Altcoins Outperform Bitcoin With Double-Digit Weekly Gains - Altcoins including Near Protocol (up 19.4%), Polkadot (up 16.5%), and Jupiter (up 15.8%) posted double-digit weekly gains, significantly outpacing Bitcoin's near-breakeven performance.
U.S. equity futures fall in pre-market trading as oil, gold retreat from highs - U.S. equity futures declined in pre-market trading following weekend conflict escalation between the U.S., Israel, and Iran.
Bitcoin, cryptos under pressure as oil spikes 6% and global markets price in U.S.-Iran conflict - Bitcoin fell to $66,702 in early Monday trading, reversing the brief Sunday rally to $68,000, as traditional markets reacted to the U.S.-Iran conflict.
New Webinar Series - A Valuation of RAILGUN
Crypto valuation is still driven by narratives and multiples.
Join our live Messari session as we present a full intrinsic valuation of RAILGUN using observable onchain fee generation and explicit staker mechanics. We will walk from TAM and adoption to cash flow, terminal value, and per token intrinsic value across bear, base, and bull scenarios.
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.
By: Jonny Kreiser · @jonnytoshi · Research Analyst
Etherlink transactions increased 50% QoQ to 18.6 million, and daily active addresses nearly doubled to 9,860, solidifying Etherlink’s role as the primary execution layer for the Tezos ecosystem.
DeFi TVL declined across both layers, with Etherlink falling 39.3% QoQ to $37.2 million and Tezos L1 falling 18.2% to $33.5 million. The decline on Etherlink was concentrated in Curve, which lost 50.4% of its TVL and accounted for over half of the total loss.
Two back-to-back kernel upgrades brought all-time highs in governance participation and more than tripled Etherlink's throughput in Q4 2025. Ebisu was activated in October 2025, raising capacity to 14 million gas per second, with Farfadet following in December, nearly doubling throughput again to 27 million gas per second.
XTZ's price fell 26.1% QoQ to $0.49 but outperformed the broader altcoin market, with its circulating market cap rank improving from 98th to 80th. Stablecoin supply on Tezos remained essentially flat at $54.2 million, and the active validator count grew 3% QoQ to 264.
Q4 was the strongest quarter for Tezos art in 2025. The Art on Tezos: Berlin festival in November 2025 was highlighted by Francisco Carolinum's acquisition of 15 TeleNFT works and qubibi's sale of "hello world" for 62,000 XTZ.
By: Jake Koch-Gallup · @immutablejacob · Research Analyst
USD.AI is an onchain credit structuring and funding protocol that finances GPU-backed, stablecoin-denominated loans for real-world AI infrastructure. Collateral is represented through the CALIBER framework, linking onchain representations to offchain legal claims.
The protocol uses a dual-token structure. USDai is designed for liquidity-sensitive capital, while sUSDai is yield-bearing and backed by longer-dated AI infrastructure loans. Redemption dynamics are managed through a queue-based mechanism.
Our valuation model treats execution as the binding constraint by separating pipeline originations from funded originations using an explicit funding realization rate to reflect hardware delivery, installation, and settlement latency.
CHIP is the governance and risk-policy token. It governs protocol parameters, treasury and capital policy, and insurance design. CHIP currently does not have a mechanically enforced claim on protocol cash flows, so value accrual is modeled as contingent.
Valuation is anchored by two lenses. (1) A buyback-supported pathway (reflecting governance-directed surplus routing) and (2) an insurance-capital-implied solvency threshold (reflecting capital adequacy constraint). Outputs imply buyback-supported FDVs of $46.4M / $329.6M / $1.74B (bear/base/bull) and insurance-implied solvency thresholds of $270.1M / $275.6M / $503.2M.
By: Dillon Shirley · @zcb_spec · Research Analyst
Vara’s strategy shifted from “just an L1” to an Ethereum-adjacent execution stack. Vara.eth keeps liquidity anchored to Ethereum while moving computation to parallel WebAssembly execution on Vara.eth, then settles verified results back on Ethereum.
The zkBridge enables cross-chain asset flow, and RivrDEX enables onchain price discovery. Together, these components create a clearer path from infrastructure to actual usage.
Staked VARA remained in a relatively tight range throughout the year, from 36% to 45%, indicating consistent security participation.
Vara.eth has strong technical differentiation (parallel compute, pre-confirmations, reverse-gas UX, trust-minimized bridge), but the next proof point is durable user and developer retention.
The Survivors Are Raising and the Market Is Narrowing
Jake Koch-Gallup, Research Analyst
Dragonfly closed an oversubscribed $650 million fourth fund last week, while many crypto venture firms are struggling to raise at all. Since January 1, 2025, $7 billion has been raised across crypto-focused vehicles. Within that pool, the top five raises alone total about $3 billion, or ~40% of all capital raised, led by YZi Labs’ $1 billion Builder Fund and Dragonfly’s Fund IV.
This is what risk-off venture looks like in crypto. When liquidity is intermittent and exits are harder to underwrite, LP behavior shifts from category selection to manager selection. Capital consolidates around firms with repeatable access, credible process, and the ability to underwrite longer-duration outcomes.
The more important shift is in the source of fundraising. A meaningful portion of the 2025 to 2026 capital stack is not classic independent VC but rather ecosystem- and sponsor-driven vehicles. That capital can be fast and catalytic, but it tends to be more conditional. It is often optimized for ecosystem growth, deal access, or flow generation rather than pure long-horizon equity-style compounding.
The friction is that concentration is now happening in two places at once. On the LP side, money is consolidating into a smaller set of durable venture brands. On the issuer and sponsor side, more capital is being raised inside the ecosystem by players who can pair capital with distribution, liquidity, or incentives. Those forces can crowd out smaller independent funds, tighten allocations in competitive rounds, and shift bargaining power toward the managers and sponsors who control both capital and downstream paths to market.
For founders, this changes the fundraising game. Capital is available, but it is increasingly gated by a narrow set of relationships, and the most abundant pools may come with strategic constraints. For investors, dispersion should widen. When more than 40% of capital raised concentrates in five funds, access and pricing dynamics tilt toward incumbents, and “being in the right rounds” matters even more than thematic positioning. Fundraising is still a sign of conviction, but the conviction is selective and concentrated. It reflects a market that is narrowing its definition of who is equipped to deploy, and what kinds of capital are actually decisive in this phase.