquired the core assets while bypassing the rights of AXL token holders.
"If you are a founder and want to issue a token, either treat it like equity or get out."
Over the past year, similar cases of "wanting the team and the technology, but not the token" have occurred repeatedly in the crypto space, causing significant harm to retail investors.
In July, the foundation of Kraken's Layer 2 network, Ink, acquired the decentralized exchange platform Vertex Protocol based on Arbitrum, taking over its engineering team and trading technology stack, including synchronized order book, perpetual contract engine, and money market code. After the acquisition, Vertex closed its services on 9 EVM chains, and the $VRTX token was abandoned. Upon the announcement, $VRTX plummeted by over 75% on the same day, gradually approaching zero (currently valued at only $73,000).
However, holders of $VRTX still have a tiny bit of comfort because during the Ink TGE, they will receive a 1% airdrop (snapshot has ended). Next, there is something even worse: outright nullification with no compensation whatsoever.
In October, pump.fun announced the acquisition of the trading terminal Padre. Upon the announcement of the Padre acquisition, pump.fun also stated that the Padre token would no longer be used on the platform and directly expressed that there were no future plans for the token. Due to the token nullification statement in the final reply of the thread, the token instantly doubled and then sharply fell, with $PADRE currently holding only a $100,000 market cap.
In November, Coinbase announced the acquisition of Solana trading terminal Vector.fun built by Tensor Labs. Coinbase integrated Vector's technology into its DEX infrastructure, but did not involve the Tensor NFT marketplace itself or the ownership of $TNSR, with some of the Tensor Labs team transitioning to Coinbase or other projects.
The trend of $TNSR is relatively stable compared to several examples, characterized by a surge followed by a fall back, with the current price returning to a level expected of an NFT market token and still higher than the low point before the acquisition announcement.
In Web2, it is legal for small companies to be acquired by large enterprises in a "we want the team, we want the technology IP, but we don't want the equity" manner, a situation known as "acquihire." Especially in the tech industry, "acquihire" allows large enterprises to rapidly integrate talented teams and technology through this method, avoiding the lengthy process of recruiting from scratch or internal development, thereby accelerating product development, entering new markets, or enhancing competitiveness. Although disadvantageous to small shareholders, it stimulates overall economic growth and technological innovation.
Nevertheless, "acquihire" must also adhere to the principle of "acting in the best interest of the company." The reason why these examples in the crypto industry have made the community so angry is precisely because the "small shareholders" who are token holders do not agree with the project teams in the crypto industry "acting in the best interest of the company" by being acquired for the better development of the project. Project teams often dream of going public on the stock exchange when the project itself can earn big money, and then when everything is just starting or hitting a dead end, they launch a token to make money (the most typical example being OpenSea). After these project teams make money from the token, they quickly find new homes for themselves, leaving behind the past projects only in their resumes.
So, does the retail investor in the crypto space have to keep gritting their teeth and swallowing the bitter pill? It was also just the day before yesterday that Ernesto, former Chief Technology Officer of Aave Labs, released a governance proposal titled "$AAVE Alignment Phase 1: Ownership," firing a shot in the crypto community to defend token rights.
The proposal advocates for the Aave DAO and Aave token holders to explicitly hold core rights such as protocol IP, brand, equity, and revenue. Aave service provider representative Marc Zeller and others publicly endorsed the proposal, calling it "one of the most influential proposals in Aave's governance history."
In the proposal, Ernesto mentioned, "Due to some events in the past, some previous posts and comments have held strong animosity towards Aave Labs, but this proposal strives to remain neutral. The proposal does not imply that Aave Labs should not be a contributor to the DAO, or lack the legitimacy or capability of contribution, but the decision should be made by the Aave DAO."
According to crypto KOL @cmdefi's analysis, the root of this conflict lies in Aave Labs replacing the front-end integration of ParaSwap with CoW Swap, resulting in fees flowing to Aave Labs' private address thereafter. In response, Aave DAO supporters view this as a form of pillaging, as with the existence of the AAVE governance token, all benefits should primarily flow to AAVE holders or remain in the treasury to be decided by the DAO vote. Additionally, previously, ParaSwap's revenue would continue to flow into the DAO; the new CoW Swap integration changed this status quo, further convincing the DAO that this was a form of pillaging.
