As you can see in the following Tweet, Agglayer account just announced that Agglayer v0.2 will go live on Mainnet in less than 48 hours. According to the tweet, this upgrade will introduce the pessimistic proof that is a critical security feature that ensures safe cross chain interactions. In other words, stronger security, fewer exploits and a more trust minimized ecosystem.

As I have said before in other posts regarding AggLayer this is a big step forward for Polygon ecosystem and it is one of the important milestones on Polygon's roadmap.

https://preview.redd.it/977gcucg4pge1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=18921ed2be54000b22b57e56cc8dada809bd4e6c

I am not going to repeat myself again about why AggLayer is important, etc. so today we are going focus on briefly learning a more technical stuff that everybody should know and understand so you can "calculate" the times and in which status X project is. For that we are going to learn what all this Alpha version stuff and the different steps before releasing something into mainnet are. This process usually applies to most of the tech developments including crypto with some variations depending whatever the dev team decided.

Before releasing something into mainnet, every development pass through an intensive testing process composed by:

• Alpha: This is the initial experimental version and its goal is to test core functionality. Usually internal tests.
• Beta: In this step all the previous bugs found have been fixed and the code is more mature and refined but still open to external feedback and testing.
• Final Candidate: This is basically the “almost there” version that is used for stress tests before full deployment.
• Mainnet: Code is for production use and this is where everything must be "perfect".

To not get you bored more, this process can be applied to X amount of environments. This process could be separated in other layers where internally devs have this same process duplicated before going into a more "public" and official process.

With all of this I want to put some perspective so you can clearly understand in which stage a crypto project is when they talk about releases and alpha, beta, etc. terms. Now depending on the bugs, the workforce and luck a project will take longer or less time to reach mainnet. In this case, I believe AggLayer could be on Polygon mainnet by end of February 2025 inside the schedule they have been sharing.

Source:

• https://x.com/Agglayer/status/1885719767274995984

One benefit of analyzing options curves is we can see clearly what traders are positioning for, unlike in the spot market where we do not actually know how the traders are positioned. This is because for options they are tradable at future dates, including up to 26 December 2025 on Deribit.

Previously we have only analyzed the near term data for the options curve, so today we will look into what they are viewing for the rest of 2025.

At-the-Money (ATM) Volatility

https://preview.redd.it/esr81b7otoge1.png?width=1443&format=png&auto=webp&s=3a5a47e73b7602604044401d0b02daba5b37b776

https://preview.redd.it/saivzdkyuoge1.png?width=827&format=png&auto=webp&s=95d5540100bad20cb5265f6d4297f3759ca22a47

Looking at the table and chart above, we can see ATM volatility is elevated for the 1-week tenor (7 February), and this is probably because of the tariff tensions from Trump. The volatility then falls until it reaches the low in April at 64.63% before picking up again going into the end of the year. Once we reach the September month, the volatility is goes to a new high (excluding the 7 February level), and this coincides with after the timing of the US crypto working group from Trump’s executive order to come back with the results (180 days from January).

Risk Reversals

https://preview.redd.it/wt6t22votoge1.png?width=1443&format=png&auto=webp&s=8acda69ec0b7ebe5d92d635ae5b7a2f277857042

https://preview.redd.it/bg7xhbfzuoge1.png?width=870&format=png&auto=webp&s=b45b8b970d655723b2834e4178b466b9e5c20a6d

Recap: The Risk Reversal is the 25-delta call volatility minus the 25-delta put volatility, and it shows which options are more expensive due to higher demand. If the figure is negative, it means puts are more valuable, so market participants view price as biased to the downside, and the reverse if it is positive, it means they view price is biased to go to the upside.

From the chart and table above, we can see that until end of February traders are actually more concerned with protecting downward moves in ETH, but going into March traders begin to have a much more positive view of ETH price. This shows that in the short term (within 1 month) traders expect ETH price to go down, but once we hit March and toward end of the year they expect ETH to rally again and prices to go up.

