Release date: December 17, 2025 Author: BlockBeats Editorial Department
In the past 24 hours, the cryptocurrency market has advanced on multiple fronts simultaneously. The mainstream discussions are focused on the re-game of core DeFi protocols in terms of regulation, governance, and token equity, as well as the intense discussions between founders and the community regarding control and incentive alignment; in terms of ecological development, Solana is exploring issuance systems and fairness mechanisms, while Ethereum and Base continue to advance the iteration of payment infrastructure, and the PerpDEX track is accelerating its expansion into institutional-level finance and commoditization.
1. Mainstream Topics
1. Aave founder looks to the future of the protocol
Aave founder Stani Kulechov stated that after four years of communication and responses, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has officially concluded its investigation into the Aave protocol. Stani mentioned in public statements that this process consumed a lot of resources from the team, and he was deeply involved in it to protect the Aave ecosystem and the broader DeFi industry, avoiding mischaracterization under regulatory uncertainty.
As the investigation comes to a close, Stani described this moment as 'a stage where developers can refocus on building the financial future', summarizing with 'DeFi will win'. This news garnered highly positive feedback within the community, with industry figures like Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and crypto lawyer Gabriel Shapiro expressing their congratulations, seeing it as an important milestone for DeFi's move towards mainstream compliance.
Some discussions also link this development to Stani's recent increase in AAVE token holdings, believing that the easing of regulatory pressure combined with the founder's shift in attitude has provided a short-term boost to the $AAVE price; meanwhile, cautious voices have emerged questioning whether the 'governance narrative is overly dramatized'. Overall, the end of the SEC investigation is expected to enhance Aave's credibility at the institutional and compliance levels, but the market is still watching for new variables in the subsequent regulatory environment.
2. Aave V4 roadmap sparks a new round of technical and governance discussions
Against the backdrop of regulatory clouds temporarily dissipating, discussions in the Aave community regarding the V4 roadmap have noticeably heated up. The focus of the discussion is on the Unified Liquidity Layer design proposed in V4, as well as its expansion potential in cross-chain and risk isolation aspects.
Stani emphasized in related discussions that the goal of V4 is to further enhance capital efficiency and strengthen risk isolation capabilities at the architectural level. Some developers and analysts believe this design could reshape the operational paradigm of DeFi lending protocols and synergize with existing L2 solutions.
Community feedback shows a divided trend: supporters see V4 as a key node for Aave to regain its technical leadership, emphasizing its long-standing culture driven by engineering; critics worry that the lengthy development cycle of V4, combined with the team's dispersed energy and incentives, may impact short-term execution efficiency. The end of the SEC investigation coinciding with V4 discussions further boosted community sentiment and may accelerate the entry of related proposals into more substantive governance processes, but it also requires balancing the innovation push with the potential risks from V3 user migration.
3. The proposal for '$AAVE Token Alignment' sparked intense debates at the governance level.
Aave contributor Ernesto proposed a governance proposal titled '$AAVE Alignment Phase 1: Ownership', advocating for the DAO to clearly control core rights such as protocol IP, brand, equity, and income. Representatives of Aave service providers, such as Marc Zeller, publicly endorsed the proposal, calling it 'one of the most influential proposals in Aave's governance history.'
The proposal directly addresses the incentive misalignment issue between Aave Labs and the DAO, calling for token holders to participate more actively in governance to prevent the protocol's value from being 'captured' by the core team. Community discussions quickly heated up, with supporters arguing that the DAO must 'step up' at critical junctures, or it will remain in a passive position for a long time; some voices have also suggested introducing legal and governance structures like BORG to strengthen the practical execution of on-chain governance.
Opposing opinions also exist. Some participants worry that overly aggressive governance stances may lead to the loss of core contributors, citing the history of projects like Compound as a cautionary tale. Investors like Haseeb have pointed out from a market perspective that the $AAVE price-to-sales ratio (P/S) has rebounded to about 25 times, reflecting that the market is pricing in expectations for 'governance alignment'.
