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

Blockchain

web3

Altcoins

Loom Network is a cross-chain optimized platform that allows developers to build and deploy high-performance DApps simultaneously across multiple blockchain networks.

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 has opened the world to endless opportunities, its structure and operation are quite complex. Deploying and running 

 (DApps) on a blockchain network can be pretty complicated for web 2.0 developers, who have to learn new programming languages and understand the architecture of blockchain networks.

However, Loom Network is seeking to cut down on these complexities and make it easier for all developers to deploy their creations across multiple platforms so they can easily reach a wide pool of users. Let's learn more about how Loom is making a difference in the 

 space by improving visibility and scalability for developers. 

Loom Network is a cross-chain optimized platform that allows developers to build and deploy high-performance DApps simultaneously across multiple blockchain networks, including 

 platform, Loom has simple and user-friendly features that enable developers to easily create and run DApps at near-instant transaction finality. Users also stand to benefit from Loom as they can interact with DApps at nil gas fees without having to download crypto wallet software.

Launched in 2017, Loom revamped its road map in 2021 to focus on its mainnet, known as Basechain, which allows deployment of enterprise-grade DApps in a wide range of sectors. 

Loom is powered by two main approaches — a

 (DPoS) consensus mechanism and the use of software development kits (SDK) that target developers. Both methodologies optimize the platform for security and scalability since the SDKs simplify the deployment of DApps across major chains, opening up a broader user base. 

Loom’s mainnet, Basechain, is a DPoS blockchain that allows LOOM token holders to delegate their tokens to secure the network. Unlike 

 (PoS), in which nodes validate new blocks, DPoS provides for delegation, which confirms transactions ahead of time and makes the process faster and perfect for scaling. That’s what serious real-world DApps need. 

, opening its network for Ethereum developers to create DApps and 

 in the Solidity programming language. Furthermore, Loom has launched an online tutorial, CryptoZombies, a fun way for developers to learn how to write Solidity smart contracts for Ethereum apps.

Loom SDK is a blockchain development kit pluggable at the contract and consensus layers. The first component is a 

 (P2P) layer that accommodates various BPFT engines, such as 

. The second is a DPoS layer, which can be tailored to the specific requirements of individual chains.

Unity is a widely used game developer platform known for its ease of use. Loom leverages Unity's popularity to create Unity SDK, allowing anyone without blockchain knowledge to build game DApps that run on iOS, Android or web extensions on its DAppChains.

The open-source SDK is easy to learn and compatible with most hardware, comes with in-built account management systems and is powerful enough to create a variety of games.

This SDK offers a simplified interface for DApp developers to easily connect to DAppChains and build their DApps, allowing them to focus on their applications’ functionalities rather than managing complex blockchain logic. 

Go Contract offers the following benefits:

The Loom Network ecosystem offers the following features.

Basechain is Loom Network’s mainnet. It’s audited by Trail of Bits, a renowned information security company, and secured by more than 21 validators.

Basechain is a multichain hub that supports ETH as well as 

token standards. Its interoperability across major blockchains and DPoS consensus make it ideal for DApps requiring a faster, smoother user experience. The DPoS blockchain can be used to create any type of DApp, including gaming, virtual reality, 

As ideal as Loom Network is, it can’t escape transaction signing, which can be time-consuming. However, the platform utilizes an easy Universal Transaction Signing system that processes transactions 10 times faster than the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains — and yet, it doesn’t require developers to change any code on their apps to accommodate multiple blockchains.

Additionally, Loom users can seamlessly connect any 

–compatible wallet to Basechain. This enables them to engage with any DApp on Layer 2, gas-free and at a faster speed, without having to change their wallet or download additional software.

 protocol, zkLoom, is an Ethereum scalable solution that aims to optimize Loom Network’s performance and security by shifting some transaction data off Ethereum and rolling it into batches.

Built on the same architecture as zkSync Era, the zkLoom Testnet brings together multiple proofs in a single transaction that can be verified across several blockchains. Validators accept and process transactions to generate verifiable 

 whenever a new block is created on the network.

Loom Network’s native token, LOOM, secures the platform. Developers use it to host DApps on their individual DAppChains by bonding LOOM to the network’s mainnet, Basechain. They’re required to deposit LOOM as a monthly fee to cover the costs of their apps’ users. 

Apart from covering transaction costs, LOOM can also

 by holders, who use their tokens to help secure the network and earn rewards. 

LOOM is an ERC-20 token, but the team has since released a 

 on BNB Chain in a bid to increase liquidity, usability and utility, and the two tokens now co-exist.

As of Oct 6, 2023, the price of LOOM is $0.17, a 33.79% drop from its all-time high of $0.027 on Apr 10, 2021, and over 400% higher than its all-time low of $0.032 on Jun 15, 2022.

Price prediction experts are relatively optimistic on LOOM's future. According to Bitnation's forecast, the 

 to a maximum of $0.63 in 2025 and increase to $1.51 in 2030.

 on LOOM for the long term and forecasts it will hit $0.62 in 2025 and rise to $1.79 by 2030.

Loom Network is determined to become a truly decentralized platform for those who believe in the ethos of web3 and blockchain technology. The reality, however, is that even though we’d like to think that apps on Loom Network are decentralized, they’re still vulnerable to the blockchain's whims and commands — more like a centralized service. 

Loom seeks to make decentralization a reality, not just a white paper or marketing-speak. With Loom, developers can operate comprehensive DApps so their codes run on nodes and the data is fully decentralized, and can be owned by anyone prepared to run the nodes independently. 

If you prefer to use BTC in DeFi, you might turn to 

, a Layer 2 solution for Bitcoin which offers faster transactions at lower costs. However, Lightning Network isn’t primarily made for DApps, and is largely incompatible with them. This makes it costly and complex for developers to create DApps and results in a poorer experience for users. On the other hand, Loom Network's DPoS and Universal Transaction Signing features make it a more practical avenue for DApp developers and offer a friendlier UX.

The Loom Network team has also demonstrated its innovative spirit in developing AI tools such as GitHub’s Copilot, a tool to help speed up coding for developers pursuing the AI wave.

Incorporating AI in the CryptoZombies curriculum to answer questions and detect errors in a student’s codes, as well as mainnet and testnet AI-powered monitoring and troubleshooting, shows that Loom’s platform is endeavoring to grow its reach in the crypto space.

However, Loom's has shifted its focus from developing social media and gaming apps (after encountering funding issues) to providing data services for healthcare and government sectors, which may cause some to question the project’s viability. Nevertheless, Loom Network can be considered a good long-term investment as the global community slowly shifts toward investing in truly decentralized products and services. This is not financial advice, however, and as with any investment, it’s important to 

You can buy LOOM as a Perpetual USDT contract on 

 denominates the order in LOOM tokens, while 

In addition, you can adjust the margin mode of your position by increasing or decreasing it, depending upon your risk appetite.

Slow transaction times and lack of scalability on most Layer 1 blockchains are major impediments for serious DApp developers. Loom Network endeavors to solve these problems by taking smaller loads off the main blockchain to increase speed and scalability. 

Hopefully, the platform will keep its long-term focus on building more viable solutions for DApp developers and users in order to provide a better blockchain experience for all.

Loom Network (LOOM): Bridging Chains for Seamless DApp Development

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards