Jan 6, 2025: Our weekly Institutional Insights explores the latest market developments — market performance, industry news, exchange-traded fund (ETF) flows, trending topics, upcoming events and token unlocks — to help you supercharge your crypto trading.

Weekly Highlight — Markets Snap Five-Day Loss Streak 

Investors are now seizing the opportunity to buy the dip in U.S. stocks after a five-day decline that erased over $1 trillion in market value. Wall Street has broken its longest losing streak since April, with the Nasdaq-100 rebounding 1.7% and the S&P 500 rising 1.3% on Friday, January 3. These gains slightly offset the week's sell-off, which had continued into the new year following a tough December.

Despite concerns about slowing earnings growth among tech giants like the Magnificent Seven, traders remain optimistic, especially regarding AI leader NVIDIA Corporation. The market believes that, as long as retail investors keep investing in AI, the associated stock market boom is expected to persist. 

Stocks reached their session highs in the afternoon after Mike Johnson was reelected as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, indicating potential support for a business-friendly agenda. Meanwhile, bond yields rose, with the 10-year hitting 4.6% following comments from Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin about maintaining restrictive rates. U.S. manufacturing showed modest growth, with new orders at their highest since early last year, while investors assessed economic strength against the possibility of slower interest-rate cuts.

Weekly Crypto Highlight — AI Agent Spring Coming

Many investors are eagerly anticipating an Alt Season, a period when altcoins typically surge in value. However, current market dynamics suggest we may not see a widespread altcoin rally. The sheer number of tokens, combined with limited liquidity, has led to what's known as altcoin dispersion, making it crucial to select the right sectors and tokens.

, which are thriving even as the broader market declines. This nascent sector is experiencing rapid advancements, and its associated tokens face less pressure from venture capital unlocks. Many of its top protocols lack centralized exchange listings, indicating more buyers may enter the market.

Those investors who missed previous opportunities, such as the DeFi summer of 2020 and the Alt Layer 1 trade, now have another chance. Instead of targeting individual AI agents, the best risk/reward strategy lies in investing in infrastructure plays, which serve as the foundational tools for the sector.

The leading AI agent player is Virtuals Protocol, a platform for launching tokenized AI agents on the Base network. By purchasing tokens like Luna by Virtuals (LUNA) and VaderAI (VADER), users gain governance rights over specific agents, which allows them to both influence development and share in profits. 

Recently, daily protocol fee revenues dropped significantly in mid-December 2024 as activity slowed for the holidays. However, speculation around agent-associated tokens surged as the new year approached. Currently, Virtuals Protocol generates over $1 million in daily fees, though this is 50% less than figures for early December. Despite these challenges, the VIRTUAL token has more than doubled in value, reaching a market capitalization of $4.6 billion.

Other highlighted opportunities include Zerebro, which is pivoting to a full-stack framework for AI agents; ARC, with its Rust-based framework; and 

 (GRIFFAIN), a natural language on-chain search tool. These projects are well-positioned for future growth in the evolving landscape of AI technology.

 as we delve into leading AI agent tokens and the past week’s market movements. 

Advanced

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Weekly Institutional Insights: Market Snaps Five-Day Loss Streak; AI Agent Spring Coming

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.

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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 Learn

web3

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Learn more about DeSci, which aims to democratize access to funding, decentralize decision-making processes and foster innovation in scientific research.

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Scientific research has long been the cornerstone of human progress, driving innovation and discovery. However, the traditional model of scientific inquiry often faces various barriers, such as limited funding, restricted access to data and inefficient peer review systems. Enter decentralized science (DeSci)

 to revolutionize the way research is conducted, funded and shared.

In this article, we’ll explore the foundations of DeSci, examine the challenges within traditional scientific research and delve into the workings of decentralized science’s innovative mechanisms, such as tokenized funding, open-access data sharing and blockchain-powered peer review. We’ll also highlight some relevant projects, such as BIO protocol, and discuss the future potential of DeSci.

Decentralized science, or DeSci, is a transformative movement that’s leveraging blockchain technology to address the inefficiencies and exclusivity of traditional scientific research. At its core, DeSci aims to democratize access to funding, decentralize decision-making processes and foster innovation in the way research is conducted, shared and validated.

By introducing mechanisms like tokenized funding through 

 and blockchain-powered data sharing, DeSci empowers researchers, institutions and contributors to collaborate in a more open, transparent and inclusive environment. Unlike conventional systems that rely on gatekeepers (i.e., academic journals and grant committees), DeSci promotes equitable access to resources and ensures that intellectual property rights are maintained through digital assets such as 

. This new paradigm has the potential to revolutionize science, increasing its collaborative aspect and impact on a global scale.

Challenges Within Traditional Scientific Research

The traditional scientific research ecosystem faces numerous challenges that hinder innovation and progress.

These systemic issues not only slow scientific progress, but also perpetuate inequalities in access and opportunity, underscoring the need for a decentralized alternative — hence, the birth of DeSci.

Decentralized and traditional science both aim to advance human knowledge, but their approaches differ significantly.

DeSci leverages blockchain for transparency, ensuring research integrity, while “TradSci” relies on centralized institutions for validation. Accessibility is another key distinction: DeSci democratizes access to knowledge through open platforms, whereas TradSci often imposes paywalls and restricted access.

Collaboration flourishes within DeSci through blockchain-based networks, contrasting with the siloed frameworks of TradSci. Funding models also diverge, as DeSci uses decentralized mechanisms to reward innovation while TradSci depends upon institutional grants, which can be less efficient.