This starkly reflects a conflict similar to that of a "shareholders' meeting versus management," once again highlighting the awkward position of token rights in the crypto industry. In the early days of the industry, many projects promoted token "value capture" (such as earning rewards through staking or directly sharing revenue). However, starting from 2020, SEC enforcement actions (such as the lawsuits against Ripple and Telegram) forced the industry to pivot towards "utility tokens" or "governance tokens," emphasizing usage rights rather than economic rights. As a result, token holders often cannot directly share in project dividends—the project's revenue may flow to the team or VC-held equity, while token holders act as powerless stakeholders.
As seen in the examples mentioned in this article, project teams often sell team, technical resources, or equity to VCs or large corporations while also selling tokens to retail investors, ultimately resulting in resource and equity holders taking priority in profits, leaving token holders marginalized or empty-handed. This is because tokens do not have legally recognized investor rights.
In order to circumvent the regulation that "tokens cannot be securities," tokens have been designed to be increasingly "useless." By avoiding regulation, retail investors have once again found themselves in a highly passive and unprotected position. The various incidents that have occurred this year have, in a sense, reminded us that the current issue of the crypto world's "narrative failure" may not actually be that people no longer believe in narratives—narratives are still convincing, profits are still good, but what exactly can we expect when we buy a token?
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Coinbase Joins Prediction Market, AAVE Governance Dispute - What's the Overseas Crypto Community Talking About Today?
Over the past 24 hours, the crypto market has shown strong momentum across multiple dimensions. The mainstream discussion has focused on Coinbase's official entry into the prediction market through the acquisition of The Clearing Company, as well as the intense controversy within the AAVE community regarding token incentives and governance rights.
In terms of ecosystem development, Solana has introduced the innovative Kora fee layer aimed at reducing user transaction costs; meanwhile, the Perp DEX competition has intensified, with the showdown between Hyperliquid and Lighter sparking widespread community discussion on the future of decentralized derivatives.
This week, Coinbase announced the acquisition of The Clearing Company, marking another significant move to deepen its presence in this field after last week's announcement of launching a prediction market on its platform.
The Clearing Company's founder, Toni Gemayel, and the team will join Coinbase to jointly drive the development of the prediction market business.
Coinbase's Product Lead, Shan Aggarwal, stated that the growth of the prediction market is still in its early stages and predicts that 2026 will be the breakout year for this field.
The community has reacted positively to this, generally believing that Coinbase's entry will bring significant traffic and compliance advantages to the prediction market. However, this has also sparked discussions about the industry's competitive landscape.
Jai Bhavnani, Founder of Rivalry, commented that for startups, if their product model proves to be successful, industry giants like Coinbase have ample reason to replicate it.
This serves as a reminder to all entrepreneurs in the crypto space that they must build significant moats to withstand competition pressure from these giants.
Regulated prediction market platform Kalshi launched its research arm, Kalshi Research, this week, aimed at opening its internal data to the academic community and researchers to facilitate exploration of prediction market-related topics.
Its inaugural research report highlights Kalshi's outperformance in predicting inflation compared to Wall Street's traditional models. Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara commented that the power of prediction markets lies in the valuable data they generate, and it is now time to better utilize this data.
Meanwhile, Kalshi announced its support for the BNB Chain (BSC), allowing users to deposit and withdraw BNB and USDT via the BSC network.
This move is seen as a significant step for Kalshi to open its platform to a broader crypto user base, aiming to unlock access to the world's largest prediction market. Furthermore, Kalshi also revealed plans to host the first Prediction Market Summit in 2026 to further drive industry engagement and development.
The AAVE community recently engaged in heated debates around an Aave Improvement Proposal (AIP) titled "AAVE Tokenomics Alignment Phase One - Ownership Governance," aiming to transfer ownership and control of the Aave brand from Aave Labs to Aave DAO.
Aave founder Stani Kulechov publicly stated his intention to vote against the proposal, believing it oversimplifies the complex legal and operational structure, potentially slowing down the development process of core products like Aave V4.
The community's reaction was polarized. Some criticized Stani for adopting a "double standard" in governance and questioned whether his team had siphoned off protocol revenue, while others supported his cautious stance, arguing that significant governance changes require more thorough discussion.