This proposal again highlights the long-standing binary tension between tokens and equity in DeFi projects, seen by some community members as a key case that could affect the entire DeFi governance paradigm, but its advancement path still needs to be carefully managed to handle the risk of division.
4. Infighting within the $KLED project founding team exposed, labeled a typical 'rug case'
The project $KLED, issued on the Solana ecosystem's 'ICM' concept platform Believe, has recently become the focus of public opinion due to infighting within the founding team.
Project founder Avi Patel accused former partner Ben Pasternak of violating established commitments by continuously selling millions of $KLED tokens within critical update time windows and low liquidity periods, reducing his holdings from around 6% to nearly 2%.
Avi detailed in public statements the process of multiple attempts to coordinate a reduction through OTC without success, accusing the other party of long-term lack of communication, calling their behavior 'unacceptable', and even urging other industry projects to avoid cooperating with them. Community feedback has been overwhelmingly negative, with many opinion leaders stating that $KLED embodies 'almost all the typical features of grift' in this cycle, describing it as 'the simplest IQ test' and recommending holders to exit as soon as possible.
Some comments are also sarcastic, pointing out that the project has historically 'withstood FUD' multiple times, but the event itself further amplifies the trust crisis regarding team transparency, lock-up commitments, and governance structures in meme-type and small projects. This turmoil may push the community to demand higher standards of team behavior and information disclosure, while also exposing the structural vulnerabilities of small projects in weak cyclical environments.
2. Mainstream Ecological Dynamics
1. Solana Ecosystem: Institutional Exploration and Fairness Controversies
① Colosseum launches STAMP investment contract, exploring new paths for tokenized ownership
The Solana ecosystem is accelerating towards a more institutionalized financing and issuance framework. The accelerator Colosseum launched a new investment contract STAMP (Solana Tokenized Asset Management Protocol), attempting to provide a clear path for crypto founders from private fundraising to public token issuance through MetaDAO, while offering investors and token holders more binding ownership and market protection.
STAMP aims to simplify the legal and operational processes between private placements and public offerings, allowing public investors to participate at a stage when projects are more mature and information is more complete. The community's feedback has been largely positive, with several developers and investors calling it 'infrastructure innovation for the future', believing it helps strengthen Solana's leading position in tokenized equity and fair issuance mechanisms. Meanwhile, some discussions point out that its actual effectiveness still depends on the implementation performance of MetaDAO in governance and execution.
② New developments in the lawsuit against pump.fun and the Solana Foundation
On the other hand, legal disputes surrounding the meme coin launch platform pump.fun continue to brew. Recent developments in the related lawsuit allowed the plaintiffs to amend the complaint, accusing pump.fun of structurally favoring privileged users who control Solana infrastructure and Jito trading order tools under seemingly automated mechanisms, thereby systematically extracting value from ordinary users.
The updated complaint emphasizes that beneath the facade of 'permissionless' and 'fair launch', there are hidden mechanisms that disadvantage ordinary participants. Community discussions quickly heated up: some voices view it as a sign of systemic risks revealed in the meme launch platform, which may drive stricter transparency and disclosure requirements; others believe that this case will directly test Solana's decentralized narrative and ecological governance capabilities.
In the short term, the lawsuit may increase legal uncertainty and affect retail user confidence; but it may also push for more fair and verifiable launch and trading tools within the ecosystem.
2. Base Ecology: Payment standards continue to iterate
The Base ecosystem has welcomed updates on the payment infrastructure layer. The internet-native payment standard x402 on Base chain released its V2 version, adding multi-chain and fiat payment support, extension mechanisms, automatic API discovery, dynamic routing, more modern HTTP header designs, and a modular SDK after absorbing a lot of community feedback.
The V2 version, while maintaining backward compatibility with V1, decouples specifications, SDKs, and facilitators to adapt to more networks and transmission scenarios. The community's response has been largely positive, with many developers believing that the upgrade significantly simplifies practical use cases such as proxy payments and multi-tenant APIs, contributing to the mainstream adoption of Base in payment.
Structurally, the continuous iteration of x402 is reinforcing Base's positioning as an Ethereum L2 payment hub, but its long-term effects still depend on the actual deployment progress of facilitators and ecosystem adoption.
