Our weekly crypto derivatives analytics report delves into macro events, the current state of crypto and trading signals from spot trading volume, and futures, options and perpetual contracts.

December's end-of-year options expiration brought an unexpected drop as realized volatility fell to the lowest levels of the month. Perpetual swap open interest remained stable, indicating these markets weren't heavily used for hedging against expired options, likely contributing to the muted volatility. 

While most expired open interest in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) hasn't been reinvested, the balance of calls and puts remains consistent. Notably, ETH options are pricing in higher implied volatility as compared to BTC, particularly for shorter expirations, leading to a flat term structure for ETH, while BTC is offering cheaper options exposure.

In the perpetual markets, low volatility and minimal spot movements have led funding rates for nearly all tokens to mirror broader market sentiment throughout the holiday season. On the options side, BTC's term structure is noticeably lower and steeper than ETH's, with realized volatility now dipping below implied volatility levels, highlighting an intriguing shift in market dynamics.

Please check out the report’s highlights.

Open Interest Solid Amid Year-End Options Expiration

Although open interest for both BTC and ETH perpetual swaps hasn’t returned to early December 2024 highs, it remained robust throughout the significant end-of-year options expiration event. This suggests that these markets weren’t heavily utilized to 

 of the expiring options contracts, likely contributing to the lack of volatility observed during this period. Instead, trading volumes have dipped noticeably during the winter holiday season, coinciding with a collapse in realized volatility back to December 2024’s lowest levels.

BTC Option Curve Remains Steep During Call-Put Parity

The expiration of December's end-of-year options didn’t trigger the anticipated surge in volatility; instead, realized volatility has plummeted to the lower end of its recent range. The implied volatility term structure remains steep compared to both its recent behavior and ETH's, with longer-dated implied volatility around 57%, and 1-week at-the-money options trading about five points lower. Much of the expired open interest hasn’t yet been rolled into new positions, maintaining a neutral balance between puts and calls. Consequently, BTC's options market positioning is relatively neutral, lacking the leverage it had at the start of December 2024.

Huge ETH Option Expiring Doesn’t Cause Volatility

A late December spike in realized volatility didn’t carry into the new year, with ETH’s spot price currently exhibiting volatility below that of short-tenor implied volatility. Interestingly, the implied volatility term structure has undergone a steepening and re-flattening over the past week, contrasting with BTC’s slightly steeper profile. This suggests that ETH’s options market is anticipating higher short-term volatility in spot price movements. 

Despite the significant expiration of options open interest at the end of December 2024, which didn’t lead to a rollover into later expirations, call options continue to dominate the market and have increased at the start of 2025.

Advanced

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Bybit X Block Scholes Crypto Derivatives Analytics Report (Jan 2, 2025): BTC Options Continue to See Call-Put Parity, With Lower Short-Term Volatility Expected

Dive into FLock, a decentralized platform that revolutionizes the way AI models are developed, trained and deployed.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to transform countless industries, but its development often raises questions about privacy, control and inclusivity. 

 is a unique decentralized platform that democratizes AI training, fine-tuning and inferencing. With its blockchain-powered infrastructure, FLock ensures transparency, security and community-driven decision-making, paving the way for AI models that align with established societal values. 

In this article, we’ll explore how FLock decentralizes AI training, its key features and its potential impact on developers, communities and users.

 platform that revolutionizes the way AI models are developed, trained and deployed. By leveraging blockchain technology and a novel approach called 

, FLock addresses critical issues in AI development, such as centralized control, lack of transparency and privacy concerns.

At its core, FLock’s mission is to democratize AI by enabling communities to participate directly in the creation and refinement of AI models. Through federated learning, FLock trains AI models across multiple decentralized devices or servers. This method ensures that data remains local, eliminating the need for raw data exchange while still enabling robust model training. By decentralizing the training process, FLock not only protects individual privacy, but also fosters a more inclusive ecosystem in which diverse contributors can collaborate.

What sets FLock apart is its integration of 

. This ensures that all contributions — whether data, compute power or feedback — are transparently recorded and fairly rewarded. Blockchain tech’s immutable ledger enhances trust among participants and safeguards the process against manipulation. Additionally, the platform’s on-chain incentive mechanisms encourage participation from a wide range of contributors, ensuring that rewards are distributed equitably.

Ultimately, FLock empowers communities to develop bespoke AI models tailored to their specific needs. By decentralizing the process and prioritizing transparency and collaboration, FLock breaks the monopoly of large corporations, creating an AI ecosystem that aligns with public ethics and societal values.

, an Oxford alumnus with a robust background in AI and blockchain technology. Sun, who serves as FLock's CEO, has an impressive career trajectory, having worked as the Director of AI for the Royal Bank of Canada and as an AI Research Fellow at Imperial College London. His vision for FLock stems from a deep understanding of both the technical and ethical challenges of AI development.

The founding team also includes other Oxford alumni, boasting over a decade of combined experience in AI research and the cryptocurrency industry. This team brings a collective blend of academic excellence and practical expertise that positions FLock to lead the decentralized AI movement.

FLock has successfully raised $11 million in funding across two rounds, reflecting strong investor confidence in its vision. In May 2024, FLock secured a $6 million seed round co-led by Lightspeed Faction and Tagus Capital, with additional backing from Digital Currency Group (DCG), Volt Capital, OKX Ventures and Inception Capital.

Later, in December 2024, FLock announced a $3 million successful funding round led by DCG and joined by prominent names like Animoca Brands, Fenbushi Capital, GnosisVC and GSR. These investments are being channelled into enhancing the platform’s testnet and federated learning client, accelerating FLock’s mission of enabling secure, collaborative AI development.

With this funding and over 1,500 nodes contributing from platforms like Numerai and Kaggle, FLock is rapidly scaling its impact on decentralized AI training.

FLock AI revolutionizes AI development through its decentralized training framework. This approach allows participants to contribute to AI model training without ever sharing their personal data. Instead, models are trained locally across devices using federated learning, which ensures that data remains with its owners while still enhancing the accuracy of the model overall. 

FLock’s reward system is designed to incentivize active participation. Contributors who provide data, computational power and/or feedback are compensated with FLOCK tokens, ensuring a fair distribution of rewards. 

FLock empowers its community through a robust governance framework. Decisions regarding AI model development, deployment and ethical considerations are driven by the community, ensuring alignment with established societal values. Through blockchain-based voting mechanisms, contributors can influence the direction of AI projects, fostering transparency and public accountability. 

FLock’s modular architecture allows contributors to participate in specific aspects of AI model development. Whether providing raw data or computational power or even refining algorithms, the platform enables a collaborative and scalable development process. 

At the core of FLock’s philosophy is its commitment to privacy and security. By leveraging blockchain technology, the platform ensures that no single entity controls the AI development process. Data remains local and protected by cryptographic measures, while the immutability of blockchain guarantees transparency in every transaction and model update. 

 begins with a blockchain and an AI layer.

The blockchain layer underpins FLock’s incentivization and security mechanisms.

The AI layer facilitates model training, refinement and deployment, leveraging both centralized and federated approaches.

Let’s have a look at the supply and demand for the FLOCK token.

FLock adopts a 1:2 ratio model between team/investors (33.3%) and community (66.7%), prioritizing community-driven growth and ecosystem expansion. The majority of tokens are allocated to incentivize user participation and long-term ecosystem success.

FLock aims to improve the future of AI development by decentralizing the training process and ensuring transparency, privacy and inclusivity. By leveraging blockchain and federated learning, FLock empowers communities to contribute to AI creation without compromising on privacy. Its innovative reward system and community-driven governance foster a fair and collaborative ecosystem. 

With significant backing and a growing network of contributors, FLock is positioning itself as a leader in decentralized AI, offering a more ethical and secure alternative to traditional AI development models. As it continues to scale, FLock is set to transform the way AI models are built and deployed.

 — and earn a share of a 10 million FLOCK prize pool. For more details, visit 

Intermediate

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FLock AI: Decentralized AI Training

In this tutorial, we’ll explore how you can complete a series of tasks in Network3 for Bybit Web3 Airdrop Arcade.

Task 1: Register for a Network3 Account and Connect Your Bybit Wallet 

: Navigate to the campaign page and click on the 

task. Click on the task, and Galxe will ask to redirect you to the Network3 register page.

: Register for a Network3 account using your email address. You may indicate a 

Task 2: Download the Network3 App and Run a Node for One Hour

 and choose your operating system to download the Network3 app.

 or powerbutton, depending upon which operating system you’re using. For ease of reference, we’ve used macOS and iOS as examples below.

: Keep running the node until the timer reaches 

Beginner

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How to Complete Network3 Tasks for Bybit Web3 Airdrop Arcade

Bybit launched the Bybit Merch Creative Challenge for university students worldwide, offering a $50,000 USDT prize pool.

