Steven_Research

Thank you @Binance Square Official and the title independent Researcher 2025

Thank you to the bosses @CZ @Yi He @Richard Teng

Thank you to the bosses @Daniel Zou (DZ) 🔶 and Francis, and @Nyan 7

It has been a memorable year 2025 with many emotions related to crypto and Binance!

Made many new friends, effective investments, gained more insights into the industry, and found reliable partners and colleagues!

Let's look forward to 2026 with new forecasts! We will be even more dynamic! Very bullish on Binance! 😍

Happy new year 2026!

Pyth Network has reported a downtime issue affecting Pythnet/Hermes, disrupting the core price feed and the sponsored feed for over four hours.

The team stated that validators are coordinating to restart after identifying the root cause of the issue. This incident could impact DeFi protocols relying on Pyth's oracle data for trading, lending, and liquidation activities.

A few hours ago, Echo Protocol (on Monad) got hacked.

The hacker just minted 1,000 fake $eBTC worth $76.64 million.

They used 45 eBTC (around $3.45 million) as collateral on Curvance to borrow 11.3 $WBTC ($867,000).

Then they bridged it over to Ethereum, swapped it for 385 $ETH ($821,000), and sent it all to Tornado Cash to launder the funds.

The hacker still holds 955 eBTC ($73.2 million) in their wallet.

After the KelpDAO hack, many protocols have ditched LayerZero $ZRO , with $4 billion in assets funneled into Chainlink CCIP $LINK .

In less than 30 days, a "DeFi exodus" worth over $9 billion has unfolded as major players sever ties with LayerZero to rush over to Chainlink CCIP.

*Projects that have left LayerZero:

- KelpDAO (~$1.5 billion): After being exploited due to a misconfigured single-verifier (1-of-1) on LayerZero, the project immediately announced it was abandoning this infrastructure and migrating its entire token bridge system rsETH to CCIP.

- Solv Protocol (> $700 million): On May 7, the project announced it was completely halting the use of LayerZero for SolvBTC and xSolvBTC across multiple networks like Corn, Berachain, Rootstock, and TAC.

- Re (~$200–475 million): On May 8, this on-chain reinsurance protocol decided to shift all its stablecoin reUSD to Chainlink's infrastructure in search of safety.

- Lombard (> $1 billion): On May 15, they fully replaced this infrastructure with CCIP across 5 chains (Solana, Berachain...) and completely closed the LayerZero bridge on Morph and Swell to safeguard LBTC & BTC.b.

- Tempo (~$5 billion): On May 16, the L1 network focused on payments, backed by Stripe and Paradigm, officially chose Chainlink CCIP as its exclusive infrastructure to migrate over $5 billion cbBTC to its network.

=> Johann Eid (Chainlink Labs): "We are witnessing a continuous wave of migration seeking safe havens in the industry."

BEST DAY TO BUY BITCOIN? $BTC

Sounds a bit funny, but they actually put together a report analyzing which day you’re most likely to profit from buying the next day. Check it out and maybe wait for that day to buy—it might be easier than technical analysis 😂

1. Performance by Days of the Week

(Calculated based on average profit of exactly 1 day after buying)

- Best: Monday & Wednesday (+0.38%)

- Worst: Thursday (-0.09% — only day of the week in the red)

- Weekday vs Weekend: Almost no significant difference (+0.21% vs +0.22%).

2. Performance by US Holidays

*Best holidays (Buy and likely to spike the next day):

- New Year’s Day (01/01): yields +2.01% (Win rate 84.6% — up 11 out of 13 years).

- Columbus Day (2nd Monday of October): yields +1.70% (Win rate 84.6%).

- Christmas (12/25): yields +1.46% (Win rate 53.8%).

*Worst holidays (Buy and likely to drop the next day):

- MLK Day (3rd Monday of January): yields -0.84% (Win rate < 50%).

- Independence Day (07/04): yields -0.26% (Win rate < 50%).

3. Long-Term Results (Hold for 1 Year)

- The effects of "buying day of the week" or "holiday" completely vanish over a 365-day period.

- The profit gap between the best and worst days of the week is only 2.4% (negligible compared to Bitcoin's volatility).

=> Overall, after a year, it doesn’t make a huge difference which day you buy, this analysis is more suited for daily trading.

=> For long-term investors, the DCA (Dollar-Cost Averaging) strategy is still the optimal choice.

- What do you guys think?

ONLY 2 DAYS LEFT UNTIL MR. POWELL'S TERM AS FED CHAIR ENDS

- Jerome Powell's term as Fed Chair officially ends on 15/5/2026 (this Friday)

- President Trump has nominated Kevin Warsh as the new Fed Chair.

- The U.S. Senate confirmed Kevin Warsh as a Fed Governor on 12/5/2026.

- Today (13/5/2026 - Wednesday), the Senate will vote to confirm Mr. Warsh as Fed Chair.

- Kevin Warsh has a more aggressive reform stance, promising cheaper short-term borrowing rates, but long-term borrowing costs (like mortgages) could get pricier. This could spike market volatility in the short term as investors reprice risk.

- After stepping down as Fed Chair, Powell will remain one of the 7 Fed Governors until 31/1/2028 (that’s over 1 year and 8 months from now).

Over the past 4 months, VCs have been rolling out additional funds in preparation for the next phase of deployment.

- Of course, on this list, Founders Fund with $6 billion isn’t targeting crypto; they're investing in tech companies, AI, etc., outside the space.

*The remaining funds that have launched additional capital include:

- a16z crypto: $2.2 billion (Fund V, closed 05/05)

- Haun Ventures: $1 billion (2 new funds)

- Dragonfly Capital: $650 million

- ParaFi Capital: $125 million

- Blockchain Capital: currently raising $700 million (2 new funds – early + growth)

- Paradigm: rumored to be raising up to $1.5 billion (expanding into AI/robotics but still maintaining crypto infrastructure).

*Leading sectors in fundraising:

- Payments & Stablecoins: BVNK ($1.8 billion M&A – Mastercard acquisition), Rain ($250 million Series C), Slash ($100 million), Reap ($600 million).

- Prediction Markets: Kalshi ($1 billion), Polymarket ($600 million).

- DeFi: Liquid ($18 million), Exponent.

- Trading Infra: Payward ($200 million).

- AI × Crypto: Reppo ($20 million), Spektr ($20 million), Squads ($18 million – backed by Haun).

- RWAs: Fence ($20 million), MidasRWA, Anchorage (Tether invested).

*What am I doing during this phase?

- Basically, these activities are setting the stage for the next funding round; it’s not about investing the whole amount right now.

- The sectors getting investment are primarily focused on AI, RWA, Stablecoin, etc.; they are looking for projects with real substance for users, being much more selective than before.

- The market next season needs a strong development of applications that connect directly with TradFi as a killer app to really explode again.

- My team and I are still focused on building our portfolio for $BTC season, while deeply experiencing the products of new projects.

So, we've wrapped up April with a solid recovery of +11.87% for $BTC , marking two consecutive green months for Bitcoin.

Kicking off May, we're seeing some bullish momentum as $BTC pushes back up to the $80K mark.

Prior to this, we faced five straight months of red, with a cumulative drop of over 50% (halving) for BTC, a rare consecutive slump since 2018.

Currently, the fear and greed index has returned to neutral territory, with moments where it even flirted with the greed zone again.

Looking at the quarterly perspective, Q1 closed with a candlestick around the $68K range, and we're now in the next month of Q2. If BTC continues to consolidate at this level, there's a good chance Q2 will end in the green.

However, if we consider 2026 to mirror 2014, 2018, or 2022, then assuming Q2 finishes green, the chances of Q3 and Q4 being red are quite high.

- What are your thoughts, folks? Is the cycle history repeating, or are we in uncharted territory now?

IN THE LAST 10 DAYS, WE'VE WITNESSED 9 HACKS

In just over a week, we've seen nearly a dozen hacks on smaller protocols, so here’s a recap for you:

1. Wasabi Protocol (30/04): Losses >$5,000,000

- This is the biggest asset loss incident in this wave. Security teams are still investigating the specific cause.

2. Sweat Foundation (29/04): Losses $3,500,000

- Error: Token contract was exploited, leading to the draining of 13.71 billion SWEAT (equivalent to 65% of circulating supply), shocking the Move-to-Earn ecosystem.

3. Purrlend (25/04): Losses ~$1,520,000

- Error: Hacker gained control of 2/3 of Admin Multi-sig wallets (on HyperEVM/MegaETH), allowing them to mint fake tokens to perform real asset loans.

4. Giddy (23/04): Losses ~$1,300,000

- Error: Flaw in EIP-712 signature verification and Signature Replay issue on the GiddyVaultV3 contract.

5. Aftermath Finance (29/04): Losses ~$1,140,000

- Error: Flaw in fee accounting logic of the Perps contract on the Sui network.

6. YieldCore (29/04): Losses ~$383,000

- Error: Authorization vulnerability in the project's vaults.

7. ZetaChain (27–28/04): Losses ~$334,000

- Error: Exploited the GatewayEVM contract via arbitrary external calls.

8. Syndicate (29/04): Losses ~$330,000

- Error: Upgrade key leak of the Commons Bridge, causing 18.5 million SYND tokens to be drained, with the token price dropping immediately by 35%.

9. Scallop (26/04): Losses ~$142,000

- Error: Vulnerability appeared in the reward pool sub-contract on the Sui network.

=> Total losses during this period are around $8-15M (not including some smaller incidents). Most teams have paused their contracts and frozen funds.

The market is pretty quiet, and most of us aren't too focused on macro anymore, right?

*Tuesday, 4/28 BoJ

- (Bank of Japan): Interest rate decision announcement. This is a key event that directly impacts the Yen and the entire Asian market.

- US Consumer Confidence (Conference Board): The US consumer confidence index will be released. This is an important measure of economic health and the mindset of American consumers.

*Wednesday, 4/29

- FOMC (US Fed): Interest rate decision at 2:00 PM ET (which is 1:00 AM on 4/30 Vietnam time). The market will be focused on analyzing Chairman Jerome Powell's press conference for clues about potential rate cuts in the near future.

- BoC (Bank of Canada): Interest rate decision along with the monetary policy report.

*We can see that the actual trend (and forecasts from major banks) from last year until now will mostly be to maintain or slightly lower interest rates, not too many surprises, and CME forecasts nearly 100% to keep it steady.

- But looking further out, we will witness a new construction phase, right folks? During this time, let's focus on accumulating knowledge, skills, resources, and perseverance, alright?

IT SEEMS AAVE HAS BEEN SUCCESSFULLY SAVED

Aave is dealing with bad debt of around $200 million (equivalent to ~75k–100k $ETH) to cover the shortfall of rsETH after the exploit (after accounting for frozen ETH + recoveries from Aave/Compound), as I have analyzed in previous posts.

*As of now, approximately $237 million has been raised (details in the image):

- Aave DAO: 25,000 ETH (~$58 million) from treasury (fixed commitment).

- Stani Kulechov (founder of Aave): 5,000 ETH personally.

- Mantle: 30,000 ETH (in the form of a loan facility with interest).

- Lido: up to 2,500 stETH (~$5.7 million).

- KelpDAO contributed 2,000 ETH (~$4.66 million) from treasury.

- Arbitrum DAO (30.76k ETH frozen ~ $71 million) froze the ETH from the hacker.

- EtherFi 5,000 ETH (~$11.65 million)

- Golem Foundation 1,000 ETH

- And over 101,000 small contributors from the community.

=> Most of the large amounts are still awaiting governance vote (Arbitrum, Aave, Mantle, Lido, Etherfi). Only when the vote passes and the transfers are completed will it be considered “real money.” However, tallying up the pledges like this allows the market to see clearly that “DeFi United” is already over-covered.

=> Although it's still at the consensus stage, it helps Aave avoid a domino effect, bad debt is under control, outflows have stopped, and market confidence is recovering.

=> The amount of TVL outflows from Aave has temporarily halted but has not yet returned; TVL remains around 14B$ .

- What are your thoughts? Has this issue been resolved?

The total deposit volume on Aave has now net flowed out $16.2 billion.

It has dropped to $29.6 billion from the peak of $45.8 billion following the rsETH incident.

Spark has partially benefited from the outflow of capital from Aave (after Justin Sun withdrew $ETH from Aave and deposited into Spark). The TVL before the event was $1.9 billion and is currently at $3.6 billion, netting in nearly $1.7 billion.

Token $SPK has also seen impressive growth, and this morning's token listing rally has pushed SPK close to a 3x from the bottom in 2 weeks.