3. Prediction Market: Accelerating Toolization Trends
The prediction market platform Polymarket has launched an auxiliary tool, PolymarketScan, providing traders with more intuitive market analysis and monitoring capabilities to help users quickly filter and track event contracts.
Community feedback has been generally positive, with many traders believing that the tool significantly reduces information gathering costs and improves 'market surfing' efficiency during hot events. Meanwhile, some discussions point out that the popularity of this tool reflects the shortcomings of Polymarket's native search and analysis functions, which may prompt the official platform to accelerate the development of similar functions.
4. Perp DEX Track: From Exchanges to Infrastructure
① Lighter: Product advancement and execution pressure coexist
In the perpetual contract track, Lighter revealed in a Japanese AMA that its TGE timeline may be postponed until 2026 (with 'Christmas' referring broadly to the holiday season), and token economics are expected to be announced within weeks. The platform is pushing for a universal cross-margin mechanism and a new spot market, and whether meme coin launches will go live will depend on community sentiment. Founder Vlad did not provide a clear timetable but hinted that potential acquisition logic still exists.
Community reactions are complex: some users expressed disappointment over the token issuance delay but also recognized the 'product-first' strategy; the market is focused on its upcoming public discussion with Dragonfly partners, hoping to gain a clearer roadmap explanation.
Meanwhile, some Lighter whales have reported execution delay issues during high volatility periods: although the median delay is about 325ms, tail delays can reach several seconds or even 10 seconds, and there is also lag in WebSocket. The team responded that several optimizations have been made, but there is still room for improvement. The community generally sees this as a constructive discussion, believing that if resolved quickly, it will help enhance appeal to high-frequency and professional traders.
② Hyperliquid Ecosystem: Intensive Product Advancement
The Hyperliquid ecosystem has been very active recently. The Felix protocol launched silver and natural gas perpetual contracts on HIP-3 (gold was previously launched), further expanding the range of commodity trading. The community has begun discussing whether to introduce uranium and other targets next.
At the same time, well-known HYPE holder NMTD publicly criticized Binance's ongoing selling pressure, calling it 'an industry parasite', with related comments resonating widely in the community, further reinforcing discussions about the transparency advantages of decentralized exchanges, but also exposing the real influence of CEX on price discovery.
On governance, Hyper Foundation proposed to have validators vote to confirm the permanent destruction of HYPE in the assistance fund (this portion of tokens can no longer be retrieved). The voting is scheduled to take place from December 21 to 24, and the community generally sees this as a deflationary positive, likely to enhance expectations for HYPE's scarcity.
Additionally, Trove launched Season 1 point program, based on the snapshot on December 5, open for claiming by Trove, Hyperliquid, Unit, Kinetiq, Hyperlend, Felix users, and Hypurr holders. Points may be linked to $TROVE in the future, driving the activity of RWA and collectible trading-related ecosystems.
Variational confirmed it will launch a points mechanism in Q4, with competition participation remaining relatively low (silver tier requires only $5 million monthly trading volume), and community farming enthusiasm has noticeably increased, seen by some users as a potential new opportunity after Lighter.
At the same time, HypurrFi announced a partnership with Euler Finance to deploy a complete Euler lending stack on HyperEVM (covering Euler Lending, Swap, and Earn). The community humorously dubbed it 'Mewler', believing this combination significantly enhances capital efficiency for traders and may reshape the lending landscape on HyperEVM.
5. Others: MegaETH Ecosystem Projects
In the MegaETH ecosystem, the project BRIX launched a sovereign yield product aimed at emerging markets, starting with the stablecoin iTRY pegged to the Turkish lira, claiming to achieve approximately 40% real returns through tokenized money market funds, and plans to expand into the foreign exchange market in the future.
The project emphasizes its composability and global accessibility, with the community optimistic about its potential to bring real returns from TradFi into the DeFi system, forming a potential compounding return cycle. However, this model still faces regulatory uncertainties and exchange rate risks. The BRIX plan will open to qualified investors after the official launch of MegaETH.
