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Today's News Recap
Nemo Exploited - Sui-based yield protocol Nemo exploited for $2.4M in USDC.
Chainlink ETF - Grayscale seeks SEC approval to launch spot Chainlink ETF in the US.
Solana Raise - Galaxy, Jump and Multicoin lead $1.65 billion private placement for Solana treasury strategy.
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In Messari News
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Messari Protocol Reporting
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.
Advanced its Liquidity Chain vision, integrating EigenDA and progressing OP-Succinct toward a ZK rollup
Ecosystem milestones included the UR beta (fiat–crypto accounts), launch of MI4 ($200M tokenized fund), and MantleX AI incubations
Core protocols mETH ($939M TVL) and Function (FBTC, $1.5B TVL) remain foundational pillars
Cross-chain DEX & bridge aggregator that finds and executes the best route to move assets between chains
Usage up: ~1.1M tx (+24% QoQ); ~7.6K daily active addresses (+7%)
Launched Rango Learning Center; targeted incentives to onboard and activate users
Decentralized storage marketplace built on IPFS.
Network utilization hit 32% in Q2 2025 as storage demand held up while overall capacity declined from provider churn
Daily new storage deals rose 25% QoQ (3.5 PiB/day), signaling sustained demand for enterprise and research workloads.
Focus is moving from raw capacity toward high-value datasets (864 >1,000 TiB in size, +7.5% QoQ)
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Chainlink and the United States Department of Commerce have worked together to bring U.S. government macroeconomic data onchain.
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This development builds upon Chainlink’s accelerated work with the U.S. government in 2025, including meeting with several key officials and regulators to make policy recommendations that are advancing the growth of the blockchain industry.
Two Bits
Conviction or Confusion: Why CT Keeps Flipping Narratives
By: Mohamed Allam, Research Analyst
If you only looked at fundraises, you’d think 2025 has been a slow year for crypto venture. But look at M&A, and the picture flips.Every other week on CT, the timeline flips from “this is the start of the bull” to “we are in a bear”. The real question is not what people believe about the market but why they keep switching their stance so often.
So far this year, crypto companies have announced $9.8 billion across 29 disclosed M&As. From 2020 through 2024 combined, the industry saw $12.0 billion across 94 disclosed deals. 2025 alone is close to matching the past five years combined and more than triple the size of any single year from 2020 through 2023.
Major 2025 Deals
This year’s largest acquisitions include:
The simple answer: a lack of conviction.
It is much easier to make a case for “bull” or “bear” on vibes than it is to put in the hours of real work, reading through whitepapers, dissecting tokenomics, tracking onchain data, and testing theses against actual fundamentals. Conviction is not free. It takes time to build, and most do not want to do the grind.
In crypto, this is especially important. There are thousands of projects, most noise, some signal. Without conviction, you end up chasing narratives, moving from one shiny token to the next, forever reacting to sentiment instead of sticking to a framework.
Why is this increasingly important now? Because this cycle might not look like the ones before it. Just a few months ago, ETH was trading at $1,300. Today, it is at $4,300. If your thesis was that ETH was undervalued back then and you acted on it, then it did not really matter whether the market was in a bear or bull. What matters is that you identified value and captured it, and there are plenty of other opportunities like that still out there.
Additionally, the market structure itself is also shifting. As institutions and market makers with deep pockets enter, their priority is not extreme volatility but steady profits and controlled risk. They prefer less chaos, and they have the capital to shape markets in that direction. That does not mean we will not see major swings. Markets can still fall hard or run aggressively. What matters is whether you are investing in strong theses that you have developed.
If you believe an asset is undervalued, that view is not invalidated by whether the crowd calls it a bull or a bear. Undervalued assets eventually revert to their mean and then decide their own direction.
This shift will not happen overnight. It will take years to play out. But assuming today’s markets will behave like previous cycles may not be the best framework. The gameboard is changing, and conviction, grounded in fundamentals and data, is what will keep you aligned when sentiment swings.
The point: conviction is not about being stubborn, it is about being grounded. If you have done the work, you will not get shaken out every time the crowd flips its mood (cough cough think Warren Buffett but crypto).
That’s all for today, folks! As always, if you think I missed the mark, have suggestions, or just want to chat crypto, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. Until next time!
Messari Research
Messari Monthly: September 2025
Enterprise Exclusive
By: Chris Davis, Sam Ruskin, and AJC
Messari Monthly (Sept 2025) spotlights five data-driven trends shaping Q4: Virtuals fundamentals are rebounding (daily fees +597% in August despite price softness) as higher-quality agents like Mamo and ArAIstotle gain traction; onchain Gacha marketplaces hit $124.5M monthly volume, pointing to PMF for exotic RWAs; Kinetiq on Pendle amassed $805.9M TVL, dominating Hyperliquid’s DeFi stack; ETH DATs slipped below NAV, reflecting structural financing/governance risks rather than simple arbitrage; and Hyperliquid’s Unit crossed $1B TVL with a whale-driven $3.2B spot day that rivaled top CEX pairs. Enterprise members can dive into charts, context, and implications across all five sections in the full report.
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