Butterfly

https://preview.redd.it/e7s5hyfptoge1.png?width=1443&format=png&auto=webp&s=b4943a3b966750ba7ddcaf27cfa38c5c3efa5c06

https://preview.redd.it/cxb30pc0voge1.png?width=858&format=png&auto=webp&s=7661d58052b29297c401ec7daf91ca2be32cdb30

Recap: Butterfly shows how much higher the out-of-the-money 25-delta options are compared to the at-the-money options, which means the higher the number, traders expect bigger and sharper moves, and a smaller number means traders expect price action to move more smoothly.

Based on this metric we can see that traders expect much sharper moves in the near term, but beginning April onwards it doesn’t seem like they are expecting too many sharp and swift moves.

Final Thoughts

Despite all the concerns of the trade tensions that are happening right now, it seems traders do not view this to be a long term issue, with ATM volatility falling already at 21 February, while risk-reversals take abit longer to show a bullish trend, only starting at end March. Meanwhile the butterfly shows stabilization around 28 February. The combined analysis shows that this dip could continue until around end of the month, but the longer term trajectory for the year is still in an uptrend.

DISCLAIMER: Options data from Deribit

Liquidation Heatmap by Symbol

Bull run is over /s

According to coinglass symbol liquidation heatmap, in the past 24 hours, 245,449 traders were liquidated, totaling $533.29 Millions in losses. Also the largest single liquidation order happened on Binance ETHUSDT with $11.84 million liquidation (pocket money xD).

As we can see in the image above altcoins (Others) are the ones that got hit harder with $109.99M in losses followed by ETH with $98.50M and then BTC with $91.77M.

Liquidation Heatmap by Exchanges

In the heatmap above, we can see the liquidation heatmap by exchanges. In this one we can see that Binance is leading with $220.50M losses followed by OKX with 4108.84M and Bybit with $102.54M.

ETHUSD 4H

As we can see, ETH is back to the $3000 support that is holding for now. Let see if market rebounds and make this support even stronger.

I believe this movements and high volatility is related to the tariff wars I talked you about in previous posts. This generates an insane volatility because of uncertainty and a single bad or good news can move the market in a different direction.

The good news is that this is crypto and we signed for this roller coaster and the other good news is that this is not crypto related, this is macro economics so just enjoy the ride, buy more if you can and dont let the FUD, the fear to affect your strategy. If you need to something to get calm, check crypto adoption metrics and where is headed. Also check market cycles that are sacred. Patience and good luck!

Source: https://www.coinglass.com/LiquidationData

ETH Spot ETF Recap

https://preview.redd.it/njw9yp21wnge1.png?width=875&format=png&auto=webp&s=96be9dd3397d51e2356308665240a7ab5f8a1f69

Weekly flow (27-31 January 2025): -$45.3 million

• Blackrock: +$167.4 million
• Fidelity -$47.6 million
• Bitwise: -$8.2 million
• Grayscale: -$172.1 million
• Others: +$15.2 million

Last week saw a net outflow in ETFs and this is in line with the yearly trend that has already seen a total outflow of -$146.7 million. If we look at the 2025 breakdown below we can see the pattern is exactly the same as last week’s pattern regarding the bigger asset managers, with only Blackrock positive while Fidelity, Bitwise and Grayscale are negative.

https://preview.redd.it/aj176te4wnge1.png?width=887&format=png&auto=webp&s=7c22984b8af94744739d1d5b2fd4e0cf65a70071

Asia and Australia Week Ahead

Monday has Australia Retail Sales and Building Approvals, Japan’s Final Manufacturing PMI and China’s Caixin Manufacturing PMI. Next data point is Wednesday’s China Caixin Services PMI, then Thursday has Australia Trade Balance and Japan Household Spending, while Friday only has Japan Leading Indicators.

Eurozone, UK and Switzerland Week Ahead

Monday starts with Manufacturing PMI from all three together with the key event which is Eurozone CPI Flash Estimate. Next data point is the Services PMI from Eurozone and UK on Wednesday. Thursday is a big day for UK with the Bank of England monetary policy meeting where they are expected to cut rates by 0.25%, while Eurozone has Retail Sales data. Friday there is only UK Halifax House Price Index and Switzerland SECO Consumer Climate, which is not too significant.

Canada and US Week Ahead

Week starts with US Manufacturing PMI, with the focus being on ISM Manufacturing Prices because it is related to inflation. Tuesday has US JOLTS Job Openings, also important because it is related to employment (Federal Reserve has dual mandate of inflation and employment). Wednesday has key employment data again with US ADP Non-Farm Employment Change and US Services PMIs, where prices will be an important area to analyze again. Thursday has US Challenger Job Cuts, US Unemployment Claims and Canada Ivey PMI. Friday is the key date to watch in this region with Canada Unemployment Rate, US Unemployment Rate and Non-Farm Employment Change, together with the Preliminary University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment data.

Tariffs to Dominate Headlines in the Week Ahead

Trump has just announced 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico as well as 10% tariffs on China, and this already has an impact on crypto with ETH down -5.77% 24h while BTC is down -2.60% 24h. Expect escalation as Canada has already announced retaliatory tariffs while Mexico and China are sure to take action as well. Expect a volatile week not only from data but from tariff developments and headlines.

DISCLAIMER: Economic data from forexfactory with additional info from the aggregated links on the site, Asset prices from CMC, More tariff news from: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/01/politics/mexico-canada-china-tariffs-trump?Date=20250201&Profile=cnnbrk&utm_content=1738448307&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter, https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2025/02/canada-announces-155b-tariff-package-in-response-to-unjustified-us-tariffs.html

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Stand with crypto!

In light of recent events and the challenges faced by the Ethereum and broader crypto space, we'd like to draw your attention to Coinbase's 'Stand with Crypto' initiative. It seeks to promote understanding, collaboration, and advocacy in the crypto space.

Stand with Crypto Initiative

Remember, staying informed and united is key. Let's ensure a secure and open future for Ethereum and its principles. Happy trading and discussing!

Over the last month, Ethereum's supply has increased by 46,303 ETH. During this time, 77,708 ETH was issued, but 31,404 ETH was burned. So ETH's net supply is now increasing, and the burn rate is about 0.73 ETH per minute.

Right now the total supply is at 120,516,667 ETH, the annual supply growth rate currently is at 0.47%. This means that ETH currently is an inflationary supply crypto. However, ETH's supply growth is still much lower than BTC's.

The biggest contributors to ETH burns are:

• Uniswap
• Regular transactions
• Tether
• Blobs

For now, these activities are canceling out issuance, but are not enough to make ETH deflationary in recent months. This small net increase in supply might cast a shadow on the long-term economic model for Ethereum. The Merge and EIP-1559 were supposed to make ETH deflationary over time, but periods of low activity can still lead to small net issuance. If demand across the network increases again, Ethereum could return to being deflationary. Until then, the supply will continue to increase slowly.

But at least fees are cheaper right now, so it's a great time to transact on Ethereum. Lower gas means we can swap, stake, and use dApps without worrying about high fees. This is a perfect opportunity to interact with Ethereum.

Data source: https://ultrasound.money

Latest insights by IntoTheBlock has revealed that the average time Ethereum is being held is 2.4 Years.

"With an average holding time of 2.4 years, $ETH signals strong confidence from long-term holders," wrote IntoTheBlock on X.

https://preview.redd.it/7dpthre51ige1.jpg?width=1120&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e36f125e7e7b4be0f7e8967890fca06ecb23c2e9

What you should know

As we can see from the chart above, there was dominance of Cruisers (medium-term holders) and Traders (short-term traders) from 2016 to 2019 largely due to the fact that ETH was still in its formative years (remember it was launched in 2015).

That doesn't mean ETH didn't have anything go for it at the time. In fact, the ICO boom which peaked around 2017-2018 saw a surge in new projects and tokens being launched on Ethereum.

However, participants were mostly interested in flipping their tokens for quick profits, leading to dominance of short-term trading behavior.

It wasn't until July 2019 that Holders began dominating, a period when the market bottomed with many short-term traders and speculators exiting the market.

