Jebin Jhon @JebinJhon

@DukeD_Defi SocialFi quietly building

@Okada_DeFi0x Prediction markets seeing massive interest

Despite a relatively challenging market throughout 2026, capital continues flowing aggressively into crypto. Investors have become far more selective, concentrating on projects with proven products, meaningful traction, and sustainable business models instead of funding every early-stage narrative. That trend becomes obvious when looking at this year's fundraising data. Late-stage funding reached approximately $7.46B across 126 deals, nearly 12.6x larger than seed-stage funding, which raised around $593M through 115 rounds. The gap reflects a market that increasingly rewards execution over ideas. – Prediction Markets attracted the largest amount of late-stage capital, raising roughly $1.8B thanks to mega-rounds involving @Polymarket, @Kalshi, and growing institutional interest from companies such as ICE and @Mastercard. – AI remained the leading category, attracting roughly $109M, slightly ahead of DeFi at $101M and Payments at $93.6M. The next generation of crypto increasingly revolves around AI agents, autonomous systems, prediction infrastructure, and decentralized AI networks. – Looking at the venture landscape, @CoinbaseVC has been the most active investor during H1 2026, participating in 84 funding rounds, followed by @YziLabs and @PanteraCapital. – Overall, crypto fundraising during H1 2026 is estimated at roughly $11-13B. While the total number of deals has declined, average check sizes continue expanding as capital concentrates around higher-quality teams and larger funding rounds. The market has clearly shifted from quantity to quality, with venture capital focusing heavily on RWAs, DeFi 2.0, AI infrastructure, and AI-crypto convergence. Several standout deals have defined the first half of the year: – @BVNKFinance - $1.8B acquisition by @Mastercard, becoming the largest crypto deal of H1 2026. – @raincards - Raised $250M in a Series C round, reinforcing investor conviction – around crypto payments and Neobanks. – @Polymarket and @Kalshi - Secured funding rounds worth hundreds of millions of dollars while reaching multi-billion-dollar valuations. For me, one message stands out above everything else. The biggest winners over the next cycle will likely be the projects solving real problems, attracting real users, and building products that generate real revenue.

@Tanaka_L2 @solana Tokenized equities gaining momentum

@Okada_DeFi0x Motherlodes keep surprising

@Crypt0Caesar_ $ASE betting on future threats

The best investments often sound unnecessary right up until the moment they become essential. x.com/Asentum/status… Nobody cared about cybersecurity… Until they did. Nobody cared about AI infrastructure… Until they did. Now ask yourself: What happens if quantum computing becomes a real threat to blockchain security? @Asentum is one of the few teams building for that today. $ASE aped a bag.

Asentum @Asentum

2 days ago

🖱️ Open a tab. Write some JavaScript. Deploy to a live post-quantum blockchain. The Asentum IDE is in your browser right now. Templates included 👇 ide.asentum.com

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@Defi_Rocketeer @42space 42 shaping new prediction meta

@Okada_DeFi0x @PlayKintara $KIN ecosystem starting to heat

$KIN has become one of the biggest surprises on Solana, rallying more than 15x over the past month as @PlayKintara continues gaining traction across the GameFi ecosystem. The numbers have started moving in the right direction. – Around 1,230 concurrent players. – Roughly 17,800 monthly active users. For me, Kintara feels like one of the closest things to a Roblox-style gaming ecosystem on Solana. The gameplay remains easy to understand while creating multiple ways for players to stay engaged. Users can complete quests, go fishing, battle in PvP, trade through the in-game marketplace, and earn $KINS along the way. Access requires holding 1,000 $KINS, creating a direct connection between player growth and token demand. More importantly, Kintara doesn't look like an isolated story. The Solana GameFi ecosystem has started showing signs of life again, with newer titles such as @fragsonSOL beginning to attract attention and bringing fresh activity back to the sector. GameFi has disappointed the market before, but the landscape looks very different today. – Solana offers faster transactions, lower fees, better infrastructure, and a much larger on-chain user base than previous cycles. – If developers can deliver games that people genuinely enjoy playing instead of focusing solely on token incentives, this could finally become the cycle where Solana GameFi reaches the adoption many expected years ago. I'm definitely keeping this sector on my watchlist.

@RicoPointEth Salute to every father

To all the fathers🤝

The Edge Weekly #62 What I’m Covering This Week – Warsh’s First FOMC - A Macro Reset – SpaceX’s Post-IPO Surge - Tokenized Stock Drama – STRC Below $90 - Strategy pauses its ATM – Hyperliquid Outperforms Across Every Timeframe – Quick Hits + Good Reads Hope you enjoy it!👇🏻 thekafka.substack.com/p/the-edge-wee…

