Gate has raised over 70 million USDT for the new project PFVS, Chainproof launches Ethereum staking insurance | Gate Research Institute

Summary

1. BTC has been consolidating since its rebound on May 13, facing resistance at $105,000, showing weakness in the upward movement but with clear support.
2. ETH surged and then fluctuated, ETF funds flowed out, and the rebound may be driven by technical factors.
3. The crypto insurance company Chainproof has launched a new insurance product for Ethereum stakers.
4. J.P. Morgan Completes First Public Trading of Tokenized Treasury Bonds with Chainlink and Ondo.
5. Tiger Brokers (Hong Kong) has launched cryptocurrency deposit coin services.
6. Pump.fun's market share has been eroded by LetsBonk.fun and Believe, and the share of daily launched tokens has dropped significantly.

Market Interpretation

Market Commentary

• BTC Market —— BTC has been fluctuating between $102,500 and $105,800 after rebounding from around $102,000 on May 13. The price has repeatedly failed to effectively break through the upper limit of $105,000, suggesting that the upward momentum has weakened; meanwhile, the repeated support around $102,000 indicates a certain level of buying power. On the technical side, if the price effectively breaks through (or falls below) the two price lines mentioned above, it could have a significant impact on the market in the medium to short term.
• ETH Market —— In the past 7 days, the volatility of ETH has significantly increased. After peaking around $2,600 on May 9, the price has shown a fluctuating trend, currently oscillating between $2,425 and $2,700. Although ETH saw a substantial increase on May 8, and the ETH/BTC exchange rate rebounded, the overall trend of ETH spot ETF last week showed capital outflow, indicating that this round of increase may not have been driven by ETF funds, with some opinions suggesting it might be a technical rebound.
• Altcoins —— In the past 7 days, the altcoin market has shown a mixed performance, with certain sectors like Meme, AI Agent, and Gate ETF performing strongly, among which tokens like MOODENG (SOL) have seen significant gains. However, the overall market has also experienced short-term pullbacks. In terms of market sentiment, the Fear and Greed Index continues to remain in the greed zone.
• Futures Market —— In the past 7 days, the buy-sell ratio of Bitcoin is negative overall, indicating a short-term bearish outlook on Bitcoin's price trend. With the results of the China-US Geneva economic and trade talks being released, risk assets have risen due to favorable factors, but since Bitcoin's prior increase has already partly absorbed this positive news, some profit-taking funds have chosen to cash out. The day after the above news was released, a large amount of BTC ETF flowed out, reflecting institutional investors' concerns about Bitcoin being under pressure in the short term. Macro Data – On 13 May, the US released its Consumer Price Index (CPI) for April, which showed inflation unexpectedly cooled. CPI fell 0.1% month-on-month in March, the lowest in nearly five years, while core CPI rose 2.8% year-on-year, the smallest increase in four years. While the data suggests that inflationary pressures on U.S. consumers have eased, the positive momentum may be difficult to sustain, especially after the Trump administration has introduced sweeping tariffs.
• Stablecoin —— The total market value of stablecoins has increased by 0.13% to $242.54 billion, with further incremental capital inflows from over-the-counter.
• Gas Fee —— Recently, the activity on the Ethereum chain has declined compared to its previous peak, showing a decreasing trend this week. As of May 15, the average Gas fee for that day was only 0.468 Gwei.

Popular concepts

This week, the price of Bitcoin fluctuated widely between $105,000 and $102,000, with varying performances across different altcoin sectors. According to Coingecko data, the Frog-Themed, Launchpad, and Layer 2 sectors achieved significant breakthroughs this week, with increases of approximately 57%, 44%, and 20% respectively within seven days. The commonality among these three major sectors is that their technological or narrative developments are highly popular and belong to recent hot tracks.

Frog-Themed With the explosion of Pepe, a variety of Frog-themed frog coins have become iconic symbols in the meme world, with a large following of fans. ——In the past seven days, the sector has risen by more than 57%, and FROC, SIZE, AND BABYPURPE have risen prominently in the past seven days, of which FROC has risen by more than 400% at one point.