Those who remained adopted a long-term perspective, believing that the worst was over and that Ethereum had strong fundamentals for future growth.

They prolly bought into Ethereum 2.0 proposals and the promise that a transition from PoW to PoS held.

Fast forward to date, ETH has more holders, Many of whom were on-boarded by the DeFi summer of 2020 and locked in with staking/yield opportunities.

With future upgrades, institutions now building on ETH and RWAs making ETH their favorite platform, we can expect that the average hold time will tremendously increase in the next decade.

However it won't be a smooth sailing as IntoTheBlock notes that:

"A lack of new short-term participants and the emergence of L2s and alternative L1s are fragmenting attention, leaving growth potential somewhat tempered."

I feel nothing

Ethereum liquid staking platform Lido has transformed its Community Staking Module (CSM) into a fully permissionless platform.

CSM is a component of the Lido protocol that was designed to make Ethereum staking accessible to the broader community.

However, participation in the CSM was restricted, requiring permission until the game changed with Friday's announcement.

What's changed?

In 7 words - removal of gatekeeping or overwhelming approval processes. Previously approvals were more permissioned or selective but now based on meeting a minimum bond requirement.

According to the announcement:

"New stakers only need to put up 2.4 ETH as a bond for their first validator while subsequent validators require just 1.3 ETH, with early adopters during the Early Adoption phase enjoying a discounted bond of 1.5 ETH for their initial validator."

By lowering the entry cost, CSM empowers anyone with a relatively small amount of ETH to participate in staking, a development that is in sharp contrast to the standard 32 ETH requirement for independently running a validator on Ethereum.

The move not only aligns with Ethereum's core philosophy of open participation but fosters robust decentralization as a diverse set of validators reduces the risk of centralization.

The best part is that CSM v2 is in the works and it promises to further reduce barriers, empower stakers, and increase the stake that can be managed in a permissionless manner.

As you may already see, the market and ETH was experiencing a trend reversal that looked quite promising yesterday. However an "unexpected" news popped and made the market stop and go down again. The news I am talking about is the one about 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico and 10% tariffs on China. Now you will ask, why was this unexpected if it was previously announced? Well, Reuters reported that this tariffs would be delayed until March based on unnamed "sources" only for Trump inmmediately deny it. This flushed in the toilet the market euphoria when market realized that the news was incorrect.

The news affected S&P 500 erasing like $400 billion in market capitalization in just 20 minutes. Consequently, Ethereum dipped -3.5%, Bitcoin too and the rest of the crypto market too. As you know, crypto is highly correlated to S&P 500 movements. This generated uncertainty in the market and that increases volatility. After a few hours the White House confirmed that tariffs would go into effect today.

This has added volatility to the market because now retaliation moves from Canada, Mexico and China could be coming adding pressure to the market.

With all this post, I just want to put some perspective in front of your eyes and show you that this movement has nothing to do with Ethereum or crypto at all. Ethereum keeps being a solid project so act accordingly and don't let market manipulators confuse you. Yes, I wonder who decided to release the fake news before to take advantage of the price movement.

Now an extra chart picture I found while researching for information and sources for this post. I hope you laugh like I did xD

YUGE

Sources:

• Tax increase announcement: https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1OyKAZjnlzgGb
• Trump denying the news yesterday: https://www.axios.com/2025/01/31/trump-tariffs-canada-mexico-feb-1-march-1
• Chart source: https://x.com/DanielMuvdiYT/status/1885401104835297580

What would you do? Best decision?

What would you do in my shoes?

Hey everyone! Hope you guys are doing good! I have a question, I invested in a trading bot and holders get a share of the trading fees revenue (whitout needing to stake , just for holding) and are paid on ETH every 3 hours. Its a small project. Im not even sure if naming small projects is allowed and don't want to be flagged for "promoting" since my question is regarding other aspects and only sharing everything for context. I really believe in this project and like that its a buisness with revenue and realistic profits and not just speculation like other alts or memes. I honestly invested a good amount since i want to have access to revenue and "cashflow" and the bot has like $25K usd revenue a week , and token holders get 40% of that. I would like to listen to opinions and I listed 3 options that peak my interest but would love if you guys had other opinions as well. Would really appreciate any feedback! Thanks in advance!

