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

DeFi

Altcoins

DODO is a cross-chain decentralized exchange that employs its own proactive market maker algorithm to bolster liquidity while reducing the risks of slippage and impermanent loss.

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 (DeFi) has become increasingly prominent in recent years with numerous services and products. Part of DeFi's popularity is rooted in its ability to provide greater financial inclusivity and accessibility to individuals worldwide, bypassing traditional intermediaries and enabling direct participation in various economic activities through 

Nonetheless, there are downsides to decentralized finance that have hampered greater adoption. A notable concern is the sometimes precarious lack of liquidity within DeFi platforms, which can lead to higher 

. The DODO project has been designed specifically to address these problems and to elevate trading experiences.

 (DEX) that runs on 11 chains, including major blockchains like 

. It stands apart from other DEXs with its proactive market maker algorithm. 

The DODO market-making algorithm allows for greater liquidity and superior price stability than those of typical 

 to identify the best swap rate from different liquidity sources to aid users in completing cost-effective trade transactions on the same network.

, the Crowdpooling function distributes tokens equitably and spurs liquidity markets. More specifically, Crowdpooling allows new projects to raise funds by joining a whitelist, in which the raised funds will be used to create highly liquid trading pair pools for participating projects. Project owners can also create liquidity mining campaigns to further incentivize their community participants.

Since most blockchains are inaccessible to each other, DeFi transactions are often complex and slow. 

 (CEXs) help execute swift transactions off-chain by using their own protocols, but using third-party intermediaries goes against the fundamental ideology of DeFi. Hence, DEXs aim to improve transactions through cross-bridge protocols and decentralized 

DEXs, however, place users at risk for impermanent loss due to the common lack of liquidity on their platforms. High slippage costs also arise when there aren't enough 

 to balance liquidity pools effectively. While most DEXs employ automated market maker algorithms to address some of these issues, there remains room for improvement.

DODO is a meta aggregator designed as a superior option for traders, arbitrageurs and market makers. It uses its own liquidity pools as well as those from other DEXs, and its capital-efficient pools reduce the risks of slippage and impermanent loss. This is accomplished through its proactive market maker, which actively adjusts the liquidity pools to accommodate the needs of market makers.

The unique structure of the DODO platform benefits market makers, traders and arbitrageurs. DODO employs deep algorithms to assess market sentiment. Generally, market making formulas are linear and overly simplified. The PMM algorithm used by DODO is nonlinear, following a price curve that better aligns with human trading behaviors. It reduces slippage and impermanent loss, leading to a more capital-efficient DEX.

 (PMM) improves on-chain liquidity through its flexible, nonlinear algorithm that emulates human market makers in CEXs.

PMM supports more favorable pricing for DODO traders, with up to 10 times the liquidity available through many other AMMs. Moreover, the algorithm is flexible and facilitates optimized transactions on-chain with its dynamic curve adjustments, effectively preventing liquidity providers' assets from being arbitraged. 

Additionally, there’s no minimum deposit, and liquidity providers can contribute using only a single token to earn a lucrative annualized return rate of 20%.

DODO also offers two other permissionless tools for more effective liquidity pool creation and management. The 

 helps smaller project owners create liquidity pools with smooth curves for their assets. Thanks to DODO's flexible PMM model, the price curve can be customized to create the 

, which offers the added convenience of unilateral deposits and withdrawals from the pool.

Initial token offerings on primary markets face liquidity constraints because users can only purchase tokens without the option to sell them. DEXs have sought to address the liquidity issue through bonding curves, automated market making and yield farming. However, these three methods remain susceptible to bot interference and frontrunning. DODO's Crowdpooling eliminates these concerns.