Together, these differences shape distinct pathways for scientific progress.

Funding: DAOs, Tokenization and Crowdfunding

DeSci introduces innovative funding mechanisms that bypass traditional gatekeepers. 

 (DAOs) allow global communities of researchers, patients and investors to pool resources and decide collectively how funds are to be allocated. For instance, 

 focuses on advancing women’s health research, a field that’s historically been underfunded.

Tokenization is another groundbreaking approach. Platforms such as 

use intellectual property represented as non-fungible tokens (IP-NFTs) to fund biomedical research. Researchers can tokenize their projects, offering fractional ownership to investors. Crowdfunding also plays a significant role, allowing scientists to raise capital directly from supporters and democratizing access to funding for research.

These types of models can potentially reduce bureaucracy, empower researchers to maintain control over their projects and ensure that funding aligns with community priorities rather than institutional agendas.

DeSci improves data accessibility through decentralized platforms that prioritize transparency and collaboration. Unlike traditional academic publishing, which often locks research behind paywalls, DeSci ensures open access. Platforms such as ResearchHub (

 Brian Armstrong) incentivize contributions by rewarding researchers with cryptocurrency tokens.

Data-sharing is further enhanced by decentralized storage solutions that securely store and share research data. For example, 

 enables individuals to own their genomic data, advancing medical research while protecting user privacy. This shift not only fosters collaboration across borders, but also reduces the duplication of efforts, which could accelerate scientific discovery.

The traditional peer review system is often slow, opaque and prone to bias. DeSci introduces decentralized platforms on which reviewers are incentivized with tokens, creating a transparent and efficient process. With the leveraging of blockchain technology, peer reviews can be permanently recorded, ensuring accountability and enabling the scientific community to track the quality of research.

These decentralized systems reduce reliance on academic gatekeepers, opening the door for a broader range of contributors and enhancing the integrity of scientific validation.

Intellectual Property Management With NFTs

Last but not least, DeSci uses NFTs to revolutionize intellectual property (IP) management. Through platforms like Molecule’s, researchers can tokenize their work — whether it’s a dataset, patent or publication — into IP-NFTs. These tokens grant creators direct ownership and control over the commercialization of their work, shifting power away from traditional institutions. NFTs also enhance transparency, as ownership and usage rights are verifiable on blockchains. This model incentivizes innovation, while ensuring that researchers are equitably rewarded for their contributions.

Case Studies: Real-World Applications of DeSci

BIO Protocol: Streamlining On-Chain Scientific Ecosystems

 protocol represents a pivotal advancement in the DeSci ecosystem. It’s designed to address inefficiencies in funding and commercializing scientific research. BIO provides a comprehensive framework for biotech DAOs (bioDAOs), enabling seamless capital flow, talent acquisition and IP management within on-chain ecosystems.

By creating efficient markets for intellectual property (IP) generated by bioDAOs, BIO ensures perpetual funding and liquidity for scientific operations. Additionally, it standardizes frameworks, tokenomics and data systems, simplifying scalability for scientific communities. This innovation helps bridge the gap between researchers and investors, fostering an ecosystem in which scientific innovation can thrive. By integrating principles of 

 (DeFi), BIO catalyzes a sustainable economy for groundbreaking research.

VitaDAO: Democratizing Longevity Research

 is at the forefront of decentralized efforts to extend the human life and health span. As the first collective to fund early-stage longevity research, it operates as a bioDAO that pools resources to support projects aimed at combating aging. 

 like Pfizer Ventures and Balaji Srinivasan, VitaDAO has raised $4.1 million to advance its mission.

One of VitaDAO’s core goals is to decentralize access to IP in the biotech world. By challenging the monopolies of traditional pharmaceutical companies, VitaDAO seeks to democratize emerging therapeutics and ensure that life-extending innovations are globally accessible. It funds research projects and helps spin out startups to commercialize these discoveries, offering a decentralized alternative to the monopolistic biopharma system.

, a meme coin on the Solana blockchain, merges the playful appeal of meme culture with serious scientific exploration. Inspired by its namesake compound, an antibiotic with emerging potential in longevity research, the project gamifies life-extension science through the 

In studies, Rifampicin has shown promise by activating cellular defense mechanisms that combat oxidative stress, a key factor in aging. Research using model organisms, such as the 

 nematode roundworm, has linked Rifampicin to improved protein quality and extended life spans. The project leverages Solana’s fast, low-cost blockchain to facilitate token transactions and community participation in gamified experiments.

Rifampicin exemplifies the way DeSci can blend public engagement with serious research by making longevity science more accessible and exciting to a broader audience.

Challenges and Limitations of Decentralized Science

While DeSci holds immense potential, several challenges must be addressed to achieve widespread adoption.

Despite these limitations, DeSci’s potential to revolutionize science remains strong, provided the above challenges are met with strategic solutions and collaboration.

Decentralized science, or DeSci, has the power to redefine the way that research is conducted and valued, in order to create a more inclusive, transparent and efficient system. By merging web3 principles with scientific innovation, DeSci promises to democratize access, enhance collaboration and accelerate breakthroughs in the world of scientific research.

As this movement evolves, hybrid models combining traditional and decentralized systems could emerge, fostering innovation while preserving scientific rigor. DeSci offers an optimistic vision of the future — one in which researchers will be able to collaborate equitably and globally, paving the way for a new era of discovery.

What Is Decentralized Science (DeSci)?

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Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards