Ecosystem Update February 2025

We are excited to present our February 2025 Ecosystem Update, showcasing our portfolio companies’ strong performance amidst a turbulent industry. This comprehensive report highlights key developments across our ecosystem, reviews progress on major strategic initiatives, and outlines noteworthy advancements made during the past month.

Macro Overview

The start of February 2025 was relatively stable compared to January 2025, although the month ended with an unexpected outflow of around USD 800 million, bringing the total market cap to USD 2.9 trillion. Year over year, the overall market cap remains positive—up 16% compared to February 2024. The notable decline was primarily driven by two key events that took place during the course of February.

In early February the U.S. announced tariffs on imported goods from Mexico and Canada, as well as 10% additional tariff from China. Tariffs are taxes imposed on imports to protect domestic industries or generate revenue, but they can also lead to higher local prices and inflation. In the context of cryptocurrencies, increased tariffs can lead to increased inflation, weaker economic growth and heightened liquidity pressure, resulting in volatility for cryptocurrencies. In late February, the third largest centralized exchange Bybit suffered a major hack, where official North Korean hackers were in charge of those activities. This has led to an all-time-low of Fear and Greed Index to 10, causing a high liquidation pressure as crypto holders were panic-selling.

Important events in February:

Bitcoin's market dominance has risen above 60%, reaching its highest point since 2021, as altcoins like Ether, Solana and XRP have experienced significant declines. This surge in Bitcoin's dominance is attributed to factors such as inflow from institutional investors via BTC ETFs, the crash of alternative cryptocurrency markets. Despite Bitcoin 23.4% decline from January's peak, its dominance verifies the stronghold interest in investor preference towards more established digital assets.
NYSE Arca has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to permit staking for Grayscale's proposed spot Ethereum ETFs. Staking allows investors to earn rewards by participating in transaction validation on the Ethereum network. This move signals that institutional interests are not only in trading crypto assets but now also expanding to DeFi activities such as staking, as other firms, including Fidelity, have also sought to incorporate staking into their Ethereum ETF offerings. The SEC's decision on these proposals will significantly impact the availability of staking features in Ethereum ETFs.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed to dismiss its 2023 lawsuit against Coinbase, the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange. SEC has also concluded its investigation into Robinhood's crypto trading arm without taking any action These decisions reflect a significant shift in the SEC's regulatory approach toward the cryptocurrency industry under President Donald Trump's administration. The SEC has established a "Crypto Task Force" to develop a comprehensive and clear regulatory framework for crypto assets, moving away from the aggressive enforcement tactics seen under former leadership.
MicroStrategy has rebranded itself as "Strategy" to emphasize its commitment to Bitcoin. Despite reporting a fourth consecutive quarterly loss, Strategy continues to invest heavily in Bitcoin, holding approximately 471,107 BTC valued at around $45 billion.
More than 30 states in the U.S. filled official bills, proposing to allocate a portion of their reserves into bitcoin. While the acceptance or passing of such bills to become a policy may take time, it underscores the increased interest and traction of bitcoin as an asset and highlights the relevance of other altcoin assets, such as Ethereum, Solana, among others globally.

Advanced Blockchains Ecosystem Updates

peaq - On February 6, peaq announced a $100 million campaign to encourage the global adoption of Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePINs) by rewarding participants for creating real-world value through applications built on the peaq network. This campaign has received over 1 million views on peaq’s official X account.

In addition, Tether USD(USDT) is now supported on peaq across all DePIN projects, brought by Stargate Finance, the multichain bridge with highest bridging volume. The official integration of USDT will make DeFi and payments on peaq more user friendly.

Panoptic - Panoptic has officially launched on Unichain, streamlining liquidity provisioning (LPing) for the newly introduced Optimism layer-2 network. By expanding its LP ecosystem into a faster, more cost-effective environment, Panoptic enables Uniswap LPs to achieve higher yields.

Engineered as a prime destination for DeFi liquidity, Unichain currently features one-second block times, with an upgrade to 250-millisecond block times in the works. Its architecture reduces transaction costs by up to 95% compared to Ethereum, while enhancing decentralization through permissionless fault proofs and the Unichain Validation Network.

Moreover, Panoptic’s TVL reached an all-time high of USD 1.76 million in February 2025.

Composable - Composable’s Mantis was listed in February. Over the whole month, Mantis has been listed in centralized exchanges such as MEXC and decentralized exchanges such as Raydium.