As a liquidity pools solution tailored for primary markets, DODO's Crowdpooling allows all users to support projects by providing liquidity. Optimal security is ensured within the liquidity protection period to prevent participating project teams from enacting 

DODO has been intentionally crafted to benefit both traders and project owners. It gives project owners secure and easy access to the liquidity they need. The platform supports token creation and launches, and it further helps project owners through its innovative Crowdpooling feature. At the same time, DODO users can actively support the projects they’re interested in as liquidity pool providers. Many of the risks and barriers commonly associated with liquidity provision are eliminated on DODO.

DODO’s cross-chain platform has an easy-to-use interface that optimizes trading activities. Users can complete limit order, cross-chain swap and swap transactions for token pairs across different blockchains. Furthermore, the platform explicitly identifies the best market price for each trading pair. In addition to trading, users can profit by acting as liquidity providers or liquidity miners.

In addition to traders, project owners and developers can take advantage of several specific features on DODO. Customized tokens can be created with functions for incremental issuance, transaction fees and token destruction. In addition, Crowdpooling allows project owners to more easily generate interest in their projects and benefit from the support of liquidity providers. Furthermore, project owners can create liquidity pools with the PMM algorithm, and liquidity mining campaigns to gain extra liquidity for their tokens.

The platform also offers a developer portal with 

 — Smart Route API, Limit Order API and Web3 Data API. Project owners and developers can also use a trading widget to easily develop a front-end interface for their DApp projects.

DODO is the native token of the DODO platform. It comes in both 

 token standards. As a governance token, you can participate in decision-making for the DODO protocol by holding or staking the token. DODO can also be used for Crowdpooling and IDO allocations, and holding DODO gives you trading fee discounts.

There are two ways to earn DODO tokens. You can stake DODO tokens to earn more DODO, or mine DODO by providing liquidity to any trading pair offered on the platform. 

From DODO tokens, you can also mint vDODO, a membership certificate for loyal token holders, to benefit from trading fee dividends and vDODO membership benefits on top of all the other DODO benefits. In order to mint one vDODO token,100 DODO tokens are required.

DODO’s max supply is capped at one billion tokens. Of these, 16% are distributed to investors, 1% to initial liquidity provision, 60% to community incentives and 8% to partnerships, marketing and operations. The remaining 15% — earmarked for advisors, the core team and potential future hires — will be locked for a year and released linearly over the ensuing two years.

As of Aug 29, 2023, the market price of DODO is $0.095, which is over 98% lower than its all-time high price of $8.38 on Feb 20, 2021, and 16.87% higher than its lowest price of $0.081 on Jun 10, 2023.

It can be difficult to accurately predict the future price of any cryptocurrency, due to volatility and the rapid evolution of the market. However, several reputable sources have indicated the probability of a substantial price increase through the decade's end. Specifically, DigitalCoinPrice 

 DODO’s price may hit $0.34 in 2025 and $0.99 in 2030, while PricePrediction 

The DODO project stands out as an improvement over conventional AMM-based DEXs with benefits for both traders and project owners. It significantly reduces the risks of impermanent loss and slippage for liquidity providers through its dynamic PMM algorithm, and project owners get to maintain their own liquidity pools to raise more liquidity for their tokens.

The current market price of DODO is affordable, enabling even smaller investors to purchase a sizable number of tokens with a modest investment. Several established sources have thoroughly analyzed the project and believe the price will increase significantly by 2030.

With these factors in mind, consider taking a closer look at DODO as an investment opportunity, though it’s always recommended to conduct independent analysis before investing in 

You can buy DODO on Bybit as a USDT Perpetual Contract (

). If you’re a first-time Bybit user, you can 

Unlike traditional market makers, the PMM algorithm employed by DODO supports more favorable pricing for traders, enhanced security and reduced risk for liquidity providers, and easier access to funding for project owners. Beyond its advanced algorithm, DODO introduces Crowdpooling, cutting-edge developer tools and a host of other innovations. With its array of distinctive and sophisticated attributes, DODO significantly elevates the DEX trading experience to new heights.

DODO Crypto: Unlocking Liquidity Efficiency in DeFi

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards