Chonks

random unfiltered thoughts on the crypto space / coffee-maker at some fund

[Chonks @Chonks0x]

@0xNairolf thought this has been what they have been doing in the past but the emissions were just not sustainable and farmers were mercenary, moving on to the next sexy thing

[Chonks @Chonks0x]

@hosseeb they should provide the 75 bps decrease option. clearly there is demand for such a market. could do $10b volume

[Haseeb Qureshi ＞|＜ @hosseeb]

Polymarket: Kalshi sucks
Kalshi: Polymarket sucks

Opinion (BNB Chain prediction market): sup guys just did a billy of volume on a 0.2% market

[Chonks @Chonks0x]

@0xfoobar this.

though sometimes founders refuse to return the investors the money, especially if its a management buyout kind-of acquisition

[Chonks @Chonks0x]

@FabianoSolana where is the 16% apy coming from?

[Chonks @Chonks0x]

@HealthcareAIGuy @doctronic @mattpavelle This AI pilot is only limited to approving refills for some common medications and so there shouldn't be a lot of complexity involved there. That being said, its still a significant step forward for the medical space.

[Chonks @Chonks0x]

@JamesWynnReal why $pepe and not other memes like $pengu?

[Chonks @Chonks0x]

@MaplestoryU baby penguins!! looks chilly

[Chonks @Chonks0x]

@HyperliquidEco @TroveMarkets do you know how much was paid per kol?

[Chonks @Chonks0x]

@crypto_iso agree that this makes the team long-term aligned. but how is it sustainable for team compensation in the meantime?

[Chonks @Chonks0x]

@ruggedpikachu this happens when private deals are done by the team. liquidity basically flushes out after the deal ends

[Chonks @Chonks0x]

@tzedonn hard for them to be an aggregator also as they don't want to be responsible for users being routed to a market that blows up

[Chonks @Chonks0x]

The assets should rightfully belong to the DAO with Labs having alignment through the holding of tokens directly. This prevents value leakage through various entities and diminishes the value of the token which is arguably bad for the long-term future of Labs.

Essentially the same issue VCs face when projects raise token and equity rounds from different group of investors

[Observe @obsrvgmi]

🚨 @aave is having a full blown civil war

And it might be the biggest governance fight defi has ever seen.

Heres a clean breakdown 👇

Aave has two sides:
– Aave labs → a centralised entity founded by stani
– Aave dao → token holders who govern the protocol

Now heres what happening,

Dec 4, 2025: Aave labs announces a partnership with @CoWSwap to improve swap pricing + mev protection on the aave interface.

Dec 11, 2025: A popular delegate, @DeFi_EzR3aL drops onchain analysis stating that swap fees from the new cow swap contract are being routed to a private wallet controlled by aave labs. Not the dao.

Translation: DAO revenue just got quietly cut off.

Dec 12, 2025: Marc zeller (largest delegate, aave chan initiative) calls it stealth privatization. Claims ~$10m per year that should go to the dao is gone.

Dec 16, 2025: Things go nuclear ☢️

A. Proposal called “poison pill” by Tulip King.

The demands:

– Seize all aave ip, code, and brand
– Force aave labs to become a dao owned subsidiary
– Claw back all past revenue earned using the aave brand

B. Then comes proposal #2 — “brand seizure” by former cto of aave labs @eboadom,

– Move trademarks, domains, socials to the dao immediately.

Logic: If dao pays for dev + marketing then dao should own the brand, domains, socials.

Aave Labs / Stani’s defense:

– This (cowswap thing) was never a fee switch.
– Frontend revenue was a surplus labs donated voluntarily.
– Aave labs is a private company.
– DAO owns the contracts, not the website.
– Labs pays for hosting, security, and frontend engineers.

Now the plot twist, amid all this chaos,

Aave labs opens a snapshot vote on dec 23👇

Proposal: Give aave token (aave dao) holders explicit control over brand assets, domains, socials, naming rights, github, npm, everything. (baed on @eboadom's proposal)

Except…

The author of the proposal @eboadom says he never approved it.

He claims it was rushed to vote with his name on it while discussion was still active. Calls it “disgraceful.” Urges people to abstain.

@Marczeller says the proposal was rushed during holidays, with fresh delegations gaining voting power.

Zoom out. This isn’t about cow swap. This isn’t about one wallet.

This is the unresolved question of defi:
Who actually owns a protocol? The code? The frontend? Or the brand?

Aave is about to set a precedent. And everyone is watching.

[Ki Young Ju @ki_young_ju]

Built this because I was tired of doomscrolling Twitter for alpha. Track your favorite analysts' consensus in one place. Daily market summaries in 17 languages.

https://t.co/HRji3w1vgs

[Haseeb Qureshi ＞|＜ @hosseeb]

There have always been casinos in crypto.

The first viral application on Bitcoin was Satoshi Dice (2012). The first viral smart contract on Ethereum was King of the Ether Throne (2015), which was basically a hot potato ponzi scheme.

Once you have programmable money, the first thing people will do is gamble and play stupid games. It's human nature.