The S&P 500 dropped 0.22% on Thursday, its fifth straight decline, with investors eyeing Friday’s economic updates. Coindesk Indices, an index measuring broader cryptocurrency market performance was up by 2.03%, with Bitcoin and Ether rising by 2.79% and 2.70%, respectively in the past 24 hours.

Today's top performer is XRP, which surged 1.9% following a rise in price driven by increased open interest and positive market sentiment.

Ripple (XRP), launched in August 2012, is a blockchain technology company focused on improving international payments with its cryptocurrency, XRP. XRP price surged due to increased open interest, a major XRP transfer, and market sentiment linked to Trump's inauguration. Bullish momentum is supported by high short liquidations, with key resistance levels to watch for further price movement.

Check Out the Latest Prices, Charts, and Data of 

 for university students worldwide, offering a $50,000 USDT prize pool. Participants can design exclusive Bybit merchandise, with submissions open until Jan. 15, 2025. Winners will be announced on Feb. 1, 2025, across four prize categories.

Yesterday, Bitcoin Spot ETFs recorded a total inflow of $84.8M, driven by $107.9M from non-GBTC funds, partially offset by a $23.1M outflow from GBTC.

, offering an airdrop for participants who complete tasks like swapping and bridging using the Mango wallet. Points earned through tasks determine airdrop rewards. Join via the Mango wallet and follow steps on the testnet dashboard.

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Bybit Launches $50,000 Merch Design Challenge for University Students Worldwide

Altcoins

Blockchain

DeFi

Unifi Protocol is both a multi-chain DeFi protocol and a DAO that incentivizes users to engage in DeFi across multiple blockchains.

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 (DeFi) offers many perks over centralized finance, ranging from the lack of intermediaries to new investment opportunities like 

, it remains a fragmented space that’s difficult to scale, with many DeFi protocols only operating on a single 

Even when certain DeFi platforms offer multi-chain capability, adoption remains limited, as there are no incentives to use them beyond participants being able to transact on their preferred chain.

Unifi Protocol seeks to gain widespread adoption for DeFi through incentives that fuel user participation across multiple chains.

Read on to learn more about this ambitious and unique project.

, UNFI, can be used across all supported blockchains to guide the protocol’s direction. 

Unifi Protocol utilizes the concepts of DeFi and cross-chain functionality to create a sustainable, utility-based blockchain model. With its unique smart contracts, Unifi incentivizes people to leverage DeFi products across multiple blockchains. It currently operates on 11 blockchains, including 

, and continuously strives to add more to its network.

In its efforts to revolutionize blockchain technology, Unifi has developed some unique products:

uTrade V2 is an innovative, feature-rich 

 that runs on multiple blockchains. Liquidity providers to uTrade V2 earn UP, a unique token that appreciates in value every time it’s minted. 

In recognition of liquidity providers’ efforts, 100% of all trading fees are awarded to them. Of these 85% are minted into UP tokens and distributed to the liquidity providers of the respective pools. Another 10% are minted into UP and allocated to Super Pairs, specialized liquidity pools on uTrade V2 that offer additional incentives for UNFI holders. The remaining 5% are converted into base tokens within the UP smart contract, enhancing the redeemable value of UP with every trade.

uBridge is a multi-chain bridging solution on Unifi that lets you easily bridge to supported blockchains.

The unique thing about uBridge is that it doesn’t use 

. Usually, to bridge between Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains, you need 

 (WBTC), which you will then have to unwrap, costing you time and money.

However, note that other cryptocurrencies are not supported by uBridge, i.e., it is a single-coin bridging solution specifically designed for the UNFI token.

Among the first DeFi protocols to integrate 

 staking, uStake is Unifi Protocol’s blended staking ecosystem, which operates on six supported blockchains — Unifi, 

. It holds tremendous potential as more cryptocurrencies embrace PoS security mechanisms. 

Each Unifi node earns staking rewards in the form of the specific blockchain’s native token. You may stake UNFI on the Unifi protocol itself to earn UNFI. Additionally, you can stake TRX crypto on the Tron blockchain, ICX on ICON, ONE on Harmony, ONG on Ontology and IOTX on IoTeX.

DARBi is another of Unifi’s unique products, a bespoke liquidity pool designed to maximize security for 

 while compounding the backed value of the UP token to ensure sustainable 

With DARBi liquidity pools, clients retain exclusive control over their arbitrage positions against public pools. This strategic exposure to crypto price fluctuations provides greater security for customers, ensuring they receive a predictable and reliable yield.

