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Most Active Investors by Funding Rounds in 2025
2025 revealed two dominant VC strategies: high-volume participation across stages and selective, high-capital lead investments. Corporate VCs led by deal count, while firms like a16z, Pantera, and Paradigm dominated by capital deployed.
Caroline Ellison has been released from jail
Ellison had pleaded guilty to multiple fraud and conspiracy charges tied to the FTX/Alameda fraud and cooperated with prosecutors, including testifying against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who is serving a 25-year sentence.
👉 theinformation.com/briefings/caroline-ellison-former-alameda-ceo-released-jail
World Liberty and Binance launch $40M WLFI Rewards campaign
Starting January 23rd Binance will reward USD1 holders with a $40M WLFI airdrop pool. Rewards will be distributed weekly ($10 million in WLFI tokens each week), with the first payout on Feb 2 and final distributions concluding on February 20th.
👉 binance.com/en/support/announcement/detail/fdcb95e74a1
Superstate Raises $82.5M Series B to Scale Onchain Equities
The Series B round was led by Bain Capital Crypto and Distributed Global, with participation from Haun Ventures, Brevan Howard Digital, Galaxy Digital, Bullish, ParaFi, 1kx, Flowdesk, Hypersphere, and others.
The funding will support expansion beyond tokenized U.S. Treasuries into SEC-registered onchain equity issuance on Ethereum and Solana.
This brings Superstate’s total funding to $100M+, following a $4M seed (2023) and $14M Series A. The platform now manages $1.2B+ in AUM.
Superstate builds regulated onchain capital markets infrastructure, enabling public companies to issue tokenized securities with real-time settlement via its Opening Bell platform.
👉 theblock.co/post/386690/superstate-raises-82-5-million-usd-series-b-funding-round
Binance Wallet Introduces New AI-Powered Features To Help Identify On-Chain Narratives
The new AI-powered features will help users spot emerging on-chain narratives and track market trends across BSC, Solana, and Base.
1️⃣ Social Hype. Ranks tokens by social attention and engagement, highlighting rising hype and momentum across chains
2️⃣ Topic Rush. Uses AI to surface emerging narratives from Meme Rush activity and major tweets, grouping related tokens into topic cards (Early / Rising / Viral)
3️⃣ AI Assistant. A pinned AI widget that instantly summarizes token narratives, X sentiment, narrative scores, and key event timelines
👉 binance.com/en/support/announcement
Biggest Lending Protocols by Assets Borrowed
Lending continues to be a cornerstone of DeFi, with Aave being a clear leader. These protocols underpin on-chain credit markets, providing deep liquidity, leverage options, and sustainable real-yield opportunities for users.
Ondo Global Markets went live on the Solana blockchain
The launch brings 200+ tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs on Solana for trading with deep liquidity and fast settlement. It offers fractional ownership of traditional financial assets like NVDA, AAPL while tapping NASDAQ/NYSE liquidity and supporting 24/7 trading.
👉 x.com/solana/status/2013983005711479017?s=20
Vietnam begins accepting crypto exchange licenses
New pilot program includes strict requirements such as a ~$400M minimum capital and 49% foreign ownership limit, aiming to protect domestic investors and encourage big players to enter market.
The move comes amid some of the world’s highest crypto adoption rates, with over 17M Vietnamese holding digital assets and the nation ranking among the top countries globally for crypto use.
👉 theblock.co/post/386543/vietnam-opens-crypto-exchange-licensing
BitGo (BTGO) goes public today on New York Stock Exchange
Crypto custodian BitGo priced its U.S. IPO at $18 per share, above the $15–$17 range, raising about $213M at a valuation above $2B, with trading set to begin Jan. 22 on the NYSE under the ticker BTGO.
👉 theblock.co/post/386629/bitgo-prices-us-ipo
X Open-Sources Its Recommendation Algorithm: What Drives Reach Now
X has open-sourced its content recommendation algorithm on GitHub via the X Engineering account, offering rare transparency into how posts are ranked in user feeds.
ℹ️ How It Works
- Likes aren’t the primary signal
- The algorithm first matches a user’s interest profile with a post’s semantic meaning. Content that doesn’t align with prior behavior never enters ranking, explaining why topical consistency outperforms scattered posting
1️⃣ Why Posts Go Viral
- X evaluates multiple actions at once — likes, replies, reposts, quotes, saves, and watch time.
