Over the past 24 hours, the crypto market has shown strong momentum across multiple dimensions. Mainstream discussions have focused on Coinbase's official entry into the prediction market through the acquisition of The Clearing Company, as well as the intense internal debate within the AAVE community regarding token incentives and governance rights.

In terms of ecosystem development, Solana launched the innovative Kora fee layer aimed at reducing user transaction costs; meanwhile, competition in the Perp DEX sector has intensified, with the showdown between Hyperliquid and Lighter sparking widespread discussion about the future of decentralized derivatives.

I. Mainstream Topics

1. Coinbase Acquires The Clearing Company, Officially Enters Prediction Market

This week, Coinbase announced the acquisition of The Clearing Company, a major move to deepen its presence in the sector following last week's announcement that it would launch prediction markets on its platform. The Clearing Company's founder, Toni Gemayel, and his team will join Coinbase to jointly drive the development of the prediction market business.

Coinbase Product Lead Shan Aggarwal stated that the growth of prediction markets is still in its early stages and predicted that 2026 will be a breakout year for the sector.

The community reacted positively, generally believing that Coinbase's entry will bring significant traffic and compliance advantages to the prediction market. However, this has sparked discussions about the competitive landscape of the industry.

Rivalry founder Jai Bhavnani commented that for startups, if their product model proves successful, industry giants like Coinbase have every reason to replicate it.

This serves as a reminder to all entrepreneurs in the crypto space that they must build sufficiently deep moats to withstand competition from giants.

2. Kalshi Launches Kalshi Research and Integrates BSC Network

Regulated prediction market platform Kalshi this week launched its research division, Kalshi Research, aiming to open its internal data to academia and researchers to promote exploration of topics related to prediction markets.

Its first published research report indicated that Kalshi's performance in predicting inflation has surpassed that of traditional Wall Street models. Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara stated that the power of prediction markets lies in the valuable data they generate, and it's time to better utilize this data.

Simultaneously, Kalshi announced support for BNB Chain (BSC), allowing users to deposit and withdraw BNB and USDT via the BSC network. This move is seen as a significant step by Kalshi to open its platform to a broader crypto user base, aiming to unlock access to the world's largest prediction market. Additionally, Kalshi revealed plans to host the first Prediction Market Conference in 2026, further promote industry exchange and development.

3. AAVE Token Incentive Controversy Continues, Founder and Whale Accumulate Amid Market Downturn

The AAVE community has recently engaged in heated debate over an ARFC proposal titled "$AAVE Token Alignment, Phase 1 — Ownership Governance." The proposal aims to transfer ownership and control of the Aave brand from Aave Labs to Aave DAO.

Aave founder Stani Kulechov publicly stated he would vote against the proposal, arguing that it oversimplifies complex legal and operational structures and could slow down the development of core products like Aave V4.

Community reaction is polarized. Some criticize Stani for applying a "double standard" in governance and question whether his team has misappropriated protocol revenue; others support his cautious stance, believing that major governance changes require more thorough discussion. This controversy highlights the tension between the ideal of DAO governance and the practical power of core development teams in DeFi projects.

Although the governance controversy has put downward pressure on the AAVE token price, on-chain data shows that Stani Kulechov himself spent millions of dollars to buy large amounts of AAVE in the past few hours.

Meanwhile, a whale with the address 0xDDC4, after being inactive for 6 months, spent 500 ETH (approximately $1.53 million) to purchase 9,629 AAVE. Data shows this whale has accumulated nearly 40,000 AAVE over the past year but is still at a loss.

The accumulation by the founder and the whale during market volatility is interpreted by some investors as a signal of confidence in AAVE's long-term value.

4. Popular Articles: DeFi Curators and Ethereum Annual Summary

Among this week's popular articles, Morpho Labs' "The Curator Explained" detailed the role of "Curators" in DeFi. The article compares Curators to asset managers in traditional finance—they design, deploy, and manage on-chain Vaults, providing users with one-click diversified portfolios. Unlike traditional fund managers, DeFi Curators execute strategies automatically through non-custodial smart contracts, with users always retaining full control of their assets. This article offers a new perspective on understanding the professional division of labor and risk management in the DeFi space.

Another widely circulated article, "Ethereum 2025: From Experiment to World Infrastructure," provided a comprehensive summary of Ethereum's development over the past year. The article states that 2025 was a pivotal year for Ethereum's transition from an experimental project to global financial infrastructure. Through the Pectra and Fusaka hard forks, Ethereum achieved account abstraction and significantly reduced transaction costs.

Simultaneously, the SEC's clarification of Ethereum's "non-security" status, along with traditional financial giants like J.P. Morgan launching tokenized funds on the Ethereum mainnet, signifies Ethereum's gaining recognition from mainstream institutions. The article argues that the continued growth of DeFi, the prosperity of the L2 ecosystem, and integration with the AI field all indicate that Ethereum's vision of a "world computer" is gradually becoming a reality.

II. Mainstream Ecosystem Dynamics

1. Solana: Launches Kora Fee Layer and propAMM Data Research

The Solana Foundation engineering team this week launched a fee layer solution called Kora. Kora is a fee relayer and signature node designed to provide more flexible transaction fee payment methods for the Solana ecosystem. Through Kora, users will be able to conduct gas-free transactions or choose to pay network fees using any stablecoin or SPL token. This innovation is seen as a crucial step in lowering the entry barrier for new users and enhancing the usability of the Solana network.

Additionally, an in-depth research report on propAMM (proactive market maker) garnered community attention. The report, based on data analysis of propAMMs like HumidiFi on Solana, indicated that Solana has reached or even surpassed the transaction execution quality of traditional finance (TradFi) markets.

For example, on the SOL-USDC trading pair, HumidiFi can provide highly competitive spreads (0.4-1.6 bps) for large transactions, which is already better than the trading slippage of some mid-cap stocks in traditional markets. The research suggests that propAMM is making the vision of an "internet capital market" a reality, and Solana is becoming the best place for this to happen.

2. Perp DEX: Hyperliquid vs. Lighter Competition Heats Up

Competition in the Perpetual Futures DEX (Perp DEX) sector is heating up. In its latest official article, Hyperliquid listed emerging competitor Lighter alongside centralized exchanges like Binance, referring to them as platforms that use a centralized sequencer. Hyperliquid used this to emphasize its own advantages of being "fully on-chain, run by a validator network, with no hidden state."

The community widely interpreted this as Hyperliquid's "declaration of war" against Lighter. The technical differences between the two platforms also became a focal point of discussion: Hyperliquid focuses on extreme on-chain transparency, while Lighter emphasizes "verifiable execution" through zero-knowledge proofs, offering users a trading experience similar to a CLOB (Central Limit Order Book). This路线之争 (route competition) regarding the future of decentralized derivatives exchanges is expected to peak in 2026.

Meanwhile, discussions about Lighter's trading fees have emerged. Some users pointed out that Lighter charged a fee as high as 81 basis points (0.81%) for a $2 million USD/JPY forex trade, far exceeding the near-zero spreads offered by traditional forex brokers. In response, some views explained that Lighter does not use the B-book model (betting against market makers); its prices are anchored to TradFi markets, and the high fees might be related to current liquidity or incentives for market makers to balance skew. How to provide more competitive spreads for real-world assets (RWA) in the highly volatile crypto market has become a key issue Lighter needs to address in the future.