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Death of InfoFi - X ended the "InfoFi" ecosystem by revoking API access from applications that rewarded users for posting content, leading to divided reactions within the crypto community .
Goldman Sachs Tokenization - Goldman Sachs CEO says firm is actively exploring tokenization and prediction markets amid evolving US regulation
Claude Vibe Codes - Claude AI plugins can now vibe code smart contracts
Messari's protocol reports give you a deep dive on the foundation and state of top crypto protocols, including key metrics and notable events. See the complete list of protocol reports here and get a preview of our latest report below.
Huma is a decentralized PayFi protocol that provides settlement liquidity and credit for payment use cases like cross-border payments and card settlements by linking liquidity providers with borrowers through smart contracts.
In Q3 2025 Huma 2.0 deposits grew sharply, total transaction volume reached $1.7B, and credit originations increased, showing rising protocol usage and engagement.
The protocol supports two product lines: Huma Institutional (permissioned for accredited investors) and Huma 2.0 (permissionless Solana-based deposits with Classic and Maxi yield strategies).
HUMA is the utility and governance token used for staking, rewards, and participation in protocol incentives, with market cap increasing modestly in the quarter.
Stable launched its Layer-1 blockchain mainnet on Dec. 8, 2025, designed specifically to support high-throughput, low-cost USDT transfers for both retail users and institutions.
Unlike typical chains, Stable uses USDT as the native gas/payment token, removing reliance on volatile tokens for transaction fees.
The protocol’s native token, STABLE, has a 100 billion supply and is used for governance and securing the network via staking/delegation, not for paying gas fees.
Architecturally, Stable combines a delegated Proof-of-Stake consensus, an EVM-compatible execution layer, and optimized storage/RPC to enable fast settlement and familiar developer tooling.
Bitget’s Universal Exchange (UEX) model combines centralized efficiency, decentralized accessibility, and traditional financial product offerings into a unified trading experience for retail and institutional participants. The UEX model comprises the core centralized exchange, Bitget Onchain, Bitget Wallet, Morph, and GetAgent.
Tokenized stocks are emerging as a high-growth vertical in the Bitget ecosystem. Since launching in July, a total of $17.1 billion in tokenized stock futures volume has been generated.
Bitget Onchain is the primary mechanism for integrating multichain access into the platform. Launched in April 2025, it enables users to trade onchain assets using CEX balances across multiple networks, generating over $2.4 billion in cumulative volume.
GetAgent is the platform’s AI assistant, designed to simplify the user experience as product coverage expands. Beyond market insights and guided execution, GetAgent has been used as a distribution channel for engagement campaigns.
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DATs
DATs raised $29.1B across 226 deals in 2025, making it the most capitalized narrative by a wide margin relative to other culturally relevant crypto themes. As the primary Bitcoin DAT, Strategy accounted for 3 of the top DAT raises in 2025, but that scale couldn’t prevent a compressing mNAV and a 67% decline in MSTR as market appetite for the DAT trade faded in the second half of the year. In hindsight, the magnitude of DAT-related funding is evidence of the overexuberance that occurs when the bubble pops.
DAT’s Not All, Folks
Even as the DAT trade unwound, 2025 wasn’t short on constructive signals. Capital continued rotating into themes with clearer utility, stronger product pull, and less reflexive positioning, most notably AI, prediction markets, and payments.
AI: The Deal Count Winner
AI was the most active fundraising theme of 2025. It led all subsectors with 420 rounds, driven by the aggressive funding of experimentation across agents, tooling, model infrastructure, and decentralized coordination.
The most interesting deal in the category for me is Nous Research’s $50M Series A, led by Paradigm. Nous stands out as one of the cleaner, serious attempts at decentralized AI, with an open-source research posture and a credible path to coordinating distributed training at scale.
That said, the VC “shotgun” approach to AI in 2025 felt like a scramble for exposure. Not “which AI startup wins,” but “how do we own decentralized AI at all.” Bittensor already packages that idea into 128 subnets, each competing to produce specialized intelligence, while $TAO functions as the index layer that gives you broad decentralized AI exposure.