- Engagement across several actions boosts scores non-linearly, leading to sudden acceleration
2️⃣ Media & Freshness
- Image opens and video completion are tracked separately, giving an edge to carousels and video-first posts
- Older content is heavily penalized; timely posts dominate recommendations
- Posting Frequency & Negative Signals
- X reduces reach for frequent posting to prevent feed saturation
- Mute, block, report, and “not interested” directly cut distribution — even high engagement can be overridden
3️⃣ What Matters Most
- Read/watch time
- Quote reposts (rank higher than simple reposts)
- Sharing behavior
- Clear keywords and semantic density improve discovery; hashtags may be regaining relevance when used sparingly
4️⃣ Key Takeaways
- Stick to one core topic
- Optimize for multiple engagement signals
- Use images and video to increase dwell time
- Post less often, but at the right moments
- Avoid negative feedback triggers
- Test hashtags carefully
👉 x.com/elonmusk/status/2013482798884233622?s=20
Neynar Acquires Farcaster, Takes Over App, Protocol & Clanker
Neynar has acquired Farcaster, taking control of the protocol contracts, code repositories, the Farcaster app, and Clanker.
The transition will roll out over the coming weeks, with members of the Merkle team, including Varun, stepping back from daily operations. Neynar, one of Farcaster’s earliest clients, already powers much of the developer infrastructure and will introduce a builder-focused vision.
ℹ️ What changes?
- Users. No immediate impact — the app and Clanker continue to operate normally
- Developers. Protocol contracts and repositories move to Neynar, which will also run developer calls
The Clanker team will continue with Neynar, while other Merkle members pursue new paths, marking a new leadership phase for Farcaster after five years
Bermuda unveils plan for world’s first fully on-chain national economy
Bermuda has announced plans to become the world’s first fully on-chain national economy, with support from Circle and Coinbase, integrating blockchain and stablecoins into everyday activities.
👷 What’s Being Built
- On-chain payments infrastructure using stablecoins like USDC
- Tokenization tools for public and private sector use
- Blockchain rails embedded across services and businesses
ℹ️ Why It Matters
- Serves as a real-world blueprint for nation-scale adoption
- Lowers transaction costs and modernizes financial infrastructure
- Positions Bermuda as a global on-chain finance hub
👉 x.com/circle/status/2013333135908343956?s=20
Chainlink rolls out 24/5 U.S. Equities Streams
Equities Streams bring near-continuous price feeds for major U.S. stocks and ETFs on-chain. The rollout enables dApps to access reliable equity data beyond traditional trading hours, unlocking new use cases across derivatives, RWAs, and on-chain financial products.
ℹ️ What this milestone highlights:
- Expansion of real-world assets on-chain
- Improved market accessibility and uptime
- New opportunities for perps, synthetics, and prediction markets
This move further positions Chainlink as the core data infrastructure bridging traditional finance and on-chain markets.
👉 blog.chain.link/chainlink-24-5-us-equities-streams/
Binance Futures to list Acurast and 我踏马来了 later today
Acurast, the first verifiable compute network powered by phones, will be listed at 12:45 UTC. 我踏马来了, a Chinese meme coin on BNB Chain, scheduled to be listed at 14:30 UTC.
👉 binance.com/en/support/announcement/detail/7736f9a5aae24
Akedo raised $5M in a Seed funding led by Karatage
Akedo is an AI-powered game and content creation platform that uses an AI agent framework to let users build playable games using simple natural language prompts, greatly reducing development time and lowering technical barriers.
👉 markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/akedo-raises-5m-seed-round-to-build-ai-native-content-creation-engine-1035724212
Farcaster’s parent to return $180 million to VC backers
Merkle Manufactory, the company behind Farcaster social platform, plans to repay roughly $180M to its venture investors, signaling a strategic reset in capital structure. The move follows Farcaster acquisition by Neynar as it took control of the protocol.
👉 bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-23/crypto-social-platform-to-repay-180-million-to-venture-backers
Ledger eyes U.S. IPO at a $4B+ valuation: Financial Times
Hardware wallet maker Ledger works with Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and Barclays on the deal, which could take place this year. The move follows comments from Ledger CEO that its annual revenue reached the hundreds of millions, supporting a multibillion valuation.
👉 ft.com/content/380bde8c-9952-4302-83be-e0440855b8ff
xStocks On-Chain Activity Hits New Highs
xStocks continue to see strong on-chain adoption, with aggregate metrics signaling growing demand for tokenized equities across both EVM and SVM ecosystems.
ℹ️ Key Metrics
- Total On-Chain Transfer Volume: $3.03B+
- Total DEX trading volume: $532.9M+
- Total AUM (aggregated): $152.5M
- Unique holders: 57,900+
- Cumulative trading volume (CEX + DEX): $17B+
ℹ️ Holders Asset Breakdown
- TSLAx (Tesla): 18,389 holders
- NVDAx (NVIDIA): 13,833
- SPYx (S&P 500): 11,493
- GOOGLx (Alphabet): 10,361
- CRCLx (Circle): 8,004
- AAPLx (Apple): 7,962
xStocks are steadily positioning themselves as one of the most actively used tokenized equity stacks across crypto-native and exchange-based environments.
