Unichain, Uniswap’s L2 network, now handles over 76% of Uniswap v4 volume, driven by UNI incentives and its new Rollup-Boost feature. 

The S&P 500 jumped 3.26% as US-China tariff easing lifted market sentiment. Investors now await CPI and retail data for signs of inflation trends under the new trade regime. Gold fell near $3,208 as easing US-China trade tensions reduced safe-haven demand. With CPI data ahead, further downside is likely. Technicals suggest bearish momentum, with key support at $3,202. The Coindesk Indices, which tracks the broader crypto market, fell 1.97%, with Bitcoin and Ether down 2.53% and 0.95%, in the past 24 hours. Trade these markets and more with up to 500x leverage on Bybit MT5 using this 

Today's top performer is RUNE, which surged by 4.4% following the completion of Halborn's security audit for Rujira Network's omnichain DeFi layer on THORChain.

THORChain (RUNE), created in 2018, is a decentralized protocol enabling native asset swaps across blockchains without wrapping. Built on Cosmos SDK and Tendermint, it uses Proof-of-Stake and Byzantine Fault Tolerance for secure cross-chain transactions. Halborn has 

 a smart contract security audit for Rujira Network, which is building an omnichain DeFi app layer on THORChain. Rujira enables seamless access to DeFi apps using native assets across connected chains.

Check out the latest prices, charts, and data of 

Unichain, Uniswap’s L2 network, now handles over 76% of Uniswap v4 volume, driven by UNI incentives and its new Rollup-Boost feature. This upgrade enhances MEV handling, cuts failed transaction gas costs, and sets the stage for Flashblocks—an upcoming 200ms block time system. Despite v4’s growth, Uniswap v3 still leads in total volume. The aim of Unichain is to solve Ethereum mainnet and L2 liquidity fragmentation while improving speed and decentralization.

Yesterday, BTC spot ETFs saw total outflows of $64.2 million, with $32.9 million from GBTC and $31.3 million from all other ETFs combined.

Multipli’s Season 1 has ended with 359.2M ORBs distributed (50% of supply). 

, allocating 30% of ORBs. Users can continue earning by keeping funds on mainnet or testnet—no action required. New users can join via testnet (free) or deposit stablecoins on BSC/Ethereum.

Beginner

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Unichain leads Uniswap v4 activity with rollup-boost upgrade and upcoming flashblocks feature

Ethereum surged 29% this week, breaking a 10-week downtrend and catching short sellers off guard with $400M liquidated. 

The S&P 500 extended its rally with a nine-day winning streak, its longest since 2004, as optimism over potential trade deals and upcoming Fed and earnings updates lifted sentiment. Gold rose to $3,245 on trade uncertainty and Fed rate cut hopes. CoinDesk Indices, which tracks the broader crypto market, fell 1.50% in the past 24 hours, while Bitcoin and Ether dropped 0.10% and 0.51%, respectively. Trade these markets and more with up to 500x leverage on Bybit MT5 using this 

Today's top performer is AI16Z, which surged 7.0% after Bonsai's smart media protocol integrated with Eliza to empower agent-driven social content creation.

elizaOS (AI16Z), launched in October 2024, formerly ai16z, is a Solana-based DApp that uses a DAO and an AI agent, "Marc AIndreessen," to manage community-driven investments in tech and crypto projects. 

, lets developers create agent-driven social media scripts and templates using ElizaOS plugins. The Bonsai Client, its first implementation, enables easy deployment of these smart media agents on platforms like Lens. Builders can explore these tools and compete for prizes in the Lens Spring Hackathon.

Ethereum surged 29% this week, breaking a 10-week downtrend and catching short sellers off guard with $400M liquidated. Despite muted ETF flows and neutral derivatives sentiment, ETH’s dominance remains unshaken—boasting $64B in TVL, dwarfing Solana, BNB Chain, and Tron combined. With fresh momentum from the recent pectra upgrades and Trump distancing from rival altcoins, all eyes are now on a potential push toward $2,700. 

BTC spot ETFs saw $920.9M in net inflows this week, driven by $1.09B into non-GBTC funds despite $171.5M outflows from GBTC. Since inception, total net inflows stand at $41.1B.

 are now live and claimable as a small bonus for users farming the upcoming Aster (AST) airdrop. By depositing BNB to mint asBNB, users can start earning points toward both the main airdrop and future ecosystem rewards. Optional perp trading can boost points further, but simply holding asBNB is enough to qualify.

Ethereum outperforms with a 20% rally as fresh capital flows in and undervaluation signals flash

Our monthly report delves into insights from options volatility to inspire your next crypto move.

: April 2025 saw BTC's implied volatility surge above 75% due to tariff chaos, but it collapsed to 35% within a week, indicating a surprising short-term drop in volatility expectations despite ongoing macro uncertainty.

