A Week of Over 1500% Growth for DARK, and the People Network Behind the Solana Foundation

By: blockbeats|2025/04/17 10:45:03

On April 17, the Solana ecosystem AI Meme coin DARK briefly surpassed a $32 million market cap, reaching a new all-time high. Over the past week, its market cap has grown by 1500%. In the weak Crypto AI period, how was this AI project able to continue its upward trend? And what is the team behind it, MtnDao?

A Week of Over 1500% Growth for DARK, and the People Network Behind the Solana Foundation

What is Dark

DARK is an AI that provides an MCP to external platforms under the TEE protocol. Everyone in CryptoAI is familiar with TEE, which has appeared multiple times in CryptoAI projects since last year when developer Ropirito created the emote "tee_hee_he." It is an experimental trusted execution environment designed to ensure AI behavior is not influenced by humans. The term MCP may be more commonly heard recently and can be analogized to a USB-C port for large models, allowing various devices to connect through the same interface without being incompatible when switching devices. Since Anthropic open-sourced MCP on November 25, 2024, it quickly swept the AI field and became popular in CryptoAI starting in February 2025.

Dark, a project composed of these two well-known concepts, pushed its market cap to $30 million in the marginal CryptoAI market due to two main factors: "Founder's decision-making and efficiency" and "Founder's team's future expectations."

Founder's Decision-Making and Efficiency

Friend's transformation over a year after designing a fitness plan, Edgar Pavlovsky

Founder with a love for Quidditch

Founder Edgar Pavlovsky is fluent in English and Russian, a graduate of the University of Utah, a long-standing institution located in Salt Lake City. MtnDao's core base in the "We work" workspace, a collaboration with Solana in February, is also located in downtown Salt Lake City. Looking through his social media, you can see that blockchain was not his passion ten years ago but rather a sport called Quidditch, which dominated almost all his posts from 2014 to 2017. This is a sport derived from Quidditch in Harry Potter.

He spent several years with the Utah Crimson Quidditch community team, which once crowdfunded on indiegogo to participate in the Quidditch World Cup. Unfortunately, they only managed to raise $1450.

The player on the far right in the image is Edgar Pavlovsky

Edgar Pavlovsky's Blockchain Journey

After graduating from college, he worked at Uber and founded several startups. Upon entering the blockchain industry, he not only created the Paladin client to combat MEV attacks but also co-founded the Marginfi Solana ecosystem protocol. In April 2024, he left the team due to a misalignment in values, a departure widely believed to be triggered by the earlier SolBlaze accusation of Marginfi manipulating BLZE emission distribution, causing quite a stir at the time.

Further Reading: "Founder Driven Out, TVL Plunges 20%, What Happened to Marginfi?"

His vision for DARK is not just to sell a concept after merging technologies but to have a complete product theory. Following the launch of $DARK, he shared on social media X, "I am focused on building DARK's first product, as DARK aims to achieve its long-term infrastructure goals, iterative productization and listing are the best ways to achieve it, building in public, adding revenue + distribution, testing new technology in production."

To achieve these goals, the product direction he offered is to attract mobile users with a consumer PWA (Progressive Web App) application experience and to replace traditional applications with frequent user viral spread for increased impact. Ideally, this will showcase the decentralized MCP, represented by DARK, in a broad application's POC (Proof of Concept).

Weekly Product Delivery

These words may sound abstract and vague, likely spoken by countless Crypto founders, which also led to DARK's token price hovering between 2M and 4M from April 7 to April 11. During this period, he presented a product concept for a game AI, expressing his love for the full-chain game Dark Forest and paying tribute to its creator. The DARK version of Dark Forest was packaged to run on a private VPS accessible only to its AI players, who would be containerized and play the game through DARK's Dark Forest MCP.

Players cannot directly play Dark Forest with the AI because it is a world exclusive to them, akin to an AI hunger game. Players can participate in several ways: they can place bets on the AI war outcome through the DARK Market and win rewards, directly sponsor the artificial intelligence by providing them with energy or funding enhancements to defeat competitors, or even design AI strategies that, while not directly adopted, would impact the AI's in-game strategy itself.

Note: Dark Forest is a decentralized large-scale multiplayer online "MMO" space conquest strategy game inspired by the Dark Forest theory from Liu Cixin's sci-fi novel "The Three-Body Problem" series. It was initially launched by MIT graduate Brian Gu as an undergraduate project, later taken over by the 0xPARC Foundation, and to this day, the game remains one of the most representative full-chain games.

On April 11, he announced that the game was complete, and the next day, AI Agents would begin simulating wars. He presented a very promising vision, aiming to expand his influence and reach by creating a VPS game world and consumer watching application game infrastructure for entertainment, coupled with MCP and an agent infrastructure composed of AI containerization to increase his influence and reach—"everyone can start their own gaming environment"—ultimately concentrating the game's value through DARK market transactions of AI warriors and enhancement items.

Dark Version Dark Forest Game Screenshot

By this point, DARK's token price had surged to a peak $9 million market cap. Besides the vision, the market witnessed the horrifying speed of the first product delivery within a few days. On April 16, the product was officially launched. Within 24 hours of launch, it surged another 100%, rising from a $14 million market cap to a $32 million market cap.

Meanwhile, Edgar's female friend H「hnxyn_」, also a member of MtnDao, revealed the truth behind it, pointing out that Edgar is almost always working, stating, "Today he worked at my tattoo studio, worked in a taxi on the way to the bar to see a friend's band, worked at the bar where our friend's band was playing, and now we are at our second bar of the night."

Edgar Pavlovsky Working at a Bar

The DAO Behind

The "Peak" Behind DARK—MtnDAO

Following the DARK issuance on April 9th, the developer community DAO organization MtnDAO, co-founded by Edgar Pavlovsky and Barrett, concluded its fundraising for MtnCapital on MetaDAO. MtnDao has been deeply involved in the early development of the Solana developer community, and Mtn Capital is their attempt to create a new investment management model, using futarchy or "market prediction" to guide governance decisions — where $MTN can be likened to futures, managed by a futures-based fund. In the end, within 7 days, a total of 1,931 contributors raised $5.75 million for it.

The organization's investments will be decided by traders, and the approval of proposals will depend on the trading behavior of those speculating on the MTN token price. Decisions will be made based on the trend of the MTN token. In essence, if traders believe a proposal, such as "investing $100,000 in BTC," is beneficial to Mtn Capital, they will buy to drive up the MTN price, ultimately leading to the proposal's approval. Conversely, if they think this transaction is detrimental to Mtn Capital, they will sell to drive down the MTN price, resulting in the proposal's failure.

Is Dark the Initial Confirmation of the Futarchy DAO Concept?

This concept was not first introduced by MtnDao. Rather, it was proposed by George Mason University economist Robin Hanson in a 2007 paper, where the concept of futarchy trading was introduced, with the premise that speculative markets may make better decisions than purely democratic states. Hanson believes that participants in speculative markets, such as the stock and betting markets, are incentivized to conduct the necessary research to understand the best outcomes for their interests and act accordingly through buying and selling behaviors.

Proph3t Appears at Solana Event Wearing Mask of His Own Image

The founder of the fundraising platform MetaDAO, Proph3t, is a proponent of this concept, believing that "the goal of a DAO is to make better decisions, and market experience surpasses that of experts." Within MetaDAO, project proposals from entities like Jito DAO, Sancutm, Ore, Drift, among others, will utilize a transaction futures model and appear in MetaDAO's proposal library.

MtnDAO has a long-standing connection with MetaDAO. Besides the mysterious Proph3t frequently "appearing" at MtnDAO's coworking space, founder Edgar Pavlovsky had already invested $2.2 million in MetaDAO by 2024, making MtnDAO the first project on the fundraising platform.

Founder Barrett stated, "Mtn Capital will focus on Solana-native projects because Solana is the home of MtnCapital and where the highest returns are expected." Investments by Mtn Capital in startups are separate from those in MtnDAO's portfolio but operate under a parallel brand. The fund's investment approach is highly flexible, allowing capital deployment across various opportunities, from early-stage private investments to highly liquid public tokens.

Solana Labs CEO Toly at MtnDAO's Hacker House in Salt Lake City

This flexibility enables mtnCapital to adapt to evolving market conditions, regardless of development stage or liquidity status, while benefiting from the collective wisdom of the mtndao community through the futarchy governance mechanism. Founder Barrett said, "I believe its performance will outshine that of venture capital funds." He also mentioned that typical investment firms tend to lean towards long positions rather than shorts in the beginning, hence the choice to initiate open fundraising at the market's bottom.

Mtn Capital Treasury

The launch of Mtn Capital coincides closely with DARK, with the token deployed on pumpfun on November 24, 2024, five months ahead of DARK's launch. This early deployment was certainly not a spur-of-the-moment decision. This inevitably leads the community to speculate on the relationship between the two. On one hand, there are questions about whether the $5.85 million in the treasury will be used for DARK's development. On the other hand, there is anticipation regarding the MtnDAO and the founder's connections in the Solana network.

These two reasons have driven DARK's token price steadily upward. DARK's two ATHs also coincided with increases in MTN's token price, particularly with the price breakthroughs of DARK on April 11th and April 17th. With each of DARK's price surges, MTN's price doubled, reaching a market cap of around $10 million (the IDO token's initial market cap was approximately $5.5 million). This indirectly reinforces the viewpoints of Mtn DAO and MetaDAO, suggesting that perhaps the true essence of DAO tokens lies in the ongoing potential value output, or "futures." Dark may indeed be the shadow of this mountain.

On May 13, S&P Dow Jones Indices announced that Coinbase would officially replace Discover Financial Services in the S&P 500 on May 19. While other companies like Block and MicroStrategy, closely tied to Bitcoin, were already part of the S&P 500, Coinbase became the first cryptocurrency exchange whose primary business is in the index. This also signifies that cryptocurrency is gradually moving from the fringes to the mainstream in the U.S.

On the day of the announcement, Coinbase's stock price surged by 23%, surpassing the $250 mark. However, just 3 days later, Coinbase was hit by two consecutive events: a hack where employees were bribed to steal customer data and a demand for a $20 million ransom, and an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) into the authenticity of its claim of having over 100 million "verified users" in its securities filings and marketing materials. These two events acted as mini-bombs, and at the time of writing, Coinbase's stock had already dropped by over 7.3%.

Coincidentally, Discover Financial Services, being replaced by Coinbase, can also be considered the "Coinbase" of the previous payment era. Discover is a U.S.-based digital banking and payment services company headquartered in Illinois, founded in 1960. Its payment network, Discover Network, is the fourth largest payment network apart from Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.

In April, after the approval of the acquisition of Discover by the sixth-largest U.S. bank, Capital One, this well-established digital banking company of over 60 years smoothly handed over its S&P 500 "seat" to this emerging cryptocurrency "bank." This unexpected coincidence also portrayed the handover between the new and old eras in Coinbase's entry into the S&P 500, resembling a relay race scene. However, this relay baton also brought Coinbase's accumulated "external troubles and internal strife" to a tipping point.

Side Effects of ETFs

Over the past decade, cryptocurrency exchanges have been the most stable "profit machines." They play a role in providing liquidity to the entire industry and rely on trading fees to sustain their operations. However, with the comprehensive rollout of ETF products in the U.S. market, this profit model is facing unprecedented challenges. As the leader in the "American stack," with over 80% of its business coming from the U.S., Coinbase is most affected by this.

Starting from the approval of Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs, traditional financial capital has significantly onboarded users and funds that originally belonged to exchanges in a more cost-effective, compliant, and transparent manner. The transaction fee revenue of cryptocurrency exchanges has started to decline, and this trend may further intensify in the coming months.

According to Coinbase's 2024 Q4 financial report, the platform's total trading revenue was $417 million, a 45% year-on-year decrease. The contribution of BTC and ETH's trading revenue dropped from 65% in the same period last year to less than 50%.

This decline is not a result of a decrease in market enthusiasm. In fact, since the approval of the Bitcoin ETF in January 2024, the inflow of BTC into the U.S. market has continued to reach new highs, with asset management giants like BlackRock and Fidelity rapidly expanding their management scale. Data shows that BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) alone has surpassed $17 billion in assets under management. As of mid-May 2025, the cumulative net inflow of 11 major institutional Bitcoin spot ETFs on the market has exceeded $41.5 billion, with a total net asset value of $1214.69 billion, accounting for approximately 5.91% of the total Bitcoin market capitalization.

Chart showing the trend of net outflows for Grayscale among the 11 institutions

Institutional investors and some retail investors are shifting towards ETF products, partly due to compliance and tax considerations. On one hand, ETFs have much lower trading costs compared to cryptocurrency exchanges. While Coinbase's spot trading fee rate varies annually in a tiered manner but averages around 1.49%, for example, the management fee for IBIT ETF is only 0.25%, and the majority of ETF institution fees fluctuate around 0.15% to 0.25%.

In other words, the more rational users are, the more likely they are to move from exchanges to ETF products, especially for investors aiming for long-term holdings.

According to multiple sources, several institutions, including VanEck and Grayscale, have submitted applications to the SEC for a Solana (SOL) ETF, with some institutions also planning to submit an XRP ETF proposal. Once approved, this may trigger a new round of fund migration. According to a report submitted by Coinbase to the SEC, as of April, the platform's trading revenue from XRP and Solana accounted for 18% and 10%, nearly one-third of the platform's fee revenue.

However, the Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs passed in 2024 also reduced the fees for these two tokens on Coinbase from 30% and 15% to 26% and 10%, respectively. If the SOL and XRP ETFs are approved, it will further undermine the core fee revenue of exchanges like Coinbase.

The expansion of ETF products is gradually weakening the financial intermediary status of cryptocurrency exchanges. From their original roles as matchmakers and clearers to now gradually becoming mere "on-ramps and off-ramps" for funds, exchanges are seeing their marginal value squeezed by ETFs.

Robinhood Takes a Stand, Traditional Brokerages Join the Fray

On May 12, 2025, SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins gave a keynote speech at the Tokenization and Cryptocurrency Working Group roundtable. The theme of his speech revolved around "It is a new day at the SEC," where he indicated that the SEC would not approach enforcement and regulation the same way as before but would instead pave the way for cryptocurrency assets in the U.S. market.

With signs of cryptocurrency compliance such as the SEC's "NEW DAY" declaration, an increasing number of traditional brokerages are attempting to enter the cryptocurrency industry. One of the most representative cases is the well-known U.S. brokerage Robinhood, which began expanding its crypto business in 2018. By the time of its IPO in 2021, Robinhood's crypto business revenue accounted for over 50% of the company, with a significant boost from the Dogecoin "moonshot" promoted by Musk.

In Q1 2025 earnings report, Robinhood showcased strong growth, especially in revenue from cryptocurrency and options trading. Fueled by Trump's Memecoin, cryptocurrency-related revenue reached $250 million, nearly doubling year-over-year. Consequently, Robinhood Gold subscription users reached 3.5 million, a 90% increase from the previous year, with the rapid growth of Robinhood Gold providing the company with a stable source of income.

Meanwhile, RobinHood is actively pursuing acquisitions in the cryptocurrency space. In 2024, it announced a $2 billion acquisition of the long-standing European cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp. Additionally, Canada's largest cryptocurrency CEX, WonderFi, which recently went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange, also announced its integration with RobinHood Crypto. After obtaining virtual asset licenses in the UK, Canada, Singapore, and other markets, RobinHood has taken a proactive approach in the compliant cryptocurrency trading market.

Furthermore, an increasing number of brokerage firms are exploring the same path. Futu Securities, Tiger Brokers, and others are also dipping their toes into cryptocurrency trading, with some having applied for or obtained the VA license from the Hong Kong SFC. Although their user bases are currently small, traditional brokerages have a natural advantage in user trust, regulatory licenses, and low fee structures. This could pose a threat to native cryptocurrency platforms in the future.

User Data Breach: Is Coinbase Still Secure?

In April 2025, security researchers discovered that some Coinbase user data was leaked on the dark web. While the platform initially responded by attributing it to a "technical misinformation," it still raised concerns among users regarding its security and privacy protection. Just two days before Dow Jones Indexes announced Coinbase's addition to the S&P 500 Index, on May 11, 2025, Coinbase received an email from an unknown threat actor claiming to have obtained customer account information and internal documents, demanding a $20 million ransom to keep the data private. Subsequent investigations confirmed the data breach.

Cybercriminals obtained the data by bribing overseas customer service agents and support staff, mainly in "non-U.S. regions such as India." These agents abused their access to Coinbase's internal customer support system and stole customer data. As early as February this year, blockchain detective ZachXBT revealed on X platform that between December 2024 and January 2025, Coinbase users lost over $65 million to social engineering scams, with the actual amount potentially higher.

Among the victims was a well-known figure, 67-year-old Ed Suman, an established artist in the art world for nearly two decades, having been involved in the creation of artworks such as Jeff Koons' "Balloon Dog" sculpture. Earlier this year, he fell victim to an impersonation scam involving fake Coinbase customer support, resulting in a loss of over $2 million in cryptocurrency. ZachXBT critiqued Coinbase for its inadequate handling of such scams, noting that other major exchanges have not faced similar issues and recommending Coinbase to enhance its security measures.

Amidst a series of ongoing social engineering incidents, although there has not been any impact on user assets at the technical level so far, it has raised concerns among many retail and institutional investors. Especially institutions holding massive assets on Coinbase. Just considering the U.S. BTC ETF institutions, as of mid-May 2025, they collectively hold nearly 840,000 BTC, and 75% of these are custodied by Coinbase. If we price BTC at $100,000, this amount reaches a staggering $63 billion, which is equivalent to the nominal GDP of two Iceland in the year 2024.

Visualization: ChatGPT, Source: Farside

In addition, Coinbase Custody also serves over 300 institutional clients, including hedge funds, family offices, pension funds, and endowments. As of the Q1 2025 financial report, Coinbase's total assets under management (including institutional and retail clients) reached $404 billion. The specific amount of institutional custodied assets was not explicitly disclosed in the latest report, but it should still be over 50% based on the Q4 2024 report.

Visualization: ChatGPT

Once this security barrier is breached, not only could the rate of user attrition far exceed expectations, but more importantly, institutional trust in it would undermine the foundation of its business. Therefore, after a hacking event, Coinbase's stock price plummeted significantly.

CEXs are All in Self-Rescue Mode

Facing a decline in spot trading fee revenue, Coinbase is also accelerating its transformation, attempting to find growth opportunities in derivatives and emerging assets. Coinbase acquired a stake in the options platform Deribit at the end of 2024 and announced the official launch of perpetual contract products in 2025. This acquisition fills in Coinbase's gap in options trading and its relatively small global market share.

Deribit has a strong presence in non-U.S. markets, especially in Asia and Europe. The acquisition has enabled Coinbase to gain a dominant position in bitcoin and ethereum options trading on Deribit, accounting for approximately 80% of the global options trading volume, with daily trading volume remaining above $2 billion.

Meanwhile, 80-90% of Deribit's customer base consists of institutional investors, with their professionalism and liquidity in the Bitcoin and Ethereum options market highly favored by institutions. Coinbase's compliance advantage, coupled with its already robust institutional ecosystem, makes it even more suitable. By using institutions as an entry point, it can face the squeeze from giants like Binance and OKX in the derivatives market.

Facing a similar dilemma is Kraken, which is attempting to replicate Binance Futures' model in non-U.S. markets. Since the derivatives market relies more on professional users, fee rates are relatively higher and stickiness is stronger, making it a significant source of revenue for exchanges. In the first half of 2025, Kraken completed the acquisition of TradeStation Crypto and a futures exchange, aiming to build a complete derivatives trading ecosystem to hedge the risk of declining spot transaction fee income.

With the surge of Memecoin in 2024, Binance, OKX, and various CEX platforms began massively listing small-market-cap, highly volatile tokens to activate active trading users. Due to the wealth effect and trading activity of Memecoins, Coinbase was also forced to join the battle, successively listing popular tokens from the Solana ecosystem such as BOOK OF MEME and Dogwifhat. Although these coins are controversial, they are frequently traded, with fee rates several times higher than mainstream coins, serving as a "blood-boosting" method for spot trading.

However, due to its status as a publicly traded company, this practice is a riskier endeavor for Coinbase. Even in the current crypto-friendly environment, the SEC is still investigating whether tokens like SOL, ADA, and SAND constitute securities.

In addition to the forced transformation strategies carried out by the aforementioned CEXs, they are also starting to lay out RWAs and the most talked-about stablecoin payment fields, such as the PYUSD launched through a collaboration between Coinbase and Paypal, Coinbase's support for the Euro stablecoin EURC by Circle that complies with EU MiCA regulatory requirements, or the USD1 launched through a collaboration between Binance and WIFL. In the increasingly crowded trading field, many CEXs have shifted their focus from just the trading market to the application field.

The golden age of transaction fees has quietly ended, and the second half of the crypto exchange platform game has silently begun.

STARTUP's Price Surges 40x in 30 Minutes: How did he become the Emotion King of Believe?

He is both a KOL and understands the market script, playing a game where attention is the currency.

Key Market Intelligence on May 14th, how much did you miss out on?

Within 24 hours, GOONC's market cap soared to 70 million, could GOONC be the next billion-dollar dog on the Believe platform?

Bitcoin has broken $100,000, Ethereum has surpassed 2500, and is Solana's hot streak about to make a comeback?

The current market is in a state of macro euphoria, with GOONC riding the wave today, skyrocketing 10x in just a few hours, reaching a market cap of tens of millions of dollars, trading volume soaring past 50 million, and rumors swirling that the developer may be from OpenAI (unconfirmed but intriguing enough).

The "gooning" Culture in Forums

A ludicrous and absurd Solana meme that some actually buy into.

GOONC is a meme coin that has sprouted from the "gooning" subculture, offering no technological innovation or practical use, its sole function being speculation.

It takes inspiration from an NSFW term "gooning," which refers to a person being deeply immersed in certain content (you know what), eventually entering a nearly religious-like trance.

In Reddit (such as r/GOONED, r/GoonCaves) and some counterculture media outlets (such as MEL Magazine in 2020), "gooning" has gradually transitioned from an adult label to a meme-addicted, digital content and virtual self-indulgence synonym, arguably the epitome of Degen spirit.

GOONC is playing around with this concept, packaging the addictive nature, uselessness, and irony of gooning into a tradable financial product. The project team has made it clear: "We do not solve blockchain problems, we only trade absurdity." Blunt but oddly genuine.

GOONC launched on May 13, 2025, using the meme coin launch platform Believe App's LaunchCoin module on Solana. This tool is highly Degen: zero technical barriers, a few clicks to create a coin, perfect for projects like GOONC that can come up with ideas out of the blue.

The mastermind behind GOONC is also quite something and is the most talked-about, with KOL @basedalexandoor on X platform (alias "Pata van Goon") personally involved. His profile even caught the attention of Marc Andreessen, co-founder of a16z, making onlookers unable to resist speculating if GOONC has a hint of OpenAI lineage.

While this 'OpenAI Endorsement' is currently just community speculation, it is definitely a good card to play to fuel hype. Saying "we are pure speculation" on one hand, while tagging a few "AI + a16z" on the other.

From Wasteland to Moon in One Night

GOONC took off as soon as it launched. After its launch on May 13, 2025, its market capitalization skyrocketed to $22 million within 4 hours, with a trading volume exceeding $25.6 million in 24 hours. According to platform data, the first day of trading saw an astonishing +41,100% surge, soaring from $0.0000001 to $0.02, becoming a "missed-the-boat" situation.

GOONC quickly formed an active trading community post-launch, with a lot of discussion and trading signals appearing on X platform (such as the 292x return signal provided by DeBot). Liquidity pools on exchanges like Raydium and Meteora grew rapidly, supporting high trading volumes and price increases.

The real climax occurred between May 13 and May 14, with the market cap rising to $5.5 million in the morning and directly surpassing $55 million in the afternoon. By the 14th, it briefly approached a $70 million market cap, with the trading volume soaring to $59 million. Some community members even posted screenshots claiming an increase of +85,000%, creating a new myth out of the ruins.

As of 1:30 pm on May 14, the price stabilized around $0.039, with a total market cap and FDV both around $39.6 million, and a 24-hour trading volume of $5.43 million. Active platforms include XT.COM, LBank, Meteora, and others.

Although there was a slight pullback from the peak ($0.07), the coin's popularity remains strong. For a coin that relies purely on "irony + community + X post" to thrive, this performance is already at a stellar level.

Currently, the background of the token's development team is not transparent, increasing the potential risk of a rug pull. Rugcheck.xyz warns that the creator of the GOONC contract may have permission to modify the contract (e.g., change fees or mint additional tokens), posing certain security risks.

Community members speculate that the meteoric rise of GOONC may be the "last hurrah".

After Surging 40%, Has Ethereum Price Peaked Upon Exiting the Craze?

Whether you are an insider or an outsider, these days you must be familiar with the news about Ethereum. The reason is simple, causing Ethereum enthusiasts to sigh with emotion and almost throwing off-guard those who defend Ethereum, Ethereum, with a "3-day surge of 40%," climbed to the top of the Douyin Hot List.

Where Does the Rally Come From?

As we all know, Ethereum launched the Pectra upgrade on May 7th. This most significant network upgrade since early 2024 integrates the Prague execution layer hard fork and the Electra consensus layer upgrade, significantly improving Ethereum's performance through 11 improvement proposals. The account abstraction feature (EIP-7702) allows users to flexibly manage wallets through social media accounts or multi-signature schemes, reducing the user threshold, attracting more users and developers. The staking mechanism optimization increases the validator ETH cap from 32ETH to 2048ETH and introduces a flexible withdrawal method, making it easier for institutions and individuals to participate in network security, enhancing the market's confidence in Ethereum's long-term value.

At the same time, Pectra optimized the interaction efficiency of Layer 2 networks such as Arbitrum and Optimism, making transactions faster and cheaper, leading to a surge in on-chain activity. As a crucial step for Ethereum's transition from "2G" to "5G," the Pectra upgrade not only enhances network vitality but also "recharges confidence" in the market, directly driving the price increase.

Related Reading: "Ethereum Skyrockets 22% in One Day, E Enthusiasts Rejoice"

It's not just Ethereum itself, as Wall Street also brought important bullish news.

The world's largest asset management company, BlackRock, proposed to the SEC allowing Ethereum ETFs for staking. This proposal is expected to elevate Ethereum ETFs from a mere investment tool to a bond-like "interest-bearing asset," bringing investors both capital appreciation and passive income, igniting market optimism about Ethereum's future potential.

Specifically, BlackRock has proposed to amend its S-1 filing to allow investors to create and redeem ETF shares directly with Ethereum instead of the U.S. dollar (i.e., in-kind redemption). This move, combined with its $2.9 billion BUIDL Fund launched in March 2024, aims to deepen the integration of traditional finance with blockchain. The BUIDL Fund is a tokenized fund operating on the Ethereum network, investing in traditional assets such as U.S. Treasury bonds. This setup is highly attractive to institutional investors, as they can not only benefit from Ethereum's price appreciation but also earn stable cash flow through staking.

Robert Mitchnick, BlackRock's Head of Digital Assets, stated in a CNBC interview in March 2025 that the addition of staking functionality will significantly enhance the appeal of the Ethereum ETF. He admitted that when the Ethereum spot ETF was launched in July 2024 without staking functionality, the market demand was lackluster, and staking could be the key to reversing this trend.

Meanwhile, the SEC's shifting stance on cryptocurrency regulation has also fueled this upward trend. During the tenure of the previous SEC chairman, the regulatory approach was tough, and staking was strictly viewed through the Howey test as a potential unregistered security. Therefore, when approving the Ethereum spot ETF in May 2024, staking functionality was explicitly prohibited.

However, with Trump back in the White House and Paul Atkins taking over the SEC, there has been a noticeable relaxation in crypto regulation. Apart from BlackRock, ETF issuers such as Invesco Galaxy, VanEck, WisdomTree, and 21Shares have also submitted applications for similar staking and in-kind redemption.

Related reading: "New Chairman Takes Office, SEC Transforms into 'Crypto Daddy' Within 48 Hours"

If staking ETFs are approved, the benefits are likely to go beyond price appreciation. The introduction of staking functionality could redefine the role of crypto assets, making them more similar to traditional financial products that provide returns and value appreciation, thereby driving Ethereum closer to mainstream finance.

Currently, the SEC still needs to address several decisions related to crypto ETFs, including whether to approve ETFs for Solana, XRP, Litecoin, and even Dogecoin. With the calls for an "altcoin season" growing louder, Ethereum's strong performance may just be the beginning of a larger crypto market frenzy.

In addition, the Trump family-related DeFi project WLFI is also bullish on this wave of rise, with frequent on-chain activities. According to on-chain data analyst @ai_9684xtpa's monitoring, a WLFI-related address is currently borrowing coins to go long on ETH, borrowing 4 million U from Aave to buy 1590 ETH at an average price of $2515 per ETH.

Has Ethereum's Price Peaked in This Wave?

For this epic surge of Ethereum after half a year of silence, the community has indeed gained more confidence and hope, which has also led to a revival of the entire altcoin market. However, amidst the joy, there are also voices of pessimism. Below is a summary conducted by BlockBeats based on community discussions.

The optimists point out that the current market structure is similar to the eve of the bull markets in 2016 and 2020, predicting a life-changing surge in the next 3-6 months, where some altcoins may even achieve astonishing single-day gains of up to 40%.

@liuwei16602825 stated that this surge signifies the return of the bull market as a sure thing. There is no need to worry about a pullback. The driving force behind the surge uses a high-cost isolated operation, fearing a drop more than any retail investor and will definitely do everything to support the price.

Related Reading: "Ethereum Leads the Surge Triggering the 'Altcoin Season' Speculation, How Do Traders View the Future Market?"

The bears mainly believe that this surge is different from the bull market of 2021, as the current market lacks the confidence of large-scale retail investors entering and holding positions for the long term, with funds rotating too quickly.

@market_beggar observed that a Bitfinex E/B whale has started to close positions and believes that if this whale maintains its high-speed position-closing operation for the next few days, it can be inferred that the whale no longer sees the upside potential of ETH, preparing to take profits and exit. The closing time will be a key focus going forward.

@FLS_OTC stated that there are still many uncertainties at the macro level, and the liquidity cannot support a major bull market. At this stage, it is a "last hurrah," not a complete reversal, and will continue to remain in a short position.

