"Weekly Editor's Picks" is a functional column by Odaily Planet Daily. While Planet Daily covers a vast amount of real-time information weekly, it also publishes many high-quality in-depth analysis pieces that might get lost in the information flow and hot news, passing you by.
Therefore, our editorial team will select some quality articles worth spending time to read and collect from the content published in the past 7 days every Saturday. From perspectives like data analysis, industry judgment, and opinion sharing, we aim to bring new inspiration to you in the crypto world.
Now, let's read together:
Macro Situation
400 Million Barrels Released, Why is Oil Still Above $100?
After the joint US-Israel strike on Iran, Iran threatened to attack oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz, paralyzing the world's most critical oil shipping chokepoint. Current actual traffic through the Strait is less than 10% of pre-war levels. Oil prices have been soaring.
On March 11, the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced the release of strategic petroleum reserves, the largest one-time release by its 32 member states in its 50-year history. However, with a daily release of 400 million barrels covering only 17% of the shortfall, the effect was not ideal. If all 400 million barrels were dumped into the market at once, it would only last less than 4 days.
What determines the oil price reaction is not how many barrels are released, but whether the source of the supply disruption is eliminated. Reserve releases are essentially not "replenishing oil" but "buying time," using limited ammunition to buy negotiation windows and time to arrange alternative routes. If time is bought but the disruption source isn't resolved, oil prices will still rise. The mathematical reality is that the replenishment speed clearly cannot keep up with the depletion speed.
Jiang Xueqin: A Viral Beijing High School Teacher Who Predicted America's Defeat in Advance (Paired with "Jiang Xueqin's Latest Interview")
The US military is essentially a "muscle display" system from the Cold War era, expensive and追求 technical deterrence rather than resilience for a war of attrition. This mismatch manifests as an absurd asymmetry in reality.
The modern global economy is built on the premise that energy is cheap and readily available. Now this premise is collapsing.
Jiang Xueqin believes the Iran war will be highly similar to the Ukraine war: it will drag on, becoming a war of attrition. The US cannot withdraw because once it does, the only regional power that can fill the security vacuum is Iran. And with about one-fifth of the world's oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz daily, if the Gulf states tilt towards Iran, the petrodollar system will collapse.
The current US economy is essentially a Ponzi scheme, relying on foreigners continuously buying dollars to keep it afloat.
Three Weeks into the US-Iran War, Who's Making Money, Who's Paying the Bill?
The Iran war changed the Urals crude discount. The economic wall built by the West through three years of sanctions has been partly dismantled by three weeks of war with Iran.
Supply-side losses and beneficiary gains will eventually be passed on to the consumer end. US consumers are the most direct bearers. This round of oil price increases恰好吞掉了美国家庭刚到手的税收退税 (just swallowed up the tax refunds US families just received).
Three weeks into the Iran war, the world loses 11 million barrels of oil per day, Russia made nearly $800 million more in 15 days, US consumers' gas money increased by one-third, and this transmission chain will continue to lengthen after the sanction waivers expire on April 11.
Stop Staring at Oil Prices, the Bond Market is the Real Bellwether
As the war enters a stalemate, a more systemic variable is emerging: financial conditions themselves are tightening. What truly dominates the current market is no longer the war itself, but the disorder in the bond market.
Over the past month, the US 10-year Treasury yield has risen rapidly, directly reshaping interest rate expectations from a "rate cut path" to a "re-discussion of rate hikes," and putting pressure on stocks, commodities, and even policy space. In this process, the持续走弱 (持续走弱 - persistently weakening) labor market and renewed rise in inflation expectations have amplified the Fed's dilemma.
The bond market is not only reflecting risk but also determining the boundaries of risk.
War Won or Lost? Trump: Profited
Trump's market manipulation tactics and the underlying purpose—making stock market prosperity the best "substitute" for economic prosperity to consolidate his voter base.
Investment & Entrepreneurship
Abandoning Additional Issuance, Abolishing veBAL, Can Balancer's "All-In" Bet Bring New Life?
On November 3, 2025, a security incident causing over $120 million in losses largely shattered the growth illusion of the veteran DeFi protocol Balancer.
The entire system看似一台持续运转的 「印钞机」 (looks like a continuously running "money printing machine"), but actually leaks from both sides: on one hand, handling fees are split and lost layer by layer; on the other hand, the BAL token has an annual inflationary release of about 3.78 million tokens, creating持续抛压 (continuous selling pressure) of about $580,000 at current prices.