Would you:

A) keep all the ETH and stake it

B) Sell it to buy other projects like AAVE , UNI , LINK

C) Reinvest in the project so I can get higher rewards

In all the previous options posts, I have talked mostly about directional strategies, like you expect ETH price to go up, so you buy a call option, or you expect ETH price to go down so you buy a put option.

But what if you think price is going to either surge higher violently or fall dramatically in a mega dump, just that you are not sure which way it will go? Well lucky for you, there is an options strategy for that! And we will use a combination of two options to achieve this.

How to Build a Long Straddle Position?

You will need to buy two option to do this strategy, which is consist of one call option and one put option. An example is that you buy an ETH Call Option with a Strike Price that is set at $3400 and you will be having to pay $250 for this option. You will then go and buy another option which is an ETH Put Option that is having a strike Price of $3400 and you pay another premium of $250.

When you buy these two option, you will have to pay a total premium figure of $500. It is more expensive than buying just one option, but in this strategy if the market moves sharply either up or down, you will make money either way. Let’s look at how to build this strategy with a combination of these two options:

Option Payoff Diagram of the Long Straddle – Part 1

https://preview.redd.it/ygq6txuqkgge1.png?width=909&format=png&auto=webp&s=fdea821c491c58c2d60c2e6ce6865ffb580771e5

The 1st part is an upward sloping line to the left combined with a flat line, which results in an upward sloping line to the left, starting at -$500 which is the combination of -$250 premium from the Call and -$250 premium from the Put.

Option Payoff Diagram of the Long Straddle – Part 2

https://preview.redd.it/33jkv6irkgge1.png?width=909&format=png&auto=webp&s=f7214519eb454280ed11668c44f58eae94ca62a9

The second part is an upward sloping line to the right side this time combined with a flat line, which results in an upward sloping line to the right, starting at -$500 which is the combination of -$250 premium from the Call and -$250 premium from the Put.

Final Option Payoff Diagram of the Long Straddle

https://preview.redd.it/ld96a1bskgge1.png?width=1419&format=png&auto=webp&s=381b25d92e83decb431069702157b997cf312899

One thing you have to take note of is if prices move really fast above the $3800 level or make a sharp drop below the $2800 you will begin to be profitable, and the profit above $3800 is UNLIMITED, while below $2800 the profit can be up to $2800. And if you look at the lowest point in the diagram which is the $3300 level, you can observe that your maximum losses will be limited to the premium paid which is $500.

Final Thoughts

You should execute this strategy when you expect market to suddenly become much more volatile and move sharply in either direction up or down. However, if markets move sideways and volatility falls, you will lose a much bigger premium, so you need to choose the market conditions wisely before entering into this strategy!

As part of efforts geared towards promoting community involvements, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) has launched a new initiative on X (formerly Twitter) called Community Guest Threads.

Announcing the initiative on X, an official associated with the EF, Josh Stark wrote:

https://preview.redd.it/per77xo0ggge1.jpg?width=1060&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4fed9c5dcb24c8a0f67352a3b87866789f11191d

What you should know:

Community guest threads operate by inviting community members to write and contribute threads, which are then featured on the @.ethereum account that has a massive following of over 3.5 million followers.

This not only gives community voices a platform on Ethereum's official channel but brings forward community knowledge and projects into the spotlight.

The first of the guest threads featured was penned by sassal0x an Independent Ethereum educator, angel investor, advisor and founder of @.thedailygwei⛽.

The initiative is one of many responses to criticisms regarding the under-utilization of the @.ethereum account which lay fallow for years.

It is worthwhile to note that initiative doesn't run at odds with Vitalik's recent statement that the the EF would not be a shilling office.

Instead, it aligns with fostering genuine community engagement which is in sharp contrast to promoting Ethereum in a traditional marketing sense like Etherealize does.

I look forward to seeing members of this sub make contributions on X that will be featured on the community guest thread.