There's always been a hot casino in crypto. Always. The ICO casino, the DeFi food coin casinos, the NFT casinos, and now the memecoin casino. It evolves over time, but gambling is deeply ingrained in human nature. Literally as soon as humanity invented writing (ancient Sumeria in 3000 BC), there's records of people gambling.

The casino is shiny and gets a lot of attention on social media (it's where fortunes are quickly won and lost, and it's easy to convince yourself that this is your lucky break), but if you only pay attention to the shimmer of the casinos, you're missing the bigger story.

The story I originally got into this industry for, that sounded like sci-fi to me ten years ago—that crypto is a better substrate for finance, that it will forever alter the nature of money, and that the balance of power between individuals and governments will be permanently changed—that story is actually happening.

Bitcoin is challenging nation states. They are now buying it on their own balance sheets. Stablecoins are bending monetary policy. Central banks are scrambling to respond. Permissionless smart contracts like Uniswap and AAVE are now bigger and more valuable than unicorn fintechs. The world is warping around crypto.

Maybe it took longer than you thought, but transformative technologies almost always take longer to diffuse than you think. I thought generative AI would completely transform the job market within a couple years, but three years after ChatGPT, it still doesn't show up in GDP or employment stats.

It's hard to change the world. Takes work. The industrial revolution began with the commercialization of the steam engine in 1781, but even the industrial revolution didn't have any impact on productivity, employment, or wage growth until 1830—that's 50 years later. The Internet, as we all know, took 20+ years. Did you think we'd be displacing all of finance, the most regulated and governmentally sensitive industry in the world, in the span of just 5 years?

If you're despondent that you were working on a memecoin L2 or whatever and didn't get rich, take a deep fucking breath. This industry doesn't owe you that.

And yet, all this spiritual capitulation on the timeline, believe it or not, is healthy.

A forest only stays robust when it periodically sheds the deadwood. Without occasional fires to clear it out, decay spreads and the whole forest rots. It's a harsh reality, but the only way to keep growing is to clear out whatever's no longer contributing.

All this negativity on the timeline needs to flush out one way or another. Let people keep shuffling out, and the air will clear. Either these people must change their minds and refocus on the future, or they need to leave so the rest of us can do our jobs.

Because the job is not yet done.

[Chonks @Chonks0x]

@Kalshi wait.. didnt know they were still spending on the metaverse. hahahah what has come out of the spending all these years? and why cut by 30% only?

[Chonks @Chonks0x]

Why hasn't there been more talk about ADI Chain?! Being the settlement infra for the Dirham-backed stablecoin endorsed by the UAE Central Bank is hugeee!

It's being built by the digital arm of IHC which has an AUM of AED 462B (USD 125B). This chain sure has some heavyweight backers behind them.

[ADI Chain @ADIChain_]

ADI Chain mainnet is launching soon.

The infrastructure has been built, and here's where we stand.

ADI Foundation is founded by Sirius International Holding, the digital arm of IHC, a $240B holding company.

Advisors and Council Members include former executives from NatWest and Airtel, current leadership from MPESA and EsyaSoft, as well as leaders from major fintech platforms across emerging markets.

OpenZeppelin has audited our infrastructure to ensure it meets institutional security standards.

We’re the first chain to integrate @zksync’s Airbender, and we delivered over 8,000 TPS in testnet runs.

The chain is EVM-compatible, with WalletConnect, Alchemy, and Covalent already integrated to support builders from day one.

ADI Chain will be the settlement infrastructure for a Dirham-backed stablecoin set to be regulated by the UAE Central Bank.

Beyond that, we're working with ADREC to tokenize Abu Dhabi's real estate, and have signed an MoU with Emirates Driving Company to modernize their operations onchain.

Over 50 government and enterprise projects are in pipeline for mainnet across digital identity, land registries, and payment systems.

These span the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, where institutions need blockchain infrastructure that prioritizes compliance alongside performance.

We're the first institutional L2 for stablecoins and RWAs in MENA.

Built in Abu Dhabi, designed for compliance, efficiency, and security from the start.

That's different.

[Chonks @Chonks0x]

@Kalshi thought they were just selling the USD and stocking up on gold just awhile back

[Chonks @Chonks0x]

Was chatting with a friend yesterday who mentioned that the days of outsized returns from crypto venture are long gone, given that:

- valuations in the secondary market are way less exuberant than before
- the markets are way more fundamentally driven (with a focus on metrics typical of tradfi companies).

While I see his points, I'm still optimistic on crypto venture for a couple of reasons:

- venture funds that raise this cycle have an edge given that there is a lot less investors seeking crypto venture exposure at this point. Given the reduction in funding, what results is more curated investments with quality founders, with less projects ultimately listing 4-5 years down the road and competing for the same pool of capital. Arguably, fund vintage is the largest determinants of fund performance, with 2025-2027 vintages funds likely to way outperform the 2021-2022 vintages
- given the maturation of the secondary markets, the venture firms need to mature too, and LPs expectations of venture need to mature too. Investors should never force companies to launch tokens prematurely. This means that venture firms should slowly move towards having a longer fund life so that they could slowly see their portcos mature and start generating revenue, instead of having the token as the product (those days are long over)