Over the past 24 hours, the mainstream topics in the crypto market have focused on Polymarket's settlement disputes and potential insider risks amid geopolitical events; in terms of ecosystem development, concerns have been raised about Solana's network health and MEV behavior, the divergence in Ethereum's roadmap continues to escalate, and the Perp DEX sector is accelerating its differentiation in buyback mechanisms and market-making compression.

I. Mainstream Topics

1. Settlement Dispute in Polymarket: Venezuela's "Invasion" of the Market

On January 3, the United States launched a military operation against Venezuela, successfully arresting President Maduro and his wife and transferring them to the United States for trial. The Trump administration characterized the operation as a "law enforcement action" rather than a "military invasion."

On Polymarket, related prediction markets (such as "Will the US invade Venezuela?") ultimately ruled the "Yes" option invalid because the action did not meet the market's pre-defined definition of "invasion," namely a large-scale ground military invasion in the traditional sense, rather than a rapid, targeted raid.

This settlement result sparked a strong backlash in the community, with many users accusing it of "arbitrary interpretation of the rules" and "reversal of decisions," and pointing the finger at the dispute resolution mechanism dominated by UMA holders. Numerous posts used the self-deprecating phrase "the casino is always the winner," further amplifying doubts about the fairness and credibility of the prediction market. Related discussions quickly garnered over a million views, becoming the most discussed topic of the day.

2. Insider Trading Suspicions Raised by the Maduro Scandal

More controversially, hours before the military operation, multiple new wallets appeared on the blockchain, placing large bets on either "Maduro will step down before January 31" or "the US will intervene in Venezuela," with a probability of only about 6%–8%. One account invested approximately $35,000 and ultimately profited over $400,000.

The community immediately questioned whether there had been an insider leak, and even did not rule out the possibility of a connection to the government or intelligence system. Although some argue that the prediction market itself has limited liquidity and is noisy, making it difficult to draw conclusions based on a single transaction, such precise timing was still considered "too coincidental."

This incident has sparked higher-level discussions, with some lawmakers suggesting restrictions or bans on government officials' involvement in prediction markets to prevent potential insider trading risks. Coupled with the aforementioned settlement controversy, the systemic risks of Polymarket have become the absolute focus of today's discussion.

3. The precipitous decline in Berachain's ecosystem TVL

Another widely shared post comes from Berachain. This L1 project, which was highly hyped in 2025 (with frequent high-profile activities and a TVL that once exceeded $3 billion), has now seen its total locked value fall back to approximately $184 million, a drop of over 90%.

Community discussions generally attribute the problem to "insufficient product offerings and genuine demand after the hype subsided" and "rapid capital outflow due to diminishing incentives." Some users jokingly refer to it as "Bear Chain" (because Berachain sounds similar to "bear chain"). Comments from influential figures like CZ also focus on the same point: marketing cannot replace sustainable products and cash flow in the long run. This type of discussion reflects a reassessment of the market's long-term viability for new public blockchains.

4. Rumors of TON team selling off shares

The price of TON has fallen by about 66% from its peak, with some posts attributing this to team selling off their holdings, sparking brief discussions. However, overall, the topic has generated significantly less buzz than Polymarket and Berachain, and is more likely to be seen as an isolated case within a broader market correction, without generating sustained controversy.

II. Mainstream Ecosystem Dynamics

1. Solana

Block packing issues raise concerns about network health.

New tools (such as ibrl.wtf) reveal that some validators are employing a so-called late packing strategy, deliberately delaying transactions until the end of the block to maximize MEV withdrawal rewards.

The community generally believes that this behavior is eroding Solana's core technological advantages: the real-time processing model, which was originally marketed as transaction streaming, has become a "burst" state, where the state is only visible at the end of the time slot, thus affecting the real-time performance of transactions and undermining the fairness of execution.
Jito's governance head, @DrNickA, described it as an "existential crisis" for Solana, pointing out that such behavior could directly hinder the development of advanced on-chain applications like CLOB. He called for penalties for bad validators through delegated actions at the staker level, or for staking to be directed to nodes with higher IBRL scores (such as Jito SOL).

The community consensus is that in the short term, only social-level coordination can be relied upon, while in the long term, it is necessary to technicalize the constraint mechanism through protocol-level solutions (such as BAM/MCP proposals). The high level of interest in this topic reflects the market's collective anxiety about whether Solana's long-term value proposition will be eroded by MEV behavior.

2. Ethereum

Divergent lines and escalating resistance to censorship are proceeding in parallel.

Former EF researcher Dankrad Feist publicly questioned Vitalik Buterin's emphasis on "trust minimization and resilience priority," arguing that this could push Ethereum towards becoming a "modified Bitcoin-style digital gold," sacrificing its potential to support real economic activity. He advocates prioritizing the return of high-value DeFi activities to L1.

Kyle Samani, a partner at Multicoin Capital, offered a more direct critique, arguing that EF's development focus is not on serving user needs, but rather on Vitalik's personal vision. This statement quickly sparked polarized reactions: one side supported a long-term approach prioritizing sovereignty and censorship resistance, while the other worried that Ethereum was gradually deviating from practicality and market competitiveness.

Alongside the ideological debates, there is a more positive technological development. Soispoke.eth analyzed on the Ethereum Magicians forum that EIP-7805 (FOCIL: Fork Choice-enforced Inclusion Lists) is expected to be included in the Hegotá upgrade (the successor to Glamsterdam).

FOCIL enhances censorship resistance, transaction timeliness, and execution neutrality by allowing multiple validators to be compelled to participate in valid transactions. This proposal, which previously failed to reach Glamsterdam due to testing scope control issues, has now gained more support among core developers, and a prototype is ready. It is believed to benefit ordinary users, Level 2 (L2) participants, institutional participants, and application layers simultaneously.

3. Perp DEX: A positive signal for Lighter

Lighter has officially launched a mechanism to use protocol fees for continuous on-chain buybacks ($LIT), with these buybacks being publicly traceable through a dedicated treasury account. The community generally believes this is a rare, real-value capture model that scales linearly with platform usage, and the recent price performance ($LIT) is seen as a direct reflection of this.

Meanwhile, market maker spread and marginal analysis show that the short-term profit margins of leading market makers such as Selini Capital and Jump Crypto are being significantly compressed. Data shows that Jump accounts for as much as 47% of the trading volume in delayed arbitrage, and since September–October 2025, the overall market-making margin has continued to narrow, with mechanized market-making strategies facing even greater pressure under a 0.2 bps fee structure.

4. Other project updates

Infinex: The founder disclosed a monthly burn rate of approximately $1.1 million (for a team of about 60 people), which led some in the community to question whether employee salaries were too high. However, a subsequent clarification revealed that the figure included infrastructure and various operating costs, and the controversy quickly subsided.

Tempo: Released the TIP-20 token standard, optimized for stablecoin and payment scenarios, supporting transfer notes, compliance strategies, revenue distribution, and "any stablecoin payment gas", and has already partnered with AllUnity, Bridge, LayerZero, and others.

MegaETH (MEGA): It has been included in Coinbase's listing roadmap, which the community sees as a positive sign that high-performance L2 is gaining recognition from mainstream platforms. The community speculates that TGE is imminent.

TON: Old news resurfaces: The team sold approximately $450 million worth of tokens in 2025, which some users consider a key reason for the price drop of about 66% from its peak. Discussions are mostly lighthearted and reflective of the event.