Publication Date: December 30, 2025
Author: BlockBeats Editorial Team

Over the past 24 hours, the crypto market has witnessed a multi-threaded progression from macro cycle discussions to specific protocol competition. The mainstream discussion has focused on the divergence in 2026 market expectations, continued exposure to security and fraud risks; in terms of ecosystem development, Solana's discussion on order flow and MEV structure has heated up, Ethereum's institutionalization and AI narrative have progressed in sync, and the valuation and competitive landscape of the Perp DEX track have further widened.

 I. Mainstream Topics

 1. 2026 Market Prediction Discussion

 As 2025 draws to a close, the crypto community has engaged in intense discussions regarding market predictions for 2026. Several prominent figures have shared their views, with a focus on macro trends, DeFi, stablecoins, regulation, and AI.

Haseeb's Prediction and Its Controversy: Haseeb predicted in a post that in 2026, BTC will surpass $150,000 but BTC dominance will decline; he is optimistic about the performance of Ethereum and Solana and believes that equity perpetual contracts will account for over 20% of DeFi perpetual contract trading volume. However, @MemeIndexer strongly opposes this view, suggesting that liquidity fragmentation, TradFi's lower spreads (15x cheaper), high holding costs (50-100% APR), and insufficient DeFi settlement speed (requiring sub 150ms) will hinder its realization. He emphasizes that inadequate liquidity depth and significant price differences will invalidate this prediction and points out that regulatory pressures (such as Citadel driving stricter DeFi regulations) will further exacerbate the issue.

Mo Shaikh's Hot Take: @Moshaikh believes that the most underrated asset in the current crypto market is "labs" (product and infrastructure teams), which will be acquired by financial institutions (FIs). He predicts that crypto companies will capture fintech users, fintech firms will rapidly integrate stablecoins, tokenized deposits, RWAs, and the DeFi track, and large financial institutions (such as JPM, BlackRock, Citi) have shifted from pilots to actual products. He emphasizes that fintech companies in the S&P 500 (such as Visa, Mastercard, PayPal) will win through on-chain tracks, or else be marginalized. Labs will be the focus of acquisitions, and he has discussed this topic with the world's top 15 financial institutions.

Santiago R Santos Alert: @santiagoroel issued a warning that in 2026, many will be frustrated by the assumption that increasing adoption rates will drive up all asset prices. Reasons include: markets pricing in advance and poor value capture and tokenomics. He predicts the application layer (especially DeFi) will outperform the base layer, with value migrating to applications that truly capture fees.

Vance Spencer's Macro Outlook: @pythianism believes that while 2025 is not ideal, it is necessary for the industry to progress. He predicts a decrease in token issuance in 2026, a focus on major assets (ETH, BTC), institutions heavily buying DeFi blue chips (protocols combining buybacks and financial discipline). The industry's future clearly points to stablecoins, RWAs, the lending capital markets, and asset management. By following a "do less, do well, go regulatory path" approach, many issues will be addressed, but rebounds and exits will be highly concentrated.

Overall, these predictions reflect the industry's consensus on transitioning from speculation to maturity, emphasizing the importance of regulatory compliance, institutional involvement, and value capture. The community's response has been positive, but there is disagreement on specific predictions such as equity perps.

2. ZachXBT Exposes Coinbase Impersonation Scam

Renowned on-chain investigator ZachXBT revealed that a threat actor from Canada, Haby (real name Havard), conducted social engineering scams by impersonating Coinbase official support staff, stealing over $2 million in assets over the past year.

ZachXBT pointed out that Haby publicly shared a screenshot on December 30, 2024, showing the theft of 21,000 XRP (approximately $44,000) from a Coinbase user. Through an Exodus wallet screenshot, ZachXBT further linked this to Haby's Telegram and Instagram accounts and identified overlaps with two other Coinbase impersonation theft cases, totaling about $500,000. The related XRP was later exchanged for BTC, and the BTC address's historical balance aligned closely with the $237,000 screenshot he flaunted in February 2025.

Subsequent tracking revealed at least three similar cases involving over $560,000. Leaked video footage shows his social engineering process and exposes related email and Telegram contact information. ZachXBT also discovered his frequent purchases of high-value Telegram usernames and showcasing a lavish lifestyle on social platforms, including nightclub spending and gambling. Open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysis based on publicly available information revealed that Haby is located in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada, and has been a victim of swatting incidents multiple times in the past.

ZachXBT has called on Canadian law enforcement to make an exception in this case, emphasizing the integrity of its evidence chain, the high amount involved, and the perpetrator's lack of remorse. The incident has sparked widespread discussion in the community, once again highlighting the importance of social engineering risk and on-chain traceability.

3. Uniswap Token Burn Arbitrage Opportunity

Uniswap founder Hayden Adams announced that its Web App, mobile wallet, and browser extension will completely remove front-end fees. In this context, the community noticed an arbitrage case related to UNI token burn.

@pixeL_laugh pointed out that a trader burned around 4,000 UNI tokens (about $24,000) but received assets including USDC, USDT, WETH, and WBTC worth about $39,500, with a net profit of about $14,500. The relevant transactions have been verified on-chain.
The community generally believes that this opportunity stemmed from changes in fee structure and contract design, constituting a typical "front-running" arbitrage. However, ordinary users lack a user-friendly GUI, making the actual entry barrier relatively high.

Cautionary voices have also emerged in the discussion, reminding others to consider gas costs, execution failure risks, and the transient nature of this opportunity.

4. Ondo Tokenized Stock On-Chain Liquidity Dispute

Amidst the launch of tokenized stocks (such as xTSLA) by Ondo Finance, the community has recently engaged in heated discussions regarding its on-chain liquidity.

@AzFlin pointed out that while some front-ends show a 0.03% slippage for the xTSLA/USDC trade, the actual on-chain liquidity is only about $7,000, with other sources indicating a real slippage of up to 45%. Further testing revealed that slippage could drop to around 0.4% during US stock trading hours, indicating that liquidity is primarily provided by off-chain market makers during stock market hours to mitigate after-hours price risks.

Some voices have questioned the actual benefits of on-chain stocks, considering whether custody and execution risks are worth taking in the face of restricted liquidity. Some have also criticized the still relatively high 0.4% slippage, implying that market makers' pricing is not user-friendly. Overall, the community consensus is not to deny the RWA model itself but to believe that its on-chain liquidity still heavily relies on traditional market hours, similar issues have also arisen in other projects (such as xStocksFi).

II. Mainstream Ecosystem Updates

Solana: PFOF and Order Flow Monetization Research

On MEV Day, @bqbrady shared research on Solana's Payment for Order Flow (PFOF) and published a lengthy article outlining how the Solana frontend (wallet, DEX) achieves monetization through order routing. The research revealed significant differences among different execution services in fee distribution and efficiency, with Nozomi's p99 fee reaching as high as $3.25, while Jito and Astralane were notably lower.

Community discussions focused on trust and decentralization, with some emphasizing that TPU routing is more trustless than RPC, while others warned that novice users might fall victim to implicit "front-running" in high slippage scenarios. Overall, this was seen as a signal of the Solana ecosystem transitioning to a more mature stage of MEV and order flow optimization.

Ethereum: Institutional Narrative and On-chain Activity Sync Upward

SharpLink CEO Joseph Chalom predicts that by 2026, Ethereum's TVL could increase tenfold, stablecoin market cap could reach $500 billion, RWA scale could reach $300 billion, driven by factors including sovereign wealth funds and large institutions entering substantially.

Meanwhile, ai16z core figure Shaw announced a comeback and will migrate the project to elizaOS, covering Solana, Base, BSC, and Ethereum mainnet, sparking community anticipation for a new round of AI × DeFi experiments.

On-chain data-wise, Ethereum validator queue entries have significantly increased, with the entry queue size being nearly twice that of the exit queue; mainnet throughput has also reached a historic high. The community generally believes that L2 has not "hollowed out" mainnet activity but has expanded the overall settlement capacity.

Perp DEX: Structural Comparison between Lighter and Hyperliquid

With the upcoming TGE of Lighter, community discussions have centered on valuation and token value accrual capabilities. Some analyses believe that under the current fee allocation structure, $LIT needs extremely high trading volume to match Hyperliquid's revenue model; there are also views that Lighter has a clear PMF and real income, and is undervalued in the long run.

Meanwhile, Hyperliquid's open interest (OI) increased by approximately $400 million in 24 hours, with total OI rising to $7.35 billion, further strengthening its leading position in the perp DEX. Community discussions on the two focus more on structural differences rather than short-term price judgments.

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