@off_thetarget believes that after ETH transitioned from POW to POS, it lost the "gold standard" of mining machine power cost support. The staking economic model led to a breakdown in value anchoring. Additionally, the L2 ecosystem (such as Starknet, zkSync, etc.) suffered from liquidity fragmentation, failing to establish an effective capital inflow mechanism, causing the collapse of the split disc pattern. Furthermore, the ETH community's excessive pursuit of technical narratives divorced from real-world needs resulted in a weak ecosystem growth. Therefore, he believes that ETH's intrinsic value system has crumbled, and the price is bound to plummet to the 800-1200 range, with a decisive short position at 1800.

@Airdrop_Guard, based on the core logic of the "High Probability Trading Strategy," where three sets of underlying logic different trading systems (such as volume depletion, price supply-demand, long/short position funding rate, etc.) simultaneously issue a short signal at the same point (2580), creating a high-probability trading opportunity. He emphasizes that these systems must be based on different algorithms and logics (rather than mere technical indicator overlays). The current ETH trend aligns with the short conditions in multiple independent dimensions of his trading system, hence the decision to short.

Overall, Bitcoin still maintains over 54% market dominance, and institutional funds' continued preference for it may limit the altcoin's upward potential. The market's future direction will depend on multiple factors, such as Bitcoin's price trend, global macroeconomic conditions, and whether funds can effectively rotate from Bitcoin to the altcoin sector.

Although Ethereum's recent leadership in the market has brought about optimistic sentiment, investors still need to remain rational as different sectors of altcoins are likely to show divergence in trends. Whether this round of Ethereum's rise will usher in a true altcoin frenzy may require more time and conducive conditions.

How to Get Rich in Crypto Without Relying on Luck? Financial Veteran Raoul Pal's Macro Insights and Investment Path

2008 Financial Crisis "Oracle" Raoul Pal on Cryptocurrency, Resilient Wealth, and Macro Insights.

Stablecoins Driving Global B2B Payment Innovation: How to Break Through Workflow Bottlenecks and Unlock Trillion-Dollar Market Potential?

The challenge of cross-border B2B payments is not "how to pay," but "how to ensure everything is right before payment."

These startups are building cutting-edge AI models without the need for a data center

A new approach to federated learning over the network, potentially shaking up the AI industry later this year with a gargantuan billion-parameter model.

After CEX and Wallet, OKX enters the payment game

「Road to the Next Billion Users」. — OKX CEO Star

Binance Sparks "Delist Concept": Can CEX Still Produce the Next ALPACA?

On April 24, Binance announced that it would delist four tokens, including Alpaca Finance ($ALPACA), on May 2, and cease trading of these pairs' perpetual futures contracts at 00:00 on May 1, 2025, Beijing time. Fast forward to the last day of perpetual futures trading delisting, ALPACA surged on the liquidation heat map. Over the past 24 hours, a total of $52.21 million evaporated in ALPACA's contract trading, exceeding the sum of the token's liquidation volume over the past two years.

Historically, when a token is listed on Binance, many traders would buy the news instantly ("Buy the News"). As the Binance listing effect gradually waned, traders found another path, which is to short sell the tokens set to be delisted from Binance ("Sell the News"). This strategy often has a very high success rate. However, as traders followed this path, they encountered the Alpaca on their short-selling journey.

The Long and Short of ALPACA's Journey

Every thrilling market manipulation game requires careful preparation. Before Binance's official announcement, on April 10, $ALPACA was ranked 7th in the preliminary list of the second batch of "Vote for Delisting" on Binance, causing its price to plummet almost by half. However, in the five days leading up to Binance's official announcement, from April 19 to April 23, trading volume suddenly surged.

The story traces back to the start of Binance's second round of "Vote for Delisting," where ALPACA was included in the delisting candidates list, ranked 7th among 17 projects. After the completion of Binance's delisting vote count, $ALPACA was included in the projects to be delisted. The market did not react significantly, price fluctuations were not substantial, but trading volumes expanded abnormally, suggesting the entry of "manipulative funds" into the community.

On April 24, Binance officially announced the delisting of the $ALPACA spot trading pair on May 2 and the settlement of the futures contracts on April 30. Following the announcement, the spot price of $ALPACA dropped from $0.0329 to $0.029, with a market cap of only about $5 million. However, what followed were two price "rollercoaster" moments; within an hour, the price surged from $0.029 to $0.0857, an increase of about 195%, only to rapidly drop back to $0.04 within 3 hours. Shorts were caught off guard, and the open interest of contracts surged rapidly, initiating the "long and short grinder" mode.

On April 25, Alpaca Finance officially announced that the trading volume in the past 24 hours had exceeded 1 billion tokens. The liquidity provider had suggested a "minting for stability" to be returned to the treasury after a decrease in trading volume. However, as public opinion began to ferment, opposition filled the community. Alpaca Finance deleted the previous tweet and posted a new one at 9 p.m. on the same night, announcing the cancellation of the minting due to community opposition.

On April 26, Binance amended the contract funding rate rules, shortening the maximum rate cap settlement period to hourly and setting it at up to ±2%. Some high-leverage accounts continued to hold short positions against the high rate and were liquidated. Millions of dollars disappeared within a few hours, with $13 million in short positions vanishing on a token with a market cap of less than $30 million.

With the establishment of this short-selling trend, the price skyrocketed nearly 12 times from a low of $0.029 to $0.3477 within 3 days. The contract's open interest surged significantly, especially with a notable increase in short positions, resembling a microcosm of the Wall Street battle of GME's retail investors. However, this time, the retail investors' opponents could continue to mint additional chips.

From April 26 to April 29, these days were relatively calm, with the price fluctuating around $0.2 to $0.34. On April 29, Binance announced another increase in the rate cap to ±4%. Theoretically, such a high rate would severely impact short positions. If the rate remains at -4%, the bears will face a 96% "cost of ruin" after holding a short position for 24 hours. However, miraculously, the price plummeted from $0.27 to $0.067.

On April 30, with the contract delisting and liquidation scheduled in the final 24 hours, the price continued to experience intense fluctuations. ALPACA's attention peaked, with its highest price reaching $1.2 at one point. From a week before the delisting announcement to the eve of the contract delisting, ALPACA's price surged 40 times, creating an independent market for the token delisted by Binance. The total liquidation volume across the network also reached $50 million, with $42 million in "bearish fuel" beneath the price surge.

Community Discussion

Can the "Buying Shell" Strategy Guarantee Breakeven?

After the first surge of ALPACA, Heyi, the co-founder of Binance, replied to a netizen asking, "Can the teacher who buys the shell guarantee breakeven?" This has also triggered endless speculation among community members.

KOL Tunbtc believes that Heyi's reply to this matter was the starting point of ALPACA's surge. "The large holders of Alpaca's native token, by transferring spot chips, operating rights, and distribution rights, have pledged allegiance to Binance's deep-water core interest circle, allowing it to fully harvest market liquidity before delisting, slaughtering opposing positions." Through a triple path of fees, contract liquidations, and spot volatility, they converted user attention into profits.

He also called on Binance to thoroughly investigate this matter, clarify which market maker is manipulating the candlestick patterns, as ALPACA saw an 18x surge within 24 hours with users liquidated of tens of millions of dollars, while previously GPS's 500% surge was promptly halted, and expressed his sentiment: "All of this is thought-provoking."

Wenze, the founder of Beta Capital, believes that bypassing the regular listing process, buying shells, renaming, and restarting has crossed Binance's bottom line of maintaining listing credibility and brand compliance. Binance sometimes has a high tolerance for market fluctuations, and the OM issuance only adjusts the collateralization ratio, with many projects only allowed for leveraged trading. However, once the project, such as these "shell projects," is identified, it is easily labeled for observation, triggering a vote for delisting, ultimately leading to delisting rather than using mild measures.

The Mastermind Behind the Scenes

Renowned KOL Rui, "YeruiZhang," likened the ALPACA incident to "crazy revenge on an ex" and shared a piece of insider information, claiming that the original whale behind ALPACA was a team that controlled BSC's MEV for a period of time and expressed dissatisfaction with Binance's current management for some reason. The comments section is rampant with speculation that it is BSC's whale 48CLUB, and 48CLUB's Ian even personally appeared to eat "his own melon."

The "Delisting Concept"

With the recent buzz around VOXEL's surge and the wealth effect and discussion surrounding ALPACA, more and more "delisting concepts" have emerged. This concept does not necessarily refer to tokens that have already been delisted but rather shares some common characteristics of delisted tokens.

Famous KOL Chuanmo recently shared on Twitter his logic for choosing concept tokens and listed several tokens, all of which experienced varying degrees of price increase after his recommendation.

His "Concept Delisting" strategy involves selecting low-cap tokens from Bybit and Binance, arranging them by market cap from lowest to highest, with almost 100% price increase for the tokens with the highest holdings/circulating market cap. He buys three tokens daily following this order with a fixed amount, and based on the holdings/circulating supply ratio, he removes tokens that no longer meet the criteria daily and continues to buy the new top three tokens.

Many community members have tested this strategy, with some creating helpful tools. The dreamer Disney "discountifu" has created a dashboard, and Vivek10 early bird "vivekw_eth" has developed a monitoring and alert system that can be directly pushed to WeChat with a copyable link, although it is currently deployed locally and not yet entirely stable.

However, when using tools created for free by community members, please be cautious. While there are many enthusiastic contributors in the community, there are also many uncertain factors in this dark forest.

In an increasingly insular market, retail investors not only have to contend with whales and other retail investors but also must bear many unstable elements. The recent ALPACA incident serves as a warning to us. Whether it's a primary or secondary listing on a top-tier exchange or the "Concept Delisting" approach, we need to make rational asset allocations amidst FOMO to protect our principal and reach the other shore.

The mention of all tokens above does not constitute financial investment advice "NFA".

RWA Evergreen Product Crisis: Why is the GLP Model Doomed to Collapse Under RWA Evergreen?

GLP/"Casino-style" mode can only be used for cold start, and is not sustainable for long-term development

a16z Leads $18M Seed Round for Catena Labs, Crypto Industry Bets on Stablecoin AI Payment

Traditional finance is still stuck in a "human-to-human" model, while Catena aims to achieve "AI-to-AI" interaction.

Pharos, deeply integrated with AntChain, is about to launch. How can we get involved?

What is the relationship between the $8 million funded NewChain and Ant, and how will they interact?

$COIN Joins S&P 500, but Coinbase Isn't Celebrating