: BTC's return above $100K was met with muted enthusiasm in the derivatives market, suggesting that 

traders no longer view this level as a significant psychological barrier, and the rally isn’t likely to be sustained.

: ETH significantly outperformed BTC with a 23% rally, leading to increased demand for short-dated calls and a positive shift in the options market, highlighting renewed bullish sentiment.

: Historical trends suggest a potential summer lull in volatility in store for BTC, raising questions about whether this pattern will repeat in 2025 amidst ongoing macroeconomic challenges.

Bitcoin’s volatility plunges in late April

April 2025 witnessed significant volatility in the cryptocurrency market, particularly influenced by US trade policies. As President Trump announced steep reciprocal tariffs, the crypto landscape experienced sharp fluctuations. Bitcoin (BTC) initially demonstrated resilience, despite widespread sell-offs in equities and the US dollar, only to succumb to a decline from $88K to $75K by early April. This period was characterized by a dramatic rise in implied volatility that peaked above 75% as traders sought protection through short-dated puts. However, as the tariffs faced moderation, implied volatility plummeted to 35% by mid-April, marking the lowest level since early March.

Interestingly, while short-tenor volatility collapsed, 

the back end of BTC's term structure remained elevated, signaling that market participants expect heightened volatility in the mid-term

. Amidst this backdrop, realized volatility fell below the five-year seasonal average, paralleling similar trends in previous years and suggesting a 

. The historical pattern contrasts that BTC often experiences a rebound in volatility heading into May, raising questions about whether this trend will persist.

Subdued derivative response suggests Bitcoin rally might not endure

The market's reaction to BTC's resurgence above the $100K threshold was notably subdued compared to previous instances. While BTC rallied 20% following the initial tariff sell-off, the derivatives market displayed a muted response. The 25-delta put/call skew, a measure of market sentiment, indicated only a slight bias toward out-of-the-money calls, contrasting sharply with sentiment previously when BTC first breached the $100K mark in December 2024. This lack of exuberance suggests that traders no longer view $100K as a significant inflection point, raising concerns about the sustainability of the rally. 

Meanwhile, funding rates and implied volatility — though still bullish — didn’t reach the extremes observed in earlier months, indicating more cautious market sentiment. The relationship between BTC's spot price and implied volatility suggests that although traders are optimistic, they’re waiting for BTC to approach previous all-time highs before adjusting their volatility expectations.

Ethereum's option data points to further rally

In stark contrast to BTC, Ethereum (ETH) displayed remarkable resilience and outperformed major cryptocurrencies, gaining 23% overnight following favorable trade news. This rally catalyzed a surge in demand for short-dated calls, pushing front-end volatility expectations significantly higher. The response from the derivatives market was robust, inverting the term structure and indicating renewed bullish sentiment toward ETH, even as it’s trading well below its all-time high.

The ETH options market exhibited a shift from neutral to slightly negative skew, to a 10% bias favoring out-of-the-money calls, reflecting the market's confidence in ETH's potential to regain lost ground. Despite overall macroeconomic uncertainty, the demand for ETH options suggests that traders are optimistic about Ether’s future price movements.

In conclusion, April 2025 highlighted the complex interplay between macroeconomic factors and cryptocurrency market dynamics. While BTC faced challenges in eliciting strong responses from derivatives markets upon recrossing the $100K threshold, ETH's performance indicated a divergence in market sentiment. As traders navigate the evolving landscape, the potential for seasonal volatility patterns and the influence of macroeconomic developments will remain critical factors in shaping future market expectations.

Advanced

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Bybit X Block Scholes options volatility report (April 2025): Data suggests Bitcoin rally might not endure, but Ether sees further upside

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.

After mostly trading sideways at the end of April 2025, a US-UK trade deal sparked a crypto rally. BTC surged past $100K for the first time since February, but it’s ETH's performance that captured the derivatives market's attention. 

A 23% increase in ETH's spot price led to an inverted term structure and a spike in front-end volatility. The put/call skew for ETH shifted from a bearish bias to a nearly 10% skew toward OTM calls. Other sentiment indicators, such as perp funding rates and futures yield, also supported the rally. In contrast, while BTC's funding rates and skew have increased, its implied volatility remains low at 40%, over 30 points below ETH's 7-day implied volatility.

Please check out the report’s highlights.

ETH’s record performance since 2021 was propelled by positive term structure

ETH has significantly outperformed BTC and the top 10 cryptocurrencies, marking its largest single-day gain since May 2021. The options market has reflected this enthusiasm, with implied volatility for short tenors rising sharply and inverting ETH’s term structure, thus contrasting with BTC's muted, positively sloped structure. The 7-day tenor for ETH is now trading at a 33-point premium over that for BTC. 

