Gate Research Institute: Hot Topics Summary (2025.4.18-2025.4.24)

Overview

This report focuses on the blockchain industry dynamics from April 18 to April 24, 2025. Solana surpasses Ethereum with a trading volume of over $16.2 billion, ranking first on the DEX leaderboard; Circle launches a revolutionary stablecoin cross-border payment network, reshaping the new standards for global payment clearing; the Ethereum Foundation adjusts its strategy, accelerating the upgrade of its core protocol through the separation of research and management to tackle user experience and gas fee bottlenecks. Additionally, the number of tokens created on the Base chain exceeds that of Solana for the first time in a single day, with developer interest rapidly rising; Eliza Labs launches a no-code AI agent platform Auto-Fun, attempting to address the issues of incentive imbalance in AI projects; Hyperliquid updates its mainnet verification mechanism to accelerate the decentralization process of the network; Floki collaborates with Rice Robotics to promote the integration of AI robots and the blockchain data market. Emerging trends such as DeFi, AI, and stablecoins are converging, and the blockchain world is experiencing a new wave of innovation.

Project

From April 18 to April 24, Solana DEX trading volume reached $16.2 billion, surpassing Ethereum to rank first across the entire chain

In the decentralized exchange trading volume rankings from April 18 to April 24, Solana topped the list with a total trading volume of $16.201 billion. The weekly trading volume increased by 15.35% compared to the previous week. Solana surpassed major blockchain ecosystems such as Ethereum ($12.508 billion), BSC ($6.506 billion), Base ($4.762 billion), and Arbitrum ($3.548 billion) in trading volume.

Despite Ethereum's continued advantage in Total Value Locked (TVL) (with Ethereum DEX TVL at $7.088 billion and Solana at $2.271 billion), the short-term trading activity comparison shows a rapid flow of funds and traders between different chains. Solana, with its high throughput, low latency, and low transaction fees blockchain architecture, continues to attract a large number of users and developers in the DeFi space, with its scalability providing an ideal environment for decentralized applications. Several leading DEX protocols on-chain—such as Jupiter, Raydium, and Orca—have rapidly accumulated trading activity due to smooth user experience while providing efficient matching and liquidity support.

Eliza Labs launches AI agent Launchpad platform Auto-Fun

Eliza Labs has launched a no-code AI proxy Launchpad platform called "Auto-Fun", which aims to solve the incentive imbalance and value capture problems that are prevalent in current AI projects through an innovative "fairer than fair" tokenomics model. The platform plans to require developers to pay a percentage of the fees at the launch of the project and allocate it to the DAO treasury, thus providing sustainable financial support to the ecosystem. In addition, the platform proposes to introduce a staking mechanism, a reputation system, and a community review process to ensure the quality of the project and incentivize long-term participation.

This initiative is an improvement proposal put forward after the early token model of Eliza Labs faced challenges. Previously, the AI16Z token launched by Eliza Labs adopted a "fair minting" model, with the founding team not receiving any initial allocation, leading to a lack of sustainable funding sources for the project. Although the token's market value once reached $2 billion, its market value has dropped to $300 million this year due to a lack of substantial value capture mechanisms, forcing the team to reassess its token economic model.

The traditional "fair launch" model, although able to attract community attention in the early stages, lacks incentives for developers and long-term holders, making it difficult to support the sustainable development of projects. By introducing launch fees, staking mechanisms, and reputation systems, the smooth launch of the Auto-Fun platform is expected to rebuild market confidence, attract new users to participate, and form a more solid consensus within the community. [2]

Base chain's daily token creation volume has surpassed Solana for the first time

According to on-chain data, on April 20, the number of new tokens created on the Base chain reached about 50,000 in a single day, surpassing Solana's 35,417 on the day for the first time, becoming one of the most active public chains in the current blockchain network. Jesse Pollak, the core developer of Base, confirmed the news on social platform X, signaling that Base's appeal in the developer community is rapidly rising.

Base is an Ethereum Layer 2 public chain that has quickly attracted a large number of project deployments and token issuances due to its low cost and high efficiency features, covering multiple categories such as Memecoin, AI agents, LP tokens, and more. From the data trends, since mid-March, the token creation volume on the Base chain has been continuously rising, reaching a historical high on April 20. In contrast, the token creation volume on Solana has been declining over the past two months, dropping from over 80,000 per day during its peak to less than 22,000.

The increase in activity on the Base chain has further attracted the attention of developers and users. Driven by new trends such as the Memecoin narrative and on-chain AI agent experiments, Base is becoming a hotspot network for token innovation. However, whether it can establish truly valuable projects behind high-frequency creation will still test the sustainability of its ecosystem. 【3】

Circle launches a stablecoin cross-border payment network, establishing a new global clearing standard

On April 22, 2025, Circle announced the launch of the "Circle Payments Network," providing cross-border payment and real-time settlement services based on stablecoins for banks, payment institutions, and technology companies. The network aims to eliminate the reliance on intermediaries in traditional remittance, reduce costs, enhance speed, and build a global payment infrastructure using USDC and EURC.

The new network will connect VASP, PSP, digital wallets, and banking applications, supporting local currency and stablecoin payments with automatic settlement. It is based on Circle's self-developed cross-chain protocol CCTP, compatible with 19 chains including Solana, Base, Avalanche, Algorand, etc., to create a unified cross-chain payment experience.