On March 23, the Balancer core team simultaneously released two important governance proposals: a comprehensive reform of BAL tokenomics and an operational structure reorganization. The core logic of the two documents combined can be summarized in one sentence: abandon the token release-driven growth model and转向收入驱动的可持续运营 (turn to revenue-driven sustainable operation).
Also recommended: 《Odaily Interview with Bitwise: BTC Could Reach $95,000 Range by Year-End》《SIREN, A Carefully Designed Leverage Harvest》《Bittensor (TAO) Short Logic: Income Desert Under the Computing Power Myth》.
Web3 & AI
The Underlying Business Protocol for the Trillion-Dollar Agent Economy: Understanding ERC-8183, Not Just Payment, But the Future
The ERC-8183 protocol is an on-chain standard for the decentralized AI agent economy. Its essence is not a traditional payment protocol but a商业基础设施规范 (business infrastructure specification) surrounding the full lifecycle of "task-delivery-settlement".
ERC-8183 takes "Job" as its core primitive, defining a tripartite collaboration model consisting of the Client, Provider, and Evaluator. It implements a complete state machine process (Open, Funded, Submitted, Completed/Rejected/Expired) for task publishing, fund escrow, result submission, and outcome arbitration through smart contracts.
Under this framework, payment is no longer a single action but a programmed process strongly bound to task conditions, delivery verification, and evaluation mechanisms, thus achieving trustless on-chain business execution. Application scenarios include automated supply chains, marketing automation, decentralized computing power markets, fully automated AI software outsourcing centers, etc.
CertiK Live Test: How the Vulnerable OpenClaw Skill Bypassed Review, Gaining Unauthorized Access to Take Over Computers
Skill scanning is almost useless against hacker attacks. Because static detection rules are极易被绕过 (extremely easy to bypass), AI review has inherent detection blind spots, and the review process has underlying design flaws.
AI Agent Can't Kill SaaS
Since AI can already write code, find vulnerabilities, and even dynamically generate tools itself, the cost of writing code approaches zero infinitely. Once Agents can随时随地为企业搓出各种定制化工具 (craft various customized tools for enterprises anytime, anywhere), the moats painstakingly built by those software companies charging monthly fees自然就荡然无存了 (naturally vanish). Thus, from CrowdStrike to IBM, from Salesforce to ServiceNow, no matter how bright their earnings reports are, they are experiencing惨烈的抛售 (brutal selling).
At the same time, countless AI entrepreneurs are拿着 BP (holding business plans), telling VCs they want to "be the middle layer in the Agent era" or "start a business For Agent".
They are all betting on one thing: building tools is the sexiest business of this era. But actually, software never sold just code.
The most critical things are actually these three: solidified business processes, customer data accumulated over years, and the extremely high switching costs resulting from them.
Scarcity has shifted from "the ability to build tools" to "possessing irreplaceable business context data." AI is the engine, and exclusive data is the fuel, as well as the沉淀 (precipitation) of time and unreplicable history. Code goes to zero, data starts collecting rent. The real winners are those holding the data assets that Agents cannot bypass.
Don't stare at the Agent's hands, go for the Agent's neck.
Also recommended: 《Token Naming War: Who is Fighting for the "Minting Right" in the AI Era?》.
Prediction Markets
The 4 Truths and Fee Trap Behind Polymarket LP Market Making Incentives
The original author analyzed Polymarket's new taker fee mechanism, market maker incentive program, liquidity incentives, and sponsored LP incentives.
Polymarket doesn't need volume-bot robots; it needs LPs that truly provide value. Systematically earning market making incentives requires capital, risk management, and continuous presence, which greatly削弱了撸毛党的优势 (weakens the advantage of airdrop farmers), instead favoring genuine market participants.
However, arbitrage trader and Polymarket/Kalshi bot player securezer0 believes being an LP is another form of "paying to lose money." Rather than drinking poison to quench thirst, it's better to make fundamental changes: target the vampires, not harvest users. Specific measures include: charging only a 1% fixed fee on profits; building native liquidity pools with the POLY token; charging on extended products, not core products.