Launchpad Launchpad serves as a bridge for emerging high-quality projects to communicate with investors, and over the years, it has gained widespread favor from market funds due to its high investment success rate. For this reason, Launchpad has gradually evolved into one of the key areas where cryptocurrency projects with the potential for a hundred or even thousand times growth can emerge. — This sector has seen a significant increase over the past seven days, with an overall rise of over 44%, among which LAUNCHCOIN, REVS, and GOCHU have shown outstanding growth.

Layer 2 Layer 2 includes various proposed solutions to address the scalability challenges of blockchain, with notable examples like Bitcoin's "Lightning Network" and Ethereum's "Plasma", which serve as different "fast lanes" for their respective networks. Although the implementation methods vary, the goal is the same: to enable the blockchain to process more transactions per second. — Over the past seven days, this sector has risen by more than 20%, with KRO, GEL, and ERN showing significant gains.

This Week's Spotlight

The crypto insurance company Chainproof has launched a new insurance product for Ethereum stakers.

The crypto insurance company Chainproof has partnered with insurance broker IMA Financial Group to launch an innovative insurance product for Ethereum stakers. This product aims to address the risk of penalties and ensure that stakers receive at least the annual yield of the Comprehensive Ethereum Staking Rate (CESR). In the event that a penalty causes earnings to fall below the CESR, Chainproof will make up the difference.

The launch of this insurance product marks an important step in the blockchain insurance field in reducing Ethereum staking risks and enhancing yield predictability. It is particularly attractive to institutional investors and is expected to attract more capital into the Ethereum staking ecosystem, enhancing network security. This also indicates that the future of blockchain insurance will develop towards greater specialization and institutionalization, potentially leading to the emergence of more innovative insurance products targeting specific crypto assets and risk scenarios.

JPMorgan completes first tokenized government bond public trade using Chainlink and Ondo

JPMorgan announced that its blockchain division Kinexys has successfully completed its first transaction settlement on a public blockchain in collaboration with Chainlink and Ondo Finance. The transaction involved purchasing tokenized government bonds deployed on the Ondo public ledger through a private chain account, and cross-chain payments were triggered using the Chainlink protocol. This marks JPMorgan's first transaction structure directly interfacing with a public blockchain.

As a traditional financial giant, JPMorgan's move undoubtedly sets a benchmark for institutions embracing DeFi and blockchain technology, indicating that the integration of traditional financial institutions with decentralized financial infrastructure will accelerate in the future. Its use of tokenized government bonds as trading targets further highlights the immense potential of bringing real-world assets (RWA) on-chain, which is expected to attract more traditional assets into the blockchain ecosystem, releasing new liquidity. Additionally, Chainlink's key role in this transaction validates its value as a cross-chain interoperability protocol, facilitating the efficient flow of value and information between different blockchain networks, laying the foundation for building a more open and interconnected financial system. JPMorgan emphasizes that this move is not a short-term response but a long-term strategic layout, suggesting profound trends in the upcoming transformation of financial infrastructure.

Tiger Brokers (Hong Kong) has launched a cryptocurrency deposit coin service.

Tiger Brokers (Hong Kong) announced the launch of a cryptocurrency deposit and withdrawal service, allowing users to deposit, trade, and withdraw major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) in their Tiger Trade accounts. The platform has been granted a virtual asset trading service license by the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong.

Tiger Brokers (Hong Kong), as a licensed brokerage, has launched a cryptocurrency deposit service that supports mainstream currencies such as BTC and ETH, marking an important step for traditional financial institutions in embracing the cryptocurrency asset space. This move not only provides Hong Kong investors with a more convenient and compliant channel for cryptocurrency trading but also further promotes the integration of crypto assets with traditional financial markets. Tiger Brokers' entry into the market is expected to attract more traditional investors to participate in digital asset trading, expanding market participation and liquidity.

