Sometimes, memecoins can be used for the force of good. Siqi Chen is a startup founder who's NOT in Crypto. On Christmas, he wrote a moving thread about his daughter Mira. She has an incurable, rare brain tumor :(. He reached out to everyone for help in raising funds on gofundme to support research on rare diseases.
A random degen decided to help. He created a memecoin called $MIRA and sent Siqi half the supply. When people heard the story, they started buying and pumping the token.
Now, $MIRA has a ~$50M market cap. Siqi holds ~$15M worth. He's donating every penny to a lab dedicated to rare diseases.
Crypto is crazy, but it can still create moments of real humanity.
Here's what we got today:
HyperLiquid. Why did they lose ~$250M in one day?
Introduction to Dexu.ai. Your free tool for narrative trading.
Around the web. Ink opened "DeFi training ground", BlackRock is partnering with Frax, Daos.world is live, and more.
Today's email is brought to you by Mantle — a high-performance Ethereum L2.
One tweet sent $249M fleeing from HyperLiquid's TVL.
What happened? Taylor Monahan, a veteran security researcher at Metamask, dropped a bomb on X: North Korean hackers had been using Hyperliquid since October. She also warned that HyperLiquid's four validators face serious risks of being hacked.
If you're not familiar with them, these hackers are no joke — they're fully backed by the North Korean state and have reportedly stolen a staggering $1.3B in crypto in 2024 alone.
According to Taylor, she had previously tried to alert the team via group chat. And only posted on X after they ghosted her there.
Her post on X went viral, and HyperLiquid paid the price.
Net outflows hit record levels. A whopping -$249.1 million flew out of HyperLiquid in a single day.
$HYPE price crashed. It fell 20% from its all-time high of $34.5 on December 22 to $26 on 23rd.
Why did it crash HYPE pretty badly? Well... the tweet led to a wave of FUD against HyperLiquid, especially regarding its security.
HL only has 4 validators. If three of them are compromised, a hacker can withdraw all the funds from HyperLiquid.
The actual code the validators running currently is closed-source. So, the public doesn't know its security level.
There are also major legal risks for HL. Since there are only 4 validators, they can be accused of trading with North Korea. And the court can ask them to stop the chain.
You can see L2Beat's report on HyperLiquid to understand more about its security. (L2beat frames it as an L3 since its bridge is on Arbitrum.)
While this led to a dump in the short term, the responses from the community were insightful. It was very similar to previous cult-like communities like LUNA.
The community turned against Taylor: from blaming her as a fearmonger to questioning her credentials. (Spoiler alert: she's one of the top security minds in web3.)
Some also listed potential countermeasures when the hacks happen.
Freezing hackers. USDC issuer Circle could blacklist malicious addresses to freeze stolen funds. But hackers can easily swap USDC for ETH before this happens.
Arbitrum Rollback: Since HyperLiquid bridges through Arbitrum, the Arbitrum DAO could theoretically roll back the chain to recover funds. Realistically though, not gonna happen.
At first glance, the community's aggressive stance may seem like a red flag. But here's the thing: a cult-like following can actually be a strength.
We've seen it before with projects like LUNA. Cults can drive tokens to absurd valuations, regardless of fundamentals. Just make sure to exit before everything comes down.
So it's stupid to short HYPE in the medium term. If they improve their security measures and manage to not get hacked, they can keep pumping.
All flagship assets from the Mantle DeFi ecosystem benefit from the update. ($mETH, $cmETH and $FBTC)
With one of the largest treasuries in all crypto space, Mantle Network is accelerating to become the Liquidity Chain of the future. Testnet is set to launch Q1 2025.
In crypto, staying on top of hot narratives is everything.
The top narratives shift every 2-3 months and some only last weeks. Missing them means leaving money on the table.
But let's face it — unless you're terminally online like me, it's hard to keep up.
Enter Dexu.ai, a data platform that tracks everything related to narratives for free (at least for now).
This tool comes from CryptoKoryo, a crypto data analyst who's spent years studying narrative trading. He's the creator of some of the most popular Dune dashboards, and now he's taken things to the next level by integrating AI and social data.
Here are five features I found most useful:
#1. CT / Socials. A one-stop dashboard for tracking crypto Twitter across any time frame.
My favorite feature is the search function. Unlike searching directly on Twitter, this feature limits results to crypto-related tweets, saving you from irrelevant noise.
#2. Narratives Overview. This is something I plan to visit regularly. It gives a bird's-eye view of all major crypto narratives.
In this tab, you can compare metrics like mindshare, price performance, volume, and more on a single page.
#3. Breakdowns. Dive deep into specific narratives that catch your eye. You'll find top projects in the narrative, along with key data: price, volume, unlock schedules, open interest, and funding rates.
There's also a feed of what crypto Twitter is saying about the narrative. In future, they'll probably add a lot more onchain data.
#4. Projects. This page collects data relating to a project on a single page. All metrics are divided into four categories.
Market: Metrics like price, volume, open interest, market cap, and so on.
Social: It shows related tweets, mindshare of the project over time, etc.
Technical: It tracks onchain metrics related to a project.
KOLs: List of influencers who are talking about it.
#5. The KOL page. Not all influencers are created equal. Some drop real alpha; others are just shilling bags.
This page tracks influencer activity, showing the tickers they've mentioned and the price performance of those assets afterward. It's a great way to separate signal from noise.
There are a couple more features in the platform. But the above five features were the ones I found most useful.
Now, this tool isn't perfect by any means.
This isn't as feature-rich as KAITO, which covers similar stuff. But Kaito costs around ~1k. So, this is great as a free alternative.
The coverage of tokens within narrative breakdowns isn't comprehensive, especially for newer narratives like AI Agents. Many of your bags might not be listed in that section.
All features aren't available everywhere. For example, you might not find any data under the "technical" tab for many of the narrative breakdowns.
This tool only launched this week only. And it's already looking very useful. While it's not perfect, it's an incredible free resource for tracking trends and staying ahead of the curve.
If you want to dive in, check out this guide from the founder and start exploring.
🚀 DeFi Catalysts
BlackRock, in partnership with Securitize, is proposing to add $BUIDL as onchain, backing asset for Frax USD with exposure to U.S. dollar yield.
Ink, a layer 2 from Kraken, has opened "DeFi Training Grounds". It is a competition where you can receive $ETH rewards.
Ether.Fi has expanded the $eBTC cross-chain. Users can now natively mint or bridge on Base, Arbitrum, and Corn.
Kernel DAO added onboarded three assets to its platform: uniBTC by Bedrock DeFi, stBTC by Lorenzo Protocol, and asBNB by Astherus Hub.
Ethena Labs has released $USDe and $sUSDe on Swellchain. Swell will use sequencer profits to accumulate sUSDe protocol-owned liquidity.
Reserve Protocol introduced Decentralised Token Folios (DTFs) from their new Index Protocol. They'll give users exposure to whole narratives in a single click.
🪂 Airdrop Alpha
Eclipse is an Ethereum L2 that uses Solana VM. It doesn't have a token yet. Here's a strategy to qualify for the airdrop.
Tavera, a one-stop gaming ecosystem powered by ZK Stack, shared $TEVA airdrop allocations and the claim page.
🚀 New Launches
Daos.world, a platform that enables users to create DAOs, is live on Base. Using the platform, any anon can become a fund manager.
Panoptic, a permissionless options protocol, launched its mainnet on Ethereum. They've launched a points program as well.
📰 Industry News
IRS (Internal Revenue Service) has officially clarified that crypto staking is taxable. Staking "should induce a tax liability as soon as it is done".
Edgy "wanted BTC to hit $100k again for Christmas and didn't get it" Today's email was written by Edgy and Yayya. p.s. Kaito's one of airdrops with the most promise in 2025. To quality, you gotta post quality content on Twitter aka Yapping. I wrote a detailed guide on it yesterday
DISCLAIMER: I'm NOT a financial advisor. This content is for education and information purposes only. Crypto and DeFi are risky and speculative. Please do your research before investing. Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways we can help you:
⚙️ The DeFi Edge PRO- Designed for busy people who want to stay ahead of the curve. Leverage our research to save you hours each week, and to see what we're personally investing in. Join the waitlist.
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