Ecosystem Update January 2025

We are pleased to present our January 2025 Ecosystem Update, highlighting notable developments within Advanced Blockchain and the broader industry landscape.

Macro Overview

January’s crypto market remains generally stable amidst a series of important political and economic events, except for the valley between January 10th to January 14th. The total crypto market oscillates between $3.6 trillion and $3.8 trillion, with the valley bottoming at $3.4 trillion to $3.5 trillion.

Important events in January:

USDT delisted in Europe: USDT, one of the largest stablecoins with a market cap of $135 billion and a daily trading volume of over $240 billion, will be delisted from some of the major exchanges in Europe complying with MiCA that came into force on December 30, 2024. Those exchanges include Kraken and Crypto.com. Other exchanges operating in the EU may also delist USDT if Tether, the foundation behind USDT, cannot settle with EU regulatory authorities. If such large scale delisting of USDT happens in the EU, users may need to settle transactions using other stablecoin alternatives such as USDC and DAI.
US presidential inauguration: Following his inauguration on January 20, President Donald Trump signed an executive order introducing a range of pro-crypto policy measures. These initiatives aimed to ensure equitable access to banking services for crypto businesses and foster the growth of the U.S. stablecoin sector. Additionally, Trump appointed Paul Atkins, a well-known advocate for cryptocurrency, to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, succeeding the previous chairman, Gary Gensler, who was known for his critical stance on crypto.
XRP becomes the third largest cryptocurrency: XRP has surpassed Tether’s USDT to become the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, trailing only Bitcoin and Ethereum. XRP’s market cap climbed to over $141 billion, overtaking USDT’s valuation of approximately $134.5 billion. XRP’s surge might be attributed to several key factors, including speculation that the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) may soon approve Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin. Additionally, investor sentiment was bolstered by the announcement that SEC Chair Gary Gensler will step down, further fueling optimism around the token. Ripple has been embroiled in a legal battle with the SEC since 2020 over allegations that it raised $1.3 billion through an unregistered securities offering. SEC’s Gensler’s departure could pave the way for a resolution of the lawsuit, potentially unlocking new growth opportunities for Ripple and its products.
USDT is now in the Bitcoin ecosystem: On January 30, 2025, Tether announced the integration of its stablecoin, USDT, into Bitcoin's ecosystem, encompassing both its base layer and the Lightning Network. This integration is facilitated by the Taproot Assets protocol, developed by Lightning Labs, and aims to combine Bitcoin's decentralization and security with the Lightning Network's speed and scalability. This marks a milestone as previous stablecoin initiatives in the Bitcoin ecosystem all went unpopular. And such an integration ensuring speed and scalability will boost interest from users on the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Advanced Blockchains Ecosystem Updates

peaq - On January 24, 2025, peaq announced that applications are open for the second cohort of the DePIN Base Camp accelerator, a program in collaboration with Outlier Ventures and 1kx. The accelerator aims to support projects in the Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) space. Outlier Ventures’ Base Camp is one of the famous accelerator programs hosted by a Venture Capital, where exciting new innovations are presented. In addition, peaq is integrated with Snapshot, the largest governance stack in the crypto space, serving over 5K projects and 3.6 million voters. This marks an important step to peaq’s DAO operation.

‍Mantis - Mantis has integrated AI agents, enabling users to execute trades through natural language prompts. This approach seamlessly combines their established intent abstraction framework with the innovative capabilities of AI-driven agentic methods.

Mantis’s AI framework is powered by ai16z’s Eliza framework and enhanced with its SDK and Solver Network,. Its core feature, the DeFAI Interactive Search Engine (DISE), allows users to perform complex DeFi operations with ease, making financial interactions more intuitive and secure. Its innovative approach to simplifying the DeFi user journey combining its intent-centric framework with AI makes it a critical player in the evolution of decentralized financial services. Furthermore, Mantis partnered with Allora Network on a project aimed at enhancing AI accessibility for context-aware intelligence, enabling users to customize their AI agents with advanced inferences from Allora to create predictive models for their trading decisions.

Panoptic - Panoptic has announced its launch on Uniswap v4, deploying version 1.1 contracts. Interface support for liquidity providing (LPing) and options trading will be introduced soon. Uniswap v4 introduces "hooks", customizable smart contract modules that allow developers to modify liquidity pools' behavior.Panoptic users can use hooks to create more efficient and dynamic options trading, reducing reliance on external contracts. Traders on Uniswap v4 now have an embedded options trading feature via Panoptic, increasing adoption. Liquidity providers (LPs) can earn additional fees by participating in Panoptic’s on-chain options mechanism.

‍Contango - Contango partnered with Dia on deploying a robust price feed, enabling the seamless conversion of Contango's options token, $oTANGO, to $TANGO. Moreover, On February 1, 2025, Contango stood in the 2nd position for open interest across notable derivatives platforms, reporting $491 million. Sourced from Dune and Contango itself, these figures trail only Hyperliquid’s $3.27 billion while surpassing dYdX, GMX, and other notable competitors.

Silencio - On January 24, 2025, Silencio Network announced that its token, $SLC, is now live and trading on several major cryptocurrency exchanges, including KuCoin, Gate, BitMart, MEXC, and BingX. Currently Silencio trades with a $39 million FDV and $6.6 million daily trading volume. As the first listed project in the peaq ecosystem, Silencio’s listing increases confidence in subsequent peaq project listings.

‍Neon EVM - Neon EVM went through an upgrade on January 24th. This upgrade integrates Solana-native wallets such as Phantom and Solfare into NEON. In addition, this upgrade incorporates Ethereum's EIP-1559 fee mechanism, introducing a base fee structure that enhances transaction predictability and user experience.

Talisman - Talisman wallet partnered with Ramp to facilitate crypto on/off ramping. With this integration, users on Talisman can now seamlessly buy/sell cryptos such as $DOT, $ETH with fiat.

‍Polymer - Polymer announced a partnership with Riftlend, a lending protocol. Polymer enhances Riftlend’s multichain capabilities by integrating Polymer's Prove API into RiftLend. Users on RiftLend can now lend beyond the Superchain, providing users with a unified interface to deposit assets and access yields across multiple rollups.

‍MYSO - MYSO successfully delivered its V3 on January 15, 2025. This is a milestone towards its full acquisition by Enzyme finance.

Group Update

January started with a strategic initiative from our management board, Maik Laske and Hatem Elsayed, who purchased a total of 7,100 company shares.

Through our investment in Permanent Ventures, the group has received 13.105 Arweave tokens, which are currently being used to farm AO tokens until the project's planned mainnet launch on February 8, 2025. Afterwards those tokens shall be deployed in platforms, such as LiquidOps and AstroUSD for passive yield generation and portions will be sold incrementally based on a dollar-cost-average strategy at the right exit range.

Furthermore, we have begun deploying a portion of our existing stablecoins in lending and yield farming activities on platforms such as Stargate Finance, Uniswap, and Curve Finance, paving the way for additional funds allocation and more efficient use of our capital to generate passive income. Simultaneously, through our PEAQ tokens staking, we have generated more than 150k PEAQ tokens during the course of January.

Our team is continuing its work on the financials—primarily for Incredulous Labs and its subsidiaries—for the years 2021 through 2024 in collaboration with the newly appointed auditor in Cyprus, with the goal of delivering consolidated financial statements in the first half of 2025.

Moreover, our team participated in the EthereumZüri.ch conference and gave a talk on DePIN titled “DePINs: Bridging Blockchain and Real-World Infrastructure for IoT, Storage, and Everyday Applications.” The presentation covered insights into DePIN and its evolution over the years, discussed market traction, and shed light on some of Advanced Blockchain’s portfolio companies within the DePIN sector. Access the presentation here.

As for the remainder of Q1 2025, our team will attend the following events to strengthen our presence in the UAE, Germany, and Switzerland:

Global Blockchain Congress (Dubai) - February 5-6, 2025
International Investment Forum (Virtual) - February 25, 2025
Crypto Assets Conference (Frankfurt) - March 26, 2025

Lastly, we are reviewing the group’s dormant entities to determine whether liquidation is advisable, which will streamline our operations and direct our focus on the entities that offer the greatest value.

As this exciting year unfolds, we look forward to overcoming ongoing challenges, delivering further value to our shareholders, and making an impact in this growing and dynamic industry. We are excited to continue this transformative journey with you into 2025.

For inquiries, our Investor Relations team is always available to assist you.

Best regards,

Your Advanced Blockchain Team