Sky Q1 reported a loss of $5 million, down sharply from a profit of $31 million in the previous quarter

The DeFi savings protocol Sky suffered a loss of 5 million USD in the first quarter of 2025, primarily due to significantly increasing the interest expenditure on its new stablecoin USDS by 102% to attract DAI holders. Although the USDS interest rate has dropped from 12.5% at the beginning of the year to 4.5% in February, the pressure from interest expenditure remains. In the first quarter, the total supply of USDS and DAI grew by 57%, with over 450 million USD of funding coming from the Ethena protocol, which deposits funds into Sky to stake USDS and distributes the earnings to holders of its stablecoin USDe.

Despite facing profit losses in the short term, the DeFi savings protocol Sky is actively attracting users with high interest rates and challenging the market position of the DAI stablecoin, demonstrating a strong willingness for market expansion. Its deep cooperation with the Ethena protocol has brought in over $450 million in capital inflow, indicating that USDS has appeal and use cases in other important DeFi protocols, which is expected to continue driving capital and user growth. However, investors still need to closely monitor Sky's ongoing losses and the impact of interest expenses on its profitability. Whether it can effectively control costs while maintaining user growth will be key to its future development.

Highlight Data

Believe ecological token total market value has exceeded 450 million USD, with a cumulative trading volume exceeding 1.4 billion USD.

According to data from Believe Screener, the total market capitalization of Believe ecological tokens exceeded $450 million, and the number of tokens created on the platform reached 11,231, with a cumulative trading volume of $1.406 billion. LAUNCHCOIN EXTENDED ITS RALLY, WITH A MARKET CAPITALIZATION BREAKOUT OF $360 MILLION AT ONE POINT AND A $120 MILLION 24-HOUR TRADING VOLUME. AT THE TIME OF WRITING, LAUNCHCOIN HAS FALLEN BACK TO AROUND $270 MILLION IN MARKET CAPITALIZATION, UP MORE THAN 200 TIMES SINCE THE END OF APRIL.

PASTERNAK is the celebrity coin of Clout founder Ben Pasternak. Clout is a SocialFi platform that allows celebrities and creators to issue tokens named after themselves, attracting fans and investors to participate, thus realizing the financialization of personal brands. On April 28, Clout announced its brand as Believe; on April 29, PASTERNAK was renamed Launch Coin on Believe (LAUNCHCOIN), with the token name consistent with Believe.

The rapid rebound of the Believe platform indicates that the market's interest in "influence financialization" and "early project investment" remains strong, but high volatility and emotion-driven sentiment are evident, making it suitable for short-term high-frequency traders. Currently, LAUNCHCOIN has a strong consensus foundation and popularity, but lacks a stable mechanism, with varying quality in project selection and a relatively short token lifecycle, necessitating caution against sudden liquidity reduction and selling pressure risks. Future observation focuses include: the quality of new projects, the timeline for the launch of platform governance mechanisms, the linkage paths with mainstream exchanges like Gate, and whether it can build a moat to withstand the impact of new competitors.

The contract positions for XRP and DOGE have increased, but the price momentum is weakening, so caution may be needed in the future.

According to Glassnode data, although spot prices show signs of fatigue, speculative positions in the XRP and DOGE futures markets continue to accumulate, indicating a growing preference in the market for volatility and downside risk. The data shows:

• Open interest in DOGE surged 63.9% over the week (from $989 million to $1.62 billion), while spot prices rose 40% to $0.23 over the same period;
• XRP open interest increased by 41.6% within a week (an increase of over 1 billion dollars), while the spot price rose moderately from 2.14 to 2.6 dollars.

The divergence between the price momentum decay and the surge in open interest suggests that speculative positions in the market continue to accumulate, which is a situation worth being cautious about. Open interest serves as a barometer for speculative activity, and when it diverges from stagnant prices, it often indicates that the growth rate of leverage has exceeded actual confidence, a pattern that has triggered flash crashes multiple times in the past.

Pump.fun's market share is being eroded by LetsBonk.fun and Believe, with daily token launch shares significantly declining.