Unifi Protocol’s hyperinflationary INFINITI token constantly increases with every transaction. This means your balance will always increase, even when you transfer out tokens, as new tokens will be minted and sent to your address after every transfer from your address. 

With an infinite supply of tokens, you can sell them at any time you wish — without regrets about selling them too soon if the price leaps after you’ve sold them. That’s because the more tokens you sell, the more you’ll receive to keep selling.

Unifi Protocol Crypto Tokens: UNFI and UP

While Unifi Protocol doesn’t have a native cryptocurrency, the two tokens associated with the project are UNFI and UP.

Unifi Protocol DAO (UNFI) is the Unifi ecosystem’s multi-chain governance token. UNFI plays a crucial role in Unifi’s token economy, and is listed on major cryptocurrency exchanges as a gateway to the protocol. It comes in two standards, 

Holding UNFI on the following blockchains — Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Fantom, Avalanche or Harmony — gives you voting rights on core proposals regarding the protocols’ development.

UNFI tokens can also be staked to earn rewards with a high annual interest. There’s no limit to the number of UNFI tokens that can be staked, and the 

 is set according to the total quantity of staked UNFI tokens. UNFI stakers receive vUNIFI, a non-transferrable ERC-20 token that can be redeemed anytime for the original UNFI, plus staking rewards.

With the launch of uTrade V2, UNFI holders will gain access to Super Pairs, which can be used to farm liquidity provider rewards, as well as a bonus from fees generated by UP minting.

UP is Unifi Protocol’s blockchain-specific liquidity mining token awarded to liquidity providers. It’s minted and backed by a base token (the native token of the supported blockchain) so that it may have a redeemable or backed value. UP is managed by a smart contract, which uses 5% of the trading fees earned from supported blockchains to mint it. As more and more trading fees are collected, the redeemable value will increase, which means when you convert it back to the base token, the token value rises — hence the name “UP.”

Previously, the 5% trading fee was the only way to increase UP’s redeemable value. However, following a referendum on Unifi DAO to upgrade to UP v2, five new ways were added to increase the token’s redeemable value: Direct public minting, staking rewards, liquidity pool rewards, arbitrage profits and the bonding UP process.

The redeemable value, however, differs across blockchains, and is named accordingly. For instance, the UP redeemable value on Ethereum blockchain is labeled as “UPeth.”

UP tokens can be redeemed into their base tokens at any time, but the longer you hold UP, the more native tokens will back it.

Since the end of 2022, Unifi Protocol DAO’s price has been in the $4–$8 range as the market stagnates, which suggests that UNFI will continue to trade sideways for the rest of 2023. Experts such as WalletInvestor 

 isn’t a good investment over the next year.

However, DigitalCoinPrice is particularly 

, expecting it to rise to $38.49 in 2025 and shoot up to $111.61 by 2030. Price Prediction also estimates a 

, albeit with more conservative growth, anticipating prices of $10.40 in 2025 and $68.50 in 2030.

Unifi Protocol’s unique vision is to drive blockchain and DeFi adoption by creating a utility-rich network fueled by user participation Unifi is resolute in positioning itself as a DeFi project dedicated to the long-term vision of blockchain. 

The unique use of a single token to incentivize DeFi engagement across multiple blockchains undeniably makes Unifi Protocol appealing to blockchain enthusiasts looking forward to the widespread adoption of blockchain and DeFi.

Nevertheless, though Unifi may seem like a promising project, as an altcoin, it is prone to market volatility. Hence, it is vital to always do your own research before investing in this blockchain.

You can buy or sell Unifi Protocol DAO on leading crypto trading platforms, such as Bybit. UNFI is available for 

 on Bybit as a USDT Perpetual contract (

Unifi Protocol’s concept of creating a multi-chain governance token to incentivize DeFi participation across blockchains makes it an attractive platform for DeFi users. The ever-increasing value of UP, its utility token, which can be used across multiple chains, serves as an additional perk for Unifi’s users. 

Furthermore, Unifi’s unique DeFi products — such as uTrade V2, uBridge and DARBi — have proven the project’s value. However, only time will tell whether Unifi will help bring about the widespread adoption of blockchain through DeFi.

Unifi Protocol (UNFI): Bridging DeFi Across Blockchains

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards