Update
The Legal Showdown: Core vs Maple
Two DeFi protocols are airing their dirty laundry in public.
Meet the players.
- Core is a chain building a DeFi ecosystem for BTC.
- Maple Finance is an asset management protocol that generates yield for users by lending to real-world businesses and institutions.
Their paths crossed over lstBTC, a yield-bearing BTC token.
In early 2025, Core Foundation approached Maple to generate yield for this lstBTC.
The product idea was great: Investors and institutions can deposit BTC with regulated custodians (BitGo, Copper, Hex Trust), mint a liquid token, and earn ~4–6% APY.
lstBTC got traction. It attracted >$150m of their clients' BTC. Clear product-market fit.
Then came the problem.
Maple started building a competing product: syrupBTC.
According to Core, Maple used partnership resources to build the competing product. This was a violation of the 24-month exclusivity clause as well.
So, Core went to court.
They got a favorable injunction from the Cayman Islands Court. It prohibits Maple from:
- Dealing in CORE tokens without prior written consent.
- Launching or promoting syrupBTC or any similar product.
- Prohibited Maple from using Core Foundation's confidential information.
Core also called Maple "destructive" for stating they would be unable to return BTC to lenders in full. There are more nuances to Core's accusations; you can read the full article here.
Maple responded to accusations here.
According to Maple, they didn't use any resource from Core for their competing product.
The lstBTC product got difficult to operate due to the crash of the CORE price and legal actions from Core Foundation.
They promised to return 85% of the BTC principal to BTC Yield lenders. The remaining 15% retained in the program will be released when the legal situation is resolved.
The whole episode has been disastrous for both projects. While BTC is down only ~2.5% on the week:
- $CORE is down 16%
- $SYRUP is down 22%
Maple Finance had a strong reputation. This saga has damaged that significantly.
The good news: you don't have to worry about their other products. Products like syrupUSDC and syrupUSDT are completely separate and aren't directly affected by this situation.
Personally, I think building a competing product without informing the partner is not a good ethical decision. But as long as there were no legal violations, you cannot blame Maple.
Core is claiming Maple violated the 24-month exclusivity contract. I don't know the full details of the contract.
With both sides lawyered up, this dispute is set to play out in court.
Sponsored by edgeX
edgeX: The Ultimate Perp Trading Platform
The most successful, long-term sustainable protocols in crypto are Perp projects.
The biggest winner of this cycle, HyperLiquid, is an example. But there's another perp project flying under the radar.
edgeX is a decentralized perpetual platform. eStrategy is its liquidity engine, where users can deposit funds into market-making vaults.
The CEX-level performance, best-in-class liquidity, rapid ecosystem growth, and a top-tier mobile experience are driving its exponential growth.
- #1 revenue-generating perp DEX (~11.5M in last 7 days) among all pre-TGE perp DEXs
- Since April 2025, its TVL has increased from <$15M to ~$450M. That's a 30x increase.
- Trading volume for perpetuals also increased massively. While it only did ~$1.5B in March, it has already done ~$138B in November.
- According to an Artemis analysis, edgeX has deeper liquidity for some assets than even HyperLiquid.
There's also a points program in the background. So if you're itching to perp trade, edgeX is a great option.
Reader Questions
Take on Ethena & BitTensor Subnets
Last Tuesday, I invited readers to send me their questions.
Two of you took me up on it — here are my answers!
What is your opinion regarding Ethena and $ENA? I currently have a large position in red and would like to know whether I should start DCAing or leave it as is. - John H.
Ethena is a stablecoin project I actually like. Strong team, big vision.
We've covered multiple times. The last time it was in the context of how the illiquidity of USDe contributed to the October 10th crash.
Let's look at some fundamentals:
- USDe supply went down from ~$15B to ~$7.5B. That's a 50% loss.
- Fees also declined notably. Since August, Ethena got >$11.5M in fee every week. Now, it's only getting ~$7.5M in fee every week.
- Other metrics like daily USDe trading volume and daily active users are also trending downwards.
The token unlocks make the situation even worse.
Massive amounts of $ENA are entering the market. Every month, 212.5M $ENA will enter the market until March 2028. For the next month, it's ~0.6% of the released supply.
See more unlock details here.
If we factor in the current general bearish environment, I'm bearish on ENA for the short term.
Only after we see the market turn more constructive would I start DCAing into any altcoin again. If ENA nukes much lower (say closer to $0.15) I might consider accumulating.
(Not financial advice. Just how I'd think about it.)
Which Bittensor subnets do you see performing best over the next 3-5 years? - Carlos R.
BitTensor is an alpha play for the AI Narrative. It's an L1 chain that connects and incentivizes the development of machine learning models.
The subnets are specialized mini-networks within the chain. Each subnet will be focused on a specific AI task, like text generation or image recognition.
The reader is asking for specific subnets. Personally, investing in subnets themselves is more risk than worth it. I prefer alpha plays, like $TAO, over levered plays like subnets.
(Subnet tokens are paired with TAO. So they can be seen as leveraged TAO.)
That said, here are my top 5 subnets I'm watching. None of this is investment advice, just my research list.
#1. Chutes - SN64
This subnet provides AI Compute with pay-per-use pricing. It cuts costs by up to 90% using underutilized GPUs provided by miners.
It's the flagship subnet of Rayon Labs, the team behind 3 subnets on Bittensor. The other two subnets support Chutes.
- Gradients (SN56): Trains models for Chutes deployment.
- Nineteen (SN19): Image generation feeds into Chutes.
Chutes currently has the highest market cap and daily emissions among all subnets.
#2. Affine - SN120
Affine enables complex workflows by incentivizing models across different subnets. Only the best model gets rewards, which pushes miners to keep iterating on their models to receive more rewards.
It was founded by Bittensor co-founder Const and launched in the middle of this year.
They recently bridged to Base via Project Rubicon,
#3. Lium - SN51
Lium offers GPU access through its permissionless rental marketplace; it claims 10 times the efficiency of traditional cloud providers.
Recently, its rental revenue reached its ATH at around $730 per hour.
#4. Ridges AI - SN62
Ridges is a decentralized marketplace for autonomous AI software engineering agents that solve real-world coding challenges, from bug fixes to full feature development.
While it's still in the beta phase, it has a daily prize pool of around $60k to $65k to incentivize miners to incentivize code quality.
While the founder worked on the X transition team at 19, he's only 21 now. There are no details about other co-founders.
#5. Gradients - SN56
Gradients allows anyone to train their own AI models on Bittensor without needing any prior knowledge.
It is built by both Rayon Labs (the team behind Chutes) and Bittensor. So the team is doxxed and reliable.
🚀 DeFi Catalysts
Monad mainnet went live. They also listed the $MON token on Solana as part of its launch strategy. It's a win-win tactic that benefits both ecosystems.
Kaito introduced a new Polymarket category: Verifiable Mindshare Markets. Users can speculate on the mindshare of different projects & narratives.
Sunrise launched. It's a unified gateway from Wormhole that lists new onchain assets from any ecosystem directly into Solana with day-one liquidity.
Aerodrome executed a 609k AERO token buyback. The total buybacks this month have increased to 3M+.
Cardano was disrupted after a problematic transaction led to chain splitting. The founder, Charles, has called the FBI against the developer who caused it.
Jupiter DTF is a new standard for transparent, on-chain project funding from Jupiter. The first launch will go live on December 3rd.
📰 Industry News
Berachain granted Brevan Howard Fund a refund right on its $25M Series B investment for up to a year after Berachain's TGE on Feb. 6, 2025.
Coinbase is looking to buy the Solana trading platform Vector.fun. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year.
Aerodrome, the top DEX on Base, and Velodrome, the leading DEX on Optimism, suffered a front-end attack on Saturday.
Fanatics is launching a prediction market through a new partnership with Crypto.com. The platform will launch within weeks.
Grayscale is launching ETFs for Chainlink, Dogecoin, and XRP. We'll keep seeing even more altcoin ETFs going forward.
🐦⬛ X Hits
- Will the quantum threat kill crypto?
- How to take leverage in prediction markets.
- What you need to know about the Talus airdrop.
- Alternative cause for the October 10th crash.
- Navigating a Bitcoin bear market
😂 Meme
Until next time,
Edgy
P.S. Monad launched their mainnet yesterday. We'll share top opportunities from the ecosystem in TDE Pro. Join to get early access.
Today's email was written by Edgy and Yayya.
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.
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