Cryptocurrency markets experienced a minor recovery after last week’s downturn, as investor activity slowed during the holiday season. Bitcoin (BTCUSD) hit a weekly low of $86,561 on Tuesday but rebounded to surpass $88,600 by Friday, according to data from TradingView. Demand for spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) remained weak, with outflows totaling $175 million on Wednesday, marking the fifth consecutive day of net withdrawals, as reported by Farside Investors.
### Aave Governance Proposal Rejected Amid Community Concerns
Members of the Aave community expressed dissatisfaction with the decentralized lending and borrowing platform’s governance, criticizing a push to advance a proposal on brand asset ownership as hasty. This proposal aimed to transfer control of the protocol’s brand assets and intellectual property to an entity governed by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) but was ultimately rejected on Friday, with a majority voting against it.
Aave token holders took part in a governance vote that concluded with 55.29% opposing the proposal, while 41.21% chose to abstain, and only 3.5% were in favor. The proposal suggested that Aave (AAVEUSD) token holders should regain control of the protocol’s domains, social media handles, and other intellectual property through a DAO. Proponents viewed this as a move toward greater decentralization and improved brand management. The rejection brought a close to a tense governance episode for Aave, one of the largest platforms in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector, underscoring how timing and community engagement can influence governance results in a DAO setting.
### Hyperliquid’s Growth Prospects Amid Competitive Landscape
Hyperliquid, a decentralized perpetual exchange, has emerged as one of the standout projects in the crypto sector in 2025, although it faces stiff competition from rivals offering attractive rewards to draw in investors. Cantor Fitzgerald predicts that Hyperliquid’s HYPE (HYPE) token may rise to $200 by 2035, a projection supported by Hyperion DeFi’s CEO, Hyunsu Jung, who emphasized that the Hyperliquid Improvement Proposal 3 (HIP-3) will be instrumental in driving the platform’s growth.
Perpetual swaps are a type of futures contract that follow the price of an underlying asset without a set expiration date. These contracts keep their prices aligned with the spot assets through a funding mechanism that facilitates payments between holders of long and short positions. According to a report by CoinGecko, the market share of perpetual futures decentralized exchanges (DEXs) surged from 2.1% in January 2023 to a record high of 11.7% in November 2025.
### Binance Co-Founder Proposes Solutions to Address Wallet Security
Changpeng Zhao, co-founder of Binance, has suggested new security measures aimed at eliminating the risks associated with address poisoning, which can result in significant financial losses for investors. In a blog post published Wednesday, Zhao proposed that all wallets should verify whether a receiving address is a “poison address” and block any transactions to such addresses.
Address poisoning is a phishing tactic where scammers deceive victims into sending cryptocurrency to malicious wallets by first executing small transactions. Many users fall victim to this scheme by copying the address from their transaction history. Recent data from Scam Sniffer revealed that phishing scams affected 6,344 individuals, leading to losses exceeding $7.7 million in November. This figure is anticipated to rise in December, particularly following a $50 million loss suffered by a single victim. Zhao also recommended that wallets filter out minor spam transactions to enhance user safety.
### Ethena’s USDe Faces Significant Outflows Post-Market Crash
Ethena’s synthetic dollar, USDe, has experienced net outflows of approximately $8.3 billion since the significant market liquidation on October 10, driven by a decline in trust towards leveraged and synthetic collateral structures. A report from 10x Research indicated that this liquidation event marked a pivotal shift in the crypto market, transitioning from a bullish phase to one of deleveraging, resulting in an estimated $1.3 trillion loss in market capitalization, or nearly 30% of the total value at the time.
USDe, which relies on synthetic collateral and hedging methods instead of traditional fiat reserves, has seen a “sharp loss of confidence,” according to analysts. Data from CoinMarketCap shows that USDe’s market capitalization fell from nearly $14.7 billion on October 9 to approximately $6.4 billion just over two months later.
### Uniswap’s Fee Switch Set to Launch Following Successful Vote
The eagerly awaited fee switch for the Uniswap protocol, known as “UNIfication,” has successfully passed and is scheduled to go live soon, having met the necessary voting threshold of 40 million votes, marking one of the most significant upgrades in the decentralized exchange’s seven-year history. Uniswap Labs CEO, Hayden Adams, announced that the successful vote would initiate a two-day timelock period during which the fee switches for Uniswap v2 and v3 would be activated on the Unichain mainnet, leading to an increase in token burns of Uniswap (UNI).
This proposal aims to burn 100 million UNI tokens from the Uniswap Foundation’s treasury and implement a Protocol Fee Discount Auctions system, which is designed to enhance returns for liquidity providers. These changes are expected to significantly alter the supply-demand dynamics of the UNI token, making it a more attractive long-term hold. The announcement of the UNIfication proposal in early November triggered a nearly 40% increase in the UNI token, rising from approximately $7 to $9.70 on November 11. Uniswap stands as the largest decentralized exchange, having processed over $4 trillion in trading volume since its launch in November 2018. Currently, UNI ranks as the 39th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, valued at $3.8 billion.
### DeFi Market Recap
Based on data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, the majority of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization concluded the week on a positive note. The memecoin Pippin (PIPPIN) emerged as the week’s top performer, climbing over 41%, followed by the Canton (CC) token, which rose by more than 25%. We appreciate your interest in our summary of this week’s most significant developments in the DeFi landscape. Join us next Friday for further stories, insights, and educational content about this rapidly evolving sector.
