While still in its early stages, DeFi presents a hopeful alternative to the centralization and power consolidation.

It is affecting the U.S. financial system, where the number of banks has fallen by two-thirds since 1990, resulting in a smaller group of large banks controlling most of the assets.

Polygon experienced significant staking outflows from its largest stakers, while other key players intensified their investments.

Historically, major players like Binance and Lido have led staking on Polygon, but their share of staked MATIC has sharply declined this past year.

Blockworks conducted research about institutional ETH staking and came to some interesting conclusions ↓

A strong 66% of respondents are aware of Distributed Validators, with 61% willing to pay for enhanced security and decentralization.

Despite regulatory uncertainty, most institutions are embracing staking technologies as the ecosystem matures.

Read the full report here.

DropsTab has shared a list of testnets with potential airdrops.

Have you already tried completing tasks in any of them?

Margin notes for a16z's "State of Crypto 2024" report:

Key data highlights and additional context you might need for a full understanding of the market ↓

https://stacymuur.substack.com/p/margin-notes-for-a16zs-state-of-crypto

Stablecoins like USDT and USDC now account for nearly 50% of transaction volume among major crypto assets.

BTCfi is now coming to the Move ecosystem.

Here’s my edu thread on Echo Protocol that brings $APT restaking token and $aBTC to Move for new yield scenarios.

The auditing firm Three Sigma shared its perspective on the role of options in DeFi.

Find out in the new article how they will impact the industry's landscape.

As Bitcoin consolidates near its previous all-time high, more than 320,000 active addresses are interacting within this price range.

Notably, 220,000 of these addresses have an average acquisition price around $68.5K, indicating strong interest and potential support at this key level.

What's new in Web3? Let's find out from the latest research! 🔍

General
➖ Galaxy: Ethereum All Core Developers Consensus Call #144 Writeup
➖ Galaxy: Weekly Top Stories - 10/18

Market
➖ Coinbase: Weekly: Applications and Apotheosis
➖ Galaxy: Election Speculation Drives Bitcoin Toward $68K

DeFi
➖ CoinMarketCap: Why Traders Are Flocking to Hyperliquid

Blockchains & networks
➖ Crypto.com: Intent-Based Protocols
➖ Galaxy: Upcoming Ethereum Upgrades & Catalysts

Tokens & currencies
➖ 4pillars: The Verge of Crypto Dollar War and Strategy of Ethena (Feat. UStb, Network)

The list of top projects in the AI and big data sector by developer activity is led by NEAR.

Other projects in the top 10 include:

— Oasis Network
— The Graph
— Bittensor
— Oraichain
— Worldcoin
— Golem
— Ocean Protocol
— iExec
— Streamr

NEAR is now live on Dune, so you can track its accurate real time data.

There are some great insights in there, you can check my thread to have a quick summary

The total BTC balance of long-term holders is going parabolic.

Seems smart money knows something.

Ethereum's average fees have dropped to an affordable $1.63, a level that typically boosts traders' transfer activity.

Over the years, ETH network fees have fluctuated significantly, but this 4-tier guide shows how current costs are shaping transfer behavior.

For Mantle, late October will be huge, with the launch of COOK and cmETH.

Here’s my speculation on what to expect once these two are live.

The number of ONDO holders keeps growing.

The era of tokenized assets has come?

Polymarket has reached new heights recently:

▪️ $1.3B in monthly betting volume
▪️ 85% of prediction markets' TVL
▪️ $3.5B in total trading volume
▪️ 17.7M bets placed
▪️ $221M in TVL

Read more about the Polymarket's milestones in the article.

Crypto markets have corrected alongside equities, strengthening the speculation that the bull rally has ended.

As crowd optimism turns to doubt, the following projects with $500M+ market capitalization show the best growth potential amid the fear:

$LINK
$BTC
$GOAT
$DOGE
$XRP
$PEPE
$FIL
$SHIB
$EIGEN
$BEAM