This controversy highlights the tension between the ideal of DAO governance in DeFi projects and the actual power held by core development teams.
Despite governance disputes putting pressure on the AAVE token price, on-chain data shows that Stani Kulechov himself has purchased millions of dollars' worth of AAVE in the past few hours.
Simultaneously, a whale address, 0xDDC4, which had been quiet for 6 months, once again spent 500 ETH (approximately $1.53 million) to purchase 9,629 AAVE tokens. Data indicates that this whale has accumulated nearly 40,000 AAVE over the past year but is currently in an unrealized loss position.
The founder and whale's increased holdings during market volatility were interpreted by some investors as a confidence signal in AAVE's long-term value.
In this week's top article, Morpho Labs' "Curator Explained" detailed the role of "curators" in DeFi.
The article likened curators to asset managers in traditional finance, who design, deploy, and manage on-chain vaults, providing users with a one-click diversified investment portfolio.
Unlike traditional fund managers, DeFi curators execute strategies automatically through non-custodial smart contracts, allowing users to maintain full control of their assets. The article offered a new perspective on the specialization and risk management in the DeFi space.
Another widely circulated article, "Ethereum 2025: From Experiment to Global Infrastructure," provided a comprehensive summary of Ethereum's development over the past year. The article noted that 2025 is a crucial year for Ethereum's transition from an experimental project to global financial infrastructure. Through the Pectra and Fusaka hard forks, Ethereum achieved significant reductions in account abstraction and transaction costs.
Furthermore, the SEC's clarification of Ethereum's "non-securities" nature and the launch of tokenized funds on the Ethereum mainnet by traditional financial giants like JPMorgan marked Ethereum's gaining recognition from mainstream institutions. The article suggested that whether it is the continued growth of DeFi, the thriving L2 ecosystem, or the integration with the AI field, Ethereum's vision as the "world computer" is gradually becoming a reality.
The Solana Foundation engineering team released a fee layer solution called Kora this week.
Kora is a fee relayer and signatory node designed to provide the Solana ecosystem with a more flexible transaction fee payment method. Through Kora, users will be able to achieve gas-free transactions or choose to pay network fees using any stablecoin or SPL token. This innovation is seen as an important step in lowering the barrier of entry for new users and improving Solana network's availability.
Additionally, a deep research report on propAMM (proactive market maker) sparked community interest. The report's data analysis of propAMMs on Solana like HumidiFi indicated that Solana has achieved, or even surpassed, the level of transaction execution quality in traditional finance (TradFi) markets.
For example, on the SOL-USDC trading pair, HumidiFi is able to provide a highly competitive spread for large trades (0.4-1.6 bps), which is already better than the trading slippage of some mid-cap stocks in traditional markets.
Research suggests that propAMM is making the vision of the "Internet Capital Market" a reality, with Solana emerging as the prime venue for all of this to happen.
The competition in the perpetual contract DEX (Perp DEX) space is becoming increasingly heated.
In its latest official article, Hyperliquid has positioned its emerging competitor, Lighter, alongside centralized exchanges like Binance, referring to it as a platform utilizing a centralized sequencer. Hyperliquid emphasizes its transparency advantage of being "fully on-chain, operated by a validator network, and with no hidden state."
The community widely interprets this as Hyperliquid declaring "war" on Lighter. The technical differences between the two platforms have also become a focal point of discussion: Hyperliquid focuses on ultimate on-chain transparency, while Lighter emphasizes achieving "verifiable execution" through zero-knowledge proofs to provide users with a Central Limit Order Book (CLOB)-like trading experience.
This battle over the future direction of decentralized derivatives exchanges is expected to peak in 2026.
Meanwhile, discussions about Lighter's trading fees have surfaced. Some users have pointed out that Lighter charged as much as 81 basis points (0.81%) for a $2 million USD/JPY forex trade, far exceeding the near-zero spreads of traditional forex brokers.
Some argue that Lighter does not follow a B-book model that bets against market makers, instead anchoring its prices to the TradFi market, and the high fees may be related to the current liquidity or market maker balance incentives. Providing a more competitive spread for real-world assets (RWA) in the highly volatile crypto market is a key issue Lighter will need to address in the future.
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