Weekly Editor's Picks (0103-0109)

郝方舟

Odaily资深作者

@OdailyChina

2026-01-10 02:39

This article is about 4901 words, reading the full article takes about 8 minutes

Top in-depth analysis articles and a roundup of the week's hot topics.

AI Summary

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Core Viewpoint: The crypto market in 2026 will exhibit a pattern of high volatility driven by events.
Key Factors:
1. Macro policies and crypto event windows are densely interwoven.
2. Unilateral market trends are unlikely; range convergence will dominate.
3. Investors need to actively manage risks around key event windows.
Market Impact: Will exacerbate market volatility, testing investors' timing and risk control capabilities.
Timeliness Note: Medium-term impact.

"Weekly Editor's Picks" is a "functional" column by Odaily. In addition to covering a large volume of real-time news each week, Odaily also publishes many high-quality in-depth analysis pieces, but they might get lost in the information feed and hot topics, passing you by.

Therefore, our editorial team will select some worthwhile, high-quality articles from the content published in the past 7 days every Saturday. From perspectives like data analysis, industry insights, and opinion pieces, we aim to bring new inspiration to you in the crypto world.

Now, let's read together:

Special Feature

2025 Archive: Odaily Editorial Team's Selected Articles Collection

Editorial team members selected articles from 1770 original pieces that either ask crucial questions for the present moment, capture a slice of the times, or remain relevant and instructive when looking back in the new year.

Best enjoyed alongside our key annual milestones review: "4 Key Themes, Composing the 2025 Crypto Seasons' Song".

Investment & Entrepreneurship

Matrixport Research: 2026 Could Be the Year of High Volatility Pricing, Event Windows Determine Outcomes

2026 may become a critical turning point for the crypto market. With the Federal Reserve leadership transition, marginally weakening employment, and election-year policy disruptions converging, event density is set to rise significantly on both the macro and crypto fronts, likely pushing the market's volatility center higher. Monthly CPI and employment data, FOMC meetings with multiple Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) updates, and potential government shutdown risk windows will persistently amplify cross-asset pricing volatility. Simultaneously, the final implementation phase of MiCA, major protocol upgrades, the Mt. Gox repayment deadline, and the historical inflection point of "approximately 15 months until the next halving" could also become key market triggers at different stages.

Against this backdrop of multiple intertwined variables, 2026 is unlikely to see sustained one-sided trends. Macro and crypto catalysts will alternately dominate market pricing, with the market more likely to exhibit a pattern of "range convergence, event-driven" movements. For investors, the core challenge lies not in directional judgment, but in how to actively manage positions and risk exposure around these key windows.

New Capital Reward Paths Under a New Regime: The True Picture of Crypto Investment & Financing in 2025

Capital is actively reducing deal frequency, instead concentrating bets on a few projects perceived to have certainty and scaling potential.

Top Liquidity Fund's Review and Preparation: Pure Secondary Market Strategy, Easier for Retail to Follow

Fisher8 Capital closed the year with a 16.7% annual return.

Reviewing 2025: The Trump-crypto market correlation was clear; investors chased local momentum, quickly harvested profits, and continuously rolled liquidity into the next narrative; DAT expansion.

Outlook for 2026: Asymmetric returns will emerge in the application layer; midterm elections will shape a high-volatility environment; selectivity increases, shaping a K-shaped divergence in token economies.

In-depth Analysis of the Crypto Compensation Report: Wait, These Guys Earn This Much?

Most crypto companies are in growth mode, not hyper-expansion phase.

Crypto hiring has been global from the start, with almost no cases of hiring only within the US.

Europe has become the primary international hiring hub.

Salaries and token compensation have declined for almost all job levels and regions.

Remote work still dominates, and companies have no plans to change this.

Barriers to entry into the crypto industry are high, with entry-level positions accounting for less than 10%.

Engineering roles remain core. Product roles typically start at senior levels, and design roles value individual contributors over management.

US salary levels set the global pricing standard for engineering management.

I Grinded for 14 Days on Hyperliquid, Turning a Testnet Mistake into a $50M Valuation

The author ported forex trading pairs to the Hyperliquid ecosystem but mistakenly deployed them on the testnet. The news quickly reached trade.xyz. The company reacted swiftly, immediately seizing the Japanese Yen vs. US Dollar (JPYUSD) trading pair and announcing plans to launch forex trading products first on Hyperliquid.

After the regret, the author also introduced Monero (XMR) to wagyu.xyz, solving a trading pain point. Within just two weeks of launch, the platform's withdrawal volume exceeded $10 million, bringing over $20 million in new trading volume to the Hyperliquid platform.

The author now plans to build wagyu.xyz into a top-tier developer platform within the Hyperliquid ecosystem and launch a points incentive system to encourage users to provide liquidity and generate trading volume for the platform.

IOSG Ventures: A Game with No Winners, How Can the Altcoin Market Break the Deadlock?

The altcoin market is stuck in a low liquidity dilemma, becoming a lose-lose-lose-lose game (CEX, token holders, project teams, VCs). IOSG Ventures examines why past repair mechanisms failed and proposes potential rebalancing ideas.

