Publication Date: January 9, 2025 Author: BlockBeats Editorial Department

Over the past 24 hours, the crypto market has exhibited parallel evolution across multiple dimensions. Mainstream topics have focused on the core disagreements surrounding Ethereum's scaling path, the structural adjustments within the ZCash team, and the continued entry signals from traditional financial institutions. In terms of ecosystem development, the Solana prediction market and application distribution are rapidly taking shape, Ethereum is advancing its implementation in institutional-grade DeFi and financial inclusion scenarios, while Perp DEX has exposed short-term volatility and structural risks due to large-scale liquidation.

I. Mainstream Topics

Structural division within the ZCash team

Josh Swihart, former CEO of Electric Coin Company (ECC), the original core developer of ZCash, announced the launch of a new startup, CashZ.org, focusing on the development and commercialization of the ZCash wallet, with the goal of pushing ZCash to a scale of "billions of users" through a sustainable profit model. He stated frankly that non-profit organizations face structural constraints in product iteration and market expansion.

The new company plans to launch a brand-new ZCash wallet and open early access. Meanwhile, the board-level changes are seen as proactively mitigating potential legal risks and clearing obstacles for core developers to move the company private and launch features more quickly.

Haseeb Qureshi likened ZCash to BitTorrent, saying it maintains "cyberpunk integrity"; Chainyoda summarized this change as a medium- to long-term positive for $ZEC.

The overall sentiment in the community is noticeably positive, with frequent expressions like "LFG," "Viva Zcash," and "renaissance begins," leading many to view it as a "reboot" for the privacy coin sector. Optimists are even giving extremely high price expectations for $ZEC; however, there are also dissenting voices, focusing on ZCash's historical baggage, whether a new coin should be launched directly, and comparisons with projects like Monero and Chia. Overall, the community tends to interpret it as a constructive split: a path adjustment, but the mission remains unchanged.

Vitalik Buterin reiterates Ethereum scaling path: Bandwidth takes precedence over latency

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin reiterated that prioritizing bandwidth improvement over drastically reducing latency is a safer and more decentralized scaling approach. Through PeerDAS and ZKPs, Ethereum can achieve thousands of times the scaling without sacrificing node verifiability; while latency, limited by the speed of light and node geographic distribution, is realistically feasible within a range of 2–4 seconds.

Vitalik positioned Ethereum as the "heartbeat of the world," not a game server, and that high-frequency applications should be handled by L2. Ryan Sean Adams described Ethereum as Vitalik's "hint engineering product"; Tetranode agreed that a 2-4 second latency was sufficient for L1 to become a national-level trust layer.

Opposition was equally sharp: Max Resnick criticized the route as too conservative, arguing that Solana had proven that low latency and high bandwidth were not mutually exclusive, and bluntly stated that the L2 route "had not delivered on its promises," calling for the slots to be compressed to 6 seconds as soon as possible.

The disagreements are highly concentrated. Supporters emphasize modularity, decentralization, and L2 specialization; critics argue that Ethereum is avoiding direct competition with Solana, and that L2 complexity is leading to a loss of users and market share. Some also see Vitalik as an ecosystem guide, a "benevolent AI" figure, but complaints about its "slowness" and "high cost" persist. The discussion consistently revolves around the core trade-off between latency and bandwidth.

SharpLink deploys institutional-grade ETH yield strategies on Linea

SharpLink ($SBET), a publicly traded company, announced the deployment of approximately $170 million worth of ETH on Ethereum's L2 Linea platform. This initiative integrates native staking, EigenLayer restaking, Linea and ether.fi incentives, and provides institutional-grade custody through Anchorage, with the goal of achieving "the most efficient institutional-grade ETH holding solution."
Joseph Chalom has called 2026 the starting point of Ethereum's "productivity era," believing that DeFi yields are being formally introduced into the public market. Meanwhile, the Optimism Foundation has proposed using 50% of Superchain's revenue to buy back OP tokens monthly, further aligning token value with network growth.

The market reaction was highly positive, hailed as a "milestone event for institutional DeFi," with many referring to it as the "SharpLink edge" or a "turning point." Discussions focused on the actual annualized yield, the incremental growth of the Linea ecosystem, and the valuation logic of ETH, with overall sentiment revolving around the idea that "ETH is shifting from a narrative asset to a productive asset."

Bank of America upgraded Coinbase to "Buy".

Bank of America upgraded Coinbase (COIN) to "Buy" with a price target of $340 (implying approximately 38% upside). Reasons cited include product line expansion (equities, ETFs, prediction markets), the value of its Base L2 infrastructure, and the potential of Coinbase Tokenize for tokenizing real-world assets.
Despite a roughly 40% drop in share price from its July high, Bank of America believes momentum is improving in the second half of the year and views Coinbase as a long-term core player in the crypto infrastructure sector by 2026.

This is widely interpreted as another sign of the "maturation" of the crypto industry, with keywords focusing on "infrastructure" and "platform play." Most believe Coinbase is no longer just an exchange, but a diversified fintech platform; a minority remain wary of speculative opportunities, but overall sentiment is clearly bullish.

Morgan Stanley may launch a crypto wallet

Morgan Stanley plans to launch its own crypto wallet in 2026 (in the second half of the year) and launch crypto trading services through E*Trade in the first half of the year, aiming to integrate digital assets, tokenized assets, and traditional wealth management workflows. Meanwhile, its deepened partnership with Carta and acquisition of EquityZen are also seen as important moves to improve the efficiency of the private equity market and serve multi-generational wealth management.

The sentiment was generally positive, with many seeing this as a clear signal of deep integration between TradeFi and DeFi, and "ticker is $ETH" becoming a frequent joke. Some interpretations linked it to improvements in the regulatory environment, but the mainstream view remained focused on the fact that institutional adoption was moving from "trial and error" to "systemic integration."

II. Mainstream Ecosystem Dynamics

Solana: Experimenting with both prediction markets and token mechanisms

DFlow announced that its prediction market API, launched in partnership with Kalshi, has significantly boosted trading activity across the Solana ecosystem's front-end applications within just two weeks of its public release. This includes a wide range of products such as Pieverse, Solprice, O1 Exchange, Synthesis Trade, Pocket Wallet, Human Plane, Duel Trade, Stand Trade, Mira, Trade Onsight, Raptor, Kairos Trade, Sharpe Terminal, Simmer Markets, and Cobot, achieving large-scale access to prediction markets on Solana for the first time.
This wave of diffusion is seen as validating DFlow's advantages in low latency, high accuracy, and composability, and also demonstrating the potential of prediction markets as a new application distribution layer for Solana.

Meanwhile, Avici and MetaDAO are seen as two attempts to fix the "failure of crypto token design": the former explores the neo-banking path with privacy and ease of use at its core; the latter reconstructs the ICO mechanism through futarchy (prediction market governance), attempting to reduce VC dominance and early selling pressure, and achieve fairer value discovery and distribution.

Discussions surrounding DFlow are heating up, with it being hailed as "the true renaissance of Solana's prediction markets" and "a milestone moment for AI × trading." Many users are directly linking it to a medium- to long-term valuation reassessment of $SOL.

The debate between Avici and MetaDAO leans more towards the structural level: supporters see it as "the future of neobanks" and "a rescue plan for ICOs," emphasizing its innovative mechanisms and strong execution; critics, on the other hand, focus on regulatory risks and complexities. Overall, the community views it as a cutting-edge experiment by Solana in ownership, distribution, and governance mechanisms, and calls for broader participation in the discussion.

Ethereum: Resilience Narrative, Cultural Conflict, and Institutional Implementation Coexist

Vitalik Buterin reiterated that Ethereum's core goal is not ultimate efficiency or convenience, but rather to provide a sovereign financial infrastructure that minimizes the risk of systemic failure, is politically neutral, and globally accessible. He likened Ethereum to a "financial amplifier" of BitTorrent and Linux, emphasizing that L1 should be the long-term home of autonomous finance, while being compatible with enterprise needs without sacrificing decentralization.

This idea has once again sparked a cultural backlash. Threadguy criticized Vitalik for publicly rejecting the ETH meme culture in 2021 and for selling tokens given to him by projects such as Shiba Inu (which were subsequently donated to the Covid Foundation in India), arguing that this "damaged the narrative and community momentum," and contrasting it with Solana founder Toly, who would not have intervened in such a way.

At the execution level, SharpLink ($SBET) deployed $170 million worth of ETH on Linea, integrating staking, EigenLayer restaking, protocol incentives, and Anchorage custody, which is regarded as a key case of ETH's transformation into an "institutional-grade productive asset".

In addition, the ADI Chain Foundation has partnered with M-Pesa Africa to extend institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure to 8 African countries and approximately 60 million users, targeting up to 42% of the unbanked population in sub-Saharan Africa.

Vitalik's statement has sparked polarized reactions: supporters see it as "the last bastion of trust minimization," while critics argue that it is overly conservative and ignores efficiency competition with high-performance chains like Solana.

Threadguy's video further amplifies the camp divide between ETH and Solana: ETH supporters emphasize the legitimacy of Vitalik's "cleaning up the scam," while Solana supporters sarcastically remark that he "personally strangled the culture."

In contrast, SharpLink and ADI's implementation cases have received more consistent praise and are regarded as "signals of DeFi maturity" and "realization of Ethereum productivity," but questions about the revenue structure and implementation details continue to arise.

Perp DEX: Large traders reducing positions triggers sentiment shock

On-chain data shows that Loracle, a major holder, sold approximately 277,000 $HYPE tokens (about $7.1 million) within a few hours, while still holding a net position of approximately $6.8 million on HyperEVM (collateralized with $11.6 million of HYPE and borrowed approximately $4.8 million of USDC). If this is to repay debts, it may sell an additional approximately 270,000 $HYPE tokens, indicating that its trading activity is a continuous reduction in holdings.

Market sentiment weakened significantly, with some accusing it of "talking the long term but actually selling off" and calling for a boycott; others viewed it as typical profit-taking or risk management. Overall, the event was seen as a reminder of the vulnerability of the perp DEX ecosystem under its high leverage and liquidity structure, putting downward pressure on short-term prices.

other

Delphi Digital and Polymarket have partnered to launch a prediction market data platform, providing real-time market data, event tracking, and analytics tools, aiming to upgrade prediction markets into an "information layer that can be systematically utilized." The Delphi × Polymarket collaboration is being called an "upgrade to the prediction market intelligence layer," and some users consider it an important data source for AI training and decision-making.

Wintermute Ventures released its 2025 dealflow summary: It reviewed approximately 600 companies throughout the year, with 20% entering due diligence, and ultimately about 4% receiving investment. The focus was on financial infrastructure, underlying platforms, and AI/DePIN, emphasizing a hybrid equity + token structure, while also reflecting on the need to improve responsiveness to founders. The Wintermute report has been widely praised for its "rare level of transparency," sparking discussions about VC funnel efficiency and sector preferences.

The Sui development team released the Seal white paper, introducing programmable data access control based on Move contracts. This allows for precise definition of decryption permissions, timing, and conditions on-chain, exploring a new paradigm for privacy-preserving data sharing. The Seal white paper has sparked heated discussions within the Sui community and is considered a "differentiated breakthrough in data privacy," particularly in game and wallet integration scenarios. However, some have expressed concerns about the governance of keys and execution-level permissions.