Contango - Contango achieved another milestone in February 2025, reaching $6 billion in trading volume in just one year.

Furthermore, Messari reported on Contango’s open interest surge in Q4 2024, increasing by 73% quarter-over-quarter, to reach USD 465 million.

Polymer - Polymer team has announced that Polymer will be the first proof based interoperability solution to support the Ethereum Foundation's Open Intents Framework (OIF).

The OIF is a public initiative designed to standardize how “intents” are expressed, settled, and executed throughout the Ethereum ecosystem. By establishing a universal language for cross-chain and cross-protocol interactions, OIF aims to break down silos, reduce complexity, and enable seamless interoperability for everyone. Over 30 leading Layer 2 and infrastructure protocols have already joined forces to make ecosystem-wide interoperability a reality.

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AO - AO has officially launched the mainnet of its computing platform, AO, following a year-long testnet phase.

Notably, deposits to farm the AO token have risen by an impressive USD 131.5 million since its mainnet launch, underscoring the growing interest in AO, the hyper parallel computer.

Teneo - Teneo has announced the close of its seed funding round, raising USD 3 million co-led by Borderless Capital, Generative Ventures, and RockawayX, with additional participation from Outlier Ventures, Certik Ventures, and Moonrock Capital.

Light Protocol - Light Protocol’s compressed tokens are now supported by Phantom, one of the largest wallets on Solana. This integration will significantly reduce Solana SPL tokens cost and boost scalability on Solana.

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Delv - Hyperdrive, Delv’s Automated Market Maker (AMM) for fixed rate yield markets, ranked as number one protocol on Base in terms of TVL in the first week of February 2025, according to BaseDaily.

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Group Update

The month of February 2025 has been quite busy with many activities on various fronts.

Staking, DeFi Activities, and Asset Management

On a year-to-date basis, we have generated a total of 392,000 $PEAQ tokens through our staking activities, which we continue to monetize. Additionally, we have gained clarity on the status of various peaq SAFT agreements and the EoT Labs structure. The management team will address these topics during the upcoming investor update call—planned to take place in April 2025—where we will also provide an update on Q1 2024 sales activities, among other topics.

Through our participation in AO farming activities, which started last year, the group currently holds 380 AO tokens—valued at approximately $45,000, based on the token's all-time high.

Furthermore, we have integrated Fireblocks in our wallets infrastructure to manage and secure the group digital assets, ensuring a high level of governance standards.

In parallel, we are currently evaluating the risk-reward implications of establishing a Bitcoin reserve, along with other liquid assets, as part of our strategy to enhance the group’s liquidity reserve - particularly after the upcoming unlocks of our peaq tokens in Q3 2025.

Group Audit & Assets Valuation

Our team's efforts to finalize the subsidiaries’ financials—primarily those of Incredulous—in coordination with the newly appointed auditor in Cyprus remain ongoing. This process includes a review of financials not only for 2023 and 2024, but also for 2021 and 2022 (since the establishment of Incredulous Labs Limited). A dedicated update on particular findings will be also provided during the upcoming investor update call.

We have initiated the valuation of our top 15 assets with the AVS Valuation team, focusing primarily on our equity and unlaunched token positions as of December 31, 2024. This adjustment in our valuation approach aims to provide more granular transparency for tokens currently traded on the market while also cutting unnecessary costs. We expect to share an update on the valuation of these top assets in March 2025.

In tandem with these cost-saving measures, we have also begun the liquidation process for certain dormant subsidiaries, thereby streamlining the group’s operations and enabling a leaner group structure.

Virtual & Physical Presence

Our team gave a presentation at the International Investment Forum (IIF) on February 25th, 2025, where we gave an update on market dynamics, our business model, and planned initiatives for the rest of 2025. You can access the presentation here.

Aside from that, our team attended the 14th edition of the Global Blockchain Congress on February 4th and 5th, 2025, in Dubai, UAE, for the second time.

As we enter March 2025, our management team will attend the upcoming Crypto Assets Conference on March 26, 2025, in Frankfurt.

As this year unfolds, we look forward to tackling ongoing challenges, creating additional value for our shareholders, and making a meaningful impact in this fast-growing industry. We’re excited to continue this transformative journey with you as we move further into 2025.

Best regards,

Your Advanced Blockchain Team