The biggest long-term threat is altcoins becoming a "lemon market"—where quality participants are shut out, leaving only those with no other options. Despite the difficulties, signs of market adjustment are emerging.

After the digestion period, three things could drive recovery: better standards formed from painful trial and error, a profit-sharing adjustment mechanism acceptable to all four parties, and selective token issuance—only issuing tokens when they truly add value.

From Helium to Jupiter: Why Have Token Buybacks Become an "Ineffective Medicine"?

Helium founder Amir Haleem tweeted that he would stop token buybacks, believing their effect on token price is not significant. Jupiter's $70 million buyback failed to reverse the token's downward trend. Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko (Toly) explicitly opposes traditional buybacks, stating that "long-term capital formation takes years, not quarters."

Prediction Markets

When War is Settled Before the News: How Prediction Markets "Priced" the Maduro Capture 6 Days Early

Insiders learned of the US military operation as early as 6 days prior. Polymarket is structurally advantaged by anonymity: no KYC, near-zero account creation cost, sufficient liquidity, and crypto settlement ensuring privacy. Under these conditions, tracing addresses and confirming real identities afterward is highly difficult. So when participation costs are driven extremely low while potential rewards are extremely high, it's no longer a moral issue but a problem of incentive design.

Ideally, prediction markets reflect the wisdom of the crowd, but in reality, they are just a playground for insiders.

This also means that prediction markets face not just compliance technical issues, but the question of whether they are unintentionally encroaching on the sensitive boundaries of traditional information security and national governance.

Only One in Ten Prediction Markets Will Survive Until Year-End, and That's Not an Exaggeration

Recently, there has been much industry discussion about the prediction market formula Yes + No = 1, but it won't solve the barrier to entry for ordinary people to become market makers like the x * y = k AMM formula did. Market making for prediction markets is inherently more difficult because prediction is a wilder, more volatile, and less rule-bound market.

The market-making challenge for prediction markets, on one hand, demands higher capabilities from market makers, and on the other hand, poses a liquidity-building challenge for platforms. This leads to a stronger winner-takes-all effect.

Who "Defines the Facts"? The Truth About Power and Potential for Abuse in Polymarket's Resolution Mechanism

Interpretive leeway in language descriptions, the unavoidable political stance of platforms, and the economic interests behind voting power.

Behind 27,000 Trades: The Survival Algorithm and Win Rate Illusion of Polymarket Whales

While many "smart money" operations involve hedging and arbitrage strategies, this hedging differs significantly from the simple hedging interpreted on social media; the actual strategies are more complex.

Behind the historically significant high win rates lies the result of many "zombie orders" left open by these whales, artificially inflating the appearance. The real win rate is far lower than the historical one.

"Copy trading" doesn't work in prediction markets.

Managing profit-loss ratios and position sizing is more important than chasing win rates.

Solana's on-chain revenue exceeds $600 million, surpassing Ethereum and TRON to become the "strongest public chain."

Revealing the composition of Solana's on-chain ecosystem revenue: 4 major components (base fees + priority fees + MEV-related revenue + others) support over $600 million.

Review of crypto cash machine business models: Public chains, Perp DEXs, and Launchpads remain the most profitable sectors, second only to stablecoins.

CeFi & DeFi

DeFi Gold Rush: 6 Metrics to Filter Out 90% of Shitcoins

Lazy Investing Relaunch｜Ethereal Offers 27% APR While Earning Points; Huma Opens New 28% APY Pool (Jan 6)

Trend Research: 2026 Beyond Paradigms, WLFI Ushers in a New Era for Financial Ecosystems

Why the Non-Mainstream HIP-3 Market Doesn't Work

Web3 & AI

Wallet Sector's Silent War 2: Is Rushing to Integrate Hyperliquid a Good Business?

The current moment for Perps is exactly like the DeFi Summer of that time. Some want to build platforms, some want to aggregate others, some want to challenge the leader, and some want to capture the tail end. The wallet sector is also engaged in a new round of silent warfare. Everyone is rushing to integrate Hyperliquid's perpetual trading capabilities.

Hyperliquid's rebate mechanism mainly includes Builder Fee combined with Referral, allowing DeFi builders (developers, quant teams, aggregators) to charge additional fees as service revenue when placing orders on behalf of users. Different integration approaches lead to different user experiences and can somewhat explain the variations in final rebate effectiveness data.

Integrating third-party Perps is mostly a low-ROI endeavor. Whether from user growth benefits or platform commission earnings versus stability investment, it's hardly a good business. Ultimately, only new users pulled from outside CEXs are truly effective users.

AI Prediction Record: Want to Make Money in Prediction Markets with AI? It Might Not Even Have Read the Question Properly

Among the settled prediction questions (21 total), Grok had the highest win rate at 75%, humans at 66.7%, and Gemini the lowest at 52.4%.

Core AI issues: Gemini occasionally misjudges the current time; AI lacks depth of thought; AI infers based on common sense rather than evidence + logic; makes errors in judging settlement conditions.

The AI Industry Has a Deep-Pocketed Newcomer: Tether

Tether made $13 billion in 2024. Those doing AI are losing money, those not doing AI are making money. Those doing AI are raising funds, those not doing AI are investing. The best AI business model in 2026 might be not doing AI. Focus on perfecting the money printer first.