According to Dune data, the dominance of Pump.fun is being challenged by new platforms such as LetsBonk.fun, Believe, and LaunchLab. Currently, among the tokens launched daily in the market, Pump.fun has decreased from over 98% to 57.5%, while Letsbonk.fun accounts for 17.9%, Believe for 12.9%, and LaunchLab for 5%. Recently, the hottest meme coins like LAUNCHCOIN, GOONC, DUPE, and Hosico have been released on LetsBonk.fun or Believe, with Pump.fun having few standout projects lately.

The rapid rise of LetsBonk.fun and Believe has filled the market gap left by Pump.fun, demonstrating differentiated competitiveness in product form, community mobilization, and token economic models. For example, LetsBonk.fun obviously emphasizes topicality and viral spread mechanisms, putting more effort into attracting new users and creators; while Believe enhances project retention and discussion through community participation mechanisms, aesthetic design, and traffic linkage, collaborating with multiple KOLs to issue tokens.

In the field of Meme coins, launch platforms are essentially traffic distributors. Once they lose the ability to support hot projects, the attention of users and creators quickly overflows. The deeper issue with Pump.fun lies in its mechanism's "weakness"; its model has become highly homogenized and lacks freshness, leading users to experience aesthetic fatigue. Previously, there were market rumors that Pump.fun might launch a platform token, which could perhaps help regain user stickiness. Otherwise, Pump.fun will fall from being a once unicorn Meme launch platform on the Solana chain to an "historical transitional tool" on the chain.

Market Opportunities

Gate Initial Coin Offering

This week's new project to watch is: Puffverse (PFVS). PuffVerse is a metaverse gaming platform built on the Ronin chain, featuring a "casual gaming + social + play-to-earn (P2E)" model. Puffverse is a Web3 gaming ecosystem created by the original gaming development team from Xiaomi, integrating strong Web2 development experience with cutting-edge Web3 technological concepts. With a solid technical foundation and product refinement capabilities, Puffverse received strategic investments from top Web3 investment institutions such as Animoca Brands in 2024, showcasing its exceptional project potential and long-term development prospects. In the same year, Puffverse fully migrated to the Ronin Network, a platform that once supported phenomenon games like Axie Infinity, providing it with high-performance on-chain infrastructure and comprehensive ecological support. In the future, Puffverse will also build a cloud gaming platform, expand its mixed-reality IP business ecosystem, and continue to enhance its influence in both Web2 and Web3 fields, aiming to create a benchmark project for the next generation of Web3 games and virtual worlds. Participation methods are as follows:

Preparation (Before the Subscription Starts)

• Gate Account: Register and complete user authentication;
• Deposit assets: Make sure you have enough USDT in your account, this Launchpad only supports USDT subscription;

Subscription Stage

• Time Window: May 13, 2025, 11:00 to May 16, 2025, 20:00 (UTC+8)
• Operation Steps: First, log in to Gate and go to the 【Launchpad】 page; second, select the Puffverse project and click 【Participate Now】; finally, enter the subscription amount and confirm to lock the funds.

Subscription Details

• Subscription Price: 1 PFVS = 0.07 USDT
• Total Subscription Volume: 10,000,000 PFVS Personal Quota Formula: The system will fairly distribute tokens according to the proportion of users' contributions. The number of tokens obtained by users = (personal investment amount / total investment amount of all users) * total subscription amount. The maximum number of tokens that can be obtained by a single person is 10,000 PFVS
• Distribution Time: Distributed on the day of TGE
• Spot trading time: End of May
• Unlock Method: 100% Unlock

Financing Weekly Report

This week, several projects successfully completed financing, involving a wide range of applications in fields such as infrastructure and developer platforms. According to RootData statistics, from May 9 to May 15, a total of 9 projects announced financing, totaling 75.6 million USD. Here are excerpts from popular projects:

Openverse Network On May 12, it closed a strategic round of financing of $11 million, with participation from Castrum Capital and others. Openverse Global is a Layer0 hub network based on blockchain technology, based on the existing blockchain technology, proposing the concept of "fully open protocol cross-chain", which will realize "the transmission of value (Token/NFT/message) between different blockchains, the metaverse, and the traditional Internet is as simple as sending an email". Openverse proposes protocol systems such as "Bitcoin VRC10 Protocol", "Private Key VRC11 Protocol", and "Public Key Issuance Mechanism, PCIM". The new funds are intended to be used to accelerate the development of its global ecosystem, including ecosystem construction, and encourage more developers and partners to join and jointly build a more open and interconnected value network.