While puts dominate BTC's open interest, ETH is seeing the opposite trend. On May 8, 2025, options volumes surged over $120M, more than double the typical monthly volume, with $60M more in calls than puts. ETH now boasts a positive futures curve and funding rates, as well as a strong skew toward OTM calls.

ETH sees exceptionally bullish put/call skew

ETH's substantial outperformance in the current crypto rally has led to bullish sentiment in its derivatives markets. Funding rates have surged, futures yields are strongly positive and the put/call skew has shifted significantly toward OTM calls, now close to 10%. This starkly contrasts with early April, when the skew was 20% toward OTM puts. Although ETH has underperformed (relative to BTC and other "ETH killers"), it has rebounded in this rally, with the ETH/BTC ratio rising after spending most of the year declining.

Open interest for Bitcoin options increased, with implied volatility remaining suppressed

The announcement of the new US administration's first trade deal, nearly 30 days into Trump's 90-day tariff pause, jolted crypto markets, pushing BTC back up above $100K. Surprisingly, implied volatility has remained suppressed, failing to invert BTC's term structure, with front-end volatility trading at around an 18-month low of 35-40%. On May 8, 2025, options volumes surged, with call volume reaching $189M, reversing last week's trend of higher put volumes. Meanwhile, open interest rose steadily to exceed $300M, the highest level this month, but remains significantly larger for puts than for calls despite the price increase.

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Bybit X Block Scholes crypto derivatives analytics report (May 9, 2025): Ether’s put/call skew turns remarkably more bullish than Bitcoin’s

Explainers

GameFi

Blockchain

Beam (BEAM) is a gaming-focused blockchain on Avalanche launched by Merit Circle, decentralized organization that supports and promotes web3 gaming platforms and initiatives.

Gaming is one of the fastest-growing niches within the blockchain industry. The 

) in 2021, continues to fuel growth in this highly competitive area. While blockchain gaming is currently dominated by the likes of

), there’s a brand-new contender on the block ready to take on these established giants.

Earlier this month, the gaming-focused decentralized autonomous organization (

) Merit Circle opened up public access to the Beam blockchain, its new platform. Beam aims to revolutionize the way blockchain games are developed and played. Operating as a subnet (subnetwork) of Avalanche, Beam offers fast execution times and low transaction fees for in-game asset trade and other common gaming-related operations.

 is a leading decentralized organization that supports and promotes 

 gaming platforms and initiatives. Using a completely decentralized governance model, the Merit Circle user community votes to invest treasury funds in various gaming projects and support the development of blockchain games. The DAO maintains four key verticals in its operations.

Beam (BEAM) is a gaming-focused blockchain recently launched by Merit Circle. One of the DAO’s major undertakings, Beam revolutionizes the way that blockchain is used for game development, player experience and gaming assets trade. Beam operates as a subnet on Avalanche (

). Since it’s integrated with LayerZero, an interoperability omnichain protocol, Beam allows the minting of all game assets as omnichain 

 so they can easily be transferred across chains.

Avalanche’s architecture can be used to launch subnet blockchains, which are sovereign network environments that leverage the base features of the Avalanche main chain yet are separate from it. The subnets maintain their own validator networks and core operational rules. At the same time, they utilize Avalanche’s core security mechanism and take advantage of the chain’s key features, such as fast transactions and low fees. Beam is among the most ambitious gaming projects launched as an Avalanche subnet.

The initial news of Merit Circle’s active work on a gaming platform surfaced in early 2023. In August, the DAO 

 to a limited cohort of game developers. Then, in early November, the project team announced the removal of a permissioned mode, with Beam finally becoming a public blockchain.

: Merit Circle’s Beam project should not be confused with an older crypto platform with the same name, BEAM (BEAM), a privacy-focused blockchain. The two projects use the same token ticker, BEAM, but differ with regard to the brand name capitalization (Beam for the focus of our article, and all-caps BEAM for the privacy platform).

Thanks to its leveraging Avalanche’s base architecture, Beam offers users an environment with fast processing times and low fees. Both advantages are critical for players and game developers alike, given the fast-paced nature of modern P2E games and the wide variety of in-game assets traded on them.

As a typical Avalanche subnet, Beam maintains its own set of validators. At the moment, there are only eight block validators on the platform’s 

. Since Beam has been open to the public for less than a month, the number of qualified validators will likely grow as the platform matures. While Avalanche subnets have their own validator sets, any validator on the vast public network can offer their resources to any subnet. As such, Beam might draw on the resources of the broader Avalanche platform to attract quality validators.

During the permissioned mode, when Beam was open to a select group of developers, it used the 

 (PoA) block validation method to process transactions. With PoA, a group of validators with a strong reputation or trusted credentials are given the responsibility of validating transaction blocks.