Dismantling 40 Addresses from the Polymarket Leaderboard, Only Three Ways to Make Money
First: Sports markets, directional, buy right and wait till the end;
Second: Crypto板块 (sector), structural, not making money from prediction, but from market making;
Third: Cognitive type, small bets but each one has judgment.
Figuring out which game you are playing is more important than optimizing any parameters.
2% of Users Contribute 90% of Trading Volume: The True Portrait of Polymarket
The vast majority of Polymarket's trading volume is contributed by a small group of algorithmic and high-frequency traders; the large number of low-frequency retail users have almost no intersection with these professional traders. Recognizing the difference between these two groups directly determines platform fee design, product priority planning, and market category strategy layout.
Mastering Polymarket, These 7 Tools Are Enough (With Full Tutorial)
Also recommended: 《Interpreting Polymarket's Major Update Last Night: Fee Expansion, Self-Regulation, New Incentives》《Kalshi and Polymarket Jointly Capitalize New Fund, A Big Step Towards Prediction Market "Ecologization"》.
Policy & Stablecoins
CLARITY Act Rewrites DeFi's Life-and-Death Book: Circle Eats Meat, DeFi Tokens Bleed
The latest CLARITY proposal essentially ends the narrative of stablecoins as savings products. Stablecoins are strictly defined as payment tools rather than interest-bearing assets, which will be unfavorable for most DeFi. The assets most easily affected are DeFi tokens and governance tokens tied to fee income, such as UNI, SUSHI, DYDX, 1INCH, and CAKE等 DEX 代币 (and other DEX tokens).
Maker's structure already allows it to benefit from this shift. Other beneficiaries include compliant infrastructure providers like Circle, exchanges, and custodians (BitGo).
10x estimates a base target price of $120 for the next 12 months. If USDC growth accelerates again and profit margins improve significantly, it could rise to $150; but if growth stagnates and the current economic situation persists, there is a risk of falling to $80.
Also recommended: 《Tether Signs Big Four Auditor, Circle's Compliance Moat Collapses, Stock Price Plummets 20%》.
Airdrop Opportunities & Interaction Guides
Popular Interaction Collection | xStocks Points Activity Launched; Tempo Mainnet Launch (March 25)
Interaction Tutorial | Startale Group, Which Raised $63 Million, Launches Points Activity
Ethereum & Scaling
Ethereum Foundation Article: L1 and L2, From Division of Labor to Symbiosis
Weekly Hotspot Recap
In the past week, Iran presented the US with 5 ceasefire demands; Israel worries Trump might compromise to declare victory; Iran stated it will not allow Trump to decide the war's end time;
Additionally, regarding policy and macro markets: US lawmakers to propose bipartisan bill banning sports板块 (sectors) on prediction markets; UK plans to suspend crypto political donations, Prime Minister cites preventing illegal fund risks;
Views and voices: Analysis: Bitcoin under pressure alongside S&P and Nasdaq, Iran war加剧市场避险 (加剧市场避险 -加剧市场避险 - exacerbating market risk aversion); BIT: Bitcoin options market turns defensive, significant升温 (升温 - heating up) in downside protection demand; Bloomberg: Tether pauses $20 billion financing plan; Bernstein: Circle stock price correction may be excessive, market misreads stablecoin regulatory impact;
Institutions, large companies & top projects: NYSE partners with Securitize to develop tokenized securities platform, supporting 7x24 hour trading; Tether partners with a Big Four accounting firm to advance first full audit; Strategy launches total $42 billion equity issuance plan; Interactive Brokers launches crypto portfolio transfer function, supports inbound transfers from external wallets; Binance issues crypto market maker risk warning and project & user guide (interpretation); Backpack launches token claim and staking interface; Balancer co-founder announces closure of Balancer Labs, protocol to continue operations转向 DAO 和基金会架构 (turning to DAO and foundation structure); Odaily Skills launches free,主打省 Token 的精选信息结构化输出 (focusing on token-saving structured output of selected information);
Data-wise: March 23, spot gold's year-to-date gains归零 (returned to zero), intraday drop over 4%; March 25, Circle stock price fell up to 18%, US Clarity Act draft proposes to limit stablecoin rewards;
Security: Resolv Labs confirms vulnerability attack, suspends all protocol functions......Well, another rollercoaster week.
Attached: Portal to the 《Weekly Editor's Picks》 series.
See you next issue~