Nirvana Labs Completed a $6 million seed round of financing on May 13. Nirvana Labs is developing a Web3 infrastructure solution for building, managing, and supporting any blockchain application, allowing developers to create their own API gateways and connect to its low-latency global network nodes located in over 30 data center regions. Its low-latency nodes (distributed across more than 30 data centers) and high-throughput design reduce costs by up to 85% compared to traditional cloud services (such as AWS), addressing the urgent need for high-performance computing in Web3 applications. The financing will be used to expand global data centers and optimize products, such as Kubernetes management services.

KYD Labs On May 14, completed a $7 million seed round financing led by a16z Crypto, marking a breakthrough for the Web3 ticketing platform in the live events sector. KYD Labs is a Web3-based live event ticketing solution platform that utilizes blockchain technology (including smart contracts and potential NFTs) to provide ticketing services, aiming to enhance fan engagement and create more revenue opportunities for event organizers. KYD has processed over $4 million in ticket sales, partnering with venues like Le Poisson Rouge to achieve a 30% sales increase, demonstrating its commercial potential.

Focus Next Week

token unlock

According to data from Token Unlocks, there will be significant token unlock events in the market next week (2025.5.19-5.25). The total value of the unlocks exceeds 560 million dollars.

The situation before unlocking the top 3 next week is as follows:

• PYTH will unlock tokens worth approximately $374 million on May 19th (02:00 UTC+0), accounting for 58.62% of the circulating supply, which is currently at 36.2%, with a total token supply of around 10 billion.
• MURA will unlock approximately $4.09 million worth of tokens on May 23 (12:00 UTC+0), representing 1.00% of the circulating supply, with a current circulating supply of 88.0% and a total circulating supply of approximately 1 billion.
• VENOM will unlock approximately $6.7 million worth of tokens on May 25 (8:00 UTC+0), representing 2.86% of the circulating supply, with a current circulating supply of 29.4% and a circulating supply of 2 billion.
  Reference:

• Gate, https://www.gate.io/price/bitcoin-btc
• Sosovalue, https://sosovalue.xyz/zh/assets/etf/us-eth-spot
• Gate, https://www.gate.io/bigdata/estimate
• Cryptoquant, https://cryptoquant.com/asset/btc/chart/derivatives/taker-buy-sell-ratio?exchange=all_exchange&window=DAY&sma=0&ema=0&priceScale=log&metricScale=linear&chartStyle=line
• Coinglass, https://www.coinglass.com/pro/AvgFunding/ETH
• Bls, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.htm
• Defillama, https://defillama.com/stablecoins
• Etherscan, https://etherscan.io/gastracker
• Coingecko, https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories/modular-blockchain
• CoinDesk, [https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/05/14/chainproof-combats-ethereum-slashing-losses-with-guaranteed-yearly-yields](https:// www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/05/14/chainproof-combats-ethereum-slashing-losses-with-guaranteed-yearly-yields)
• Fortune Crypto, https://fortune.com/crypto/2025/05/14/jpmorgan-chase-kinexys-digital-payments-ondo-chainlink/
• Cnyes, https://news.cnyes.com/news/id/5978994
• CoinDesk, https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/05/13/defi-savings-protocol-sky-slumps-to-5m-loss-as-usds-interest-payments-wipe-out-profit
• X, https://x.com/glassnode/status/1922638034656239968
• NEAR, https://pages.near.org/blog/blink-and-its-final-near-launches-600ms-blocks-and-1-2s-finality/
• Gate, https://www.gate.io/zh/launchpad
• Rootdata, https://cn.rootdata.com/Fundraising
• Token Unlocks, https://tokenomist.ai/unlocks
• Investing, https://cn.investing.com/economic-calendar/

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