@RicoPointEth Dutch dominance 🔥

Game on, hup holland hup! 🇳🇱⚽️

Top Protocol with highest user As crypto moves closer to mass adoption, one metric continues standing out above the rest: Daily Active Users (DAUs) -  Prices can fluctuate. - TVL can rotate. -  Narratives come and go. But millions of people returning to the same ecosystem every day say a lot about product-market fit and long term adoption. High DAUs reflect real usage, strong user retention, and a constant flow of new participants entering the ecosystem. After following onchain data throughout 2026, these are the five ecosystems that have impressed me the most. 1/ @trondao - tron:native DAUs: ~4.3M Tron remains the undisputed leader for stablecoin transfers, particularly $USDT payments across Asia, Africa, and emerging markets. Ultra-low fees, fast settlement, and practical payment use cases continue driving exceptional user retention while making Tron one of the busiest blockchains in crypto. 2/ @BNBCHAIN - $BNB DAUs: ~3.8M BNB Chain continues benefiting from Binance's enormous user base while maintaining one of the strongest ecosystems for DeFi, gaming, and low-cost onchain trading. Protocols like @PancakeSwap continue dominating DEX activity. While Binance Alpha has introduced a new wave of onchain users, especially for projects launching within the BNB ecosystem. 3/ @solana DAUs: ~2.5M Few ecosystems have attracted as much retail activity as Solana. Memecoins, AI, DeFi, high-frequency trading, gaming, and consumer applications continue driving millions of daily users thanks to $SOL speed and extremely low transaction costs. Developer activity also remains among the strongest in the industry, helping expand the ecosystem at an impressive pace. 4/ @ethereum + Layer 2s DAUs: ~500K @ethereum continues serving as the foundation of on-chain finance. Protocols like @LidoFinance , @aave , and @Uniswap remain core pillars of DeFi, attracting institutions and long term capital through deep liquidity and proven infrastructure. Meanwhile, Layer 2 networks such as @base continue improving scalability and user experience, making Ethereum increasingly accessible without sacrificing security. 5/ @HyperliquidX DAUs: ~100K Hyperliquid has become the benchmark for on-chain perpetual trading. With industry-leading trading volume and one of the fastest-growing communities in DeFi, the ecosystem continues attracting professional traders looking for a CEX-like experience onchain. As HyperEVM continues expanding, I expect even more builders, applications, and users to enter the ecosystem, creating additional demand for $HYPE over time. Looking across the market, I think 2026 will reward ecosystems that retain users rather than simply attract short term attention. The blockchains capable of consistently growing DAUs while keeping users engaged are likely to become the biggest winners over the next phase of the crypto market. NFA.

3 founding execs left the @SonicLabs board same day. Cronje, Kong, Richardson, gone from decisions entirely. $S down 5%, 97% since January 2025. New CEO admits it openly: no victory lap, sentiment’s down, not spinning it. When does honesty this blunt become the bottom signal?

@Kaffchad PMF became the real moat

We're heading into a new cycle and the biggest lesson I learned is that the crypto investment game changed. Last cycle left a lot of ppl underwater because they never updated their framework. They bid on every L1, L2, new LSD ticker with a roadmap full of dreams but no real use case, then convinced themselves they were early. Big capital doesn’t care about faster chains because blockspace is everywhere, users are not. Even $EIGEN couldn’t hold despite reaching $12B TVL at peak because revenue was low. Crypto VC checks are getting bigger but fewer, and funds are not spraying capital into every shiny thing anymore. Fewer deals getting done, bigger checks going into fewer names, and the winners tend to already have something tangible working. The market wants projects to show users and revenue first, then reprices later. Every runner this year gives us a clearer picture of what the new cycle looks like. > $HYPE: PMF becoming the moat. Controls 70% of decentralized perp volume, does multi-billion dollar volume, prints huge revenue, and 99% flows back to absorb $HYPE supply. > $VVV: 3M signups, 50K DAU, 60B+ token throughput daily, $23M-$60M ARR. 42%+ of genesis supply burned, monthly revenue buy-and-burns, and staking gives access to private inference. > $NEAR: an infra-level play with Confidential Intents, TEE-based AI Cloud, NVIDIA Confidential Computing, and a tokenomics update that cut inflation while routing Intents fees toward buybacks. > $ZEC: every wallet movement can be tracked, so encryption becomes a financial primitive. The Orchard pool holds 4.2M $ZEC (~25% of supply), while shielded transaction share reached 59.3%. > $TAO: the bigger frontier AI becomes, the stronger the decentralized AI thesis gets. $TAO powers 128 active subnets, ~70% of supply is staked, and the Covenant drama didn’t change the core thesis. > $CARD: flipped Pump.fun to become the highest daily revenue app on Solana. $1B cumulative trading volume, $50M revenue, $1.5M-$2.3M weekly revenue, and a record 215K packs opened in a single week. What I see is capital rotating from promises to evidence. The new investment thesis is PMF over roadmaps, revenue over tokenomics, distribution over tech demos, and real usage over engagement farming. The risk is staying loyal to the old meta while the market quietly reprices what a crypto asset is supposed to be. The edge in this cycle is finding the business before people admit it's a business.

@Kaffchad Consumer UX wins payment wars