👉 dune.com/xstocks/xstocks
Xpin Network (XPIN) Spotlight. Recent News and Updates
Xpin Network is running a new incentive campaign in partnership with Gate. The event runs from January 19 to January 26, 2026 (UTC), with 132.5M XPIN distributed across different incentives.
Alongside the campaign, XPIN continues to roll out ecosystem updates, integrations, and incentive programs, with the latest developments highlighted below.
Immunefi (IMU) initial listing to take place today, at 14:00 UTC
Immunefi sits at the core of crypto’s most resilient market, security, which remains essential at any time. As the “App Store for security,” it provides a hub for every builder to keep protocols protected.
Immunefi, which previously completed a $71M Gate IEO with 28.4x oversub, is hinting at a potential WLFI partnership and a compelling IMU accumulation case ahead of a possible Coinbase debut.
Check IMU trading pairs 👉 bit.ly/IMU-Inc
Iran’s Central Bank has quietly built a $507M USDT reserve
Elliptic’s blockchain analysis shows the Central Bank of Iran acquired at least $507 million in USDT, routing funds through exchanges like Nobitex and cross-chain bridges as a way to support the collapsing rial and work around international banking restrictions.
👉 elliptic.co/blog/iran-has-acquired-us-dollar-stablecoins-worth-at-least-half-a-billion-dollars
Tria unveiled plans to roll out its futures trading solution
Waitlist is now open for everyone. Tria's Perp DEX will offer fast order execution without any bridging, freedom to use any funding source, trade any asset across any chain, and open any position type.
Tria is a Web3 Neobank uniting cross-chain finance, real-world cards, and seamless on-chain operations. Users can get their 6% cashback card using our promo link.
👉 x.com/useTria/status/2013929665510162793?s=20
River received $8 million in funding from Justin Sun
River is building a chain-abstracted stablecoin system that lets users mint and use USD-pegged assets across multiple blockchains without relying on bridges. RIVER rallied roughly 4x in January, rising from around $12 to the $46-47 range and reaching $4.5B+ FDV.
👉 x.com/RiverdotInc/status/2013957517873946649
Saga pauses its SagaEVM following ~$7 million exploit
According to the project's investigation update, the exploit involved a coordinated sequence of contract deployments, liquidity movements and cross-chain interactions that allowed the attacker to extract funds rapidly.
👉 theblock.co/post/386638/sagaevm-suffers-exploit
Is Opinion TGE Approaching Amid Token Creation Rumors on BNB Chain & Ethereum?
Korean community activity is fueling speculation around the OPN token launch, with reports of token creation on BNB Chain and Ethereum, though no official confirmation has been made.
The Opinion Points program continues to gain traction despite no announced tokenomics or airdrop details.
Opinion has gained strong momentum, reportedly surpassing Polymarket in trading volume in early January, and is becoming one of the most talked-about prediction platforms on BNB Chain, alongside Kalshi and Polymarket.
👉 x.com/opinionlabsxyz/status/2013801442973532478?s=20
Price Discovery Board: Sentient vs Top AI Projects
With a 34.4B total supply and a $380M FDV, this chart benchmarks potential market scenarios based on comparable AI projects like 0G Labs, Virtuals and Render. Launch is scheduled for Jan 22, 10:00 UTC.
Trump Media sets February 2 for its rewards token launch
Trump Media shareholders need to hold their positions by February 2nd to be eligible for the token airdrop. The tokens are expected to be minted and custodied via Crypto com, with more details on allocation and distribution to follow.
👉 theblock.co/post/386306/trump-media-sets-feb-2-record-date-for-upcoming-rewards-token
Mask Network has stepped in as the new steward of Lens
The move aims to accelerate the adoption of decentralized social by focusing on real products. Backed by years of experience bridging Web2 and Web3, Mask plans to build consumer-ready social experiences through MaskDAO and its growing ecosystem.
👉 x.com/LC/status/2013614839705612290?s=20
Noble sunsets Cosmos appchain and migrates to EVM-based L1
Noble is winding down its Cosmos appchain in favor of launching a standalone, EVM-compatible Layer 1 network. This transition aims to improve developer access and performance for stablecoin and FX infrastructure while tapping into the broader EVM ecosystem.
👉 x.com/noble_xyz/status/2013603974201463086?s=20
Solayer unveils $35M EcoFund after Layer 1 Alpha Mainnet debut
Solayer is powered by a bespoke "infiniSVM" engine, which has reportedly demonstrated 330,000+ transactions per second and approximately 400 milliseconds of finality. Solana, by comparison, offers a theoretical max of 65,000 tx/s and 4 ms blocktime.
👉 x.com/solayer_labs/status/2013659311365673111