4 (4) Plunge

Galaxy Research Report: How Hyperliquid's HIP-4 Upgrade Changes the Prediction Market Landscape. Hyperliquid's HIP-4 protocol upgrade, activated on May 2, introduces a third model for prediction markets. While incumbents like Polymarket focus on consumer discovery and Kalshi on regulated US access, HIP-4 integrates outcome markets directly into Hyperliquid's "house of all finance." This embeds binary event contracts within HyperCore, its native on-chain order book, sharing a single margin account with perpetual and spot trading. HIP-4 offers distinct advantages: superior infrastructure with sub-second finality, ~200k orders/sec throughput, and unified cross-margin, enabling novel hedges for perpetual traders. It also features a unique validator-curated oracle model for off-chain events (e.g., Fed decisions, CPI, sports) and zero fees on opening positions. Early traction shows HIP-4 capturing ~20% of combined BTC prediction market volume within 25 days. The report highlights a broader industry trend of convergence: all major platforms are moving towards a "trade everything from one account" model. HIP-4's challenge lies in expanding market breadth and consumer discovery, currently lagging behind Polymarket's flexible UMA oracle/Kalshi's sports depth. Key risks include validator centralization, US regulatory exposure (mitigated by potential pathways like the CLARITY Act), and competitive pressure from Kalshi's newly CFTC-approved Bitcoin perpetual contract. Ultimately, HIP-4's strongest case is its technically superior, unified execution stack—a harder advantage for competitors to replicate than building consumer layers atop it. The upgrade positions Hyperliquid to contest the lucrative institutional hedging flow in the evolving prediction market arena.

Kristin Smith, President of the Solana Policy Institute and CEO of the Blockchain Association, urged the U.S. Senate to pass the CLARITY Act, emphasizing four specific priorities must be met first. The legislation aims to provide legal clarity for public blockchain operations, focusing on protecting open-source developers and infrastructure providers who do not custody assets or control transactions. Smith argued that strong developer protections, including the key Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act (BRCA), enhance enforcement by clearly distinguishing between different market participants, allowing authorities to target bad actors more effectively. She warned that weakening these protections could undermine the act's goal of giving builders confidence to operate in the U.S. Smith's position is to protect developers, target bad actors, preserve open-source innovation, and maintain U.S. leadership in crypto.

US CPI Preview: Headline Inflation May Top 4%, Hitting Three-Year High, Core Could Fall Short of Expectations. Wall Street's major institutions (Goldman Sachs, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley) anticipate May's headline CPI year-over-year to rise sharply to the 4.17%-4.3% range from April's 3.81%, largely driven by a significant jump in energy prices due to recent geopolitical tensions. This could mark the highest level since April 2023. In contrast, core CPI (excluding food and energy) is forecast to increase only 0.17%-0.22% month-over-month, notably below the market consensus of 0.27%-0.30%. Key moderating factors include cooling shelter inflation (OER and rent) and weaker auto insurance prices, while used car prices are expected to be flat. However, upward pressures persist within core components. Airfare, IT goods, and some non-shelter services are expected to show strength, partially offsetting the cooling trends. This divergence makes the report complex for markets: high headline inflation from transient energy shocks versus a potentially softer underlying core trend. Market pricing via inflation swaps suggests a slightly higher-than-expected headline print, historically associated with a modest dollar rally post-release. Looking ahead, the trajectory for inflation remains highly dependent on future oil price movements.

Maelstrom, the family office of BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, has published the first annual report for its Bitcoin Grant Program. Over a 20-month period beginning in October 2024, the program has supported five developers, with four currently active. They are paid monthly in Bitcoin, with grants capped at $400,000 per developer annually. Two developers focus on Bitcoin Core: **Rkrux** is a prolific code reviewer, working on MuSig2 and wallet descriptor modernization. **Stratospher** focuses on critical consensus and peer-to-peer network code, fixing bugs that could cause network splits. Two others advance Bitcoin privacy: **Benalleng** develops Payjoin, a protocol that breaks common surveillance heuristics, with integrations in several wallets. **Macgyver** works on Silent Payments, enabling reusable static addresses without on-chain reuse, driving wallet adoption and standardization. The program funds only open-source Bitcoin protocol work with no commercial ties. The report highlights this model as a direct, transparent way for successful industry participants to fund the essential, unglamorous development underpinning Bitcoin's security and privacy.

Tencent's AI office assistant, WorkBuddy, has achieved daily active users (DAU) 3-4 times that of the industry's second-place product, primarily driven by non-technical users like HR, operations, and administrative staff. Its rapid growth, starting with a public beta in March 2026, highlights a key strategic divergence from competitors like OpenAI's Codex and Anthropic's Claude Code. Unlike those tools, which originated as developer-focused assistants (in command lines or IDEs) and are now expanding towards office scenarios, WorkBuddy was built from the ground up for non-technical office workers. Its development was user-driven, initiated after腾讯云's team observed non-technical employees using their CodeBuddy coding tool for general tasks. WorkBuddy's design is defined by three core decisions aimed at lowering barriers: 1) Using natural language instead of technical concepts, so users describe their goal without needing to understand prompts or agents. 2) Providing pre-packaged "Skill" templates for common office tasks like data processing, content creation, and research. 3) Natively integrating into existing腾讯 ecosystems like腾讯 Docs and WeChat, making the agent a seamless part of the user's workflow rather than a separate tool. This "scenario encapsulation" approach, prioritizing the shortest path for users to get work done, contrasts with the "underlying capability" focus of Codex and Claude, which offer more flexibility but require more technical setup. Analysts confirm WorkBuddy's leading market position in China by mid-2026, with massive user and request growth following its launch. Recognizing the same trend of surging non-technical adoption, OpenAI and Anthropic are now pivoting their products with features like role-based plugins (Codex) and a simplified desktop interface (Claude Cowork). However, adapting tools built for developers requires significant changes to interaction models and integrations. WorkBuddy currently holds an estimated six-month lead in delivering a complete solution for non-technical office users. Its recently launched enterprise version aims to solidify this advantage. The competition underscores two valid paths: embedding agent capabilities directly into familiar work environments versus building powerful, general-purpose agents that users must learn to access. WorkBuddy's early success demonstrates the effectiveness of the former strategy for mainstream office adoption.