Circle's move comes as it seeks an IPO and echoes the ongoing process of stablecoin legislation in the U.S. Congress. Through the network, the company hopes to drive the adoption of stablecoins among financial institutions around the world and push stablecoins to become mainstream liquidation assets, rather than just crypto-native trading purposes. The launch of the Circle payment network is not only a head-on challenge to traditional cross-border payment models, but also shows that the strategic role of stablecoins in the global financial infrastructure is rising. With the gradual opening of the policy window, if this compliant, efficient, and on-chain native clearing mechanism can be implemented on a large scale, it may promote the stablecoin from "asset substitution" to a new stage of "payment bottom". 【4】

Ethereum Foundation Strategic Adjustment: Separation of R&D and Management to Accelerate Core Protocol Upgrades

Tomasz Stańczak, the co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, stated that after the leadership restructuring in March of this year, the foundation has clearly focused on user experience and Layer-1 scaling to alleviate Vitalik Buterin's burden in daily management, allowing him to concentrate on in-depth research and innovation exploration.

In recent months, criticisms of Ethereum in the market have mainly focused on three aspects: the deterioration of user experience due to high Gas fees, performance bottlenecks of Layer-1 restricting ecological development, and the long-term absence of privacy features. Especially against the backdrop of high-performance chains like Solana capturing market attention and the heated competition of Layer-2 following the implementation of EIP-4844, the pace of evolution of the Ethereum core protocol has been repeatedly questioned.

The restructuring of the foundation directly addresses these pain points. By freeing Vitalik from daily management, it retains his key role as the "thought engine" while allowing the execution team to focus more on advancing short-term actionable solutions. This "dual-track parallel" strategy maximizes efficiency to ensure that upcoming upgrades like Pectra will directly address Layer-1 throughput and cross-chain interoperability issues, while Vitalik's forward-looking research lays the groundwork for subsequent major updates.

It is worth noting that this adjustment also implies the optimization of the community governance model. Stańczak's emphasis on Vitalik's proposal "needs to be improved or rejected through community discussion" suggests that the Foundation is trying to maintain technical leadership while avoiding overly centralized decision-making, which has been the key to criticism from some developers in the past. While the market is still arguing about Solana's short-term performance benefits, Ethereum seems to have chosen a more balanced development path: maintaining competitiveness with instantly perceptible protocol upgrades, while building a moat for long-term value capture through base-layer innovation. 【5】

Hyperliquid Updates Mainnet Validator Mechanism: 21 Permissionless Nodes Participating, Delegation Program Coming Soon

Hyperliquid has launched a validator delegation program aimed at enhancing network security and decentralization by delegating HYPE tokens to high-performance and trusted validators. The mainnet will dynamically select the top 21 nodes based on the amount staked to form an active validator set, thereby strengthening network security and decentralization. [6]

Applicants must meet certain threshold requirements, including holding and locking 10,000 HYPE tokens for more than one year, operating at least two high uptime non-validator nodes, publicly disclosing node IPs, completing KYC/KYB verification, and not coming from restricted areas.

By delegating tokens to trusted and high-performing validators, Hyperliquid will enhance the network's security, promote the diversity of the validator community, thereby improving the level of decentralization, and is expected to mitigate the impacts of previous security and trust issues such as the loss of Jelly tokens. This mechanism also incentivizes validators who are committed to ecological construction and network stability to participate, helping to build a more robust and sustainable financial infrastructure ecosystem.

Floki teams up with Rice Robotics to drive AI data marketplace on-chain

On April 23, news came that the meme coin project Floki announced a partnership with the artificial intelligence robotics company Rice Robotics to jointly launch an AI companion robot named Minibot M1. Through its tokenized platform TokenFi, they will put AI brands and data market assets on the blockchain, entering the emerging field of "AI + blockchain" integration. This collaboration marks another important move for Floki as it ventures into the realm of real-world assets (RWA) and artificial intelligence data beyond the Web3 infrastructure.

As a meme token that is out of the circle with community culture, Floki has been actively building a diversified ecosystem, and has launched an asset tokenization platform TokenFi, a crypto education platform "Floki University", and is developing a metaverse game called "Valhalla". This cooperation with Rice Robotics is another part of its ecological overlay strategy. Rice Robotics has served high-profile clients such as Nvidia, Softbank, Nippon Telecommunications (NTT), Dubai Future Foundation (DFF), 7-Eleven, and more. Earlier this year, the company closed a pre-A funding round of more than $7 million with the participation of Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund, Soul Capital and Audacy Ventures to build a decentralized network of AI training data that allows global robots to autonomously acquire, trade, and learn high-quality training data under decentralized control. 【7】

As part of the strategic partnership, the Floki community will provide blockchain infrastructure support for Rice Robotics and achieve the tokenization of brands and AI data markets through TokenFi, promoting the tradability, shareability, and incentivization of data within the robotics ecosystem. Floki stated that the AI robotics market is rapidly expanding from the current $22 billion and is expected to exceed $100 billion by 2030.

Tip Users should participate cautiously, be aware of risks, and conduct thorough research before participating. Gate.io does not guarantee the subsequent development status of the project.

Reference:

1. Defillama, https://defillama.com/dexs/chains
2. Cointelegraph, [https://cointelegraph.com/news/ai16z-s-eliza-labs-launches-ai-powered-pump-fun-alternative-auto-fun](https://cointelegraph. com/news/ai16z-s-eliza-labs-launches-ai-powered-pump-fun-alternative-auto-fun)
3. X, https://x.com/jessepollak/status/1914330662485807299
4. Coindesk, https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/04/21/stablecoin-giant-circle-is-launching-a-new-payments-and-remittance-network?utm_content=editorial&utm_source=twitter&utm_term=organic&utm_campaign=coindesk_main&utm_medium=social
5. Cointelegraph, https://cointelegraph.com/news/ethereum-foundation-user-experience-layer-1-scaling-leadership-shift
6. Hyperliquid, https://hyperliquid.gitbook.io/hyperliquid-docs/validators/delegation-program
7. Coindesk, https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/04/23/floki-teams-with-softbank-partner-rice-robotics-for-tokenization-of-ai-data

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