On December 30, 2025, perpetual futures DEX Lighter launched trading for its native Lighter Infrastructure Token (LIT) after months of building activity. The token's early price discovery saw levels around $2.80, while the platform reported about $1.4B in value locked and $4.7B in daily trading volume. LIT will distribute 25% of its total supply to point farmers based on two 2025 farming seasons, fully unlocked for trading.

In 2025, Solana-focused treasury firms and exchange-traded funds accumulated more than 28M SOL, amounting to nearly 5% of the circulating supply. These entities built sizable strategic reserves, shifted toward yield within the Solana ecosystem as stock valuations retreated, and continued net ETF inflows while SOL's price remained below $130. The concentration of holdings and staking activity may shape validator dynamics and broader market sentiment heading into 2026.

On December 26, 2025, Solana was cited as the top chain by annual on-chain revenues at $1.3B, while Hyperliquid’s native chain was placed second at $816M. The latest Cryptorank data indicated a reshuffle in network rankings, with Base at $76.4M and Ethereum and BNB Chain logging $524M and $257M respectively.

In 2025, real-world asset (RWA) tokenization became the leading crypto narrative as RWA tokens delivered average returns of 185.8%, with Chainlink acting as a key proxy for tokenized stocks. Over the same period, major L1 chains like Ethereum and Solana, along with memes, AI agents, GameFi, and DePIN tokens, generally posted significant losses despite periods of high activity and popularity.

On December 26, 2025, BTC and ETH options on Deribit saw a record year-end expiry with around $28B in notional value, covering monthly, quarterly, and annual contracts. The event impacted more than half of the exchange's open interest, with BTC's $23.6B notional and ETH's $3.71B notional highlighting heavy downside protection and expectations of possible volatility.

Trust Wallet disclosed a security incident affecting only its browser extension version 2.68, which began draining hundreds of user wallets after an update on December 24 2025. On-chain researcher ZachXBT tracked the exploit, estimating around $6.77M in crypto was taken, with about $2.35M still held in attacker-linked addresses, while users were told to disable 2.68 and move to version 2.69. Trust Wallet and Binance's former CEO said users would be compensated as investigations into the supply chain-style attack and malicious redirect continue.

Aave is holding a governance vote that ends on December 26, 2025, to decide whether its brand and related assets should be transferred to a new DAO-controlled entity for the benefit of AAVE token holders. Large holders, including founder Stani Kulechov, have amassed significant voting power, and the proposal has triggered a sharp move in AAVE's price to around $146 before a modest recovery above $150. As of December 25, most votes were against the transfer, leaving the future structure of Aave's brand control and fee distribution uncertain heading into 2026.

On December 24, 2025, Binance opened subscriptions for a USD1 product offering a 20% annualized yield, with deposits capped at 50,000 USD1 and the window running until January 23, 2026. Shortly after, USD1 supply rose by over 45M tokens to 2.79B. Trading activity climbed, including more than $150M in buy volume on Binance and $1.39B in daily turnover.

On December 23, 2025, analysis of Binance’s 2025 listings showed centralized exchange allocations were a small fraction of total supply. Distributions commonly ranged from 1-5%, with larger, higher-FDV projects often under 1%. Binance said these tokens funded liquidity, airdrops and marketing rather than exchange fees, amid weak market performance for many new launches.