Early in its public mode era, Beam continues to operate as a PoA chain. Later in the year, Merit Circle plans to move the platform to the 

 (PoS) validation model, the default block validation method used by the Avalanche blockchain.

Being such a new platform, Beam currently has a small ecosystem comprising a few essential tools and applications. Over the coming months, as Beam grows and establishes itself on the market, its ecosystem will expand.

Despite being in its early stages of operation, Beam is already attracting pronounced interest from the gaming community. The blockchain’s 

 lists over 180 games, which will undoubtedly rise in number over the coming weeks and months.

The first game to launch live on Beam was 

, a card game set in a fantasy world. This was quickly followed by a rush of other titles and genres populating the platform. Currently, some of its popular games include 

, a move-to-earn (M2E) mobile game that encourages an active lifestyle; 

, an action role-playing game (ARPG) in which players traverse time and space; and 

, an AAA first-person shooter (FPS) whose players compete to survive and extract valuables in a band around the Earth known as The Zone.

The BEAM token is the Beam blockchain's native cryptocurrency. All the transaction fees on the network are paid in BEAM. When Beam fully transitions to the PoS validation model, BEAM tokens will also be used for staking. The platform's 

 rules specify that BEAM holders will be able to delegate funds to their preferred validator node and receive a portion of the block rewards generated.

Merit Circle DAO maintains its own crypto token, MC, which is crucial for the governance of the organization. However, upon launching Beam, Merit Circle announced a migration of MC tokens to BEAM at a fixed ratio of 1 MC to 100 BEAM. MC Holders will be able to migrate their funds to BEAM until Oct 26, 2024. After the migration is complete, BEAM token will acquire governance function as well, replacing MC in this capacity.

The BEAM crypto was launched on Oct 26, 2023, with a total supply of slightly less than 63 billion, of which over 44 billion are already in circulation. BEAM is a supply-capped token, with its maximum supply specified at exactly the same number as its total supply. In other words, minting additional BEAM isn’t in the cards of Merit Circle’s governance community.

As of Nov 24, 2023, the Beam token (BEAM) trades at $0.00853 (about $8.53 for 1,000 BEAM), which is 26.68% lower than its all-time high of $0.01163, attained on Oct 26, 2023, and 96.57% higher than its all-time low of $0.004338, registered on Oct 29, 2023.

BEAM is still taking its first steps in the market, but the token’s long-term outlook is already quite optimistic. DigitalCoinPrice 

 BEAM will reach $0.03 in 2025 and $0.089 in 2030, and CrowdWisdom 

 nearly the same rates ($0.0202 in 2025 and $0.0862 in 2030).

Is Merit Circle (BEAM) a Good Investment?

Although a very recent entrant in the market, BEAM is already shaping up as a major crypto gaming token. With a market cap of about $378 million, BEAM already features among the top 10 gaming-related cryptocurrencies — an achievement that has taken less than a month since its launch. Clearly, the gaming niche of the market is paying close attention to this newcomer. Some key factors pointing to the token’s good investment potential are as follows:

1. BEAM is among the first comprehensive gaming and game development platforms on the market. While projects like 

 space, these platforms are focused environments, dedicated to a single game. In contrast, the Beam blockchain is an all-in-one portal with scores of different games across a multitude of genres. The Beam platform is, therefore, well-positioned to become a major portal for P2E games, a kind of Google or Amazon of blockchain gaming.

2. Beam is also positioned to leverage the technical and cost efficiencies of the Avalanche environment. Most of the abovementioned crypto gaming platforms are based on 

 (ETH), a blockchain notorious for its network congestion and high gas fees.

3. Beam’s core business, crypto gaming, is an area poised for profound growth over the coming years. As the concept of the 

 matures and more games choose blockchain as their primary hosting environment, the BEAM token will benefit from this niche-wide expansion.

You can buy the BEAM token on Bybit, both on the Spot market (

). If you don’t yet have a Bybit account, you can easily 

 for one to trade hundreds of crypto assets and products in both Spot and Derivatives markets.

Beam by Merit Circle presents a novel way of using blockchain technology to facilitate game development and in-game asset management. This innovative project brings the capacity, expertise and ambition to act as a major crypto gaming portal/aggregator. Instead of focusing on one game, genre or category, Beam aims to become a comprehensive blockchain gaming universe. Supported by Merit Circle and its unique governance model, Beam is also poised to attract the interest of decentralization purists, crypto users and gamers who value truly community-driven platform management.

The market is already reacting positively to Beam's entry. In less than a month since its launch, Beam's market cap has skyrocketed to levels comparable to (if not yet the same as) established gaming coins. Early indicators are that Beam is about to take the market by storm. The year 2024 will be fascinating for Beam by Merit Circle — and the overall crypto gaming niche!

Beam by Merit Circle DAO (BEAM): The Ultimate Gaming Ecosystem

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